Howdy ya'll! Psycho Counter's back with another thrilling edition of The Demon Master. If any of you guys were a little disappointed with the last chapter, don't worry. We'll have more twists and turns waiting for you at the end of this puppy.

Anyway, I'm glad to see that the voting is starting to pick up a little speed. I still haven't settled on a stopping point yet as I'm still trying to gauge when I want the romance to start, but trust me when I say it'll be soon. Probably within the next three or four chapters…

I don't have any particular author notes that need to be put down other than thanks for everybody's support, so let's keep this thing going!

Disclaimer: I don't own Eva. If I see a lawyer anywhere near my apartment, I swear I'll retaliate with C-4 and an Uzi.

The Demon Master
By Psycho Counter

Chapter 4: Upping the Ante

"Ikari-kun…"

Shinji stopped in mid-step and turned around, regarding Rei with a quizzical glance. School was out and the boy was on his way to the park for his next training session. "What's wrong Ayanami?"

Most people wouldn't have noticed the tiny changes in Rei's facial features. However, Shinji Ikari was not most people. He knew instantly that the red-eyed girl was smiling at him; rather sweetly too, considering her usual personality.

"If it is acceptable to you, I would like to accompany you to your lesson with Morgan-kun today," she responded. Blinking, Shinji could only nod his head. If there were a single person alive that the shy pilot of Unit-01 found it impossible to say 'no' to, it was Rei Ayanami.

"That's fine Ayanami. Sig said that he had a surprise waiting for today's lesson," he said. Together, the two walked out the door, not noticing Asuka watching them with her patented glare pointed directly at their backs.

'It's high time I found out just what exactly that baka has been up to this last month…' she thought as she sneakily tiptoed out the door and after her fellow pilots.

(Tokyo-3 Municipal Park)
Sig picked himself off the ground as he saw his pupil enter the park entryway. Unlike past lessons the powerful American wasn't wearing his school uniform, but his training uniform. It consisted of a short sleeve black shirt and indigo training pants, with a stark white vest covering the shirt. What puzzled the young man slightly was the fact that Rei was following his student. Sig had never really gotten to pay a lot of attention to Rei at school, considering her preference for being alone. However, his mental klaxons began screaming as soon as he took a closer look at the girl.

'What the hell! This is…highly unusual,' he thought as the pair walked up. Shrugging to himself, Sig decided that if Shinji trusted her, then that was good enough for him. Shinji was the pickiest person he knew when it came to doling out trust.

Walking up to them, Sig waved. "Hey Shinji, I see you brought Rei with you today. What's the occasion?" he asked. Shinji shook his head.

"Nothing special. Ayanami just wanted to come watch our session today. Is that alright, Master?" he answered.

Sig nodded. "It's fine with me. Hell, I'll give her a weighted training outfit of her own if she wants to join us completely. You know what they say: The more, the merrier!"

Rei simply tilted her head to the side. "Weighted training outfit? You would not object to teaching me as well as Ikari-kun?"

Sig laughed heartily as he gave Rei an once-over with his eyes. "It's not a problem at all, Rei! And stop with the formalities. We're all friends aren't we?" he said, digging another suit from his duffel. Rei couldn't help but feel slightly touched at the taller boy's friendly nature.

She didn't know it just yet, but Dr. Akagi had been gradually lowering the dosage of Gendo's emotional suppressor pills, allowing the albino's emotions to slowly make their way to the surface.

"I see that you've decided to take on a new pupil, Sigurd. What's the matter? One not enough for you?" an eloquent voice rang out from behind a nearby sakura tree. Shinji nearly jumped out of his skin as a tall, beautiful redheaded woman stepped out and into the open. Sig's eyes narrowed at the visitor.

"Since when do you care about what I do, Lils? It's not like you actually know either of them," he retorted. He didn't like where this was going. Lillian never exposed herself to others if she could help it. What was her game?

