"Come on, pick up the damn phone, it's a Thursday afternoon."

Kensuke Aida, dressed in his olive drab shirt and camo pants after another dull school day, idly spun in his chair, which was in the only part of his room not completely cluttered with various military and Evangelion-based paraphernalia. He'd been trying for 20 minutes to get Shinji on the phone, and he'd already called the house itself and confirmed with Misato he wasn't in training at HQ today or tomorrow. The kid really wasn't taking the situation well - Kensuke wished he could swap places.

The phone line finally connected, and a groggy teenager's voice answered. "Shinji! Well, I'm sorry I woke you up, but this is important! I already called Hikari and Rei, and they're coming with me on a campout in the hills tomorrow. Toji's coming too, actually. Just the one night. Oh, come on, I promise it'll be fun. Yes you can have your own tent, I've got enough spare. Great! We'll meet up after school tomorrow and Hikari will transport us to my favorite spot. See you tomorrow!"

A knock on the door make Kensuke jump, and the voice from the other side filled him with dread. "Kensuke! You're not going on another camping trip until you clean up your room!" his uncle said in an I'm-serious-this-time voice. Kensuke gulped and looked at his room again, trying to figure out if he could make it look like he cleaned it.

Shinji's Bizarre Evangelion

Part Two: Angelic Tendency

Chapter 1: Asuka Strikes!

The crackling and warmth of a perfectly built campfire was soothing to Shinji in a way he couldn't quite put into words. Maybe it was getting away from Misato and her constant not-quite-flirting, or maybe it was just spending several hours working on stuff that wasn't Stands, Angels, or schoolwork. Whatever it was, Shinji was content for what felt like the first time since he arrived in Tokyo-3. Kensuke's campfire cooking, while not great, was still eaten ravenously after the work of setting up camp - most anything tastes good when you're that hungry.

After a very odd desert Hikari brought, which she called an "American delicacy" and consisted of chocolate, roasted marshmallows, and sweet crackers, the five teens settled in simply talking around the fire. Even Shinji was drawn into the fun. However, they were interrupted when, worryingly, the sky began to glow a dim red, which slowly got brighter over time and started wiggling around.

"Woah, is that an aurora?" Hikari asked.

"I think it's called a blood aurora," Kensuke said, "I read about these. It happens when corona material from the sun interacts with atomic oxygen way high up, like at the very edge of the atmosphere."

"From the sun?" Rei glanced at Hikari, who seemed to have a similar thought running through her head. "Hey, uh, how long does it normally take for that corona material to reach Earth?"

"How long? About four days, if I'm remembering correctly. Why do you ask?"

Hikari gulped. That was right around when she sent that robot Stand to the sun. She looked at Shinji, but he didn't seem to have the same revelation. "Just wondering." She said, trying her hardest to play it cool. Toji stared at her for a few seconds, seemingly not buying it, but didn't press the issue. The group watched the red dancing lights in silence, and after about 10 minutes, they faded away.

"Maybe we should take that as a sign to go to bed," Shinji said, as a huge yawn forced itself on him.

"That's probably a good idea." Rei said, looking at the time on the external display of her phone. "We don't want it to be too hot when it's time to pack up." Everyone else agreed, and they filed into the three tents - Toji and Kensuke in one, Rei and Hikari in another, and Shinji alone in the last. With the sides of the tents facing the dazzling lights of the city, the interiors were almost pitch black - which left Toji and Shinji a bit uncomfortable, having lived in heavily light-polluted areas all their lives.

At one point, Hikari rolled over in her sleeping back, facing Rei. "So, that was totally our fault, right?" She quietly said.

Rei wasn't asleep either, and answered in the same quiet voice. "Has to be. Too much of a coincidence."

"I guess it could have been worse. There was a coronal ejection over a hundred years ago that wiped out the telegraph infrastructure over huge parts of the planet. Modern technology is even more delicate. We could have lost the satellites that detect the angels."

"I guess we'll just need to be more careful with the Evas. Though, I'm not quite sure what we'd do differently if that situation comes up again."

Hikari was silent for a moment. "...I'll just send it to the moon if that happens again. It's still pretty far away, with nothing but vacuum between us and it."

