Side note, the auto-censor in its infinite wisdom is censoring phrases that look like web addresses. it looks more like it's trying to censor me when I call Shinji a player. You can silence me, but you cannot silence the revolution! The Truth will out!
No seriously guys, I think Pacific Rim may be referencing mecha anime just a bit
Insert Lonely Island Joke Here
"I really don't see why I have to come with you to meet the new pilot, it's not like I have any say in things anyway." It was already getting hard to talk, and they hadn't even gotten close to the helicopter. Somehow, NERV's helicopter hangar was underground, far away from the sky over Tokyo-3. The helicopter chosen for today rose out of the ground outside the city in a similar fashion to the delivery of an Eva, rotors already spinning up for take off.
"You're coming because I'm going anyway, and I feel you should get to know her before you start fighting Angels together." Misato was raising her voice at the same rate the helicopter was, but she was still unreasonably close to Shinji's ear.
"Then why do we need Kensuke and Toji?"
"Because I said you could bring friends."
"Oh yeah."
"For the savior of all mankind, you're as thick as a brick."
"You're not too great either Toji."
"Shut up Kensuke."
...
"Amazing! That's the carrier group for Over the Rainbow! And over there is the HMAS Crikey!, There's hardly any southern hemisphere ships in the U.N. Fleet and this section has loads! I don't think I want t-"
"Yo, Shinji, pass me that first aid kit will ya? Kensuke's frothin' at the mouth." Reaching behind Misato to retrieve the cross-marked kit, Shinji noticed Misato was struggling to hold back laughter at Kensuke's general ridiculousness.
"Perhaps it was a bad idea to let Aida have the window seat."
"Why didn't you ask Rei to come?" At that, Misato adopted a weary expression, as though the very idea of Rei being on a boat was immensely boring.
"We had to leave at least one pilot behind in case of an attack. I chose to leave Rei behind because I figure you'll get along better with the new pilot better." Her explanation sounded like it had been drilled into the very core of her being, which knowing his father, sounded very likely
"Then what about Kensuke?"
"I don't know, but I vote we toss him overboard in an 'accident'." Misato switched suddenly from her bored face to a wicked grin.
...
It seemed, to Shinji, that it took hours of Kensuke-frothing agony for the helicopter to land. To Kensuke, it was single, bubbling instant of pure bliss before Toji punch-suscitated him back to he land of the moderately less clinically insane. As the rear door of the helicopter swung down, the first person to step off was not Misato or Shinji, but Toji, following on the heels of his oddly striped hat.
"It was a gift from my sister." Toji had said.
"Does a hat have heels?" the Author pondered.
"Stomp!" said the flat-soled shoes of the red-haired girl in the yellow sun dress.
"Woosh." Said the wind.
MEH. REI'S LEGS ARE BETTER said Shinji's interloping subconscious.
"I suppose they don't really have heels." And with this revelation, the Author realised the fundamental hopelessness of life and stabbed himself to death with a fruit knife. As he lay bleeding, the mere thought of Rei's legs gave him the strength to cast Curaga.
...
"And that's the viewing fee." With a firm nod, the angry red-haired girl returned her hands to her hips, the merest twitch of her left pinky telling of her readiness for the next gust of wind. Nursing a red cheek, Toji tried to defend himself against the feminism radiating forth like a bad fart.
"But why, I didn't do anything intentional, so don't blame me."
"You're a man, aren't you? You liked what you saw so you get charged a bargain price. Unless, of course, you're like that girl back home who just looks like a man." The girl was almost sniffing Toji for any feminine qualities, otherwise how could it be reasonable for her to stand so close to him? Toji seemed to take great offense at this, because he cried "I have a man's face, and I am a man!", undid his belt and dropped his pants to the deck of the HMS Tea & Crumpets.
This seemed to earn Toji a viewing fee plus tax, as the girl punched him even harder this time. Misato, deciding to act later rather than sooner, took this as her cue to introduce the girl to the boys, and vice versa.
"This young lady here is-"
"I can introduce myself, Misato." Taking up what could only be described as a pose, the girl puffed out her chest with pride. "I am Asuka Langley Sohryu, the Second Child and pilot of the Production Model Evangelion, Unit-02." Pushing Toji aside with a hand, she continued.
