Geofront, AEL Headquarters
January 10, 2042
1025 hours
Kaworu did not hesitate for even a second to join in on the clapping that erupted when Asuka's LCL-damp mane appeared over the edge of the entry plug. He couldn't count how many people were cramped into the hangar; hell, he didn't even know how many people worked at the company, but from the look of it a significant chunk of that number found the time away from their duties to express their opinion about her performance earlier.
And to be frank, she deserved every second of it.
Finding her footing on the walkway, the girl took a moment to gaze across the gathered crowd, looking quite smug with herself even before she opened her mouth. – "And that, ladies and gentlemen... is how we do things on planet Earth."
At that, another round of cheers went up. If such a thing was possible, she looked even more smug – and what's more, she seemed to have had prior experience at "working the crowd" or however they called it. That is, until her father stormed out of the crowd and immediately snatched her in a bear hug, Asuka visibly squirming and protesting, evidently not a fan of being handled like that where other people could see it.
It was quite amusing, actually, to see the girl being on the back foot for once, rather than always being aggressively assertive in every conceivable situation.
It was at that point where Yui walked out of the crowd herself and rose her voice. – "Like everyone gathered here, I too feel that miss Shephard's performance today was outstanding. However, I do believe that in light of recent events, we still have much work to do."
At that, the crowd began to disperse but Kaworu didn't.
"I'm glad to see my faith in you was vindicated." – Yui continued, now directing her attention to Asuka.
"Not my best, but I'll take what I can get." – Asuka replied, half-turning away to wring LCL out of her hair without splattering it over the adults' legs.
Her father made a mock snort. – "What, you're suddenly modest now?"
"Hey, I'll take credit where credit's due any day. 'Outstanding performance', remember?"
"Now that's more like it."
"Besides, I'll take two unconfirmed kills over zero kills whatsoever any day." – For a second, Kaworu thought that was a jab at him before realizing that technically speaking, he too had one unconfirmed kill against Shamshel as per Asuka's standards. Not that it meant much, seeing how Shamshel evidently survived whatever that red spear did to her in a decent enough condition to come back for another round.
"I don't know, that second one looked pretty confirmed for me."
Asuka shook her head. – "Not until we see the corpse, it ain't. It already came back once."
"They do not leave intact bodies, miss Shepard." – Yui pointed out. – "We don't know for certain if this was the same one."
"Which means there's no reason to assume it wasn't." – the girl replied simply. – "So that makes it two confirmed kills for Blueberry, two unconfirmed for me, one unconfirmed for Nagisa. That about right?"
Shephard shook his head with a smile. – "Bragging already? Really?"
"Like I said, credit where credit's due. Besides, I'm still number 2, I still got catching up to do."
"Not to me, you don't." – Kaworu said as he joined the conversation.
"Were you watching the fight?" – Asuka pointed the question at him in a no-nonsense tone.
"I did."
"Take notes and next time, fight like that. No ifs, no buts."
"Understood." – Kaworu noticed her absently rubbing the same arm Shamshel's tentacles burned. – "You alright?"
"Just residual feedback, I think."
"Doctor Sanada should examine you." – Yui declared.
Asuka glanced at the doctor whom Kaworu only now noticed himself as having joined them. – "Shower first? I stink like a slaughterhouse."
"Of course." – Sanada replied immediately. – "Take your time, I'll be waiting."
"Thank you. How bad was the collateral damage?"
"We don't know yet, but none of the shelters was hit. Property damage, of course, is another matter."
"Unconfirmed kill or not, dumping that thing into the lake was a good call." – Shephard offered. – "If it went off in the middle of a residential district..."
"Consider the time of day, colonel." – Yui pointed out once again. – "Most people weren't home to begin with."
Asuka just sighed, shaking her head. – "I tried."
"We know, kiddo." – her father immediately replied. – "Hell, we don't even know how they snuck up on us like that without warning. Nobody here's blaming you."
