His vision was beginning to clear, and the ringing in his ears was beginning to subside. Glancing at the receiver in his hand, he didn't need to hold it up to his ear to know what was being said. "We're sorry, due to the state of special emergency yada yada yada..."

He dropped it and let it hang from the payphone, not bothering to hang the receiver up. Rolling his eyes at those all too familiar words, he peeped at the image atop his duffel bag; a photo of Maj- Captain Katsuragi in a wholly innapropriate position, especially considering how old Shinji was supposed to be at the time. He snickered a little at his memories of Misato and her antics; she always tried her best for him, even when he didn't deserve it.

Immediately he turned his head to the right, almost perpendicular to the payphone. Locking eyes with the figure in the distance, he steeled himself. This time he wouldn't break eye contact. This time he wouldn't run away. He was tired of it. He was tired of running away. He was tired of what he knew. He was tired of what he didn't know.

Despite his best efforts, he was knocked to his feet by the VTOL crashing next to him. He only looked away for a moment, and yet when he looked back she was gone.

"Damn it." He looked up at the alien figure that towered above him with nothing short of rage and disgust. "Just you wait..."

Shinji couldn't remember the amount of times he had experienced this exact sequence of events. In fact that had sort of applied to almost every moment of the year ahead of himself. The start always bothered him the most though; the way events played out almost taunted Shinji, like idols that were leering at him.

Him and his duffel bag; who at the first instance of being contacted by his father, had left everything behind and rushed over to Tokyo-3.

The figure in the distance; no matter how hard he tried or what he did she would vanish.

Sachiel crushing the VTOL in front of him. This should be pretty self-explanatory...

At least Misato showing up was always a sight for sore eyes.

Mostly though, the start simply meant that Shinji had failed. If he was seeing this all again, it meant that he had failed the previous time and that it was time to begin again. That thought bothered him more than he thought possible. How long was he damned to repeat this? Why couldn't he get it right, why couldn't he just do everything correctly and save everyone...

"Sorry! Been waiting long?" Shinji entered the car wordlessly. He had to give her some credit; despite her laws-of-physics defying style of reckless driving, she was really good behind the wheel. She skillfully avoided the angel and drove them somewhat out of danger... At least for maybe a minute or so.

"They wouldn't..." Aaaaand N2 mine right on queue. It was hard not to be so cynical after a while, but it's not like he was being rude to anyone or anything, so no harm no foul. Misato dove onto Shinji, trying to shield him from the blast. The N2 mine ended up doing more damage to the car than Sachiel, so Shinji helped push it back onto the wheels. After they were done, Shinji turned around, hoping to see Sachiel after the blast. Unfotunately the mountains ended up blocking his view of the Angel.

"Thank you. I couldn't have done it without you." spoke Misato.

"It's no problem, Ms. Katsuragi." Shinji said, still staring off into the direction of the Angel.

Misato stared at the back of this boy's head, somewhat put off by this kid's lack of fear, gratitude, ...or well anything really. "Are you sure you're okay?" Misato asked, she was beginning to think that maybe this kid was in shock. Who could blame him if he was?

"Never better." Shinji replied, turning back to face Misato. She hadn't really gotten a good look at Shini Ikari before now, and besides the psychological reports on him she didn't know much about him either. The cold look of determination he showed on his face unnerved Misato somewhat. She only had sparse interactions with the Supreme Commander of NERV, but there was definitely an eery resemblance. 'I guess he's his father's son.'

"Well it's nice to meet you Shinji Ikari! We should get a move on then."

The car drove along the road in quite a sorry state. While she was driving, Misato was on the phone with someone Shinji hadn't met yet. Of course Shinji assumed it was Ritsuko. From the look on her face, Shinji assumed she was upset about the state of her car and her clothes. Despite what it looked like, Shinji was a remarkable judge of character. The fact that he had experience this exact moment a hundred or so of times didn't factor into it at all. No sir.

Shinji tapped his foot against the floor of the car. After a bit he stopped and started tapping his finger against the dashboard. Then the door of the car. Next his knee started bouncing.

"Is something the matter?" Misato asked.

"No. Not really. I'm just a little nervous I suppose." Shinji replied.

"Are you nervous about meeting your father?" She got the impression that this was a touchy subject, but felt like broaching the subject regardless. Shinji was clearly anxious about something, and if possible she'd like to help him with it.

"Something like that I guess." After he said this, Shinji faced her and smiled. It was a small smile, but it was pretty clearly a fake one. Try as he might though, the eyes couldn't lie.

Misato felt herself frown slightly at this, but turned back towards the road. Eventually they entered a tunnel which led to a lift that carried them and the car downwards. Misato and Shinji sat in the car as the lift lowered in a somewhat uncomfortable silence, but neither were willing to break it.