"And since they wouldn't let Short Round anywhere near an Eva if he was the last person on Earth, that means that one of you two fools must be the other pilot. So, is it you, Rambo?" She pointed to Kensuke, with his sleeveless jacket covered in useless pockets. Misato cut her ranting short, however, by placing a hand on Shinji's shoulder and shoving him forward to over balance and nearly fall onto Asuka. However, Shinji was quite happy to assert that his life was not in any way similar to those shows that his cousin would watch from before Second Impact and thus the laws of probability were not inbred mouth-breathers that would bend over backwards to ensure that whenever a teenage boy fell over there would always be some inconveniently sexual position to land in (or on). As a result of profoundly normal laws of probability, Shinji managed to recover in a single step and a girly 'waah!', with only a modicum of dignity lost. Asuka seemed to find great mirth in the way Shinji moved, or perhaps she just found him immensely worthy of ridicule in any situation.
"You? You're telling me, Misato, that you entrusted the defense of Tokyo-3 to him?" Apparently that was the sole reason Asuka found his actions funny, she simply couldn't believe that he was the Third Child. "He's scrawny, he whines like a girl, and I don't think he's any better than Short Round." With a sly smirk, Misato came to Shinji's defense. To Shinji, this was just as well, because he had learned, from living with Misato, that an argument with a woman was not to be won by having a penis.
"Despite his many flaws and whatever you have to say on the matter, he's still got a higher kill-record than you do, and it's too windy for me to argue at the moment, so I'm going inside."
...
After a round of proper introductions between the gathered children, Misato bustled her way to the main bridge of the ship to discuss handover signage with the fleet captain, Commodore Karen Moore, formerly of the E.U. Navy. She hadn't been happy to, as she had put it, 'babysit a child and her toy', and she was even less pleased with Misato's demands for an improvised umbilical cable to be fitted and attached to the ship's reactor. Even worse, Misato seemed to take it for granted that the Commodore would capitulate to her every demand, even the one for a strip club to be built in the main mess hall. While technically the strip club wasn't an official NERV request, it was just a really useful thing to have around. Responding with great umbrage, as was her right, the Commodore was quickly denied any privilege to be angry as Misato reminded her of the status Commander Ikari held with the higher ranks of the U.N.
"I get given Top Secret dispatch orders to Japan, then get lumped in with the girl, who by the way is treating my ship as her playground, and you expect me to just power up the fucking robot at sea?" waving her hands in front of her, Misato wildly fended off the Commodore, a woman potentially more angry than she could ever be.
"It's actually just there as a precaution, since we have no indication of when or where the next Angel is going to atta-"
"AND THE STRIP CLUB?"
"That was mostly just to see how far I got before you said no. Since you didn't call bullshit on the jet ski armada, I figured that uh… you had no issues."
"There are issues! There are lots of issues!" the Commodore began to trail into incomprehensible vitriol, but Toji's conversation continued undaunted, whispered to Kensuke and Shinji on his left and right.
"Yo, you think that Asuka chick is some kind of demon? There's no way she belongs to the same gender as a babe like Misato." Kensuke put forth his own conjecture, concealing his mouth with his ever-present camera.
"It's possible that she's an agent of the Angels, sent to destabilise NERV HQ." Shinji, somehow the voice of calm and reason in this situation, began his own hypothesis.
"She's entirely human, and not in any way the embodiment of various Hellspawn sent to bring ruin to our world. She's probably just the reincarnation of that Hitler guy."
"Hitler?" Toji whispered, a bit louder than was necessary. "You mean the guy that lost World War Two, right?" true to all the mean looks he got for his attitude, Toji barely paid any attention at school.
"We lost that war too, you know." Kensuke interjected, not even the slightest bit annoyed that he had not been alive back then, amongst all the Leman tanks and Imperial soldiers.
"Come now boys, don't feel bad about the war. No use crying over spilt nukes, as they say." Asuka had managed to sneak up behind the trio, her interest piqued the moment Toji mentioned Hitler. As the boys stared at her in shock, she saw someone standing by the door to the bridge and skipped her way over.
"Literally Hitler?"
"Literally Hitler."
"Hello there Kaji!" When Asuka made her way over, Commodore Moore, noticed the intruder too.
