Chapter 8: Why is she such a jerk? (Enter Asuka)
Ritsuko's mind was racing with the elevator she rode in as it rose to the commander's office at the top of Nerv HQ. She had quite the topics to discuss with him tonight, and a headache begging to be relieved. She proceeded down the short hallway to the office, opening the door and looking around the spacious room for him. Surely enough, there he was waiting patiently for her, his hands covering his face in that familiar pose.
"Good evening, commander." At his signal, Ritsuko continued walking and stopped before his desk.
"Have the arrangements been made for Captain Katsuragi to bring the Third Child to the UN fleet?"
"Of course. She didn't suspect a thing," Ritsuko responded, trying to keep herself collected. "But I have bad news. Some …complications have arisen."
"…Continue."
Ritsuko took a deep breath. "As I spoke with Katsuragi…" Her expression grew more pained. "I learned that Rei and the Third have entered a relationship."
An awkward silence ensued. Ritsuko wondered what Gendou might have been thinking behind his outward stoicism. First Rei had moved out of her carefully chosen residence, and now she and Shinji were dating and getting cozy with each other. She was growing increasingly in danger of drifting away from Gendou's influence. Only time would tell when she no longer became compliant.
"This is not desirable," he finally declared, his voice having taken on a small twinge of irritation. "That said, her behavior has yet to endanger the scenario. All that matters is that she does as we tell her and that she can pilot. Anything beyond that is irrelevant."
"…You're right. For now, we'll keep an eye on how their relationship affects their behavior. If they can't separate that from their duties, then it'll be more than enough reason to separate them from each other."
"And if they don't cooperate, we can replace them. How is work on the Dummy System progressing?"
"According to schedule. However, progress will hinge heavily on Rei's willingness to obey us. If this turns out less favorably than we'd like, then we don't want to be caught without an alternative replacement ready."
"What do you propose in this case?"
"I recommend we select the Fourth Child as soon as possible. In addition, we should do what we can to have Unit-03 sent in from Massachusetts. The remaining Angels may well only be growing stronger from here on out; in that case, we'll need all the Evas and pilots we can scrape together."
"What about the Fifth Child?"
"We should wait and see what can be done with the recovered S2 engine, which has just now arrived in Germany for repairs. Once it's fixed, we can send it to the Nevada branch and have it inserted into Unit-04."
"Do you have any thoughts as to who the Fourth and Fifth Children might be?"
"There are two individuals I've taken particular interest in, especially given the situation with Rei. They're the ones the Third had to let into his entry plug. If nothing else, they know better than any of our other candidates how the Evas are operated. Training them will not be as difficult. Of course, I'm sure some of the old men will have their own ideas of who should be selected…"
The commander paused again for a moment. "That's all I need to hear from you for now. Monitor the candidates closely and see what can be done with them."
"Not a problem. Although…" Ritsuko's mouth gently curled into a small grin. "You realize I didn't come here just to talk, right?"
Friday, August 28, 2015
Not a whole lot out of the ordinary happened today. This afternoon, however, Misato told me that on Sunday we'd be flying over to the UN fleet sailing to New Yokosuka so I could meet and become acquainted with Asuka Langley Sohryu, the Second Child, in addition to getting a refreshing change of scenery and delivering a power cable to her Eva, Unit-02. I wasn't really opposed to it; my only concern was whether or not Rei would be coming with us. Sadly, Rei told us she couldn't; she had to remain behind to pilot Unit-01 in case an Angel showed up while we were away.
In addition, Rei relayed a warning to us from Dr. Akagi, who knew she and I were lovers now: the two of us were not to allow our new relationship to interfere with our piloting, and Father would see fit to separate us if there was reason to believe it was getting in the way. I bet he's itching to pounce on us at this very moment. I won't let him, though. I did well enough keeping my head clear for my last sync test between Operation Yashima and Rei's moving in, and I see no reason for that to change now.
