The Ikaris. The Dr. Akagis. Lilith and all of her planet.

Rei didn't know if Earth was beyond saving (and she hoped not, because it was Shinji's planet), but the fact remained that in Rei's experience, it was not possible to properly look after babies there. Yes, it could be argued that this was because none of the parent-child sets Rei had observed had parents who tried properly, but that was even more frightening a prospect. What if there was something in how the angels had distorted earth that made parents not care properly for children? What if it affected her?

She didn't want to be like Yui. She didn't want her dream of being surrounded by family to be replaced by Yui's dream of being eternally alone, with everyone else including her own son long dead.

So yes, she wanted her own planet.

It was fortunate that this was in accord with Kaworu's own idea of how to handle her training: it seemed that since all of the other angels she had experienced had come as destroyers and she had been raised to think of herself as a tool, she needed to come to understand that she was not a destroyer, not the enemy of worlds and their people, but a creator. That if she was a tool, she was not merely Gendo's to own: she was a Seed of Life, born of the wishes of countless lives all the way back to the First Ancestral Race and the first being to know love for their children, hope for the future and trust that no matter how strange and powerful they would made, even children of such a different sort would use their powers for the good of those who lived instead of becoming enemies to them.

She could feel that now, doing this, unleashing the light of her soul instead of hiding it. Through her flowed great power, the gift of minds Dr. Akagi could never hope to equal in her pettiness.

Rei's will, Rei's emotions were not meaningless, not when they could shape worlds. She could not be caged, not when all of time and space was hers to travel (although Kaworu had cautioned her that she shouldn't range too far: there was a part of her that was tethered to Earth), hers to search for a better world. And if she couldn't find one, then she had the power… She was the power that could make one.

She was not an angel, not a messenger meant to carry Gendo's soul to his uncaring love: she was a god. She wasn't able to think it through yet, wasn't able to put this feeling into words, this expansion of her mind and awareness, the awakening of parts of her that had long been stifled, but yes.

At first she'd played Asteroids with Shinji in this model of the solar system Shinji was dreaming, but once Kaworu was satisfied that she knew how to access hyperspace, change her shape, redirect mass and impacts and the things that were most important for her to know in order to survive, class was over for tonight and she was allowed to go play in her new sandbox.

As she shaped this red earth, as subroutines began calculating the first primitive life forms, little more than self-perpetuating chain reactions, that would begin to groom it for greater and greater life, growing stronger and stronger under her care, she knew.

This was what that power was meant to be used for.

"Two hundred and eighteen points in one shot!"

…

"Guys, did you see that?"

Rei couldn't be upset with Shinji when he was her brother and he was so happy, and the whole point of the score was how helpful this would be to her.

"I've got that asteroid labeled and I've marked the trajectory for when you do this for real." She felt Shinji's stunned excitement. "Wow, though." New high score!

"That is impressive. Pass me the radioactive elements?" Kaworu asked, still focused, still in the zone that Shinji's excitement had jarred Rei out of. She felt him giving the lump of iron at Mars' core a directed impulse that felt like when Dr. Akagi hit Rei's knee with a rubber hammer to test her reflexes. "This is going to take more work to kick-start than I thought. Sol is one of the oldest third-generation suns in this galaxy: I should have realized its planets wouldn't have as much radioactive material as the systems in my original galaxy did." , hopefully he'd have worked out how to get Mars' core molten again by the time Rei wanted to start: she wasn't going to leave Earth now, not when Shinji needed her.

"Sure," Shinji said, using the part of Kaworu's mind's programming he was borrowing to isolate them and hand them off to Kaworu through hyperspace. "You know, there's a lot of it already refined on Earth, and a lot of it's waste or underwater anyway."

Rei felt Kaworu's wince. Taking material from an already-claimed world? Yes, it wasn't doing Earth any good now, and what was seeping into the red sea wouldn't be helping if there was anything left there to kill, but there were people on Earth and eventually they'd need to do something to keep their own planet's core from cooling down and maintain their environment.

Right now, there wasn't anyone to stop Kaworu, and a lot of people might actually thank him as long as he didn't touch their strategic weapon supplies or do anything to what they were actually using. But if this was during a normal system settlement? If Earth had an angel of its own to speak for it, to defend the interests of its children even a thousand thousand planetary generations down the line?

