Neon Genesis Evangelion is property of those nice people over at ADV films and Gainax studios. I love their series and everything to do with it. I write this for fun!

Seishoku Garasu Studios Presents…

The door silently slid open and gave Shinji access to the inside. The lock on this door seemed to be of a special caliber that took the young raider sometime to crack, which of course further irritated him about the job he was currently doing. As the young black clad man entered the premises, confident through his sources that no one was home, he thought about his reasons for doing this particular raid. Pure and simply, the money was too good to pass up. He was, of course, worried about the lack of security details the client could provide, but he was confident in that his experiences would be able to help him do the job cleanly.

Shinji quickly and quietly slid past the various articles of furniture and disarmed the security system with minimal effort. It seemed that most people in Tokyo-3 were pretty lax about inside security systems. True, crime was certainly rare because of the efficient city management from the Magi super computers, but it still made the young pilot wonder about that special lack.

"Not that I mind," Shinji told himself as he began searching for the item in question. "The lack of security certainly makes my job a lot easier."

After several more minutes of searching, Shinji began to lose a little bit of his carefully stored patience. According to the client, the item in question should have been in any of the usual places, yet he had already searched through several drawers and still nothing. This was yet another point against his client, in Shinji's mind. This job was turning out to be less and less worth the money he would be paid or the effort he put into it.

Finally, after what seemed like hours of fruitless searching through clothes and drawers, he finally found the item he had been looking for in the bottom of a shirt drawer. The young raider had carefully searched of course as he didn't want to make the house look as if it was ransacked, a fact that would surely begin an inquiry into his activities.

"Hmm, probably placed there by accident," he muttered to himself and began the process of turning around and placing the item into the safety of his back pack and closing the drawer when suddenly the lights flipped on in another room of the house.

An Original Fanfic by Garasu…

"Shit," Shinji whispered harshly and dove under the bed that was next to him after making sure everything was back in place just in time to watch as a pair of feet came into the bedroom, turn around and flop onto the bed above him. In his mind, Shinji began cursing every word and god he knew against the client of his. When he got back he was going to flambaste that man so royally hard he'll be able to smell the barbecue from school. The cursing continued for an extraordinary amount of time in no small part due to a certain redhead, so that by the time he was done the young man felt that he was at least nominally feeling better.

Finally, as his mental cursing wound down, Shinji heard the doorbell ring from the other side of the apartment and wondered curiously at it.

"Who could it be this late at night?" The woman above him wondered, echoing Shinji's thoughts from below her bed. After making sure that she was decent to be answering the door, the young woman got up and padded out of her bedroom and over to the front door. Looking through the peephole she was greeted by the most unusual sight of a blue haired girl with red eyes standing before her and dressed completely in black.

"Yes, may I help you?" The young woman asked when she had opened the door, curious at least as to why someone so young looking was standing at her door at such a late hour.

"Yes," the young woman answered in a quiet voice. "I am here to inform you of something."

Unseen to the young woman, the girl's eyes slid over just a fraction to make sure that Ikari was taking opportunity to sneak out. She had been watching him from afar, dressed identically as he was, and knew instantly that the young man was in trouble the second the door opened and the lights flipped on. Hence, the reason she was standing before the door now. She promised she would protect Ikari at all costs, and he was indeed in trouble now. She was briefly glad to see a shadowy figure sneak behind the young owner of the apartment and disappear out the door as quietly as a whisper of wind.

"I am here to inform you that I am the pumpkin queen," Rei Ayanami said in a quiet, serious voice before turning around and walking back down the hallway, her job of protection done.

As the young woman watched her strange visitor disappear into the elevator then turned back into her own apartment she couldn't help thinking that it was time to move out of this crazy town. The people around here were just too strange for words anymore.

Panty Raider

Episode 3: Trouble on the Home Front!

The next day was a very distracting day for all involved in the current project. Of course, the distraction made it all the more frustrating considering that the current project was merely a simple matter of synch tests. The very same synch tests, in fact, that the three pilots, two scientists, and one major did every Tuesday and Thursday morning and sometimes even on a Saturday to the disgruntlement of the afore mentioned pilots. Distractions led to a lower score, a lower score led to a grumpy scientist and a grumpy scientist led to an irritable major which in turn yielded distracted pilots, the cycle was never ending and it seemed to show no mercy on this very particular day.

