Neon Genesis Goonvangelion Book 1

by Rick Spiff

Utterly insane fanfic authors prance through the Evangelion universe. Action! Comedy! Action! Drama! Action! Coarse language! Action! ... Did I mention action? - Rated M for very bad language and later disturbing and violent scenes.

9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: By decree of the Holy Water Buffalo, there will be no more disclaimers. Seriously.

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Neon Genesis Goonvangelion

Book 1: The Overdue Re-Write

Chapter 9: Look Ma! / The First Step

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Jared slammed his empty cup of coffee onto the counter top with a satisfied sigh. "So, what's on the agenda today, gentlemen?"

The three were at their kitchen counter as usual, drinking coffee at varying speeds and levels of wakefulness, with Misato sipping her own beer across the counter. Behind the Goons, sleeping teens littered the floor; some NERV personnel who had come over late in the evening had already picked themselves up and left for work. The Goons were currently four hours, thirty-one minutes late and counting.

John stared into his second cup. "Well, I've been thinking about Rei."

Misato poured Jared a second cup. "Oh, you have?"

"Well, about moving her into this building," John clarified. "Why, what if there was an emergency?"

Misato set her beer on the counter. "In the event of an Attack, getting the pilots to their Evangelions has the highest priority and--"

"What makes you think Angels are NERV's only enemies?" Andy growled, sipping at his first cup of coffee with a 'I should still be asleep, damn it' look on his face.

John and Jared's faces went carefully blank.

Misato picked up her can of brew and swirled it around absently while she looked at the Goons, silent. "Well Mucha, that's... interesting."

"Isn't it, though?" Jared added.

"We are aware of the security around the pilots," said John.

"That too is interesting," said Misato.

Behind the Goons, Toji sat up. Still asleep, he asked, "What?"

"Nothing!" Jared shouted. Toji grumbled something in reply and laid back down.

"So," Misato asked carefully. "What episode are we in now?"

"Hard to say. We aren't in the original plot anymore," Andy supplied.

"Yeah, this is almost like... fan fiction," Jared added. "Hmm..." Then he finished off his cup. "Mmm... yeah. Maybe... Hrm..."

Misato slowly finished her beer as well, watching the trio. She idly selected a large plate from the cupboard. "Well, I remember the pilots mentioning something about training. Since you three are skipping work, I assume training is on the agenda."

"I don't see why not," John said idly.

Andy and Jared began long sips of their coffee.

Misato idly grabbed a serving platter off of the counter, fingering the pattern imprinted in the cheap plastic. "Going to teach them to throw ki blasts like Rei did during the last Angel battle?" She countered the dual spit-takes that followed her question by holding the serving platter up as a shield. When the surprise-powered spewing stopped, she dropped the platter directly into the sink.

"What ki blast?!" Jared demanded of John.

"Uh, you guys weren't aware of Rei using a ki blast right next to me when we fought the Ninth?"

"Well, excuse me, I was kind of under an Angel at the time!" Jared snapped.

"I was on the other side of that Angel, thank you very much!" Andy added.

"Did you talk to Rei about this?" John asked, ignoring his fellow chattering primates.

"Of course I did, she's the one that told me," Misato replied. "So, what are you guys going to do?"

"Well, we do have work, so I'm sure we'll show up at NERV at some point," John mused.

"Presumably whenever you feel like it," Misato put in, ignored summarily by all three.

"We must prepare NERV to defeat the Angels," said Andy.

"And grope Asuka, that blue-haired chick in the weapon testing wing, and those three waitresses in the Black Mountain Bar with the fine, fine a--" Jared was cut as Misato talked over him in a loud voice.

"Fine, don't tell me." She breezed passed the guys to put her shoes on.

"We will be training the pilots, I think," John said. "That's what will lead us to each of our goals."

Jared and Andy nodded sagely.

"Holy shit, that actually made sense." Fearing for her own sanity, Misato left.

