Disclaimer: See first chapter

Well, I was gonna start this with a rant at non-believer, but sprite did that for me...

But I will say this, pls only review in English, and when you do, at least spell Shinji right, k?

Also, please don't bitch at each other with reviews, that's what e-mail is for, k?

Anyway, on with the show...

Chapter Three

The inhabitants of Tokyo-3 are quite unaware of the private war against Selee. Nerv's propaganda department were not paid well to allow the public to be panicked by such events that were so far from the city limits. Instead, life in the city continued much as it did when the angels were attacking. Mostly day to day activities, but there was always the undercurrent of fear inn the populace.

Fear of divine-like retribution from an N2 mine. Fear of the last angel not quite being the last after all. Fear of the new threat, which appeared to have come out of nowhere. Fear, as the city's guardians, the Evas, had left not only the city, but also the country.

The mood in the city was tense, a mousetrap of communal fear and trepidation, hidden under an equally powerful desire to bring things back to normal. So they all put on a brave face, and smiled to the camera, lied to the journalist and even told their children it was all over. But when the camera was put away, or the notebook flipped shut, or the door to the nursery closed on peaceful dreamers, the old fear for their lives came rushing out.

As a result, brief liaisons, promiscuous encounters with strangers rose to an all time high. Those that feared to die decided to live as much as they could, preferable with a companion, to try and ward off the seemingly inevitable doom of the city.

Strange, as many had left only a few months before, just to return to the same old fear. But the kind of fear the people of Tokyo-3 had developed travels with you, eating away at any safe havens, making the shadows grow larger. And so they returned to the fortress like Tokyo-3, no longer a bastion for mankind's hope, but a rat tunnel of humanities fears.

None felt the fear more keenly than Kensuke Aida. A mere observer to the war against the angels, he watched as both of his closest friends were cut down from their pride. He could only watch as Touji lay on his hospital bed, smiling, and trying not to notice the missing limbs. He could only watch as Shinji punished himself further for his failings, never realising his own worth, or the envy many held him in.

And so Kensuke hated himself. He was just a watcher to the pain, unable to stop it. All he could do was be there when they asked for him. Which was not very often. And so he grew depressed. And he hated himself for feeling depressed. After all it was not him who suffered, it was others.

Others like Hikari.

Kensuke was sitting in the library opposite her, trying to make notes on his homework, but the thoughts in his head kept him from concentrating on his work. Hikari had been hit pretty hard by the war. Her father was at work a lot because of the angel attacks, and she had a crush on an oblivious Touji, only managing to get him after his brief time as a pilot, which left him crippled for life.

And yet as he looked over his book at her, he could see no pain on her face, no regret. Just a slight frown of concentration as she thrust herself into her studies. He had come to admire that dogged determination in her to keep on with the normal routine, despite the world collapsing around her. And now, Kensuke held on to that determination like a drowning man, in a sea of fear.

He sighed inwardly. And if nothing else, this non-stop studying was bringing his grades up sharply. Only yesterday he had got a hundred percent on his test, a previously unheard of score for Kensuke.

He grinned, and refocused on the textbook in front of him, a large pad of clean paper just ready to be filled. He started to scribble furiously on the paper, before looking up at the book, and turning it the right way round.

Hikari smiled as Kensuke turned the book right side up. It had been upside down since they had started, about an hour ago. She was going to say something, before she realised the glazed over look on his eyes. Over the weeks she had been spending with him she had come to realise that was his standard procedure when he wanted to do some heavy thinking. He would pretend to be doing something routine and dull, and his eyes would glaze over, and he would be in another world.

She thought it was funny at first, the way he would just drift off into a brooding like trance. Then she saw it was his way of dealing with what was around him. Most people, herself included, tended to let problems sort themselves out in the back of their heads, basically ignoring them until they went away or got resolved. Kensuke tended to store up everything, and when he just filled up with problems he would brood for an hour or so. But when he finished thinking over, he would always grin, as if laughing at some private joke, and then get on with his life.

She admired the way he could sort his life out in one go, and wished she could just start thinking for a while and sort out all of her problems. But no. She was not strong enough to face up to what was inside her. And so she kept it locked away behind her eyes, keeping up appearances, whilst on the inside she was tearing herself apart. Like her problem with Touji. She had not been able to face up to the simple truth that she liked him, and had to be told she was in lo... liked him a lot.