"Making use of it is the practical thing to do," Rei said, and wondered why part of her approved of the way Kaworu wasn't quite refusing, since right now Shinji was really as close to an angel as Earth had to speak for it, but was only a hair's breadth away from doing so, no matter how much work it would save him. Not that the work was a disincentive: Rei enjoyed this work, which was why part of her regretted that Shinji had woken her out of her zone.

Then she realized that, yes, these two actually cared about her feelings, and she finally had someone to explain her feelings to her, so she said, "I am divided," and sent the strange mixture of reactions.

Oh, Shinji knew that one, after having to kill. "Conscience is who you are in the dark," he told her, white-paneled wings extending further as he teleported above the surface of Mars' atmosphere to come in and land next to her. After reentry. Entering an angel's planet & its atmosphere the slow way at first, unless you had permission to come in through hyperspace (or were used to what amounted to invading it, like Kaworu and Earth), was both polite and practical in the same way as notifying a human by knocking at their AT field before entering their mind: fewer guests died that way. "Just because Dr. Akagi could get away with killing my other little sister," and how terrible Shinji felt, for Rei's twin that he hadn't known to save. "That didn't mean it was right." Just to her, Shinji also sent that, "Normally he's not as uptight as he's been about this, really. It's just that with what all the other angels did and are doing… he blames himself. So he doesn't want to do anything else that could hurt us." Even though how could Tabris have known that giving the others a time out was wrong, for a species that thought in terms of billions of years? The sensible thing for them to do would have been to just shut down, and they never should have started screaming at developing humans out of anger and jealousy that they should have had the planet, these should be their children.

"Ah. So I appreciate the knowledge that he should care when it comes to treating me fairly, even though I don't see the point of caring so much about this." Well, this was a minor thing, so it was proof a more serious matter would be handled accordingly?

Rei hadn't sent that privately, so Tabris' response was, "Have you thought about how easy theft is for an angel? I have a few billion from SEELE's operational funds stocked away in various places, just to be on the safe side, and that's just electronic theft." Most of the things Tabris might actually need money for someday were the kind of thing that cost what governments called 'real money,' since he wouldn't need money for something he could do with his own power. Music was another matter entirely: acquiring art, the Lilim efforts to communicate the truth of their hearts, with money tainted by deception?

Spiraling around Shinji's path of descent, Tabris continued, "I can also locate gold, the platinum group and other valuable metals and extract them from bank vaults or hidden treasuries as easily as Shinji just handed me those: easier, since they're already refined. Since people don't like wasting their time, and we want to achieve our goals, we all want to do the easiest, most efficient things, yes? Even if you may be right, and humanity would like it if someone removed most of their fissionables, I don't actually have permission and breaking into someone's planet or house to take something is still theft. It's not about the minerals: I can sieve them out of the rest of the solar system, it will just take a little longer. It's about my own principles and idea of what is acceptable. If we just do what is easiest without thinking about the consequences… What kind of world would someone like that create, Rei? How would they affect the other humans around them, Shinji? Just because I have power doesn't mean I should ignore the rights of the Lilim, their rights to their own homeworld."

The other angels… If they were in their right minds they'd have to agree that even if Lilith might not have the right to Earth, it was too late for any other angel to take that right because the Lilim had it now, and the children were not responsible for the sins of their was too late to reboot Earth or mine it for resources like an unclaimed world, not when there were people there now.

"Sorry," Shinji said, because he'd heard this lecture before. "It's called integrity, Rei. Wholeness. Being aware of who you are, and doing everything in a way that is according to who you are, that fits with your principles and enforces them on the universe. It's a lot more important for, you know, normal planets, since there people are more aware of what other people are like. We all create ourselves with our actions, so… Act lazy and uncaring, and you'll make yourself and the light of your soul weak and unable to do much, because if you don't care enough about the universe, you're not going to make the effort to change it?" Shinji sent as he dumpedhis inertia into another dimension so he didn't actually have to decelerate in order to taxi to a landing a moment before Tabris surged up out of the red earth like the long-extinct flying fish.