Shinji looked at his teacher quizzically. "Master, who is this? A friend?" he asked.

Sig turned his eyes on Shinji for a moment. "Not so much a friend as…an associate. This is Lillian Cromartie of Canada. Her family had known Master Nakar for years, and she helped me out a bit after he died," he explained. The ties ran deeper than that, though; he just felt Shinji was ready for that information quite yet.

The sultry woman smirked. "If your appearance is any sign, then I'm willing to guess that the boy's training is about to truly get under way." At Shinji's confused look, she elaborated. "Sigurd here is planning on beginning your lessons in the actual usage of White Shield martial arts, Mr. Ikari." Shinji's eyes widened. His master thought he was ready to learn the styles already?

Sig chuckled. "Spoil the surprise for me why don't ya, Lils? But yes Shinji, I will begin teaching you the White Shield style today." Sig trailed off as he saw Lillian hold up a hand in defiance.

"First, Sigurd, I believe you and I should have a friendly spar: To show the boy just what you can do in a serious fight."

Shinji didn't want to voice his opinion, but the woman in front of him didn't exactly look like she was wearing proper attire for a spar. How could she fight in that dress?

Sig sighed and clapped a hand to his forehead. "Alright Lils, but I'm not responsible for the conseque-" he began before the auburn-haired beauty rushed him.

The young man sidestepped her high kick just barely, her sudden attack surprising him. Not letting up, she dropped down and tried to sweep Sig's legs from underneath him. He jumped up to avoid the strike as she leaped after him, swinging forward with a right hook.

Sig parried the blow and countered with a knee strike, which Lillian avoided deftly. Back-flipping over Sig's head, she tried to bring her foot on his skull in a powerful axe kick, only for the boy to block with crossed arms. Twisting his arms around, Sig grabbed hold of Lillian's leg and swung her like a club, bringing her to the ground hard.

She simply smirked and pulled her leg in, knocking Sig off balance as she slammed her foot into his chest. Sig grunted painfully as he skidded across the ground. Calmly getting to his feet, he flattened his hands and crossed them in front of his face.

"So you wanna play a little hardball, eh? Alright then, I'm game. Gravity seal…release!" he yelled as a shockwave of ki pulsed around him. The ground itself seemed to be pressed down into a small crater around Sig's body as his body was made considerably lighter. Lillian didn't even blink. She had expected him to be using those dratted weights, but now the fight could really begin.

Shinji and Rei stood by in stock silence as they saw Sig being matched blow for blow by this woman. Asuka had been taken down almost instantly, but Lillian was a perfectly even match for Sig at this point. Speaking of the proud German…

'Ha! I knew that Morgan was a fake. He can't even beat that lady and she's wearing a dress!' Asuka said to herself as she intently watched the spar.

"So," Lillian started, "you finally decided to get serious, Sigurd Morgan?"

Not saying anything, Sig crouched into a running position and, his legs tense with power, tore off towards the redhead at alarming speeds. Shinji's eyes bulged as he saw Sig's feet literally tear the ground apart beneath him as he barreled into Lillian.

The two traded punches and kicks at speeds the Third Child could only imagine, each blow slamming into their intended target with enough force to rip a bar of steel in half. Eventually, the brawl slowed down to a more graceful battle, the two 'friends' carefully avoiding each others attacks like the dances one would see at a ball.

Sig would leap forward with a jab, only to twist himself sideways as Lillian shot a leg at his ribcage. Then the woman would press her attack, launching a barrage of punches before being forced back on the defensive by Sig's attempted head-butt and shoulder charge combo.

Rei couldn't believe what she was seeing. Sig had always appeared to her to be a gruff, plain warrior in the way that he carried himself. That perception went flying, however, as she watched him move with a grace and agility that would make professional athletes' and dancers' blood boil in jealousy.

