Author's Note: Due to FFnet's restrictions on the usage of certain characters, the mathematical symbol for "equals" will be represented by "is".

11b: Hikari Horaki

When night came the Horakis turned their porch light on.

In the family room of the house two girls sat next to each other on a sofa. A bowl of popcorn rested between them. An old black and white movie played on the TV.

Hikari sighed into her drink, a diet cola on ice. "I just don't understand him."

"That's because he's a boy," declared Kodama. She paused to fish a bit of popcorn shell from her teeth. "Boys are stupid like that."

"No, I mean I just don't understand him. He's always so... so distant. Like he doesn't care what's happening around him."

"So he's cold. Dad says Shinji's father has the same reputation at work, just more dastardly."

"No. It's not that." Hikari munched on some popcorn. Once she finished chewing she swallowed before speaking again. "It's like he's, I dunno, afraid. I think. Maybe."

"That's some stunning observational analysis, sis."

"Shut up, Kodama."

The older sister snickered. "Touched a nerve, did I?"

"No."

Kodama Horaki stretched out, uncurling her folded legs from her warm spot on the couch. "I think it's so cute. My widdle sis has a widdle cwush."

Hikari blushed. "I do not!"

The older girl swooned melodramatically. "I'm Hikari and I have an unrequited luuuuvvv for the sensitive war hero. If only he could look past his stoic duty and see my womanly pig-tails. Oh! I feel faint!"

A pillow to her sister's face was the younger Horaki's response. Kodama retaliated by dumping the half-empty popcorn bowl on Hikari's head. "Ack!" screamed the Class Rep. "You're getting food EVERWHERE!"

"Oh hush. I'll clean it up later."

Hikari wrung her hands. "But… but we'll get bugs!"

Kodama paused the VCR. "…fine. I'll do it now, okay?" She got down off the couch, picked up the fallen bowl, then began collecting the scattered popcorn and odd errant kernel. "OCD much?"

Hikari kneeled down and helped. "I just like a clean home."

"Sometimes it's fun to get dirty."

Hikari didn't roll her eyes at her sister's lecherous remark. She was use to them. Soon the two Horaki girls cleaned the couch and surrounding floor space of snack food. Movie forgotten, they ventured into the kitchen to resupply themselves for the rest of the night.

"You should ask him out!" yelled Kodama over the fridge's noisy ice machine.

Hikari was horrified. "I can't do that!"

"Why not?" Kodama set their glasses down on the countertop. She looked to her left and flashed her younger sister a sly smile. Hikari avoided her by busying herself with refilling their drinks with the sweaty pitcher cradled in her hands. "Is it because he's the boy and you're the girl?"

"It wouldn't be proper." Hikari walked around Kodama, studiously avoiding eye contact. "He'd be embarrassed."

"So?"

"So?!"

"This is about you, not him. Don't ever put a man ahead of your own wants, sis. They'll just walk all over you then and you'll never be happy."

The microwave dinged. Hikari removed the popcorn bag. "That's pretty selfish."

"Maybe, but that doesn't make it any less true."

Hikari tore open the bag. Hot steam smelling of butter piped out the top. "I don't even know if I like him. He's a friend, I think. And… and what if he said no? I don't want him to avoid me if I, er, y'know."

"Then you tell a little joke so neither of feels awkward and you'll never talk about it again. It's not that hard."

"Maybe not for you."

"Sis, you're never going to get laid with that attitude."

Hikari, holding the fresh bowl of popcorn in one hand, picked up her drink with her other. "Just don't dump this bowl over my head, okay?"

The next day at lunch Hikari found Shinji Ikari in an odd mood.

"Hello, Shinji," she said, offering him a stack of printouts. "Here's everything for yesterday."

He stared at her, then at the papers. "Right," he said, taking the offering.

"And here's your lunch. I know you like seaweed so-"

"Thanks." He nibbled on his bottom lip. "Hikari?"

The pig-tailed girl settled down in a desk opposite him. She laid out her own lunch spread. "Yes?"

"Can I ask you something… personal?"

Her heart fluttered. See, Kodama? He came through. "Sure! Anything!"