* * *

After dodging their boss on the way in--complete with a chanting of 'sneak, sneak, sneak' during the process--the Goons spent some time getting settled in their office. At least, they were going to until Andy stood on his desk and screamed 'boring' at the top of his lungs. Jared swept him off the desk while John batted a thousand on Andy's skull using his name plaque.

They quickly tied up their 'friend' like a caught shark and took several 'trophy' pictures with him.

Then the Section Chief walked in. "It's finally happened. Someone's died in this office and now the survivors can be executed, dissected, and fired. In that order. Oh, happy day!"

"It's nice to see racism is alive and well in Japan," Jared said dryly.

John jumped across his desk and dropped the Chief with another swing from his name plaque.

"Uh, why did you do that?" Jared asked, realizing John stood between him and the room's only exit.

John said the dumbest thing that came to mind. "I think that was a silly attempt to replay, in office violence form, America's defeat of Japan."

"Will successive interactions between both nations be played out through our interactions with Section Chief Yamanaki?" Jared questioned eagerly.

"How..." John quickly ran through a mental list of suitable descriptors. Dumb? Stupid? Repetitive? Trite? Repetitive? Hackneyed? Banal? Unoriginal? Repetitive? Jared? Wait, maybe he had something there. On the other hand, he really liked 'banal.' He made his decision before the first word had grown stale on his tongue. "Banal."

"Indeed," Jared said with a smile.

"THAT HURT!" Yamanaki cried, still on the floor.

"He can yell pretty loudly for a guy with a head injury," Jared commented.

"YOU TWO WILL PAY FOR THIS!" Andy shouted, then flipped to his feet and kicked at Jared, who jumped out of the way to land on his own desk. He did it just like a cat--showing off enough style to deliberately piss off his opponent, but acting like he didn't give a damn about how much he pissed off said opponent.

John put his name plaque back on his desk and helped Yamanaki to his feet. "Boss, could we have a word outside while they redecorate the office?"

Yamanaki's reply was a disgusted huff, a narrowing of his eyes, then a curt nod towards the door while the Battle Cry of the Idiots rang out through the office.

"KAMEHAMEHA!"

"FATAL FLASH!"

John closed the door. Then stood in front of it.

Yamanaki nodded over John's shoulder at the door. "Are they--"

"Yes."

"Can they--"

"No."

"Are you s--"

"Yes."

"But could they--"

"Lord, I hope not."

"So do I. Well, you three were five hours late for work today. Originally, I came to hear your excuse this time--"

"The pilots," John smoothly interrupted. "We had a party last night. It ran late. A few of them fell asleep at our place. I figured NERV wouldn't want us leaving them there alone, so we woke 'em this morning and sent them home at a sane hour."

"Then stuffed Suzuhara into a giant piñata, hung it next to the Horaki girl and left a baseball bat in her hands." The Chief added.

"Hikari probably flipped when she gave it a whack and it started screaming," John said with a wistful smile. "But he's in one piece and I'm sure she's calmed down by now."

"Is that how you quantify the safety of the public? That they're in one piece?"

Following his standard office protocol, John replied by tweaking the bosses nerves with a pair of pliers, a blow torch, and forty-five times the necessary enthusiasm. "I recall something about not floating in the infinite vacuum of space surrounded by fist-sized rocks that used to a planet, now rendered a cloud of debris aimlessly orbiting a dying star. Throw that in there too."

Yamanaki's lips drew into a tight line. John suspected that if he tossed a chunk of carbon in between them, a diamond would fall out when the Section Chief started yelling. John waited patiently until Yamanaki gathered his nerves and separated his lips. "Well, be that as it may, I am warning you not to put your fellow pilots in undue danger. They are necessary for the defense of Tokyo-3. You are expendable."

"Warning duly noted, Chief," John said with a half-ass salute. He then spied Asuka coming down the hallway towards him. He ignored the Chief's scoff and waved the fuming man off. Asuka stopped a few paces away, almost as if expecting an applause and for him to maybe drop to one knee and kiss an offered hand. He smiled at her like an annoyed parent indulging a belligerent child. "Hi Asuka, what do you want this time? Ice-cream? My lunch isn't for another thirty minutes." He lied. Technically, his lunch was whenever he felt like it.