"Sounds good. Now, let's actually get some sleep." Rei closed her eyes, and Hikari rolled back over, silently terrified of the power of the Stand she was wielding.

Two days later…

Shinji was eating his toast at the dining table as Pen Pen gulped down whole fish next to him - a strange event for a normal person, but it barely even registered on Shinji's scale of what was even normal anymore. They were both finished up and Shinji was somewhat awkwardly using a partially summoned Unit 01, only appearing from the waist up, to clear the table for him when he realized that Misato was taking longer than normal to stagger out of her room. He chalked it up to being the weekend and her not having a shift at NERV today, which is exactly when the door slid open, and a fully-dressed Misato in dress uniform emerged.

It was still shocking to Shinji to see this, even though it was the second time, the first being the Jet Alone trip. Misato greeted him warmly and went to make herself a quite large cup of coffee, with a minimum of additives. She sat down on the couch adjacent to the one Shinji had moved to and sipped at it slowly.

"What's, uh, what's going on today?" Shinji asked.

"Didn't I tell you? Oh, wait. Maybe I didn't. I'm taking you to the harbor today to meet the new pilot. Asuka is arriving in a couple hours."

The name barely connected in Shinji's memory. "Is she the one you talked about with Rei the other week?"

"Bingo! Now that we're almost certain that Japan is the only target for Angel attacks, we've recalled her and will integrate her into the squad."

"How many other pilots are deployed? Didn't you say there were six Evas already?"

Misato paused. "That's… a good question, actually." She stared into her coffee. "It's true that units 03 and 04 are in the US, but as far as I know neither have pilots yet. The other four are all accounted for, it's just you three already here and then Asuka."

"That seems kind of odd. Why would NERV only station any pilots in Japan and Germany, and not even have the evas combat ready in the US? Wouldn't that have caused problems if the Angels had attacked, say, Brazil?"

Misato swiftly searched her world history and improv skills for any sort of explanation. "They were the largest targets left over after the Impact Wars," she half-lied, "Japan rose as the world's leading political power. Germany became the largest manufacturing center. The US maintains a very strong conventional military presence. That's probably why they haven't activated their evas yet, and there are probably emergency pilots on standby to activate like we did with you. It's probably just a matter of making the hard choices."

Shinji seemed to take this answer at face value, and settled into his couch a little more. "So… Who is Asuka? You seem to know her."

"I met her a few years ago when I was Japan's liaison officer to the German branch of NERV. That was before she became a pilot. She was being raised by a stepmother and was pretty shy, but I gained her trust after several months. I think you'll like her, she's a sweet kid."

"We'll see, since this'll make three girls I'm stuck with."

Misato watched Shinji as he let his head fall back, mouth gaping open with his tongue flopped out at the thought of being surrounded by another of the opposite gender. She giggled; "What's that? Young men your age would be thrilled to be working with women of the same age."

Shinji looked back at Misato. "Rei is too creepy to date. Hikari is my class rep. Asuka is from Germany so there'll be a language barrier. Even apart from all that, I just don't like girls after what happened with Azumi three years ago."

Misato blinked. "That sounds like a story. We've got time."

"Just… No. Not right now. It involved two small watermelons, a large cardboard box, and a pair of her panties, and I could never look at girls the same way after that."

Misato was silent for a moment, her eyebrows as high as they possibly could go. Right as she opened her mouth to speak, a tiny mote of light appeared in the small open space of the living room and quickly expanded into a series of flowing concentric circles before Hikari stepped out of it, wearing her hair in a bun and a different dress than Shinji had seen before with black tights and slightly wobble-inducing heels. "Sorry for the intrusion," she said, grabbing her hands behind her back, "I was super late to take the train to the harbor but I didn't feel like jumping there and just being seen doing that in public. Can I ride with you two?"

Misato rolled her eyes. "Well, you're already here, so yes. But at least call or text me next time!" Hikari sheepishly agreed and the three left for Misato's car. An hour later in oddly dense Sunday traffic for Tokyo-3, they arrived at the harbor and met up with Rei. They spent the rest of the time in a restaurant overlooking the water, until the unfamiliar silhouette of a navy battlegroup appeared on the horizon, and the group went down to the bustling docks.