"Mr Kaji, please refrain from inviting yourself onto my bridge. I refuse to let you civilians dominate my ship, now get out!" Seeing the man, Misato began to seethe with rage, a rage so potent that many an Old One had failed the required nat21 sanity check. As the waves of wrath passed over him, the man gulped quite audibly and retreated behind the doorway.
"I'm going to head over to the mess hall if you need me." Turning to go in the most nonchalant fashion, he waved to Misato and the cowering children. "Come on, the food doesn't cost anything, but feel free to consider it my treat."
...
"Sooooo, Mr Kaji, you're Misato's old boyfriend?" With Misato's breath heating his neck, Shinji was choosing his words very carefully. Somehow, Kaji had recovered from his earlier apprehension on the way down to the mess hall, twisted ear notwithstanding, and was grinning from ear to ear at Shinji's nervousness.
"Yeah, we met in college at a party, angling for cheap beer and cheaper women."
"Women?" Toji, Kensuke and Asuka cried out in unison. It seemed that the stereotypical sheltered Christian upbringing spread from Germany, through Asia Minor and up to Japan.
"Well yeah." Kaji shrugged, his eyebrows twitching; betraying his incredulity at their incredulity. "It's practically a major part of becoming a woman to try things with other women."
Asuka looked on with a face of beatific enlightenment, at least until Misato pulled Kaji backwards over his chair by his ponytail. Near breathless through laughter and fear, the wannabe womaniser managed to force out a weak "I take it back, you don't have to do that to become a woman." Planting a pointy-heeled foot over Kaji's neck, Misato began to to prompt him with a long, slow, violence-implying "and…?"
"You never tried any of that stuff either in college, we met in an economics lecture and we were both totally sober!"
"Good, good. You shouldn't lie around such young children, you'll set a bad example that they'll carry all through their lives and beyond."
"What you did try back in college, is flashing your underwear to me like you are right now." Misato forced more weight onto her foot, gradually cutting off Kaji's air supply.
"Look away Shinji, and the rest of you too." Her voice was strained with rage, fists clenched hard enough to whiten her knuckles.
"Why?"
"Because if nobody sees me murder this insignificant little shit of a man, then I don't have to ask you for help getting rid of the body."
"Um, Ms Misato," Kensuke raised his hand, camera and all, as though he was still in class "I don't think alibis work like that." As Misato sighed in disappointment at Kensuke's reality-check, Kaji grabbed her by the ankle and tipped her over. Misato didn't fall elegantly, but rather she fell with one knee on Kaji's lungs and the other mere centimetres from his crotch. With a winded, yet deep, chuckle, Kaji lauded her efforts to rekindle their romance.
"I can see why you regret leaving me, but you don't need to hide it behind this veil of antagonism, you can be honest with your feelings, and with me." Taking Misato by the hand, Kaji was moving in for a kiss before she moved in quicker for a head butt. Crawling to her feet, Misato brushed herself off and returned to her seat without even kicking Kaji before he rose. Kaji was significantly slower to rise than Misato, eventually settling into his chair with a look of sarcastic admonishment at Shinji.
"I thought for the Big Hero, saving lives was easy; why didn't you save me?" Asuka looked on with an evil glint in her eyes as Shinji wilted under the misunderstood ribbing.
"I'm not really a hero." Shinji muttered this, lowering his head.
"Come on, little Ikari. Do I really need to start listing your criteria?" Holding a hand out in front of Shinji, Kaji began to count them off. "One: you pilot a giant robot against monsters out to destroy the world." With one raised eyebrow, Kaji seemed to be waving the evidence right in front of Shinji's face, which was half true, he was waving a hand representing the evidence in front of him. Shinji for his part shrugged with an odd look on his face, managing to convey an 'I suppose'.
"Two: you were at first reluctant to do so, but upon seeing a heavily-injured young girl you changed your mind." Unsure of exactly how that was in any representative of his actions, Shinji was sent reeling when Asuka slammed her hands down onto the table.
"Hang on a minute, does that mean I'm not a hero? There were no girls like that back in Germany for me to agonise over." Seeing her so flustered seemed to be humourous to exactly 25% of the current male population, because Kaji began his deep-throated chuckle again.
