Disclaimer: We're getting into multi-fandom territory in a seriously unpleasant way here. Massive plot-driven OOC behavior ahead. It only gets worse from here on in.
Neon Genesis Goonvangelion
Book 1: The Overdue Re-Write
Chapter 8: Of Chicks and Evas / Enter the Feline
Toji, being a boy of fourteen that could barely spell the word 'architecture,' found himself in the subjectively odd position of being impressed by it. Simply because he lacked refined tastes didn't mean he couldn't appreciate the matter, especially standing within such an extreme example as this. A mixture of hard lighting aimed at his eyes with laser precision combined with vast dark spaces gave the office the impression of a deep, mysterious space existing in a realm beyond his understanding. A fitting place for Gendo Ikari to name his office.
"So... you've agreed?" Said the man himself from behind an immense black desk carved out of nightmares.
Toji would never be accused of being a wise man, but even a complete idiot would know better than to give Gendo Ikari wiggle room in any deal. "Let me make this clear. I just want to make sure my sister is getting the best care possible, got it? I'll be a pilot if that's what it costs."
Gendo smiled over the black desk, lowering the room's temperature by several degrees and forcing Toji to fight off the urge to shiver. "That's the plan."
* * *
The goons were playing cards in their Lair of Evil--I mean... uh, apartment. Yeah, the goons were playing cards in their La--apartment. Jared was loosing, it was dark outside because the sun was going to rise in two hours, and a discussion was underway.
"You know, I just realized something," said Jared.
A helpful reminder: Just because a discussion is underway does not mean it is productive, meaningful, or even marginally sane.
"What? That we should be getting our asses to bed?" Andy proposed over his cards.
"That you're probably going to shoot your own foot off at tomorrow's synch test if we don't get some sleep?" John added, which made one wonder why they didn't ditch Jared's little game and get some shuteye themselves.
Jared adjusted his own cards, uncertain of why lizards were climbing on them. "No, Asuka's already kissed Shinji. Hm... and I'm hallucinating."
John threw his cards down on the table. "No! NO!!! It's too late for this! I am going to bed." Deep sigh. "Sorry you're hallucinating."
"That's okay," Jared replied.
Faintly irritated, "I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to the cabbit on your head."
"Oh."
John left the table, pausing in the hallway to add, "Besides, they don't actually kiss until episode 15 in Eva."
"Right. Don't forget to say hi to Rosy Palm and her five sisters for me," Jared called in reply.
John stopped dead in his tracks. "Take that back."
Jared merely chuckled.
"EEEWW!!!" Andy shouted, jumping to his feet and pointing at Waddell as if the younger man had murdered his wife. "That's IT, you're going DOWN!"
Then Jared did, tackled by Andy. He didn't stay down long, quickly kicking the larger goon off of him. In another remarkably small fraction of a second, he was back on his feet, deflecting a kick from Andy. The kick hit the couch, flipping it over.
Jared's retort was a quick jump-spinning kick that Andy rolled under and away from while Jared's foot turned a nice table lamp into sparking shrapnel. Andy launched a flurry of punches at the smaller target, who fell back from the barrage. Jared finally jumped the overturned couch and threw several magazines from the coffee table at Andy's face, stopping the flow of punches. Andy snarled in response, then threw his own spinning kick at Jared, who ducked it with a manic grin. The kick snapped a floor lamp in half. Jared grabbed the small wooden chair next to it and swung at Andy. Andy tore the chair out of Jared's hands and tossed it over his shoulder, where it flew onward to hit the kitchen wall.
John stood stoic in the eye of hurricane Stupid, an island of calm reason, and said, "Guys."
Andy snatched up another table lamp--this one made of solid iron--and tried to bash out Jared's brains. Jared's brains were having none of it and he grabbed their card table and used it like an immense pair of nunchuks to keep Andy's illuminated weapon at bay. Andy was furious, as Jared's defense looked even cooler than it sounded.
When the two finally separated, Jared threw the table at Andy, who demonstrated his ability to apply a useful tactic in any situation and ducked. The card table crashed through the balcony's glass doors.
"Guys!"
Andy brought the lamp overhead like a club, and out of nowhere Jared grabbed a metal chair. The two objects met like swords, with a mental-rending clang!
The lamp snapped off at the impact point, the end sailing by John's unsmiling face to embed itself in the wall. Jared's bent chair made for Andy's brain at Mach 2.0, and was deflected only at the last possible second by the remains of the lamp. Sparks flew from this impact.
The noise left John's ears ringing. "That's it!"
He jumped into the fray.
Literally.
His flying kick sent Andy into the balcony doors, the remains of which shattered into a million pieces upon impact. Then John made the mistake of actually launching a fist at Jared, instead of leading with a two-by-four. He immediately found himself flung bodily into the couch, which he skipped off of like a pitched stone hitting still water, and crashed into the lower counters in the kitchen. The cupboard doors exploded open, and every dish the goons owned rocketed off their shelves.
When the cacophony cleared, all three were standing and glaring at one another, and the apartment was quite thoroughly trashed.
Also, Misato was standing in the entrance, looking like a very pissed off woman with military command responsibilities who had been rudely woken in the middle of the night by a bunch of violence-prone idiot neighbors. "GET YOUR ASSES IN BED!!! EVEN INDECENT PEOPLE ARE ASLEEP AT THIS HOUR!!!"
The goons wisely opted to drop to the floor like sacks of flour and sleep where they lay, lest they incur the wrath of their Tactical Commander and find her offering them a cigarette and blindfold--or was that a tanto?