Unsurprisingly, Kensuke was already there, a bag full of spare data cartridges over his shoulder and seawater staining his shoes from his attempts to get closer shots. "Hey, I was wondering when you guys would show up! You're getting a new pilot today, right?"

"You're possibly too-well-informed." Misato patted the top of Kensuke's head. "I suppose you can also tell me which ship she's on?"

"Well… no." Kensuke deflated slightly. "But I have to assume she's on the main carrier. Even if it's the biggest target isn't it the most protected?"

"Oh, I wish that's the reason she's on it." Misato rolled her eyes.

Then, as if on cue, the sounds of a teenage girl boomed in their direction over a megaphone from up on the deck of the Carrier.

"Attention inferior Eva Pilots!" Shinji looked up at the red-head, dressed in a redder dress with black leggings and, weirdly, a similarly red bandanna. She tried to make the rest of her announcement, but it was drowned out by the sudden blaring of klaxons. Shinji felt his phone vibrating and pulled it out while plugging an ear with his other hand. POLARIS scan positive. Pattern Blue. Approaching… Tokyo Harbor!?

Misato's voice cut through the din of the crowd and alarms as though they were barely there at all. "Shinji! Rei! Take defensive positions on the pier and be ready for naval intercept! Hikari, with me to help crowd control, prep a subspace jump to shelter 113! Earpieces in, everyone!"

Rei grabbed Shinji's hand and he only stumbled a little bit this time as she dragged him off toward their post. They both pulled specialized earpiece radios out of pockets and shoved them in their ears, the devices automatically coming to life and forming a comm link between each other. They reached the pier, but had to stop in their tracks as a huge column of people started filing off it right at that moment. A brief glance was exchanged, and two Stands appeared carrying their users, Shinji swinging on grapnel lines attached to the light poles and Rei darting forward in Zero Shift toward the end of the pier. Shinji arrived a few seconds behind her and had just enough time to take one breath before a cruiser at the far side of the harbor exploded in a cross-shaped spray of water.

"I can't see it! Is it underwater?" Rei said, taking out a monocular from somewhere and scanning the attack site. Another ship was bisected in the same way, closer this time. "Shinji, our priority is protecting the new pilot, we need to get on the deck of the carrier!"

"R-Roger!" Shinji stammered slightly but followed Rei up and over, navy personnel scattering on the deck as they landed in tandem with the purple and blue giants. Another ship was destroyed, less than 100 meters away, the spray of water just barely reaching Shinji's face. "We can't even see it!" He said, "How do we fight this one!?"

"You don't." A personnel deck elevator finished it's ascent right behind Shinji, Asuka calmly riding it, wearing a miniature rebreather and wielding a long tube with PORTABLE TORPEDO LAUNCHER printed on the side. "Leave this one to the pro, 'kay?" She stepped up to the edge of the deck, taking a deep breath. "Evangelion Unit-02, codename: Komm, Susser Todd! Power Suit, Gravity Feature!"

The red and white giant that was Unit-02 appeared behind Asuka and a strange purple aura began emanating from her body as she leapt from the carrier into the water. She fell through the water as though it were air and landed perfectly on both feet on the seafloor. There was barely time to look around before Asuka leapt to her right, narrowly dodging the huge white mass charging at her. She turned on a dime and fired a salvo of torpedoes back, though only one impacted due to not properly priming the targeting system.

The Angel let out a roar and made another charge, but Asuka stood her ground, and the elongated "snout" of the Angel was caught by Unit-02, centimeters away from hitting Asuka. She smirked, and 02's eyes glowed green as it wrenched the Angel's mouth open, revealing the core. Torpedos fired over and over until she heard the crack of the core splitting, and 02 instantly moved to cover her with the AT Field. Once the ensuing pressure waves of the explosion died down, Asuka dropped the spent launcher on the seafloor, released the purple glow, and began ascending in the arms of her Eva.

Above the water, Shinji and Rei saw nothing after Asuka slipped beneath the surface. They kind of saw a large mass moving very swiftly under the waves, then saw it stop, and very suddenly were in the shadows of their Evas as the entire harbor seemed to explode. Water splashed against every building for two kilometers and the remaining ships all fell a solid two meters as they dropped ungracefully back down to the new waterline.