"Har-har. The tall stooge told me you were going to start training all of us pilots."

"Training is something you all need. Now, it would be easy to simply lock the four of you in a room with Jared for three hours a day, but that will just get me in trouble with the Human Rights people. You all probably won't learn much beyond running and screaming anyhow. So, how do you suggest I handle the pilot training?"

"You can do ki-blasts. Teach me how. Surely the stooges can pick it up from Andy with ease, and you'd love to teach Wondergirl in person, right?"

"I don't want to teach you. I don't want to teach anybody. I don't think any of us three are really capable of teaching you guys ki blasts. At least, not yet. Look, I could suggest to Jared that you should know how, and with a little prodding, he might figure it out. Somehow."

"You're actually suggesting I get within groping distance of that pervert?!" Asuka shrieked, scandalized.

John sighed, then frowned. "No. And your attitude and habit of ignoring what I fucking say is getting very annoying. I am suggesting that Jared, being the martial artist among us, figure out a way to teach you three, and hand that information off to NERV personnel."

"That..." Asuka looked suddenly unsure of herself, like a politician without a script. "All right, John. Let's do that." She pulled up her Mini-MAGI interface and walked away with the map active.

John almost fell over when heard Asuka force out his name instead of a reflexive insult. He... didn't expect that.

Asuka was just a character in an anime, right?

Well, maybe... not anymore.

Hmm.

He walked back into the office. The empty office. He called up Jared on a direct line using the Mini-MAGI.

A video feed came on, revealing Jared laying on his stomach in a very dirty air duct, wearing a stained white tank top and using an old Zippo lighter for illumination. "Yeah?" He asked with a distinct New Jersey accent.

John decided to skip berating Jared until he knew where the bastard was. "Asuka wants to learn to do ki blasts."

Grimly, Jared said, "Welcome to the party, pal."

"What, she's already asked you?"

Jared shrugged, not dropping the terrible accent. "Nah, I just figured it was coming. Why the call?"

"Hypothetically speaking, let's say you were to teach Asuka how to do ki blasts in her Evangelion. How would you go about training her?"

Jared looked thoughtful for a moment. "I would start with conditioning."

"What kind of conditioning?" John wondered.

"Air conditioning, it's damn hot in here."

"Focus, McClain!" John shouted at his Mini-MAGI.

"Well, I'd have to figure out how we did ki blasts," Jared said. He shook his head, the lighter catching his hair on fire. "Man it's hot in here."

John almost said something, but instead thanked Jared for his time and closed the line. A moment later, he tapped his watch again, calling up the tracking map, and watching the blue dot--Jared--and the yellow dot--Andy--make their way to a green square labeled 'Training Area Four.'

A red dot--Asuka--was just a few hallways away...

"I wonder if NERV has enough insurance to cover this?" He mused out loud.

* * *

She found them in Training Area Four. Although a piece of paper had been taped over the sign next to the door, and upon it some English was written:

Most Badass Training Room EVER!

PLEASE: Do not enter unless you are prepared to learn the sacred art of Ass Kicking.

Asuka sighed heavily and rubbed her temples to stave off the coming headache. "Okay, focused... need to stay focused..." She looked at the door, faintly hearing the distant sounds of highly enthusiastic combat.

She knocked, then quickly stepped to the one side. A second later, Andy's airborne body blew the door clean out of its frame, both impacting the far wall with a cacophonous bang.

She peeked into the room. It looked rather like a small American gym, with a small set of free weights in one corner, a few heavy bags tucked into the other corner, open mats in the far corner, and a full boxing ring in the remaining corner. Jared was standing in the middle of the ring, wearing a simple white gi, one bare foot raised in the follow-through to a karate sidekick. Wisps of smoke appeared to rise from his heel and blue fire seemed to burn where his iris should have been.