* * *
Rather unsurprisingly, morning came. Right in the morning time, even. The goons made their way to Misato's for breakfast, having convinced Shinji to invite them the evening after they killed the Ninth Angel. Well, no convincing was really necessary, the lad invited them over right out of the blue, then used them as human shields when Asuka went ballistic.
The trio could hardly hold it against him then--they were too stunned by the hospitality the reserved pilot bequeathed upon them to even notice--and they couldn't very well now, what with no caffeine in their systems. Heck, Jared was wearing his T-shirt over his bare feet when Shinji opened the door to find all three standing outside Misato's apartment.
"Good morning," Jared said as if the words were doused in ash.
For a moment Shinji had the irrational notion the goon was seconds away from whipping out some pistols and laying waste to the apartment. He took in the bags under Jared's eyes especially. "Good morning. Come inside." He stood aside while Jared tripped on his shirt, and had to fight his way back to his feet and put it on correctly.
Andy came in next, bumping into the walls of the entry, nearly knocking over Shinji. His sudden loss of eyesight was clear--he was wearing John's glasses. Jared finally took pity on the man and plucked them off his nose. Andy looked around like a wild animal loosed in a new cage and took off an imaginary coat, offering his empty hand to a puzzled Shinji.
"Shinji! What is all that racket?!" Asuka yelled from somewhere in the apartment.
"Our neighbors are here--mmph!"
"Sorry." Andy dropped the hand covering most of Shinji's face. Behind him, mostly hidden by Andy's mass, John finished adjusting his frames.
"Uh, it's all right," Shinji turned to lead them to the kitchen.
"Don't you DARE come in here!" Asuka shouted from her bedroom.
Jared perked up, his nose pointing into the apartment like an alert dog's. John grabbed his arm and reminded Jared to put on his shoes. Jared did so, then scowled as he realized he was supposed to have them off anyway and grumbled as he removed them and set them with the others in the entry.
At the breakfast table, a lackluster Chinese fire drill was required to get the seating arrangements down. Asuka was flanked by her human shields--Misato and Shinji, with the armed one between her and The Pervert.
As the food was served, she attempted to communicate with the least-insane one. "Why did you guys come over here for breakfast?"
John sighed. "Our apartment is filled with Dew after that run-in with the ninth. It turns out the stuff is excellent for keeping you awake after those draining ki techniques."
"And the Spineless One invited us," Andy added.
"Nice of him," Jared said with an obviously fake smile.
Shinji rubbed the sore spot on his head, where he was sure hair would never grow again.
Asuka ignored all this, and scowled. "But I wanna ki technique..."
"THAT REMINDS ME!" Jared said at a volume designed to cut through the distracting din of a rock concert.
John rubbed at his forehead, ears ringing. "Now that you woke the fucking neighbors, what do you want to say?"
Jared entered Dramatic Pose #4, putting his leading foot on the table. The others scrambled to remove their food, lest he infect it. Imperiously, Jared began, "I have the most excellent of excellent ideas!"
John wolfed down his eggs and toast. "God help us."
"This is going to be bad," Andy said, consuming his breakfast in one bite.
Jared bumbled and blustered onward, "--a Battle Royal for all of the active pilots, allowing us to test our skills and finally settling the Eternal Question: Who gets to sleep with Asuka!"
Crash! Said the plate that hit Jared in the side of the head.
Asuka dropped her hand from the follow-through and sipped at her orange juice. "Hentai."
John spied the orange juice, and twitched, staring.
"What?" Asuka persisted, glass in hand.
John blinked, slowly, as if seeing a ghost. "Aaanyway, we need to get to NERV, and--"
Jared sprang off of the floor as if launched by a catapult and returned to Dramatic Pose #4 as if nothing had happened. "WHO'S WITH ME?!!"
"No one," John answered.
"I am!" Andy put in.
Andy and John each looped an arm around Jared and hauled him out of the apartment. After the door closed on their backs, Asuka left for her room.
Shinji poked at his eggs. "Misato-san?"
Misato set her beer down. "Yes?"
Shinji switched to a whisper. "Do you know if Asuka is a natural redhead?"
Misato winked at the boy. "Trust me, she is. Why do you ask?"
"Oh, it's nothing, maybe just the lighting in this room."
"I did put new bulbs in yesterday."
"That must be it."
Breakfast was completed in silence.
* * *
Asuka's fingers rested lightly on the trigger portion of her hand grips. In battle, her fists were always wrapped around the stanchions in a white-knuckled death grip. The feel of the metal, curiously warm, was lost on her in the moments of soaking wet terror. Yet it was there, whenever she was within her Eva, a part of the metal cocoon which kept her safe and smited her enemies at her whim.
Something constant, in this world gone mad.
A few weeks ago, three Americans appeared in one of Tokyo-3's parks. Not 'hid from security sweeps.' Not 'wandered out of shelters.' They literally stumbled out of thin air during an Angel attack. Now they were also Evangelion pilots. Skilled pilots, who had learned to shoot fireballs with their Evas. They weren't even fourteen! What the Hell was wrong with reality?!
Her grip on the trigger shifted. The gun held tight by Unit-02 fired its last round down the outdoor range, punching a hole the size of a compact car in the last target.
And the Firing Range was something else that made her skin crawl. Why not do this stuff in a simulator? It was horribly wasteful. Computing power was cheap, and this place seemed almost custom-made to let the goons show off.
Unit-02 responded to her commands easily as she had it set the gun down and look at the trashed targets down range.
"Hmm..."
It had occurred to her, more than once, that the presence of a firing range gave the goons an idea that had no merit until they vaporized that first row of hills.
She smirked.
Unit-02 dropped into a stance familiar to fans of Dragonball Z.
It was also familiar to the bridge bunnies within the testing Control Center.
