Disclaimer: This is gonna turn real redundant real fast, I just know it. No, I'm not talking about this whole 'disclaimer' thing, it's... you wouldn't understand. We've been, like, trying for three days straight to, like, get this ONE DERPIN' CHAPTER OUT and last night it wouldn't save, right? Then this morning he forgot to submit the finished product, then at school he editted it about for the other account, then the school caught on and wouldn't let him log in through the proxies... It's... it's like, depressing, yo?

Real Disclaimer: Sorry, the Emo One took over for a minute there. This One (Toriano Flacko) does not own NGE.

02: The Not-So Great Awakening of Asuka the Great

It's the same for everyone in the world; a certain image comes to mind when one refers to 'God'. For some, an urban myth, some faceless person to swear on when suspected of lying. An elderly, dark-skinned man with grey or white hair, either meditating on a cloud or pointing a finger of blame from the heavens. A pale little girl, obnoxious or quiet, that goes relatively ignored for a time before suddenly disappearing like the subject of this sentence. An overweight, smiling, hairless creature that opens the road of enlightenment. An elephant with multiple limbs, and a tendency to switch shades of color from the rainbow.

Normally, no one would suspect a bald, middle-aged man with a golden, pointed goatee sitting behind a large desk of questionable origin; said man wearing a mask and a business suit, and said desk covered in will-o-wisp musings of what could have been towering piles of paper. And why would they suspect? He was asleep. And everyone knows that God doesn't sleep, especially not on the job.

... I said, 'especially not on the job.'

"Sure, I'd like a job," he mutters. "Bet it would be better than this turned out..."

Ahem. We seem to be experiencing technical difficulties with the staff. We'll get back to you on this.

/andtheworldcomescrashingdown/

He didn't start strangling her immediately. First thing he did was sit there, a few feet away, staring at her. She, half-awake, could read his thoughts easily since he was thinking out loud... not that she understood much of what he was saying.

"Are you at peace now, Asuka?" A half-lidded blue eye gives away nothing, and there's no serene smile-of-death on her lips. She was barely conscious, and couldn't be bothered to make an expression. He probably figured that she was dead. Neither of them wonder why her arm and eye are bandaged, or who did it; what did it matter? "Probably better than going back to that place... unless you're there now. Then this would suck for you. And if that was the case, I should be trying to help you now, right? But... I kinda don't wanna bring you back. You were kind of a bitch before, and I don't think dying and coming back to a world with just me would change that. So then you would bitch at me about being bored... the point is, nobody can hurt you anymore (and I hope to hell that you can't hurt me), wherever you are. Good-bye, Asu-"

She moved, didn't even realize it. It wasn't even a flicker of motion. It was probably just his imagination, but he edges forward, softly, silently. She makes an effort to look in his direction, but...

"Asuka?"

The eye blinks again, and she can finally hear her own breathing past the sound of waves sloshing. Where were they, a beach? Why can't she feel her face... or her arms, her hands, her feet? Those were still attached, right? The eye blinks again, up at the dark-eyed boy, who's closer now.

"Oh... so you're alive," he says in a strange voice. Hoarse, like he hadn't used it for a long time... or when he had, it had been for screaming. Screaming at God. Not like how he'd been speaking before. And there's a weird lilt to it... like he's back at Misato's house one day after school or sync tests, and the place is a mess. Like he has to do something about it...

About what?

"Man... that's no gooood. Unacceptable, you know? Life around other life brings pain. Pain brings more pain. Too much pain... it just brings irritation, and brings death. Life brings death.

"That probably just went over your head if that look in your eye means what I think it means, so I'll spell it out for you. You are alive. I am alive. If we don't accept one another, we can hurt each other. We can kill each other..." She blinks again. She gets it, what he was saying. But this wasn't like him. This was not like him. Were these thoughts the aftershock of leaving Instrumentality behind? But she knew exactly what he was saying, recognized the exact words even... were these thoughts originally hers? "So you know what that means, don't you Asuka... there can be only one."

She remembers his hands around her throat, the feeling of a fire building in her chest. She wanted to fight back. That's who she was, right, through everything that happened and everything she did. Right? She was a fighter; born to fight, raised to fight, and quick fight back at everything with everything she had. She even fought becoming a pilot, until she was all her mother had... and look how that turned out.

But she couldn't fight back, not right then. She didn't feel like it. She was too tired. She was still in shock at being alive again. She didn't want to be alive anyway. She deserved to die anyway. Those who couldn't do anything deserved death, and she couldn't even stay alive.

