Disclaimer: I've recently acquired all the rights to Evangelion. You can probably read all about it in an anime news magazine or website.

Pffft, yeah right.

I opened my eyes to find that I was lying on my back on top of my parent's prized glass coffee table. On either side of my head were empty wine bottles. I sat up slowly, expecting to feel incredibly ill, remembering how Misato would often turn up in class hungover. Strangely, I felt fine and stood up to survey the mess we had caused. Asuka was still on the sofa, sucking her thumb in her sleep of all things. Toji and Hikari were on the floor behind the sofa Asuka was on, hand in hand, which was a rather cute sight. Kensuke was soundly asleep in front of my laptop, which was still switched on, at the dining table. It took a while to find Rei but eventually I discovered that she was in the bathtub, fully clothed may I add, clutching a hold of an empty wine bottle. Looking at it all, it was quite hilarious where and how we all ended up. Still, I had no idea how I ended up on the coffee table as well as why I didn't have a hangover.

I jogged my memory but it kept on going back to the last thing I did remember which was Asuka and I making out on the sofa. I couldn't quite remember how we ended up doing that either, but we did and that was pretty much that. I pondered whether it would be a good idea to ask Asuka or not about it. That probably depended on her fettle when she woke up. "Argh! My head…damn, I feel like crap!" That outburst was from the newly arisen Asuka who, from the sound of things, had a hangover. I glanced over toward her which was sharply replied with, "Shinji! Why the hell did you have to wake me up?!"

I blinked and said, "But I didn't…"

"Yes you did! Why do you think I'm awake now?!" Asuka interjected. "Agh! Who thought that drinking too much made you feel like shit afterward."

"It's called a hangover," I pointed out, rather feebly.

"Yes, I know what it's called! Damn, now I know how Misato felt all those times in class," Asuka muttered, thinking about Misato as well on the subject of hangovers. Then, she sharply turned her head towards me and I swear, that evil look she had on her face simply drained the life out of me. "What about you? Where's your hangover?!" she snapped.

"Um, I don't have one," I replied. "Maybe I don't get them?"

"Oh great," Asuka said. "I guess I have to say you were right. We shouldn't have drunk so much."

"When did I say that?" I asked, rather confused.

"I don't remember, I just remember you did," Asuka said.

"What else do you remember?" I inquired, wondering if she would recall what I did.

"We were both on the sofa making…out," replied Asuka, her voice going quieter at the end of her sentence. And I swear, for the first time in my life, I saw Asuka blush in embarrassment.

"Is something the matter?" I said.

"We were both drunk! Those things happen, right? Hehe, I mean, yeah, get over it. As if I would want to kiss you!" Asuka said, laughing nervously.

"Huh?" I said, my naivety getting the better of me.

"Um, it's nothing. Listen; forget about what happened between us last night for a bit. We'll…we'll talk about it later," Asuka said. "You know…whether we're going to take this seriously or not."

"Seriously?" I asked, again, sounding absolutely clueless.

"Never mind. Like I said, we'll talk about it later," Asuka said. "Anyway, shouldn't we do something about this mess?"

"Yeah, we should clean up before Kaji gets back," I said. Then the seriousness of our actions dawned on me. "Wait…if Kaji catches us, we're dead!" I said in a wild panic. "Oh my god, no! WAKE UP EVERYBODY! WE NEED TO CLEAN UP!"

"Shinji, calm down!" Asuka hushed. However, it was too late. My cries woke everyone in the flat up. And probably the neighbours too. "Who, what, when, where?" Toji asked with one eye still trying to stay shut.

"We need to clean up this mess!" I said.

"Oh right," Toji said. "Well, wake me up when you're done." Much to my absolute shock, he simply lay back down and went back to sleep. Hikari looked down at him and frowned. "You lazy bastard," she muttered before turning to me. "Don't worry, I'll get him properly awake and we'll help you tidy up. Is Kensuke up?"

"Yeah," Kensuke muttered very groggily, wondering across from the dining table. "I think I had too much."

"We all had too much," Hikari pointed out. "Where's Rei?"

"She's asleep in the bathtub," I replied.

"What?! You just walked in on her?!" Asuka exclaimed.

"No, wait! Not like, in the bathtub, bathing. Just...in the bathtub! That's where she fell asleep!" I babbled, trying not to get a beating from Asuka. I didn't want a repeat of that limousine incident. That was far too painful.

"What appears to be the matter?" Rei asked, emerging from the bathroom, looking very grumpy.

"I was about to ask you the same thing," Asuka said, who was trying to hold back giggles after seeing Rei look so moody.

"I have a hangover and I am not happy about it," Rei muttered. "Let's just do what we need to do so I can go back to sleep or hit something."