Asuka's comm. came to life with a panicked shout. "Pilot Sohryu, what are you doing?!"
Asuka was already starting her battle cry, "KAMEHAMEHA!!!"
"Asuka!" Shrieked Shinji from the surfacing Unit-01, "NO!"
Nothing happened, if you didn't count the lone tumbleweed that blew across the range. And the appropriately-sized sweat drop that rolled down the back of Unit-02.
"Um. Sorry... Shinji?"
Another tumbleweed rolled by.
"You know what?" Ritsuko said over the comm., "We're done for today."
* * *
"So you'll have to be nice for the new pilot," Ritsuko said, leaning back in her chair.
Her office was neither dirty nor small, but it was a cluttered space that forced the goons to stand almost shoulder-to-shoulder to remain in the same room for their little briefing. After ranting at them for an hour for 'encouraging' Asuka's 'little show' on the Eva Firing Range, she had pulled out a folder and switched to her Ominous Voice to warn them the pilot ranks would shortly be swelling by one.
John and Andy listened thoughtfully and stoically, respectively. Jared was half-drooling, half-frowning. He couldn't quite look up her skirt because the desk cut off his line of sight as he ducked down. He sipped at the drool once she paused, apparently to gloat. "That's what you called us down here for?"
She shut the folder she had been reading and grabbed her coffee mug. "Well, this and something else, actually."
"This pilot wouldn't happen to be one Toji Suzuhara, would it?" John asked casually.
Ritsuko sat up and spewed her spiked coffee all over Jared, who didn't even notice, only frowning slightly more. "What do you mean by that? You don't know him, do you?!"
John laced his fingers together in a very Gendo-esque manner. "Oh, we know all right..."
Jared jumped ahead to some place this wasn't originally leading. "So, you want us to train him?"
"NO! God no. Just..." She looked helplessly at the least-excitable one. "John?"
"We won't hurt him."
All eyes shifted to Jared, as he began to whine like a kicked puppy.
"Shut yer ass up." John snapped. Jared did as he was told. "We'll keep an eye out for the guy."
"What about his girlfriend?" Jared added.
John sighed. "We aren't--"
"Didn't ask you," Jared interrupted.
"Who might that be?" Ritsuko asked.
Jared slammed his hands down on Ritsuko's desk, miraculously finding the only open space without looking. "Don't fuck with me, doctor!"
Ritsuko picked up her mug again, taking a measured sip while looking at Jared over the rim. "Why would I want to?"
Jared blinked. "Er... quite. Well, what about his sister?"
"We're taking care of her."
Jared's eyes narrowed.
Ritsuko sipped her coffee again and made a face. "Anything else?"
Jared folded his arms over his chest. Behind him, Andy mirrored the action. Both sniffed the air snootily.
The doctor sighed and waved at the door. "All right, get out."
"What was the other thing?" John said, not budging.
"Out!"
Andy ignored the shouting doctor, selected a vent, and disappeared into it with a 'whoosh' noise.
"Andy!" John shouted after his friend.
"Your turn," Jared said, not moving to help. He watched, plainly amused, as John cursed and dived into the vent in hot pursuit.
Jared sighed, looking the doctor in the eye for the first time in living memory. She drew a deep breath and watched as his eyes did not waver from her own. "Can I help you?"
"What's the other thing?"
"Right... right." Ritsuko set her mug back on her desk. "Well, remember I said was working on a less obtrusive interface for your Mini-MAGI?"
"Of course."
Ritsuko snorted derisively. He'd been listening to her cleavage at the time. "Well, I've come up with something that should do the job. A little attachment with a communicator to provide audio work. A full set of programs rounds out the system's functionality, and it works in wireless mode 24/7, so you can communicate with NERV even if the power is out."
Something slipped out under his breath, sounding like, "Like that's useful now..."
"I heard that. Anyway, we will begin some testing on them tomorrow."
"I can test one," he said as if stating the obviousness of the sky being blue.
"Sure you can."
He grinned. "Really, I'm good at pointing out other flaws in other people's work."
"I'm sure you are." Ritsuko's eyes were already drifting back to her paperwork.
"And perks in women's figures."
She sighed again. It was disquieting when he didn't ogle her like a piece of meat. She grabbed a Mini-MAGI from her desk drawer, a model identical to his except for gray trim instead of black. "If I give you one, will you leave?"
He pinned the grin from earlobe to earlobe. "Yesss."
John's voice echoed out of the vent. "We want one too!"
Jared swiped the offered device from Ritsuko. "Suckers! Only the Enlightened One receives the Lucky Prototype!"
In an effort to change things up, Andy barged through the door, preparing to throw a Gallat-Gun. Jared tucked the device into his pocket and posed with his own move.
"GALLAT GUN FIRE!!!"
"KAMEHAMEHA!!!"
"You know, I'm really happy that doesn't work," John said from the ventilation.
"So am I," said Ritsuko, relieved. "Now leave."
In a poof of cheesy Power Ranger quality special effects smoke, the three goons disappeared.
Sort of. Ritsuko watched them through the dissipating, poor-quality smoke, running down the far end of the corridor, their voices echoing back.
"Damn, this thing's long!" Shouted Jared.
"Andy, if you were faster, we would be out of range by now!" Howled John.
"Shut up and MOVE!!!" Blared Andy.
"Baka," Ritsuko idly commented.
* * *
Toji picked at his food lifelessly. As he was sitting in a NERV cafeteria, and the food was indeed cafeteria food, his lack of enthusiasm appeared almost normal. But then there was a dull light in his eyes, signaling a mind heavily weighing his choices of the last few days, particularly those made before that devil, Commander Ikari.