These were excuses she piled onto one another to justify not doing anything. She would pick them apart later as lies, lack of oxygen, things she thought to make herself feel better. The fact of the matter was, she'd already forced him to snap and kill her once.

She didn't want to hurt him anymore. That was what her oxygen-deprived brain told her, when all she really wanted to do was slap him and say "Creepy use of Highlander reference, stupid Shinji. Baaaad Stupid Shinji."

So when she raised her hand to touch his face, her sappy side saw it as her way of saying 'good-bye.' She wouldn't be the one to hurt him or scare him away, not anymore. She was tired of seeing those serious, hurt, blank looks on his face... No. That's not right. She was tired of being the cause of them.

He let go, and it was like God punched her in the face. 'Nuh-uh-uh, you don't get to die yet,' she could swear she hears a voice say, and star-bursts of black light explode in her eyes. She could only stare, left eye twitching behind the bandage, as tears fell on her face and the weight on top of her shifted back over her legs. She heard him sobbing, and behind that, the softest words she'd ever heard from him. From anyone, for that matter.

"Dammit, face, why do you choose now of all times to start leaking? Shut up, I'm not depressed! I will f_ you up if you don't stop this right now...! Quit... quit it, dammit! You suck!"

She was very, very confused, but air was moving through her lungs again. Her eye stung, and she realized she had yet to blink since the moment his hands had touched her throat.

Her eye moved -well, both moved, but only one eye saw anything- and she looked at the boy on top of her, him wiping his face as he swore, and realizes that now that he isn't choking her, something is moving... in her stomach... up... crap.

"I feel sick..."

0iherpmyderptotheleft0

They were in the Ierō Senbei residential district, a miniature city in the hills, on the outskirts of Tokyo-3. A suspiciously abandoned miniature city in the hills, one that he had only been to on three occasions in his lifetime; once for the bar when he'd been running away from NERV, once a little while before the 13th Angel attacked, and once just the day before to see if he could get a few beers before going to see Asuka in the hospital. He had known at least five of the residents fairly well; enough to know when the Totally-Hot-but-Crazy Cat Lady was coming in his direction and to know when 'Dr. Nark' had stopped by the bar with a delivery.

He knew that even now with car alarms going off and the casino burning down, not one of them was alive, there, with him. So even with all the noise, Ierō Senbei was a ghost town, speaking with a silence that one Shinji was most aware of when he finally stopped there a few hours before sunrise. But his being wary does nothing to stop him from breaking into the first house he sees that isn't smoldering, or doesn't have a car instead of a front door. No, the things that stop him are the drowsy red Dobermans he can see lazing on the couch inside.

"Don't judge me," he says mildly to his travel companion as he looks back at the house pitifully. "Did you see how big those things were?" The redhead lazily bites him on the shoulder, Shinji having moved so he was carrying her around piggy-back an hour ago; dead to the world. He scratches the top of her head softly before swinging her from his back to his arms, by chance moving her into the bridal position.

It hadn't taken him long to get used to talking to her like this, a fact he would have found disturbing were he still thinking like he used to. Beyond that, it hadn't taken him a minute after they (he) started walking to get used to her weight over his shoulder, then on his back, now in his arms; he'd adapted to appreciating close contact, as opposed to how he was before. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the old Third Child actually was panicking... mildly. However, there was no immediate threat that the new Ikari Shinji couldn't handle, so he shut up fairly quickly.

Double-checking the next place that looked okay, the former Pilot pauses, debating just how he would make his way inside. This goes on for about a minute, him using a still-unconscious redhead as a sounding board for ideas, before he finally takes a convenient lawn gnome to the three-by-five plate-glass window in the front of the house, breaking out a corner just big enough for him to slide in and open the door from the other side without cutting himself. It was an elaborate method (why didn't I just break down the door in the first place? he finds himself wondering), but it worked. Not to say that he didn't feel bad about breaking part of the window.

"I would appreciate it if you didn't judge me here either; it was either him or you. Just be glad I didn't try punching it first."

In the hours since he'd woken up, Shinji had learned a few things about himself in talking with Asuka, the first of which being that he loathed awkward silences with a passion (in which he bemoaned the loss of his recorder before wondering just how that would help in this situation). In abridging his life story in a five-minute mouth-off to the unconscious girl, he'd realized that it wasn't exactly humanity as a whole that he couldn't stand, but the unnecessary things that came with it; insanity, patronization, classification, genre-definement, the moments of silence that stretched into minutes, hours, perhaps even days between two people that didn't know how to deal with each other.

