IV – "Face it"

"Engaging the enemy!" reached Shinji via the comms, and the trembling of the ground – an all too well-known sign of a charging Evangelion – followed seconds later.

'She is going to kill him', a grim thought appeared in his mind. 'She always fights like crazy, she's always ignoring her safety, but she is good, she'll manage, she's not in danger', a parallel thought, trying to rationalise away his fear for Asuka's life that gripped his guts. 'But I should be there, helping her!' he realised as he heard another frantic report from Asuka; the enemy seemed to be far too good at dodging for an Evangelion, and it was now clear it became something more. 'This whole tactic is simply not working! I can't just stand here! If we do it together, we could save Toji!'

"Permission to assist Unit-01, sir!" he suddenly demanded, to the surprise of everyone – except his own and another, suddenly smiling soul.

"Negative", came the immediate, almost angry response of Commander Ikari. "Hold your position. You will engage the target as the final resort."

"But sir!" he tried to protest. "This is not–"

"Hold your position, Pilot Ikari", came a repeated, insistent order from the Command Centre.

Shinji could feel a wave of anger rising, growing with every word he heard. "Sir! Asuka is fighting without support!"

"Silence, Pilot", came a terse reply. Shinji shivered at the tone. "Do not question your fellow Pilot's abilities. You will engage when ordered, not sooner."

Shinji did not reply to that; he refused to believe that trying to convince his father was a waste of time and effort – but for the moment, he felt like he was hitting a wall. And breaking an order, despite the circumstances, still felt like an impossible feat for him. Seeing no other option for him at the moment, he simply focused on what was coming on his comm lines in the hope he could support Asuka this way.

...

Meanwhile on the battlefield

'This thing is something else', Asuka realised quickly enough to avoid another strike delivered from an angle it has no business coming from. 'Evangelion is just a shell, it's a full Angel!' followed – and she had to quickly suppress the dreadful 'I can't beat it alone'. It was, after all, a sentiment that had no place in her mind: she was here alone, and she was going to defeat it. And not just defeat: she was going to disable it, pull the Plug out, and only then tear the enemy to pieces. She might not have had the same feelings towards the boy inside as Shinji did: it was no secret that she considered him dumb, boorish, and obnoxious. But he was a fellow Pilot, a fellow warrior, perhaps even a battle brother with some – well, a lot, but still – stretch of the imagination, no matter how crap he might have been otherwise.

And taking someone like that hostage was a crime deserving only one punishment – a brutal death. Also, that dumb boy was Shinji's friend, so saving him from this mess would make Shinji happy beyond measure – and making the idiot happy was something she actually liked doing.

Unfortunately, Asuka did not seem to be able to execute that particular death sentence – and that particular good deed – with any reasonable effectiveness. Her main issue was that fighting to disable was, by its very nature, considerably harder than fighting to kill. The fact that the enemy did not seem to have the same scruples was only adding to the quickly growing list of Asuka's issues. 'I might have a problem' was the main sentiment in her head right now, aside from a quickly diminishing array of her tactical options.

'Scheiße!' came through her mind when yet another blow from an odd angle dented her armour and winded her for a short moment. She knew that both this effect and her increasingly heavy breathing were nothing but psychosomatic reactions – after all, it was her Unit that was doing the effort, not her, and bodies of Evangelions were quite durable compared to the human body – but that awareness notwithstanding, it was her who felt increasingly tired. She had always preferred quick victories – dominating and destroying the enemy with her brilliant tactics, with her unquestionable wit, with the doubtless skill of her manoeuvre, or – if everything else failed – with her sheer might and undisputable agility.

Except that the chance to do just that was diminishing with every strike that she failed to deliver, with every dent that appeared in her armour, and with every just barely successful dodge. It was not that she was not landing any strikes, no – the enemy was bleeding from several wounds already; the problem is that this seemed to do nothing to the target – and Unit-02 was becoming beaten up with every exchange of blows. It was becoming increasingly obvious that no matter how she refused to admit it, she was facing the enemy who had every conceivable advantage over her: it was faster, more agile, able to dodge most of her attacks, and – most likely – less prone to getting tired. Moreover, it held a hostage, making most of her possible approaches too risky to consider, let alone apply.

