Somewhere In September (An Eva Fanfic)
By Synaid1066@hotmail.com
Based upon this art:
"Awwww! Why do WE have to go in there?!" Asuka, as usual, was rejecting anything that was not her idea or would not make her look good. While Shinji would have never dared speak it aloud, he wondered if perhaps there was some dial on the back of her neck, and Asuka only had two settings, sweet and nice, and snobbish bitch.
The trio of pilots, Asuka, Shinji and Rei, were standing before what looked to be their three cockpits without the entry tubes. The three cockpits were back to back to back, connected together by use of a large black cylinder, Ritsuko having explained it as a network hub that would connect the three pilots to the three magi super computers.
"Asuka, we've explained this to you before. It's a test." Ritsuko didn't bother looking away from her clipboard. "You three were chosen because you already know how to synch up with other systems. It could take weeks to train other people. It's perfectly safe so all three of you are going."
"Doctor A-Akagi?"
"Yes Shinji?" For some reason, Ritsuko did happen to look up for him, though her gaze avoided Asuka and Rei all together. "What is it?"
"What is the test for? A-and what will it do to us?" There was a moment of silence from the blond doctor, and Shinji thought he'd said something wrong. He hung his head and quickly mumbled out an apology.
"It's not you, Shinji, I was thinking of how best to describe it." Ritsuko tapped her clipboard against her hip. "There are two theories on the human soul. One is that no matter what body your soul was in, it would still make the same choices no matter what. However, if you changed the personality, even if your soul was still in your body, the decisions you make in life would be completely different from what you would have made normally. Thus, your soul does not affect your fate, but is affected by the fate you choose. The other is that no matter what kind of personality you had, not matter what form you had, if it was your soul, you would always make the choices you would make normally, thus your soul decides your fate. Do you understand all this, Shinji?"
"Kinda..."
"Oh like you understood a word that came out of her mouth, idiot." Asuka stuck her nose in the air, not wishing to admit that she'd only 'kinda' understood it herself. "What about you, First Child, what do you think of this? Or do you even have an opinion?"
"I would... like to see the results of this test." Rei's usually hesitant speech was in full effect, but there was a certain hunger to her crimson eyes. "If a simple change in one's self is all that's required to change one's destiny, then perhaps-"
"Oh shut up. You're only doing it because you were ordered to." Asuka shouldered Shinji out of the way and moved to the red seat marked 02. "What will it do to us, exactly?"
"The Magi will circumvent your brains' ability to access its memories and instead shunt it to its own false memories for each of you. Having lived a different life will mean you should respond differently to stimuli, in essence giving you a new personality." Ritsuko had gone back to flipping through the pages attached to the clipboard. You won't have any memory of NERV, the Evas, the angels or of ever having been pilots. For all intents and purposes, you'll be typical seventeen year olds."
"Seventeen year olds?" Shinji and Asuka asked it simultaneously.
"Yes, we decided to advance your ages within the virtual world we'll be creating simply to get more adult responses for you. The older you are the more experiences you'll have theoretically had, and thus the greater the chance for the difference in your responses. Not so old to have been totally jaded by the real world and not so young as to give identical responses as anyone your age would. We would have actually pushed you closer to twenty, but we didn't quite get done finishing up our false memories of you."
"So Shinji might get a spine. I'd do this just to see that." Asuka had climbed into her seat, and noticed it contoured to her body just as well as her Eva cockpit would have. "What about the virtual world? Did you fabricate that too?"
"No that will actually be created by the three of you."
"How will we-" Asuka had reached the end of Ritsuko's tolerance for questions. Ritsuko slammed the clipboard on a table and looked pointedly at Rei and Shinji, who instantly got the message and climbed into their respective seats.
"Now, just act as you'd synch up normally. It'll feel a little weird because you'll not only by synching up with the system, but each other as well." Ritsuko watched as one by one the triangle of children closed their eyes and allowed themselves to absorb and be absorbed by the system. A beep from a nearby terminal told Ritsuko all she needed to know. The Rei, Shinji and Asuka that the world knew was gone for a while, and their new memories and personalities were falling into place, as their united subconscious's created a world for them.
***
A girl leaned against a red, sporty looking car. She absently smoked a cigarette, blowing the smoke through her nose and letting it rise up to sting her eyes. She was waiting for someone, and not good-naturedly either. Her eyes were narrowed with impatience, focused more on the burning end of her cigarette than the large orange doors she knew they'd walk out of. She absently rubbed the tattoo on her right bicep. It'd had been a year since she'd had it done and it no longer hurt, but it had become a nervous habit. The orange doors she was pointedly not looking at slammed open just to slam again upon closing. Two sets of light footsteps told her that it wasn't the vice principal of the school coming out to make his lunch time patrol of the parking lot.
"Where the hell have you two been?" She asked, still not bothering to look in the footsteps direction, she knew who it was without looking, she'd have know those footsteps anywhere.