And why didn't they know? They had no way to know. No one person could fully know what another is thinking, or feeling, or how to make them understand what is trying to be said. If such a person existed, they would be hard-pressed to solve all the world's issues, and that's if they actually felt like using their life for something so counter-productive.

He'd said as much, explaining his theory to the German as best he could without waving his arms around and dropping her on the gravelly road he'd taken. She'd responded by kicking him in the hip and snoring especially loud. He got the feeling that she had been awake for a minute and actually didn't like what he thought. She had actually been dreaming of chasing blonde leprechauns, who for some reason kept screaming "She's a ginger!", or "Gingers don't have souls!", and giggling in ecstacy as she ripped them apart with her teeth.

Automatically, he was better off not knowing what went on in her head. So he had kept walking down that particular road. In walking down that particular road, he had found this particular city, which he recognized as the "I can see Misato-san's apartment from here!" city. And in finding this particular city, needing a place to rest his feet, he had found this house.

Ikari Shinji was no expert when it came to the art of 'breaking and entering' at the time of his death, less than a full day before now. He had been good at two things in his life; killing Angels and running away, although he had been trying to cut it out with the latter when the world ended.

Now in his second life, there were no Angels to fight. There was less, almost nothing to run from, compared to how things had been before. He was facing the consequences of the Human Instrumentality Project and his response to it, stuck in an empty world with no one for company except a violent, half-blind German and animals that had no one to take care of them.

But above all else, at this point in time, he was hungry, slightly sweaty, and his feet kind of hurt. So he sets the redhead on the first proper bed he finds, wraps her in the bedspread, and goes off to the kitchen to make himself a sandwich, not once wondering just whose house he had invaded.

After all, it wasn't like he was sleeping on his or her grave, right?*

(/idonteffinknowdude)

In the Office of God, there sits a tall, Asian fellow with a Chia-pet-esque hairdo, bridging his fingers in front of his face like it's the most physically exciting thing in the world to do.

"So you're saying that it's not?" He says in perfect, clear English. "Well duh I say it, and duh you're going to understand what I'm saying. I'm God. I can make stuff like that happen."

So he's talking to no one-

"Uh, hello?" He glares. "I'm talking to you, Idiotic Voice That Won't Let Me Sleep When I Have Free Time."

Oh, so you're awake now? Only took you, what, five hours and a few cherubim poking you in less-than-famous parts. Also, wow, didn't know I had a title.

"I'm not going to call you 'Narrator' because that gives you power over me, and I'm God. I don't like letting stuff like that happen. Now, what did you wake me up for?"

Well, somebody's grouchy...

"I don't have time for this. Get the Hell out of my office."

But I'm not in your office...

"If you're trying to trick me into thinking that you're gone, stop telling me what you're doing! You know what, screw you and your semantics! As of right f_ing now, I'm having the Metatron fix the Stairway to Heaven so you can't get back up here unnoticed, ever again!"

Keh, and how do you think that's gonna work out?

"I'm gonna get her to reroute all paths to Heaven so they cut off and go straight to Hell. How's that sound?"

… But I'm the narrator. Stuff like that doesn't affect me.

"You are correct~," he smiles, sitting back in his chair and steepling his fingers in front of his face. The voice pitch changes, and the narrator winces at the emphasized 'twang' in the words. "It doesn't affect you. But it will affect any souls that make their way up here from now on. And it will all be your fault."

... Nuh-uh. You gave the order.

"That's true," the Asian laughs. "But I'm God if you haven't noticed. Who do you think they gonna believe, White Boy?"

… Thou dost sucketh greatly. You know that, right?

0iherpmyderptotheright0

She sees a dark red sky as the sun goes down, relieving the burning in her throat with air as her eyes water. He's gone, over by a rock at the edges of her sight, not even five feet away. He's quiet now, probably sleeping. Her senses shut off a few minutes ago from shock. She's probably panicking.

'What is this? Wha... what is this?' Her eyes are wide open, one open to nothing but darkness, the other, a skyline of black between red and it's pale reflection. A few tilted buildings poke out above a bloody sea with no waves. It's a pretty messed up picture. She's not seeing it.

'Didn't I die? It felt like I died! Where's my Eva? My arm...!'

Some reaction sparks from her brain and she grabs at nothing with her bandaged hand, noting how cleanly it had split back then in her mind's eye. She gasps when her knuckles crack from the grip, and unclenched her hand. She felt something scratchy, thin against the skin of her palm. Paper? Bandages. Her fingers are shaking, twitching, when she brings her hand up, just above her face, and balls it into a fist.

'I'm... alive?'

