"Just mere hours ago, Unit-02 engaged the Angel, and as a result of a direct strike, the Angel proceeded to split into two separate entities, from this point forward labelled "Alpha" and "Beta". After this, Alpha engaged in combat with Unit-01, dispatching it 2 kilometers from Suruga Bay. At the same time, Beta engaged in combat with Unit-02, similarly dispatching it near the coastal area."

The darkened tactics room projected a slideshow on-screen of the two Evangelion units, buried upside down in the earth, the legs of each pointing towards the sky. An embarrassing sight, to be sure. Shinji and Asuka had been recovered, their minor injuries tended to, and they both sat, angrily, in the seats that filled half the room. Myself, Kaji, a couple of NERV technicians, and Gendo's right-hand man Fuyutsuki, were all sitting with them, as Maya, another technician, read out the transcript of events that had unfolded this morning. Fuyutsuki was temporarily taking over for Gendo, as he was out of town on other business. Suffice to say, he wasn't pleased with any of this.

Asuka stood up, interrupting Maya's reading, and pointed at Shinji with a threatening finger. "It's all thanks to you that this happened! You ruined my debut fight in Tokyo-3, jerk!" Shinji leapt up at this accusation.

"All thanks to me!? Last I checked, you're the one that jumped in without thinking, like an idiot!"

"An IDIOT!? It'll be a cold day in hell before I let a wimp like you call ME an idiot!" When she took a step towards him, Fuyutsuki's voice boomed over us.

"SILENCE!"

The two sat down in a huff. Kaji leaned over to me. "Charming, aren't they?" He whispered softly. I chuckled. He was right, they are, but I'd be lying if I wasn't becoming annoyed at their incessant squabbling.

Maya cleared her throat, continuing with the transcript. "Um, at 11:03am, NERV gave command of the situation to the UN's second forces, forfeiting the combat flow to their discretion until further notice."

Now that? That hurt. NERV may've gained popularity in the public eye recently for the Angel fights of the past few months, but a butchering of the situation like this? We were all embarrassed. The entirety of Tokyo-3 was risked for no reason. That was unacceptable. Taking a look at Asuka beside me, it was obvious she felt the same way. A very familiar feeling for her as well, coming right off the back of her supplementary classes.

The transcript reading continued still. "At 11:05am, the UN's second forces deployed N2 mines, which succeeded in reducing the Angel's physical make-up by 28%. The Angel seems to be rebuilding itself, albeit slowly. According to our data, this gives us about a week of preparation before it reactivates."

On-screen, the slide switched to showing the Angel's mass, a shell of its former self, bubbling just above the ocean surface. They were fairly similar to the first Angel I had seen, visually. Lanky and grotesque, with bone-like armor. Such strange creatures. Asuka studied the screen.

"I dunno, they look pretty dead to me."

Fuyutsuki stood up and slapped his hands on the desk in front of him, calling us all to attention. "We have been humiliated! Because of the N2 mines, we have to redraw the coastline on the maps again, and if that wasn't enough, the Angel isn't even taken care of! We'll only get one more shot at this, we can't afford any more mistakes!" Kaji leaned back over his seat to face the older man.

"Well, look at it this way. We have a whole week, right? That's pretty lucky!"

I turned around as well. "As long as we prepare sufficiently, we should be able to do this. We won't be going in blind again."

Fuyutsuki sighed, pinching his glabella. When he looked up again, he stared directly at the two pilots.

"Remind me again, as I think you've forgotten: what are your jobs?"

There was stillness for a moment, before Asuka spoke up.

"To pilot the Ev-"

"Wrong! Your job is to defeat the Angels! Not to show off, not to make a spectacle, not to be super heroes, not to just "pilot the Evangelion"! NERV exists solely to defeat them! Anything else beyond that is dishonoring the people who died to give us these opportunities! Please, do not ever give me reason to believe you've forgotten your places again, and that goes doubly so for Director Ikari."

I had no idea he could get that angry. I always thought he was a nice old guy, the kind of man you see playing shogi in the park on a sunday, but he sure tore into the two of them without remorse, not that I thought anything he said was wrong. After making sure his words had sunk in, Fuyutsuki left, and the lights turned on.

Kaji scratched the back of his neck as the two young pilots just sat in the room's now awkward silence. I cleared my throat to break it.

"Well, from what the Angel's information is telling us so far, all the two of you need to do is cooperate and-"

The two pilots shot up and spun towards me, speaking in sync. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN, COOPERATE!?" They then gave each other angry glares and turned away with their arms folded. I shrank into my seat a bit. What a pain. Kaji seemed to be having fun at least.

The technicians in the room were all packing their things and beginning to leave, now that the meeting was over. Kaji smiled and stood up, stretching his arms. "I guess the work is certainly cut out for you this week. I'd sure hate to be in your position right now, Matsuo."