He slowly lowered his foot to the mat's surface.

Andy groaned. Asuka gave him a glance, noticing that he too was wearing a white gi, although his belt was white, while Jared's was black with several colored patches.

Asuka stepped into the door frame and leaned casually against it, crossing her arms in front of her. "Is that supposed to impress me?"

Jared smiled serenely from the ring. "Not especially for you, my dear, I'm just naturally impressive."

"Why was your foot smoking?"

"Because I am made of pure awesome," he said as if channeling the voice of the lord of the universe, certain of the Undeniable Truth flowing forth from between his lips.

Asuka lifted one corner of her mouth in irritation. "..."

Jared sighed. "It's chalk dust. The mat is a bit dirty."

"It's cleaned every shift," Asuka said.

"Andy and I have been at it for a while," Jared replied.

"According to your Mini-MAGI, twenty seconds," Asuka stated.

The pervert didn't miss a beat. "We were using a training montage to speed up the honing of our skills."

"Jumping around while screaming like Bruce Lee and punching the air does not make a 'training montage'," Asuka replied, deadpan.

"All those curves and a sense of humor too? Somebody call a coroner, because I've died and gone to heaven!" Then he turned around and did three back flips, the last taking him out of the ring and landing him on the floor in front of Asuka, but facing away from her. He slowly bent into a bridge. "Polka dots today? Feh. Predictable."

Asuka snarled and kicked him in the head.

After rebounding off the sparring ring, Jared removed his gloves and rubbed the comically over-sized bandage on his head. Taking in the flaming red hair, "Pink and blue."

Asuka lunged at him, her fist missing his face by inches and slamming into the padded base of the ring. Chalk dust billowed into the around around her fist.

"Interesting," Jared said, his head tilted to one side to avoid the blow.

Asuka drew back. Her hair flared a darker shade of red, then slowly returned to its normal color.

"Hmm..." Andy said, holding a color sample to her crimson locks.

"Get away from me, Mucha."

Jared jumped into the ring. "Come, my beauty! Into the ring!"

"Don't call me that!"

Jared started jumping from foot to foot, dancing around the ring like Bruce Lee. "I wanna see what you're made of. Besides pure sex, of course."

Wordlessly, Andy held a bullet-proof vest out for Asuka to take.

She grabbed the vest and shucked out of her shoes. While struggling into the vest, "Why can't the world go back to being normal?"

Andy offered her a last will and testament form, and a pen stolen from NERV's Public Relations department.

"Piss off, Mucha."

Andy wisely put away the cigarette and blindfold while Asuka climbed into the ring and put up her fists.

"Beware, Goddess! I have the speed of a mongoose and the reflexes of a ca--"

Asuka dashed in and popped him one in the side of the head.

"Ooow! You hit me in the ear! Why the fuck did you do that?"

Asuka smirked, her hair turning a light purple. "Both species are asleep at this hour."

"All right, that one was free, but prepare yourself for--"

Pow!

"Fuck! In the ear again! What the hell was that for?!"

Asuka shrugged, failing to look innocent. "I thought we were sparring."

"But I'm not done with the pre-fight tra--"

Asuka threw her fist at his yammering face again, but this time it passed cleanly through empty air. Before she could even wonder why, a small car slammed into her stomach. The ropes stopped her from sailing clear of the ring, instead catapulting her face-first onto the mat.

Picking her head up, she glared at the Goon standing before her in a relaxed ready stance. He simply said, "I win."

"No," Asuka paused to cough. "I hit you twice." She put her hands under her and maneuvered into a sitting position. "You hit me once. I win."

"I'm still alive because you didn't aim to kill. You're still alive because I pulled that blow. In a real fight, you'd be dead."

Her chest hurt, her whole rib cage felt like some huge friggin' guy had been stomping on her for hours. Nothing seemed broken, but then her eyes landed on the bullet proof vest protecting her torso. "That's not--"

"Try doing a set of bloopers at breakfast, lunch, and dinner to start with. Let's say... eight each. We'll move on to combat conditioning in two weeks when we have full assessed all of the pilots' physical abilities."

