"What the hell happened out there?"

Ritsuko had woken up in a hospital bed a few minutes before to find Misato keeping her company; after establishing that it was approximately 1 AM on Tuesday morning, and that she'd been unconscious for several hours, bits and pieces of the insanity that had led to that unconsciousness began to return to her memory.

Misato hesitated. "A lot of things. Most of which you probably don't want to hear right now--"

As soon as she heard that, it naturally became absolutely vital for Ritsuko to know the exact details of that day's events. And Misato was the only person she could trust to give her the truth—the woman was too honest for her own good sometimes. "No. I want to hear everything. Starting from the beginning—you picking up the Children."

The dark-haired woman shrugged. "Okay, but don't say I didn't warn you..."

Misato woke up late that day, and as a result had to rush to the pickup point at a somewhat unsafe speed. (She was vaguely aware that what she considered to be a "somewhat unsafe speed" would be considered a violation of various traffic regulations, common sense, sanity, and possibly the laws of physics by most people, but she never let that bother her too much.) Add that to the fact that she was driving a heavy, ungainly NERV armored transport instead of her coupe, and it was a miracle that any serious accidents were avoided.

Toji and Haruhi were waiting for her; judging by the way Toji was looking at his watch, they had been waiting for quite some time.

"Toji-kun! And you must be Haruhi." She opened up the passenger-side door and waved to the two teenagers as she pulled up alongside the sidewalk. The Fifth Child nodded back, then not-very-subtly suppressed a yawn. That and her slightly bleary eyes hinted that she probably hadn't gotten very much sleep the night before. "I'm Major Misato Katsuragi, director of NERV Tactical; my superiors would prefer that you called me 'Major Katsuragi', but you can just call me Misato if you want." Misato hoped that allowing such familiarity would help ease any potential tension.

Haruhi kind of vaguely half-nodded, half-bowed back. "Niceameeshya." The girl was clearly on the edge of falling back asleep; thankfully, the ride to Matsushiro was long enough that she would have the opportunity to do just that. A shame, though: Misato had planned to give them both a bit of a briefing on the way.

The trip was therefore spent mostly in silence. At one point, Misato asked Toji if he knew why Haruhi was so tired; he didn't know for sure, but speculated that sheer anticipation had kept her up all night. "'Cause, y'know, she's been hyper like ya wouldn't believe ever since whatshername...the blond scientist chick...?"

"Ritsuko? Dr. Akagi?" Despite her determination to act casual with the two new Children, Misato was a little startled to hear her friend referred to as 'the blond scientist chick'.

"Akagi, that was it. Ever since Dr. Akagi came 'n talked to us, Suzumiya's been runnin' around like some kinda demon. She really, really likes the idea of being an Eva pilot, I can tell ya that."

Something in his tone of voice... "And what about you? Don't you want to be an Eva pilot? Save the world and all that?"

Toji seemed to stop and think for a moment. "...I s'pose. I dunno. It's just that, I've been in there. I was in the cockpit with Ikari when he fought off the big...snake thing. I got an idea of how much power you have...how much responsibility you have to bear. I guess I dunno if I'm up to the task."

"Don't worry, Toji-kun, you are. You absolutely are," Misato replied.

"Did you mean it?"

Misato stared at Ritsuko. "I'm sorry?"

"Did you mean it when you told Toji he was up to the task?"

"I thought you wanted to find out what happened, not...psychoanalyze me or something."

"I'm sorry. The question just kind of popped into my head."

"It's all right." Misato looked away from Ritsuko for a moment. "I think I did. I mean, there wasn't any reason to believe he wouldn't be...but then again, are any of the pilots 'up to the task'? They're children, Ritsuko. Just...kids, and look what we're making them do..."

"Misato, we have no choice. You know that."

"Yes. I...I know. Back to the story, then..."

Nobody really spoke again for the remainder of the trip. When they arrived at the Matsushiro facility, Toji tried to gently wake up Haruhi. The girl's eyes sprang open, showing none of the previous bleariness, and she nearly jumped out of the car with a shout of "AWESOME! WE'RE HERE WE'RE HERE WE'RE HERE!" Misato watched with something like awe. Nobody could wake up that fast, even from a nap in the car.

As it turned out, Haruhi's enthusiasm was premature; the two C-350 transports had been delayed several hours due to weather. Misato used the opportunity to give her and Toji the briefing they had skipped in the car: what NERV was (a UN paramilitary organization founded to combat extraterrestrial threats), what the Angels were and where they came from (we don't know, but they're trying to get to something beneath Tokyo-3), what the Evangelion was (an experimental biomechanical weapons platform with a new, nearly invincible shielding technology called an AT field), and why they needed it (Angels had AT fields as well, making them invulnerable to conventional weaponry, and two AT fields could cancel each other out). Some of it was actually true. It hurt to lie to them, of course, but she knew that they'd run screaming away right now if they knew the truth. (Misato suspected that she herself would do the same if she knew the whole truth—she knew there were plenty of things Gendo was still keeping her in the dark about.)

