There are many things that can be said about Gendo Ikari: monster, pedophile, bastard coated bastard with extra bastard filling and some bastard sauce on top, uberpimp. He could live with those titles as long as he succeeded in the end. Going from "mangy street punk" to "amoral monolithic Supreme Commander" was a surprisingly easy transition: the outfits got nicer and now he looked down on those who hated him instead of the inverse. He sighed, scratching at the palm that once contained Adam, the end of the beginning of the end. Tang is a surprisingly uncomfortable form of matter to inhabit, he now realizes. Back to flesh and blood, he does the first of two things he knows how to: plan. Fuyutsuki won't let him do the second thing anymore, after that one time in Neo-Kabukicho. It was his duty to ensure that the Children got along, for they were the key to his new scenario.

As he watched the honeycombed viewscreen in his office; Gendo Ikari mentally added "voyeur" to the list.

"The Ree are quiet this time of day I tell you what."

"You aren't using the right bait," says everybody's favorite tsundere, already a six-pack towards party time. A positively evil grin steals across her face. "Here, let's try this!" Years of training, endless cycles of defeating Angels, of striving for a perfection she could never reach culminated in this moment. She will not fail, cannot fail. The day shall be hers at last.

With hands so fast they practically blurred, she yanks down trademark black slacks and Ebichu-print boxers.

And there, before Kamina and everybody, Shinji Ikari learned a very uncomfortable new definition for the term "bait and tackle".

"Wh-wh-what the hell man?" he screams, reddened face three times more embarrassed than the average male real robot protagonist. Delicate hands and demurely crossed knees serve to cover his manhood.

"It worked, didn't it?" Asuka pouts, a blush playing across her cheeks as well. Red eyes and blue-gray hair poke intently out of the orange liquid. The sudden agitation of countless Ree rocks the hydrofoil of the would-be Lilim fishers. "Besides, you said I should be more playful."

"Asuka, molestation isn't playful, it's illegal." Shinji pulls up his pants, to the disappointment of the Ree. They groan and bob back under in perfect synchronicity. He plops down on the opposite side of the boat, and cracks open a canned coffee. "And since when do you care about being playful?"

Asuka grimaces, her notoriously short fuse already burnt out. "Well fine, I'll go back to being Asuka McBitchface then, seeing as you like it when beautiful women belittle you." She turns away with a humph, drawing her knees into her chest. Her fishing line shows some play, but she ignores it. She never liked fishing anyway. Boring and wasteful and stupid; no use to anybody except as means of providing food.

Just like she is.

Track 2: ...And I Want

As a means of relaxation and exercise of newfound self-awareness; Misato and Ritsuko spent a great deal of time watching the three Children in various activities. Their personalities were so rigid, so strong that no matter how many times they seemed to relive these moments nothing ever changed.

"Men and women are such irrational creatures," Ritsuko punctuates with a long, slow drag of her cigarette. "Wouldn't you agree?"

"Of course Ritzy. Life wouldn't be fun if we weren't." Misato kills a can of Kirin, then crushes it against her cranium.

"If men and women are irrational, then what does that make me Dr. Akagi?" Rei sits curled up beside them in a rolling chair, a bottle of orange beverage between her teeth.

"If I could figure that out, they'd probably give me the Nobel Prize." All three watch the attempted leisure activities of the Second and Third: go wide eyed at Shinji's bare bottom, facepalm in unison at the Hedgehog's Dilemma making itself painfully obvious again. Misato is the fist to break the unity, yelling at the monitors as if the two could hear her.

"Jesus Ecchi Christ, just fuck already!" She slams her hands down on the break room table like a petulant child. "God, it's so obvious that she just wants somebody to take initiative, strap her in and make her feel the Gs."

"Like you and Kaji, Misato?" Ritsuko and Rei chime in, earning a spittake from the blueberry haired bombshell. She turns her head around as if it were on a rickety gearshaft, face darkened. The tension in the room gets heavy, and Misato practically glows with a dark aura.

"What. Was. That?"

The fallen scientist and the Second Angel recoil in terror; Katsuragi can be a mean drunk, and when she gets mean the fury of Angels pales in comparison.

"That's what I thought bitches," she spits with a toss of her hair. "Now, what was that about being more playful?"

Ritsuko puts out a burnt-out smoke, popping out a fresh one within the same breath. She gives Rei a sideways glance, "Take it away Rei."

