+++++ Kirijo Residence. (Monday, August 23rd, +2)

Shinji was not quite ready when, a half an hour of measurements later, he stood in the doorway of a room that could easily have fit the entirety of his previous residence within it. Partly dressed, with only the slacks and his undershirt visible, he had a difficult time hearing what Yuko was saying over the not-so-distant wailing of denial in his mind. At the center of the wall opposite the doorway was a bed that could easily fit twelve of him. One entire wall was dedicated to an exterior view of the nearby forest valley, and the balcony that was his to walk out onto from which he could watch the setting sun should he so choose. A walk-in closet that he once would have considered an enormous upgrade to the bedroom he'd slept in before. An adjoining bathroom, with varying fixtures that offered comforts he'd never known. A mini fridge stocked with drinks and healthy snacks for those times when he was too hungry to concentrate. A writing desk, intended to double as a study desk, with a mirror attached to the back that afforded him a view of whoever was entering the room to speak with him. Any one of these things would have been enough to cause him the emotions he was feeling at the moment. But none of them was nearly as baffling as the one small detail that his eyes kept returning to: the sound system.

Easily as large as he himself, and with a multitude of potential inputs, the beast of a main console was connected wirelessly to speakers stationed throughout the room at heights and angles that would give flawless sound to any centimeter of the room he occupied. Of any gift he'd yet been offered, of any kindness that had been shown to him, the offhand way that Yuko mentioned that this sound system could be played at all hours owing to the acoustical dampening of the walls around his room was the greatest. If he was in his room, he would never again be denied music.

"…mattress is quiet," Yuko finished with the brief overview of what was currently inside of his new room. "An entire classroom could jump up and down on it and you wouldn't hear a thing."

He blinked, several times, then looked towards her and tried to recall what had led up to that particular bit of information.

She saw the change in his demeanor, and shook her head. "You are a restless sleeper, I would imagine. Tossing and turning as the night terrors take you. You do not need to worry that your tossing and turning will wake the others, the bed is quite silent."

"O-oh." Finally taking a few steps into the room itself, the door swinging closed behind him, he approached the bed and timidly pushed down onto it. He'd spent his entire life fearing this particular type of furniture. When it failed to push back overmuch, he frowned and pushed harder. The mattress gave easily, and when he retracted his hand it returned to an undisturbed state without external assistance. It was as if the bed was alive, a soft and pliant creature shaped into something to sleep upon. "It's…odd."

Moving over to the foot of the bed from where she'd been standing, she sat on the edge of the footboard and held onto the post that detailed that corner. "It will likely take some getting used to. Much of this will, I would imagine."

Shinji looked over to her, then back to the bed. "I…I d-don't…."

"I know it's kind of sudden, and I normally wouldn't say anything," she kept her voice even, a woman simply conversing on the weather, "but my mother used to beat me with a wire hanger every time I made a mistake." Pulling up one section of her blouse, she exposed a corner of her back and the scars that lined it. "I had originally intended to flee this place, once I was old enough. My mother had found employment here, working for Mister Kirijo, and I was given a place in the servants' quarters." She caught him looking at her, and grinned like a child confiding a secret in another. "The Young Madam took note of my scars one day, when she saw me leaving one of my beatings. She took me into the library, calmed my tears down, listened to what happened, and then called her mother. I have seen few people ever reach the height of anger that Miyuki Kirijo displayed, though one of them is your own mother. I was adopted, informally, the next day. My mother is still serving her sentence, as far as I know."

His eyes remained on her scars, physical reminders to a woman that he had begun to think was simply quiet and calm by nature. "I'm…sorry…." It sounded pathetic to his own ears, to express sympathy to someone for what she had experienced. He couldn't yet begin to process that she saw in him the emotional version of what on her was a physical marking.

She noted that the fingers of his left hand kept running along the back of his right. "You can touch them, if you'd like. They don't hurt anymore."

Like tiny magnets, the marks drew his fingers to her flesh. When he first touched them, he flinched slightly. Not in disgust, or fear, but in realization that he was the one willingly engaging in interpersonal physical contact. Fingertips moved along the ridges of poorly healed flesh, leading to entire fingers caressing the markings with increasing curiosity. Without being actively aware of what he was doing, he stepped up against her, between her legs with now both hands smoothing against her skin. "They're…beautiful."