Asuka snorted in contempt. "This is supposed to help me learn to do ki blasts in an Eva?"

Jared assumed a familiar look: Clueless moron. "What? Who said anything about ki blasts?"

"Ugh! You mean I've been--" Asuka stripped the vest off with a snarl, tossing it at Andy's head like she was trying to knock it off his shoulders. "I came down here because the Worm won't show me how he does ki blasts in his Eva! He said to talk to you!"

"Oh," Jared shrugged. "Well, let me think. Did you try doing one?"

"Yes!" Asuka said, almost screeching.

"That's... news to me." Jared mused, rubbing his chin in 'thought.' He glanced at Andy, then looked at her. "Did it work?"

"NO!" she shouted.

"Did you pose?" Jared asked.

Asuka clenched her fist to keep them from flying at his face. "Yes!"

"Shout the attack name?" The Goon said as if reading off a checklist.

Asuka sighed. "I don't see what that has to do with anything, but yes!"

The Goon pulled out a heavily used notepad, and began writing complex equations on it rapidly. Asuka waited for something comprehensible to come out of his pie hole, but after fifteen minutes of being ignored, threw her arms into the air in frustration. "Well?!"

Jared looked up from his writings and adjusted a pair of glasses that weren't there. "This... requires some... experimentation. Come, Mucha!"

Andy appeared beside Jared--not walked, not sauntered, not slid or strode, not slithered or dashed, and not meandered, but appeared--and mimicked him in tone and volume as the two shouted, "FOR SCIENCE!"

Asuka's hair was a strange blend of green, red, yellow, and purple, the colors swirling about each other like a mud puddle of sharks. "MY BRAIN!" She screamed, clocking Jared, who went down like a deflating condom. "MY BRAIN!" Andy tried to duck the second blow but couldn't move fast enough while tangled in his lab coat and went down next to Jared.

Asuka strode from the room, running her fingers through her hair in exasperation. "They're dissolving my brain!"

* * *

Jared and Andy walked into the labs like a pair of lost sailors. The whole wing was tight, divided into countless partitioned rooms short on space and long on exotic equipment. Technicians moved through the space like ants in a colony, barely noticing the two Americans standing a head above everybody else. The pair cut through rooms quickly, efficiently, zeroing in on a head of bleached hair they could recognize instantly at a hundred paces.

And soon, the Americans stood before Dr. Ritsuko Akagi, who glared at them and said, "Why are you two wearing lab coats?"

"We were in a hurry," Andy said.

"Still are. Is this a good time?" Jared asked.

"No," the doctor replied.

"When would it be a good time?"

"Never."

"That's going to make our scheduling a bitch," Jared complained. "Okay, I'll just ask you now. Have you ever known any person to actually throw a ki blast? I mean like, actual energy that was directly seen or observed?"

Ritsuko frowned at them as if they'd just asked a particularly stupid question. "No. And for the record, even coming from you two that is a particularly stupid question. Now will you get out of my hair?"

"Sure. Thanks!" Chirped Andy.

And just like that, the two left. They could still be heard talking as they walked out of the lab area without a backwards glance.

"What are we going to do now?" Asked Andy.

Jared replied with the authority of a man who had not the foggiest idea of what to do next, and frankly didn't care. "Talk to the next person we run into who might have martial skills. And since we're close to it, I say we swing by the maintenance department first."

* * *

Later that afternoon, John was finishing up yet another pile of paperwork in the office when there came a knock, knock, knocking at the door. For a second he had the brilliant idea of quoting Edgar Allen Poe, but decided that was just the coffee talking and got up to deal with the door. Opening it, he found Andy and Jared on the other side, still dressed in lab coats. Jared also sported a pair of black rubber gloves and old style goggles hanging around his neck. Andy sported a belt of machine gun ammunition drawn across his chest.

John's look drew the answer from them.

"We have been doing... SCIENCE!" They shouted in unison.