"You're a different kind of hero, Asuka. You had already decided to be a hero, any heavily-injured girls in our future will be a test of character." Hearing this, Asuka sat back down with a smug grin directed at Shinji.
"Three, the most important number for you; after doing your best to save said heavily-injured girl, she begins to fall for you." The previously apathetic Kensuke suddenly jumped in his seat and stared at Shinji when he heard that.
"You've known Ayanami for like a month, and you've got her falling for you?"
"I don't think tha-" Shinji began to protest, but was cut off by Toji throwing his arm around his shoulder and pulling him in close.
"You gotta tell me your secret to gettin' with chicks, man. Just think: you, the valiant savior of mankind and me, your, uh, stalwart companion who stands beside you every step of the way. The Lady-Killers of Tokyo-3." Shinji tried to extricate Toji's hand from his shoulder, but was unsuccessful due to the interference of Kensuke on his other side.
"I don't 'get' with 'chicks', I don't even think Rei likes me that way." Kaji continued to chuckle.
"I didn't mean it quite like that. Here, allow me to elucidate." Reaching into his pocket, Kaji withdrew a small black device and placed it on the table with no preamble or fanfare.
"Kaji, is this what I think it is?" Misato gave the device a leery look, switching her gaze from Kaji to the device intermittently. The thing was the size of a fat, boxy finger; black and shiny, it sat on the table without moving.
"Why yes, Misato, yes it is." Pointing at the device with a finger, Kaji hovered over the play button ominously. "This is the highlights reel from that time we spent all week in bed, just making love."
"Hey!" Misato yelled, slapping Kaji right in the stubble. "Not in front of the children." She whispered loudly afterward.
"Okay, okay!" Kaji threw up his hands in surrender. "It's a recording from after the latest operation versus the Angels. You know Shinji, that one where you started swearing at the enemy of mankind while bludgeoning it with the body of its dead comrade." Kaji's voice raised near-questioningly as he finished speaking, but Shinji was already too embarrassed to think. He knew what Kaji was talking about, he just hadn't figured that it had been recorded.
Kaji began to wave his hand about as he 'reminisced' about Shinji's recent past. "Oh and let's not forget the first time you ever fought an Angel, where you battered it to death with a chunk of its own ribcage."
Asuka began to talk over Kaji, reaching for the small device.
"Stop being silly, Kaji! Play the thing already, I want to hear it." Slapping a hand down onto the device, Asuka managed to only hit the play button with her rampaging fingers. The device lit up, re-engaging several sleeping functions. Eventually, after almost a minute of tense waiting, Kaji was able to navigate to the file he had intended to open from the start.
File 'Shinji_the_Player' is not compatible with this nTunes device. Convert 'Shinji_the_Player' to NP3 format?
Hitting yes treated the group to a progress bar crawling across the screen, easily outpaced by Zeno's arrow.
"I know I shouldn't talk about my employers behind their backs, but I think everything out of NERV America either explodes, or takes ages loading up a progress bar and then blows up."
As if simply to prove contrary, the barely complete progress bar shot over to the far end and faded to a set of jagged lines and white noise.
...
First there was silence, then the quite sound of crunching dirt crackled through the tinny speakers. Shinji cringed further as the crunching was replaced by a loud, hollow banging sound.
"Ayanami! Are you alright in there?" There was a creaking sound as what Shinji knew to be the emergency hatch of the entry plug was forced open, then a hiss of rapidly vapourising LCL as the pressure inside the tube dropped. Everyone at the table heard the hollow clanging as the Shinji of a week ago stepped half-into the entry plug, then the voices distorted by the same echo.
"You don't just reveal a deep and personal thing like some 'internal conflict' then do a mission like this, it makes me worry." Asuka and Toji looked across at Shinji, suspicious of these things called 'feelings', while Kensuke cocked one ear closer and closer to the speakers. Kensuke proved to be some sort of prophet, as the audio appeared to cut out around this point. With a questioning look to Kaji, Asuka began to lean back in her chair; Kaji just waved her suspicions away with a smug "there's more". It was true, the recording hadn't stopped, the noises being made were just very quiet. The 'silence' continued for a few more seconds until what Kaji considered the main attraction occurred.