And her awareness that Shinji would likely hate her if she failed to save the gorilla was making it even worse.

'Great', a thought appeared in her mind, 'What can I do if I can't disable the bastard? I can either kill it and have the boy I love hate me forever if I as much as wound his friend… or die to it and still fail to save his friend! Some alternative! Or worse, the idiot would not hate me, since he would die next! No!' a sudden determination filled her as she realised the grim necessity of what had to be done. 'I have no choice. God above, I know I really suck at praying, and I won't beg for my life… but at the very least let me not fail the ones that rely on me–'

Her impromptu prayer got suddenly interrupted by a stabbing pain in her side; she did reflexively move out of the way of the blow, but since she was paying not enough attention, some of the force of the attack connected and made yet another, worryingly deep, dent in the armour.

She shook the pain off and focused on the enemy form landing after it delivered the strike. "I'm sorry, Toji", she whispered with genuine sadness mixed with rising anger toward the Angel. "Forgive me, Shinji" she added with an even quieter voice, this time underscored only with sadness; a few tears she shed dissolved in the surrounding LCL without a trace.

Bracing the half-broken knife against her body, she assumed the position – and started her charge at the target.

At that moment, a sudden 'Asuka, gib Acht!' sprang in her mind, seemingly from nowhere – and she realised that the Angel's body started to rapidly change: bone-tipped tentacles burst from the flesh of the creature at the newly opened slits, three of them anchoring the abomination in place and the rest stiffening in the front of the gaunt body, forming sharp pikes ready to take the Unit-02. Asuka's eyes widened in fear as she quickly recognised the obvious, cold, and cruel truth: her inertia was too great, and thus, she had no chance to stop in time.

She knew that no matter how much she tried, there was only one outcome: Unit-02 would be pierced and impaled, she would suffer horribly, she was quite likely going to die in agony, and all she ever did before that moment would have been in vain.

'Forgive me, Shinji', she pleaded in her mind as her eyes closed, her tears mixed with the LCL once more. 'See you soon, Mama…'

A moment later, horrible pain rippled through her body, clouding her vision and making her scream.

It took her a few seconds to realise that this pain was wrong: was not coming from her torso or arms as she would have expected from where the enemy held the weapons, but from her legs – and her vision and her sense of balance suggested that she was, right now, ploughing the rice fields with her face. A burst of pain coming from her neck along with another feeling of vertigo followed, invalidating any attempts to get her bearings. She felt dizzy, she was in horrible pain, and quite sure that she should be dead or dying by now – but was, somehow, still alive despite Unit-02 being, without a doubt, mangled in a nasty manner. The only thing she could vocalise at the moment was a simple question: "Was zur neunten Hölle war das?!"

Since there was no reply of any kind in the hectic but still composed comm chatter, she quickly tried to move her hands; they worked, at least as much as it was possible in this position. When she tried to do the same with her legs though, the feedback made her curse aloud from the pain; she quickly decided that she does not want to try that again, at least not for the moment. Next, she tried to move her head – and it had, to her rapidly growing irritation, a similar result; the wave of pain told her that it was a distinctly bad idea and reminded her of several more German expletives she eagerly and loudly shared with anyone that could be listening.

She was, of course, quite happy to be alive.

But this life was definitely far too painful for her comfort. And she was not going to keep her opinion about that to herself.

Even if nobody seemed to care.

...

"Pilot Ayanami, prepare to engage", came over the comms in the voice of Gendo Ikari, directed at Unit-00. "Unit-02 had been disabled. The enemy is coming your way."

"Yes, sir", Rei Ayanami confirmed in her usual, calm voice and focused on the situation awaiting her.

Unit-02 seemed to have failed and was likely heavily damaged. For some reason that thought filled her with worry, worry that went beyond the expected reaction to the loss of support in battle. It felt, for an unfathomable reason, personal.

Rei Ayanami paused for just a moment.