Smirking, Sig ducked under another kick and grabbed Lillian's leg, tossing her skyward and spinning her body around with a flick of his wrist. She wasn't fazed at all as she went with the flow of the counter and flipped herself to have eye contact with the young man. Sighing, she pulled her hands back, concentrating ki into her palms as they erupted in an ethereal white glow. Looking at him dejectedly, she frowned as she thrust her hands forward and fired an enormous ball of ki at Sig's face, point blank.

"Heaven's Wrath!" she screamed, blown backwards as the energy ball exploded instantly. She landed hard against a tree as she groaned in pain, gazing at the carnage her attack had created. A sizable crater had been left, but Sig was nowhere in sight.

Shinji stumbled backwards as the apparent reality of the situation hit him. Sig had lost? Suddenly, he realized that Lillian wouldn't have vaporized the American; not in a spar. But then…where was Sig?

His mental question was answered as a shadowy form shot down from the sky and crash landed right in front of a stunned Lillian. Sig smirked as he jabbed her hard in the stomach, effectively knocking the wind out of her. Grabbing her by the hair, he threw her forcefully into the air before taking off after her.

Wheeling his body around, Sig delivered a roundhouse kick to her head, spinning her body in mid-flight as the young man continued pummeling her with kicks that made it look like he was juggling her in mid-air with his legs. Finally, he used his ki to propel himself over his opponent and flipping himself at supersonic speeds, he smashed his heel into Lillian's skull as her body erected itself perpendicular to the ground below.

"Acrobat Locus!" Sig puncuated his attack with a cry as the woman's mass was fired back downwards. Knocked unconscious by the attack, Lillian could do nothing to slow her descent as she crashed into the earth, forming a crater 10 meters in radius on impact.

Sig landed gracefully as he flashed a smirk at his surprised students. "See guys…I told you that the Black Sword and White Shield styles were a powerful combination."

Shinji could only gape like a fish. After a couple seconds, he remembered what word Lillian had used to describe their battle. This was a spar? What the hell could they have done if it was serious!?

"Master…do you think I can get that good? I mean, you were moving so fast I could barely even see you!" he said loudly.

Sig chortled. "Shinji, believe me when I say that you have the potential to be so strong, I would be surprised if you couldn't pummel me into the ground on a regular basis."

Hearing a groan from the ground, the three looked at the crater as Lillian dragged herself to her feet. She gave Sig a satisfied smile. "Well Sigurd…I'm glad to see that you're skills haven't dulled." Before the last words finished leaving her mouth the woman had collapsed to the ground face-first, unconscious once more.

In the bushes, Asuka's face was chalk white at seeing the punishment her rival had dished out on the powerful woman she cheered on against him. 'He moved so fast! How can I even hope to beat someone like that!?' she asked herself as she slowly left the park, unable to stand being near the place where she realized that she could never beat the confident American at martial arts. Tears stung the redhead's eyes as she ran; her pride wounded far worse by the truth she had seen than any verbal attack Sig had ever sent her way.

(The following week)
Shinji felt rather proud of himself that morning. His advanced lessons, while far more punishing than usual due to Sig's rigorous training methods, had been paying off. Shinji felt himself becoming stronger every day. Sig had even taught Shinji the theory on how to draw forward his own personal AT-Field, though neither of the two actually attempted it, lest they draw the attention of certain supercomputers that shall remain nameless.

The boy still had somewhat of a hard time believing that he had achieved a stage of human evolution that few had ever accomplished. According to Sig, Ascending relied on a couple basic prerequisites. First of all, one had to have a large enough ki reserve so that their body could bear the physical changes that came with the Ascension. Second, the person had to be under a lot of physical or emotional stress. Shinji found that one to be rather simple; he had been attacked by an Angel at the time after all.

Sig also informed him that the AT-Field was nothing more than a barrier constructed of concentrated ki, and by focusing his ki into a solid wall in front of himself, Shinji could bring his AT-Field out. The reason most people couldn't use their fields was because they simply didn't have enough ki to create a very powerful one and had little experience in actually focusing their ki in any way, shape, or form.

