Henry, it seemed, would be staying at NERV headquarters for accommodation, apparently because 'it would be best if Commander Ikari could keep an eye on me'. Misato would have argued, but she barely had enough room left after herself and Shinji to accommodate one more, and Asuka's stuff had already been shipped to her address. Misato didn't want to admit it out loud, but she was the one who threw them into the dangerous missions they had to run; she felt responsible for their safety.
Henry's quarters were spartan; a fold-out futon, small kitchen, and en-suite bathroom, an old bookcase that bore a lot of dust, but not a lot else. Henry didn't care; NERV Germany had had to organise shelter for the millions of people stranded, homeless on the high ground after Second Impact, so for the first few years of his life Henry had lived in cramped refugee camps, or abandoned hostels after he ran away from home. His possessions were few and far between; mostly several copies of Abrahamic religious texts, the pages stuffed with jutting sheets of notepaper scrawled in notes, a pile of sketches of the confirmed angels, schematics for Evangelion-N, an empty photo frame. The battered leather collar of a cat he'd befriended. His clothes were not very numerous, either; a handful of shirts and a heavy ex-military jacket (stained liberally with LCL) and some changes of school uniform. His possessions could all fit in a sports bag, so it looked more like a holiday than a pseudo-permanent work relocation.
"Hey."
Henry jumped around, growling savagely, before he realised who it was. "Oh. Sorry."
"No worries, Henry." Shinji looked around at the bare room. "Misato asked if I could help you unpack. You don't seem to have got started."
Henry hated the presumptuousness of the boy. "I'm finished, actually."
Shinji did a double-take. "This is all you have?" He scanned the piles of books and notes. "Quite a fanatic on the Angels, I see."
"I think it better to understand the enemy," growled Henry warningly.
Shinji then leafed through the sketches, before Henry swiped them from his fingers.
"They're good," complimented Shinji, trying to make up for whatever it was he'd done to upset Henry. "You draw them really well."
"Says the boy who killed them," said Henry coldly. "Stop going through my stuff like that, please. I don't like it."
Shinji backed off, apologising. Then he noticed the collar, so out of place among the Angel paraphernalia. "Am I allowed to ask what that is?"
"It's a cat collar," said Henry facetiously.
"I didn't think we were allowed pets here."
"There is no more cat," said Henry, starting to sound like Rei.
"What happened?"
"I killed it."
Shinji looked shocked. "What?"
"It kept drawing people to my hiding places. I broke its neck."
Shinji decided it best to pretend that Henry wasn't talking about murdering in such a dismissive way.
"You must think I'm crazy. A dead cat, an Angel fixation. You do, don't you?" Henry muttered.
"N-no!"
"You do, Ikari. But it gave me no pleasure to kill that cat. It was my only friend. And the Angels interest me. I could say you were crazy for always listening to the same tape on your S-DAT."
"How did you notice that?"
Henry decided to shut up again. The truth was, that he'd seen Shinji's S-DAT, and had the hunch that he only had the one tape. "I'm sorry if I came across as a little crabby today, but I've just migrated across half the planet and I'm tired and stressed and knowing my luck we'll have an Angel attack before I've even adjusted. I've got orders from two different sources and I'm stretched to breaking point." He sighed. "Can we just put all this behind us?" He offered Shinji a hand.
Shinji shook it. "Did you want to come to our place for dinner? We've got plenty of food."
"I was going to eat at the cafeteria. Asuka will be there, won't she?"
"Don't worry about her. She just seems to be jealous that you stole her limelight. Misato'll keep her in check."
Henry wanted to say something, but he needed to at least pretend to like Shinji, at the very least. "Fine. I'll join you."
"Come on, then," said Shinji, heading to the door.
"By the way, Ikari," said Henry, padding out and locking the door, looking very bizarre in doing so. "Please don't mention any of my eccentricities to Miss Katsuragi. I'm not sure how you took it, but I don't think she'll be too pleased to have what looks like a crazed lunatic running around HQ. Especially one that doesn't have any obligation to obey her orders."
"What do you mean?"
"I'm still under direct control of Bethany Base. All orders from NERV-01 are secondary directives only unless approved by them. It's a bitch, I know. I would rather I never got messed up with all this, but it's too late to back out now."