"What business is it of yours, Demon?" Another girl's voice responded back, the footsteps halting.
The smoking girl brushed her died blue hair out of her eyes and dropped the cigarette she had been smoking to the ground, grinding it out with the heal of her left combat boot. She rotated her eyes, crimson due to special contacts she had bought. Between her constant smoking and those red eyes, along with her constant choices of unnatural hair colors, she had long ago earned the nickname of 'Demon.' "Oh shut the fuck up, Asuka. I hate that name. We should call you Demon, you're the one with the red hair."
"The only place Asuka's a demon is in bed." A male voice spoke up. Demon focused her eyes on him, taking in his dark black hair (She knew it was naturally chestnut, but liked it in this midnight black dye job), his piercing ice blue eyes (one of the few sets of eyes in the school that could meet her own gaze head on), his multi-pierced ears (no less than four piercing visible in his left ear, though she knew he was closer to six in each ear), the black, leather collar around his neck just above the barcode tattoo (only the two of them and no one else, not even Asuka, knew that Demon had an identical one on the inside of her left thigh), the long sleeved gray shirt with the black short sleeved shirt worn over it and the baggy black pants that not even the world's greatest belt could keep up.
"Oh like you ever fucked her in a bed." Demon scrunched her eyebrows together, trying to keep from smiling. "It's always in the back of a car or in the bathroom. That's why you're late this time, wasn't it? The two of you were off fucking somewhere."
"Why do you want to know, Rei?" The boy stepped forward, forcing Demon's breast to crush against his chest and their crotches to rub against one another. "Want to join us next time or something?"
Not one to back down, she matched the boy move for move and soon had him backed against another car, caught in the same pose he'd had her in a moment ago. "Forget the little girl, Shinji. You can have a real woman, like me."
"All right, bitch!" Asuka grabbed Rei the Demon by the shoulder and pulled her off Shinji, the two coming apart with a sound much like Velcro. "It's ok if we get to fuck him together, but no way am I letting you fuck him alone."
"Not even if I pay you?" Rei turned her back on Shinji and winked at Asuka.
"There's no way you have enough money." Asuka kept her expression stern since Shinji could still see her face, but gave a slight nod to let Rei know she had gotten the message. "You still owe me twenty bucks!"
"Then I'll just have to rape him."
"Oooooh! Kinky!" Asuka cooed. "Tell me when and where so I can secretly tape it. We'd make a killing selling copies around school."
"Fine, I give up, damnit." Shinji was the first to break. "We were dodging Hackleford. He was on the second floor so we tried to go around him by going to the third floor but that was where he was headed so we had to go all the way down to the first to get pass him."
"You sure you weren't fucking?" Rei leaned close to Asuka, sniffing. "She smells like sex."
"Oh give it up ya pervert!" Shinji rolled his eyes. "Are we going somewhere or are we going to stand here talking about sex all day?"
The two girls glanced at each other for only half a second and then in unison replied, "SEX!"
"Screw it." Shinji opened the door of the car Rei had been leaning against. "I'm going to McDonalds. You two can go fingers yourself."
"We can't miss out on French Fries!" Asuka yanked Shinji out of the driver seat by his arm, and climbed in to the cramped back seat, Rei quickly scrambling in after her. "McDonald's French Fries are better than sex!"
Shinji sighed and wondered how he had ended up with these two as his best friends.
Life didn't matter. Nothing really mattered. Or at least that is what Rei would have anyone believe. She had worked hard on her aloof attitude, "really getting in touch with her inner bitch," as Asuka had put it once. She wouldn't admit it to anyone, not anyone, but there was one thing she cared about...
"Shiiiiiinji," Rei leaned forward between the front seats, making sure her right breast rested on the dark haired boy's shoulder. "Want to catch the new X-Men movie Friday night?"
"Pffft!" Asuka blew a raspberry. "Like any of them have been good since the second one. Why would we want to see that?"
"Did I invite you, bitch?" Rei almost twisted her head back around to look at Asuka, but had kept her right breast touching Shinji. "The three of us aren't a unit, ya know!"
"Oh realllllly?" Asuka leaned back, arching her back and pushing her hips out a bit. "If that's so, then why don't Shinji and I go to the movie Friday night?"
"You don't want to see it, bitch." Rei turned her attention back to Shinji. "But you want to see it with me, don't you?"
"Rei?"
"Yes, Shinji?" She put on the sweetest expression she could manage, and blew in his ear.
"If you don't stop using my shoulder as a replacement for your right bra cup, I'm going to crash the car." Shinji twitched his shoulder to drive the point home. "Set your slutty ass down, and put your seatbelt on. If you die in a car accident it's me who goes to jail."
As Rei plopped into her seat defeated, she noted the smug expression on Asuka's face. She wanted to just smack it off, a sudden ach of pride springing up in her chest. Instead, she settled for something a lot easier to belt out. "Fuck Toy."
"Bitch." Asuka smiled sweetly as she said it, then winked at Shinji in the rear view mirror.