It was about 4:00 in the afternoon when the transports finally arrived. First was Unit 03, Toji's Eva. He nodded in approval and let out a short "Nice" at the matte-black color, which made the robot look like a walking shadow even in daylight. A bit of a subdued reaction, but then again, he had seen an Eva up close before.

Next was EVA-04. When Misato turned to see Haruhi's reaction, she saw nothing less than pure, unadulterated wonder on the young girl's face. She couldn't really blame her.

Leaving aside the fact that it was a real, honest-to-God giant mecha, and that it was the first time Haruhi had seen one in person, it was 04's specific appearance that was really stunning. The third production Evangelion unit had a silver chrome paint job, which caught the afternoon sunlight perfectly. As a result, it seemed to shine with a light of its own, like some ancient sun god come to life. (Misato noticed that something seemed wrong about the position of the sun in the sky at that moment, but chalked it up to the light being in her eyes.) And this wonder, this god-machine was Haruhi's, hers and nobody else's. Misato supposed that anybody would be awestruck in that situation.

"Wait, what do you mean the sun didn't look right?"

"The position seemed off. Like it had moved down a few degrees, just so Unit 04 would catch the light at just the right time and angle. Only for a few moments, though. I'm sure I just imagined it."

"You're right. Probably just the light in your eyes. I was standing right next to you, remember? I certainly don't remember anything being wrong with the sunlight. Then again, our attentions were on very different things at the time."

"Right. You were moving to check out the Evas, and I was..."

All was quiet for a few moments as everyone stared. Misato eventually spoke up: "Finally! First guy ever to make me wait this long. All right, get these things prepped for the powerup tests! Toji-kun, Haruhi-chan, follow me to the locker rooms. Let's get you two suited up."

On the way to the lockers, Misato told them about the Evangelion control interface. She didn't get into the technical details (most of which she didn't understand very well herself), but talked about how the biomechanical nature of the Eva allowed it to be controlled directly by the pilot's mind.

"So I just think 'punch' and it'll throw a punch?" Haruhi asked.

"Yes, basically. There are some tactile controls in the entry plug—the cockpit, that is—but they're mostly there to help you with fine motor control. You could do everything while sitting back with your arms crossed and your feet up on the control panel if you focus well enough." Misato thanked her lucky stars that Haruhi and Toji were going to get the chance to familiarize themselves with these things before getting thrown into a combat situation. "Ah, here're the locker rooms. Here." She handed them each a neatly folded plugsuit. "These are your plugsuits. They're one of the many innovations that came out of the Evangelion project—they reduce interference in the neural link between Eva and pilot, and contain a full suite of bio-sensors so we can monitor your vital signs in the command center. The new versions even have thermal regulators that can keep you cool or warm. All you have to do is put it on, zip it up, and press the button on your left wrist to pressurize it."

Both teenagers unfolded their suits and looked them over. Toji examined his blue-and-gray outfit with an expression of vague distaste, but didn't complain out loud. Haruhi's face, though, only brightened even more at the sight of her bright-yellow suit. "Oh, this is totally even better than the bunny-girl costume..."

Misato decided to avoid the question of where and why a 14-year-old girl got a bunny-girl costume. "All right. Suit up, you two. Girls' side is there, boys' side is there. If you need any help with it, just call for me."

To her utter shock, before Toji even started walking to the men's side of the locker room, Haruhi just started changing then and there. Misato rather hurriedly turned Toji around and walked him away before confronting Haruhi, already down to her underwear. "Um, Haruhi, just what did you think you were doing?"

"Changing, like you said." Nonchalantly.

"...In front of Toji?"

"Sure."

"...Did you want him to see your body?" That was the only thing Misato could think of, although given that the two weren't already in a relationship (as far as she could tell), that would be a level of...forwardness beyond anything even she did while completely smashed.

"No. Just didn't care. I have more important things to worry about than the perverted minds of men."

Oh. Misato wasn't exactly sure how to respond to that. "But...you know it's not...proper, right?"

Haruhi, who had not stopped changing and now was zipping up the plugsuit, shrugged. "Eh. Don't care about that, either."

At this point, Misato was seriously starting to wonder who exactly raised this child. Time to go for a weak spot. "Listen, Haruhi. It's not my responsibility what you are or aren't willing to do in front of boys...when you're off duty. Right now, you are a soldier, you are on duty, and you are expected to meet certain standards of behavior. If you want to stay on with NERV and pilot EVA-04, you're going to have to start caring."