Returning to the topic of Sunday's outing, Misato suggested I ask Touji and Kensuke if they could come along, since Rei has to stay here and our helicopter will have two extra seats. I'm not confident they'll be able to, since the notice will be kind of short, but I'll try. It's always fun to hang out with them, and there's still the chance they might be able to befriend Asuka too. Whatever happens, I hope it goes well…
Sunday, August 30, 2015
This was… certainly a day.
After getting up and getting ourselves ready, we left the apartment, picked up Touji and Kensuke from their homes, and drove to our helicopter to take off. Even before we got onto the UN fleet, Kensuke was acting like a little kid in a candy store, taking all the video he could of our takeoff and flight including the fleet below us. Touji wasn't quite as into it, but he was still excited enough about going on a date with Misato that he brought his favorite baseball cap with him to wear. As for me… I probably wasn't paying as much attention to my surroundings as I should have. The whole time I couldn't help but be preoccupied wondering to myself what the Second Child would be like. I'd find out soon enough once we landed on Over the Rainbow, one of the fleet's carriers.
The wind bore down aggressively on the four travelers as they disembarked from the helicopter. Shinji looked around to get his bearings, still feeling a bit tense and uneasy. Kensuke was being Kensuke, ecstatically videotaping everything he could fit into his camcorder's disk. Touji, for his part, got his hat blown off of his head and started running for it. And soon Shinji was running for the hat too to help him grab it. They wouldn't have to for long, because it became caught against the foot of a red-haired girl in a light yellow sundress who'd just walked on deck. They breathed sighs of relief …which quickly turned into indignation when she smashed it beneath her foot.
"Hey! What's the big idea?" Shinji demanded from her as Touji grew awash with anger.
"Hmph. I stopped it from blowing away, didn't I?" she responded in a haughty tone and a distinct accent.
"That doesn't mean you had to step on it like that! Who does that, anyway?"
"I do what I want around here. If you don't like that, you can go-"
"Asuka," Misato interjected as she caught up with them. "Give him his hat back. He was excited to wear it today, since it's such a special occasion."
Gottverdammt, Asuka thought to herself. Misato was here too, and siding with them? "…Fine, whatever. Leave it to a dunce to wear a dunce cap on a day as windy as this." She returned the hat back to Touji, who unhappily snatched it out of her hand.
Misato took a deep breath. "You'll have to excuse her. She's quite proud of herself. Anyway, everyone, this is the Second Child, pilot of Evangelion Unit-02. Miss Asuka Langley Sohryu."
Almost on cue, another gust arrived. This time, it was Asuka on the receiving end as her dress blew upwards and gave everyone a peek at her panties. Without warning, the boys got a close to literal taste of her wrath as she slapped each of them on their left cheek.
"Now what was THAT for?!" Touji yelled. His temper was starting to boil over now.
"THAT was the viewing fee! A small price to pay for a look at my underwear!"
"It's overpriced! Here's your change!"
Before Touji could embarrass the gang further, Shinji stopped him just as he was about to show her his own, and maybe even a little more. He was certain nobody among them wanted to see anybody's underwear, and he wanted to see that of a different girl least of all. "Now, now, Touji, hold on and think about this for a second. Are you sure you want to show her your goods?"
"Huh? W-well, she just-"
"Didn't she say you shouldn't have worn a hat in this kind of weather? So then why is she wearing such a loose dress that could've been - actually was - messed up by it just as easily? Are you sure that's the kind of person you want to deal with?"
"Ehh?! Grrrr…!" Asuka immediately caught on and became even more enraged. "Who the hell do you think you are, talking to me like that?!"
"He's Shinji Ikari, the Third Child piloting Unit-01, and he's my ward!" Misato revealed to her.
A slight chill went down Asuka's spine as Shinji resumed speaking. "And I have some advice, if you'll hear it. I dunno if you have this in Germany, but there's this thing called the Golden Rule we like to follow here in Japan. 'Treat others the way you want to be treated.' You'd do well to remember that." He suddenly turned his head. "Isn't that right, Kensuke?"
