This is the sequel to Eva Dating Game. Takes place after the 14th before the 15th for anyone who cares. It's different from the last chapter, I put a bit more thought into the idea this time around. Let's see how it works.
Disclaimer: I don't own Eva, if you think I do then think again.
Iron Chef Shinji
From the people who brought you Eva Dating Game.
In the sub-basement of Nerv Headquarters a contest of grueling skill and finesse, a battle of wit, speed and reflexes was about to commence.....Seele was sponsoring an 'Iron Chef' competition.
Misato, high in the announcer's booth looked down upon the tiny specks that were the audience and the two rival chefs.
Misato squinted and shrugged. She flipped her mic on and took a deep breath. "Hello everyone! Today the 'Nerv (TM) Channel' is showing a special presentation of 'Iron Chef'! Our operators are standing by so you can go ahead and call in your pledges!" The camera zoomed in on Gendo, who's face seemed to say 'Donate or I'll hunt you down'. Misato tried to make out what the two chefs standing around on the floor were doing but decided to complain about it.
"And how am I supposed to know what's going on if I can't see 'em?" She asked Gendo, seated next to her.
"That is irrelevant." Gendo replied, wishing he got to kick one of the old Seele guys every time he said that. He looked over to the judges lined up in a row on a long table. From left to right they were, the Jock (Toji, all patched up) some dorky kid (Kensuke), the annoying chick (Asuka), the blonde one (Ritsuko), the other dorky one (Makoto), and the bum (Aoba).
Toji was selected for his supreme tasting abilities...well, not really. If it smelt dead he'd eat it. The rest, well.... no one else thought it safe to volunteer as a judge for the Most Notoriously Secret Organization of the Year. (Three years in a row!)
"Welcome to the Iron Chef!" Misato said in an amazingly deep voice. "Today's rival chef is Shinji Ikari! Going against the Iron Chef herself, Horaki Hikari."
Hikari made a menacing look to Shinji while at the same time looking sweet and innocent to the camera.
Misato glanced at the script for the day's ingredient and repressed the urge to swell up with joy and run to the stock rooms. "And the selected ingredient for today is.....Yebisu Beer!" She hollered happily, tears collecting at the sides of her star-filled eyes.
"Yebisu?" Shinji asked, wondering if this was a joke. After all, Misato had made him wear the ridiculous 'Kiss the Eva' apron again. "Is that even digestible?" He asked Hikari, who shrugged.
"Okay everyone, begin!" Misato yelled to the two chefs wondering who everyone was.
"One hour remaining." Maya reported from the computer terminal. From her chair at the judge table Ritsuko wondered why she wasn't in her lab doing tests on how to make sure Yebisu ceased to exist. She sighed.
"Something wrong Dr. Akagi?" Makoto asked.
Ritsuko shook her head and lit a cigarette; it was going to be a long hour.
Shinji pulled out an arsenal of cooking utensils and ingredients. From his memory he selected six dishes that he could somehow replace an ingredient with Yebisu. He began chopping up some carrots and some other veggies.
Hikari already had a dish going, strained ramen with Yebisu sauce. It smelled like a drunken bum at a ramen stand, but what was she to do?
"Let's see, a pinch of ginger should neutralize the nasty alcohol smell," Shinji said aloud, reaching for the spice. As he grabbed it his sleeve brushed the forty-three bottle tall pyramid of Yebisu, bringing the structure down with incredible finesse.
"And Challenger Shinji knocks over his main ingredient!" Misato wailed into her microphone on the podium she was at.
"Dumb clumsy idiot." Asuka muttered, feeling embarrassed for him.
While Shinji was apologizing to the cleaning crew that'd brought in the XX-7900 Wet/Dry S2 powered vacuum, Hikari was busy on her second dish, Miso Yebisu. Granted, it also had a slight beer smell, but she had yet to discover the advantage of spice.....or had she?
"Just a dab of Tabasco....." A brown haired chef hummed as she chucked the bottle in.