She understood the concept of personal feelings, of course; contrary to what others thought of her, she was not emotionless. She had feelings, preferences, emotions, and goals. They were just far less pronounced than those of her fellow Pilots and her classmates: they were mostly aimless, their attention scattered across numerous things, while hers was focused on her role, the role that was quintessential to the Commander's Scenario. It was not that she did not have any personal interests or distractions more appropriate to her perceived age – they were just not really important.

But this was different. This felt like her worry was specifically focused on Unit-02 – on the Evangelion, not on the Pilot.

And she did not understand it.

Her musings were suddenly interrupted by the yelling over the comms, yelling that came in a voice that almost palpably radiated with anger. "Zur Hölle mit euch! Of course I got disabled! I was whacked over by this fucker, if I had someone to watch my back, I'd still be fine!" Asuka yelled. "Ayanami, watch your back, this fuck shapeshifts!"

"Acknowledged", Rei replied.

She did not understand the wave of relief that washed over her, either.

But there was little time left to muse over that. Her enemy was approaching, and it was her duty to kill it.

There would be time for musings later.

After all, she always did have a lot of time.

...

'What am I supposed to do?' rang in Shinji Ikari's mind in several variants, his fear, worry, and despair growing. 'Asuka is down, she's alive, but can't do much… I hope she's not injured, I can't help her now! Maybe Ayanami is going to stop him… but will she be able to protect Toji? He is still there! And… if she fails, then I have to fight this… Angel?! Evangelion? with Toji inside… I can't! But… if I don't…'

All this was rattling in his head all the time; he was alternating between bouts of panic and moments of calm – and he was under the impression that the only thing keeping him from falling to it was the realisation that this was, most likely, going to bring death, cause destruction, and make Asuka hate him.

And so, he kept hoping for many things: that Unit-00 would stop the Angel without harming Toji; that the Entry Plug would somehow come loose during the fighting and land somewhere safe; and, finally, despite his fears, that he could help resolve this situation somehow – preferably without having to fight.

The thought he refused to allow himself was that it would take a miracle for any of those to happen.

And NERV was not known for miracles.

...

Meanwhile, not too far away

Rei Ayanami was never a very good Pilot. She was, without a doubt, reliable: she remained calm in most situations and she was quite well trained – but her synch rate was never high and while she was motivated to fight as a part of her unwavering faith in the Scenario, she was never truly devoted to it. There was no driving force behind her fighting; she fought because she was told to fight, just as she would die if she was told to die.

And the latter seemed to be quite likely an outcome right now.

It was not that the enemy was particularly powerful; it certainly lacked any high-energy attacks that would pose a serious threat. Rei was also not very concerned with the Pilot, likely stuck in the Entry Plug partially sticking out of the ex-Unit-03 neck. First, Unit-00 fire would be directed at the front, limiting the danger to the said Pilot by shielding him with the matter of the Angel's body; second, the defeat of the Angel was the priority, since its victory would mean death to all, and thus, the concern for anyone stuck in it was secondary in the face of potential annihilation; third, the situation could not be resolved in any practical manner while the Angel was active – and she deemed an attempt at subduing it an ineffective tactic.

The problem was different: the Angel was both difficult to hit and capable of delivering numerous small blows that were quickly accumulating and making the always-unwieldy Unit-00 even less able to match its agility.

The fact that Pilot Soryu seemed to shout out a large amount of chaotic and not very useful advice in a rather profane manner using an odd mix of Japanese, English, and German was also definitely not helping Rei's performance.

The Angel dodged another of her shots as it performed an improbable, gravity-defying manoeuvre, landed, and launched another strike with an appendage it seemed to hide under the armour until now.

"Ayanami, watch for the spikes!" Lieutenant Ibuki warned.

Rei felt a sudden, uncharacteristic annoyance and a desire to reply with a request not to waste her time with obvious advice – but decided it would serve no purpose other than further demoralise the Command Centre. "I will take it under consideration", she replied instead while firing another volley, checking the ammunition count, and watching for the signs of a counterattack.

Not that it helped her against an opponent whose movements defied gravity – and who did not care much about damaging its own body.

Rei Ayanami was used to feeling pain; it was, after all, a constant companion in her life, be it from the imperfections of her body, the psychosomatic side effects of her soul's incompleteness, flaws of her prototype Unit carrying over via the synchronisation, or finally the repeating ravages of battle. But being used to it did not mean, of course, that she stopped hating it, even if the hate was somewhat subdued, just as all her sensations were.