"My position? Compared to what Misato has to deal with, my troubles are non-existent."

"Too true. Nice to see you came around to calling her by first name, as well. She's been calling you a stick in the mud behind your back, you know."

"I wish she'd stop treating it like a big deal, or I'll go back to calling her Commander again..."

Not quite understanding, Shinji's face screwed up. "Speaking of, where is Misato, anyway." Kaji chuckled wryly and began walking towards the door himself.

"She has… quite a lot of business to attend to, thanks to this morning's impressive events. Toodles!" He left, leaving me alone with the two pilots.

The tension that began growing in the air was palpable.

Asuka brushed past me out to the hall. "It really is a shame, you know? Poor, stupid Shinji, messing up a perfectly good plan of attack, and will now be forced to watch as the dashing Asuka Langley Soryu picks up the broken pieces of his incompetant work, forming them into a spectacular victory for mankind!" She pranced gleefully down the hallway, towards the underground lot.

I looked at Shinji, his glare tearing holes through her back. "Remember when you told me to just focus on cover fire? To not get in your way? What happened to the "dashing" Asuka when she messed up that much of an opening?"

"Shinji, Shinji, Shinji, really showing your stellar brainpower, getting caught up on insignificant matters. The bottom line is that YOU chose to stay back and watch, as the Angel did a surprise attack on me! Not only are you a loser, but you're a coward too!"

I quickly sat inside my car, leaving the two of them continuing to argue with each other in the lot. Back and forth, back and forth. Eventually they got in the car, both very obviously annoyed with each other, but whatever they had been arguing about seemed settled… for now. I wondered how I was going to make it through the next week, heck, how any of us would. Since I was looking after Asuka, it was half up to me to make sure she and Shinji were ready when the time came. Misato had emailed me earlier, telling me she had a plan, and I was just supposed to take both of them back to her apartment and ready myself to be staying there for the next week. I wondered what kind of plan she had in mind.

It was going to take a lot to get them to cooperate…

When we stopped into my apartment to pick up some clothing for the week, Asuka went to grab a shower before coming up, so I let her go on as I took Shinji up to Misato's place. Before he put the key in the lock, he inspected the dent Asuka's kick had made in the door earlier that morning.

"...so that's what that noise was…" He scratched the back of his head. "Misato's not going to be happy about that one. Where does Asuka get off anyway?" Unlocking the door, the two of us stepped into the long entryway of the apartment. I slipped off my shoes.

"To be fair to her, we were in a hurry."

"Well, I did hear you call out, and knock at the door, but it just didn't register at first what was going on." We walked into the kitchen. The sight of the empty beer can stacks in the corner gave me a chill up my spine. Misato really was a monster, huh.

"Then you heard her kick the door and…"

"It startled me awake, yeah."

I laid my work bag on the countertop. I was given the rest of the day off to help Misato prep her plan, one I still had no clue about the contents of. I checked my cell phone's email again. The last message I had gotten from her was a chillingly vague "you'll see ;3".

"Did Misato text you?"

I sighed. "Sorta"

"...what does that mean?"

"It means she has something planned, and wants it to be a surprise, I guess." Shinji's brow scrunched up.

"That's worrisome."

I shot him a sly smile. "For one of us it will be, yeah." He laughed sheepishly before letting out a sigh of his own.

"I really don't know how much of this I can handle."

Feeling bad for the youngster, I put a hand on his shoulder. "Look at it this way, at least you'll have someone to share the experience with."

His brow scrunched again. "Asuka might end up killing me herself long before the Angel does."

Taking a step back and scratching my chin, I joked. "Oh, yeah, she absolutely might."

The brief silence was followed by chuckles from the two of us. Shinji went to have a shower himself shortly afterwards, while I checked on the food situation. I figured I may as well take over cooking duties here, seeing as I was going to be here for the rest of the week.

It wasn't pretty, but I might be able to scrounge up enough to put together a meal. At this point I'm fully convinced that if Misato didn't have Shinji here, she'd be making an honest attempt at surviving off of beer. At least from the stack in the corner, she may be making a try at it even with him here…

"Lieber gott, what kind of pig sty is this?" A discontented Asuka entered the fray of the kitchen, staring in horrified awe at the beer can corner.

"Welcome."

Practically ignoring me, she poked around a bit more, a growing look of disgust on her face. I hadn't even noticed the strings tied up in the hallway that Misato's laundry was hanging on before Asuka pointed it out to me. I had been here a couple times before, but I didn't think I had gotten used to it that much. I turned back to the meagre ingredients I planned to turn into stir-fry.

Asuka sat at the kitchen table and watched me cutting vegetables.