"Do you look like your mother?"

"…huh?"

"Nothing," he said quickly, standing up. "Forget about it. Thanks for the lunch but, uh, I'm not feeling hungry."

The Eva pilot hurried out of the classroom. His unopened bento box sat forgotten on his desk.

Later, after dismissal, Hikari found herself attending to her cleaning duties as a Class Rep; erasers needed clapping, floors sweeping, and trash burning. After that was taken care of, Hikari didn't go straight home as usual, nor did she join the other Class Reps for a study session or trip to the local Starbucks. Instead, she bummed around the school building, wandering the halls of memory as she considered the peculiar situation she was in.

It wasn't that lacked interest in Shinji, just that Hikari Horaki wasn't her sister. She liked order, tradition. She herself recognized that it was a trait others found strange in a fourteen year old. Teenagers were supposed to be rebellious. Hikari was painfully aware that she was not.

Why can't he say something, she thought to herself, and make things right? Is he totally clueless?

So wrapped up in thoughts was Hikari that she didn't realize someone was talking to her until the other person put a hand on her shoulder.

"GAH!" yelped Hikari, spinning around.

"Whoa," said the stranger, "no need to freak out on me. Jeez. I was just asking a question."

"I'm sorry," apologized Hikari, "but you startled me. I was… thinking about things."

The stranger, a redhead European or American girl Hikari's age, nodded. "Yeah," she said evenly, "I get that." She paused. "Asuka," she said, offering a free hand. "Asuka Langley Soryu. Charmed, huh?"

She studied the strange girl. Her posture was completely open. She stood straight up. Her voice only had one volume level and it was loud. This girl was the person Kodama, in all her rebelliousness, was always trying to be against her better nature.

"Very," said Hikari, taking the hand. Asuka's grip was firm. "I'm Hikari Horaki, the Class Representative for 2-A."

"What, that's like Class President or something?"

"Sort of." She glanced over the redhead's shoulder. "What were you doing wandering around at this time of day?"

"I came to sign all this paperwork or some crap so I could start tomorrow, only once I was finished my ride never came – the bitch – and I got bored. So I went and threw some hoops. I like to keep busy."

Hikari guessed that already. Standing near her was like getting an adrenalin contact high. Not that Hikari Horaki was the sort to know what a contact high was. "So you're the new Eva pilot."

Asuka looked surprised at that comment. Hikari was surprised herself. Shouldn't she have softened such a statement by phrasing it in the form of a question? Kodama is finally getting to me after all. "I was given your contact information since you're transferring here. Since you're living with Captain Katsuragi it only seemed logical." Then, so as not to seem arrogant, she added, "Also, Shinji and Ayanami mentioned you."

"Ah." She paused, searching momentarily for something to say. Then she asked, "So, 'Shinji', huh? You know the Third Child."

"We're friends."

"Really? He hasn't mentioned you before."

"He hasn't?"

Asuka shook her head. "No. Sorry."

"Oh."

"So," said Asuka, "care to show me around the place?"

"Yes, of course!" Hikari shifted back into 'Class Rep' mode. "Well, right now we're standing in the…."

Hikari covered the simmering pot with a heavy lid, then set the whole thing on the back-left burner to keep. "A new girl transferred into my class today," she told Kodama, who had fortified herself at the kitchen table behind an array of textbooks and technical manuals. Nozomi, blissfully, was occupied by a shojo anime blasting on the family room's TV. "She's another Eva pilot."

Kodama looked up from the graphing calculator in her hands. "What, the big red one that Dad was talking about?"

"I guess. She didn't say."

"Huh." Kodama turned most of her attention back to studying. "What's she like?"

Hikari tapped her wooden spoon twice on the rim of the sauce pan, flicking off the bits sticking to it. "She reminds me of you."

"God, I'm sorry. First me at home and now this girl at school? I can't imagine putting up with a me twenty-four seven."

"She's European," continued Hikari. "German. Red hair. Pretty."

"Hmm." Kodama absentmindedly tossed one textbook aside and scrounged around in the pile of books on the table for another one. After a moment she pulled out a thin blue book. "The boys will be beating each other up with clubs to get to her."

