Three months. Three blessed months without an angel attack. Things had almost gotten back to a degree of normalcy.

Oh wait, this is Tokyo-3. Nothing is normal.

Lieutenant Katsuragi (under inquiry for punitive demotion) after authorizing the release of a N2 mine far too close to the city-proper, Angel attack notwithstanding. She had yet to completely beat back the deluge of paperwork related to that fiasco. That it worked didn't matter, and her advisory board in the JSSDF told her, in so many words, just what she told Shinji a few days after the Fourth Angel.

Oddly enough, Shinji had begun work on a few secret projects. Not figuring out the gold distilling thing seemed to inspire him to try more and more experiments. She never saw the results, but he spent long hours up on the roof of the apartment complex, or holed up in his room. The light cast out from his brow or the display on his back usually tipped people off. They got used to it. Much the same they 'got used' to Evacuation Drills, or the actual Attack.

It came to a head a couple weeks ago, and Misato was still smiling about it. It was yet another round of testing, more close combat training, and anything else Akagi could think of to put the Third Child through his paces. Katsuragi had shown up wearing sunglasses, in one of NERV's below-ground Geofront test facilities. Ritsuko gave her a look that half-said "I really don't want to know but I have to ask." Misato just grinned, and pointed to Shinji as he demonstrated his ability to punch man-sized dummies dozens of yards every direction.

"My Shinji-kun's so bright, I have to wear shades."

The dark-haired woman wisely decided to avoid the labs, EVA testing facilities, Geofront, really anything to do with NERV for the next several days. But not before making a mental note to extort a new pair of sunglasses out of Ritsuko. They were expensive!

But, as is with anything, come routine come contempt and despair, and Misato's hands ached at the end of the day, every day, for weeks on end.

Misato returned home feeling more like a Jiang-Shi than any Romero-walking dead. Her feet felt like lead weights, and it was easier to hop-shuffle, compared to walking. She didn't so much as slide the door of her apartment open as thump ineffectively into it, dragging her forehead across the cool faux-wood and gradually levering the damn thing open with friction alone. But, once the door was open a crack, she perked up almost immediately.

For when Misato crossed the threshold into her apartment, the pleasant sound of sizzling met her ears, and the warm, welcoming smells of good food filled her nose. A single step was a marked change in her demeanor, gone was the waking-dead stumble, in its place an almost zen-like floating gait, as of she where a Bodhisattva lured down from seclusion by the vices of the common man.

One of those vices was waiting, cool and ready, with only the barest hint of condensation building on the can. Shinji-kun was so sweet! She popped the top and downed the Yebisu as per her custom, and she caught a glimpse of Shinji, master of his domain in the kitchen. The frilly apron the older woman had since college somewhat diminished the effect, but Shinji didn't seem to mind. He waved at her without looking. "Dinner will be a few minutes, you can shower and change, if you hurry."

Misato tossed her totally awesome roomie a V-for-Victory and waved. "Don't mind if I do~!"

When she returned, refreshed and relaxed, and not so much dressed as a demonstration of indecent exposure, she loomed behind Shinji, who either didn't notice her impending glomp, or chose to ignore it. He was a boy after all, and she could never be quite sure when it came to teenagers, they possessed far more guile than most gave them credit for. Regardless, her glomp was successful, and Shinji made like a plank of wood. Fortunately though he didn't mangle any more cutlery or cookware.

But with the way she was wrapped around him, Misato was keenly aware of how utterly bunched up and tense he was. She could literally feel the corded muscles in his neck and shoulders, corded in a bad way. He stammered out a greeting, half pleased and half panicked. "M-Misato!"

She hugged him a bit tighter, and he relaxed a fraction, but his head was goose-necked forward, and it took her a second to realize he was trying to avoid what he probably thought of as 'inappropriate' contact. He was after all, far too nice to consider her breasts as anything but attractive. She made a mental note to work on that, as well as the tenseness. Letting him go, she stepped back. He caught his breath and smiled. "Dinner's almost up, two minutes, tops."