"Where's the idiot?"

"...considering how often you call people that, you really have to be more specific."

"You know who I mean." She growled back. "Also, I'm pretty consistent in calling him an idiot. At least I respect Misato a little… or I did, anyway." She was eying the stack of cans again.

"Ah, well, Shinji's in the shower. He should be out soon."

Asuka took out her handheld game system. "So did Misato tell you what her big idea is?"

"Nope, she's keeping that close to her chest."

Asuka sighed. "Wie lästig." I heard her fingers tapping the buttons repeatedly. "Well, whatever it is, it shouldn't be a problem for me, right?"

"Even if it means working with Shinji?"

She gritted her teeth. "As long as he can keep up with me and stay out of my way, I'll manage!"

I was fairly sure that wouldn't be considered "working together" exactly, but I continued cutting veggies with my mouth shut.

"Oh wow, I wasn't expecting the place to smell this good!" Misato had arrived just in time to catch me taking the stir-fry off the heat. "Huh, and here I thought I was going to have to order take-out for all of us." She had a stereo and some other things under her arm.

"I'll have to run out and pick up some groceries tomorrow afternoon to replace what I used, sorry about that. Oh, and I need to stock up for the week, but I think the meal turned out okay for what you had here." I started washing my hands as Misato laid her things on the kitchen table.

"I honestly can't remember there being anything worthwhile in the fridge besides beer anyway, so don't worry too much about that! Speaking of, toss me one, would ya?"

Drying my hands with a towel, I gave her an unamused look. "As long as I'm staying here, I'll cook. It's the least I can do." I reached into the fridge and threw one to her.

Misato caught it and popped the tab. "Shinji's going to be busy with other things this week anyway, so that's good to hear!" After taking a long, loud slurp, she cleared her throat. "HEY, YOU TWO, I GOT A SURPRI~ISE!"

Synchronization.

That was the key to beating this Angel.

"When the 7th Angel splits into Alpha and Beta, the core splits as well. If you take down one by itself, the other half is just going to rebuild itself. To put it plainly, both cores need to be destroyed at the exact same time." Misato raised her hands containing a CD, monitors, and other assorted pieces of gear. "So, you will both need to train. Learn to match each other's movements, math each other's breathing, match each other's heartbeat, whatever you have to do in order to pull a flawless, synchronized attack on the Angel at the end of the week!"

A very loud silence followed this explanation. Neither of the teens looked happy.

The first to speak up was Asuka. "You're actually insane!"

Misato flashed a devilish smile. "Insane? Maybe, but unless you want everything to be a hot pile of ash in 6 days, then you're going to have to do this." She tapped the CD. "There's an entire battle plan being crafted around this music's tempo. I'll be picking it up bright and early tomorrow morning, along with the rest of the materials. I've already contacted the school, and you have both received the week off in order to train! You'll learn the choreography, you'll master the moves, you'll do so in tandem, and you'll put that Angel in the dirt where it belongs, got it!?"

Another loud silence. Neither of the teens looked particularly motivated.

This time Shinji spoke up. "Well, I'm not sure how smoothly this can go…"

Putting her hand on Shinji's shoulder, Misato looked the young boy in the eyes. "Look, I'm telling you we have to make this work, so, we have to make this work. That's all that matters." He still looked like he had his reservations.

Asuka pulled out a chair from the table and sat. "If the plan isn't going to be sent out until tomorrow morning, then we can stop talking about it now, right? I'm starving!" Letting out a defeated sigh, Misato conceded, remarking again at how good the food smelled. I filled everyone's dishes and we all began eating together, like a little family.

I think one of the vegetables must've gone bad, though no one seemed to mind the slightly odd taste, everyone just engaged in idle conversation while we ate, so I just soaked up the atmosphere. It was refreshing, but…

How long would it be before this feeling went away again? Before I felt lost again? I didn't want to think about it, but it crept into my mind anyway.

What was wrong with me? Who looks at times that should feel happy and thinks to themselves "boy, I wonder when this'll end"? I still hadn't quite figured it out. Nothing I could do about that tonight, regardless, and it was about to be one hell of a week, so there was no time to worry about myself for a while anyway.

My eyes cracked open very early on the first day, to the sound of soft knocking on the door. I had been given Shinji's room to stay in for the week. Misato's training plan required both of the pilots to sleep in the living room together, in order to grow their coordination… "even in their sleep". For the life of me I couldn't tell if there was some science behind that helping, or if she just wanted to see what would happen, but either way, the two teens eventually agreed to it.

Misato's voice whispered from the hallway. "Hey, you awake?"

"...no, but I can be."

"Good. I need you to come with me."