Yuko rested her cheek against his chest, listening to his heartrate as he explored her back. "That's sweet of you to say. I've always thought they make me look like a lizard, or perhaps a tortoise." The type of abuse he'd suffered was now clear enough for her to understand, and she slid off the footboard to stand up against him as well, wrapping her arms around his waist to bring him into a comforting hug. "If you ever can't decide whether or not you should do something, or if you ever wonder if you could get something, I want you to come talk to me…ok?" Letting her head fall back, she saw in his eyes the same distant fog that she found in the mirror far too often. "Some scars never go away…and sometimes you need to do things that others just can't understand. Let me help you not make my mistakes."

His mind returned to itself with a crash, and he realized that his fingers were digging into her back. Her face showed no signs of torment, her posture remained completely loose as he forced his grip away from her skin. "I-I'm-"

"Going to be slow to process something far more terrible than most people will ever realize," she interrupted with a sad smile of understanding. "I'm very serious, come to me first. Let me help the ladies of this house guide you onto a path that won't force you to crawl through slime. I didn't deserve it, in my youth…you don't deserve it in yours."

"…You…you don't know…." Stepping out of the hug, he looked down and turned away to move towards the window.

"I do, actually." She knew she couldn't expect him to simply accept her offer without thought. If he was that type of man, he wouldn't be where he was right now. "You'll see that, in time." Fixing her uniform, she left him to his thoughts and hurried towards where she would be expected.

Shinji stared at the bulge in his pants reflected in the wall of windows staring out at the dark night beyond, hating himself intensely for what he had felt compelled to do to a good woman.

+++++ Kirijo Residence. (Monday, August 23rd, +2)

Miyuki listened to Yuko's report of the events in his room, nodding slowly as she absorbed the important knowledge gained. Stopping her at the point where Shinji pulled away from her, she tapped the table. "Would he have?"

"Without question." Yuko shook her head sadly. "He's been programmed for far too long to not have those impulses. Someone has associated pain with gratification in his mind, it's plain as day if you know where to look."

"Mmm." Lifting up her pen, she began to swirl it in the air thoughtfully. "I do not believe he'll seek it out."

"He would not. The triggers are very specific, and tuned to retain submission to the event. If I pulled him onto the bed, toppling backwards so that he remained between my legs, that would have been enough." She shrugged. "If one of the ladies in class are forward enough, and he hasn't had an outlet recently enough…it could very easily become a situation outside of your scenario."

Miyuki's pen stopped twirling and pointed directly at Yuko. "Our, not mine. What I do here remains for the benefit of what is left of humanity. The Great Will must be stopped, and if that means I take Shinji to my own bed each night I will do so with a glad heart."

"As you say."

Blowing out a sigh of exasperation and tossing her pen onto the desk, she sat back and crossed her arms while glaring at her most trusted lieutenant. "Would you just spit out whatever it is you're chewing on, so we can both get some sleep?"

Yuko smiled, caught in her intentionally childish attempts at winding up the woman she loved more than any other on Earth. "I would like to take up the role of his EA. I will balance out his time, maintain his finances, and keep an eye on him so that he doesn't do anything irreparable in ignorance. Better that I do so than someone from NERV. Naoko Akagi should not be trusted with him, at least not just yet."

"…You realize what this might require of you, yes?"

"I would do so gladly."

"Why?"

"Because he has very kind eyes."

+++++ Kirijo Residence. (Monday, August 23rd, +2)

Shinji sat on a chair upon the balcony outside his room. The sounds of the forest below played counterpoint to the music he'd put on that was emanating through the open balcony door. At some point, he figured, he would have to actually try to sleep. That point, however, was not yet upon him. In the past two days he'd been exposed to more of humanity than he had in the nearly two decades prior. All of which were female. All of which were….

"Shinji?" Mitsuru's voice came apologetically from inside the balcony door.

When he looked over at the achingly gorgeous daughter of a painfully wonderful woman, he didn't attempt to hide the tears he'd shed after Yuko had left. "I'm sorry," his voice was lifeless, resigned to the fate he anticipated was inbound, "I'll turn the music off."

"What? Oh, no, the music is lovely." She carefully stepped around him, taking the other seat on the balcony and setting her hand atop his. "I'm fond of Classical myself. I wanted to come over to make sure you were doing ok. You didn't answer my knock an hour ago, and I assumed you were probably…needing a little time to decompress."

