II.
Evangelion piloting wouldn't have been so bad, if it wasn't for her mother.
Part of Asuka's weekly routine included weapons training to get better and maintain the skills she kept. After all, she was supposed to be the best Evangelion pilot in the world. Asuka had know way of knowing if this was true or not.
But she did enjoy piloting.
Her favorite thing was the Sprint. Being an 80 meter tall mass of muscle and power was quite the escapism thrill. The buildings were toys. Rolling Hills kilometers in length looked jumpable. And the body she commanded wouldn't run out of breath or become sore from exhaustion.
5 minute timer click. Go.
The simulated red Evangelion kicked up mud and gravel at Asuka's simulated launch. Her objective was to hit the distance targets and maneuver through obstacles. At the end, she would engage the target with her progressive knife. She had aced the German version of this test, she was eager to ace the Japanese one.
Her first challenge were low rise apartment buildings, abd in a leap she flew over them like a cloud. Landing, she continued her charge across the countryside, landing feet in between the rice fields as she saw her next challenge: power lines.
They had been her first nemesis. She remembered catching a toe on them and faceplanting numerous times. Her mother had mocked her for tripping on such thin wires. So with relish she applied the lessons off then, leaping early and bringing her feet up over the lines. She landed, clearing the wires.
Excellent!
She let out a whoop as her Eva surged up beneath her to continue the course. She was approaching more of a suburban area now, with plenty of elevated roadways where an Evangelion could catch its foot and trip. At speed she had to watch her footing, choosing to shave time off than find a way around.
Crashing into a park on the other side she released a held breath. That was the first time she crossed that obstacle without an issue.
At the four minute mark she was approaching skyscrapers. This obstacle she hadn't faced before, and sucked in a breath as it came up. They weren't just high rise buildings- they had walkway spans between them. And she had mere seconds to plan her way through them.
She decided to jump, gripping the leading skyscraper by the roof rim and pulling herself up. She lost precious seconds in the ascent, but she couldn't slide through that maze of buildings and walkways. Not yet.
She navigated the city by jumping between the buildings. Her balance was good, and she landed where she needed to and crossed the distance.
Then she descended into the park. Her target was there. She glanced at her battery timer; 3:30.
Her past practice targets were mock Evangelions: yellow mono-eyed dummies that she had come to easily defeat. This thing was different. A broad shouldered humanoid, with a hunched in face and three fingered hands.
The eyes flashed. Asuka's AT field took the hit out of reflex, but it did disrupt her momentum. She fell down.
Treating it like an artillery impact she rolled to prevent being pinned. She leaned on a trick she tried to perfect- a progressive knife draw while in motion.
But she missed. The knife was already in the air when she went to grab it from the pylon.
"F-" she was hit again by whatever force blast the Angel used before she could complete her utterance.
She recovered, deciding to abandon the knife and attack the angel target with fists and feet. Better this than rooting on the ground, undignified. She got a running start-
-and suddenly all the screens went black. "W-was? Mein Gott, ich fing gerade erst an!" She screamed at the screens.
Then she heard the distant alarm klaxon. She sucked in a breath at what this meant.
A real Angel was approaching!
No more simulators. It was time to fight the real thing.
The real thing.
She boarded her Evangelion now feeling different. Crisper. Everything had an edge now to it that the real thing was on. Asuka was able to forget about her mother now that she was up to doing what she was meant for.
In the plug of her Evangelion she laced her fingers, inverted them and stretched, working out her nerves.
Misato came through the comms just then. "Asuka, Rei is having synchronization problems with Unit 01. I'm sending you up to engage until her problems are fixed. You up to going solo?"
Asuka hunched forward to her controls, hungry. "I was born up to it!"
Misato nodded firmly in the comm window. "Good. Launch intercept in two minutes."
Asuka's breath heaved with anticipation. She looked over the roster of weapons and chose her favorite, a long spear, to ride up with her.
Then the countdown began to launch. She gripped the handles as the launch cradle fired- skyrocketing the girl up the launch shaft.
Germany had nothing like this. She wailed as went up the elevator rails. She tried to get a grip, but by the time she was able the Evangelion changed at the top of the elevator.