From the stands Toji's stomach decided to make its presence known. In a very impolite and rude manner too, one might say. "Grrrrrrmmmmmppppplllll" It said over the sound of open-air grills and microwaves going.
"Man, that Yebisu looks so tantalizing." Makoto said. "I like the way Chef Hikari is using Tabasco to cover the disgusting smell of booze." He stopped, blinked, and threw his script out.
Ritsuko found herself once more sighing and praying that the fire Hikari was making carried over to Shinji's side and blew the whole place up. She calculated the effort it'd take to lug her lighter that far and decided she'd wait for fate to intervene and do it for her.
"Come on Shinji! Quit with the Japanese food! Make some marzipan or something!" Asuka yelled, seeing the boy cringe and nod. She picked up her fork and waved it around threatingly.
"Forty-five minutes remaining." Maya announced, making Hikari cringe and Shinji wonder what was going on.
"What? We're timed? Now I'll never finish my oven-marinated turkey with Yebisu broth!" Shinji complained and dumped the abandoned plate into the garbage. He pulled out a grapefruit and began gutting it. //Gotta get it juuust right. One wrong move and there'll be juice in my eye.// He heard Asuka yelling about the stupidity of this show and flinched, being rewarded with and eyeful of , you guessed it, juice.
"Assistant, bring me some herbs!" Hikari commanded, sweat forming on her brow from carving little totem poles out of cucumbers. From off to the side, where no one even thought about subliminally noticing her, Rei appeared and handed Hikari some green stuff in a bag that said 'Gendo's, don't touch.'
"Rei! Not those herbs!" Gendo yelled, suddenly standing up and rushing to the observation window. All in one fluid motion Misato was pitched over the side of the window, Gendo stuck his face out to tell Rei to put his stash back, and Misato grabbed hold of his thick beard.
Gendo froze, as did Misato, though it was quite hard when she was suspended a score of feet above the floor. Commander Ikari's eyes traveled from the top of his tinted glasses and fell on the sweetly smiling Operations Director.
"Let go."
Misato considered her options.....let go and drop to the ankle breaking floor, or stay there and face an angry and wounded (surely miffed, too) Commander Gendo Ikari. Tough choice there. She let go and fell. She kept falling until she landed on Rei, who was returning from the kitchen with a watermelon. That said watermelon was launched from poor Ayanami's grasp and smacked Shinji in the head, causing him to aim the spoon he was using to scoop the evil grapefruit in Asuka's general direction. The ensuing squirt hit her in the eye, and out of reflex she flung the fork into the fray. The fork itself imbedded itself on the grill's gas 'on' knob, sending sparks across it's already flaming surface. That combined with the spilt Yebisu caused what most of the audience called the 2 1/2 impact.
From what was left of the stage and kitchen, Hikari stumbled out, all six of her dishes clutched to her and smelling like a thousand burnt hobos.
Misato was next, somehow unscathed and with both ankles still functioning. In her hand was the one single Yebisu that was not destroyed. "Whooo......this is more damage than the 14th caused." She observed casually. Glancing up and talking a swig she confirmed that the roof of the room was indeed gone and those were in fact the Evas and not her drunken visions. //Then why are they smiling and waving at me?//
Fuyustki looked into the gaping hole and sighed, it had to be those kids. He turned and went to his custom chair for a relaxing '1,000 Fingers' massage.
Shinji awoke to find himself under a purple roof, with something REALLY hot right near his pride and joy. As his vision ridded itself of those annoying flashes of light he realized that Unit-01's hand had saved him again. And fire was crawling up his thigh. The boy scrambled up and did a little jig that somehow rid his leg of the flames.
"Oh.......wow." he stood up and watched the vision before him. Paramedics rushed into the building, carrying first-aid kits and nebulizers. Firefighters broke in, wielding fire hoses and axes, hacking and soaking anything that could be a fire.