Haruhi froze with her finger hovering an inch above the pressurizer button. She slowly turned her head towards Misato to look her right in the eye, and for a second Misato felt a chill go down her spine. She knew, instinctively somehow, that she might have just made a very big mistake.

But then the smile returned. "Roger that, Misato!" Misato noted that the girl had taken her up on the offer of dropping rank or even basic honorifics from her name. Not that she would push the matter now. Haruhi pushed the button on her wrist, and the baggy suit tightened around her. She turned to look at herself in the mirror. "Not bad, not bad...but...Say, Misato," she said with a grin, "who do I have to bribe to get from this..." She pointed at her rather undeveloped chest area. "...to this?" She moved her finger from her own chest to the older woman's. Poke. Jiggle. Jiggle.

"So what you're saying is that we have a pilot on our hands that has zero respect for the rules of society, rank, or any kind of authority except hers, and may in fact be an all-out sociopath?" Ritsuko frowned. "Assuming she survived the explosion and...whatever came afterwards, that is."

"She did. And yes, that is what I'm saying. She followed orders well enough after that, though. She knows she can be taken off duty if she doesn't, and I guess she either decided that...removing me would be more trouble than it'd be worth, or realized that it wouldn't actually help her situation."

"Or you're completely misreading one two-second look. Plenty of people can give scary death glares. I can give a scary death glare." Ritsuko demonstrated with an expression that could probably kill most insects and certain small rodents. "That doesn't mean I'm sizing you up and thinking about the best way to stab you."

"Maybe." Misato looked unconvinced. "Maybe it wasn't the expression, but Ritsuko, this girl scared me. Not like the Commander scares people. It was something more primal, like..." She shook her head. "I can't explain it, but Haruhi is different. When you're talking to her, it feels like she's not ignoring all these social norms and customs and rules to be disrespectful, or even because she doesn't feel like she's bound by them, but because she isn't bound by them."

Ritsuko raised an eyebrow. "You're starting to sound a little...strange, Misato."

"I know, I know. It's...it's been a strange day. And it only gets stranger from here."

"Go on, then."

Misato blushed, faked a laugh, and mumbled something dismissive. She wanted to slap the girl right there, or at least yell at her, or something, but she was going to treat Haruhi very delicately until she took a look at her psych evaluation. The sight of Toji walking out of the locker room a few seconds later couldn't have been more welcome.

"Jeez, who designed these things, 'n how soon can I sock 'em in the face? Cause...whoa...never mind." He had just caught sight of Haruhi, and was very obviously looking her up and down.

Haruhi paid no attention. Maybe she really doesn't care. "Okay, everyone's ready, can we go now?"

Misato nodded. "Yes. I'll take you to your Evas now."

Haruhi stared into the bizarre, spider-like face of EVA-04 with the same awestruck expression that she had worn when first seeing it. Toji had been loaded into Unit 03 already, and there were several hours worth of tests to run before the techs could get started on 04. But that meant that Misato would have to watch Haruhi until then, as well as supervise the 03 tests in the command center. Not a pleasant idea.

So she got a brilliant idea. "Haruhi?"

"Yeah?" Haruhi did not turn around, but continued staring down the silver EVA.

"How would you like to get in the cockpit now?"

That got her attention. "Seriously? Can I? Please?"

"Sure. Toji's not going to be done for a while, so it might get a little boring. I figure you'd rather spend that time inside Unit 04 than outside it." (rephrase this)

"Awesome!"

After Misato cleared this change of plans with Ritsuko, the entry plug for Unit 04 was lifted up to the observation platform where she and Haruhi were standing.

"All right. Now, let's walk you through this. This is the 'Entry Plug', the specialized cockpit used for the Evangelion's unique control system--"

But Haruhi had already run over to the plug, and now was fiddling with the hatch release lever. Misato just shook her head as one of the technicians stepped over to help her with it, and began walking back to the command center.

The command center was a semi-replica of the Evangelion launch station at Central Dogma. Two large screens displayed live video feeds from the cockpits of Units 03 and 04, each accompanied by several other screens showing the status of both Evangelion and pilot. Ritsuko had made a couple minor changes to the test schedule as a result of Misato's impromptu suggestion: they would run the pre-power-on tests on both EVAs simultaneously, allowing Haruhi to acclimate herself to the special conditions while Toji (who had already been in an EVA cockpit) went through the primary test sequences.

Ritsuko switched on the audio link to the EVAs. "All right. Are you both ready?"

"Yes, ma'am!" They both replied enthusiastically, Haruhi somewhat more so.