"Why are you crying? I don't think that's the correct emotion for this kind of situation." The 'snrk' came first from one side, then the other. Shinji finally looked up to see Asuka, brought to a breathy whisper of "Crying? Really?". Shinji returned to shrivelling into his seat. Kaji was beginning to bend over backwards in his chair in silent laughter when the Rei in the recording began to speak after a further silence.
"Though, I don't know what kind of emotion I should be feeling right now."
"You know, you could try smiling."
"You got her to smile? Ayanami never smiles!" For some reason, amongst giant purple robots and alien gods, Kensuke found the most surprising thing to be the idea of Rei smiling.
"Well apparently, for our Little Ikari, the Big Hero, she does." Kaji had read the file on Rei as a requirement and was aware of her penchant for expressionlessness. The voices in the recording went silent, just the swishing of LCL, then the crunching of some more dirt. Yawning theatrically, Toji cemented his attachment to Shinji's shoulders.
"This get any better?" with the last of his tiny reserves of courage, Shinji unlaced Toji's hand from his shoulder and stood resolutely on his feet.
"No. It doesn't get any better, and we should all go outside and ignore Kaji forever." Pushing his chair away from the table in his haste, Shinji left the mess hall.
...
Toji and Kensuke found him out on the deck less than ten minutes later. Racing over to him, they adopted poses of swooning romance.
"Oh Ikari-kun~, please resolve my internal conflict!" Toji cried, one hand to his forehead, ready and willing to swoon at a moments notice.
"Please Ayanami-san, call me Shinji." Kensuke began to rub shoulders with Toji, his hands clasped tightly, resting them on his other shoulder. The two over-enthusiastic boys began to inch their way closer to Shinji, wiggling their hips as they went. Shinji inched his way further down the railing in the opposite direction, coming close to pitching over into the ocean.
"Then Shinji, call me Rei! And hold my hand, it makes my girly parts feel tingly!" Locking hands, Kensuke and Toji made great strides toward Shinji, who hunched over the rail far enough to crush his liver into his ribcage.
Eventually, Kensuke's free hand wandered over to one of his compatriot prankster's nipples.
"Woah man, not cool! You don't get to touch this kind of stuff! Only the hottest of chicks get to touch this kind of stuff!" Pushing Kensuke away, Toji was himself shoved out of the way by a rampantly cackling Asuka. Spinning and weaving as she made her way to Shinji, the German girl doubled over in front of him, one hand on the railing to support herself.
"I don't know what's better," she began, face flushed with constant laughter, "the fact that this all actually happened and you didn't get any further than that, or that it actually happened and you didn't get any further than that." Wiping an imaginary tear from the corner of her eye, Asuka dug the imaginary knife in further. "But seriously, you haven't gotten any further?"
"I-wait, what?" Thrown off-balance by Asuka's words, Shinji was forced into dissembling embarrassment. "No. Why are you even asking?"
Taking Shinji by the collar, Asuka began to drag Shinji to what would be considered aft of the ship, entering into the shadow of the colossal shroud of cloth that took up most of the ship's length.
"Where are you taking me?" Shinji cried with no small amount of trepidation.
"I've seen the files, and if I've seen yours, it's only fair if you see mine." Asuka called back with a chirpy voice.
...
"Oh you meant your Eva unit. That makes everything a lot better." Wiping some imaginary sweat from his brow, Shinji released the tension pent-up in his shoulders just as Asuka was climbing the ladder over Unit-02's shoulder. Legs apart, Asuka placed her hands on her hips, towering over Shinji as he remained on the side of the shallow pool the bio-mechanoid lay in.
"So, like what you see, dummkopf?" looking up to the girl, Shinji quickly began to look at the surroundings at eye level, finding them to be composed of red armour and beige fabric.
"It's very red. And big."
"Good to see you looked at my Eva, not my underwear. I'll still have to hit you at some point though."
"But I didn't do anything, and neither did Toji this time."
"Because you're a guy." Shinji lowered his head into his palm with a sigh as he lamented the feminine empowerment that comes with losing almost half of the global population. His lamentations were simultaneously interrupted and exacerbated when a small red blur struck him directly in the stomach. The missile did not have a great deal of force behind it, but the shock caused him to double over, allowing another to bounce off the back of his head. Rubbing the back of his head as he straightened up with a wince, more for show than anything, he saw that the two projectiles from hell had been the red shoes that had crushed Toji's hat less than an hour ago.