Asuka could have told anyone this was going to happen. From the table where she the rest of the slightly charred judges sat the German had to smile with contempt, she just had to. "Morons...." She said as two firefighters attempted to save Commander Ikari from the wrath of a hibachi.
Gendo was not very thrilled about how these turn of events. For one, he was burnt, scraped, and bruised. Two, he hadn't gotten any donations from viewers, though the operators were still standing by. Three, his tiny wallet sized picture of Yui and Shinji was now just a wallet sized picture of Shinji's left arm, some background, and smoldering photo material.
"I'm just gonna ask Seele for a raise." He decided. With the aid of a broken table leg he limped up to his desk where he could watch and smirk at the little pissants trying to contain the chaos.
"So what do know, this is actually pretty good." Shinji turned to find Toji standing next to him watching the scene and eating his 'Tenderized Yebisu stake'.
"Thanks, uh, have you seen Rei?" He looked to where Toji pointed and found her licking her fingers and putting out a strand of her hair that was on fire. "Oh..."
"Two minutes remaining....." Maya croaked, leaning on her terminal for support.
Aoba and Makoto arrived from the makeshift bunker they'd fashioned out of the Magi.
"We tasted Hikari's stuff," Makoto started. He glanced to Aoba, trying to gnaw his way through what was some grilled goose and Yebisu.
"Blech...it's pretty much just charcoal. So you win by default." Aoba said, spitting out the blackened lump.
"What do I win?" Shinji asked. "A chance to leave Nerv?"
Makoto laughed. "Heh heh- no. You get this." He held out a tiny little Eva Chokogin.
Shinji took the little metal figurine into his hand and frowned at it. "I already have one Eva to worry about....." He scrutinized the little Eva, which winked at him. Shinji chucked it over his shoulder into a fire.
With a look around Ritsuko smiled and stepped from the Porta-AT field dispenser. "Knew it." She smiled wider and went for some coffee.
Misato looked to find the single operating camera was zooming in on her. With record speed she composed herself and hid her Yebisu. "Now a word for our sponsor."
"This show was brought to you by Seele, 'Get ready for another disaster that will change the world!' Surgeon General's Warning; Seele might cause bouts of nude questioning, mild kidnapping, and occasional spontaneous dissipation into yellow goo."
End
A/N
Interview with the author, so you know the who's, the why's, and, the how's.
Reader: How do you feel about readers flaming you because they think anything that's not up to TOILIs standards should be wiped from FF.net? And what of LD's complaint of the characters being to In Character?
Me: Well, they have a right to want good quality fics, but this IS a humor fic after all, don't think of it as an important work of literature or anything, you'll get angry. This is not to be taken seriously. Its not an epic meant to discover the character's motivations or feelings. It's supposed to make you sit back from the seriousness of Eva fiction and lighten up before you run out of Prozac. About Lord Deathscythe, yes, most of my fics are IC, but just for you I'll make this a bit OOC.
Reader: Who are you to judge what's IC or not?
Me: I've watched Eva, I've seen the characters develop, and I hope by now I know how to keep Shinji timid enough without him coming off as a complete wuss.
Reader: And why do you post this if you know someone out there is gonna find this insulting to Eva fiction?
Me: Um.....lemme see, I post it because I took the time to write it, I like it, and I think others will, too. To the ones who will be insulted (I know there's gonna be at least one) sorry, if you can't find the humor value of this then its your loss.
Reader: Isn't that more insulting than a bad fic?
Me: No, I'm just saying if you really can't sit back and realize that not every Eva fic has to be full of angst or WAFF you need to reconsider your views. It CAN be funny, watch the first part of the series, that itself is funny.
Reader: Some people might think this isn't funny.
Me: Oh well, no skin off my nose.
Reader: Last question. Several people have complained about your lack of caring or interest in peoples feedback
Me: It's not lack of caring, but I do what I can to make what I write enjoyable, I can't go and change the whole thing if only a couple people don't like it. I take into account what they say and try to apply it to my next fic. Once I post a fic I'll rarely take it down to fix unless all the reviews are people telling me I should.