Her hand was neither warm nor cold. Too small to cover his entire paw, it still managed to fit where she'd set it. "I'm sorry."

"Whatever for? Everyone needs time to themselves, after all. I only came in now because I was concerned that you might be suffering in silence."

His mind continued its journey through dark places. "I shouldn't be here. You should have someone better protecting you, and the others. Someone who knows how to fight. Who knows how to be human. Who hasn't…." Pulling his hand away from her, gently, he set it on his knee out of her reach. "I'm not who you think I am. Everyone acts like I'm 'honorable' or 'good'."

"No, you act like you're honorable. You act like you're good." She didn't have to fight to keep her voice calm, she had expected that his sense of self-worth would be poorly aligned to what others saw in him.

"That's all it is. An 'act'."

"Shinji, actions are what matter. Thoughts, even the bad ones, are just that." She reached over and purposefully took his hand back, holding it atop her arm rest this time. "I've 'thought' about punting Ulala-chan in the head, sometimes hourly. I've 'thought' about smacking one of the male students so hard that I left a permanent handprint on his face. All I've done is tried to help her act appropriately for a young woman with a bright future, and firmly instructed our classmates that photographs of the women's locker rooms are by appointment only."

Her fingers held his hand firmly, purposefully. It confused him. "You…heard what I've done."

"No, I heard the criminal charges that were going to be pressed against the woman who has done things to you."

He had to get her away from him. "I enjoyed it."

"I don't believe you did. Not truly." She'd done some quick reading on the subject, and despite feeling revulsion she had managed to glean enough insight to recognize what she was looking at. "Physically, perhaps. Emotionally? No."

There hadn't really been a plan for what happened if she didn't recoil in horror, and now Shinji was forced to deal with a calm, caring, woman on her terms. "…I…I miss it."

"You miss the routine. The expected," she corrected him. "You miss the false comfort of knowing what was going to happen. Even though what was going to happen was terrible, it was at least something you were used to. Here, now, with a false sun overhead that's dimmed to what we're terming 'night', with a classroom of other people with needs, and feelings, and motivations that don't involve hurting you…it's scary. You want everything to go back to what you know, which is pain. But you know what I want?"

Her grip on him was as gentle as falling snow, it was bands of molten iron. He was lost, he was found. "I d-don't want to hurt you," he whispered in a voice that echoed in his ears like artillery fire.

"I want you to learn how to actually be happy. I think you can do that, here. Even during all of this, even fighting in Tartarus, even struggling to understand these emotions and impulses."

"Please…." He wanted what she said to be true. He wanted to pull her over to sit atop him as he filled her with his essence. He wanted- Reflexes and manual dexterity tend to be tied together as a natural principle. The ability to correct and adjust to a changing situation either has the support of a body capable of doing so, or it doesn't. When he spied the boulder flying directly towards Mitsuru, he adjusted their hands so he was holding onto hers instead then yanked her towards him as he threw himself backwards to propel her out of the immediate danger.

Mitsuru, no slouch at controlling her body, worked with him instead of tensing up completely and causing him to have to haul either dead weight or rigid mass. When she landed atop him, Shinji having used his body to impact the deck of the balcony, and then the bulletproof glass panels protecting people from stumbling off of the balcony, she felt little more than a flush of anxiety at the enormous sound of destruction behind her and a tinge of embarrassed bemusement at the presence of his hardened member pressing against her groin.

Preventing the initial death was, as it turned out, the easy part. Having lost half of its mooring, the balcony then pivoted on the remaining contact point, becoming a slide and sending both Shinji and Mitsuru gliding down towards an awning that sheltered an exit from the first floor leading to the exterior pool. Shinji lifted Mitsuru slightly higher so that his feet hit the awning first, then rolled with the impact and hoped that he could control their rotation enough that he didn't land atop her when they struck the ground below. Momentum and physics, having the greater vote over who went where and when, instead sent them both on a course directly for the nearby pool.

Mitsuru was sheltered from the immediate impact against the water, Shinji's back striking the surface with a wet and meaty thwack, knocking both the wind and sense from him. Remembering the truth revealed in class that he wasn't adept at swimming, she quickly freed herself from his grasp and switched who was saving who. Finding him heavier than she'd expected, it was a chore to get him back on the surface of the pool, and a pain to get him over towards the wall without going under herself. Fortunately, she was quickly met with assistance from one of the agents that had arrived with her new friend.