"They'd better not, or I might recommend that they go take a turn next time."
As the three left, Kaworu lingered in the hangar as he looked up at Unit-02's battle-scarred form; if anything, the damage made the blood-colored Evangelion look even more fearsome. There was nothing that needed to be said: the difference between him and Asuka was clear as day. Now he understood the attitude she's been giving him: she wasn't talking down to him because she thought she was good, she was good and she knew it. Hell, she practically blew him straight out of the water right out of the gate. The one Angel he fought head-on and nearly got beaten by (as opposed to being actually beaten by) despite being backed by Rei, Asuka not only beat by herself, but did so outnumbered two-to-one and beat the other Angel too.
He didn't know whether it should've made him feel jealous of her performance or ashamed of his own. But when he remembered the way she fought, the way she kept getting back up, the way she resorted to anything she could do to keep fighting... he found himself feeling neither jealousy, nor shame.
He wanted to be like her.
He didn't fear the Angels, no. But after what she did, what he saw her do... something has changed. And at that moment, Kaworu Nagisa knew that if fate decided to pit him against an Angel once more, no matter how badly they tore into his flesh, he will not yield this time.
He owed her that much.
Outskirts of Tokyo-2
"See?" – Leliel quipped to the two figures walking eastward from the city. – "Told you she didn't need help."
"And what about the people in the city?" – One of the figures pressed, voice that of a teenage girl. – "How many died?"
"As many as it did. There's nothing you could've changed anyway."
"Do you even care?" – The other figure grumbled.
"It's not my job to care." – Leliel replied bluntly. – "I'm here to ensure events happen as they're supposed to, not as they should be ideal according to you or anyone else."
"'Supposed to' according to who?" – he asked back.
"Entropy and causality. Your lives are important not because of who you are, but because of what you do. All are just cogs in a machine. The only thing that differs is when your time to do your respective part will come - and for you two, that time is not yet here."
"Then what was all that three days ago?"
"A prelude of things to come." – Leliel replied cryptically before abruptly vanishing into thin air from one instant to the next.
"Both to them, and to you."
Ten minutes after the reception in the hangar, Asuka let out a deep sigh as she threw her head back and let the shower wash the remaining LCL off of her, plugsuit haphazardly discarded on the floor behind her. As skimpy as it was, at least it was a single piece of cloth that could be removed in seconds – and the fact that it had sleeves meant that she didn't have to be concerned with the vacuum seal suddenly failing and gravity stripping her stark naked on the spot.
Because impending medical checkup or not, now she had time to let her mind wander about such things, so she did just that. Yes, she was a pervert – but then again, who of her age wasn't?
Yet even her stillness, feeling nothing except the water running down her bare skin, couldn't still the turmoil within her as her head slowly bowed forward, eyes cracking open to gaze at the tiles between her bare feet as her self-amusing thoughts drifted away to make room for something else.
Praise. Genuine, earned praise with no strings attached and no one to thank for it. Recognition that she was strong and not riding on someone else's coattails.
It was the first time anyone other than her father saw her that way. She didn't even expect that was ever going to happen.
Not after everything.
The first, concrete memory she could remember was of herself uncontrollably crying in her father's arms as her mother's coffin was lowered into the ground, never to be seen again. After that, herself waking from nightmares in the middle of the night and finding him awake in the kitchen, clutching a bottle while his body was racked by silent sobs.
Many, many times.
They moved off Earth soon after the funeral. He never told her why and she never asked. Yet despite the two of them being the only ones each other had left, there was also the matter that Asuka's mother was an only child born just before Second Impact, with no living relatives by the time Asuka arrived. And despite having just been widowed, Asuka's father was soon recalled for active service. There simply weren't enough actual police in the colonies to effectively handle the rapidly growing immigrant population in those days and in many places, the local military garrison had to step up and handle law enforcement themselves. And with Shephard being one of the relative few survivors of Second Impact with actual military experience, coupled with him having specifically requested exclusively offworld postings, they couldn't just simply let him go raise his barely three years old daughter. He was too valuable.