He looked something like a manta ray: the most obvious differences were that his wings (patterned, since adjusting panels would let him control his flight path, but not really feathered) were more like a bird's and the fan at the end of his tail was larger and more elaborate. Once he was in the air he didn't land: that was courtesy again. Even though this was a simulation dream, Mars was still the planet Rei had chosen as her own, so another angel shouldn't land on it. Helping out with the terraforming was one thing (although normally it was the planet's owner who directed and taught the other angels), but getting comfortable on its surface? Setting foot on it?

That was what had started all the trouble in the first place, in fact…

"Anyway, Rei," Shinji asked to change the subject, "Have you thought about what you want the trees and everything – if you have trees – to look like? If you want some ideas, I've got a lot of science fiction movies, manga and all kinds of things that have crazy plants and animals on my player." It was designed to look like an antique, the kind that just played a few songs.

"That would be appreciated." Rei didn't want her children to have a boring planet, one that wasn't beautiful at all: she wanted to make a glorious world. "I still don't have any ideas for an angel form I could use in combat to conceal my identity, either. Tell me, Shinji, what gave you the idea for yours?"

If the empty cockpit had eyes, it would have been staring at her. "You haven't seen Star Wars? Right, of course you haven't seen Star Wars." Dammit, Gendo… "This is… Well, you'll see." Tomorrow, after they woke up, because although Shinji could draw on everything he had ever experienced & the files Tabris had copied to him for his dream world, eating dream popcorn still just wasn't the same and Rei needed to have the full experience. "The prequels, though…" They'd bugged him ever since he'd made the connection between what Gendo was willing to do to bring Yui back and Anakin's desire to save Padme that also killed so many innocent people. "And Kaworu's going to want to show you the Fantasias… I should make a list."

"The Fantasias?" Rei wondered.

"Artwork set to music. The first one is amazing: to think of drawing all of that by hand!"

The clones floated in the LCL, thinking very little because there was nothing to think about. Not until someone appeared, and then there were smiles because there was something to look at! A moving thing!

"Having observed the consequences of giving a yo-yo to a flock of flamingos," Rei said with her usual emotionless voice and expression, "I now wish to observe the consequences of giving a ball to a group of kittens."

Because she had also witnessed the consequences of giving blasters to a group of clones, and even though these were going to be given Evas instead, Shinji had expressed the thought that Rei's clones were therefore also his little sisters, and he would not want them to be uselessly killed, or trying to kill him the way the SEELE Emperor's clones tried to kill Shinji Skywalker. Rei was fairly certain that her clones would have better aim.

Darth Gendo... Reia, you're my sister... Obi Wan Kaworu... Han Misato & Pen-Penna... Asuka Jade... Has anyone written this yet?

It's interesting that Gendo becomes one with Adam's flesh when they're so alike: both of them are fathers who want to devour their own children, calling them to Tokyo-3, calling them to their deaths in order to trigger Third Impact and get what they want, and they don't care about sacrificing their children's futures in the process.

On the other hand Kaworu, who contains Adam's soul, says that Shinji needs to kill him and live on afterwards because Shinji and the Lilim (the children of Lilith) are the ones who should have a future.

Then there's Yui, in the Eva, flesh like Lilith's, who also wants Third Impact, wants something that will prove that mankind existed for all of eternity and also doesn't hesitate to sacrifice her son for that. Then there's Rei with Lilith's soul who wants Shinji to be happy and sacrifices her own life so that Shinji can live.

During Third Impact, Kaworu and Rei appear as proof that it's possible for someone to care about someone else, that someone can love Shinji & proof that people can and will work to understand one another and bridge the gap. The first people to care about a child would normally be their parents, and good parents want their children to live on, to inherit the future: they make sacrifices for their children, they don't use them as human sacrifices.

Gendo and Yui, merged with base, monstrous flesh, are the parents that devour their own young. Kaworu and Rei, with the souls of beings meant to give life to worlds, instead symbolize the ideal parents, those who would rather sacrifice their own lives than allow harm to befall their children. They're the reasons he's born again into the new world, so they become the parents of the reborn Shinji.

Rei's similarity and connection to Shinji's mother is inescapable, but I haven't seen anyone address the issue of Kaworu's… pretty stark opposition to Gendo.