As they descended, Shinji figured that now was about the time that his father was given the go ahead to command the operation. He imagined the conversation taking place between him and a bunch of old farts, with them conceding leadership to his father. He imagined that he did one of those stupid smirks of his, and pushed his stupid glasses up his stupid face. Also he thought his father's beard was stupid. He would definitely need to invest in a razor once he finally beat the Angels.

Shinji rolled his eyes.

"Did your father send you any ID forms?" Misato eventually asked. She was tired of the silence, and felt like this was an appropriate enough question to ask to break it.

"Yeah, here." Shinji said as he handed the paper over.

Misato took a look at the paper and in return thanks him and gave him a green information booklet.

'Welcome to NERV'

Shinji opened the booklet and skimmed through the pages, with no real interest being given to what was on them. He didn't want to appear rude, but his mind was just occupied with other matters at the moment, predominantly the upcoming meeting with his father. The first ten or so meetings had been nerve-wracking, but they quickly lost their luster. Now he was just wondering how he wanted to handle it this time around.

As Shinji found himself once again deep in thought, the atmosphere in the car lapsed into another somewhat awkward silence. Misato wasn't quite sure what was going on with Shinji. She hoped that at least he wasn't intimidated by her, so once again she thought of something to say to try and break the ice.

"Do you know what your father does at NERV?" Misato asked.

"Hmm? Oh my teacher told me he protects humanity or something." Shinji replied indifferently.

Misato frowned again. Shinji was still looking through the window, and no matter what she did she couldn't seem to break through his shell. She considered teasing him, but hadn't really found any decent openings. Oh! The photo! How could she forget!

"Sooo, Shinji. How'd you like the photo I sent you?" Misato asked with the hint of a smirk on her face.

After hearing this, Shinji's expression twitched somewhat, and he snickered a little. He pulled the photo out of his pocket and stared at it with a small smile.

'Did he just laugh?!' Misato thought to herself incredulously. What was this fourteen year-old laughing about. She couldn't help her eyebrow twitching somewhat, but bit her tongue instead of saying anything.

"I'm sorry Misato, I didn't mean to laugh. It's just that you're very pretty and a fully grown adult. You're not making a pass at me are you?" Shinji replied once he was done stifling his laughter. He didn't mean it in a malicious way, just that remembering Misato's tomfoolery gave him a chuckle. Of course he couldn't tell her that, so he improvised as best as possible.

Misato was a little flustered at this, as she considered the implication. She was told to pick up Shinji, a fourteen year old teenager, by any means necessary. So she decided that sending a flattering image would be the best course of action to get his attention. "No, no! Of course not! In fact why don't I take the photo back, you're right." Misato was trying to keep cool, but felt like it would be best if Shinji wasn't walking around with a photo of her that had an arrow pointing to her breasts.

"No that's okay Misato, I think I want to keep it." Replied Shinji, with the ghost of a smirk upon his face.

Misato's eyebrow twitched again.

"No Shinji you're right, it was inappropriate of me to give you that photo. Give it here."

At this point Misato began reaching over to try and take it from his hand. Shinji stopped gazing at the photo and turned to face Misato. Seeing that she was leaning over to try and take the photo, he backed up against the door and batted away her hand with a smile.

"Honestly Misato it's fine. You should forget what I said. I'm a naive fourteen year old, I have no idea what I'm talking about." Shinji grinned while he said this.

Misato turned it up a notch. Instead of just trying to take it from his hand, they were doing battle. The valiant Ser Shinji tried his best to defend the treasure from the great red dragon Misato. After a minute or two of bickering and slapping and pinching, Misato eventaully wrestled the picture from his grip.

She took the picture and stored it in some kind of abstract mathematical pocket dimension in her dress. As far as Shinji could tell, her dress didn't have pockets. But that's neither here nor there.

"Thanks Shinji!" Misato smiled brightly.

Shinji tried his best to fight against it, but he couldn't stop the smile from infecting him and spreading across his face too. After failing miserably, he smiled and eventually burst into laughter alongside Misato. Misato was happy that they were laughing, she wasn't totally sure if they were fighting for real or not, but in the end it all seemed to be in good fun. She was glad that she managed to break the ice too! Shinji seemed a little happier, though he returned to staring out of the window.

A little while passed before the darkness of the lift was replaced by the grandiose view of the Geofront. You'd think that experiencing this moment a hundred times would dampen the view, but truthfully it never did. Shinji stared left and right, taking in the sights of the artificial paradise. He didn't say much besides the occasional gasp here and there, but Misato could tell he was impressed by it. She leaned back with a smile across her face. Happy to have been able to show this to Shinji.