The lifelessness expressed in his movements was mirrored in his subdued surroundings, lending everything an almost Eva tin, but not emo. No, that would be going to far. Just then, something interrupted his musing with a metallic ting!
Looking at the object laying on the table, "What the--? A screw?"
Ting. Ting. Ting.
NERV's newest Eva pilot had just enough time to realize this was Not Good before a cry split the air with its fury. "TOJI SUZUHARA, PREPARE TO DIE!"
Toji did not posses a lifetime of martial arts training, but his grade school Judo training told him to roll out of the way and he obeyed but a half of a second before a bokken cut the table he'd been sitting at into two pieces.
"Who the fuck are you?!" Toji shouted, raising his fists. He didn't really expect an answer, but felt compelled to demand one anyway. Likewise, he didn't expect to fight off someone who could shatter a metal table with a wooden sword using only his fists, but instincts were instincts.
The massive man who had interrupted his introspective ingestion dusted himself off. From the vent he'd fallen--or simply jumped--out of, Toji guessed correctly. He was easily two meters tall, with hands big enough to palm a basketball with ease. His hair looked like it won a battle against not just his own comb, but all combs, perhaps even the ur-comb of all combs. Then it spoke, as if nothing violent had just happened. As if he wasn't standing on the remains of a table and Toji's lunch, holding a bokken like some warped vision of a character from an old samurai flick. "Hmm? Oh, it's you. Good reflexes, dude. We may have something to work with after all."
Toji followed that as far as 'good reflexes' and had to reboot his brain. "What? Who are you?!"
Not that he expected an answer, of course, but he hardly expected what he got.
Another American, nearly as tall but all bony joints and sinewy muscle, kicked open the main doors to the cafeteria and pointed at random, screaming, "THAT FOOD IS MADE OUT OF CLONED HUMANS!"
Several dozen pairs of eyes locked onto the crazy American, who held up an official NERV badge. "I should know!" The madman continued, "I'm the kitchen inspector!"
Let it be known that the sound of a cafeteria full of office bunnies spitting out their food simultaneously is NOT a noise you ever want to hear again.
"What?!" Toji managed to shout over the din.
A third American dashed into the room, hitting the tall one by the door with a bit of wood before leaping onto a table and holding up two items. In authoritative voice, he announced, "John Genoni, NERV Intelligence. I would like you all to please look at this pen right here."
Everyone did. Everyone except for Toji, who glanced in the direction of the kitchen. Where these guys really kitchen staff? Maybe that would explain the craziness.
The tall one said something just before a bright red light flashed throughout the room. Toji looked back to John, who was putting away a NERV badge and a pen while continuing in his haughty Authority Voice. "Someone was testing a sonic device that emits ultra-low frequency waves, and accidentally pointed it at the cafeteria, causing the mess, but it won't happen again."
In violation of every law known to God and Toji, everyone else nodded and went about the business of cleaning up. John led the tall American to the taller, bulkier American with the wooden sword.
Toji, fists still raised, shifted his stance to guard against all three of the weird Americans. The one with the glasses appeared to be capable of brainwashing people in record time. The other two...
John glared at the other dazed Americans. "Andy, I thought I told you not to do the Kuno Entrance. And Jared, that was just in bad taste."
The huge one, Andy looked completely clueless as he stole Toji's question. "What Kuno Entrance?"
"What was in bad taste?" The thin one, Jared asked.
Toji fought down the urge to answer that for him. Instead, a more important question came to mind, one he had been asking silently, and out loud, in various forms, ever since the big guy ruined his lunch. "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?! WHO ARE YOU GUYS?!"
John answered, "We are merely people who know. I am John. The stupid-looking one is Andy, and the idiot is Jared."
Which told Toji nothing he didn't already know. Useful information might have been on its way, but as John opened his mouth, some boards hit him on the head. Boards held by Andy and Jared.
Jared smiled, put his lumber... somewhere. "What my associate was trying to say was that we are from the Intelligence division."
"Must be a small department," Toji quipped. He was certain that if they were going to kill him--deliberately or accidentally--he had better start banking some one-liners.
"Touché," countered Jared.
"We're going to be training you and the other pilots to bring out the Evas' full potential," supplied Andy.
Training? "I think I remember Shinji talkin' about Evas, those are the giant robots he pilots?" And the robots he was now going to pilot.
"In layman's terms, yes. Evas are the giant robots."
"You guys must be the ones who were fighting that giant spider the other day."
John sat up, a comically huge ice cube tied onto the lump on the top of his head. "Yeah, Kensuke must've really flipped out when we fired off those DBZ blasts, huh?"
Toji barely kept himself from laughing. "You shoulda seen the look on his face... oops." It was more like 'oh shit.' He asked for forgiveness in advance when he was dealing with Ikari, the damn creepy bastard.
"We know you snuck out of the shelters, though with the big pink one, one would think you two had learned your lesson."
"It was his idea!"
John's ice cube vanished as he stood, waving his hand dismissively. "Toji, Toji, Toji, we don't really care about two measly civilians who willingly put themselves in the line of fire. You got lectured on enough about that. What we care about is--"
"Explosions," Andy shamelessly interrupted.
"Ravaging the female cast," Jared added.
Toji opened his mouth, trying to respond to that, but found no words that could possibly be uttered in this situation, and closed it again.
John glared at the two other Americans. "As I was saying, what we want from you is your cooperation in the coming weeks as we bring all of the pilots up to the next level."
"My cooperation?"
The thin dude smiled. "You know, refrain from insulting the beautiful Asuka, encourage Shinji every now and then, and basically keep in good spirits."
