Tokyo-2, Inner District 3
1624 hours

Checking the address from the printouts one last time, Kaworu looked up at the apartment building before him. The building he spent nearly an hour of walking to get to.

At least he had the foresight to ask Mari for directions. He thought about leaving it for later, but realized he had no idea how long it would actually take him to find the place... or make his way back home afterwards.

In any case, Mari gladly helped him out, even offering to go with him. Kaworu had no need for that – but it didn't dampen the girl's cheekiness in the slightest.

'Have fun, but remember... use protection.' she quipped with a wink when they parted.

He rolled his eyes at the memory as he pushed in the building's outer door.

It seemed to be of a newer construction than his own apartment block, albeit not by much. If anything, the only real difference he noticed was the cleaner corridor and the elevator's holographic buttons (that is, a flashy but completely unnecessary hologram hovering less than a millimeter over a button-sized touchscreen). Only when he was standing in the elevator did the boy realize that he had no idea which floor he even needed to go to, causing him to let out an exasperated groan at his own inattention/stupidity; he couldn't decide which.

Fortunately, the wall of mailboxes next to the entrance set him straight, with one of them bearing the name of the very girl he was supposed to seek out.

On the elevator ride upward, Kaworu absently noticed that the elevator was also quieter than the one at his own home, reinforcing his guess that this building was newer. It wasn't important however, so he just shrugged to himself and stepped out of the elevator on the second floor. From there, it should have been a simple matter to find the door marked with the number 23, ring the doorbell and give the printouts to whomever came to answer the door.

Problem is: the doorbell seemed to have been completely drowned out by the extremely loud music seeping through from the other side.

He rang twice, three, four times, to no effect.

Kaworu sighed and turned away from the door, glancing at the printouts. 'What now?' he asked himself, leaning against the door...

...and almost fell back as the door gave way.

In hindsight, he probably shouldn't have elbowed the door's handle. Then again, hindsight is always 20/20.

He pondered on what to do. On one hand, he wasn't supposed to walk into someone's home uninvited. On the other hand, said someone obviously didn't hear him ring, plus the door was unlocked and open as well.

'What if I just put it down somewhere and leave? The class rep only told me to bring it here, not to deliver it directly into anyone's hand.'

Kaworu suspected that kind of logic wouldn't cut it in front of Hikari, especially after she thought he was trying to weasel himself out of the task - but she wasn't here right now.

'Besides, didn't Kensuke say something about her mother being a corporate boss? She's probably at work right now... so she's bound to come in through this door at one point.' he reasoned to himself. 'So if I put this somewhere in the open, it's bound to catch her eye when she comes home.'

Nodding to himself, the teen pushed the half-open door in. The music was clearly audible now, although he couldn't understand the lyrics. For that matter, Kaworu didn't even know how can a man let out sounds of that pitch, short of being an eunuch. Though to be fair, he had never met nor heard the voice of an eunuch before, so he wasn't sure about that last part.

Beyond the door was a short corridor that seemed to double as a kitchen, if the sink, counter and fridge on the right were of any indication.

Not that he needed to ponder on it for long, as the door on his left chose this moment to open.

When he entered the building, Kaworu didn't really bother to think what state he would find Rei in. Butt-naked and drying her hair with a towel was definitely somewhere on the bottom half of his non-existent list.

'...there goes that plan.'

They stared motionlessly at each other for what felt to him like an eternity. Back in elementary school, Kaworu never really understood his fellow boys' attempts at trying to peep on the girls whenever they had the opportunity. He just didn't feel the same kind of excitement at the prospect of catching a glimpse of something he wouldn't normally see. He didn't even know why he should care; if he really wanted to see such things, he could always borrow a porn magazine from someone else (which he never did) and he'd see it anyway once he had gotten a girlfriend or wife, so why even bother?

With that said, it was his first time seeing a girl naked and it did give him pause. She wasn't anywhere near as well-endowed as Mari, but as far as Kaworu could tell, she had nothing to be insecure about either. And without clothes, he was surprised at how pale her skin was, in sharp contrast with her blood-red eyes.