And this pain was even more pronounced; it was coupled with a gnawing sense of having failed someone, a feeling that came a moment after a series of vicious strikes disabled the legs of her Unit and kept sending wave upon wave of pain through her body, crowned with a powerful blow to the lower torso that made her vision go dark for a few seconds. When she regained her bearings, she realised that the Angel was just atop her – and something odd was starting to drip on her.

The next few seconds were a mix of pain, a horrifying sensation of a vile presence that was definitely not her own, and the sound of her own screams.

But in all that suffering, there was something else, something that gripped her attention for a moment: a wordless, distinct and unknown, but at the same time, a confusingly familiar presence that suddenly made her feel far less alone – and far more able to endure what was happening to her.

"Unit-00 is severely damaged, the pilot is wounded!" a message in a tone Rei disliked pierced through her confused mind and banished the familiar feeling; that almost shrieking tone strongly contrasted with the one she remembered with a memory that was also not exactly her own, one patient and calm. She tried to place it, she tried to match it with a face, she tried to–

"Pilot Ayanami, eject, I'm sending retrieval force" interrupted her. Another wave of displeasure and dismay passed through her, augmented by very similar feelings from her Unit-00 – but there was very little she could do now.

And so, she quietly obeyed, her relief of the pain ending with the synchronisation cut tainted with her understandable worry for Shinji Ikari – and her inexplicable worry for Unit-02's predicament and the danger Unit-01 was in.

...

"Pilot Soryu, eject as well", Maya Ibuki's voice turned her attention to Asuka; that voice was still worryingly close to sounding panicked, but Asuka had to begrudgingly give the Lieutenant the credit – despite the rather dire situation and obviously growing fear, she managed to perform to the NERV standards. "There's nothing you can do now and you're just exacerbating the damage on Unit-02."

"Ah fuck that, don't feed me that bullshit, I can still do something!" Asuka still protested with vitriol in her tone as she kept crawling across the rice fields, ignoring the pain and the persistent warning on her displays; after all, it was not so bad if she did not try to stand up. And she could bear the pain; it was not as bad as the stampede of the increasingly dark thoughts inside her head, after all: 'Wondergirl got disabled, so much for the brilliant plan of the Commander Can't Command For Shit… Where's Misato when you need someone with actual battle experience?! And now it's all on the idiot, and my only chance to do anything is to crawl up to him and do something… and he is going to need my help. He always does!'

"Pilot Soryu, you're essentially immobile, have no useful weapons, and are nearly at the maximum range of your cord. Eject", the voice of Lieutenant Ibuki sounded again, having the sole effect of making Asuka more annoyed. "Please", the Lieutenant added, her almost pleading tone making things even worse.

'I don't need you to pity me! He. Needs. My. Help.'' rattled in her head. "Focus on helping that idiot, okay?" she demanded aloud in response, her tone angry and openly hostile. "He's going to need all the help you can give him! And let me worry about my cabling myself!"

Unit-02 kept crawling in the mud, Asuka's mood now far beyond sour and quickly approaching acidic – especially since her conviction that this was the right thing to do started to go thin – and the power cable was quickly going taut. The sight of the enemy performing another of its weird manoeuvres in the distance did not help her at all.

'He's going to get himself killed for that brainless jock', she realised. 'If only I had been less sentimental… that's where listening to boys gets you, Soryu', she chided herself. 'Don't listen to him! Okay, maybe in the kitchen he knows what he's doing, but not on the battlefield! Not when it comes to something that I've been trained about for most of my life! Hostage lives are important, yes, but not as important as yours!'

A stray thought was telling her to listen to the orders, telling her that the pain could be too much to bear – but she ignored it. She was not going to give up – and, in the end, she seemed to be right; the pain abated not long after and she was able to keep crawling. "I hope you're happy, Third", she quietly, her thoughts entirely focused on Shinji. "Now you're on your own, idiot! Use your brain!"