Directly after this though, Shinji and Misato found themselves on an escalator, moving across from one place to the next. Misato had a goal in mind, she just had no idea where she was going or how to get there. Naturally they had been at this for a while. Shinji felt himself tapping his feet and his fingers again, try as he might to stop them, he just couldn't do it. Any concious effort he applied to stopping these tics would be ignored after he lost focus.

The waiting had become the worst part. After experiencing the same things over and over, what he dreaded most now was the calm before the storm. He knew what was going to happen. He knew what to do to deal with it. But despite all of this, he couldn't hurry it along. A lot of his time had simply become waiting for the incident to occur, and he hated that. After doing it so many times he had become increasingly impatient, and anxious. While before he was calm and collected, happy to sit on his bed and waste away the day with his SDAT, this was no longer the case. Inaction had become something he hated, and he actively tried to keep himself busy. He had come to the realisation that his SDAT was poison, and the first thing he had done every time he settled down now was to take it out of his duffel bag and smash it into pieces.

Eventually Misato and Shinji were in an elevator. It had stopped and the doors began to open. Shinji wasn't even pretending to stare at his NERV booklet anymore, he didn't care enough to keep the facade up. Once the doors opened Misato greeted Ritsuko, who was in her bathing suit and lab coat. She said nothing in response and stepped into the elevator, pushing Misato backwards.

Shinji watched this happen.

It may seem somewhat rediculous to imagine, but of all the things throughout his experiences, it was this event that interested Shinji and he couldn't put his finger on what had happened. Having fought the angels and everything in between countless times, he had plenty of time to analyse and try to understand what had happened. After he had a pretty good grasp of the big events, so to speak, it was the minor things that began to interest him. Misato and Ritusko were college friends, and now colleagues. They should still be friends now, so why did Ritsuko push herself into the elevator like that. Was it a power play?

"I said nice to meet you." Ritsuko said, rather impatiently. Shinji had been thinking about the little event that transpired and had ignored her first introduction apparently.

"Oh. Nice to meet you too." Shinji replied, keeping eye contact with a somewhat bored expression on his face.

Misato felt like saying something, but with Ritsuko and Shinji staring at one another the atmosphere in the elevator had become somewhat tense. She elected to say nothing at all and hope the elevator would stop shortly.

At this point Misato and Ritsuko struck up a conversation, mainly technological jargon relating to Unit-01. Shinji didn't really pay attention to what they were saying. He had heard it all before. Instead his attention was directed to the rather menacing purple hand outstretched in front of the elevator.

Finally they found themselves on the gangway directly in front of EVA Unit-01. It was pitch black, but Shinji knew what he was staring at. The lights were on instantly. Shinji found himself thinking once again about a little moment. Was this whole thing rehearsed and choreographed intentionally? So that the lights would flicker on and Shinji would be face to face with this purple visage of death. Was this situation constructed to frighten him? It couldn't be a coincendence, his father was probably behind it.

"It's been a while."

Moment of truth. The first meeting with his father.

Shinji didn't bother looking up. This meeting with his father was typically the focal point of how the rest of the run, cycle or whatever you want to call them would go. How he acted now would set the tone of the rest of their encounters.

Shinji looked up, staring directly back at him.

"Yeah."

Truth be told, Shinji was expecting a smirk from his father. None was forthcoming though, and he simply replied with a command to launch the EVA.

Misato expectedly launched into a tirade about Unit-00 being grounded, Rei being injured and Shinji's pilot status. Misato's arguments in Shinji's defense were always appreciated, but at the current point in time he knew where her loyalties lied. She wanted the Angels dead, no matter the cost. It's not like Shinji could fault her for that, so he didn't hold it against her. At least she tried defending him; Gendo knew what he was doing and Ritsuko didn't care.

Shinji still wasn't backing down. He paid no attention to the bickering besides him, continuing to stare into his father's eyes. He felt that either Ritsuko or Misato had said something to him, but he didn't quite hear it.

"Will you pilot it?" Gendo Ikari asked, the impatience in his voice was palpable.

"Sure." Shinji Ikari responded, his expression unchanging. In fact he still hadn't blinked the entire time.

Shinji began walking down the gangway, towards the access of the Entry Plug. An explosion rocked the facility. Sachiel had directly attacked the ceiling of the Geofront, and now rubble was raining down on top of the EVA cages. A light fixture above the middle of the ceiling fell down and smashed against the gangway. The EVA had not moved, there was no need to. Shinji simply looked behind him and narrowed his eyes. 'Hopefully Rei can sleep a little more' Shinji thought to himself.

Shortly after, Shinji was in the entry plug, slowly being inserted into Unit-01. No plug suit, just his regular white shirt and slacks with an interface headset.

"Flooding entry plug."

Shinji didn't bother acting surprised or worried. He just stared ahead blankly as the plug filled up with LCL. He took one deep breath and took the LCL straight into his lungs, it was still gross though, that would never change.