When she finally spoke, Kaworu almost didn't catch her voice against the music. – "What do you want?"

"Class rep asked me to bring your printouts. For school."

She motioned with her eye towards the counter. – "Put them down."

"Okay."

He did as she asked – no, ordered –, yet she still didn't budge. No attempt to cover herself up, nothing.

"What?" – she asked after a second.

"You're naked." – Kaworu replied.

"So?"

"And I'm standing right here."

"Are you bothered by my current state of undress?"

"Aren't you?"

"Should I?"

"...I don't know that much about girls." – he admitted. – "But I'm pretty sure if I were to look at them while they were naked, they would scream. And yell at me. Possibly slap me too." – After a few seconds, he added – "Maybe punctuated with a kick to the crotch."

"You did not attempt to molest or sexually assault me." – Rei replied, turning away from him. –"Therefore, no retaliatory action is warranted at this time. I do not recommend for you to provoke such action either."

"I'm not the pervert type." – he called out as she passed through a door at the far end of the kitchen, directly opposite of the entrace.

"I know."

"How?"

"You are not aroused." – It was a matter-of-fact statement, not a question. And it was true.

With nothing to do, Kaworu followed her but stopped at the threshold of her room. It had to have been her room, as her coat hung from the back of a chair. He didn't know what a girl's room was supposed to like but the almost spartan furnishing was something he didn't expect. No posters, no decoration, nothing. Just a bed, several dressers, a large, military-style crate in the corner, and a desk with a blaring music player and an assortment of books. Most of the books were titled with characters he had never seen before. That included a large stack of doorstoppers on the ground next to the desk, with the topmost one bearing תַּלְמוּד in place of a title. Of the ones that were titled in English, he spotted multiple dictionaries and thesauruses for modern, medieval and ancient Hebrew, as well as something called Aramaic.

Except it wasn't just the books that seemed unusual. Lined up on her desk in an orderly fashion were several dozen knives, a sword in a scabbard, and two black revolvers with wooden grips, accompanied by speedloaders carrying some rather large bullets.

As Rei walked to one of the dressers, Kaworu's eyes were immediately drawn to the dark spot on her left arm, just below the shoulder. A tattoo, composed of ten circles and 22 lines connecting them.

"Where did you-"

No further sound could leave his lips before she was there.

He didn't see her move, or even begin to move. One moment, she was about to walk through the door opposite of him; the next, she was less than a meter away from him.

He similarly didn't see her hand before it latched onto his face and brutally smashed it against the wall, making him lose his bearings for a moment. Only distantly did he feel his legs getting swept out from under him before he was jolted back to awareness by a rough landing on his back, followed by a weight on his chest pushing all air out of his lungs.

Kaworu assessed his situation. She didn't simply knock him to the floor but followed him down as well, her naked rear currently resting his chest. And she wasn't straddling him, either: her lower body was twisted sideways with near-impossible flexibility, left leg clamped around his thighs in a vice grip, right leg hugging his right shoulder and clavicle to keep him from leaning away or twisting himself free. Her hand was still latched onto his face as well, along with the sensation of something metallic pressing into his temple.

All in all, he was well and truly immobilized. The part of his brain that wondered about her disinterest at being seen nude absently noted that the position they were in happened to give him a prime bottom view of her right breast as well.

"You did not see any kind of mark on my body." – she said, voice barely more than a whisper. – "Do not ask about it again, even in private. Forget ever having seen anything. If you will not do as I say, I will kill you. Do you understand?"

'Kinda hard to forget something that gives me bruises.' Kaworu thought silently but knew she wouldn't accept that as an answer. There was something in her eyes that warned him she wasn't kidding or exaggerating.

As soon as she had the answer she wanted, Rei abruptly got off him and yanked him to his feet before practically showing him outside through the still-open entrance door and slamming it behind him. Thus, as a thoroughly confused Kaworu got into the elevator once more, he couldn't see the girl resting her back against the door as she closed her eyes and let out a sigh.

A minute later, she opened her eyes to stare at the palm she grabbed his face with. – "That feeling..." – she murmured. – "What... was that...?"


