Lemonade
A/N: Silly little idea I had while brainstorming for Rei Grips.
Disclaimer: Handle your citrus with caution. No actual smut here.
Ritsuko was cleaning up and getting ready to leave for her apartment. It had been a very long day with the angel attack. This angel wasn't taken down by an Eva, but by her own coding skills.
As she logged out of her computer, she noticed something odd. Various applications were opened that she definitely was not using. Thinking not much of it, she clicked each window to close them down, when she noticed something.
The angel harvested info from the MAGI and used her computer as a medium to send the data as far as it could.
"Oh fuck."
Shinji sat on the couch and absentmindedly watched a movie being shown on one of the TV channels. Misato was dealing with paperwork and Asuka was in her room, so the apartment was relatively quiet. Such is life enjoying a weekend as a teenager.
His moment of peace was interrupted by a call on his cell phone. The caller ID told him it was Kensuke so he picked it up "Hey Ken, what's up?"
His bespectacled friend began speaking at a mile a minute "Shinji! Open Twitter! Huge NERV stuff! There's so much!"
Shinji held the phone a bit further from his head "Whoa, whoa, slow down! I don't even have Twitter, what are you talking about?"
Kensuke huffed "Look, just go to Twitter and look up NERV"
Shinji sat at the kitchen table and opened his laptop. Accessing Twitter, he immediately noticed "NERV" and "#NERVleak" were the top 2 trends.
Clicking the hashtag, he began to scroll, and was immediately greeted to a myriad of pictures: The Eva units, the angels, and various shots of the battlefield. There was also video footage of the battles with the the angels."
"Hm, at least I'm not in these..." He mused out loud, but was immediately proven wrong when he began seeing various pictures and videos of himself as well: His NERV-ID including his name, entry plug footage from his battles, even security footage of him in the Eva cage. His face paled "Oh, Jeez."
He was not the only one, seemingly most of NERV had their name and picture leaked, including Misato, Dr. Akagi, the bridge crew, his co-pilots, even Mr. Kaji and his father.
He was broken out of his worrying only for a moment by his roommate "Oy, idiot, what you up to?"
He looked at her "Oh, h-hey Asuka. This is... interesting, someone posted NERV stuff online..."
She nearly pushed him off the chair to look at his computer screen "WHAT!?" She began to frantically scroll through the search results, seeing footage of herself and others. She puffeed her chest "Hmph, as long as they got my good side..." and smirked.
She pulled up a chair and the two continued to quietly scroll through info they already knew. Neither was prepared for the thread that was gaining the most traction:
Nerv staff that are definitely fucking: a thread.
Their eyes widened
The ominous commander's office was usually eerily silent, but today it was in a mild panic.
"Dr. Akagi, how did this information reach the general public?"
The scientist was frantically pacing "Sir, from what I could gather, the angel hacked the MAGI during my attack and used my computer as a medium to leak what it could gather online. Thankfully, the deeper secrets about Project E are heavily redacted, even in the MAGI, and stored elsewhere, so all that got out was surface-level technological specs."
The commander's tone and posture remained stagnant "We need to find a way to quell the spread of this information as soon as possible. That is the priority."
Fuyutski sighed. Days like these made him think of his days as a professor and how he took them for granted.
"I'm home!"
"AAAAAAAAH!"
Misato did not expect to be greeted to Asuka soundling like she was being murdered, so she made haste to the kitchen, where she saw her charges, both mortified in front of Shinji's laptop. Asuka looked like she had just jumped back, and Shinji had his head in his hands.
"Everything alright?"
"NO! EVERYTHING IS NOT ALRIGHT!" Shouted the girl, pointing at the computer. Misato approached it to see the Twiitter thread they were looking at.
Nerv staff that are definitely fucking: a thread.
Letting curiosity get the best of her, she began to scroll.
The first tweet was Maya's photo and Ritsuko's photo. She couldn't help but chuckle, knowing how obvious Maya's crush was. Continuing, she saw Hyuga and Aoba paired with two female techs, but the horror came at the next tweet.
The sexual tension between these two is palpable, the caption read, and it was her photo with Kaji. "Oh god..." She said with a big blush. How the hell did these randoms pair her with her god-damned college boyfriend of all people. Letting out a sigh, she scrolled down to see the source of Asuka's shriek.
