Disclaimer: Neon Genesis Evangelion is the creation of Anno and Gainax. I don't own it, make no claims to it, and am making no profit from the fan fiction. No infringement of copyright is intended. In other words, please don't sue.


Chapter Three

Kensuke Aida considered himself a fairly simple man, with fairly simple desires. Indeed, there were really only two things he wanted in life: women and action, the latter of a military variety (though if the former also presented itself to him in the military variety, well, he certainly wouldn't have said no to a hot girl in camouflage).

So when Toji told him he'd been outside the shelter during the battle against the Angel, Kensuke had immediately begun to bombard his friend with questions about this great historic event. However, a lot of the information he got was not exactly what he'd expected.

"Let me get this straight," Kensuke began slowly. "The giant robot started winning, and the Angel got desperate and self-destructed, sending stuff flying everywhere, including right at you and your sister. You're sure you're about to be crushed, and then suddenly a girl with wings wearing some kind of superhero costume swoops out of nowhere, and blocks everything with a shield of orange light just like the one the Angel had."

"Yeah, I saw it," Toji insisted.

He actually hadn't seen it, having closed his eyes, but Mari hadn't been able to look away and had told him what he'd missed seeing. And there was no way he was going to tell people he'd squeezed his eyes shut while his little sister had watched everything.

"Toji…are you sure you didn't faint and dream this up or something?" Kensuke asked slowly.

"I'm telling you I saw her!" Toji snapped. He sighed dreamily. "Man, she was so hot."

"You realize that the fact that the winged girl who saved you was hot doesn't make this story any more believable, right?" Kensuke asked dryly. "If anything, it does just the opposite."

"It's all true, damn it!" Toji exclaimed, frustrated.

"Uh-huh, sure it is."


While heading into school, Hikari was still wondering what had caused her to behave the way she had when she had saved Suzuhara and his sister. She could still barely believe the way she'd acted!

She certainly hadn't planned on acting like that. If she'd planned on anything after using her powers to save them, it had been giving them both a stern talking to about the dangers of leaving the shelter during a state of emergency.

But the knowledge that she could say absolutely anything to her long time crush and that he would have no idea it was her, no way to link her words to the forever proper representative of class 2-A…well, it had been intoxicating. Intoxicating enough that she'd said things she would otherwise never say and done things she would otherwise never do. And the worst part?

She had liked it! She had liked it a lot!

It was rare for her to not feel shy, at least when she wasn't being the class rep, but Spirit obviously wasn't the least bit bashful. Completely frying Toji's mind with a few words and a chaste touch hadn't exactly ruined her night, either.

So, despite her confusion and surprise about her own behavior, Hikari was in high spirits as she arrived at school and parted ways with Nozomi. And why shouldn't she be? She had done real good the other night, saving two innocents from becoming collateral damage in the battle against the Angel.

"Toji…are you sure you didn't faint and dream this up or something?"

Hikari turned and observed a skeptical looking Kensuke speaking with an increasingly frustrated Toji. She smiled to herself, able to guess what they were talking about.

"I'm telling you I saw her!" Toji snapped. He sighed. "Man, she was so hot."

Hikari's eyes widened, and her amused smile grew into a broad grin. He…he thinks I'm hot?

"You realize that the fact that the winged girl who saved you was hot doesn't make this story any more believable, right?" Kensuke asked dryly. "If anything, it does just the opposite."

"It's all true, damn it!" Toji exclaimed, frustrated.

"Uh-huh, sure it is."

"Excuse me, Suzuhara?" she said, approaching the otaku and the jock.

Toji turned at once. "Um, hey, class rep," he greeted her nervously. "What can I do for you?"

Hikari frowned slightly. Toji was not looking at her the way a boy looked at a girl he found attractive. Admittedly, she didn't exactly know what that looked like, but she didn't have to; she recognized the way he was looking at her now. She had seen it often enough.

The look Toji was wearing right now said, "Why is the class rep talking to me? Am I in trouble? Could she possibly know about…?"