"Wh-what?! Why are you addressing me? Aren't you still talking to Asuka?"
"I was. And you videotaped it. All of it." Shinji raised a knowing eyebrow at him. "Delete it. Now."
He soon understood what Shinji was talking about, and grew horrified. "B-b-but this footage is of my fresh first reactions! You can't tell me to delete this! It's too cruel!"
"Okay. Think of it this way. Would you be able to rest easy knowing some creepy person had footage of you in your underwear stored away somewhere to view later?"
Now Kensuke looked as though he'd been shot in the heart. There was no way he could bring himself to argue with this question. "…Oh, alright." He gathered everyone around the camcorder so they could watch him destroy the incriminating evidence. He was lucky Shinji knew as little as he did about what went on behind his back…
"Good." Misato concluded. "Now then, we need to see the admiral. Let's go."
Asuka was… hoo boy. Looking back on it now, I don't wanna say she's a "bitch", but… that sure was our first impression of her. We were introduced to her as she stepped on Touji's hat when it got blown away by the wind. Then she had the nerve to criticize him for wearing one in such poor weather for it, while wearing a sundress that was an equally bad match. And then, when her dress got blown around too and we saw up it, she slapped us even though it wasn't our fault!
I was getting sick of her very quickly. I even wanted a little to hit her back. I didn't care what was between her legs, nobody abused friends of mine and got away with it. But I also found myself wondering what Rei would think of it all. I remembered what she said about there being "good in everyone". Even Father. Could there be good in Asuka too? I decided to trust Rei's words. I knew Kensuke was still videotaping everything, so I got him to delete what he'd shot after we got on the boat, including Asuka's panties. She was still upset, but it at least looked like she was cooling down.
While Misato spoke with the admiral to hand over the cable and check us in, another man who went by the name Kaji showed up; he said he was on a business trip. Misato knew him, and was not happy to see him. Maybe he's her ex-boyfriend or something? At tea below deck, he tried to start a conversation with us, and asked me a pretty crass question about whether Misato was still "loud in bed". As if either of us needed to know that. He also told me that I was pretty well known in the defense business for my exploits in Unit-01. I tried not to brag about myself too much, since I wasn't too proud of how some of them went, but he insisted I had some kind of talent. Not really. When it comes down to it, all I really am is just a guy trying to preserve his own interests…
"What do you think of Shinji Ikari?"
Asuka's mind drifted to the Three Stooges she'd just met earlier. Touji was an oaf; she didn't care for him one bit. Kensuke was …kinda cute? And his fashion sense was the least bland of the three. But he seemed to spend all his time with his face stuck in that stupid camcorder, and he had to be pressured into deleting the video he'd shot of her. And then there was Shinji… Her feelings towards him were a little more complicated.
"Baaaaah! I hate him! Acting all high and mighty, like he's better than me!" And yet, there was still something bizarrely compelling about him, and she respected him the most of the three. "But I'll give the Third Child one thing. I'm glad Nerv at least picked somebody with some guts."
"Guts, eh? So you're glad he's a match for you?"
"A m-match for me?! What are you saying?"
Kaji sighed. "I don't know if you're aware, but you can behave pretty proudly yourself. That is… maybe you two aren't so different from one another."
"Don't compare me to him! I'm the greatest Eva pilot in the world! How could he possibly stack up to someone like me?"
"Well… Hm." Kaji paused for a moment to think. "He's at least as talented, even if he doesn't realize it himself. Did you know that in his first fight, with zero preparation, his sync rate with Unit-01 exceeded 40%?"
"No way!" Asuka's eyes widened at this revelation. What kind of inhuman freak of nature was she up against? How much higher could his sync rate have risen since then? All kinds of fearful possibilities filtered into her mind …and she wouldn't have any of them. She was the star of the show around here, and she had to put him in his place.