Of course, she was not entirely convinced the intended recipient of those words had a functioning brain right now. At least it did not seem to be so from the discussion he was having right now with the Command Centre.

...

"The target is approaching you", Shinji heard from the Command Centre in a voice he did not want to hear. "It will contact you in twenty. You must destroy it."

"But this target is… there is a Pilot there!" he tried to object as he watched the oddly shaped figure, an almost-but-not-quite-Evangelion, approach and stop for a short moment; he suddenly felt watched, observed, almost scrutinised. 'Like a bug on a pin… is this what we are for them? Bugs to be squashed?' a stray thought appeared in his mind. The cavalcade of thoughts that rumbled in his head a few moments ago departed without leaving any useful conclusion, leaving him in an unchanged state of indecision, confusion, worry, and borderline panic – a state he knew was a very bad one to have in the battlefield.

"This is irrelevant", the Commander cut him off. "You have your orders. Carry them out."

"But–" Shinji tried to protest again – only for the orders to be simply repeated in a more insistent tone.

His attempt at objecting a third time never left his lips: the ex-Unit-03 suddenly roared and leapt at him, making him land on his back in the mud and lose his breath. Unit-01 recovered to its feet quickly enough, but the Angel wasted no time; one of its limbs elongated suddenly. A moment of confusion on Shinji's part – and a very late attempt at dodging – ended up with a hand on Unit-01's throat, momentarily joined by another, similarly elongated and just as strong. Shinji tried to scream, but while nothing really constricted his throat, it did not matter.

Something was telling him to fight, to do it not for his father, but for Asuka, for himself, even for humanity. He pushed that thought aside. He knew his death would bring nothing; he knew it was pointless – but fighting his own feelings was an impossibility. Even the dim realisation that he could still try, make an attempt at breaking the enemy's hands, or at least aim around the Plug – all this no longer mattered; his world was slowly going dark.

"Problems in life support! The Pilot's in danger!" came from a distance in the voice of Lieutenant Ibuki.

"Not good! Cut the synch rate to 60%!" the Vice-Commander's voice ordered.

"Wait!" the Commander's voice interjected firmly. "Shinji, why don't you fight?"

It took Shinji a few seconds to realise this was question directed at him; as much as he did not want to answer, he felt compelled to do so: "Toji is in there, Father!" he tried in a strained voice.

"Irrelevant!" Gendo Ikari's voice was firm. "It is an Angel! Our enemy!"

"But… but I can't!" Shinji protested with increasing effort; the pressure on his throat felt like it was increasing. "I've got to save him! I just can't let him die!"

"You'll die", Gendo stated dispassionately; a stray, angry thought in Shinji's head just noted it as another proof that he, personally, never mattered to his father.

"I don't care! It's better than killing Toji!" Shinji managed to get out. "I won't – I won't fight!" he exclaimed – or, more precisely, tried to exclaim; the psychosomatic sensation of being choked made it impossible to give those words the appropriate tone. "I'm sorry, Toji. I can't save you… and… Asuka… I hope you'll get out of this alive… somehow…" he whispered.

The delicate touch of a hand on his cheek felt unreal; he realised it had to be a hallucination of a dying mind. But it did not matter. He welcomed it, nonetheless, along with the comfort it provided.

...

"Never mind! Cut all synchronisation between the pilot and Unit-01", the Commander suddenly ordered.

"Cut it?" Lieutenant Ibuki asked, suddenly sounding more confused than panicked or concerned.

"Correct. Switch the control circuit to the dummy plug", the Commander confirmed firmly.

"But the dummy plug system still has a lot of problems, and without Doctor Akagi's approval…" Lieutenant Ibuki protested.

"It'll be of more use than the pilot", the Commander explained curtly. "Do it!"

"Yes, sir", the Lieutenant nodded and started to type the commands into the console. She might not have been shown the details of the program – but all the necessary systems were in place and she knew well how to activate them.

She also knew enough to fear that option.

...

The jolt of having the synchronisation cut along with his eyesight suddenly returning and the sudden lack of pain brought Shinji back to reality – just in time to realise that the inside of the Entry Plug was no longer providing any visual input; it was nothing but emergency lighting now.