"Nice moves, kid!" Akane had jumped into the water herself, helping Mitsuru get him to where Mikoto could pull him out. "Next time, though, tuck into a ball. It helps when you're entering with someone else."

"Miki-chan thinks instead next time he should try falling feet first." Mikoto was visibly straining to get him to his feet and put herself under his shoulder to keep him there. "Dustoff vectoring in, Aka-chan!"

"Yeah, I hear it." Akane finished helping Mitsuru out of the pool, then climbed out herself. Looking at the soaked student body president, she placed one hand on her shoulder and checked her eyes for consistent pupil size. "You going to be ok, ma'am? We've gotta get our man here into his zoombag."

Mitsuru shook her head. "I'm fine, I've had worse falls from a horse. Where are you taking him?"

"Fucking civvies," Mikoto muttered under her breath as the helicopter rounded the side of the building.

Akane motioned to the helicopter, shouting over the sound of the engine as it moved to land on the nearby green. "He's got to get to work! You need to get to a shelter with your-"

"No." Mitsuru asserted, looking every inch her mother's daughter. "If he is going, so am I."

This time everyone heard Mikoto repeat herself, "Fucking civvies!"

Shinji shook his head, the fog of dizziness clearing. "Too dangerous!" His words weren't coming clearly to him, but he knew his obligation. If he was going to go fight a giant alien, Mitsuru belonged in a shelter somewhere not close to that.

"Then you shouldn't be going either," Mitsuru countered, with a heat that he hadn't seen in her before.

The side hatch on the single-rotor helicopter slid open, dispensing a single woman marked with an armband that identified her as medical personnel. Dashing over, she went straight to Shinji and began assessing him for trauma. "Are you mobile, sir?"

"Yeah," his head wobbled as he went to nod and move with the new woman towards the helicopter at the same time, his balance still slightly off, "get her somewhere safe!"

"That's wherever you are!" Marching towards the helicopter, she ignored Shinji's sound of protest.

Akane looked to Mikoto, then shrugged. "We're burning daylight arguing."

The skeletal woman growled in irritation, jogging towards her duty. "Fucking civvies!"

Once he was seated inside the helicopter, with a pair of noise-cancelling headphones covering his ears, Shinji started to regain his balance completely. The barrage of wind against his eardrums had been causing him to feel as if he was still tumbling, and now his only concern was that he was cold. If he was cold, then Mitsuru had to be freezing. She insisted on coming with him, that made her his responsibility directly. Twice he tried to speak, and both times he doubted he made much sense over the roar of the propeller as the machine carrying him towards the GeoFront was far louder than him.

Mikoto reached over and waggled a portion of the cord connecting his earphones to a railing above his head, then pressed a button on her own cord that matched one on his. "You push this to talk to us. Don't push the one above it unless it's an emergency, that goes to the pilot."

Carefully choosing the button she indicated, and not the one she'd warned him of, he felt a wash of relief as he heard his own voice enough to know that he was speaking what he was thinking. "It is freezing." Picking three words, each articulated cleanly, he hoped to get his point across without his teeth clattering.

The medic was taking his blood pressure, and gestured with her head towards a nearby bag. Akane reached in and pulled out two survival blankets, tossing one to Mikoto and unwrapping the other for Mitsuru. Her voice came across the headphones clearly, despite not having pressed the button. "Where's the Crew Chief?"

"We only have th' few," an unidentified voice replied. "I was no going t' trust any of th' nuggies t' bring our brother t' base, as only Sparkle and Flash are qual'd on this bitch an' we need th' heavies t' keep the winged abomination away from home."

Akane looked irritated and disgusted. "I never thought I'd miss Moritama."

"If ye've got a problem with my leadership, feel free t' get the quals t' be a combat pilot."

"It's not you Noelle. I'm just bitching about the chaos."

"Yeah…I ken what-" The helicopter pitched hard to the right, the pilot's horrible accent shifting to clipped professional Japanese. Despite the dire situation, she spoke as if she was on the phone with an old friend. "Homeplate, this is NERV-01. Need you to ask the southeastern guns to stop missing these projectiles. I just almost got fed a second dinner, over."

Misato's voice came back over the headset. "NERV-01, this is Actual. We've lost Homeplate, as well as Hornet-05 and Hornet-11. Interrogative: ETA?"