After tea, Misato, Touji, Kensuke, and I resumed exploring Over the Rainbow. We were barely getting back on deck before Asuka blocked our path and suddenly demanded that I come with her. I wasn't even given time to protest as she grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the others to drag me off to who knows where. Her grip was so strong and we were moving so fast I couldn't muster the energy to break free. After some time I noticed she was pulling me towards another helicopter, only big enough to fit four people including the pilot. She started yelling something in English towards it; I couldn't understand all of it, but I could vaguely make out that she wanted to take me to another boat, the Othello. Luckily for me, the pilot (I think his name was Omar?) was observant enough to notice something unusual was going on, and asked what it was. This bought Misato and the others enough time to catch up to us and ask the same thing.
Asuka explained that she wanted to show me Unit-02. The moment he heard this, Kensuke immediately started begging and pleading for her to take him with us so he could see it too, but she refused on the grounds that he didn't have clearance. Misato countered her by asking why she needed to show it to me now, when she could do so after we'd arrived in New Yokosuka; even as pilots, Asuka and I had as little business being on the Othello as Kensuke right now. The only defense Asuka could give was that there was nothing better for us to do on Over the Rainbow besides more walking around, talking, and drinking tea. Something still felt off, though, like there was more she wasn't telling us.
I wasn't really sure how to feel about the situation. On one hand, I absolutely didn't want to hang out with Asuka anymore if she was just going to keep being a jerk like she was when we first encountered her. And the way she approached me and then manhandled me getting me to the other helicopter gave me doubts that she had learned her lesson. On the other hand, I still wanted to have faith that maybe she wasn't as bad as she seemed. Plus, she wasn't wrong about us barely having anything to do on Over the Rainbow. I wracked my brain trying to determine the best course of action. Eventually, I agreed to come with Asuka to the Othello, but made it clear to her that I wasn't going to stick around if she was going to continue being rude.
Unit-02 was a striking red color, and it had four eyes. Asuka spoke at what length she could about how it was the first production type Evangelion, made specifically for fighting Angels. She didn't get very far before we suddenly heard a big explosion in the other direction. Another Angel had shown up at sea, and it was attacking the fleet at this very moment. I tried to return to Over the Rainbow and tell Misato, but Asuka stopped me and demanded again that I come with her instead. She was going to take me with her into Unit-02's entry plug, ostensibly for protection in case Over the Rainbow sank before I could return. Besides, she asked me, would I rather not be in an Eva at a time like this? …Now that I couldn't dispute.
As we approached Unit-02's chamber, Asuka dove under the stairs to change into her plugsuit and shooed me away in the direction of a spare changing room with another one I could borrow. Let me say right now that wearing somebody else's plugsuit doesn't feel pleasant at all. But it'd have to do if I wanted to keep my own cognitive noise to a minimum. Once we were both changed, we got in the Eva to sortie.
"LCL Zugriff. Anfang der Bewegung, bestätigt. Beginn des Nervenanschlusses, bestätigt. Starte als Nächstes den Herzmonitor, bestätigt. Synchro-start, jetzt!"
At these words, the familiar lightshow accompanying Eva activation began, only to suddenly end in Fehler. Lots of Fehler covering up the surface of the plug.
"What is this?" queried Shinji. "A program error?"
"A language conflict. I told you not to get in my way!" Asuka angrily reminded him.
"Language conflict? I've never run into something like this before."
"You're thinking in Japanese, aren't you? Can't you think in German, you idiot?"
Shinji looked at her sheepishly. "I know Japanese and English. And I don't know English well enough to think in it yet. The only German words I know are 'strudel', 'bratwurst', and 'baumkuchen'."
"Ugh. I should've known. Fine! Switch cognitive language to Japanese." The sync process restarted, and this time finished successfully. "Evangelion Unit-02, activate!"