A flash of gold caught Misato's eye, and Shinji moved to intercept before she could see around him. "Ah, That's... kind of a surprise. You'll see after dinner."

And what a dinner it was!

Steamed rice hopped past her taste buds in savory morsels, sashimi with actual, hand-made wasabi just begging to be dipped. If she had been less distracted by the orgy of flavors in her mouth, she probably would've made a show of eating, just to tease Shinji-kun. She supposed the moans of rapture would have to do. And they did indeed, Shinji blushed redder and redder each time she vocalized her appreciation.

A bell rang and Shinji begged off. "The main course." He explained. He returned with a covered skillet, with something sizzling inside. Lifting the lid, Misato was assaulted by the heady aroma of expertly made teriyaki. She blinked at the pan, and its curious coloring. Shinji gave her an apologetic smile. "I'll explain later, let's eat first?" Portions were laid out and eating resumed in earnest. The second the first bit of meat hit her tongue, Misato stopped thinking.

When her brain rebooted, she had apparently already finished swallowing that first bite, and the flavor lingered in a manner most satisfying. She was pretty sure mind-blanking orgasm wasn't on the normal list of results when eating chicken. Well, Okay, she didn't actually orgasm, but the way her mouth practically overflowed with savory flavor and deliciousness was pretty damn sexual. And religious. Maybe that was blasphemous... Heh... heresy was hot. She shook her head clear and let the pleasant fog of food-induced euphoria fade away.

Misato sighed happily and tucked away more slices of pan-fried chicken, a healthy bit of color reaching her cheeks. She got up to replenish her Yebisu supply when she noticed something was off.

The can she'd been drinking from (her second of the night), was only half empty. She took a moment to test her general level of inebriation:

"I think the Commander's beard wants to rape me."

Shinji obligingly sacrificed a mouthful of tea to the gods of the spit-take. Misato laughed raucously. "Hot damn, did you add any alcohol to any of this? I'm so deliciously buzzed." Shinji, still dripping, shook his head. Misato grinned, her lips curling into all sorts of interesting shapes while her eyes crinkled. "I'm not drunk, hell I'm not even tipsy, but I feel that good feeling after a few beers... Huh."

Having eaten most everything and picking at the leftovers, the two roommates moved back to after dinner conversation, notably, the new bit of cookware Misato suddenly had. Shinji rubbed the back of his head, bashful. "I uh, wanted to stop breaking all of your pans, so I made one that I can't break"

The skillet was fairly standard looking, other than being made of what looked like iron mixed with gold in whirling, water-like bands. It didn't have a handle, just a band of iron Shinji bolted into the side, a steel handle from one of her wrecked pans served well enough. Misato gave a pleasant thrumming purr as Shinji explained, he had such a nice voice when he was talking about something he was good at. She idly picked up the last bit of teriyaki and dropped it in her mouth, and hummed with flavorful-pleasure.

The buzzed-feeling surged back in full force, and Misato giggled. Then she stopped.

Then she giggled again, pointing and laughing at the Third Child. "You're magic, right?"

Shinji nodded warily. "I guess..."

She grinned wider. "That gold stuff is magic, right?" Shinji nodded again. "Sooooo... stands to reason the pan is magic too, right?"

Shinji blinked. And then he slapped his forehead. "I used your blood to make it."

Misato's mind slammed on the breaks. "...Huh?"

Shinji blanched a bit, before blushing, it made him look really unhealthy. "I uh, snuck into your room and pricked your finger, I needed it because it was for you and um..." He started babbling in that language, one arm gesturing weakly while he looked off to one side. Misato took a swig of beer before setting the can down, walking around to the other side of the table, and wrapping Shinji up in a hug.

"It's okay. You didn't do anything wrong, and I obviously didn't wake up when you got my blood... so... Why do I feel so buzzed?"

Shinji shrugged, and closed his eyes. A second later, he opened them again. "I uh, made the... power? I made the stuff that makes up the universe, I made that interact and follow your nature, I think that um... does things for you. I guess?"