John closed the door, praying the headache wouldn't stick around, make itself at home, and bother him for the rest of the afternoon. He wasn't really ready for it. He sighed, opened the door. Two idiots in lab coats were still standing there, grinning like... well, like idiots. John braced himself as he asked, "Do I want to hear this one?"

Jared rubbed his gloved hands together with palpable glee, then walked past John into the room and up to a blackboard John was certain hadn't been there before he opened the door. At the blackboard, Jared chucked the gloves and produced a piece of chalk. He scribbled furiously while talking a mile a minute. "Well, explaining ki, as it pertains to Evas and A.T.-Field attacks, is a PhD level discussion about molecular dynamics and particle spin and about a dozen other concepts, but as I'm an engineer and couldn't give two shits about those fancy-pants PhD assholes and their wonderful 'theories,' we'll skip that bullshit. We all know that chemical and nerve processes in the body involving electricity. Our nerve cells actually conduct electricity rather well. And, we also know that where current flows, a magnetic field is produced. We use this principle to build electromagnets."

Andy cut in, "And use electromagnets to execute creative pranks on the maintenance crew."

"Exactly!" Jared pointed to Andy like a teacher highlighting an especially smart student. "The result is that a human nervous system can be scanned by noninvasive equipment that merely detects very tiny magnetic fields. And that has nothing to do with the Eva's control system." He put the chalk down, triumphant.

John looked at the drawing now on the chalk board: A crude stick figure with exaggerated mammary glands, looking rather like a broken hat rack with a couple of balloons taped to it. He produced an eraser from nowhere in particular and quickly erased the image. Out loud, he mused. "That's the hair clips though, isn't it? They're... magnetic brain scanners?"

"Yep. They function as a set of keys for the Evas." Jared began drawing with another piece of chalk. John wondered if he should have tied Jared to one of the office's uncomfortable chairs while Jared continued. "Basically, each human brain has a unique magnetic signature that rarely, if ever, changes. It's like our... brain fingerprint. The hair clips are very simple scanners that tell the Eva's computer systems to let the pilot wearing them to command the Eva. This also is to prevent neural control confusion... not that said system actually works properly. The Eva itself doesn't use the clips for control."

"The original series said as much through Ritsuko," John pointed out.

"That's true," Andy said. "The neural clips were never the whole control interface, otherwise they'd allow a pilot to control the Eva remotely. That feat in fact, requires a one hundred percent synch ratio, but that's another episode." He gestured to Jared. "Go on."

John stared at Andy. So, he had been replaced by a pod-person.

Jared drew a breath. "The Eva itself apparently reads our 'spirit' if you will. It reads our whole nervous system, which is conducting electricity and emitting a magnet field. The nervous system, as you know, extends throughout the whole human body, and if ki exists, that is its likely origin. In short, the Eva does what our ki commands. Follow?" He finished drawing another figure, and set the chalk down.

John looked at the crudely drawn nude woman plastered across the blackboard like an anatomy model drawn by a three-year-old. He went to work with the eraser while he digested this information. "Let me guess, when we move the Eva, it's responding to a small amount of ki that would move our legs around if we put enough effort into it, and when we fire ki... well, A.T. blasts in an Eva, that's copying an actual ki blast we're performing inside the entry plug?"

Jared whipped out another piece of chalk, prompting John to kick it out of his hand. Jared hardly seemed to notice and shifted to a pacing lecture mode. "Exactly. Even though the most sensitive equipment man has ever made could barely detect that energy, that ki that the Eva's scan and mimic, it's there nonetheless. The Eva can detect it just fine, and does what it can to mirror the action. Gentlemen, we're already doing ki blasts. We just need to kick it up a notch. We need some... some bam!"

"And boom!" Andy reminded him.

John sighed. "That's awesome. But it still doesn't explain how a person learns to control their ki."