"With pleasure, Doctor." Her eyes go black as she reaches between worlds, tearing a hole into the Dirac with but a thought. She rummages around, tossing various bits of junk and offal into a separate hole behind her. After a few minutes, she hits paydirt: a large flat screen television and accompanying entertainment system. With a grunt and a clatter, she brings it out of the nothingness; an image already on the screen. It's the aftermath of the previous battle, the cooldown period. Eva Unit 02 stands proud in the blood of their fallen enemy; looking for all the world that she destroyed it singlehandedly.

"Score another one for the great Asuka Sohryu Langley!"

"But Asuka, Rei made the kill and I kept the thing down long enough for you to cut it open." Unit 01 grunts in agreement, content in letting her boy take credit for the neutralization. "All you did was hit it a few times and stab out some eyeballs."

"Those were important eyeballs, idiot!" Asuka bristles, "You wanted to get acid to the face?"

Shinji slumps, thinking back to the job the stuff did on Unit 02. "Not particularly, no, but you're the only one who took major structural damage. I got tossed around a bit, but the AT-Field cushioned a lot of the blow. Most of the plating on your right hand is just gone."

"Well yeah, but you didn't actually do anything. You were a goner until I made my glorious entrance into the fray."

"If you had not saw fit to make such a flashy entrance, I would have had a clear shot at the core 190 seconds earlier, Pilot Shikinami," Rei posits, sounding as true as the sky is blue.

"Shut up, the both of you! I am squad leader, and integral to the cohesion and proper function of this unit! I am infallible!"

"No, Pilot Shikinami, you're kind of a bitch."

That last epithet hits Asuka like a slap in the face. She punches the Rei-side of her viewscreen, so she doesn't have to look at that deadpan face. "Say that again, doll."

"Sir yes sir. You're kind of a bitch, sir." Rei adds, her flat inflection spiked with just a hint of sarcasm.

Shinji, never one to start a fight, steps in between the two units. Unit 01 puts up her AT-Field, just in case. Boy's always too trusting he is. "Now Asuka, she didn't mean that. Guys, just stay calm."

"I am calm, Pilot Ikari." Her dual black eyes and harlequin smile scream otherwise.

"Fuck you! This...this is insubordination! This is treason! I should have you taken out back and shot!"

"I would be replaced, and my replacement would think the same. They all would."

Twin shoulder pauldrons pop open, ready to deploy Progressive Knives to Unit 02. The great Asuka Sohryu Langley's bangs hang over her face, obscuring the murder in her eyes. She bites her lip so hard it bleeds; the taste of LCL.

"Third Child Shinji Ikari, do you agree with her?"

"Uh, I..."

"Did I stutter? Do you agree with Ayanami or not, Stupid Shinji? Respond." She grinds her teeth, every muscle in her body screaming for bloody satisfaction. "That's an order, Third Child."

"Well, you could stand to be more playful..."

They had to maximize the pressure in Unit 02's entry plug to keep Asuka from going aggro on her squadmates.

"Pilot Ikari, in an attempt to make amends, invited Pilot Sohryu to go fishing with him. Pilot Sohryu, in an act of petulance, decided to go fishing for my sisters. Which brings us to our current point in the narrative."

Ritsuko's eyebrows trend up as the lit cigarette in her mouth sags down. "You mean 'point in time', I hope."

"That is also acceptable," Rei replies, now sitting atop the television.

"Well she's just a regular ball of sunshine, now isn't she? Gets it from her mother, God I hated that woman."

"You are correct, Doctor, but not in the way you expect."

"Referring to her abandonment issues, I take it?"

Rei closes her eyes, images of red doors and hanged dolls flashing across her eyelids. She thinks of Unit 02's silence, her distance from a daughter that needed her and the connection that only brought further pain. In the hydrofoil, Asuka gasps as if she had been punched in the gut. She scrambles to the edge of the boat and dry heaves.

A bitter little smile comes to the First Child's lips. "Whoops. For simplicity's sake, let's just say you're correct Dr. Akagi."

Misato takes another drink. "I like you and all Rei, but you seem to get creepier as we go."

"Is that so? I feel as if I get more human as the cycles continue. I feel more, experience more." She kicks her legs off the side of the TV, one black eye taking in her compatriots. "Humans are such irrational creatures, after all."