She sighed inwardly. And continued with her homework.

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Aoba looked dejectedly at Maya's empty station. He was slightly annoyed that she had been selected to go with Major Katsuragi. Now he had no one to tease Hyuga with apart from Dr. Akagi. And frankly when it came to teasing people she was just a little too good.

Oh it was not that she was nasty or anything, it was just that he hated the competition. Maya and him had a little signal system set up, so that when Hyuga was not expecting it, they could concert their attack, and the result was usually the entire control centre erupting in laughter. As you can tell, Nerv employees get very bored when there are no angels to fight.

The day usually started with Aoba and Maya throwing their mugs at Hyuga for him to fill up. It had taken years of early mornings and overtime to get all the kinks out of THAT system. The number of times Hyuga had thrown full mugs back out of spite was evidenced by the brown stains that could still be seen, despite numerous occasions when the commander had caught them playing multiplayer video games on the Magi and had forced them to clean out both the Magi memory systems, and the command centre itself.

Then there was the interesting problem of replacing the coffee filter. That was Aoba's job. No one trusted any one else to do it.

Hyuga kept on insisting they use his special brand of espresso grade bean. That had ended with Maya being sent to the sick bay to get a sedative before she plastered the entire of her console with hello kitty stickers. The only ones happy with that particular brand were Hyuga and Misato, who seemed to appreciate taking the equivalent of sixteen caffeine pills with each gulp.

Then Maya was given the job of replacing the filter, which worked fine until she started adding things...

The less said about that incident the better...

Next up was Dr. Akagi. That did not last long. She was too busy to replace the filter, and there were days where the control centre personnel had gone without any hit of that sweet, sweet hot lava java. That had ended with Hyuga threatening to download RealPlayer onto the Magi central system. The commander had seen that this would be more lethal than any angel attack, and the hunt for the filter replacer continued.

It continued for a few months, when Sub-Commander Fuyutski volunteered himself. Tired, groggy computer programmers stumbled into the room to find the Mr. Koffee replaced with a kettle and a teapot...

It was then decided that only Aoba should replace that filter, and get the ground beans for the entire command deck. That only left the far more interesting problem of coffee mugs not cleaned for weeks on end. That was quickly sorted by Maya volunteering to replace and wash the used mugs each week. It was not perfect, but it was better than your morning hit of caffeine trying to make its own AT field.

Hyuga sighed as he looked at Aoba staring blankly at his monitor. He grabbed a scrap bit of paper he had been doodling on previously, scrunched into a ball and threw it at Aoba's head. That snapped him out of his daydream, and he looked at his screen, which had flicked over to it's very ... revealing screen saver. 'Lucky Maya isn't here to see that,' he thought quickly tapping his mouse to bring back the normal screen.

Hyuga shrugged as Aoba got back to work, and turned to face his own monitor. He was not really paying attention. Routine maintenance of the Magi system required next to no brain power whatsoever. So he basically cursed his misfortune that Mis- the Major had taken Maya with her to the strike in - wherever the strike was.

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Art awoke again in his entry plug. His eyes snapped open, and he took a deep breath in, but gagged on the LCL that had caught in his throat. Coughing up the foul liquid he promised himself he would never fall asleep in the plug again. It felt like someone had poured coppery bile into the back of his throat and solidified it with used chewing gum. Sufficed to say, it was not a pleasant feeling.

He looked around for what had woken him, scanning the interior of his entry plug. He could find nothing out of the ordinary, but his eyes came to rest on a small disc of brass. It was connected to the pilots couch by a chain, which was in turn hooked up to a handy non-essential loop. He leaned down to grab the brass disk, a small grin on his face. It was his cap badge, removed from his formal beret from Basic. He gripped it in his hand, just remembering all those stupid stories his instructors had told him to make him remember his drills. He kept the badge with him now as a reminder as to what he had to do.

And that would be to pull the trigger.

Well, now it was crunch time, and he would find out if he could do it. He was not sure he could. After all, they had not done anything to him, except sign on that dotted line at the bottom of the recruitment form. And just because they had filled in the wrong sides form was no reason to ki- shoot at them, shoot at them, not necessarily kill right?

