Tokyo-2, Inner District 5
September 26, 2041
0746 hours

"Hey, man." – Toji piped up as Kaworu reached his school desk. – "Did those clowns from yesterday give you any more trouble?"

"Not yet."

"Good. They try anything, let me know and I'll help you out next time."

"Don't worry about it."

And Kaworu truly meant it. He had both seen and had been through far worse than three teenage boys trying and failing to intimidate him with strength alone, only to back right off upon realizing that they bit off more than they could chew. He had known since his first years in elementary school that he was... different from everyone else his age. How or why, that he didn't know, for the simple reason that he never wanted to seriously hurt anyone to the point of not holding back at all. Still, it was impossible for him not to notice certain things.

How two older boys had trouble lifting weights together he could casually lift by himself.

How he could match everyone in endurance running with barely any effort and remain as the last one standing while everyone fell on their faces in exhaustion afterwards.

How he never got sick even when half the school was at home with a fever.

How, whenever he scuffed or cut himself, it was completely gone by the time other people with similar injuries were still complaining.

Or, to take a more recent example, how he could apparently backhand hard enough to cause skull fracture and kick hard enough to bend someone's knee backwards.

Not that anyone ever really cared. The PE teachers did notice but since he was neither interested in a sports career, nor had the financial backing for it, they dropped the matter soon enough and just gave him a perfect grade without trying to figure out just how far beyond average he was. And considering what he did to end up in this particular school, he didn't think anyone would ever give him the chance now, even if he asked. People tended to be biased against troublemakers.

"What happened?" – he heard Kensuke ask from behind him.

"Those guys he told off yesterday? They made a pass at him after school and got their asses handed to them."

"Two on three?"

"One on three. All by himself. They never stood a chance."

"Class rep ain't gonna be happy."

"And? When is she ever happy?"

As Toji launched into an explanation of yesterday afternoon's events, Kaworu found his eyes drawn to the black specter sitting a couple rows ahead of him.

It was that girl from yesterday, the one with the motorbike. He didn't even notice they were going to the same class even though it was obvious to him now that she stuck out of the rest of the class like the proverbial sore thumb. Everyone except her was wearing normal street clothes, though their colorfulness varied from person to person. Hikari for example was pretty much the most plainly-dressed girl in the class with a skirt reaching beyond her knees, as opposed to that friend of hers whose skirt was quite a bit shorter and shirt tighter (though not to the point of actually being skimpy, he had only seen that on girls older than her and halfway across the world from where he was right now).

This girl, however, was pretty much monochrome black aside from her skin and hair. The latter of which was pretty much the oddest feature he could see: what in the world would possess someone into dying their hair light blue, he had no idea and none of the other girls in the class had similarly colorful hair, so it probably wasn't a Japanese oddity. Even the fact that she went around in a leather coat in the late summer warm outside was less odd in comparison.

But it wasn't merely her unusual looks that got his attention. There was... something about her. He couldn't quite put a finger on it, but there was a part of him that immediately noticed her as... different from everyone else. Like she was a searchlight in a sea of burning candles, wrapped in an invisible aura of otherness. And somehow, Kaworu suspected that whoever or whatever that girl was, she was the most dangerous person in the whole room. Not merely dressed for intimidation, but able to back it up, regardless of the image of complete indifference she was putting on by staring out the window, with even the thin cord of headphones running down the cheek he could see from where he was sitting indicating that she wasn't paying any attention to the rest of the classroom.

He found himself abruptly yanked from his thoughts by Toji tapping on his shoulder. – "Something on your mind?"

"What?"

"Asked something, you didn't answer. What are you thinking about?"

Kaworu sent another look towards the girl. – "Who is that?"

Toji followed his gaze, eyebrows slightly rising. – "Who, Ikari? She's, ah... weird. I don't think I've ever seen her talk to anyone in class other than the class rep."

"Why?"

"Dunno." – the other teen replied with a shrug. – "She's like a prodigy or something. Never pays attention in class, but I've yet to see any of the teachers ask her something she doesn't know the answer to whenever they noticed her not listening."

"You don't pay attention in class either." – Kensuke supplied.

"But at least I'm not sitting in the front row!" – Toji fired back. – "When there's a writing assignment, she writes like everyone else but if there's only a lecture, she just stares out of the window all the time. No taking notes, nothing. She just doesn't care, but keeps acing her tests anyway and I got no clue how she does it."