Jared shrugged, leaning against his desk. "That's already licked, actually. Classical martial arts training and meditation practice solves the problem nicely. Rei seems to be a natural... I don't know why. Maybe because she's a clone? We know she's not using freaky Angel powers because an Orange Pattern wasn't detected when she shot one at the ninth."

Andy parted Jared's speech like Moses getting on that Red Sea thing. "Maybe she did use freaky Angel powers and they simply weren't detected? Then we'd have the same Angel powers, and we would also be Angel-slash-human hybrids with implanted memories. That would make us agents of a vicious, word-destroying conspiracy we currently believe we are working against."

"Now that's just silly," John said.

Jared looked at Andy for a minute, as if he too were making sure Andy was not some pod person. At length, he looked satisfied, then turned to John. "Anyway, for the sake of making the pilots more effective in combat at the same time, we should combine this with combat, conditioning, and survival drills. No esoteric 'one hit kill' bullshit, but all the martial arts conditioning stuff that leads up to it."

"How did you figure this out?" John asked.

"Ritsuko. And Bob. And Saito. And some files. And the public library." Andy replied, ticking off their activities on his fingers.

"That sounds like some pretty solid science giving us some pretty solid results," John said. "Good job, guys."

Andy and Jared patted themselves on the back.

"Right," John continued. "Well, that dovetails nicely with Asuka's demands, letting us kill two birds with one stone."

"Three, actually," said Jared. "Pilot upgrades, Asuka's demands, and ki blasts. Anyway, now that the science is over, this is just an engineering problem. The how, the what..."

"Speaking of which!" Andy shouted, causing Jared and John to jump. "What about turning this pansy-waist universe into Go Nagai's Evangelion?!"

The glare from the office's lighting reflected ominously off of John's glasses. "In Go Nagai's Evangelion, Shinji would be in a remedial school for killing his own mother, Rei would destroy New York City in a fit of rage, Gendo would sprout tentacles and raze Japan, and Asuka would spend a quarter of the series dressed as a suspiciously hot male mechanic, only to rise up later as the unappreciated series hero."

Jared had grabbed a notepad off his desk and was scribbling furiously upon it. "You forget the end where the giant space vagina eats half of the solar system."

(Let's be perfectly clear on this one point: This all more or less actually happened in Getter Robo Armageddon. - Ed.)

"Oh, I'm not forgetting it..." John conceded with a shudder. "Ever."

The scribbling continued unabated.

John frowned. "You aren't allowed to think that's cool."

Jared gasped in shock. "But it explains everything! It's just like the end of Eva!"

"Yeah!" Andy added. "Just with more explosions!"

John slammed his hand down on his desk. "NOT! COOL! We don't want the End of Evangelion! And Go Nagai's Evangelion is an even worse idea! This needs to be more like Ranma 1/2. Wait, forget I said--"

"Then quit tempting me!" Jared whined. "No, that's perfect!" More frantic scribbling. "Swap the genders of the entire cast!"

John made a mental note to fire that notepad into the sun.

"Yes, but how?" Andy assumed the pose of The Thinker.

"We are NOT changing the--how the hell would we even--"

Jared raised a hand. "We just--"

"DON'T ANSWER THAT! We are going to keep this series--"

"We know, we know... upbeat and full of fan service," Jared finished the old battle cry. "What does that mean, anyway? Love Hina with giant robots?"

"Uh, yeah," John said. "We could go with that."

* * *

When Asuka and Shinji arrived at Training Room Four the next day after school, Shinji stared at the Goons' handmade sign for a full minute before Asuka realized he couldn't read English of that complexity and translated it for him.

"That's a silly name," Shinji commented, then the two went inside.

Inside the Goons were standing in the center of the room dressed in their 'training' outfits. Jared in a worn and well-fitting gi with his multicolored belt. Andy also wore a white gi, but it looked new and ill-fitting. John wore a t-shirt and some sweat pants, nearly matching Toji Suzuhara and Shinji's dress. Asuka had elected to wear a gi, but in bright red, and over a sturdy undershirt and an even sturdier bra.

"Is Wondergirl late?" The kraut asked, dropping her bag just inside the door.