The glasses dude added, "And since half of the training involves physical conditioning, it should be right up your alley."
Toji blinked. What did that have to do with anything? "But I live in an apartment..."
"Is he not fully dubbed or something?" Jared said to the one with glasses. Toji chalked that question up to him being utterly insane, and ignored it.
Andy did kindly provide a bit of an answer. "It's an expression, baka!"
John smiled. "Anyway, keep smiling. There's also a party at our place to welcome you to the family. We're right next to Misato's."
Lucky sons of... just then, custodians kicked down the doors, faces red, fists clenched. The Americans fled in a flash of aftershave, cowardice, and imperialism. But then, didn't they always?
* * *
Asuka had refined using her Mini-MAGI's map into a science and was waiting for the goons when they entered a junction of two service corridors with a seventeen digit name.
John was at the lead. In the darkness behind him--literally and figuratively--Andy followed, mumbling to himself. The trackers insisted Jared was not far behind, but she wasn't worried about them pulling anything; the corridors weren't big enough for one of the Americans to move past the other.
Upon sighting her, John was understandably surprised. "Asuka! What are you doing here?"
Asuka put on her best smirk. No need to tell him about the map, after all. "I figured this was the way you would come, genius that I am."
Jared shouted from behind Andy. "I hear my red-haired Goddess! Where is she?"
After getting an elbow in the ribs, Andy spoke up with a right hook. "Quit shoving!"
Excellent, Asuka thought to herself.
"I must see her!" Jared retorted with a jab.
John ignored the two and adjusted the angle of his head so that his glasses showed her only glare. "So what did you want?"
She opened with something that should give her a bit of leverage. "Well, for starters, Worm, I felt I should warn you that Akagi-san was seriously considering setting land mines in these tunnels."
"Thank you, my goddess!" Shouted Jared, ducking a kick.
"You helping us?" John narrowed his eyes. "What is it you're after?"
She kept the smirk off of her face, watching for his reaction. Surely he was quicker on the uptake this friends. "I think you know exactly what I'm after."
By sheer amazing coincidence, Andy and Jared had dropped back a step and assumed their by-now-characteristic poses. Twin cries of stupidity and fanwanking rang out in the tiny tunnel.
"KAMEHAMEHA!"
"GALLET GUN FIRE!"
Now only silence rang through the dull gray hallway. John listened in obvious relief. "I think we should find a more comfortable place to talk."
"DARLING!" Jared dived into Andy fist-first.
Andy did not look amused as he countered with an uppercut. The two resumed fighting as Asuka led John through an access hatch into one of the nameless halls of NERV.
Inches outside of the door, she turned to face him, serious. "This isn't exactly easy for me. Just teach me, and if you do a good job, I won't castrate you with rusty farm implements." There, now he knew were he stood.
John made a covert glance at the lighting, still not revealing his eyes, and for some reason seemed to look at her hair before he answered. "Charming, but you seem to forget that only we hold the secret to those techniques."
This was already getting old. Didn't he get his ego stroked enough? "And those secrets shall be told, Worm."
"Asuka, Asuka, Asuka... You don't seem to realize who has the advantage here. It's impossible to get anything out of Andy except gibberish. And Jared will only trade his tutelage for a date or three. So, let's dispense with this whole 'Worm' business, shall we?"
She should have started shouting at this point, and put him firmly in his place, but she took a deep breath and held her ground. "When you have shown that you are worthy of a different name, I shall change it."
John crowded into her personal space. "Well, quite frankly, ki attacks require a certain amount of control. Mental control, physical control, and emotional control. You lack all three... and your preconceptions about yourself and your Eva will be your downfall, Sohryu."
She held back her Righteous Fury punch that longed to seek out John's face. "I... don't know what you're talking about."
"I think you do. And I simply don't have time to play doctor with you, Asuka. Now if you'll excuse me, I do have things to do."
"Do you want me to beg?" She finally asked.
John looked away, past her, and sighed. "Yes, but not right now." He turned away. "Oh, and before I forget, we're hosting a 'Welcome to NERV' party for Toji, since he's going to be piloting soon. You're invited of course."
She reacted before she had a single second to consider her words. "WHAT?! That Stooge is going to be piloting?!"
He was casual. "Yes, now if you'll excuse me, I really must be going."
"They'll let anybody pilot those things..."
John was a ways down the hall already, obviously ignoring the sounds of Andy and Jared fighting in the service corridor. "Oh, have you looked in a mirror recently?"
She wondered for a moment where this odd concern had come from. "Not since this morning, why? Is there something on my face?"
"No, no, nothing like that." He turned the far corner, and disappeared.
* * *
Some time later, the goons returned to their office, where Andy spent a full hour analyzing the bars welded right to the wall to seal the ventilation grate from interior access. Jared occupied himself with some paperwork. Namely, engaging in a ritual burning of the NERV Employee Handbook. John had torn into the OS of his Mini-MAGI, and had pulled up the overland map of Tokyo-3 when Jared set his papers aside, stretched, and whistled to get his attention. "Finished yet?"
John glanced at him, then back at his map. "Just about. Anything interesting show up in our inbox?"
"Just one thing: The receiving orders for our cars."
"What?"
Jared waved John over to whisper in his ear, "Just Andy's though. Ours should be here tomorrow."
Andy, already standing over the pair, whispers back, "Well, that thing won't hold me for long. Are we ready to go?"
Jared threw the papers in the trashcan near his desk. "Yosh!"
Andy rose and fetched his heavy-duty canvas jacket from the coat stand, and opened the office door. John sighed and closed up his Mini-MAGI's map before herding Jared out of the office.
Outside of the door, Jared waved off John. "Well, I'll just pick up the pilots."