Misato hummed. "So... anything made with this pan is going to give me a buzz?"

Shinji shrugged again. "Seems like it."

Misato pulled a chair around and sat down, before hooking her arms around his neck and looking into his eyes. The older woman smiled warmly. "Shinji-kun. Please don't freak out." Shinji blinked. Misato sucked in a deep breath and let the glorious heat of inebriation suffuse her body. "I really want to kiss you right now."


Hyuga Makoto and Maya Ibuki oversaw the reconstruction of Evangelion Unit-01. Ritsuko was still busy with her own private experiments in the Proving Grounds. A new arm had been fabricated in Terminal Dogma before being brought up to the cages.

Great sections of Evangelion Armor had been removed, and the new arm itself was bare of external reinforcement. Only cybernetic sockets and access ports threaded between bands of muscle thicker than a man was tall. They had to be careful at this point, the great weight of the Evangelion's body still adhered to the square cube law for the most part. The slightest miscalculation could send the whole limb collapsing.

Thousands of wire-thin nerves labeled with non-conductive plastic tape tags stretched out from the arm and shoulder. Veins and arteries were connected via temporary shunts and grafts. All readings were good; the arm was accepting LCL and power from NERV systems. The end of the arm looked ragged, but that was deceptive. The reinforced bone peeked out among the folds of synthetic muscle. The Evangelions lacked proper connective tissue, and instead had bio-technical 'sockets' where their muscles connected to bones and each other

Hundreds of technicians and engineers crawled over the Evangelion. They'd long since used the slave control system to urge the bio-machine into lying down. Instead of a plug and pilot, the crews triggered muscle reflex actions and applied carefully monitored nerve stimulus. Massive cranes dragged the arm closer into position, while the crews slowly but surely connected muscle to muscle and nerve to nerve.

Maya looked up from her tablet computer. "What do you think about Shinji?"

Makoto shrugged. "He saved us. He just did it in a very weird way. Weirder than this." He pointed at the Evangelion. "Artificial humans, giant monsters, and now glowing gold teenagers. Sounds a lot like a sentai series."

The young woman giggled. "I think you mean tokusatsu, besides, we only have the one glowing gold teenager."

Makoto grinned wider, always happy to share common pop-cultural history. But then his mood soured. "Wait a second, are we the imperiled hostages who get taken before the good guys do anything?"

Maya's cheeks drained of color "... Do we get hazard pay for that?"


Shinji, unsurprisingly, freaked out.

The Third Child seemed to want to both scramble out of Misato's hug, and do anything but move at the same time. this was both comedic and somewhat sad, as his muscles bunched and tensed but his limbs refused to move. He turned away from her and his face burned red. She caught him by the chin and brought his head around.

"Shinji-kun... What's wrong?"

He took a deep breath, but still looked incredibly skittish. "...Nobody touches me, hardly anyone ever speaks to me. Whenever they do they usually want something from me... instead of just me."

Misato's voice was soft. "And when I tease you, all the flirting and stuff?"

Shinji hunched up further. "...it's meaningless."

"I'm sorry?"

"I know it's just teasing, but... I want it, I want it to be real. I want it to mean something... but it doesn't, it can't... I mean, why would it? I'm just a kid! And you're beautiful and lively, and like, twenty."

Misato blinked, it was almost non-sequitur. Then she fell over laughing, inadvertently dragging Shinji with her. He landed with an 'ooof!', with his face buried in her cleavage, cheeks somehow growing even redder. How much blood did he have? A six agonizing heartbeats passed before he managed to scramble away and apologize profusely. Shinji knew this because he could count both Misato's and his own, Misato looked at him and started laughing harder.

"You are just too perfect, Shinji-kun!" The boy wondered if he should feel complimented or insulted. The older woman caught her breath and sat up. "Okay, Yeah, I do tease you, it's... Just what I do, I tease and flirt and poke at people. I didn't mean to give you the wrong impression..." She trailed off before the dark look on his face. "No! I mean, yes, I like you, I want to be your friend, I don't necessarily want to be intimate with you but that doesn't mean you aren't desirable!" She rambled, and Shinji blinked audibly.