"More than likely." Hikari sprinkled some salt into the brewing sauce. "Suzahara and Aida will be selling pictures of her by lunchtime tomorrow."

Kodama arched an eyebrow. "You have creepy taste in friends."

"They're not my friends. I'm just–"

"–responsible for them. Yeah, yeah. Hurrah for the Class Rep." Kodama closed her calculator with a clacking of the plastic casing. "So did you ask Shinji out yet?"

Hikari tended to her stove.

"You didn't."

Hikari picked up the sauce pan and poured its contents over a waiting platter of grilled fish.

"Damn it, Hikari."

"Watch your language in my kitchen."

Kodama sighed. "Yes, mother."

That night her father, in an unusual move, stopped by her bedroom.

"Sweetheart?"

"Come in, Daddy."

The door slid open. Her father, dressed in his pale beige NERV uniform, stood in the entranceway. Once again he had missed dinner and arrived home only as his three daughters were settling in for the night.

"How was your day?" he asked.

"Normal. And your's?"

"Same ol', same ol'." He glanced over his shoulder, back down the dark hallway. Then he stepped inside and slid the door shut behind him. "I have a favor to ask," he said quietly.

Fiddlesticks. "What is it, Daddy?"

"Did a new girl transfer into your class today?"

Hikari shook her head. "Just for paperwork and a tour; she starts tomorrow."

"Ah." He paused. "Hikari, keep an eye on her."

"…okay?"

"I've heard some… things about the Second Child." It took Hikari a second to place that designation. She had heard Shinji referred to as the 'Third' by Ayanami and Asuka but she herself was used to thinking of the pilots by their proper names. Asuka must be the Second Child. Good to know. "I can't tell you much. The less you know the better. Just… keep an eye on her for any abnormal behavior."

"Abnormal behavior?"

Her father nodded. "Yes."

"…"

"Can you do that for me?"

"I… don't know."

Her father frowned.

"I just met her," Hikari explained, "and she's a foreigner. I don't know how she'd normally act."

Her father relaxed. "Okay. I understand. But watch out for her."

"I'll try."

That satisfied her father. "Goodnight, sweetheart."

It took Hikari some time to fall asleep that night.

The redheaded gaijin scrawled her name in large, elegant cursive on the blackboard. Then, in one smooth move, she tossed the chalk to the side, spun around in a flourish of crimson hair, and flashed a brilliant smile.

"I'm Asuka! Asuka Langley Soryu!"

The telltale hushed chatter of gossip washed over the classroom. Hikari let it go for a few seconds. It went against official protocol to let students talk so openly during class time but Hikari found that if everyone had a chance to say something, if just a few words, they were less likely to be disruptive after the hammer came down.

3… 2… 1…

Hikari stood. "Quiet!"

And it was so.

The Class Rep glanced over at the redhead. The amused smirk and arched eyebrow on the gaijin's face almost made Hikari do a double-take. Before Hikari said anything Asuka strode forward and sat down in the seat furthest back in the classroom. The heads of all the boys and most of the girls followed her as she walked past them.

Showoff, thought Hikari, not entirely disapproving. Just like Kodama.

"Pictures? I don't know what you mean, Class Rep."

"Don't play dumb with me, Kensuke Aida!" Hikari glared at the freckled boy. When she had spotted him walking the halls with a strange black bag slung over his shoulder she had followed him up to the roof. There she had cornered him against the chain-link fence. "I know that camera bag! You're trying to sneak photos of the new girl!"

"D-don't be silly! I wo-"

"'Silly'?" Kensuke Aida winced. Hikari, knowing no one was watching, savored the moment; then she got down to business. "The dignity of a girl is anything but silly, Mister Aida. If you think you can mock that dignity with your dirty photo scam then you have another thing coming."

"I'msorry!I'msorry!"

"Open the bag."

"…"

"Open the bag or you'll be working clean up duty for the rest of the year."

Kensuke sighed, then opened the bag. There was a host of camera goodies inside, several designed for long-range image captures, just as Hikari suspected.