"No," said John.
"By--" Jared began, then was interrupted by a board hitting him in the head.
Andy looked at John. "Was... that necessary?"
"You will pick up the pilots." John pulled out a bone-shaped cookie and offered it to Andy.
Andy put on his best 'Vegeta' voice. "You think you can buy me with that?"
John waved the cookie at him suggestively. "You can handle it, Andy... that's right..."
Beads of sweat broke out on Andy's forehead. "Must... resist..." But he didn't. He snatched the cookie from John's hands and gnawed on it like a starving raptor.
"Good boy," John said brightly. "And the jacket, dude, wh--"
"Coat," Corrected Andy, as if he was tired of making the distinction.
John blinked. "Coat. Where did--"
"Equipment lockers, level thirty-four."
Andy bit off a chunk of his cookie and left through a convenient ventilation duct.
"Well, it looks like it's you and me," John said to the not-unconscious figure on the floor.
"Can I get up now?" Jared asked.
"Sure. But before we go, we need one more thing..."
"Do we have the time? I need to finish checking the [Stereo System]."
John gave Jared a wary look at the bracketed words. "Right."
* * *
Andy stood at the street-level access to the apartment building's parking garage, wondering what was taking Jared so long to get here. The man was a demon once his hands touched a steering wheel, and he was claiming to be delivering a super-car. What could possibly hold him up?
Jared Waddell had never been in a traffic jam in his entire life. He'd been through, around, under, and (terrifyingly) over many of them, sometimes with a mildly panicked Andy helplessly restrained in the passenger seat. So, no, traffic could not possibly be holding up the Four-Wheeled Demon of Washington State. The Japanese police couldn't even slow him down, especially not with his NERV ID. Traffic lights and the public safety were quaint ideas that Jared treated with the same respect he reserved for creationism and republicans--none.
For the last twenty seconds or so, Andy had been hearing a strange wailing, like a tiny world dying. Dying, and approaching rapidly.
Suddenly, the noise was a crescendo of squealing tires, wailing transmission, and howling engine. All three went silent at the same moment. Coincidentally, that was the same moment that a fire-engine red Ferrari F40 appeared before him in a cloud of acrid smoke. Jared's smiling face was in the window. He got out of the car the usual way (the door), and greeted Andy. "Hi, dude."
"What's that?" Andy asked ambiguously.
"Your car."
Andy peered at the interior. "Where's the stereo?"
"It's got a sound system," Jared insisted. He got back in the driver's seat, leaving the door open, and fired up the way-too-loud engine to rev it for a few moments.
"You didn't answer my question," Andy stated flatly.
In response, Jared revved the engine again, then shut the beast off. He sighed theatrically. "I'll install one."
Andy swapped places with Jared, and the whining and bitching began. "Where's the seat adjuster?"
"That lever under there."
"It's not electric?"
"No."
"How many airbags does it have?"
"None."
"What about the floor mats?"
"It doesn't come with floor mats."
"I see a stick. Does it have a clutch?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"That pedal."
"I'm pushing on that pedal. It's not moving."
"It's a pretty stiff clutch. Uh, think of it as special leg training."
Andy grumbled and shut the door, then stared at it. "Where's the door handles?"
"Doesn't have any."
"Doesn't... Then how did you just... and how do I roll the windows down?"
"The windows don't roll down."
Andy stewed for a minute, and finally what he had been hurting to say burst forth. "Waddell, you imbecile! You spent NERV's money on a car that doesn't work!"
"It's not broken. It's... spartan. Light on its feet. Ridiculously fast. Epically cool."
"It's not cool! It's got no door handles! And what's this... is this glue? Is this car glued together?!"
"I'm hungry," said Jared, walking away.
"Hey! HEY! Get back here, damn it! ...How do I get out of this thing?!!"
* * *
Much later that night, after certain people had gotten the hang of using their car and subsequently gotten themselves roped into running around the neighboring pilots, John found himself the unfortunate witness to Jared's 'sonic testing.'
"TURN IT DOWN!!!" And discovered why the couch had been bolted to the floor.
"WHAT DID YOU SAY?!!"
And then, for reasons unknown to both God and man, Jared turned the volume up.
The funny part would be where a post-doc monitoring some seismic sensor feeds a hundred kilometers away started seeing an earthquake caused by an apartment building.
* * *
Miles away, where Andy was picking up the party supplies from a convenience store with three other Eva pilots in tow, the skyline of Tokyo-3 was visibly wobbling.
Asuka and Shinji were putting their bags of goodies into the trunk of Andy's red F40 when they stopped to watch the buildings undulate. "Earthquake?" Asuka asked after a minute.
"I don't think so," Shinji replied.
"it is not an angel attack," Rei added.
Andy put on his shades and stuffed their bags into the trunk. "I'll see you back at our place!"
Andy quickly got into the car and laid a patch.
"That... was our ride." Asuka said to the cloud of tire smoke. She raised a fist at the departing car. "Asshole!"
* * *
Andy made his way up the stairs to the seventh floor, not trusting elevator cars that swayed like cable-hung gondolas in tornado alley. After breaching the sixth floor, he swapped his driving sunglasses for his wrap-around shooting sunglasses, looking very much like a character from a Wachowski film. At the access door to the seventh floor, he withdrew an immense single-shot, fifty caliber rifle from his massive Coat and dropped into a crouch.
He slid through the door and took cover behind a conveniently placed, sturdy metal barrel. While he was there, he noted that no sane man would wonder why a steel barrel would be sitting on an outdoor hallway on the seventh floor of an apartment complex. First person shooter's said so!