Hikari suddenly felt deflated. "Um, how is your sister? You found her all right, I hope," she said with none of the confidence Spirit had been overflowing with.

"Yeah, yeah I did," Toji answered, looking relieved that she hadn't come to yell at him.

"I'm glad," Hikari said and turned to head back to her seat.

She felt like such an idiot. What was she expecting to happen? Him to realize that she was Spirit and ask her out on the spot? Him to subconsciously know she was Spirit and be madly attracted to her for reasons he didn't understand yet couldn't resist?

Yes, she realized to her embarrassment. On some level she had expected these things, and realizing it made her feel like the world's biggest moron.

"Hey, class rep," Toji called after her.

She turned back around to look at him. Toji got up from his seat and bowed formally to her. "Thank you for helping me search for my sister the other night," he said.

Hikari smiled. "You're welcome, Suzuhara."

She went and sat back down at her own desk feeling a bit better but still far from content. Toji didn't think she was attractive, he thought Spirit was attractive, and it wasn't too hard to figure out why. Hikari Horaki was the good girl and the vaguely menacing authority figure who wore a bra that was too small to stifle her endowments. Spirit was the mysterious and exotic woman who let it all hang out, figuratively and almost literally. The fact that they were actually the same person was immaterial.

Crud, is it possible to be jealous of yourself? Hikari wondered.


Ritsuko sighed as she looked over the data they'd collected from the Third Angel's attack. There was depressingly little of it, mostly because what few scraps of the Angel which had remained after it self destructed had dissolved before NERV could take samples.

Of course, she had another potential Angel to investigate, but the Committee would get suspicious if there was any delay in the collection and analysis of data on the Third Angel. Or at least, so Gendo had claimed.

Not that she was looking forward to studying whatever new information on the anomaly they'd obtained. The need to keep it a secret from SEELE would prevent her from using the MAGI, which would just make the task incredibly onerous and time consuming.

She looked at the clock in the corner of her computer monitor, and was annoyed but unsurprised to find she'd been working for fourteen hours now. "I could really use a cup of coffee," she moaned.

A red NERV mug filled with steaming hot java was suddenly placed on her desk. Ritsuko blinked. "I could really use a billion yen," she said.

There was a laugh from behind her and Ritsuko turned to see Misato standing there. "I didn't hear you come in," the scientist commented, picking up the mug and taking a sip of the coffee.

"Well, you know how stealthy I can be," Misato bragged.

"Uh-huh," Ritsuko replied, strongly suspecting it had more to do with her weariness and deep concentration on her work. "So, to what do I owe the pleasure of your company, Misato?"

"I just wanted to offer my old friend a pick-me-up," Misato said.

Ritsuko seriously doubted that, but she played along anyway. "Thanks, then," she said. "So how's Shinji?"

Misato frowned, thinking over the question for a few seconds. "Moody," she answered. "I'm hoping that once he starts school, he'll pep up a bit."

Ritsuko didn't believe that he would, but she was too tired to explain why, so all she said was, "Well, good luck with that."

"So, Rits, tell me about the anomaly," Misato said slowly.

Ah, there it was, the thing Ritsuko had been expecting, and approached with all the subtly of an N2 mine detonation. Typical Misato.

"Not long before you came here, the MAGI started detecting these odd waveform patterns," Ritsuko explained, carefully deciding what to reveal and what to keep secret. "Caspar and Balthasar even thought they detected an AT field at one point. During that particular incident, something fired a cross-shaped blast of energy into a nearby mountain. Despite all this, however, no attack came of it, and no Angel appeared. The pattern of the Angel we fought last night was too different from the anomaly to be the same thing. The Commander's been…adamant that the Committee not find out about this."

"Why?" Misato asked.

"He's covering his own ass, mostly," Ritsuko answered. "That the anomaly is still an anomaly represents a failure of the Angel detection system. Besides, we still have no idea what it really is. Ikari doesn't want to report that to them."