Misato took a deep breath. "I mean, yeah, in my case you are pretty young. I'm not known for really holding to convention, but..." She gave him a catlike smirk. "You do realize you're pretty much the most eligible bachelor in all of Tokyo-3, right? If not the world?"

Shinji looked like he was about to explode with disbelief, better, he looked like he could use a drink. Misato pushed off to break out some of her imported reserve and handed one can to Shinji. She made a move to sit back down next to him on the floor, but stopped and offered her hand instead. "Let's move to the couch, okay?" He nodded weakly.

Misato took a sip of her ale and grinned. "So, you did say you were an EVA pilot right, your first day of school?" Shinji blushed and nodded. "Yeah, you kinda did violate about sixty different confidentiality agreements and a few international laws, but uh, I was the one who was supposed to tell you about that so my bad?" He goggled but let out a one-note laugh.

"Anyway, Yeah, you're young, you don't quite get things the way an adult would, it's just part of growing up. But basically, with the right approach, any man can get with any girl he wants, or guy if that flicks his wick, so to speak."

"M-Misato!"

"Relax! I'm just teasing, remember? Anyway, since you're famous, and a real hero, you're not at all in a bad situation as far as getting attention. I admit some of it won't be very good, fans, stalkers, people who want to use you, it's just part of life. Real friends are going to be worth their weight in gold though..." She trailed off, nostalgic. "I won't lie, you are really young, but..." She grinned. "Well, like I said, you're a hero, you saved the goddamn world, twice." She drained half her beer, while Shinji only took modest sips of his, almost mechanical.

The fell into silence for a while, and it was nice. Then, Misato grinned. "By the way, I was born in nineteen eighty-six." Shinji did the math, and goggled. Misato flashed another V for Victory. "Yup, You've just stumbled into one of the many ways to a woman's favor."

Misato considered most of the post-dinner conversation quite successful, having dug out a fair amount of Shinji's crippling neuroses. She was no psychologist of course, but it was a start! At one point she had half-stumbled through the explanation of the Hedgehog's Dilemma, but fortunately for them both, Shinji was sharp as a tack and had a surprising knack for holding his liquor.

"So... people are desperate to connect, but they're also terrified of it, everybody is, even me. I don't act like it but I haven't let anybody really in since my last boyfriend... and now you." She hiccuped, very close to being drunk. Misato however, was a high-functioning alcoholic, 'drunk' for her was 'coffee, black' for most people. Shinji nodded, both out of unease and understanding. He hardly looked inebriated, but had just as many cans of beer on the end table next to him. It was telling however, that he joined in with Misato when they decided to emulate the Eiffel Tower.

Adding in the last beer of the night, Misato glanced over at her roommate and harrumphed. "You're still really tense. Does my raw sexual presence intimidate you?" Shinji nodded. Misato frowned cutely. "You know, you could flirt back. You've done it before."

Shinji did his embarrassed hunching maneuver, blushing again. "I... don't want to offend you." Even inebriated, Misato could read between the lines.

She scooted closer across the couch so they were hip to hip. "I don't want to run away from you, and I don't want you to make me run away." Before he could answer, she laughed and slapped him on the back, sending him tumbling off the couch. She was on him in a second, laughing and tickling, while her real intent was safely obscured.

Shinji was half-out of his shirt when he realized it. "M-Misato!"

She grinned and pulled his T-shirt all the way off, laughing. "I want to give you a back rub, It'll feel good, trust me!" He looked stricken, finally that damned mask of his cracked, and she could see how much he wanted it, as well as feared it. That was only step one however, and Misato never did anything fun by half-measure.

She put on an exaggerated, contemplative look. "If you're that upset about being the only one not wearing a shirt, I suppose~ I could join in."

With that, Misato peeled her already-inconsequential tank-top off.