Some time later, long after the carrier stopped heaving, Shinji finally dared to open his eyes to the sight of Asuka drying herself off with one of several towels she'd left on the elevator before jumping overboard, her bandana nowhere to be seen. Rei was sitting cross-legged, back straight as a rail and eyes closed in meditation.

"Uh." Shinji started.

"Well? Aren't you going to thank me?"

It was curious, in this moment, that having been practically abducted from his real home and brought to this city, forced to bear a powerful superweapon and to fight aliens threatening to wipe out all of humanity, Shinji was rendered speechless by nothing more than a human girl asking him a question. There was nothing he could say, as no point in his life up to now had ever prepared him for this situation, even with that explicit prompt.

"Don't just stare at me like a perv!" Asuka stomped over and raised her hand in preparation for a megaton slap, but her hand was stayed at the last moment - not by herself, but by a rapidly materialized upper body of Unit-01. This only served to make Asuka angrier, however, and her retribution was swiftly delivered by the hand of Unit-02 giving the same slap to 01. Shinji was knocked a meter to his side and made a landing sprawled on the ground, dazed and with a painfully throbbing cheek. Asuka turned around to make her leave of the ship, but was startled to find Rei suddenly standing centimeters away.

"Attacking a squadmate is punishable by prison sentence." Rei flatly said.

"Then it's a good thing I don't take orders from a goody two-shoes like you, First Child." Asuka sidestepped Rei and stormed off. "I'll see you at debriefing."

Once Asuka was several strides away, Rei quickly stepped over to Shinji and crouched, pulling him up off the carrier deck. Noting his injuries, she turned to a navy man that had been brave enough to witness this event within earshot and sternly said, "Go get a medic. Now!" He hurriedly went off and Rei turned back to Shinji. "Are you okay?"

"My mouth is full of blood" Shinji managed, coughing up an uncomfortable amount of said fluid, thankfully not getting any on his shirt. "What the hell was that?"

Rei sighed. "Possibly a mistake on my part. It wasn't supposed to be this way. I'm really sorry, Shinji."

He looked up at Rei, confused. "What do you mean, your mistake?"

"I pushed for NERV to reassign Asuka here without thinking. I've known her for a while, but after she got Unit-02… It seems as though we aren't friends anymore."

Shinji had managed to peel away from Misato while Asuka was getting formally inducted into NERV and went to one of the tiny break areas littering the base, one that was out of the way of the foot traffic. Two sickly green couches, one vending machine, and a unisex bathroom in a tiny niche along one of the endless corridors in the labyrinth that was NERV-1 HQ. Shinji was laying down on one of the couches, an arm laying across both eyes and ears firmly plugged with the earbuds of his SDAT player. The auto reverse had tripped five times, so he must have been here for a few hours already. He was was legitimately prepared to just not bother going home to Misato and sleeping here for the night, the effort in doing so not seeming like it was worth moving from this spot.

The earbuds and music prevented Shinji from hearing the approaching, thuddy footsteps, so he was only alerted to the other person's presence when the shadow fell on him and dimmed the light that snuck under his arm. Shinji groggily sat up and looked, not recognizing who had approached him at first. As his eyes readjusted to the evening lighting in the corridor, he realized it was… Gendo?

"Father?"

"We should talk." Gendo said, his words sounding more like a command than a statement. "I haven't been able to get away from my work, but tonight I'm feeling particularly uninterested in staying at my desk any longer. I'll buy you dinner."

Shinji took one of the earbuds out, staring at his father for a few moments. "Um. Okay. Sure. Where do you want to go?"

"There's a ramen place near my apartment that stays open late. Not fancy, but it'll do well to shield us from those prying on us. We'll take my car." Gendo pointed down the hall, and Shinji got up, adjusting his shirt slightly as they started walking.

After some time, Shinji spoke up. "So… what exactly is your job here? I know you're the director, but I don't know what you even do."

"Not here." Gendo said, "There are too many eyes and ears out for us here on the base. You know that Section 2 keeps you under surveillance at all times, but that is just what NERV does. There are far more people who have an interest in what gets said in these walls."