Ritsuko Akagi, the grumpy scientist, was not a happy person this morning. Even more unhappy than she usually was on a morning that the children's scores were slightly lower than their usual. This morning's unhappiness had nothing to do with the lower scores however, and everything to do with the surreptitious skirt adjusting she kept feeling the need to do.

"Damn laundromat pervert," the disgruntled doctor mumbled under breath, giving the synchro graph a withering look. "I bet he stole my damn power panties, I can't ever work on the projects That Bastard wants me to complete without them."

Ritsuko sighed and keyed in the microphone, anxiously wanting to take out her annoyance on someone, and the pilot that was performing exactly one point two-five percent under par was exactly the target she was looking for. In fact she was so intent on taking out her anger she completely missed the furious blush that Maya now had set on her face. Mumblings about 'power panties' wasn't exactly something she was used to hearing from her sempai, though she couldn't help wondering what exactly could be empowering about a piece of supportive cloth. The simple explanation for the even redder look that suddenly over took her.

"Asuka, for Pete's sake we do this every single Tuesday and Thursday, you can find time to wonder about whatever it is you're wondering about some other time, preferably away from the entry plug." Ritsuko grumbled through the two-way radio that was installed into the test plugs. She would have gone after Shinji and his one point two-six percent drop, but a quick glance at Misato's current mood and she knew that that would be opening up a bag of bacteriophages that she didn't want to enter. When Misato was grumpy, nobody got away with harping on Shinji, unless it was Misato herself.

Asuka, for her part, mumbled something in return and her graph went up another point two-five percent, an acceptable return for Ritsuko's efforts. Still, the young red headed pilot couldn't help her mind from wandering back to the subject she had been thinking about earlier, albeit in a little more scaled down manner. It wouldn't do for her to draw the wrath of the irritable doctor again.

Damn panty freak and his stupid defenses. If I hadn't spent all night last night trying to tie into another line and hack his firewall I wouldn't be so damn tired. That stupid idiot gave me bags under my eyes!

Asuka muttered a few expletives in German that involved some very complicated positions and a more than a few questions concerning a certain pervert's lineage before she began to seriously think about what she could do about the situation. In her mind, she was a genius and there was nothing she couldn't solve without a little prior thinking. So then why was this mystery giving her so many problems?

Well, I know at least that he goes to our school. The address definitely showed it as coming from that point. But when would anyone have the time to hold a chat in the classroom? Unless…unless it was my classroom. I know that whenever that good for nothing teacher speaks everyone automatically tunes him out, and I know that that's the only teacher in the entire school that possesses that vaunted ability.

Asuka's mind began churning a mile a minute with that last thought. If it someone within her classroom, she was closer to that pervert than she would have liked. Still, that might also explain his reaction for the bait she tried to send him last time. She'd always gotten compliments about how much older than everyone else her age she looked and she had always conveyed that fact in the drawings that she did of herself as well. There was no way that the pervert would have been able to tell she was only fifteen unless he already knew her. But that left a collection of twenty or so people of which she knew mostly nothing about.

Suddenly a stray thought caught the red head's attention and she latched onto it with all her considerable mental strength. The user who deflected her attack had to be a good at computers, which was obvious; otherwise he wouldn't have known what she was doing. But it wasn't just the repulsion that caught her attention; it was the manner of the repulsion. An image of unit 00 wasn't too rare, considering the city they lived in and the dependence they had towards the three working EVA units, but few knew enough of the unit itself to actually make an animated version to use in such a manner. In fact, if Asuka considered all the points of intelligence she had gathered in the past few days since her failed trap, a computer genius and an EVA fanatic, there was a really only one person that fit that description.

A Stooge.