Then the door to apartment 724 was blown off by a powerful bass hit. John was shortly sent on a sonically-powered flight through said doorway onto the floor near Andy's cover.
Andy looked to the unconscious goon and wrestled with himself. "Apartment... John unconscious... large weapon... anime within apartment... Nnngh..." Not that anyone could hear him, given the local noise levels. He finally made his decision, and sighted into the apartment with his immense weapon, firing a single shot.
Silence reigned.
John woke while Andy was cycling the rifle's action, and immediately saw the goon. "...I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but thank you."
Andy removed his military grade earplugs upon seeing John moving. "Did you say something?"
"...No. Help me up?"
Andy ignored the request and put the rifle back to where it came from. John climbed quickly to his feet and dusted himself off.
"Hey!" Jared shouted from within the apartment. "Who put this bullet hole here? Damn it, this is why we can't have nice things!"
John pulled out some lumber. "Excuse me..." Plucking Andy's sunglasses off of the taller goon's face. "I'll be back."
Andy was about to protest, but couldn't decide what to get angry over; the fact that John had just stolen his sunglasses, or the fact that John had just stolen his line. Damn him!
Before he grew exhausted from the immense effort required to pick one, Andy was distracted by the elevator at the end of the open-air hallway disgorging three Eva pilots.
"How did you get here so quickly?" His eyes narrowed in suspicion at the three teens. "I had a high-powered foreign sports car. You all were on foot!"
The red-haired one snorted, her hair briefly switching to yellow before switching back as she replied, "You navigate like a drunken spider on a storm-tossed ship."
Shinji nodded enthusiastically, until he spied Asuka's hair, at which point he began silently pointing at it with even more enthusiasm, desperate to get Andy's attention. Andy ignored this as stoically as the pale clone next to the Ace was ignoring the entire situation.
"I had a map!" Andy said to Asuka's hair.
"That you didn't use," The German deadpanned.
Shinji continued to gesture frantically at Asuka's hair. Andy shrugged, mystified at the insanity surrounding him, and straightened his Coat. Shinji stopped pointing at Asuka's hair, and started staring at Andy.
"What's with the military firepower?" Asuka asked.
"What military firepower?" Andy replied, annoyed. He followed Asuka's pointing finger to see the outline of his Grizzly target rifle visible through the Coat. "It's not military, its civilian."
"This is Japan!" Howled Asuka. "You can't just walk around in broad daylight with a gun the size of a small car!"
Andy looked to the dark windows. "It's not daylight anymore, and for the record, I drive a small car, and it seats me and this gun just fine."
"Y-You can't carry a gun like that in public!" Shinji's incredulometer had been pegged out for too long.
"I'm NERV Intelligence." Andy showed his badge for emphasis. "It's part of my job."
Asuka snorted again, her blue hair gaining a green tint for a second. "NERV. Intelligence. In the same sentence. Amazing."
Andy quickly adjusted an imaginary tie. "Why, thank you."
Asuka's hair shifted to corn yellow. Andy raised an eyebrow at this. Shinji caught the raising and shrugged in reply, then suggested they all head into the apartment. "Hey, why don't we all go inside now?"
"An excellent suggestion, invertebrate," said Andy.
"Why do you have to call me that?" Shinji pouted.
"Why do you have to be so spineless?" Andy countered.
"I..."
"Leave him alone!" Thundered a red-haired Asuka.
"...Riiight," said Andy, turning away and leading the trio into the Dungeon of--er, the apartment of the (cue evil music) Three Goons!
"Ooooooo!" Andy shouted once he cleared the door, causing the three Japanese pilots to jump. "The space is a mess, claustrophobic. A massive entertainment center dominates the north wall. The television is off. A large hole in the stereo system appears to have silenced speakers the size of Volkswagen Beetles. Tennis shoe marks mar the floors, walls, and curiously, ceilings. The kitchen to the east is pristine, but the darkened hallway is a treacherous river of laundry. A couch is here, overturned. A body is on the floor here, barely recognizable as human. Is it dead? Alive? Suddenly, a being of pure evil slithers out of the hallway, reeking of--"
John, now out of the hallway, glared flatly at his comrade. "Andy, stop narrating like we're in an interactive fiction game. You're scaring the children."
Andy turned around to look at two wide-eyed pilots, and one unflappable clone. "Boo!"
Asuka decked him.
Andy bounced off the floor and back to a standing position, rubbing his jaw. "Okay, put that stuff away."
"What stuff, the stuff in the trunk of your car?" Shinji asked.
"Of course!"
"Your locked car that's in the parking garage on the ground floor?" Shinji added.
"Yes!" Andy was tiring of this game.
"With the party supplies in it?"
"YES!" Andy thundered.
John finally tapped Andy on the head with his two-by-four. "Andy doesn't understand logic," he apologized to the other pilots.
Andy swatted at the lumber while rubbing his head. "That hurt, damn it!"
John pointed at Asuka. "Keys."
"She's the key to what?" Andy said, irritated.
Tap.
The Japanese kids watched the exchange with amusement.
"Quit doing that!"
"Give her your keys."
"Why?!"
"So she and Rei can bring up the party supplies."
Suddenly, Andy was all sunshine and rainbows. Plants in the apartment immediately perked up. That is, they would if any plants were in the apartment. "Sure, no problem." He smiled, an unsettling sight, then chucked the keys at the trio, hitting roughly eighty miles per hour, and Shinji's face.
POW!
Thud.
"OW! MOTHER OF--" The remainder of Shinji's complaining was muffled by his hands over his own face, searching for gaping wounds.
John ignored the kid and smiled at Asuka, his grin menacing and unflinching.