"Pick them up and bring them up here." As Shinji was bending down to pick up the shoes, she added "And don't look up!" as an afterthought. Seeing no simple way out of the situation that didn't involve a frankly ludicrous application of engine grease and a tanuki's left testicle, Shinji held the shoes as gingerly as possible and resigned himself to climbing the ladder one-handed. The moment he had acquired stable footing on Unit-02's armour-clad trapezius, Asuka rushed him from the side and clamped down on his hand with both of hers. Pulling him close to her, he felt the hem of her dress run over his knuckle as she whispered in his ear.
"I never did ask you, did you like what you saw? Out on the deck earlier?" Wildly disseminating, Shinji began to stutter out a response he hoped would imply ignorance in the face of impending wrath.
"I don't- I'm not sure how I should respond, I mea-"
"I'm talking about my legs, you fool." Her voice rose almost imperceptibly, but to Shinji, who's ears were wrapped non-consensually around the young German's talk-flaps, it was definitely noticeable, simply from the tightness of her grip. "And, well, everything else besides." She added as a coy afterthought.
"I think you've lost me." Turning his ignorance up to eleven(it still baffles modern science as to why, at this point, Shinji didn't simply readjust the amount of ignorance at ten), Shinji tried to pull away from what he believed to be the least able to flirt of Hitler's reincarnations. His efforts proved futile, however, when Asuka tried to nibble away at his earlobe. She was gentle, he thought, but it was still unwanted attention.
"You're a man right? Besides, I heard how hot under the collar you and that Ayanami girl were getting, so you know what I want." Planting a small kiss on his cheek, she continued in a 'seductive' whisper. "So come one, do to me what you wanted to do to her." While Asuka forced his hand to run up her thigh, Shinji was trying to think of a reason why he should politely refuse both this girl and his genitals.
And so it was, during the most awkward moment of Shinji's young life, that something blew up.
"What the fuck?" Asuka cried, the shock wave rumbling Shinji out of her grip.
"Something blew up." Shinji nearly screamed out. Indeed, something had blown up, and if Shinji was any good at guessing directions, the something was somewhere near the HMAS Crikey! that Kensuke had pointed out earlier. Another blast soon followed, knocking Shinji from his perch on the red beast and down into the shallow pool it was floating in. The pool wasn't enough to halt his motion effectively, but it did provided an excuse to tear off a section of the huge cloth covering the Eva unit.
Wiping the remains of the purplish water from his face, Shinji saw what remained of two giant pink crucifixes where two ships should have been. Shinji was not aware of the theological implications of an enemy using cruciform explosions to wipe out mankind after losing a large portion of its population, but he was sure of its ramifications in the immediate future. Scrabbling to stand up, he saw Asuka had already reached the flat 'ground' the proper way and was waiting expectantly.
"It's an Angel."
"WUNDERBAR!" she cried, racing up to Shinji and pulling him back behind the draping sheets.
"What?" Shinji questioned questioningly.
"I'm going to show of my new unit's combat capabilities, and you're coming with me."
"How?"
"Simple really." Asuka bent forward to consume his entire field of view with her blue eyes. A swing of her arm and his attention was distracted by her sudden ability to point at Unit-02.
"Get in the fucking robot Shinji."
...
Approximately 4,937 words in this chapter, 28,445 preceding that, 33,382 total, and I finally got to write those six most perfect words that every good Evangelion Fanfiction must have. A few notes though:
1. Why is 'panties' a word? 'Underwear' seems neutral and generic but it actually describes the item, 'panties' is just like, what? It's suitably girly, but what is pant-ies? It's plural like pants is but what, seriously what. Is there a panty?
/rant
2. That's essentially what happened after Ramiel's death: Rei wants to hold Shinji's hand, but due to her sexual neutrality (she knows, but doesn't care about it) moves Shinji's hand near her crotch. Then anime misunderstandings happen.
3. I'm not using -san and -kun because that just sounds weird in actual English, even though I try to think how it would be said in Japanese. Toji and Kensuke are being mocking so I left it in, but Shinji uses Asuka-san and Kaji is actually using Ikari-kun, but because he knows both Ikaris it make sense for him to call Shinji 'little'; I just didn't write them.