Asuka's fists curled up in a tight ball and her face grew a fierce scowl. Of course it would be a stooge. They were the only ones whom she considered actual competition to any of her abilities. Whereas in her mind she had everything: the looks, the brains, and the EVA; each individual stooge had but one or two abilities and they each challenged hers individually. With Touji, it was the looks and brute strength. Of course, Asuka herself was absolutely repulsed by his looks, but she could not ignore the fact that more than a few classmates had spent considerable time pining over the idiot. Then of course, her strength was more graceful in nature than the tallest of the three stooges but he still had plenty of it. Kensuke was just the same way in intelligence. Of course, his was stoogy intelligence, things that she would never be interested in, but there was no denying he was the brains of the bunch, replacing what was originally lost on the fist stooge. That nerd stooge was the only one she could think of that could rival her computer prowess, especially in the area of hacking. Finally, the third stooge, the stooge among stooges, Shinji Ikari. That stooge possessed the one thing no one else could have: piloting an EVA. He was also the only one who rivaled her synch records and her mastery of the huge organic life form's incredible abilities. Between those three, they were the closest things to her perfection, and it was well known that they often worked together on projects.

Still, for all that it made sense in her mind; there was one thing that she couldn't quite place. That was the conversation they had that informed her to the Pervert in the first place. Why would they be having such a conversation in the first place if it were them? Of course, Asuka's sharp wit led her to what she believed was a simple answer for that question: bragging to the one stooge who probably wouldn't be going along with such an idea.

Asuka Langley wasn't a fool, a fact much vocalized by herself, and she knew that as much as she thought of Shinji as being a pervert, he actually wasn't. There were things, she knew now, that the young pilot would and wouldn't do and after living with the boy for so long she knew them each well. In her mind, the surest way, however, to change Shinji's mind was to convince him that he was wrong. It was something that wasn't as simple as it sounded, for the other pilot was almost as stubborn as she was in certain areas. However, throw a few exciting stories his way, maybe toss around a simple monetary figure - for Asuka knew that the raider, no matter how perverted he was, had to be getting a lot of money out of this deal. Then theoretically, to a stooge's skewed mind anyway, Shinji just might be willing to go along with such a plot.

Asuka shook her head, she really doubted that Shinji was perverted enough to do something like raid people's underwear drawers for money. She trusted him in that anyway. However, as far as the long-term picture was concerned, the young man was standing in her way of finding and exposing the real pervert for the entire world to see. What one stooge knew, after all, the others knew as well and Shinji was her key.

The German teen hunkered down into her entry plug; positively itching for the opportunity to get out of this damned prison, absolutely smiling with glee at the future plans her mind worked out. For Misato and the watching bridge crew, the sudden expression change on the second pilot's face was positively chilling. Some even would swear later that her hair curled up in a crude facsimile of horns.

Shinji meanwhile wasn't faring much better in his own entry plug. First of all, there was that damned itch in his nose that just simply wouldn't let go. The stupid thing about LCL was that it tended to dampen the effects of itching and such, preventing a logical reaction like sneezing. Right then, the young man wanted more than anything in the world was to sneeze.

Damn itch, the boy thought while trying to crinkle his nose enough to put the itch out. Finally, after an almost interminable amount of time, the itch went away almost as suddenly as it had come and Shinji sighed with relief, allowing his mind to wander back to what he had been thinking about all morning: his narrow escape from the job earlier.

By all rights he should have been caught and been sitting in a prison cell about now, completely humiliated, yet for some reason he kept imaging that the visitor that allowed him to escape was deliberately timed. An even more disturbing fact when considering that he could almost swear he heard Rei's quiet voice on the other end of the door. Of course, being in a hurry as he was, as well as the position that he was currently in it did not give him the time or the angle to check out his first instinct. Though after thinking about it for a while, Shinji could only draw the conclusion that he had been hearing things, as it was simply impossible for Rei to aid him in his escape. There was just no way the seemingly emotionless pilot would do anything of the sort, especially if she knew what exactly it was he was going after in the first place.

Yet still, the feeling that he had some sort of mysterious protector could not be shaken from his mind.

Of course, I shouldn't have needed protection in the first place. The young man thought viciously as his fist clenched in anger. The incident last night seemed to be the final straw in a string of things that had gone wrong with the raid last night, and by god he was going to draw it out of his clients hide. In all the months that he had been the Panty Raider there was never such a close incident than last night, with the possible exception of the first raid he ever went on.

Heh heh. Shinji chuckled in memory of his first raid as the panty Raider. Which in turn made the boy think of the whole reason he got into the business in the first place. As with all things that seemed absurd in his life it all began with a conversation with his two friends, Kensuke and Touji.