"Whoa, I've never seen Rei this passionate about anything," Toji muttered.

"Shut up," she snapped.

It was incredibly odd. Rei was in a very irritable state which was both funny and strange. With the way she usually is, this made an odd change, even if it meant that she would probably poke my eyes out if I pissed her off in this state. "I swear, if anybody pisses me off, I'll poke their eyes out," Rei muttered as she went to working cleaning the mess around the bathroom door. I blinked in shock after she just said what I had thought in my head before shaking my head and getting to work on making the place look like it wasn't the site of an underage drinking fest.

It took about half and hour but it was well worth the effort as the place looked like it hadn't been touched at all. "Everything's clean," I said with the relief evident in my voice. "I was really scared someone would walk in on us cleaning up."

"As long as the wine bottles were out of sight, then there's no trouble. We just made a mess, that's all," Kensuke said.

"Mr Counter-Strike pwner of all things n00bish makes a good point there," Toji noted. "There was no reason to be so stressed Shinji."

"Well, you did keep falling asleep every five minutes!" I snapped.

"Um, yeah, but just chill, that's all of it done now," Toji said.

"I'm fine now," I said. "Everything is all right now. There is no problem."

Asuka had collected all of the bottles and placed them on the dining table so that we could bag them and get rid of them. "Shouldn't we recycle them?" Hikari asked.

"Screw recycling them! We just need to get rid of them!" Asuka said. She was right, but something wasn't right about the bottles. "Um…why are there more bottles than what I remember us drinking?" I said worriedly.

"I don't know. Maybe we drank more?" Asuka suggested.

"I only had seven bottles in my room and those were all fairly cheap bottles," I explained.

"Then what about the other ones?" Hikari said.

We moved forward to investigate and much to my horror, I found another four bottles of very expensive looking chardonnay along with the seven I thought we drank. "It says these bottles were 20 years old at sale," Kensuke noted, scanning them over. "These must have been very, very expensive."

"Holy crap," I said, suddenly feeling all faint and the knees and finding it necessary to take a seat. "We…drank even more after those first bottles?"

"Looks like it," Kensuke noted. "This isn't good, isn't it?"

"Four bottles of very expensive chardonnay just don't go missing. My parents are going to find out one way or another," I said.

"Well, just buy more bottles to replace them. None of us are short of money, right?" Asuka suggested hopefully.

"We're all underage!" I cried in exasperation. "We'd have to get someone who is old to buy it for us."

"What about Kaji?" Toji asked.

"What do you mean, 'what about Kaji'? He works for my dad! There's no way in hell that would work!" I shot back. However, there was doubt even in my voice about that statement and everybody picked up on it. Soon, I had five pairs of eyes looking at me very intently.

"This is a very nice present you guys are buying Shinji's parents," Kaji noted with a bag with five bottles of chardonnay. "This is good stuff too. 20 years old, in fact." Toji and Kensuke came up with the crazy scheme of getting Kaji to buy the chardonnay for as under the guise that it would be an anniversary present for my parents. And ironically, it was my parent's anniversary today, as well as the day that they got back from their holiday. I expected them to arrive some time this evening. Talk about cutting it close! "Why did you get five though?" Kaji asked.

"Uh…we got five because…um, well, there were four spaces left to fill in the wine cabinet and one for them to enjoy when they get back! Yeah, that's it…" I said nervously. Talk about an improvised answer. I glanced towards the others and they were all wiping the sweat from their foreheads at this point. "That's really nice of you guys. It was an expensive present, but then again you would have no trouble with that, huh?" Kaji chuckled, placing the bottles into the wine cabinet and leaving one out on the table, along with two wine glasses and anniversary card I asked Kaji to get. "Well, everything's set. I have to get back to Misato's but call me if you need anything else."

Kaji made his way out and all of us collapsed onto the sofas. "You guys need to square that money up to me," Asuka muttered. She had ended up paying the most out of all of us and although she did accept responsibility for getting us started on the wine, we still all could have said no so she was right in wanting to spread the bill for this cover up operation evenly. "Kaji is rather gullible," Rei noted. She sounded a bit more like herself now. Maybe her hangover was easing up. "I can't believe he actually fell for that. Did he realise how much money we needed to spend to get five bottles of that stuff?" Hikari asked.

"I guess he never thought about it," I said. "Maybe he had other things on his mind."

"That's true," Hikari noted. "Anyway, I should be getting back home. My parents are probably wondering why I haven't come back in time for school."

"Ah, same here," Toji said.

"Me too," Kensuke added. "I forgot about that."

"I am required to leave as well," Rei said. "My gratitude for an entertaining night."