Hikari put on her best 'disappointed mother' look, the special one she usually reserved for Kodama when her older sister crossed the line twice.

"I can explain!" blurted Kensuke. "It's all innocent! I'm innocent!"

"Tell it to the mop and bucket." Hikari spun around and walked for the roof access. "If I see so much as a single glamour shot of her or any other girl for sale this year you'll be scrubbing floors until THE END OF THE WORLD!!"

(That threat, incidentally, wouldn't have been such an empty one if either Kensuke or Hikari had any inkling of what was going to happen in the coming months. Alas, they didn't, and so we move on with our story.)

Kensuke Aida muttered, "Great. Now she'll kill me."

Hikari smirked.

Like they had done occasionally for the past few weeks, Hikari walked part of the way home with Shinji and Ayanami. Today all three had been on cleaning duty so they'd been able to leave at the same time. Usually Hikari's Class Representative duties kept her after school too long to met up with the two Eva pilots. Asuka had left earlier, stating that she had business at NERV.

Conversation with Shinji was a no-go, however. The boy was stuck in the same funk he had been in for the last few days. Surprisingly, the walk wasn't silent because of his mood.

"Miss Horaki," softly spoke the pale girl, "what is it like to leave one's home?"

Hikari blinked, caught off-guard by the fact Rei had been the one to initiate the conversation. "What do you mean, Ayanami?"

"Your family moved to Tokyo-3 in 2008, correct?"

"How on Earth did you know that?"

"It was in your father's NERV employee file," calmly replied Rei.

"What?"

"It was in your fa-"

"I know that! What I'm asking is how you were able to read it!"

"I, like Shinji, have security clearance at NERV."

"Oh." That makes sense. Creepy, but it makes sense. "Yes. Before that my family lived in New Kyoto."

And then, Hikari remembered, Mother died and Father was hired by NERV.

Rei's crimson eyes met Hikari's dusky blues. "What did you experience emotionally after moving to this city?"

"…"

Rei stared at her. Hikari, not wanting to waste this rare opportunity to connect with a girl who always seemed lonely, drew her strength up and explained:

"Well, I… I was lonely at first." There was no one to be my mother anymore except me.

"I found ways to keep busy." I smashed my piggy bank so I could buy a small step-ladder so I'd be able to reach the stove. Father never asked me where or how I got it when he walked in that night.

"We moved between school terms so there wasn't any good chance to meet other kids." Father had to work so much we just stayed home for weeks. He said it was dangerous to go out with all the construction going on, even with him watching them.

"But then school started and I made friends."

The teacher looked over the handful of seated students. "I need a volunteer to help me o-" and before he finished speaking her hand shot up, much to the disgust of the kids around her.

"Suck up," muttered a freckled boy.

Rei nodded. "I see."

"Did that answer your question?"

"No." The pale girl looked straight ahead. "My question was in error. F-forgive me."

Hikari normally would have let matters go at that but there was a hitch in Ayanami's voice as she spoke those last words. "Are you alright, Ayanami?"

"I am well," stiffly replied the pale girl.

Nothing more was said by anyone on the rest of the walk home.

Kodama had a date that night so it fell to Hikari to oversee Nozomi. The youngest Horaki was having problems with her math homework and Hikari was trying her best to bring Nozomi up to snuff on the standards set in the Horaki Household.

"So the 'x' is the variable here," explained Hikari, tapping a trim nail on the notepad. "Everything you need to figure out 'x' is inside the equation."

Nozomi nibble on her eraser. "So… it's like a riddle?"

She nodded. "Now what is 'x' here?"

(4 + x is 9)

"That's easy," said Nozomi, despite making chicken scratch on her work paper to do the math. Unlike their Father, Kodama and, to a lesser extent, Hikari, little Nozomi was appallingly bad at math. This sometimes led to friction when Kodama grew frustrated with her little sister's valiant but useless efforts. Just yesterday Kodama had snapped and accused Nozomi of being an embarrassment to the women of science. Hikari had pointedly excused her elder sister for the next few study session. "It's five."

"That's right." Hikari wrote out another equation. "How about here?"

(4 + y is 9)

"It's… five?"