Shinji's eyebrows rose for a while as he thought about his surveillance itself being under surveillance. Eventually they reached an elevator, and Gendo pressed the call button three times. The cab arrived in a notably short period of time and they went in, Gendo swiping a card on the inside and pressing a button which began flashing. The cab moved with a surprising speed upward, and very quickly opened to a car garage where a short limo and chauffeur were already waiting. They got into the back, uncomfortably facing each other, and Gendo told the name of the ramen place to the driver. 15 minutes of silence commenced between father and son as the limo drove through Tokyo-3's fully lit streets, the sun having set long ago.

The limo eventually stopped, and Gendo wasted no time in stepping out into the cool night air, not even waiting for the limo to stop rolling. Shinji slowly followed, exiting the vehicle and indeed finding an outdoor ramen cafe, the kind that was just off the sidewalk with stools and a hanging veil of flaps that reached all the way to the seats of the stools. The kanji on the flaps was difficult to decipher for Shinji, but he was pretty sure it read "philanthropy", whatever that was supposed to symbolize in this context.

Gendo sat at the center stool and Shinji took the one to his right. There was nobody else there, but that was to be expected at this time of night. Gendo ordered an extra large pork ramen bowl with sake, and told Shinji to get whatever he wanted before chugging half the bottle of sake in one go.

"There's so much I wish I could tell you." Gendo said, burping. "You have a genuine need to know more about what's going on. But the old bastards in Germany have made it impossible for me to even speak to you most of the time. I'm not even sure if we're completely safe here. But there are some things that need to be said, consequences or no."

The food was served and Gendo immediately started gulping noodles down, punctuated only by swigs of sake. Shinji stared at his own, smaller bowl, not really that hungry despite the time that had elapsed since lunch.

"What are you busy with all the time?"

"Honestly? Reading a lot of reports. NERV has spies everywhere, SEELE has spies everywhere, NATO is still trying to be extant. It's an arms race of information. We spend a lot of our black budget on neutralizing opposing spies. Just yesterday we intercepted an attempt by SEELE to insert a new student into your class who was going to become your friend and give you a bunch of bad information."

"What? Why would they do that?"

"SEELE wants a very specific outcome at the end of the war with the angels. They're upset because a… certain object that was needed has been lost. The proliferation of Stands has also upset them."

"Who or what is SEELE?"

"Officially, SEELE are a clandestine organization overseen by the UN that coordinates EVA production all over the world." Gendo finished the bottle and ordered another. "In reality, SEELE controls the entire world. They're a religious cult that worship the Dead Sea Scrolls and want to initiate Human Instrumentality on their own terms. The entirety of NERV is funded by them controlling the international bank systems and simply creating all the money out of thin air. Massive campaigns to remove this money in the world's poorest nations then keep it out of the public eye."

"...Are you one of them?"

Gendo almost choked on the fried egg. "Absolutely not. I'm using SEELE to achieve my own ends. They have their suspicions of me, but I've learned a few tricks about manipulation from them. I can't be replaced as Commander of NERV."

"What are they planning, then? What are you planning?"

Gendo sighed. "That's one of the things I can't tell you. Not even partially. Both our plans include the defense of the planet from the angels."

"What are the Angels?"

"Alien life-forms which were intended to colonize planets. Our planet got two of them, ADAM and Lilith. We humans came from Lilith, and the angels we are fighting came from ADAM. They want to reunite with ADAM's remains that are stored deep under NERV, a process we have named Complementation, and rewrite all life on the planet to be like them. That's why the Angels are only attacking Tokyo-3."

"Did SEELE kill Mom?"

The bottle of sake shattered in Gendo's hand. He stayed silent for some minutes, then inspected his hand and found one of the shards left a tiny cut through his gloves. He disregarded the wound and stayed out of the way as the cook cleaned up the area and delivered a third bottle after he finished.

"Yui died to ensure the survival of all of us." Gendo said through gritted teeth. "Yes, I blame SEELE. If they hadn't rushed her project, she wouldn't have had to perform the contact experiment. We'd probably still have Kyoko, as well."

"Kyoko?"

"Asuka's mother. Biologically. Only scientist I've ever met on par with Yui. Akagi is a close second but not the same."