"Initiating level two contact."

A few of the people working on the bridge were shocked that Shinji had said nothing and simply drank in the LCL with no complaints. Misato had been slightly worried about him for most of the time she had been around him; his near-apathy had gone from unsettling to downright scary. He shouldn't have known that LCL would be breathable, so was he expecting to drown? Whatever conclusion she came to was unsatisfying.

"A10 nerve connection, status green."

The usual kaledioscope of colours shimmered around Shinji. Instead of turning around and admiring the rainbow around him, he sat deathly still. Simply staring ahead of him. If looks could kill, anything Shinji had been staring would have dropped dead.

"Cognitive configuration base rules set to Japanese."

If Ritsuko wasn't nervous before, she was certainly nervous now. Not reacting to the LCL was weird, he just let it fill his lungs up without a peep. Then the A10 connection had come, she knew what that was supposed to look like, and yet again Shinji refused to react. If anything in fact, the expression on his face steadily grew worse. She was pretty sure he wasn't in shock, and he certainly wasn't comotose. The fact that she didn't have a tidy explanation to his reaction to any of this bothered Ritsuko.

"Initial contact shows all green."

'Alright, I don't want to overdo it. 90% should be good enough.' Shinji was wary of going above 100%, he didn't particularly want to suffer any physical injuries, but moving around in a sluggish EVA didn't exactly sound like a good time either.

"Opening bilateral circuit."

Ritusko's eyes widened.

"Synchronization rate at 90.7%."

"W-What? How..?" Maya almost whispered.

Ritsuko bit her nail. She was definitely nervous now. By all accounts this shouldn't even be possible. But here they were. "Maya, how are the harmonics?"

"N-normal levels across the board..." Maya replied.

Neither of them were able to tear their eyes away from the synch graph.

"How are we doing Ritsuko?" Misato asked, she wasn't totally sure what Maya and Ritsuko were talking about, but it didn't quite help the way she was feeling herself.

"Everything's green... We're good to go." Ritsuko finally responded.

"Alright... Prepare for launch!" Misato tried an air of confidence as she said this, but it was impossible to hide her apprehension of the situation.

Shinji thought about the first launch almost as much as he thought about the first meeting with his father. How far should he push the sync rate? How much should he show he knows? Should he allow the EVA to berserk? Should he reach out to the soul residing within the EVA?

Truth be told, as hard as it was to remain positive and optimistic about everything after doing it so many times; one thing he couldn't remain positive about was the idea of his mother and EVA Unit-01. No matter which way he cut the situation, he just simply couldn't agree with her. He knew by now that she had always intended to become the soul of Unit-01, and had refused to leave. Apparently her motivation for this was that she wished for Evangelion to be an eternal monument to humankind. So her genius plan was to let herself become absorbed into Unit-01 and eventually float around space as a giant haunted suit of purple armour. He couldn't believe the genius Yui Ikari had come up with something like this. There were just so many holes in her plan. She seriously wanted to float around space forever? Like some kind of signpost? Did she have any idea how long forever was? What if she was floating around for millions of years? What if she floated into a black hole?

And let's not forget that she had Shinji witness the contact experiment as a child. Another brilliant example of exemplary decision making. If Shinji felt like being cynical, he might consider the idea that she had planned it all. That she had manipulated both Gendo and Fuyutsuki, requiring an emotionally broken Shinji so that they could be positioned into deliberately starting Third Impact and causing instrumentality. In the name of Human evolution or Heaven or whatever.

All of this of course goes without saying that, because of her incredible plan to become an immortal action figure dedicated to humankind; she had basically sent Gendo off of the deep end. His whole entire plan; the one where he manipulates thousands of people, spends trillions of yen, has God-knows how many people killed was simply for one purpose. It was all just to try and get his wife back. The wife who had chosen to leave and refused to come back in the first place.

Everything associated with the entire project made Shinji's blood boil. At first he had hated the EVA because it caused him pain. After a few cycles of the year, killing the Angels made him feel powerful. After thirty or so he felt like it was his duty, and that he was there to defend humanity. Now though, it just made him angry. The Evangelions made him angry. Unit-01 made him angry. Instead of a giant monument to humankind it was a giant monument to stupidity.

The hatred he had for his father was quite cool in comparison to the hatred he had found for his mother. However he tried to rationalise what she had done, it was wrong. Plain and simple. The Angels had come to end humanity, and so they were the enemy. But Seele, Fuyutsuki, Gendo and even Yui had chosen this too. And so they were the enemy all the same.

It was very hard for Shinji Ikari not to become bitter.

He found himself clenching his teeth. Shinji needeed to reign his anger in; quite a few times, losing his control had cost him dearly. Now though, he found himself speeding towards the surface of Tokyo-3. Staring down Sachiel.