"Yeah, what she said!" Toji laughed. "Anyway, we better rush! It's almost 10 o'clock! See you later!"

Soon everybody bar Asuka had left for their homes. I had completely forgotten about school and that we were the first ones boycotting the place. "Hey Asuka, shouldn't you be getting back as well?" I asked.

"Nah, it can wait a while," she replied. "Actually, want I wanted to have a talk with you."

"A talk? About what?" I said.

"About…you know, what we did last night," Asuka answered.

"Oh…that," I said. "I thought you said to forget about it."

"I said to forget about it for a while. I also said I wanted to talk about it," Asuka pointed out irately.

"Sorry, I was just too caught up in this mess," I replied. "If you want to talk, then go on ahead."

Asuka nodded her head before turning away from me. She slowly paced towards the balcony door before heading outside. She appeared to be in an odd mood and I wanted to know why. I followed her outside, keeping my mouth shut as I did. She moved towards the balcony railing and began looking out toward the city and the mountains in the distance. I stood behind her and off to her right, watching her every movement, seeing if they indicated anything of what was on her mind. However, she stood still and didn't let on at all. The one thing I could tell that she wasn't acting herself.

"You know Shinji," she said slowly. "We've only really known each other for what, two weeks or something right?"

"Yeah," I replied. "It's been about that."

"And in that time, we ended up being good friends," Asuka noted.

"Friends? Well, I guess yeah, we are friends. We hung about with each other a lot, anyway," I added with a smile.

Asuka chuckled quietly before running her right hand through her hair. She then turned to face me and leaned back on the railing. "Something…something in my mind is telling me…and after what happened with us last night…something is telling me that…we should be…more…" Asuka said before stopping suddenly. She looked incredibly nervous. It wasn't like her at all. "We should be more what?" I asked tentatively. I wasn't sure what her response would be but I wanted to know. "We should be…more than…"

The telephone began to ring just as Asuka was about to finish her sentence. However, I wasn't going to answer it until I found out what she had to say. "You should probably answer that," Asuka said.

"No, I want to know what you have to say," I insisted.

"Just…answer the phone, okay? It might be important," Asuka said. I frowned, but went with Asuka on this one. Whatever she had to say, I guess it could wait until later, unlike this impending phone call. I went inside to answer it and it was a familiar voice on the other end. "Hey Shinji! It's me, Misato."

"Oh, hey there. How's it going?"

"The wedding's all planned! I'm so excited!"

"Really? When is it?"

"Two months from now. You'll find out more about it when the invitations go out. Anyway, that isn't the reason I called."

"So what is?"

"Turn on your TV and watch the news."

I held the phone between my cheek and my shoulder before picking up the TV remote. After turning it on, I went to the first major news channel I could think of before dropping the remote out of my hand in absolute astonishment. "See it yet?" Misato asked.

"That's…that's the academy!" I cried. "All the pupils and teachers are walking out!"

"Looks like our plan is working! Anyway, I've got to go. Keep watching that report!" Misato said before hanging up.

I couldn't believe it. Barely half a day after we sent all those e-mails, pupils and teachers were leaving the school in protest and it was enough to gain national media coverage! "Asuka! Come, look at this!" I yelled. She walked in and glanced over at the TV and all of a sudden, her eyes lit up. "What?! Are you telling me it's working already!" she asked, bounding up next to me.

"Yes and it's on national television!" I added. "I can't believe it!"

"Shh! Listen to the report, I want to know what's going on!" Asuka snapped.

"…and as you can see, these are live pictures we are showing of the Tokyo-3 Academy. The latest reports say that all the pupils and staff minus the headmaster, Kozo Fuyutsuki, have walked out in protest. We cross live to our reporter on the scene, Hideko Anno. What do you have for us, Hideko?"

"Well, from what I've heard, the walk out was caused by a series of e-mails sent to all the pupils and members of the faculty by several unknown parties. The sender's e-mail address is blocked out on each e-mail. Now, as to the contents of this e-mail, we have a copy right here. It unveils an apparent scandal of epic proportions on the part of Kozo Fuyutsuki that involves money laundering, bribery, falsification of official documents, fraud and even social manipulation. The credibility of the source of these e-mails is uncertain, but members from NERV, National Education Review and Verification, have expressed a desire for Fuyutsuki to stand down as headmaster and some others going with an even stronger opinion saying that Headmaster Fuyutsuki should be arrested and tried in a court of law."

"So is there any indication of what action may be taken?"

"It is unclear at present but…hold on. It appears that police have appeared on the scene. What's that…? Yes? Really? Well, we have some breaking news for you right now. The police have arrived on the scene and are moving in to arrest Kozo Fuyutsuki. I repeat, the police have arrived at the Tokyo-3 Academy to arrest Kozo Fuyutsuki."