Ritsuko could tell that Misato wasn't fully satisfied with that explanation but couldn't see a way to poke a hole in it, which was good enough for her.

"He's playing a dangerous game," Misato proclaimed, her eyes narrowed.

Ritsuko came perilously close to snorting a laugh. Misato, you have no idea.

"If the Committee finds out he's keeping secrets from them, then they might well replace him," Misato continued. "Hell, they might even bring him up on criminal charges."

"I wouldn't be so sure," Ritsuko said. "Commander Ikari is…uniquely qualified to run NERV. They can't just fire him."

"But if there's an enemy out there, an Angel that's just running around free doing god knows what, then pretending it doesn't exist could be disastrous," Misato pressed, undeterred.

"We're not sticking our heads in the sand here, Misato," Ritsuko protested. "We're just keeping information from the Committee. We are investigating this anomaly, after all."

"And what have you found?" Misato asked.

"Not much," Ritsuko sighed, which was the truth, but she followed it with a lie, "I could show you what we've got, but it would just be a bunch of technical jargon that doesn't really tell you anything."

"No thanks," Misato said with a sigh. "But I should've been informed of this, Ritsuko. I am the Operations Director, after all."

"You're right," Ritsuko conceded. "I'll make sure to keep you updated on the anomaly."

Another lie, but it got Misato out of her office.


One of the many things that you simply have to learn, if you plan on acting the part of the matron for your family, was how to sew. At the moment, Hikari couldn't be gladder about this little fact.

The costume she'd "borrowed" from Kodama just wouldn't do for continued use in its current state. Toji probably hadn't noticed it, being a boy and all, but the white and gold costume clashed terribly with Spirit's silver hair and red eyes.

So, since Hikari's first romp as Spirit had been so successful, she decided that she would need to rectify this problem, and had gotten out her sewing basket during one of her long nights.

She didn't do anything terrifically elaborate, not feeling that she needed to. Hikari carefully removed the gold trim, replacing it with silver material, and added further trim by the holes she'd cut for her wings, to prevent the costume from fraying there. She trashed the gold skirt and mask entirely, making news ones of similar cuts from red material.

Hikari was tempted to make the new skirt longer than the old one, but when she'd gone to cut the fabric, she had found herself grinning mischievously and making it exactly the same length.

Finally, to finish it off, she had embroidered the kanji for "Spirit" onto the chest in red thread.

"Perfect," she said to herself, holding the finished costume up.


When most children start at a new school, they're usually nervous, excited, or a bit of both. After all, a new school presents all kinds of opportunities, both good and bad. Opportunities to make new friends and enemies, explore new social cliques, get horrifically embarrassed, and shed whatever reputation one acquired at one's former school and start fresh were all present. If the person in question is old enough, they may even hope to find that special someone among their new classmates.

However, Shinji Ikari wasn't most people, even discounting the fact that he was now the Third Child of NERV. None of the normal hopes and fears associated with starting at a new school reached him. He knew the drill by now: sit in the back of the class, hope no one thinks it's a good idea to pick on the quiet ones, and tolerate the daily grind to the best of his abilities.

"Excuse me," he said to the tall, pig-tailed girl sitting in the desk nearest to the teacher's. "Are you the class representative?"

"Yes," she answered with a look of mild suspicion that stung him slightly. "I'm Hikari Horaki, may I ask who you are?"

Shinji gave her a small, polite bow, ever eager to avoid giving offense. "I'm Shinji Ikari—"

"Oh, yes, the new student," Hikari broke in, obviously remembering suddenly. "It's nice having someone transfer into this school for a change, rather than out. There are plenty of empty seats, so go ahead and take one."

Bowing again, Shinji headed to one of the vacant desks, having to settle for one in the middle of the room despite the low number of students, and took out his SDAT. Soon losing himself in the music, he never noticed the kid with the glasses having an excited conversation with the guy in the track suit, nor did he notice the class rep going over to speak with them.