"Honestly, I'm not sure she should even be attending our school." – Kensuke noted, looking at Kaworu. – "The yearly IQ test the ministry of education has us do? She scored some ridiculously high result, way above everyone else. Like, higher than literally everyone else in every school in the city. But here's the thing: she didn't even seem to care about the results, even when the teacher specifically called her out in front of the class. As if it was nothing out of the ordinary for her."

"And yet look at her." – Toji continued. – "From the way she dresses, you'd think she's a delinquent or a foreigner who wants to show off." – After a second, he added – "Uh, no offense."

"None taken." – Kaworu replied smoothly. He didn't exactly make a good first impression himself yesterday, if Hikari's reaction was of any indication, so it was only fair. – "Maybe she's getting private tutoring or something?"

"I'm not sure." – Kensuke replied. – "That big company in town, the Artificial Evolution Laboratory? Her mom's the CEO there and is also a big-name scientist herself, from what I hear. Got lots of people working for her too; don't know the exact numbers and I've never seen how big their place is because it's underground. They have a couple buildings above ground as their postal addresses, but none of them are big enough for the kind of staff they're supposed to have."

"Your point being?" – Toji asked in a tone mildly hinting that he didn't really care. Or maybe he already heard all this, Kaworu didn't know.

"Ikari's mom is loaded and probably has connections as well. If she was being pushed to have good grades, she could've just gone to a private school." - the other teen summarized. - "So why is she here?"

"Maybe she just didn't want to go." – Kaworu guessed.

"She sure doesn't seem like she wants to be here either."

Toji sighed. – "Ain't we all, man."

A sentiment echoed by all people their age, Kaworu believed. Well, maybe not all of them. He himself was somewhat ambivalent on the idea of going to school. On one hand he fully understood the point of it, plus it wasn't like he had anywhere else to be either. On the other hand, he had seen enough at his previous place of residence to know that people with backgrounds such as his rarely got the opportunity to reach anything better, even if they did have good grades. It was simply how the world worked: who you know always mattered more than what you can do.

Of course, there was also the fact that school was almost always the only way for low-class people to stop being low-class. It's just that most couldn't make use of it due to circumstances, usually involving similarly-unfortunate people in their immediate vicinity convincing them that it wasn't worth to try. Which carried with it the irony that those born into a better position also didn't bother with pushing themselves to excel simply because they weren't forced to, instead just taking what they had for granted. Even after Second Impact supposedly erased such divisions by nearly destroying civilization and thus bringing everyone down to the same level, complacency reared its ugly head in record time as soon as the world started regaining enough of a sense of normalcy that children could once again choose what they wanted to be once they grew up.

Not even the near-annihilation of the species is enough to change some parts of human nature, it would seem.

Kaworu sent another glance in the girl's direction before asking – "What does her mom's company do?"

"World's leading experts in genetic engineering and applied biotechnology." – Kensuke listed off the top of his head. – "Vaccines, gene therapy, anti-xenofauna pesticides, stuff like that. You know that anti-headcrab pen thing that made the news a couple years ago? That was them. Most I hear of them is either their product line or business deals her mom makes and I tell you, that woman does not take crap from anybody. She wants something, she gets it, come hell or high water."

"Like the class rep?" – Toji asked with a half-grin.

"Except the class rep yells at you. Ikari's mom, she just keeps pushing and pushing until she has her way."

Toji made a 'whatever' gesture before turning back to Kaworu. – "Why the sudden interest in Ikari, anyway?" – The half-grin turned into a full-blown one. – "Caught your eye?"

Kaworu just sighed. – "If you mean 'almost ran me down with her bike yesterday morning', yeah."

Toji broke out in laughter at that. – "So that's why the class rep ran out so suddenly! I though she had to go to the loo, or something."

"If she hadn't come out when she did, I might not have found the classroom." – Kaworu pointed out. – "I guess I was lucky there. Anyway, I'm guessing the teachers don't have any problems with how she's dressing?"

"Nope." – Toji replied. – "Well, some of the older ones do. But then again, she isn't the only one."

"Apparently Japanese schools used to have uniform dress codes before Second Impact or something." – Kensuke added. – "The old geezers wanted it back after unification for tradition's sake but the government didn't let them do it for public schools. They're still salty about it."