Asuka's hair seemed to respond an instant before her tongue, shifting to deep and angry red. "Well played, Worm." She grabbed the keys off a groaning Shinji and left the apartment with Rei in tow.
Jared sat up. "I live."
"Unfortunately," John commented.
Andy tapped John on the shoulder. "My sunglasses?"
"Hey, I'm being dramatic here!" Jared shouted from the floor, and was ignored. Grumbling, he got to his feet while John handed Andy the shooting glasses.
Shinji also got to his feet, wary of another attack. Not wary enough to dodge Jared glomping onto his leg, though.
"Ace! You've gotta help me!" He jumped to his feet and moved quickly behind Shinji, using the pilot as a human shield while pointing wildly at John and Andy while wailing like a school girl. "They're being meeeaaan!"
"Uh... I, um. What?" Shinji asked.
"You're the big bad Eva pilot! Kill them and feast of their remains!" Jared howled. His hand clawed the air, desperate for a whip.
"Hm," Andy noted. "He went straight from dramatic to drama queen."
"He does that a lot, doesn't he?" John asked Andy.
"I'd say so, yeah," replied the Maniac.
Shinji nodded enthusiastically as Andy answered.
"You guys are just no fun," Jared pouted, then left Shinji to turn up the volume on the stereo. After spinning the knob uselessly a few times, he punched a few buttons, then looked over the rig. "Aha! A bullet hole!" He glanced around the room suspiciously. "Gentlemen, we may have snipers in the area."
Andy put his shooting glasses back on. "What are they packing?"
"Fifty caliber by the looks of this hole," Jared said, pointing at his ruined stereo. He closed the blinds to peek out between the slats. "This could have come from anywhere."
Andy grabbed a chopstick from the kitchen and fed it into the hole in the stereo. "From the looks of this trajectory, the bullet came through the--THE FRONT DOOR!"
Jared looked to apartment's entrance, where the front door had been ripped from its tracks. "We've got a breach!"
John righted the couch and sat down with a pained sigh. "Ace, close your mouth before something builds a house in it and sit down."
Brain obeying John's command on autopilot, Shinji also sat down on the couch. He looked at John, attempted to say something, then looked back to Andy and Jared. The pair were busy constructing a barricade where the front door used to be, utilizing a mountain of empty pop cans as raw material, and duct tape as a kind of mortar. He finally tore his eyes away from their ADHD-inspired engineering discussion and attempted to form a question in John's general direction.
After Shinji failed to find words to expression his confusion, John answered. "They have the collective attention span of a hyperactive terrier."
Shinji swallowed this and found it stayed down. He glanced at the already half-built makeshift door. "Can terriers be house trained?" He asked. He didn't know why, but quite suddenly, he wanted to know.
"Yes, but getting Andy and Jared to behave is probably going be somewhere up there on the List of Really Hard Things To Do right next to 'create sustained nuclear fusion in an aluminum can'."
"Hey, I did that last week!" Jared said without looking up from his work.
"Your atrocious food experiments don't count," John countered.
"Who put all these fucking cans here?!" Asuka shouted from the other side of Jared and Andy's construct.
The two goons peeked over the top, which was about up to their shoulders, and gave Asuka clueless looks. "What are you babbling about, wench?" Andy asked rudely.
Jared side-kicked Andy into a nearby wall. "What he meant to say was, 'hold on a moment, Asuka-sama, and we shall have you inside'."
Andy engaged his Sarcasm Mode from inside the wall. "Of course."
"I'm waiting!" Asuka chimed in.
"Can't you wait quietly?" John asked from the couch.
"Fuck off!" Came the reply.
Jared finally pulled the door open. "Tada!"
Asuka stalked inside with a glare, her flaming red hair trailing her like a swath of living fire.
"Rei!" John said happily, indicating the spot next to him on the couch. "Take a seat."
"okay." Rei approached the couch, glanced at the offered spot, and sat primly on the edge of the cushion.
"Whoa, what happened to your door?" Toji said from the entrance.
Hikari stood uneasily next to him, adding, "And what's with the cans?"
"Oh, a little project of ours, right Andy?"
Andy was halfway through brushing off the bits of drywall and broken wood that littered his hair like trinkets in a bird's nest. "Yes, an important security measure."
She peered at the cans like a single, childless twenty-something man, blinking uncomprehendingly at the artwork of a two-year-old. "I see..."
Jared smiled.
Andy smiled.
Andy tackled Jared.
The two rolled into the kitchen, missing Asuka by inches. "Watch it, fuckers!" She brought out some drinks, handing one each to Rei and Shinji with a big smile and blonde hair, then snarling and redheaded to John when he gave her puppy dog eyes. Or leered at her. Hard to tell with how the apartment's lighting kept the glare pouring off his glasses.
She picked a chair far away from the couch.
Toji and Hikari sat down on the smaller couch that one might unimaginatively call a 'love seat.'
"Ha! I have the high ground now, Waddell!" Came from the kitchen.
"You're on the stove," replied Jared.
"It is a tasty high ground, is it not?" Asked Andy.
Fwoosh! Said the stove.
"John! Andy's on fire again!"
"Dang it!" Misato said over the remains of the improvised front door. "I'm already missing the party?"
End Chapter 8
A note from the author(s):
I could stop here and whine about multiple computer and car failures, certain persons loosing their jobs, time-intensive engagements made before I even started releasing Goonvangelion, being sick for a month, a co-author actually catching the Swine Flu, and a close family friend having a serious medical crisis... but that would be making excuses.
No excuses. I was being lazy. Besides, this isn't exactly The Lord of the Rings, right?
Four more chapters to the end of the book sound doable. Even five, if it comes to that. Then we'll have another break. A brief, deliberate one.