She was aware then that a comm. Window was open. Catching her breath from hyperventilating she was aware her mother was staring at her.
"Pull yourself together, Asuka! This is no time for theatrics!" Kyoko demanded.
"Y-yes!" Asuka replied, trying to swallow down her nerves. The elevator building door had opened, Asuka stepped out and almost forgot her spear.
A comm window opened, it was Misato. "Asuka, calm down. You're not going to win this fight being off kilter. Your synch ratios are fluctuating."
Mother was watching!
"Evangelion 02, engaging!" Asuka reported and rounded the elevator building to come face to face with the Angel.
The tall squid had reared up on its stem. Legs were clawing the air while two outstretched arms mounted two flailing tentacles.
The core was placed like an eye, right in the neck. She hesitated, because she had never engaged whips before.
But there was no going back. Screaming, she charged.
Misato had been trying to reach her. "Asuka, pull back and rearm for range-!"
Asuka ran, jumped, then sprung off a building to go high, then swung down to try cleaving across the Angels body.
She hit a wall. Blinking with surprise, the Angel's AT field had sprung up to stop her. She hadn't neutralized it first. A basic mistake.
Her mother was hollering at her through an open comm window but Asuka was focused on trying to neutralize, then push through the AT field.
"Asuka, stop making such amature mistakes! Do better now, second children!"
The Angel's laser tentacles wrapped around the spear and her right wrist, then started to squeeze. Asuka's own wrist started to burn.
"What? Let go!" Asuka demanded, "LET GO!"
The tentacles kept twisting and burning, now uncomfortably. Asuka had felt the Eva's sympathetic pain before, but never past a point. "Let! Me! GO!"
She yanked, and things happened.
The spear was cut in half as the whip burned through it. The other whip, twisting into the wrist of the Eva, clenched as Asuka yanked back. Eva's hand twisted and flew free of Asuka's right arm.
The pain blasting into Asuka's wrist was unlike anything she encountered, and certainly not trained to handle. Her escalating screech pierced the ears of everyone in the bridge. Only Kyoko didn't wince, instead wearing a mortified mask mixed with raw fury. "Asuka! ASUKA!!"
Asuka collapsed, rolled to her feet and scrambled to run away. Her wrist was tucked into her armpit, both in the cockpit and of her Evangelion. The Angel pursued slowly, laser lines lashing the pavement and slicing apart her umbilical cable.
She was crying with pain and fear, tears running down her already wet cheeks. She couldn't hear anyone or anything as she ran from the situation she was totally unprepared for.
And her mother was a constant in the speakers.
"ASUKA GET BACK THERE AND ENGAGE, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING? YOUR PURPOSE IS TO FIGHT, GET BACK THERE AND DO YOUR DAMN JOB!"
All Asuka could think was to hide someplace, so she headed for the lake. The Angel slowly pursued. She lept into the water, making wide strides as she went deeper and deeper.
Once fully submerged she curled into a ball and continued to cry. The Angel ceased pursuit, instead headed to the center of the city to try to find a way into the geofront.
Her mother's screaming was incessant background noise that Asuka turned off with a swipe of her hand, refusing all comms. She just wanted the hostile world to go away as she cradled her burning wrist.
After a moment of sobbing and rubbing her wrist, The priority message statted dinging at her. She looked up over her knees at the window, knowing that it was her mother trying to reach her still in the Eva.
It was comms she couldn't remove from the cockpit.
The beeping shrilled at her from the other side of her knees. It was clawing, morphing into the sound of her mother's voice.
It made Asuka cry harder. She knew she was failing everyone, and had to re-engage for the sake of mankind. Her mother, Misato, and everyone was disappointed in her. She would get a beating when she returned, to be sure.
Mama…
Unbidden, a moment returned to Asuka when she was a little girl. It was a long time ago, when mama and papa were still together. They were in a place called Harz, walking along a boardwalk. There was a moment when mama stopped her, bending low to Asuka's level, and pointed.