A blue eye opens to darkness, a shaky silence. The dream -no, the memory- has played it's course. And all she can do is hum.

"Hmmmm..." She doesn't need any help in figuring out that she's alive, no. She knows that, just like she knows that she should be a little surprised by the fact. She's had a second-uh, third- chance at living forced into her hands. By whom, she didn't know, and something else she didn't know was whether or not to be thankful that he or she moved her to somewhere more comfortable than the ground outside to sleep. Asuka isn't even sure that the reason she's here is a good one; did someone else come back from the LCL, find her where she lay, and bring her here just to have his -or her- way with her body?

'No,' she thinks in response to the train of thought. 'This is not an American porno. Things like that don't actually happen, least of all in this kind of situation...' Or did they? Did this kind of thing happen often? No. So what basis did she have to imagine that 'things like that' don't happen? She didn't have any basis, she realizes, and while that doesn't scare her, it shakes what little optimism she has about the situation.

So she wraps herself tighter in her blanket, noting that she's in a room with a window; sunlight is making it's way through the blinds to the wall she is now staring at, so it's morning outside. Or maybe it's evening...? She has to know this, among other things, if she's going to figure out her situation and whether or not she had to kill a sicko to get out of this with her honor intact. Now, if only she could figure out where she was... and was there a shower running somewhere?

//

It hadn't taken him long at all to make a sandwich, and it took a fraction of that time for him to inhale it. This was a normal fact of everyday life when it came to him, or any other growing teen; always take longer to make something than you take to eat/destroy it, and always do it in that exact order.

What wasn't a normal fact of everyday life for Shinji was that he was full, but only after taking in a few bowls of cold curry from the stove to go with the sandwich. Then the entire serving of fruit salad sitting in the refrigerator to go with the curry. Then the entire fresh package of rice crackers he'd found in one of the cupboards. Then the quart of milk he'd taken in to wash all that down. In three minutes or less. He didn't know exactly how long he'd taken as he hadn't thought to time himself.

But he couldn't freak out about it. So what if he had a larger-than-it-used-to-be appetite? Maybe it was all just because he hadn't eaten in longer than he thought, and was actually just hungry enough to go without cooking for once. Besides, if he got freaked out by something so trivial, then he wouldn't be ready if something weird actually did happen later in this second life.

So all he would admit to thinking on the subject was 'well, shit, that was weird' and 'should I worry about puking? Probably shouldn't have eaten all that at once'. This was before he belched a cloud of smoke on his way out of the kitchen.

After staring at it for a good minute, poking at it, and finally sniffing the cloud, he folded his arms and stepped back.

"This is not weird at all," he said to no one, nodding. "I totally do this kind of thing all the time. Nothing surprises me anymore."

After making sure that the cloud wasn't going to respond in a language he could understand, Shinji nodded again, moving towards the bathroom with the empty pile of clothes he'd found in the kitchen. He had no idea who they belonged to, or even if they were meant for a girl or boy. All he knew was that, now that he'd had something to compare it to, his school uniform smelled of LCL. Scratch that, he smelled of LCL. He was going to take a shower, change clothes, and maybe go to sleep afterwards. When he woke up, assuming that Asuka hadn't killed him in his sleep, he would figure out either what to do with her, or how to explain things to her. After that, if she still hadn't killed him, he would see about what the hell they would do in this empty world.

Leave it to say, Shinji went into the bathroom thinking about a good many things, some of which pertaining to the future, others, a lack thereof. He didn't openly show that he noticed when the cold water hit his skin, him sitting at the edge of the bath in a 'Don't Bother Me I'm Thinking Deep Thoughts' pose. He didn't even show that he felt it when the cold water got warm, then hot, scalding his skin and scalp as he sat. But at this point he wasn't contemplating his future.

No, he was contemplating how the hell he'd fallen asleep the second he'd sat down, somewhere deep in the back of his mind.

Almost soundlessly, the unconscious form of the young Ikari eventually slides down to the bed of the tub. He is still there, hours later, when the sun breaches the horizon outside.

God is in his heaven. God is at odds with the narrator.

And all is still f_ed up with this world.


*Sleeping on a dead person's grave is one of those 'Black Magic' superstitions that no one knows where it came from, only that the meaning is obvious. Such an action is akin to speaking ill of someone else's misfortune; it's disrespectful, and the equivalent of karma jinxing you to 1) die soon and 2) have someone sleep on your resting place, or worse, urinate on it.**

**Come on, who would have believed that had I worded it better?

If you have anything you want to say (flames, opinions, questions) please refer to the comment section below~!

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