"Well, if I don't have t' dodge half the mountainside, ETA three minutes t' pad nine, over."

"Roger that, Raffle. You have priority on nine, get him here safe. Out."

Raffle snorted, pitching the helicopter down slightly and increasing its speed. "Get him here safe, she says. No, ye big-titted sow, I figured I'd just smash th' bird into th' barn! Fucking Armor. Keep hold o' him, Miki. I'm after testin' th' Grease Tribe."

Mikoto slid closer, then wrapped her arms around Shinji's shoulders and pulled him down onto her lap. The medic moved to sit under his ankles, then cinched several restraints over them both. Mikoto then lightly scratched Shinji's head with her nails, tittering with a laugh of anticipated excitement, "Welcome to the roller coaster, Shin-kun. Hope you don't get motion sick."

What followed was one of the most thrilling experiences Shinji could have ever conceived of. He was riding in a roaring chariot of conflicting and unstable physics being piloted by a disembodied voice that spoke nigh-unintelligible Japanese with an accent he'd never known existed describing circumstances that he couldn't force his mind to envision properly. He was lifted upwards, shoved downwards, torn from side to side, and at times varying combinations of the same. At the end, he was given no warning when the helicopter touched down hard, spinning and skidding on a broad arc after apparently dodging yet another projectile.

Emerging from the front of the helicopter was a short, blonde, pixie-like woman with a wolf's grin and a confidence that no amount of money could buy. "Right, that's yer lot! I dinnae get paid t' repair th' bitch, just fly her, let's go!" Taking a combat rifle from the rack next to the door, she yanked the portal open and checked for hostiles. "Clear!"

Akane was first out, grabbing a rifle of her own and dashing towards the entrance into the nearby building. The medic was next, keeping Mitsuru's head down and running her after the lithe Agent. Bringing up the rear was Mikoto and Shinji, his escort forgoing a rifle to keep one hand on him with the other drawing her service pistol. "Ok, Shin-kun, Miki-chan needs you to promise her two things, please and thank you."

He reached the entrance, still held and guarded by Akane, shifting his mass to clear the doorway and agreeing to do whatever she asked, "S-sure."

"Kick this thing's ass," she held him back as Akane moved to clear the path for them, "and give us a kiss?"

He blinked, not having anticipated the last portion at all. With any view of them blocked by the walls of the entrance, he stepped up against her and gave her the kind of kiss that he'd been trained to. It was shorter than it might otherwise have been, as brutal as he could make it in the time he was given, and ended with him looking into her eyes with a wariness that he might have done something wrong.

"…Miki-chan really likes your enthusiasm." She wrinkled her nose, taking his hand and hauling him bodily towards the motioning Akane.

Akane stood at the elevator, her eyes everywhere but Mikoto and Shinji. "Temple took our plus one to the medbay. It's the safest place for her, and she wants to get her treated for hypothermia." The elevator arrived, and she pulled Shinji in firmly. Once the doors were closed and they were in motion, she lowered her rifle and looked shook her head. "Hell of a welcome, eh kid?"

He swallowed, then jerked his shoulders in a shrug. "I've…uhm, I've never been welcomed anywhere before I came here. I wouldn't know a good welcome from a bad one."

"Think you're going to be able to pilot the big robot?"

There was a brief instant where he was about to inform Akane that what he was going to be doing was neither piloting nor involving a robot. He then remembered Ritsuko asking him, with great respect and infinite politeness, to not do that thing. "That's why I was brought here…so we'd better hope so."

The elevator door slid open again, with Ritsuko and Naoko on the other side waiting for him to arrive. The latter nodded politely, "Agents, I would take it as a kindness if you went back and kept an eye on our wayward Kirijo. This floor has been secured by the MAGI, to preserve Shinji-kun's dignity."

Stepping towards Ritsuko, who motioned for him to come with her, he turned quickly and looked between Akane and Mikoto. "Thank you," his eyes lingered briefly on Mikoto, "for everything." He had to turn back towards where he was walking in order to not wobble like a drunkard, and so missed any potential reaction before the elevator doors shut behind him. He was shivering now, not just from the cold but also from the thrill of the slight release Mikoto had given him. Like an addict that had been denied a drug for nearly too long, the slight 'hit' had helped remind him of the physical pleasure that had been one of his only joys.