Before we knew it, we were jumping from ship to ship to get the Eva connected to an umbilical cable so we could intercept the Angel (designated Gaghiel after the fight) without worrying about running out of power. We had to be careful because we were still using the B-Type equipment for land combat, meaning we'd probably be fish food if we sunk into the water. In all my time as a pilot I'd never done anything so motion-intensive; I thought I was gonna throw up. Asuka, on the other hand, was completely in the zone. I was amazed at how skillfully she could maneuver even with an impeded sync rate. But inevitably, we indeed fell into the sea as she tried to slice through Gaghiel with her Prog Knife.
I tried desperately to think of a plan as we hung there, unable to move. Soon it bit into us, and we were trapped in its jaws. It might've actually been good that I was there to dull Asuka's sync rate, because it would've been horribly painful otherwise. Gaghiel's core was right in front of us, too, and we couldn't even reach it. The situation seemed hopeless until Misato radioed us with a plan of her own. We were going to fish the Angel out of the water; after we opened its mouth, two of the fleet's battleships would fire into it, killing it and leaving us intact. Asuka wasn't able to do it on her own, so the two of us both grabbed Unit-02's control levers and pulled at once, focusing all of our thoughts into prying open the jaws. With that, they gave way, the battleships made their attack, and the Angel exploded. The blast sent us landing back on Over the Rainbow, the Eva no longer able to move.
We sat there and waited until we could get in a safe extraction position. When we got out, I made sure to thank her for taking on the Angel and saving my skin. She admitted that I wasn't bad myself, but warned me not to get too comfortable, because my days in the sun at Nerv HQ were going to be numbered once she'd fully settled in.
Later that afternoon, we arrived in New Yokosuka and finally got to return to dry land. Touji and Kensuke got an eyeful of Asuka and I wearing matching plugsuits as we disembarked; they were quickly sent back home as Dr. Akagi arrived to retrieve us. Kaji, for his part, had already flown back to HQ. After returning there and giving the debriefing like usual, we returned home ourselves and had a restful afternoon.
Asuka… What else can I say about her at this point? She's abrasive and not quite what I'd call a nice person. Yet somehow she still feels like a kindred spirit. Maybe it's because we're both Eva pilots? No, it can't be that simple. Whatever the case, I'm going to have to learn to work with her sooner or later.
"Man, she was hot, but I just could not stand her."
"Well, we won't be seeing her again."
"Poor Shin-man still has to, 'cause of his job." Touji turned to Shinji. "I feel for you, I really do."
The timing couldn't be more uncanny. As soon as he said that, a familiar redhead walked into the classroom in their school's uniform. Shinji and his friends looked on in disbelief as she wrote her name on the chalkboard in the Latin alphabet.
"I am Asuka Langley Sohryu! Charmed."
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
If Asuka's dialogue here doesn't blatantly convey that I've been writing with the cast's ADV dub voices in mind, then I don't know what will.
Anyway, this chapter was a massive pain in the ass to write. It was my first time writing Asuka in any capacity and her interactions with the other characters were very hard to get right. As if that wasn't bad enough, I was also deeply torn on whether or not to have Kensuke accompany Shinji and Asuka to see Unit-02, because I figured he would at least try to do so even if he couldn't videotape it, and it would ultimately lead to him being selected as the Fourth Child (among other things). I decided against going that route because it was too hard not to make it feel overly contrived. Oh, well. Maybe he'll get his chance later.
With that, I've exhausted the current extent of my outline and will have to take time away from writing the fic itself in order to resume planning. I'll probably continue with that as long as I can until I reach another critical point like this one where I can't decide what'll happen until I actually start writing it.
Special thanks to Evageeks for help with canon fact-checking (including timeline planning), and to my pre-readers Argent and Spider for examining the chapters released so far. Please check out their works (specifically A Strange Duet and The Moment Yuuko Found Out) if you can. The former is another Evangelion (AsuShin) fic, while the latter is a Nichijou fic. More special thanks to the good people over at AsuShincord's fanfic workshop for their advice on making Shinji's writing more believable. Finally, special thanks to my acquaintance Hermän2000 for coming up with a more grammatically correct version of Asuka's German in the entry plug.