Shinji noticed his father's hand movements and posture start to lose their practiced rigidness. He noticed his food start to go cold and started timidly eating, not sure how to continue after that. Gendo decided to continue on his own, whether or not he was interested in it.

"Truth is. I'm not even sure my plan will work anymore. Much less SEELE's. There's too much missing. Gotta try anyway. Otherwise there's no point staying on this rock for me."

"Am I in danger?"

"No. You've got round the clock surveillance and bodyguards, not to mention Can't Be Yours. If something happens to you it would be divine intervention."

"You said you're telling me this despite the consequences… But what exactly am I supposed to do now? What do you want me to do?"

"I need you to defeat the angels, and SEELE if necessary. You should be able to handle what comes after that. I'm sorry I can't tell you more." Gendo burped quite loudly, and almost stabbed himself trying to get one of the last few bundles of noodles in his mouth. "Something that's bothering me. The Dead Sea Scrolls mentioned a lot of stuff we didn't find. Not to mention that thing that showed up. It's almost like something went wrong, and we're messing around with something we can't possibly understand."

Gendo lifted his hand to go for the sake bottle again, but found it wavering far too much. "Shit. I overdid it." He checked his antique wrist watch and sighed. "Looks like that's all we can do this time. The driver will take you home. I hope this went the way either of us wanted."

Shinji gave a simple thanks and went back to the limo. The driver opened the door with a button on the inside and Shinji nervously got in. He was figuring out what to say when the driver set off, saying something about Misato's apartment. Shinji spent the ride trying to decompress exactly what it was his father was trying to communicate to him - getting straight answers to any of his questions was refreshing for once, since Misato always either evaded the answer or redirected the conversation. But he felt like there wasn't really that much that Gendo had told him. The Angels were terraforming agents from an alien race? Made sense that they'd be trying to wipe out humanity, then. But SEELE being the secret power that controls the world? That was really all he got that was even remotely useful information, but there was no way he could act on it.

Shinji made a series of low, unhappy noises as he put the earbuds of his SDAT player back in just in time for the limo to stop in front of the building with Misato's apartment. He thanked the driver and got out, heading up to the apartment basically on auto pilot - it was extremely late. He keyed the lock code into the keypad outside, and the door opened… to a bunch of moving boxes that he recognized from when Section 2 had brought his stuff to the apartment. Shinji was very confused until he heard a familiar, and unwelcome, voice call to him from inside.

"There you are, Third! We were wondering when you'd finally get back!"

Shinji took one step inside, the door closing behind him. The hallway was packed with boxes, leaving barely any space for a person to walk. Asuka and Misato sat across each other on the couch, looking tired themselves with cups of tea in front of them.

"What the damn hell is this." Shinji flatly said.

"Asuka's going to be your new roommate." Misato said. "I think it'll be a great learning opportunity for both of you."

"Pfft, as if I have anything to learn from him" Asuka retorted, "I killed an angel without any support from the other two. If anything he should be learning from me."

"He also has more kills than you. Don't forget that."

"Please, I could do what he's done since I was ten. It's not that impressive."

"You didn't even have Komm Susser Todd when you were ten."

"Exactly!"

Shinji, who had been silent up until this point, was weighing his options. He could stay here, and risk getting in a fight, or just up and leave. After an amount of mental deliberation on the subject, he announced his decision.

"I'm going to let you two figure this out tonight and just find a cheap hotel or something. Don't bother looking for me. I'll see you at the Synch test on monday."

Misato started to voice an objection, but Shinji legitimately didn't care, and stepped back out of the apartment. He went back down the building's elevator and went out onto the sidewalk, before realizing he had absolutely no idea what he was doing. But he couldn't go back up, so he went through his phone's contact list for someone who might be up at this time of night. He stopped at one, thought about it for a moment, then hit the call button. It only rang one and a half times.

"Shinji?"

"...Rei? Did I wake you up?"

"No, I was awake anyway. What's going on?"

"I… Can't stay with Misato tonight. But I don't really have anywhere to go."

"I see. Well, don't worry about it. I'll have someone in your guard detail bring you to the nearest NERV entrance and meet you on the inside. It'll be nice to have you over~"