Two hours later, Kaworu let out a similar sigh as he scooped up water from around him and threw it into his face before leaning back in the bathtub.

At least this apartment had running water – and warm running water at that –, unlike his previous one. But then again, the whole building of his previous apartment was in dire need of a complete structural overhaul; Kaworu still remembered that one night two years ago when he was abruptly woken up by a top floor room's ceiling collapsing in the middle of the night, giving him (and whatever rats happened to be in the building at the time) quite the scare. He could tell from the outer walls almost universally lacking plaster that it was bad, but didn't know just how bad it was until then.

Fortunately, no such incident happened again - and right now, it didn't even matter anymore. The government official who visited him about his expulsion took one look at the building he left at the school as his contact address and immediately had him forcibly evicted; on his last day in Vienna, Kaworu even overheard him mention the building being slated for demolition due to threatening to damage other buildings nearby if it collapses (even though Kaworu knew this particular block was mostly uninhabited, aside from squatters like himself). In other words, he suspected a high chance of him never seeing the building he grew up in, ever again.

Instead, he now had a place that was officially his. It was, admittedly, too big for him, what with having two bedrooms and all. But Kaworu wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so he didn't complain. The room he claimed for himself wasn't even a proper bedroom; more like a storage closet that happened to have a window. It was even smaller than his old room – but his old room was actually a living room and everything he owned took up only a fraction of it, so the smaller one was just as sufficient. He would've been just as fine with just using the living room like before, except this apartment happened to have a balcony that took up the living room's entire wall, placing him squarely in the center of attention for everyone looking at the balcony from outside.

There was also the fact that, unlike before, he didn't have to go easy on the heating. Upon moving in, Kaworu spent a few moments figuring out the wall thermostat in the living room. He wasn't going to be cold in the winter, which was always good. Gone were the days of him huddled around the old electric heater he salvaged from a nearby scrapyard, along with whatever rags he could use to insulate the windows. He hated winters; not just because of the cold but because of those rags teaching him the lesson that frozen mold, when warmed up, had an absolutely awful stench.

But it wasn't his accommodations that had his mind going at the moment. No, it was the girl who smashed his head against a wall so hard that it still hurt.

Her behavior was, simply put, impossible to figure out. Dressing in a way that makes it hard to tell her gender but not having any trouble with nudity? Completely docile at one moment, then literally a trigger's pull away from taking his life the next? Just what was going on inside that girl's head?

It wasn't even just her behavior that bothered him, but his own as well. Somehow, he had an odd feeling when near her; like something was lurking just beyond the forefront of his thoughts, eluding focus. She felt... familiar. He didn't notice it beforehand but when she stood bare before him, Kaworu inexplicably felt as if he wasn't looking at another person of the opposite gender. Beyond the flesh, he felt as if he was looking at himself in an invisible mirror. There was something about her that made her stand out for him; not her clothing, not her appearance, not her behavior, but something else. He couldn't put it into words but it most definitely wasn't sexual attraction.

Then there was when she grabbed him. The instant her skin touched his, Kaworu felt something like a static discharge. Except... not quite.

She was a complete enigma... one that reminded him of himself.

Sitting up, he shifted his left arm to glance at the tattoo on it: ten circles and 22 lines forming a hexagonal shape, underlined by an alphanumeric string: PrG-AEL_GC2-2027.

While outwardly appearing calm and confident, the truth was that Kaworu Nagisa knew very little about himself. He didn't merely not know his parents; he couldn't remember ever having parents. He couldn't remember anything past the time he was six years old, aside from his own name. Every time he tried to, it was like running into a blank wall.

Even the branding on his arm was a mystery. The number he knew was his year of birth, but the rest escaped him. He asked a multitude of people about the symbol, yet not even any of his teachers could recognize it. And now his most enigmatic classmate turns out to have an identical one she's defensive about.

Kaworu found that fact highly interesting.


Six hours later, the apartment was completely pitch black, the only source of illumination being the street lamps' light seeping in through the windows from below. For his part, Kaworu himself was sleeping face-down on his bed, limbs pointing in every direction underneath the covers.