"So Shinji," Kensuke had called him from his quiet ruminations with a smirk on his face. The smirk that Shinji knew well as the to be the "beware: ecchi thought coming on" smirk that his friend took to wearing when a particularly evil thought crossed his mind. "I was just curious if you've ever seen Asuka's panties. You know, in addition to that first time."

Shinji stared curiously at the question that his friend just asked out of the blue and regarded the camera that was no shoved into his face, ready to record his answer for all posterity.

"I…I..uh, don't know. I don't think you should be asking that question." Shinji told him after fumbling over the furious blush that threatened to make his face break out in cold sweat. Then, when he was sure he got his embarrassment under control, his self-preservation instincts kicked in and he glanced around looking for the very redhead they were talking about. Asuka was scary, especially when it seemed that she could read his thoughts from a distance and even from several rooms away. If she caught this current conversation his life would be a made into a living hell.

"Aww, come on!" Kensuke added with the same smile on his face. "We all know you do Misato's and Asuka's laundry. So what colors do they use, hunh? I bet Misato uses plenty of purple." The boy finished when his smile turned into one of dreamy fantasy. Shinji had no trouble decrypting what that particular smile meant. Kensuke's fixation on his messy guardian bordered on insane.

"So how about Asuka?" Touji put in for the first time, grinning like a demented idiot. "We know you like her. Does she use anything but boring old white?"

The blush that Shinji had fought off bravely earlier fought its way back to his face and the boy could feel his cheeks begin to heat up. True, he did do the laundry a lot, and what his two roommates placed into the dirty laundry when it was his turn was positively embarrassing. He tried not to pay attention to those things too much though-; it would only get him into trouble later on if he did. Why did his life have to be so difficult?

"I don't pay attention to those things," Shinji told his friends in what he hoped was his most confident voice. Unfortunately for him it sounded less like confidence and more like a silent plea for them to leave off. "Can't we talk about something else now?"

Both Kensuke and Touji backed off from him echoing each other's humms, indicating that they were thinking over his request. Though the young pilot had a horrible feeling that they would not leave off. Kensuke was the first to speak.

"You know we can't do that, Shinji. You see, we're determined to bring you up to speed," the war otaku made a broad sweep of the grassy field they were currently sitting on indicating all the other young men from his class. "You really need to start thinking about these sort of things, it's just not healthy for you to keep it inside."

I…I do think of those things, sometimes." Shinji quietly asserted. Boy, do I ever, he added in his mind, thinking of all the dreams he had had of Asuka alone since the fiery teammate of his had arrived. "I just don't like to, that's all."

"So if you do think about it, then come on! Fess up!" Touji leaned in for the kill. "It'll be nice to have something over that demon, maybe it would shut her up every now and then."

"Yeah, then she would kill me because I'm the only one who would know and could tell you two," Shinji added miserably. "I'm sorry, I just can't tell you guys. It's my own life at stake. Besides," the boy added with a look directed at his two friends, "What is your fascination with panties anyway? Why are they so important to you?"

His erstwhile friends recoiled when Shinji had directed his questions towards them. Finally, the young man thought he would catch a break from his two friends and they would leave him alone. At least, he thought that until he caught that strange gleam in Kensuke's eyes again as the boy began to shake his head sadly.

"Shinji, Shinji, Shinji… you just don't get it do you?" Kensuke gave his friend a solemn smile before he continued. "It's not just a matter of thinking about them, it's a matter of getting to them. For young people like us they represent everything about the girl we wish for. Flashy, plain and boring, it doesn't matter; they all indicate a bit about the personality of your girl, so it's only natural for us to desire them."

"Really?" Shinji asked, considering the skewered logic that Kensuke had just used against him. It all sounded terribly confusing to his mind, but maybe there was a way to exploit this?

Shinji recoiled at that thought. Dear lord what was he beginning to think? But then again, considering the earnest shaking of both of friends, maybe there was a plan behind this after all.

Shinji shook his head from the vision that his flashback had left him. It was really strange that something as simple as that confused, embarrassing conversation had led him to formulating the idea of the Panty Raider. But simply put it began to be fun for him after a while. Of course, the raiding was just a means to money, but the fun part really came from acquiring the few spy gadgets he owned or learning how to scale apartment buildings unnoticed. If anything, he could at least draw from his experiences the fact that he was in much better shape than he ever was in his life. Something that Asuka just may find appealing, his mind added.