"I saw the recording Kirijo-san forwarded," Ritsuko stated as she steered him towards the lockers. "You, my good sir, have a phenomenal reaction time." Flashing him a tight grin, she added, "How much of this shaking is adrenaline, and how much is you freezing?"

"Too much, on both accounts," Naoko interrupted, reaching his side once again and hurrying past to get the door opened for him. "The LCL is already room temperature at best, we're going to be risking frostbite if the suit malfunctions again."

Shinji winced at the memory of the first time he put on the suit they were talking about. It was an intensely painful memory, and a significant part of him wished he could just forgo the suit. "Do…I have to wear it?"

"The QA team says that what happened was a freak accident," Ritsuko assured him. "The suit is really for you. You could pilot nude, at least according to the theory. I know you're comfortable without clothes on, but I'm not so eager to push you out like that after what I learned earlier today. You deserve to develop your dignity."

Inside the locker room, Shinji was urged to start shedding the cold and wet clothing he wore. It started taking too long to remove his overshirt, so he simply instead chose to grab the placket of his shirt and tear it off. Throwing that to the side he fumbled for a bit with numbed fingers against the undershirt before Ritsuko stepped close and began helping. "Th-thank you."

"I was actually going to apologize." Her smirk demonstrated the truth of her words, "But if you're going to thank me for this, I guess I'll leave it at that."

Before the last of his clothes were off, Naoko already noticed something that would be a bit of a problem. "Dear, not to disparage your…considerable natural weaponry, but is there any chance we could possibly focus on containing that?"

Shinji blushed, looking down. "I…I'm t-trying."

"I know you are." Naoko moved closer, his plugsuit hanging over her shoulder, and ran her fingers under his chin to get him to look at her. "It's a physical reaction to mental and chemical actions. I know that you're not intending to, and I know that you're trying, but I need you to tell me what we can do to help you."

Ritsuko hesitated to offer what she believed to be a sane solution, but the situation above them forced her hand, "If you need, we can leave for a moment or two while you manually unload it, to borrow my mother's euphemism."

"N-NO!" Shinji hadn't meant to yell, but he could already feel his palms aching. "N-no…I-I c-can't. No."

A growl grew at the back of Naoko's throat. Biting her bottom lip as she put thought into whether or not she needed to accelerate a number of plans, she threw out an option as chaff to buy time. "We could tape it to his torso?"

"Elastic bandage!" Ritsuko snapped her fingers, hurrying over to a nearby cabinet and fishing some out. "Wrap it to protect everything, then around his back to keep it close to him. Might make bending forward a little awkward, but it gets us out there."

Shinji nodded eagerly, he'd accept discomfort as a solution when compared to the alternatives his own mind kept parading out. "I-I'll deal."

"I'll get some gauze padding," Naoko sighed. "I understand that you're not terribly familiar with the delicacy of this type of equipment, dear, but it is not quite as sturdy as it appears."

Keeping his arms up and out of the way of everyone, Shinji allowed them to manipulate and 'holster' the problem. Half a minute later he was stepping into the plugsuit and silently praying that it wouldn't wind up like the last time. Once everything was in place, he pressed the button to decompress the suit…and nothing happened. Trying once more, pressing more firmly, resulted in the same nothing. "I-I broke it?"

Naoko gently took hold of his wrist. "No. I designed this to survive being run over by a damn tank." Pressing a few other buttons, she found the entirety of it was non-responsive. "Ritsuko, dear, I'm going to get him to the catwalks and in Unit-01. I want you to go get QA and bring them to Unit-01's foot so he can stomp on them repeatedly."

"Not intimate enough, I'll just kill them myself," Ritsuko shot back. "We can't leave the bandage on, it's going to get soaked in LCL and risk getting fibers in his lungs."

"Then I-I'll go nude." Tearing off their work, he gestured to the door urgently. "The longer I wait, the more people die. The more people die, the bigger my failure. Let's go."

Ritsuko shrugged off her lab coat, pocketing the important items and throwing the rest to the side. Wrapping it around his waist, she gave him what modesty she could. "Take it off before you get in, but at least this stops you from being exposed as much."

Naoko got the door open and agreed that they needed to move on from the situation. "I'll make sure to have a nice warm robe waiting for you afterwards. You can do this, Shinji, we believe in you."