"Hey, Toji," Kensuke said in a rather loud whisper, "why do you suppose that kid transferred here when everyone else is leaving?"

The jock just shrugged in response. "How should I know?" he asked. "And for that matter, why should I care?"

Kensuke grinned slyly, pushing his glasses up with his middle finger. "I'll bet he's the pilot of the giant robot you saw kill the Angel," he said. "Think about it, why else would anyone come to Tokyo-3 at a time like this?"

"Do you really believe he's the pilot, Aida?"

Kensuke spun around, starting when he realized it was the class rep who'd come up behind him and spoken. Then his mind actually processed what she'd asked him and he grinned.

"I didn't think you were interested in this sort of thing, class rep," he commented.

Hikari barely managed to hold back a wince. Kensuke wasn't a terrible person or anything, but the last thing she wanted him to think was that she was one of the rare and elusive female otaku. Getting hit on by her crush's best friend would just be painfully ironic, especially if piled on top of the fact that her alter ego had practically had Toji drooling.

Still, it looked like she was going to be sticking her nose into NERV's business in the future, and it would therefore pay to know as much as possible about NERV's business.

"I'm usually not," Hikari said quickly, "but with all of this happening right here in our city…"

She shrugged, as if to ask how she couldn't at least be a little curious about the giant robots and monsters that had gone rampaging through the streets just a few days ago.

"Ah," Kensuke said. "Well, as I was saying, I really believe the new guy could be the pilot of the robot. After all, he's probably the only person to move into the city rather than out of it recently."

"Ken, why in the world would they put someone our age into that thing instead of an actual soldier?" Toji argued. "Besides, that guy? Though if it was him in there, I guess it would explain why he got smacked around like he did."

Hikari glanced at the boy seated near the back of the class, who was listening to his SDAT and looking into space with a morose expression. Toji did have a point, she had to admit. Ikari definitely did not seem like the warrior type.

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Kensuke said with a sigh. "Still…"

Toji and Hikari could practically see the wheels in the bespectacled boy's mind turning. He wanted to believe it, wanted very much to be sitting in the same room as the pilot, but he couldn't come up with a good reason as to why it should be so.

With a small sigh, Hikari bowed politely to Kensuke and made her way back to her desk, already mentally counting down the seconds until class officially began with a part of her mind. She supposed it was foolish of her to expect that anyone would be crazy enough to give a fourteen-year-old the proverbial keys to a giant robot.

The Sensei strode in a moment later.

"Stand! Bow! Sit!" Hikari barked as always.

And as always the other students complied at once, Hikari admitting as she did every school day that a part of her absolutely loved doing that. She allowed herself to briefly wonder if she could make them do that even when the Sensei wasn't present, in a kind of Pavlovian response, before she turned her attention to the teacher.

"As you know," Sensei began, "fifteen years ago, mankind faced its greatest cataclysm: the Second Impact…"

The eyes of the students collectively glazed over at once at the sound of the Sensei's customary Second Impact lecture. Hikari put more effort into paying attention than the others, since she was the class representative, but she eventually zoned out as well. Even her diligence had its limits, and they were never actually tested on recent history anyway.

Her reverie was broken when she suddenly noticed something pop up on the screen of her school laptop.

Aida K.: Are you the pilot of the robot?

Hikari glanced back at Kensuke, who was seated near the back of the room, but at the opposite corner as Ikari. She narrowed her eyes. Kensuke had put that message out on the class chat room, but he clearly intended for it to look like a private Instant Message.

Aida, what the hell are you doing? Hikari wondered.

Aida K.: You are, aren't you? Y/N

Hikari waited. She knew she should do something, put her own message into the chat room to let Ikari know that it was not a private conversation he was taking part in, but her curiosity stayed her hand. Ikari probably wasn't the pilot, anyway. At most, he might be the pilot's son or something.