He remembered watching them fill the magazine for the standard eva assault rifle. The rounds were about the same size as cars. Like hell they would only injure someone. Anyone on the receiving end of that bullet would only have one probable, no, definite fate. And that would be to become a red smear on the landscape.

Well, it was too late to back out now. He just had to remember that when he pulled that trigger that he was pulling it not for himself, or for some anonymous shadow government agency, but for those poor bastards on the end of whatever else these people might do to them. All for them. Yeah...

He looked at the cap badge in his hands. Even to him those words sounded hollow and meaningless.

" 'Standing on the shoulder's of giants' ...," he read out loud. He shook his head. He wondered how his instructors had done it when they were called to ki- shoot at some one. At least they knew it would be fair, but the people he would be forced to ki- shoot at would have no chance against the eva. His AT field would protect him, and they would have no chance.

And he would kill them.

There, he had said it.

He looked up from his thoughts to see a little flashing red light on his radio panel. That indicated he was five minutes from the target. He made a few final checks of his entry plug, and slipped the badge's chain around the handy loop on the edge of the pilots couch.

He was the deep penetration drop. He would be flown well into the enemy territory and dropped. He would have five minutes in which to secure the area before his battery power ran out, and if the power did run out and the area was still hostile, the trucks dragging the power cable would not enter the area. He would be left alone and downed, behind enemy lines. There was no doubt that if that happened he would be captured and killed, so that Nerv would have one less evangelion for a while.

Art was very, well, scared of this. Standard equipment for his entry plug included a small Walther PPK, a diddy pistol to most people, but he doubted he could do much with it. It would probably only end up pissing them off when they found him, and he would most likely manage to shoot himself in the foot. But it was a little bit of protection, just a small hope in case the worst did happen.

And he hoped the worst would not happen.

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Unit 00 stood a long way from the front line. It was agreed that, as a prototype model, it would be unwise to put the eva in undue danger. As it was by far the most unpredictable eva of the three that would be taking part, using it somewhere away from the main battle line was considered a good idea, in case it went berserk and slaughtered half of the supporting industry.

Rei did not mind much. This was barely important, and it allowed her to use the eva sniper rifle a.k.a the really big positron gun. It was rested on a hill, and gave her a commanding view of the battlefield. Her role was simple. Fire her first shot at the grey slab of the factory roof, and then continue to give supporting fire to the other evas as they worked their way through the enemy formations.

She thought that she should feel more regret about those she whose lives she would be ending. But, she reasoned, they were like her, just following orders. And like her, they were individuals. And so they could decide to ignore those orders if they wished. She smiled. This new concept of following her own ideas instead of following orders opened up vast opportunities for her.

She glanced up at the small timer that floated in the LCL next to her. It was not a physical presence, but more a projection in the LCL as a result of her direct link-up to the eva. If she so wished, a similar window would appear displaying topographical data on her surroundings transmitted from the support satellite, which floated in orbit many miles above her. When the timer reached zero she would fire her first shot. From then on, she would fire at her own discretion.

She did not dwell too much on the upcoming battle. Her thoughts kept drifting to the evermore favourable ones about Shinji.

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Asuka sat in her own entry plug, in a similar position to Art, on route to her drop off point. It would be a short trip; she was only going to be a few miles away from the base of operations. She was to distract them on the main battle line, whilst Cooper in his green eva would give them a surprise on their rear flank. A small flashing red light lit up on her command console on her lap.

She looked up, a slight scowl on her face. There was virtually no pressure on her. The umbilical cable had been left attached to the eva, as she would not be travelling far from the airfield in any case. Her role was just that of distraction. No real value at all.

The prideful part of her could not tolerate that. Why should that garstabeiter bastard get the real job? Did they not trust her or something?

She sighed, and knew that was the truth. She was no longer reliable in an eva, despite the progress she had made. She hated them for that. She had worked so hard to bring herself back to her former glory, and yet they still treated her like a porcelain doll. True this was a better battlefield role than Rei's, which was merely long-range support, but still, it was not a far way from redundant.

But on the other hand...