Still, despite all that, his first raid was a very dangerous adventure in which had almost been caught twice. And he certainly did not have any of the efficiency that he had now. Back then it was hard to find a few clients, now he had almost enough to be picky. But still, he worried about those few ignorant soles that never bothered to follow his carefully planned steps in order to get him to accept a job. No matter how much fun this job was, if he got caught he'd still be in big trouble so when someone didn't follow the rules, Shinji turned a considerable amount of his small impatience on them.

Still, what is it about this mysterious protector that showed up last night? I feel like I should know him somehow. Shinji drew idle circles on his butterfly handles thinking about the feminine quality of the voice he could have almost sworn he heard. But it just could not be a female. It was just impossible.

The voice of Ritsuko brought him from his idle thinking as she agitatedly brought Asuka to task for letting her mind wander. Guiltily, Shinji brought his attention back to the task at hand and finished out the test with a reasonable amount of attention. He'd think about this again later that night.

Meanwhile, in the entry plug on the far side of the test chamber Rei sat quietly in her chamber. Thinking privately and paying attention to the experiment without having them affect the other came effortless to the blue haired girl so she let her mind wander far and wide. Soon though, it focused on one subject in general: it was kind of fun to dress up in all black and follow Ikari. Maybe she would do it again the next time he went out?

Rei smiled mysteriously and continued thinking about that thought.

Much later that evening a slight crash at his bedroom door woke Shinji up from a mild sleep. For a moment, the young man thought that someone had entered his room, but that was impossible. Misato was the only person who would be awake at this time of night, and he knew for a fact that his guardian was still at work until at least daybreak. With a resigned sigh and thoughts of growing slightly paranoid, Shinji tried to close his eyes again and go back to sleep. Just as he was about to do so, however, a dark figure suddenly shot up from below his bed and before the young pilot had a chance to scream a hand clamped over his mouth.

"Don't say a word, third child." Came a hoarse whisper, just within Shinji's hearing levels. It was so soft, in fact, that he couldn't even tell if he knew the voice or not or even make out the gender. Not that it mattered much even if he could hear, Shinji, at that time, was so scared that his poor mind couldn't comprehend anything of value anyway.

"Follow me," the voice came from the darkness again, and before Shinji could even think to obey the command, he was unceremoniously hauled out of his bed. The young man could do nothing but follow after the dark figure as it hauled it out of his room and then gruffly shoved him down the hallway. It confused Shinji to no end when instead of going to the front door like he had expected; he was taken to the door of his fellow roommate and pilot. Was this person after Asuka too? Suddenly, Shinji was filled with a dread and abject terror that he had never felt before in his life. He couldn't let whom ever this person was take Asuka as well. He just couldn't!

Fighting as he had never done before, Shinji began twisting in the grip of his captor doing anything he could to loosen the iron grip that was around his wrist. In the end, Shinji only ended up cursing his lack of strength as the door to Asuka's room was torn open and he was unceremoniously shoved inside. Once inside the room, however, he blinked in confusion and looked around for a moment trying to orient his senses. The room was pitch black and he couldn't very well see a thing. This momentary lapse of resolve was just enough for his captor – who evidently knew exactly where they were going – to roughly shove him into a chair and bind his wrists behind him with expert ease. These actions only served to make the poor confused EVA pilot even more floundered. Why was he being tied up in Asuka's room?

Shinji had no more time to contemplate this newfound development as a light suddenly came on and was aimed directly towards his eyes. Quickly, the young man turned his head away and tried to wash the green afterglow away from the backs of his eyes by blinking rapidly.

"Wha…who are you?" Shinji asked once he finally gained enough vision to stare back at the silhouetted figure before him. The light, however, made it impossible to determine anything about the figure.

"That is unimportant third," came the voice, strangely distinctive to Shinji's ears. It sounded feminine now that he could hear it clearly, and had that certain ring that Asuka only seemed to have. But Shinji balked at that decision, it couldn't be Asuka! What would she want with him? Why would she drag him to her room in the middle of the night and then tie him to a chair? Shinji swallowed nervously as a thought came unbidden to his mind immediately. Just as quickly he shot that thought away from him as fast as he could. Asuka would never do that with him… or at least maybe not in such a manner. The boy could feel his face begin to flush with embarrassment.