Hikari nodded. "Why?"

"Because… uh…"

"Come on."

"Because it's the same math thing, just with a different letter?"

"Right! Even if you change the symbol of the variable it's still the same variable in the same equation. A change in appearance means nothing." Hikari wrote out a new equation. "See?"

(y + 4 is 9)

Nozomi rolled her eyes. "It's five, Hikari."

"Exactly. See? You're catching on. Even if you change the order of things the end result will be the same!"

The younger girl smiled dubiously at Hikari's appraisal. "Okay?"

"Now try this one…"

(y + 2 is 9 + x)

(x is 8)

"Wait, if I know this one," she indicated the x with a slim finger, "they why even have it?"

"Because," explained Hikari, "sometimes even if it's a variable you can still know what it is."

"But if you know what it is then how is it a variable? Don't they, uh, vary?" The youngest Horaki paused to mentally review her last statement. When she was satisfied with its correctness she repeated more definitively, "Don't they vary?"

Hikari smiled. "I know, but you still need to consider them variables because they could change. See, what if I went back to the beginning and changed one thing? Here…."

(x is 18)

Nozomi sighed. "Math isn't for me."

Hikari turned over the page. Fresh white paper spread out before the two girls. "Let's take it one more time from the top and then get to work on dinner."

"Can I help slice the veggies?"

"Vegetables," corrected Hikari. "And yes, you can, if you can solve this one…."

The next day at lunch Hikari Hokari spotted something unsettling outside the classroom 2-A windows. Up across the 'L' building junction someone was leaning against the roof's chain link fence. Hikari recognized the 'someone' as Shinji Ikari. She didn't need to guess at the owner of the mop of light blue hair standing next to him. The two pilots were talking and from what Hikari could read of their body language it was an intense conversation.

Maybe even… passionate?

"Christ," said Asuka, jolting Hikari out of her trance with a sudden appearance at her side, "you look like someone just killed your dog. What's up?"

"N-nothing." Hikari turned away from the window. God, I look like a stalker.

Asuka glanced up, out the window and spotted her fellow pilots. She paused for several LONG seconds before saying, "Please tell me you're a lesbian."

Hikari, used to receiving similar attitude from her elder sister, merely smiled at the pretty gaijin girl.

The redhead cringed. "Ugh. Mein Gott, you have terrible tas–"

"He's sensitive!" snapped Hikari. "And cute!"

The pig-tailed girl immediately clamped her hands over her mouth. A quick glance around the half-empty classroom showed that either no one had heard or that they were savvy enough not to show that they had (would this be blackmail material, she wondered).

Asuka rolled her eyes. Still, she took a half step closer (which Hikari knew was unusual – the gaijin girl liked her personal space) and said in a quieter voice, "So when are you going to ask him out?"

"I… I don't…."

"Because he's not going to ask you out," explained Asuka. She reached out and touched Hikari's arm. The Class Rep managed not to jerk away. "It's nothing personal. I mean, I don't know if he likes you or not. He won't tell me–"

"You asked him?!"

"–but," she continued, ignoring Hikari's freakout, "even if he does he'll never ask you out."

"Huh? Why wo–"

"Hikari, he's a wimp."

"He's not," she replied. "Anyone who gets into one of those Evas can't be."

"…True," conceded Asuka, frowning just a bit as if upset at the thought of giving ground. "But, Hikari, there's a world of difference between getting into an Eva to kill Angels and being able to ask a cute girl out. Even a coward can save the world if he doesn't want to die."

"…"

"So ask him out. Lord knows why you want to, but, hey, who am I to judge? Aside from apparently being the last sane woman in the room, that is." Asuka twirled around. Hikari felt an odd stab of jealousy at the girl's red hair. "And Hikari?"

"Yes?"

Without looking over her shoulder Asuka said, "Trust me when I say that there's absolutely nothing to worry about with Shinji the Hero and Ayanami's relationship."

"Why?" blurted Hikari.

That got Asuka to look back. "Huh?"

"W-w-why should I trust you? About them?"

"Because," said Asuka, "Shinji hates Rei."

"BLUUURPGCH!"