She did not want to have to kill another human. She had never thought that this would be a problem she would ever have to face, even when she was fighting the production model evas. That was defence, pure and simple; they attacked her so she made them pay for that. But to actively go and hunt for the enemy to destroy, to snuff them out of existence for no apparent reason...

That just did not seem right. She remembered her arrogant words to Misato during the Angel War, ' "Any good commander knows that the best defence is a good offence..."'. Fucking stupid words. And Misato had even quoted them back to her when she was protesting to going on this attack. Bitch.

There was no description for what she felt now. No melody from her memory to affix to this new emotion. It was like it had been taken as being obvious and thus ignored by humanity. But at its fundamental core, she did not want to have to kill anyone. She did not think she could kill anyone. When it came to pulling the trigger against some poor bastard on the receiving end of a 4 metre long bullet when she was wrapped up safe in her eva, free from harm...

She remembered how Shinji had looked after he had torn apart Touji's eva. She realised it was not quite the same, but the principle was it felt wrong to hurt another human. And she would not have the solace of not being in control. She would have to be the one telling her eva to pull the trigger. She always wondered why the renegade Unit 05 had beaten her so easily. True it had taken her by surprise, but still, she knew she was better than that. She half suspected that she had let herself be defeated, so that she would not have to worry about pulling the trigger.

She shook that thought from her mind. That was not how she thought. Self-doubt was something that happened to other people, not her. But then, what had she been doing less than three months ago? Wallowing in her doubt of her abilities until it physically debilitated her. How much had she changed since going to Japan?

How in the hell was she going to get through this.

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The little flashing red light on his heads up display, stopped flashing. That meant he was twenty seconds from the target. He thumbed on all the eva controls, and the entry plug came to life around him. It flash through a series of psychedelic patterns, making Art wonder what exactly they had put in his LCL mix, before the external view came up. Nothing much, just the dark grey of the carrier craft he was in.

He glanced down at the little cap badge, which hung from that handy loop.

In a few seconds he would find out. In a few seconds he would either become a killer, or he would never be able to look himself in the mirror again. That was the real reason he was going to fight. Not for those people back home, not for some idealistic crusade. But so he could look those people back home in the eye, and tell them without lying, that he had done his best. And when he looked in the mirror he saw himself, and not some coward, too frightened to pull the trigger.

The red light on his console went green.

He pulled a small lever at the base of his chair, and he felt the eva shudder from its moorings on the carrier craft. The green eva slid out the back of the craft, hanging in mid-air, trailing after the carrier craft.

In that brief instant of weightlessness, Art could see the entire battlefield. The enemy were not going to give up lightly. He could see tank columns and rows of artillery vehicles, with ant like infantrymen laced in between the armoured beasts.

As gravity took a hold, his stomach lurched as the green eva accelerated to the ground.

He grinned, a humourless expression of determination.

"Here goes..."

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The red light on Asuka's panel flashed green, and she pressed a button on her console, sending the eva out of the back of the carrier plane. In the distance, as the world emerged from behind the plane, she saw a flash of green hurtling towards the ground. That would be Cooper. Probably scared out of his cowardly mind.

She looked down, and saw the drop zone.

She saw tank formations.

She saw men running in the sparse cover.

She saw the long grey slab of concrete that ran along the ground, which was the roof of the under-ground factory.

She saw the small box, which had been dropped below her, a small weapons locker for the eva, housing an assault rifle, and a dozen melee weapons.

As the red eva began to fall to the ground, Asuka began to feel numb.

She did not want to die.

She did not want her friends to die. It occurred to her that she had very few friends. Real friends anyway. Not just the hangers on that had followed her around the school during those glorious days when she was popular. She could count maybe two people that were close friends. And both of them were hurt when she did not fight on.

So maybe that was how she could pull the trigger.

She would find out soon enough.

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Next to Rei, the counter, which had floated in the LCL, reached zero.

She had made her peace with pulling the trigger.

Which she did so, without a moment's hesitation, sending a scarlet beam lancing out from the positron rifle, screaming towards the factory roof.

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Authors notes: Ok, next chapter, next chapter we'll get some eva action. I promise.

Honest.

Will you please stop looking at me like that!

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