Confused, he tried to do something – but quickly enough, he realised that all he could do was to helplessly tug at the controls. He could not understand what was going on; his father gave up on talking to him, issued a few odd orders–

"What is this?" he asked in an increasingly panicked voice as he saw a few red lights coming up inside the Plug, heard an odd hum rising around him, and felt the Unit he was in making a few jerky moves, so very different from ones he was used to. Taking a quick look around, he noticed the large label OPERATION DUMMY SYSTEM displayed in glowing, red letters on one of the modules behind his seat. "What did you do, Father?!" he yelled out, his voice fearful; he was now a prisoner inside an Evangelion, locked in the plug without any control over anything except his own body. 'No… I'm just like Toji now. Did Father just do this to me? Did he do this to Toji, too?' he suddenly realised the horrifying similarity. "Father! Answer me!" he demanded, his tone a mix of fear, anger, and desperation.

There was no answer from the Command Centre, though; instead, a few more red lights went up inside the Plug and a few more jerky moves shook his surroundings, indicating that something bad was about to happen – and he was going to have no control over it. 'Asuka… I'm sorry… Toji… forgive me…' were his last thoughts as he closed his eyes and waited for the unknown but inevitable end.

But the end refused to come; the steadily rising hum suddenly fizzled out, sunlight pierced his eyelids – and once he opened his eyes, the outside was visible again – and the red lights around him were almost gone.

Confused, he looked around and saw additional words appear on the device – words like FATAL, ERROR, and EMERGENCY. He craned his head to get a better look – and this was the moment that a wave of unbelievable anger and fury, coming seemingly from nowhere, hit him – and a sound reached him through the LCL and the Evangelion's body, a sound that was a source of both hope and terror.

It was an ear-piercing, bone-splitting, soul-piercing roar.

...

"The response signal is in… critical error! The system is not responding!" Lieutenant Ibuki reported; a few tense seconds passed as she tapped at the keyboard. "Correction! The response signal is gone! Unit-01 indicates the system is damaged!"

"Explain", the Commander demanded, his voice wavering for the first time since the battle began.

"I – I cannot, sir! Unit-01 no longer accepts input to the Dummy Plug system! It no longer accepts–"

The sudden roar interrupted her frantic report, freezing her on the spot and heralding another awakening of an Evangelion.

...

A wave after wave of anger was washing over Shinji; he was, once more, feeling the pain of having his throat crushed – but it was no longer crippling him. Now, it was just making him angrier.

He was not entirely sure at whom was he so angry – but it did not matter that much right now. All that mattered was the death of that thing in front of him, a thing that hurt Asuka and Rei, a thing that held his friend hostage, a thing that simply offended him by its very existence.

A small part of his mind was telling him that this was wrong, that this was not his anger, that his real enemy was someone else, that he should stop – but he paid that voice no heed. The fury in him was simply stronger, and the man that deserved to die from it was too far.

For now.

Shinji felt like there was no longer a distinction between his hands and the hands of the Evangelion; he grabbed both of the elongated arms of the monster in front of him in one motion – and snapped both of them in one quick gesture.

The Angel howled – and Unit-01 responded with another roar, pulling the enemy to itself by the bleeding appendages and rising from the half-prone position in the process. A hard punch delivered to the Angel's abdomen pushed it away for a second – only for it to become a target for a vicious, if surprisingly precise, beating coming from Unit-01. A blow fell after blow, all of them focused on the front of the Angel's torso; the metal on the Unit-01's hand began to crack and hiss in contact with the occasional burst of Angel's ichor – but the assault finally exposed the Core.

Unit-01 roared again – but instead of just punching, it grabbed the ex-Unit-03 head by the neck with a surprisingly precise motion, pulled it closer – and delivered a powerful knee-kick into the Core. Seeing no real effect, it growled – and kept repeating the blow, again and again, putting steadily increasing pressure on the neck of the creature.

When the cracks started to appear, Unit-01 roared again, headbutted the top of the Angel's head – and when a part of the damaged helmet fell off, bit into the exposed tissue.

The Angel's dying wail carried over the valley; the final kick in the Core was merely a coup de grace.

...