"Get your mind out of the gutter," the shadow told him, giving Shinji a swap across the back of the head just for good measure. "I wish to have a little discussion with you."

Yup, Shinji thought with a grimace of pain. That clinches it, it's definitely Asuka. She has a distinctive feel when her hand connects the back of my head. I'd know that slap anywhere. But still, what in the world would she want to talk to me about to the point where she would have to tie me up like this?

"A-Asuka? Why did you tie me up? Why can't we talk in the morning?" Shinji vocalized his mental concerns with trepidation and more than a hint of fear. There was no telling what his unpredictable roommate would not hesitate to do to him should he not do what she wanted. But curiosity usually seemed to take precedence to pain in her presence, or so Shinji thought ruefully as another cuff came to the back of his head.

"Shut up, baka. I ask the questions here." Asuka bent into the light and let Shinji get an eyeful of her glaring face, and incidentally more than just a peak at what lay underneath her thin and low cut shirt. This had the effect of the young boy immediately closing his mouth and nodding silently, still staring at the space between the other pilot's breasts. Fortunately for his life Asuka could not see exactly where his eyes were looking at due to the shadows cast by the light of her lamp, so she folded herself gently into a chair placed just behind the light and smiled a bit to herself.

"Good, now then, I wish to ask you a few questions about your little friends. The stooge kind."

Shinji only blinked at her. Why would she want to know anything about Touji and Kensuke, two people she had never ever shown any interest in before?

"What about them?" he asked, quietly.

"Oh, come on, Shinji! You can't tell me you don't know what's going on! I know they tell you all sorts of things about their exploits. I know how you feel about it!"

Shinji thought long and hard about what Asuka just said. Touji and Kensuke's exploits? What did she mean by that? Suddenly a smile spread across his face, well far be it for him to question why Asuka wanted to know about that but maybe the sooner this was over with the sooner he could get back to bed. It was just fortunate he didn't have a job to do tonight; otherwise he'd be in serious trouble.

"Oh that!" Shinji said, happily thinking that he would be back in bed in no time.

Asuka sat back and rubbed her hands in glee. Finally! She was going to expose those perverts for who they really were! "Yes, come on! Out with it already!" She impatiently told Shinji, giving his chair a swift kick just for good measure.

"Well, I suppose that it's really no secret but if you want to know I don't mind telling you. You see, Kensuke really needed some help with moving a few things so he called Touji to come over and help him. Well by the time those two were finished they had somehow managed to end up half way across town and covered from head to toe in mud. Now don't ask me why or how that managed to happen but you know Kensuke, some of those harebrained schemes of his are just downright frightening…"

"Enough!" Asuka cut Shinji's monologue off with her hand. "I don't care about some damned harebrained scheme by that geek!"

Shinji just closed his mouth and stared.

"Oh…but I thought you…"

"No, damn it! All I want you to tell me about that damn pervert the Panty Raider! I know those two are working together on it and they tell you everything!" Asuka could barely contain her seething anger and she had to visibly restrain herself from hurting her dense roommate physically several times.

Shinji, for his part instantly shut up at the mention of his alter ego. He was in some serious trouble now. Asuka was after him, and even though she had it completely wrong with the idea that Ken and Touji could be it, a little torture from him could have it coming right out of him like a song. If Asuka knew of his secret then any hope he would have of maybe getting a little closer to the woman would be completely and utterly shot down.

The young pilot began to sweat nervously and tried to stall for time. Unfortunately for him Asuka suddenly decided to switch tactics, as it seemed being rough and mean wasn't getting her anywhere.

"Shinji," she purred and snuggled up to the young man tied to the chair before her. "I know you know something about this. I want you to tell me. Now, please?"

"Just for good measure, Asuka made sure her face was completely visible to the boy and made sure he saw her 'pouty face' that always got her what she wanted with any male. She even allowed her finger to trail up Shinji's sternum and trace his rib line lightly to seal the deal. The young German could see her captive begin to sweat profusely and start to shake uncontrollably. It wouldn't be long now before he broke and spilled the guts.

Shinji was frozen in place. Asuka…sitting on his lap…touching him calling for him with that voice. He couldn't resist! Desperately he tried to summon up his Ikari Business Mode and perhaps be able to shrug off the German's advances. He knew it was just a ruse to get him to tell her what she wanted but still…it felt so…nice.