As for Shinji himself…if he didn't notice any change in his body before his Ascension, he certainly did now, though the changes had been gradual after the Eighth. He had grown several inches in a matter of days, now standing just maybe a half a head shorter than Sig. His muscles had also expanded and bulked up, giving him a greater muscle density that made his skin rather hard to puncture. Ritsuko really didn't like that particular change when he went in to get a physical done. Finally, his senses had apparently become much sharper. Shinji now possessed a sensory clarity that at times annoyed him, especially in the mornings when his more sensitive eyes were hit with sunlight first thing after he wakes up.

As if that wasn't enough, Rei had decided to take the plunge and begin training under Sig as well. Her progress in a week wasn't quite as fast as Shinji's but her previous experience with Nerv's military trainers had prepared her enough for Sig to dive right into the basics of hand-to-hand combat after only five days. The fact that Asuka had slowly quit verbally attacking him was an added bonus.

The only setback Shinji saw to his changes was the fact that Misato now found it highly appealing to pinch him in rather personal places. The boy would blush uncontrollably whenever his guardian thought it a good idea to pinch his buttocks or playfully pat him between the legs, calling him 'big boy.'

Shinji smiled as he watched the teacher walk at his usual time. The young Eva pilot swore that people could set their watches by the old fart: he never missed a class, and was always at the door at the same exact time every morning like clockwork. Before Hikari could get up to do her drill-sergeant impression, the lights went out.

Everyone in class looked around in confusion, including the teacher. A power outage? The professor told everyone to remain calm and wait for the back-up generators to kick on. Five minutes later, the group was still standing in darkness and many of the girls in class, Hikari at their head, had scooted closer to Shinji; though the Third Child never actively took notice of it. Sig made it a point to speak up.

"I don't know about you guys, but I'm starting to get tunnel vision just standing here. What happened to the back-up power?" he asked.

Rei glanced at him briefly. "Tokyo-3 has several layers of back-up generators on standby in the event of a mass blackout. For all layers to not work can only mean one thing…" she said.

Sig smirked. "Good ole' fashion sabotage. One question: who would have the balls, or the brains for that matter, to actually try and blank out the whole city like this?"

Shinji tried to contact Misato on his cell phone, but the reception was completely dead. "We'd better get to Nerv. This may be an attack," he said cautiously. The other two pilots nodded.

Sig pushed his way through the blackness and managed to open the door, beckoning the pilots towards him. "Then come on you three! Get the lead out! I'll follow you guys to Nerv myself just in case. Who knows what kind of chaos is going on outside," he exclaimed.

As the three pilots shuffled and made their forward to follow Sig out the door, they heard a loud blaring sound break through the silence that had settled: The Angel alarms.

Well that does it for Chapter 4 guys. For those wanting more Gendo-bashing, I've got a hell of an idea set up for the next chapter. Trust me: you'll love it. I nearly gave myself a heart attack just thinking about it. Also, Shinji will get to fight more, but not until at least the next chapter or two.

Next time on The Demon Master, Chapter 5: Trouble Always Comes in Pairs. The Ninth Angel has arrived, and the pilots have to use all their wits to come out on top with Tokyo-3 out of commission. Also, Class 2-A gets a couple of new additions as the girls all decide Shinji is ripe for the taking.

Okay then, time for the voting update. As if the end of Chapter 4, the voting tally stands as thus:

Rei-17

Asuka-14

Hikari-12

Misato-14

Maya-10

Mana-12

Ritsuko-8

O/C-1

Rei still holds a commanding lead in the votes, though Asuka has surged back to pull into a tie with Misato, leaving Hikari and Mana shortly behind. Keep those votes coming people. I wanna see us hit at least 25 on somebody before the end of Chapter 5.

Until next time, this is Psycho Counter, signing off! Send more reviews.