Ikari S.: Yes

The room erupted in chatter as everyone turned and began to bombard Ikari with questions, who started to stammer out a few nervous replies. Hikari shut her eyes, damning herself for her lapse in performing her duties as class rep, even as she made a mental note to speak to Ikari later.

"Quiet!" Hikari barked, slapping the top of her desk. "Back to your seats, everyone! We're in class here!"

The other students sat back down in their seats with extreme reluctance, but kept their eyes on Ikari. The object of their curiosity swallowed, obviously hoping that the class rep had brought him more than a brief respite from the attentions of the horde.


"Hey, new kid!"

Shinji Ikari turned to see a tall guy in a black track suit coming up behind him. Before the Third Child could respond, Toji had grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him forward.

"You're the pilot of the robot?" Toji demanded. "Really?"

Shinji nodded reluctantly, wondering why this guy looked about ready to punch his face in.

"Your crappy piloting of that thing very nearly got my sister and me killed, you idiot!" Toji barked.

"G-Gomen," Shinji stammered. He lowered his head, unable to meet Toji's eyes. "I-I'd never seen the thing before that day, and I didn't pilot it by choice."

The pilot's sullen excuses disgusted the jock, who shoved Shinji, causing him to stumble backwards several steps and nearly fall.

"Just be glad that nothing happened, otherwise I'd have to pound you," Toji spat and then walked off.

For several moments, Shinji just stood in the middle of the schoolyard, watching the jock's retreating back, shell shocked. He couldn't decide what he disliked more: getting yelled at by the bigger boy, or the overwhelming wave of blind praise from earlier.

I'm so screwed up, he thought.

"Excuse me."

He turned, irrationally fearing that the jock had come back, deciding that he wanted to pop the Third Child one after all. Shinji realized this wasn't the case before he even managed to face the new person, though, the fact that the voice belonged to a girl registering in his mind.

"Oh, class rep," Shinji said, "what can I do for you?"

"Don't let Suzuhara get to you," she advised. "He really cares about his sister, and what happened the night of the Angel attack really shook him. He's just…dealing with it rather poorly. I'll have to say something to him later."

"Um, okay, class rep," Shinji replied, not really taking her words to heart.

He was going to be dodging the tall Osaka boy in the track suit from now on, regardless of what anybody said about him.

"You can call me Hikari, Ikari," the class rep said.

Shinji nodded. "Then I guess you can call me Shinji," he replied.

A rather uncomfortable silence fell, which Hikari finally broke, bluntly broaching the subject she'd come to speak to him about. "So, are you really the pilot of that robot?"

Shinji sighed tiredly. "Yeah, I am."

"It's very brave of you to pilot it," Hikari said, feeling rather awkward. She wasn't much of a conversationalist either, especially when it came to boys. "But why not someone older?"

"Only kids can pilot EVA," Shinji answered. "I don't know why."

"And they really made you do it without giving you any training first?" Hikari asked. "Then how did you defeat the Angel?"

Hikari nearly added that it looked like he knew what he was doing toward the end of the battle, but she was able to stop herself in time.

"I…don't know," Shinji confessed slowly. "I don't think it was me. I think…I think the EVA did it."

Hikari frowned. "The EVA? But it's just a robot, isn't it? How could it defeat the Angel by itself?"

"It's more than a robot," Shinji said, a haunted look coming over his face as he remembered Unit One's green eye, which had seemed to stare deep into his very soul. "…I don't want to talk about it anymore. Gomen."

"It's all right," Hikari said. "I should probably get going anyway. Enjoy your lunch, Shinji."

There were already a few people curiously watching them converse, Hikari realized to her annoyance. She'd be dealing with rumors for a few days, at least, but she had managed to learn a few things. The first was that there was more to EVA than met the eye. The second was that NERV and Shinji were going to need all the help they could get.


Several days passed in the dull, routine way they usually did, and at times Hikari almost forgot about her alter ego. She befriended Shinji, albeit largely out of pity and a desire to pump him for information.