No sound was made when a shadow separated from the corner and resolved into a human silhouette.

"Report." – the figure spoke with a dry, almost emotionless tone. Kaworu slightly stirred at the sudden sound but didn't wake up.

"No anomalies, my lord." – a bodiless voice replied. – "However, I might not be able to maintain my cover for very long."

"Oh?"

"Those accursed vortigaunts have detected my presence. I'm not certain whether they're fully aware of my nature but they might move against us."

A long silence settled over the room before the figure spoke again. – "...you have doubts."

"My lord, I have been watching over this boy for ten years now. What good is he to us?"

"Do not underestimate his worth. You have seen for yourself what his kind can achieve."

"But he is just a frail mortal. Your previous puppet was only successful because he fought enemies of his own power."

"Except one."

"Which was only a pale imitation of us, unable to project the light of its soul without an external source of energy. Even Sachiel would have been able to vanquish it. What good would a single human, as unusual as he is, be against a true Angel?"

As soon as the last word was spoken, both sides of the conversation went abruptly silent.

On the other side of the city, Rei jerked awake.

"Speak of the Beast." – the Voice murmured. – "He is coming."

The corner of the figure's mouth slightly curled upwards. – "It is time. Everything is prepared."

"Is everything ready, my lord?"

"Proceed as planned."


Low Earth orbit
Same time

"Sir, you'd better see this."

The man in an officer's uniform sealed the straw of his coffee can before heaving himself out of his chair, sailing across the null-gravity environment to finally come to a stop next to the uniformed equipment operator who called out to him. – "What is it?"

"Sensors just picked up an anomalous mass reading near Mars." – the operator replied, pointing at the sonar-like display in front of him. More accurately, at a red spot surrounded by dark blue. He pressed a button and a yellow UNKN caption appeared next to the spot.

"Do we have a visual?"

"No, sir. I don't understand it either: an object with that kind of mass reading should be big enough to be seen at our long-range resolution, yet we can't pick up anything."

"The AI can't see it either." – another operator interjected. – "Reading confirmed but no visual."

The officer raised his head and called out behind him. – "Do we have any civvies out that way?"

"ATC says no." – a third operator replied.

"Then it's probably just some kind of malfunction. Log it and switch to the backup." – the officer ordered before kicking off the wall and towards his chair.

"Yes, sir. Switching to backup now." – The sensor operator pressed a few switches on his console, looked back at the screen and froze. – "Sir... the backup is picking it up too."

Before the officer could reply, the third operator interjected. – "Captain, transmission from the Valencia. Text only. They're asking whether we picked up an anomalous gravimetric reading a moment ago." – His console beeped, drawing his attention back to it. – "Hold on, transmissions from another five ships. They're all asking the same thing." – His console beeped again. – "Sir, White Forest is asking all orbiting vessels for confirmation."

Dozens of millions of kilometers away, a dark shape drifted swiftly through the void, unblinking eye sockets on a bird-like skull staring outward just as silently as the void stared back into them.


Chapter rewrite complete on 15/04/15

The Hebrew-titled stack next to Rei's desk is the Talmud, an old Judaic religious text dating back to between the second and sixth century. Originally, Jewish religious traditions were purely oral until the Romans looted and destroyed Jerusalem's Second Temple in 70 AD, which prompted the Jews to record this knowledge in written manuscripts to ensure that it won't be lost. The book itself is composed of laws, traditions and interpretations of Biblical texts (from the Old Testament, that is) and is a central piece of Jewish law. An unedited omnibus of the Talmud would be several thousand pages long, hence why Rei has it in several volumes.

The basic layout of Rei's home is the same as in canon, except for one extra bedroom. The extra room is directly opposite of the bathroom, opening from the end of the kitchen (next to the threshold of Rei's room). Kaworu's apartment has the same layout as Misato's in canon; EvaGeeks has the exact floor plan, if it is necessary to get a mental image of how everything is laid out. In this layout, Kaworu uses the same room Shinji did.