Hikari bundled her sister Kodama's long black hair in one hand. She made sure to keep the mane high and dry, away from the heaving girl slumming on the bathroom's tiled floor. With her free hand Hikari tenderly rubbed her elder sister's back. The whole series of movements on Hikari's part were fluid; there were no hitches. Hikari had had a lot of practice with this particular maneuver; Kodama Horaki did so love to party.

Kodama Horaki's series of movement were less graceful, though more fluid.

"huuuuurrGUHH!"

Hikari wrinkled her nose at the sour smell that wafted up from the toilet bowl. "Cosmopolitans again? You know what vodka does to your stomach!"

"Y-yes… pfttt… mother," sniped Kodama, pausing to spit some lingering bile into the bowl. The older girl brought a hand up and wiped her red, tearing eyes. "Men are such bastards."

"Hmmm," she coooed softly.

"Men are bastards but med students are the worst. They're dogs, Hikari. I can't… I can't be… believe… be-ughBLARRRRGH!"

A good quarter hour passed by as Kodama Horaki alternatively damned the whole male gender or worshipped before the porcelain goddess. Afterwards Hikari cleaned up her sister and helped her into bed.

"Just rest, okay?" Hikari drew the blinds to shield against the harsh light that would otherwise flood the room the next morning. "Dad's working late so you've escape justice once again."

"Ugggghh." Kodama threw an arm over her eyes. "Men suck."

Hikari set a pot down next to Kodama's bed. "So you tell me."

"Men suck, suck, suck."

"Hmmm." Hikari bent over to tuck her sister in.

Kodama threw her arm off, rolled her head to the side, and stared into Hikari's eyes. "You didn't ask that boy out, did you?"

"Aren't you supposed to be drunk?"

"Hikari, I am not drunk. I am smashed." She grinned. Her eyes were out of focus. "But enough about me. I wanna get my little sister laid. Gotta pop that cherry."

Hikari blushed. "You're drunk."

"Do you ever use that birthday present I got you?"

Hikari blushed harder at the thought of the 'present', still in its original packaging, stuffed in the back of the third drawer on her dresser. "N-no!"

"Well if you're not using the batteries I need new ones."

Having had enough, the middle Horaki girl stood up and made a beeline for the door. "Goodnight, Kodama."

"Gotta get yee forth and multiplying."

Hikari closed the door. "Goodnight," she whispered.

"BE FRUITFUL!" raved Kodama, shouting to make herself heard out in the darkened hallway. "Spank his bony ass!"

Sometimes life hinges on big things, like unworthy bastards being thrown back in time by ill-defined forces in order to change history. Sometimes a person's life pivots on smaller act, like pausing in the middle of your own maddeningly busy day to help that cute chick from Accounting collect all those papers she just dropped only to make conversation and find out that, hey, she digs John Coltrane too!

And then, once in a great while, shit just occurs to people.

Hikari Horaki was walking to school in the early morning when it happened to her:

The sky overhead was bright and blue.

The cicadas sang their song somewhere off-screen.

A compact truck with a dent in the center-right of its front bumper piped past.

I like Shinji, she decided in a moment of clarity. So I'm going to ask him out.

This declaration startled Hikari. She stopped dead in her tracks and reevaluated what she had just thought. When she found nothing to upset her line of reasoning (which in itself was a tad shocking) the Class Rep carried on with her walk.

Later, after she had attended to her morning pre-school duties, Hikari spotted Shinji Ikari coming through the gates at the front of the school alongside his fellow pilots. Ducking out of the classroom, the Class Rep quickly (but not too quickly, one had to be mindful of appearances) made her way down to schoolyard. She arrived just as the threesome was making its way through the front door.

"Good morning!"

"H-Hikari," sputtered Shinji, headphones from his SDAT player fixed firmly in his ears.

Asuka fumed, "Aren't you supposed to say something, Third Child?"

"Huh?"

The redhead snorted and turned to Hikari. "Shinji says 'good morning' too."

"Sorry," said Shinji.

Rei Ayanami studied the whole exchange with uncharacteristic curiosity. She tilted her head to address the girl at her left. "Soryu, is this one of the rituals we discussed?"