He was such a strange young man. Most guys would've been excited at the idea of being given a giant mecha, but Shinji obviously hated it. In fact, Hikari suspected that if there was anyone else who could do it, he would be gone from NERV and Tokyo-3 in a heartbeat.

Then, about three weeks after the first Angel attack, things began to happen.

The first thing was mundane enough, compared to what came later, but it was still startling enough to catch Hikari's attention that morning before class began. The most mysterious student of class 2-A finally returned.

"Ayanami?" Hikari said. "Wh-What happened to you?"

Hikari immediately winced at the rudeness of what she'd blurted out, not that the pale girl seemed to care. And indeed, Rei was in rather terrible shape. The blue haired girl seemed to have bandages everywhere, and even one of her eyes was covered up.

"I suffered work-related injuries," Rei answered.

Hikari blinked, but then shrugged it off, knowing from experience how futile it would be to try and get Ayanami to talk. "I see," she said. "Well, I'm afraid you've missed a lot of work while you've been out. You'll have to struggle to catch up."

Rei just nodded. She looked like she was about to head to her seat for her daily few hours of gazing out the window, but she stopped herself with a barely noticeable double take. Ayanami suddenly stared at Hikari, the enigmatic girl's red eyes—so much like Spirit's, Hikari noted—piercing her.

"Ayanami?" Hikari spoke up, far more softly than she'd intended to.

The moment broken, Rei blinked and silently went to her seat. Hikari let out a small sigh, relieved to have escaped Rei's strange scrutiny. She'd always found the girl to be strange, but that had just been beyond the pale.

Shaking off the feeling, Hikari went and sat down at her desk, waiting for Sensei. It had probably just been her imagination, she decided. She'd been feeling strangely ill at ease since she'd gotten up that morning. Maybe that time of the month was just approaching and it was making her skittish or something.

Sensei walked in.

"Stand! Bow! Sit!"


By lunch period, Hikari's vague feeling of unease had crystallized into something else, making her realize that it wasn't her monthly visitor that had caused it, but something even more sinister.

She could sense the approach of the next Angel, even darker and more powerful than the one before it. Unfortunately, she could do nothing. If the class rep decided to play hooky, people would take notice, especially if she wasn't there to help get the class to the shelters when the time to evacuate came.

So she paced around the schoolyard, filled with jittery, nervous energy as she waited for the orders to evacuate to come, everyone else continuing on with their day as if everything was perfectly normal.

"Are you all right, Hikari-san?" Shinji asked, startling her.

"Huh? Oh, yes, Shinji, I'm fine, thank you," Hikari replied automatically.

She would have to be more careful, she realized. Shinji wasn't the most observant person in the world, and even he'd realized she was antsy about something. People would get suspicious if they noticed that the class rep got visibly nervous prior to every Angel attack.

"All right," Shinji said, and went to sit over at vacant table. "Sorry."

Friends or not, Hikari was too embarrassed by the gossip just their brief conversations spawned to eat with him. She felt guilty about it, but she couldn't bring herself to set the rumor mill into overdrive. Fortunately Shinji didn't seem to mind. For someone so obviously afraid of giving offense, Shinji seemed remarkably difficult to offend.

Just as Hikari went to sit down, planning to force herself to eat something, the sirens went off. She gave a soft sigh of relief. Finally, she thought.

The next Angel had at last made its presence known to NERV.


Author's notes: Well, there you have it, in case you were wondering, the reason Hikari acted so differently when she was being a super heroine. And if you don't think anonymity can make people act differently than they normally would, just take a good look around the internet where everyone can be a handle and an avatar.

The updates are going to slow down a bit now, I'm afraid. I already had most of what I've posted so far before I even put the prologue up. I just waited because I wanted an okay from orionpax to use the title I did before I put this story up, plus FFN made me wait two days after I registered for some reason. But fear not, the updates shouldn't slow down that much, and I will finish this thing.

Until next time, thanks again to all my reviewers.