"Well, you heard it first here. Also, we're having more breaking news being wired into the studio as we speak. It appears that the Mayor of Tokyo-3 has been forced to step down due to some of the content of those e-mails. I say again, Mayor…"

Having heard enough, I switched the television off and looked towards Asuka. "We did it Shinji!" she cried before frantically grabbing and wildly hugging me. Sure, she was excited but what did we exactly do? I mean, ousting Fuyutsuki was a good thing but none of it would probably prevent me from having to go to the Tokyo-3 Academy again. So in essence, I had failed my own ambition of never going to that school again. Then again, that hope was misguided and looking at the other side of the coin, maybe things would change and make it a better place to be after this all settled down.

"Hmm? Is anything the matter Shinji?" Asuka asked. She had obviously noticed the disappointed look on my face. I shouldn't have felt that way though because I had been dreaming of an impossibility. I had to finish school and the only way out would be a transfer. I had always yearned to switch schools before but my parents prevented that move. Had the opportunity been given to me a couple of weeks ago, I would have taken it without hesitation. Thinking about it now, I'm quick to hesitate, as if there's something keeping me from leaving. Then, when I looked at Asuka's worried face, I realised what it was. The reason I wasn't so keen on leaving the school is the friends that I've made in the past two weeks, as well as realising the importance of the ones I already had, namely Toji, Kensuke and even Misato and Kaji. And then there was Asuka and Rei and recently Hikari, people that I never really knew before until now. Those people were the reason I didn't want to leave so badly anymore. In a school filled to the brim with snobby and unbearable rich kids, I managed to find a few people I could really relate to and call my friends. And that was enough to put a smile on my face.

"Nothing's the matter," I said. "Anyway, we should meet up with Misato. I'm sure she wants to celebrate!"

"Haha, yeah, she sure would!" Asuka laughed.

"Also, about that thing you wanted to tell me?" I asked.

"Later Shinji, later," Asuka said. "It's not that important anyway."

"Well, okay. I'll call the other guys and we'll head off to Misato's!" I declared with that smile stilled proudly worn on my face.

It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life and I'm feeling good. Well, I had been feeling good until I discovered something last night. We had a party at Misato's to celebrate and this time, there was no underage consumption of alcohol. I didn't particularly enjoy the feeling of not remembering half of what you did the previous night so I think it's for the best. Then there was the bad news. Because Fuyutsuki had been arrested, Misato's suspension had been withdrawn and she was required to go to school the next day. The same went for all of us; we had to go to school as well which was a bummer, but then again not all too unexpected.

So here we were, in Misato's registration class once again. From today, we would be allowed to sit where we wanted as Misato no longer received seating plans issued from the headmaster's office. With that new initiative, Toji, Kensuke, Asuka, Rei, Hikari and I were all situated in and around the same area in the classroom. That suited us a lot better because it made mornings at lot more pleasant and we could chat easily to each other. Some things never change though, as Misato stumbled into class late and with a suspected hangover judging by the look on her face.

Immediately after she sat down, she groaned before calling me. "Shinji?"

"Yes?" I replied.

"The new headmaster wants to see you in his office," Misato said.

"Oh, in trouble already hot shot?" Asuka laughed.

"I wonder who the new headmaster is," Toji noted.

"Well, I'll tell you when I get back," I said. I got out of my seat and made my way jauntily towards the headmaster's office. I knocked on the door once I got there and I got a call of, "Come in." For some reason, the voice sounded familiar.

When I walked inside, I was in for the biggest shock of my life to date. The headmaster was dressed in a black jacket, wearing white gloves and had red-tinted glasses on. He sat with his hands clasped together in front of his mouth with a blank, emotionless stare. "What the…what are you doing here?!" I cried in a horrified tone.

"Maybe I forgot to tell you, Shinji. I was offered the job of headmaster for this school because of my NERV credentials, and I duly took it," my father replied coldly.

"No way…you're the headmaster?!"

"That is correct Shinji. I talked this over with your mother as well."

All the shock that overcame me when I walked in suddenly disappeared. "Oh, okay. Well, catch you around dad," I said.

"See you later," my father said.

After walking out of the office having discovered who the new headmaster was, I wondered what was in store during my continued tenure at the Tokyo-3 Academy. It certainly wouldn't involve money laundering headmasters, anyway. Well, I hoped it wouldn't involve money laundering headmasters.

Author's Note: Well, there ends Part 1, or the first 'saga' of the Tokyo-3 Academy. I'm going to keep writing this and see what happens! I have something in mind already for the next chapter or two, so expect to see updates sometime in the near future!