Damn…Ikari Business Mode failing. Emergency! Emergency! Shinji's mind frantically screamed at him as all his defenses came crumbling down in one fantastic groan. Though thankfully, one final countermeasure managed to kick itself up to the surface before he dissembled completely to the vision before him. Thank god for his nasty habit of stuttering.

"I…I can't tell you, I'm sorry Asuka. I just c-can't!" Shinji closed his eyes and turned away, determined to take whatever punishment his roommate would give him with a minimal amount of looking.

Shinji, expecting a few hits and a lot of cursing was then of course very surprised to find a low dangerous chuckle coming from his fellow's pilots lips instead of a string of cursed.

"Heh heh, Shinji. You didn't have to say anything. Just your reaction alone lets me know that they are guilty. I still don't understand why you insist on protecting those idiots, but that you do is noble." Asuka said in a low voice, still letting herself stay on his lap. It was after all, strangely warm. "Unfortunately for your friends, though, I'm too smart for them and they will rue the day they ever decided to become a bunch of more perverted idiots than they already were. Tomorrow they shall know humiliation like no other. Now I'm afraid it's time for you to get out of my room."

The red headed pilot got up suddenly, but instead of untying her captive she simply just drug him out into the middle of the living room and left him there, disappearing back into her own room chuckling madly.

"Asuka? Hello? Asuka? Don't leave me here…please? Untie me! Asuka??" Shinji called for his roommate helplessly as he struggled in his bounds, the imminent humiliation of his friends, not to mention the humiliation that Asuka will face when she finds out she got it all wrong a far thought in his mind as he fought to free himself.

Finally, the young pilot gave up and slumped in his chair only calling out the name of his captor weakly before falling asleep from exhaustion.

Hours later a tired and grumpy Misato walked in her front door and leaned against it for support. It had been such a long day of paperwork, annoying employees, and Kaji's horrible flirting. All she wanted now was a six pack of her favorite beer and a nice long rest.

Removing her shoes, Misato began to walk into the blackness of her living room, absolutely confident that she could see where she was going simply because she had finally gotten used to her small apartment. That and the fact that with Shinji keeping the house fanatically clean at all times, she could be absolutely confident that nothing would be lying out in the middle of the floor for her to trip on.

So it came as a huge surprise when the purple tressed major fell over a large object right in the middle of the room and all she could let out was a strangled yell before her face planted into the ground.

"What the hell?" Misato got up and flipped on the nearest light then turned around to face the cursed object that had made her trip, expecting some rearranged furniture or something cutesy of her other charge. What she got was the sight of Shinji silently snoring with his chin resting on his chest. What was the most unusual about the scene, of course was not that Shinji was not in his bed sleeping, but instead that the pilot was tied to a chair with his hands bound behind him. It amazed Misato even more that the young man could even sleep like that.

"I don't want to know…I just don't want to know right now." She muttered under her breath and with that took out a fresh six pack of beer from her fridge and wandered over to her bedroom, careful to step around the sleeping form of Shinji. She would yell at Asuka tomorrow, she was too damn tired to do anything tonight.

End

Author's Endnotes: Well, this one certainly took a long time to write. I must simply apologize for that as a huge case of writer's block struck me several times, then I was without a net connection for a while then once I finished this part and sent it away to my reader he agreed with some of my now budding thoughts. That this part was crap, though of course he didn't say it in nearly such crass terms. ^_^. So I scrapped a goodly portion of it and took a look at it again with some fresh ideas (no few thanks to Dante for coming up with). What I got is now something a little closer to what I had originally planned for this fic than what my previous part had. Hopefully now the humor is not as stale as it was in the last re-write – which thankfully you, the general public, never will have to be submitted to. Let me know what you think! I kind of like the way Rei is going, what about you guys? ::Evil smile:: We'll see you all in the fourth and final installment of Panty Raider: Final Raid!

Thanks again to my pre-reader Dante! You were a big help in this fic and I am in your debt, especially now that you saved my ass from putting out a crappy part and helped me see the vision which I truly had!

P.S. Oh yeah, that pumpkin queen joke is a subtle nod towards one of my favorite comedies of all time: "Shinji the Casanova" by Strike Fiss. If you haven't read that one yet, you really need to, it's hilarious!