I looked at the clock on my cell phone quickly. 6:05am. Good grief. I quickly dressed and headed into the hallway. Misato's index finger was pressed against her lips, before pointing at the two snoring teens in the den, lying about 6 feet away from each other. We both took a moment to smile before making our way quickly out of the apartment and down to the lot.

Misato's car was a lot cooler than mine, in almost every way. Actually, not almost, it was better in every way. Admittedly, mine didn't set a high bar, but even so, it was a tad intimidating, to see it outdone with such ease.

"You like it? It's a newer model. Only rent though, for now, but boy, does it feel good to drive. Purrs like a kitten and handles like a dream!" She laid her cheek lovingly on the bonnet, visibly getting carried away. I let her have her moment, walking over to the passenger side door. It would've been rude to interrupt such a romantic scene, I guess.

We drove through the city at an astonishingly quick pace, much faster than the road signs. It was quite early in the morning still, but I wonder if that would have mattered to her. "You aren't much of a car guy, are you?"

"Ah, sorry, I'm not really."

"Mmh, a shame. You've got a cute face and you work hard. If you had a passion for cars, I might've begun looking at you differently…" She slyly smiled, and I honestly couldn't tell if that was supposed to be a joke or not. Regardless, my cheeks started growing hot, so I turned to look out the window. "You and Shinji really are alike, huh."

"...I could say the same of you and Asuka." I spoke under my breath, but she heard me.

"Really? I didn't think we were that similar." We came over the hill that led towards the Geofront's vehicle entrance.

I couldn't actually think of a real reason for saying they were similar, outside of…

Outside of reminding me of my sister.

"Just a feeling I get, is all."

"I bet it's because we have too much energy for you 'slower pace' types, right?"

That wasn't it. "That must be it."

We were in and out of the Geofront in about a half hour. Not too bad, but some of the monitors were heavy, so I felt like I was essentially just the muscle. I packed what seemed to be two fairly complex looking electronic dance mats into the trunk of the car while Misato went to collect the battle choreography notes. I think I understood what the plan was now, somewhat.

By the time we arrived back at the apartment (with me carrying the monitors, cables and dance mats all the way in one trip), Asuka and Shinji were already up and about, and thus, the coordination training began.

Terribly. It began terribly.

"Oh dear, this... is gonna be a doozy." Misato stared regretfully at the crumpled, unconscious body of Shinji, who Asuka accidentally kicked in the face during their first try at the routine.

Nursing her heel with an ice pack, Asuka cursed in German under her breath. "Who just stands still in the direction someone's foot is coming? With spatial awareness like that, I'm shocked he hasn't been hit by a bus yet!"

"Well, he was looking the other way… doing the exact same move you were." She glared at me for making that comment.

"The same move, sure, but he was going way slower than me!"

"Hm, I can't deny that. His pace was off…" In a way, it was kinda impressive, to knock the guy out with a single kick like that, but that wasn't the point.

Misato scratched the back of her head. "What we also can't ignore is Asuka not only going at a faster pace than the music, but also fully extending her leg into Shinji's blind spot when I don't believe a leg extension was called for."

Asuka's cheeks turned red. "Th-That was a simple case of sour luck! Nothing more!"

About a half hour later, Shinji came to, and another argumentative spat broke out between him and his fellow pilot. Eventually, after a couple of arduous hours, they got through the entire choreography set without any incidents.

Panting softly, Asuka dabbed her forehead with a towel. "Not bad right? Hah, I mean, my part anyway."

Shinji growled, but Misato stood up before he could retort and gave them a short solo applause. "That was awful, you two!~" Her smile was so genuine, it hurt to look at.

"Wha- but, we finished it! It was only our eighth try too, that had to've been at least pretty good!" Asuka pleaded. Misato just shook her head.

"That would've been pretty good, had you been looking for the fastest way to doom us all!~" Another smile. She sat down and drained the can of beer she had only just opened. "Matsuo, tell 'em where they messed up."

I stood up and cleared my throat. "Well, to put it as simply as possible: Asuka, after the first 7 seconds, you began hitting every step a half second too quickly, and then spent the entire set hanging on the music to catch up to you, resulting in countless errors. Shinji, you were the complete opposite, to the point where Asuka finished the set a full 4 seconds before you did, not to mention that you ignored a number of the final steps in order to make up for the time you blundered." I sat back down on the floor. "It may not seem like much, but this is the most basic of basics. Applying this alone to a combat situation where perfection is absolutely necessary will result in... well, failure." The two teen's expressions dropped. At least they can emote in sync, whatever good that'll do.

"Today, we'll just be focusing on trying to get both of you to go in-time with the music." Misato clapped her hands together. "Come on! We don't have time to waste, your break is over!"

Asuka and Shinji groaned as they walked back to the middle of the den.

They certainly had a long way to go.