Which Kaworu could understand, to some extent. An extradimensional alien invasion that caught humanity completely by surprise at the very apex of their power, crushed the planet's entire military force in seven hours, dealt a near-crippling blow to the Earth's biodiversity via the introduction of invasive xenofauna, almost caused humanity itself to go extinct by denying them the very ability to reproduce, killing half of them in the process... after all that, the question of school uniforms would justifiably rate "why the hell are you guys caught up on trivial shit like this, don't you have anything better to focus on?!" on the priority scale of a government formed in the aftermath to desperately try holding what was left of humanity together.

Like everyone in his generation, he was familiar with the story from his history textbooks. A simple experiment, gone horribly wrong in the worst possible way. The result: several hundred dead scientists and other civilian personnel, two entire US Marine battalions annihilated and a research facility nuked in a final act of desperation to contain the forces unleashed by the incident. And that was before the first portal storms appeared, leveling entire cities with titanic force, storms to which even the very passage of time was just a toy to play with. And even that was before the blue-gray spires appeared above major cities, raining down like giant, metallic spears stabbing the very heart of humanity before disgorging otherworldly war machines, not quite living yet not quite machine.

That was the first time humanity encountered something completely beyond their own level - the price for which was three billion lives, millions upon millions of children never born due to artificially disrupted formation of certain protein chains critical to early embryonic development, and humanity becoming little better than cattle on their own homeworld, ghettoed into cities and gradually harvested for cybernetic and biomechanical augmentation into unbreakably loyal foot soldiers for the regime. And yet ironically enough, humanity's darkest hour also became their finest one: while many were forced to submit, many chose to fight like cornered animals, striking the occupiers whenever they could and biding their time. And the second they saw an opening, yet again ironically created by the very man whose hands set these chain of events in motion in the first place, they made their move. For the first time in history, humanity found itself united in will and purpose, turning their oppressors' own weapons and technology against them to regain their freedom.

Even so, the scars of the planet Earth ran deep. Most of the countryside was overrun with wildlife not native to the planet, which rapidly integrated themselves into the food chain - with more than one species having no qualms whatsoever about hunting humans, devoid of the instinctive fear most terrestrial life had of humans after having been hunted by them for eons. After years upon years of trying to clean everything up to at least minimally livable, some people just got fed up with it all. Kaworu had never seen any of them by himself, but he heard from others how many people decided to leave all of it behind and start a new life elsewhere. How what was once considered a laughably unthinkable fantasy had become cold, hard reality as people built themselves new homes on alien worlds so far away that even their sun's light couldn't reach Earth within a generation.

In any case, it was at this point when Hikari appeared next to Kaworu's deck, arms folded and face bearing an expression that was anything but pleased.

"I heard something about the upperclassmen you confronted yesterday turning up looking beaten up this morning." – the girl said, eyes narrowing. – "You wouldn't happen to have anything to do with that, would you?"

"I didn't attack them after school, if that's what you're asking." – Kaworu replied. He didn't need to look to know that other people were listening in, even with Hikari having kept her voice down instead of loudly announcing it to the whole classroom. Pushy or not, she at least had tact. – "They came after me when I was going home."

Hikari let out a sigh of exasperation. – "You just can't help getting into trouble, can you?"

"He ain't lying." – Toji piped in, leaning into Hikari's field of vision. – "I was there, we were goin' home together. Those guys just jumped him from behind, no warning."

"And I tried to talk it over with them." – Kaworu continued. – "It really wasn't my fault this time. Are the staff looking for who did it?"

"Not yet." – she replied, still not sounding convinced. – "But if they ask me, I'll have to point them at you."

"Come on, class rep! He just said-" – Toji started to complain, only to get cut off by Kaworu. – "That's fine. I'll be here if they want an explanation."

That seemed to finally soften Hikari's scowl a bit. But before she could reply, the teacher walked into the classroom. Or to be more exact, gaited into the classroom. Digitigrade legs are hardly capable of walking like a human, after all.

Kaworu had seen a vortigaunt before; it was rare for someone not to, considering that humanity has been sharing their world with the enigmatic aliens since Second Impact. This one looked just like any other: gray-brown skin, hoofed feet, a neck jutting forward instead of upward, a head framed by a pair of tube-like ears and crowned by a large crimson eye with three smaller ones above it, slim hands with three-fingered hands, including an entire third arm jutting out of its chest. Completely unlike anything native to Earth, yet a completely ordinary sight to many, especially those born after their unwilling arrival to the planet as refugees fleeing from something that ultimately caught up with them anyway.