This person paired Shinji with her and said Do you SEE the way they fight? He's gotts be hitting that!
Misato chuckled "Oh... sorry Asuka."
"Sorry? SORRY!? I'M 14 FOR GOD'S SAKE! THESE PERVERTS THINK I'M DOING GROSS THINGS WITH THIS IDIOT!?" she roared back.
The last tweet in the thread made Misato grin as she nudged Shinji "Hey, Shin, didn't know you were such a casanova~" she teased.
Looking up at the tweet, it was his photo next to Rei's with the caption Screw it, he's gotta be banging her too. Shinji went all sorts of crimson "Um-uh-I-I-don't-"
Misato laughed "Embrace it, kid. The girls are gonna be all over you."
Asuka gave a cynical laugh "Heh, like they'd know how much of a turnip he is..."
Misato let her curiosity take over as she scrolled to the replies. Most of them were about the pilots, but one stuck out. It was a link to some sort of fan forum with the hashtag #AsuShin. What else to do but click it, right?
As her charges were recovering from embarrassment, Misato grabbed a chair as she started scrolling through this forum.
Shinji eyed the screen "W-what is this? People are... writing about us?"
Asuka was too shocked to scream "Hm, seems that way..." Misato opened a story that was labeled 'AxS, lemon' "Wait, Misato, what the hell are you doing!? What the hell's. a 'lemon'?"
She turned to her with a grin "Just seeing something. Not too sure."
The three read through this forum thread, where the host was fabricating a story about the pilots having a romantic encounter after the battle in the volcano.
Asuka read with wide eyes "As they deepened the kiss, Shinji's hand slowly made it's way towards Asuka's..."
That day, two simultaneous screams unlike any other shook the very foundations of the apartment complex.
Aoba was handling another day at work with relative ease. At times like this, he turned up his punk CD and got through it with relative efficiency, while occasionally stopping to bug Hyuga. When the time came, he noticed Hyuga looking at a forum.
"Hard at work, Hyug?"
His friend turned to him "Apparently there was a leak, and now people are writing about us."
"Huh?"
Hyuga showed him the infamous Twitter thread and the two laughed as they read through it.
Maya eventually looked up from her computer "What the hell are you guys looking at?"
Their laughter continued, so Maya rolled her eyes, stood up and walked over to see what was so funny. When she saw the implication that she was being courted by her superious, she squeaked like a mouse.
"Ju-(wheeze)-just wait! It gets weirder!" Hyuga struggled to get out through laughter as he switched to the forum.
Maya almost pushed him out of the way "They're writing about us!?"
Her eyes were immediately drawn to two stories: One titled 'Cat and Mouse,' whose description implied that Ritsuko ravaged her in her office, which caused her to go red.
However, the three went pale when they saw a story title 'Bridge crew threesome'
15 minutes later, the NERV bridge was filled with laughter and screams.
As Ritsuko was continuing to discuss how to approach the data leak, her cellphone rang
Misato Katsuragi
Incoming call
Shrugging, she picked up "Misato, what is it, I'm kinda in a crisis right now."
Misato was standing on her verdana "Speak for yourself, Rits. We're dealing with one of our own."
The scientist pinched her nose "Misa, the angel leaked a bunch of NERV data, what could be worse than that?"
"We know, we were looking online about it and instead of people discussing our secrets, people are pondering about who's doing it! And they're writing about it!"
Ritsuko momentarily pulled the phone away and looked at it. "What the hell are you talking about?"
Her question was answered by a screaming voice in the background "HASHTAG ASUSHIN? THEY MADE A PAIRING NAME FOR US? GROSS! THEY EVEN MADE ONE FOR YOU AND WONDERGIRL!"
Ritsuko's eyes widened "Who are they writing about?"
"All of us!"
Within half an hour, Misato was in the commander's office, holding Shinji's laptop.
"Look at this!" She exclaimed while turning the computer to him so that he could see the source of panic.
His expression did not change until he clicked the forum page and saw a plethora of stories labelled "Ikari x Akagi, lemon." Upon seeing this, his eyes widened only a fraction.
"Gather everyone in Central Dogma."