"Eva Unit-03, no, I mean the target, I mean the Angel, it is completely silent", the voice of Lieutenant Aoba cut through the stunned silence of the Command Centre. "Unit-01, stand down and return to the retrieval point."

There was no answer – and the observation station still showed the Unit-01 methodically dismembering the Angel, limb by limb.

"Pilot Ikari, stand down", the Commander ordered. "The enemy was defeated."

This also had very little effect. It took the ex-Unit-03 reduction to a mangled, headless torso for the Unit-01 to suddenly drop to one knee – and freeze in that position.

"It is finished" came a grave voice, a voice that was simultaneously angry, defiant, hateful, and – first and foremost – tired. "Just as you wanted, Father."

Gendo Ikari did not reply – and nobody dared to look upon his face to watch the man's reaction.

...

Asuka Langley Soryu, still refusing to eject from her damaged Unit but no longer trying to test the tensile strength of the power cable, shivered at the roar. 'Shit. Again. What the Hell is about this Unit? Or is it him? So much pent-up anger, that he makes even an Evangelion mad?!'

She could barely see what was going on but judging from the stunned silence of the Command Centre and the fact that the battle was still raging, she could conclude that Shinji was winning – or, at the very least, not losing. She felt a small prick of envy in her heart; 'how come he did better than I? I'm the warrior here, he's just a reluctant tag-along!'

A sprout of something appeared in the distance; Asuka did not have to make a guess what that is, all she could hope was that it was coming from the Angel and not the machine her boyfriend was piloting. 'If that's him, then it seems that this anger – what the Hell?!' she reacted to an object landing just a few metres away from her.

It was a huge head, missing an eye, cracked, bloodied, and marred by teeth marks.

'God above. I'd better never make him angry again. And I thought that I had a temper…' a stray thought appeared in Asuka's mind as she tried her best to contain her revulsion at the gruesome sight. 'That's some "Seven against Thebes" level of fucked-up…' a more rational part of her mind added before the not unexpected, but somewhat embarrassing wave of relief at him having survived the battle took over the moment his report of the victory came in.

She knew it was not over for them. She still had a problem with him over his stupid stubbornness, and she knew all too well that he will have a problem with her over her actions – and she was definitely not happy with how all this went.

But this would not be the first time they disagreed, and she was not going to let it tear them apart. But this had to wait; as her breathing slowly became steadier and she calmed down, the pain of the shattered bones finally reached her in full force. And so, she decided it was finally time to leave.

"Pilot of Unit-02, ejecting", she reported to nobody in particular. "Send someone to pick me up once you're done with the idiot, okay?" she added, doing her best to sound flippant – but, most likely, convincing no one.

...

The darkness of the night surrounding Shinji Ikari would be calming if not for the odd smell, spreading even in the LCL, most likely coming from the damaged module – and for the fact that it would take a lot more to calm him down right now.

He was still angry. Angry at his father for forcing him to fight, angry at Asuka – and, to some degree, at Rei as well – for not taking his warnings and pleas seriously, angry at himself for giving in to the fury. He was also angry at Unit-01 itself for fuelling his fury, perhaps even causing it; he remembered how strange it felt in the beginning, and for all he knew, the whole module malfunction might have triggered this berserk. His anger – especially at his father – was augmented by the uncertainty gnawing at him; he did not know what happened, and, as usual, nobody was telling him anything.

On the other hand, he had to admit that he had a surprising amount of control for a berserk – and his anger was mitigated, even if just a bit, by the good news of Toji's survival. This was actually the reason he was waiting right now – since he and Asuka were clearly not injured, Toji and Rei were evacuated first – both of them for immediate medical assistance and observation for possible contamination.

But all the good news could not calm what was boiling in his heart.

And, if he was to be honest with himself, he did not want it to calm down.

"Shinji?" a sudden voice interrupted his dark thoughts.

"Misato-san!" he called out, relieved that at least one of his worries was unfounded. "Are you all right?"

There was a long pause, one that made his stomach sink once more before the voice on the other side responded. "I'm fine, Shinji. But… I owe you an apology", she started – and carried on before he could protest.

And to his regret, this conversation did little more than change whom exactly was he angry at.