But as Hikari hurried back to her own desk, Kaworu noticed the alien looking directly at him. Not his appearance, but him. Its gaze felt like it stared upon his very soul, seeing all and knowing all. He didn't know whether that's how it felt like to be probed by a supposedly psychic alien, or whether he was just imaging it in his head; regardless of which, he felt like he was the focus of attention for something infinitely his greater. As if a million eyes were all looking at his tiny form at the same time, studying and examining him with the wisdom of eons.

It only lasted for a few seconds. Then the teacher's attention left him just as abruptly as it came, turning to the class instead. – "Greeetingss... to the young ones." – its guttural voice drawled in its kind's weird speech pattern. – "Let us begin... today's... lecture."

He had no idea what that was about. Nor did he notice the Ikari girl briefly glancing at him herself before turning her attention back outside.


Tokyo-2, Inner District 3
1513 hours

In a downtown apartment, a snow-white cat slept on a bed, completely oblivious to the world around itself. Only the faint, rapid clicking of a wall-mounted clock in the kitchen one room over made any kind of sound, other than the traffic outside.

Then the cat abruptly raised its head to look towards the entrance as silence was broken by the sound of keys being inserted and turned, followed by the door opening just as the cat leapt off the bed towards the source of the sound.

The door slamming exploded across the apartment like a gunshot, casting the final vestiges of silence into oblivion.

A black coat flew into the room first, landing on a chair's backrest. Half a minute later, its owner was face-down on the bed, the rest of her clothes messily scattered all over the room as the cat curled up next to her form and the silence resumed, eventually broken once more by a phone's ringtone. A sigh rose from the girl before she rolled to the edge of the bed and planted her feet on the ground in the same instant her upper body rose from the bed, nimbly flipping onto her feet on momentum alone.

Five seconds later, the phone was in her hand as the coat whose pocket she retrieved it from slid to the ground. – "What?" – she said curtly.

"Rei, are you home now?"

"Yes."

"Good. I'm calling because Monday's sync test was brought forward. It'll be tomorrow, at midday. Can you come in by 1100?"

"Yes."

"Good. I'll let the school know." – A pause. – "How was your day?"

"Nothing to report."

"...I see. I'm also calling to let you know to not expect me tonight. There's food in the fridge, so you don't have to go to the store."

"Understood."

She hung up without waiting for a reply and tossed the phone aside before taking a step back and simply letting herself fall backward onto the bed, sending the startled cat scrambling out of the way. Blood-red eyes gazed up at the ceiling for nearly a minute before the girl sighed again and glanced at the cautiously returning cat, absently reaching out to scratch the base of its ears without a word.


Chapter rewrite complete on 15/03/29. Moderate changes on 21/04/12 for consistency purposes, primarily in dialogue flow and exposition.

In canon, the AEL was a scientific research institute in Hakone (Tokyo-3) that actually served as the public face of Gehirn and later became NERV when the UN greenlighted Eva production. In this story, the AEL and Gehirn are separate organizations and this story's Tokyo-2 is really meant to be canon's Tokyo-3, minus the fortress infrastructure; in canon, Tokyo-2 is located approximately 140 kilometers (87 miles) north-northwest of Hakone, at the present-day site of Matsumoto City in the Nagano prefecture.

Regarding the altered backstory for Second Impact. Humanity discovered teleportation technology sometime during the late 20th century, alongside a transdimensional realm with abundant veins of a naturally-occurring exotic matter christened xenium that could be used to catalyze the process, allowing smaller teleporters with significantly lower energy requirements. The problem was that, in order to analyze an exceedingly pure sample of xenium, the operator crew pushed the scanning equipment beyond design limits and bypassed multiple failsafes, causing the xenium sample to violently detonate into a dimensional rift that directly connected Earth to Xen. While this was already bad enough, this rift also attracted the attention of an interdimensional empire that used it to tunnel directly into this universe and invade. Thing is, the operator crew who started this mess knew (or at the very least suspected) what could happen if things went wrong, but their boss forced them to go ahead with it anyway. Considering that the sample itself was acquired through a third party and said boss later ended up negotiating humanity's surrender and got appointed as Earth's puppet leader by the invaders, it's highly probable that this was intentionally set up.