Asuka had forgotten what was said, but remembered Mama's closeness and hushed enthusiasm. Asuka remembered the bird, brown and regal before it spread it's wings and took to the sky. Asuka watched with awe as the predator took to the sky.
Asuka also remembered mama picking her up and carrying her. She remembered her father, flinging her up into the air and catching her. She remembered mama stroking her hair, kissing her forehead. She remembered being warm against her, feeling her heart.
All gone now.
Her mother, cold and relentless. Her father, bitter and distant. There was no light in her world now, since that day.
The day mama went to work and changed. She was in the hospital, lost. Gradually she changed, becoming harder. Driven.
Hateful.
The shrilling of the urgent comms message pierced her skull.
"You…" she seethed, "I hate you."
Her Evangelion unfurled. She grabbed the handles, seeing before her the face of the hateful thing her mother had become. Since that day.
"I… I hate you." She rasped.
Her feet pumped. She strode out of the water. She saw the purple body of the Angel. She saw the short red hair of her mother's imposter. The woman turned her scornful mask towards the Evangelion.
"I'll kill you!"
Asuka took a running leap at the Angel, hitting out a foot to kick into the Angels core. Momentum carried both of them further into the city until they hit a building.
"I'll kill you!"
Asuka stomped on the core. The tentacles writhed, gripping Asuka's arms, but the girl kept driving a foot into the Angels core repeatedly. She imagined it was her mother's face.
Teeth grid, force exerted, she didn't give up until the core overloaded and exploded- detonating that city block. Asuka was thrown into the air and collided with one of the artillery buildings. By then her Eva had shut down.
With no power in the darkened cockpit and no enemy to fight, Asuka clutched herself as she felt the force of the blast over her skin, burning and tingling.
Nothing of those simulations in Germany had prepared her for what she just experienced.
It took a half hour to recover the unpowered Evangelion and return it to the cages. Asuka hadn't been extracted for some reason. Though Misato had wanted to in order to facilitate a proper debriefing, Kyoko had one of her own in mind.
The girl emerged from the plug herself with a degree of optimism. She had beaten the Angel after all, wasn't that worthy of praise?
But once Asuka emerged onto an empty recovery deck, her heart sank, and she heard the footfalls of her enraged mother.
A part of her wanted to run. Another part of her realized it would make things worse. She was conflicted up until she saw her mother raise her hand. The slap was loud enough to echo off the far wall of the cage.
Asuka tried to draw on some of the fury that drove her during the Angel Battle- of vengeance against her mother. But here she was a mere human, not an Evangelion. She was easily overpowered against her mother's hands and curses.
But then, it stopped. On the ground Asuka looked up.
The tech crew had intervened. Two technicians had grabbed her by the arms and were pulling her away from her daughter. One was calling for security. Asuka learned later their names were Ichijo and Kodai.
Another man, Casval, was helping her up. "Are you all right, miss? I can take you to medical for treatment."
Asuka was looking at her mother, restrained and shouting at the techs- but her gaze caught Asuka's. In that moment the redhead realized that if she made this matter bigger, possibly involving command, it could go so much worse for her.
She bowed her head. "No, I'm fine. She didn't hurt me that badly."
Later Asuka learned that Ichijo, Kodai, and Casval were reassigned from the launch crew to radiation handling. Their health compensation from NERV was also revoked, on the order from NERV's health and pilot maintenance officer: Kyoko Zeppelin.
But through the battle, Unit 01 had refused to activate with Rei this time. Command authorized the repair of Unit 00… and the provisioning of the third children:
Shinji Ikari.
a/n: The Red Queen serves both as a prequel to Wreckage and a new standalone story focused on Asuka's conflict with the thing her mother has become. Its been light on specifics up until now because I haven't decided yet on what other differences The Red Queen will have with Wreckage.
This dichotomy between Wreckage Asuka and Kyoko is an interesting one, as it's essentially two halves of canonical Asuka in conflict. Kyoko embodies Asuka's drive, pride, callousness and determination whike Asuka retains her vulnerability and desire to be loved.
however, the red Queen is about Asuka reclaiming the power to decide her own fate. She will need the characteristics Kyoko possesses to do this.