"Shhhhh!" shushed Asuka. The gaijin girl grabbed hold of Ayanami's nearest hand and dragged her inside. "God!" rang the girl's fading voice, "I can't believe I…"

Hikari suddenly found herself alone with Shinji.

Very alone.

"Shinji…"

The Third Child stared at her, his expression informing her that he didn't quite understand what was going on. At least he pocketed his SDAT, Hikari reassured herself.

Over Shinji's shoulder she spotted more stragglers coming through the school gates. "Shinji," she said, "let's go someplace quieter."

As Asuka had with Rei, Hikari dragged Shinji away. Heart racing, Hikari brought the Eva pilot to the side of the school. The refuge wasn't entirely private. There were a few bushes and trees dotting the place to provide ambiance but there were other students milling about. One or two were sneaking smokes. Hikari made a mental note of their names so to write them up later.

"Um," said Shinji, dropping his book bag to the ground but keeping a death grip on the shoulder strap in his right hand, "I think class is supposed to start soon. Shouldn't we b-"

"Wouldyouliketogooutsometime?"

Shinji blinked. "Huh?"

Hikari blushed.

"I'm s-sorry. Could you repeat that?"

Hikari took a breath, held it, then released it. "Shinji," she said, pulse pounding, "would you like to go out with me on a d-"

His cell phone rang. Shinji's eyes darted down towards his backpack. Quicker than she liked he dropped down and fished the cell out from the cluttered bag. "Angel attack." He looked up at her. "I… I have to go. They'll be waiting."

"Yeah," she said weakly.

Shinji stood up and slung his backpack over one shoulder. "I'll see you tomorrow? Hopefully."

She smiled weakly. "Well, unless I turn invisible or something!"

Oh God. That's the BEST I can come up with?!

They both chuckled politely at the lame joke.

Shinji left without another word. When he was out of sight Hikari brought her hands up and hid her face in them. "Stupid! Stupid!" She sniffled. "God, I can't believe I embarrassed myself like that."

"Don't beat yourself up, Class Rep."

Hikari whipped around, unmindful of her tearing eyes. "Suzahara?"

Touji Suzahara and his shadow, Kensuke Aida, were approaching her. Turning away from them, she furtively dried her eyes. She snapped, "Don't sneak up a girl like that!"

"Yeah. Sorry about 'dat." The tall boy shuffled his feet. "Look, its okay. He's nothin' special, Class Rep."

"Touji's right," chirped Kensuke. "There plenty more fish in the sea."

"What?" Hikari glanced over her shoulder and glared at the two teens. "Like you, Aida? Or you?"

Suzahara brought his hands up defensively, warding off her attacks. "Whoa, chill! That's not what we were takin' about, Class Rep. We was just trying to be helpful, that's all. No need to bite our heads off."

"No. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have yelled. I was just d… wait, what were you two doing here anyways? I left you upstairs."

"Uhhh," said Aida, clutching something behind his back.

"Well," said Touji, "you see, we were go-"

"Is that a video camera?"

"No," lied Aida, fumbling with what he was holding behind his back. "Not at all."

"Y…you were trying to videotape us… me! Me and Shinji!" Hikari scowled at her slip. There is no 'us'.

Touji Suzahara sighed. "Okay. Yeah. We were. But see, it was h-"

"Assholes!" snapped Hikari. "The both of you!"

The jaws of the two boys dropped at the obscenity taking flight from the Class Rep's lips. "I'm going to the nurse's station," said Hikari, striding past the duo. "I'd hurry to class. Maybe Sensei will only force you to carry one bucket if you sprint."

Satisfied and yet not, Hikari walked away.

"Turn invisible?" she mumbled under her breath. "God, I wish I could."

# # # To Be Continued

Author's Notes: The Shinji portion of this piece got split off onto its own. It'll follow Asuka's and Rei's. All the "chunks", or these short chapters, prior to Gendo's will overlap with one another and end with the arrival of the 7th Angel. We'll find out just how things went in Gendo's chunk.

NEXT UP: Asuka Langley Soryu