"Good. First, we're going to insert the entry plug into the Eva. You shouldn't feel more than a slight jolt." They both nodded; then twitched a bit as they were lowered inside. "This next part may be slightly disturbing for you, Haruhi—we're going to fill the plug with a liquid called LCL. It's heavily oxygenated, so you can breathe it like air, but it might feel like you're drowning for a few seconds. Just stay calm and breathe. If you experience extreme discomfort, we can stop it and drain it immediately—just say so, or give a thumbs-down if you don't feel like you can talk."

Misato watched Haruhi's face carefully as the plug began filling up. She kept the same excited grin throughout the whole process. No struggling, no instinctively trying to keep her face above the liquid level (which Toji did quite noticeably). No fear or panic whatsoever. It was like she had done this a thousand times.

Shinji had panicked his first time. So had Asuka. Even Rei had panicked, although it was obviously more difficult to tell with her.

"Are both of you breathing the LCL?" Ritsuko's voice cut into her memories.

"Yeah. It feels really weird, but I'm good to go," Toji responded.

"Yes, ma'am! Also totally good to go!" And there was Haruhi.

"Settle down, Haruhi," Ritsuko said, smiling. "You're not up for a while yet. If at any time you need to get out of the cockpit, feel free to let us know. Now, we're going to run the power-up sequence for Unit 03. Toji, are you ready?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"All right. Begin Evangelion power-up sequence!"

Misato listened to the voices of NERV Technical's many employees—about half in Japanese, half in English—swirl around her. "Initiating phase one connection...transmitting pulse...graph readouts within tolerance...checklists cleared to 1350...initial contact all clear...Roger, begin phase two. All nerve links normal...checklists cleared to 2550...harmonics are normal...approaching absolute border..."

And then, quite frankly, the shit hit the fan. As far as she could tell, every alarm in the entire base went off simultaneously. Various information boards suddenly lit up with just about the worst possible news: BLUE PATTERN DETECTED.

"Break the nerve circuits! Abort the test! Mission failure! High-energy reaction detected! Impossible! An Angel?"

The external cameras from the EVA-03 test cage showed a flash of light, then went to static. A split second later, so did Misato's eyes as a massive explosion tore through the command center.

"Right...right, it's starting to come back now." Ritsuko frowned as she tried to dredge up more details, but finally shook her head. "Is that when I was knocked out?"

"Yes. I was stunned for a moment and took some shrapnel scrapes, but stayed conscious. The command center was utterly wrecked. It wouldn't be going too far to say that there isn't a command center any more." Misato matched Ritsuko's frown. "But...now that I think about it...an explosion of that size should've done a lot worse."

"What do you mean?"

"There were no deaths. Zero. Every single employee on base is alive and accounted for, and the absolute worst injuries are some missing fingers. Plenty of minor bone fractures; many concussions like yours, but literally nothing life-threatening. At the time, everyone was just happy to have survived it, but...even the techs who were literally right under Unit 03 made it out with just some minor burns. It doesn't make sense."

"And Unit 03 was the source of the explosion?"

"As far as we can tell, yes."

Ritsuko rubbed her eyes; she could feel a headache coming on. "I'm starting to see what you meant about it being a strange day."

Misato gave a humorless grin. "It only gets stranger from here."

A/N: HAH! You thought this story was dead, didn't you? DIDN'T YOU?! O ye of little faith... (Unless you didn't, in which case you have more faith in it and me than I did at one point.)

I've cut this chapter off halfway through because it was getting a little long for my tastes. (I am of the opinion that chapters—especially fanfic chapters—should be short, easily digestible chunks. I'M LOOKING AT YOU, CHARLES BHEPIN.) It should be noted that this cut-off rewrite is only a few lines short of the entire original version of this chapter.

It's occurred to me that very rarely in the anime or light novels do we ever see someone genuinely pissing off Haruhi. Probably because Kyon, Itsuki, and to an extent Mikuru have dedicated themselves to making sure she stays happy, but also (I suspect) because there are very few ways to piss her off. One of the only ways to do so (instead of merely putting her into 'you are a potato, you do not matter' or 'you are a worthy opponent, your challenge is accepted, prepare to lose' mode) would probably be giving her a direct order to do something she does not want to do while having the authority to back up that order. Poor, poor Misato...

If you liked it, please leave a review and tell me why. If you didn'tlike it, definitely leave a review and tell me why. C2A2: Constructive Criticism Always Appreciated! (Also, I'm sorta-kinda looking for a beta reader, as they're apparently quite a handy thing to have. Any volunteers? I'd need someone at least vaguely familiar with Evangelion...and MoHS...and Naruto...and Fate/stay night...and Mahou Sensei Negima...unless I were to get a different beta for each story, which would get really complicated really fast...but I might need to...)

Next chapter: Eva-04, all systems go!