Fortunately, he wasn't the only one in a similar situation: with the massive baby boom following the destruction of the Combine's reproductive suppression field across Earth, there were a lot of parents in the military and quite a few who simply didn't have anyone to entrust their kids to while out on the field. Thus, the military set up a support infrastructure of foster homes and paid caretakers specifically to watch over the children of active-duty soldiers while the latter are away.
Unfortunately, the woman Asuka ended up with was anything but motherly. Sure, she seemed helpful and nice on the surface – but as soon as Shephard was off to do his job, she immediately turned her back on her charge, making no secret of the fact that she considered Asuka to be nothing but dead weight she only bothered to look after because she was paid to by the state. Not to mention that when Asuka got old enough to understand, she realized that the "niceness" the woman displayed towards her father was actually her relentlessly hitting on him on a constant basis whenever he came home off-duty, always going on and on about how well she was taking care of his daughter, no matter how painfully obvious it was that he was 1) not interested and 2) not intent on remarrying anytime soon for the rest of eternity.
But it was not until Asuka overheard that woman outright advising him that it was time for him to forget about his late wife and move on with his life that Asuka's lingering distaste of that woman blossomed into burning hatred. Even now, merely thinking back to it made her hands clench into fists hard enough to nearly spring blood.
How dare that FUCKING WHORE think she could play gold digger on her father after what happened? How could she EVER in a million years think she could replace her mother?!
No. That person was nothing for her. There was no home for her there and never would be. Ever.
She was eight years old when she saw the military expo at the colony she was living in at the time. Mostly a PR event aimed at enticing the youth to keep the recruitment quotas going, civilians could, under supervision by actual soldiers, familiarize themselves with military gear and life. Needless to say, it was highly popular with boys, despite heavy resistance from parents' associations trying to have it canceled on the grounds that, need for self-defense against another alien invasion or not, anyone who thinks it a good idea to let children get within arm's reach of actual military equipment outside a historical museum, even under close supervision, was a lunatic.
In fact, it was so popular with the boys that she was the only girl in the queue who wasn't a grownup escorting a boy.
The whispers, the snickers, the pointed fingers were all she could see and hear. A little redhead girl wanting to play soldier rather than playing with dolls. The idea was apparently so fucking hilarious that everywhere she looked, she saw nothing but amused condescension directed at the little shit, the little nobody.
Which did not stop her from asking questions, from paying attention, from lining up at the simulators again and again as often as the queue let her. None of them stopped her. None of them could stop her.
Of course, that woman didn't care. At least the little brat wasn't underfoot, after all.
So she started reading. Weapons, tactics, history, recruitment propaganda, everything she could get her hands on, both offline and online.
She was nine years old when she told her father about it when he was back from assignment. And when he not only didn't laugh at her or think that she was doing it only because of him being a soldier, but actually sat down with her and asked her to tell him more, she felt happier than she ever did in... she couldn't remember how long.
It was shortly before her tenth birthday when the military's PR department proposed the use of surplus trainer-model Mark IV battleframes for public entertainment, creating a sports league with several age brackets, including anonymous underage ones. It was, of course, another propaganda stunt meant to direct the street folk towards recruitment points – but Asuka couldn't possibly care any less. To her, it was the chance of a lifetime. And thus, she was right in the first row of applicants, calmly sitting through and listening to every single training lecture and warning that if she hurt anyone with the giant (relative to her at the time) robot, she'd be out on her ass in an instant.
So she didn't. She watched, she learned, she fought, she won, she lost. She ultimately got eliminated just short of the quarterfinals in the first season, but she persevered. She very barely made it into the quarterfinals in the second season, but pulled herself back up and snatched up the bronze medal in a spectacular comeback. And the third time around, she was the one standing on the podium's top as all the boys wondered how did this scrawny kid under a full face-concealing helmet beat them all.