Misato, Ritsuko, the bridge crew, all three pilots, the commander, the sub-commander, and even Kaji were gathered in Central Dogma.
Hyuga and Aoba were laughing to each other about the situation at hand.
Maya was sitting near Ritsuko with a furious blush.
Misato was sternly eyeing Kaji, who kept his usual grin.
Asuka was pacing the floor and angrily mumbling in german while Rei stood neutral and Shinji sat against a wall, as he was frantically getting texts from Kensuke and Toji.
'Shinji, you didn't tell me you were getting it with Asuka!'
'Shin-man, I'm proud of you for taming both of em' paired with an emoji wearing sunglasses.
He sighed and shut his phone off for the time.
The commander remained silent as people talked amongst themselves. It was then that he cleared his throat and had all eyes on him, room going silent.
"As you all know, NERV was subject to a data breach. This was due to the angel attack, but everyone in this room has had personal information leaked to some extent."
Ritsuko spoke up "Commander, what do we do? Are we able to censor this? It's all over the place!"
Gendo paused "It is not entirely possible to redact everything from social media, but we can get most classified and technical information removed. The biggest issue appears to be speculation about personal lives of NERV staff. To remedy this, I propose a press conference."
Misato looked up at the commander "A press conference? Who's gonna speak?"
Gendo pondered the question, then spoke "Myself, Sub-commander Fuyutski, Dr. Akagi, Major Katsuragi, and the pilots, as the three seem to be people of interest and you are their direct superior."
That evening, the seven NERV personnel exited Commander Ikari's limousine and made their way to the Tokyo-3 conference centre, where they were ambushed by camera's and voices from every angle.
"Commander Ikari! What do you have to say about the data leak?"
"Dr. Akagi! Are there details about Project E that we do not know about?"
"Master Ikari! Are the rumours about yourself and Miss Sohryu and Miss Ayanami true?"
"Major Katsuragi! Are you free for dinner tonight?"
Eventually, they made their way to a long
table with water bottles and microphones, and they took their seats.
When the press got settled in, Fuyutski grabbed his microphone and stood "Good evening. I am Professor Kozo Fuyutski, sub-commander of NERV. Two days ago, an entity known as an 'angel' attacked our Tokyo-3 headquarters. This angel attacked our MAGI system before being defeated by Dr. Akagi. Unfortunately, in its last moments, the angel used the MAGI to leak classified information online." he sat back down.
Ritsuko nodded to him and stood up. "NERV will be petitioning the Japanese Government and the United Nations to deter the spread of classified information. As soon as it is effective, any classified information posted about NERV or Project E will be a punishable offence, with a fine being the most minimal punishment."
Gendo stood. "Once the measures are in effect, we can and will take measures to ensure that the spread not only stops, but does not happen again. The most severe punishment for such an offence is prolonged time in prison." They sat down.
Misato stood "There has also been a lot of attention on the personal lives of various NERV personnel may also be taken seriously and treated as libel if necessary. At this time, we will be taking questions."
The room exploded with noise as hands went up everywhere.
"You in the red sweater."
"Thank you, I'm from Tokyo times, and I would like to ask Master Ikari about the rumours about himself and Miss Sohryu. Are you romantically involved?"
Shinji's face met both hands, but Asuka beat him to the punch for answering "No, there is NO ROMANTIC INVOLVEMENT BETWEEN MYSELF AND THE ID- PILOT IKARI. There is no romantic involvement between himself and Pilot Ayanami, and there is no romantic involvement between myself and Pilot Ayanami. Have I made myself clear?"
The reporter did not answer.
"AM I!?"
"Y-yes ma'am!"
Misato nodded to Asuka "If you have any further questions regarding romantic involvement, redirect them else."
The press conference continued for another half-hour as people asked various questions about the angel attacks and NERV's security, so the members of the Katsuragi household were glad to be back at the apartment.
"God, what a day..." Lamented Asuka.
"Yeah..." replied Shinji, who all but collapsed onto a beanbag chair.
Later that night, the two teens were doing their own things as Misato sat at the kitchen table, beer at her side. She had put Shinji's laptop there upon getting home, and opened it absentmindedly. Closing the forum window, she was back on twitter. She clicked the homepage and noticed the trending topics had updated.
1. #mommymisato
A mouthful of beer ended up on the wall.