It wasn't because she was the strongest. It wasn't because she was the fastest. It wasn't even because she was the smartest.
It was because when others told her she couldn't do something, she went and proved them wrong.
It was because when she fell and skinned her knee, she flicked the blood off and kept going without a single sniff or tear.
It was because when she kicked a metal doorframe and dislocated her little toe, she grit her teeth, popped it back in place herself, and kept going.
It was because when she, with less than two months of experience at piloting an Eva, marched into mortal danger without hesitation, fought tooth and nail and when the smoke settled, she was the last one standing.
It was because while all the others had happy lives at home with everything they wanted at their beck and call from their parents, she had been touched by death before she could even talk properly and had to learn her lesson that nobody will take her seriously unless she stays well ahead of the curve.
She was here. She was alive. And nobody was going to change that. Nobody was going to stop her.
Not until she found who she was looking for.
Unknown location
"The Sixth did not appear."
"The Fourteenth appeared early."
"And now both the Fourth and the Seventh have arisen once more."
"There is no possible interpretation of the Scrolls that could have predicted this."
"The situation is getting out of control."
"Not yet."
An image of Unit-02 wrestling with Shamshel appeared within the circle of monoliths.
"It would seem our investment is starting to provide results. The appearance of the Second Child was most timely... even if the circumstances were unexpected."
"I still believe it was a mistake to have allowed that man to live. He was asking too many questions and the girl would have been usable even without him."
"Which would not have happened if it weren't for your unsanctioned and impulsive actions."
"Those actions were necessary. She was getting too close."
"Yet the execution was sloppy enough to arouse his suspicions nonetheless. Removing him so soon would have proven him right."
"That man is not the issue here." – the monolith marked 01 spoke up. – "Our predictions are inaccurate, but not yet unsalvageable. The three Evangelions, the three Children, the order of the first four Angels are still according to the Scrolls."
"Not entirely. The Third Child has not yet appeared."
"Yet the Fourth did. And we know who the Third is."
"What of Ikari? Is she still cooperating?"
"She still believes herself to be in control."
"Will that be enough?"
"Her work is required, for now. Duplicating it will be a trivial matter once she has given us what we need, knowingly or unknowingly."
After the monoliths disappeared, the room remained dark for a moment before lighting up to reveal a large office, the holographic emitter system in the center sinking into the floor before it was seamlessly covered up by a pair of sliding panels bearing the large sigil of the president of the Confederacy.
Behind the desk where the monolith marked 01 used to be, Keel Lorenz turned in his seat to gaze out the window, light glinting off the visor framing the wrinkled skin on his cheeks from above.
"And thus approaches the promised time." – he mused. – "Our work will soon reach completion."
"Your... colleagues are underestimating how... resourceful Adrian Shephard can be." – came from behind him a drawl he had gotten quite familiar with over the years.
"They are fools." – Keel replied without looking back. – "But you are not. Is that why you released him?"
"That... is a complicated matter." – If anything, the voice sounded mildly irritated. – "Suffice it to say that his initial... promise was, in the end, a disappointment. Do... with him as you will."
"We have no plans with him at the moment. Our attention is focused on other matters. And on that matter..."
He turned back to his desk.
"Do you have the package?"
Before him, the man in a suit cracked a cold smile as he placed a canister with biohazard warnings on the side onto the desk.
Chapter completed on 21/09/12. A very minor update has also been simultaneously pushed for chapter 4 - and with that, this story has officially surpassed 200k words in length.
In case anyone wonders, yes, Asuka's foster mother is the same woman who would've been her stepmom in canon. It's just that this time around, Asuka has a father who both has too much moral integrity to be led by his pants and was himself too emotionally attached to Kyoko to just shrug and move on, even without considering his daughter's feelings.