"no," Rei said as she walked inside. She wore only her usual school uniform and didn't even seem to notice how everyone else was dressed.

John stepped away from the other two Goons and addressed the room as a whole. "Now that we're all here: the purpose of this meeting. We suspect that A.T. blasts, as employed during the most recent Angel attack, will be an effective weapon against future Angels, and so we wish to train the three pilots who are not yet skilled in their use."

"In short," Asuka grumbled, "We suck and you three are going to make us better."

"Asuka, think of this as an opportunity for all of us to improve--"

"John?" Jared interrupted.

"What?" John sighed.

"Get out of here."

"Excuse me?" John asked.

"I said, get out of here. You already know how to do an A.T. blast and you've neither a personal interest in the pilots' training, or any desire to train yourself. Get out, and let Andy and I take care of things from here."

John stood squarely in front of Jared. "I'm not leaving these three in the care of you two idiots."

"Relax, we're just going to forward three weeks so the pilots are up to snuff and then we'll all go shoot ki blasts down at the firing range. Maybe we can take them for ice cream afterwards." Without waiting for John to counter his declaration, Jared gestured to his comrade. "Andy?"

Andy walked to the row of bags near the door, and from the one with the explosion embroidered on the side, he withdrew a large black piece of cloth. He straightened it out as he walked back to where John and Jared were standing, them held it up. In the center, some white cloth letters spelled out in English:

THREE WEEKS LATER

He held the curtain there for a second, then let it drop to the floor.

"See?" Jared said with a victorious smile. "They're looking fitter already."

John stared.

Jared scoffed at John, then ordered Shinji into the open area next to the ring. Andy scooped up the curtain and returned it to his bag.

"Okay, Ace. Let's see your opening stance."

"Uh, what opening stance?" Shinji said, honestly confused.

Jared frowned. "The one you learned from me three weeks ago."

"You... didn't teach me any opening stance three weeks ago," the First Children countered.

Asuka approached John. "This isn't the kind of training I had in mind, Worm."

"Sohryu, if you want to try and convince them this farce isn't working, you are more than welcome. I'm going for popcorn." John made for the door.

Asuka whipped out a massive wooden mallet, and charged Jared. With a mallet head the size of an oil drum descending towards his head at barely sub-sonic speeds, the Goon didn't even flinch. The next instant, the mallet was sailing free of Asuka's hands, missing Shinji by inches. Asuka was flying in the opposite direction, grimacing in pain.

A moment later, she was looking at Jared's concerned face, laying against the far wall, and fearing her internal organs might need to be put back together... just as soon as her diaphragm started moving so she could breath again. Any second now...

"Hrm, Andy?" Jared said.

The taller, dumber one walked over to the Pervert. "What is it now, Waddell? Played too rough with another of your dolls?"

Asuka snarled at him in silence. Just as soon as the feel returned to her hands, she would choke the stupid out of him.

"Actually, I think I kind of overestimated the progress they've made over the past three weeks."

And kill Jared. Just as soon as she got her breath back. He'd fucked up, embarrassed her one too many times. He had no excuse now, and there wasn't a judge on this Earth who'd convict her. She realized she could still make a fist, and fought to stand.

"You mean they're even bigger weaklings than we thought?!" Andy was saying.

Breath! She could breathe! Gasping, she was pleased to find her her legs didn't feel shaky. She began to advance on Jared. No careless screaming charge now, no idiotic reliance on her Righteous Fury.

Jared ignored Andy, critically watching Asuka's approach like a movie director. "That hair."

Her own hands rose into her view, a red mist clouding her vision. She could see, however, that another set of hands were arresting her wrists, keeping her from her target. She looked to the source of the interference, shifted her targeting sights, and... blinked. "Shinji?"

He looked worried. No, scared. That was definitely his scared face. "Asuka, he's too dumb to realize what he's doing."

"He's not a moose, Shinji! He's a monster!"

"Only in bed, my--"

POW!

Her knuckles stung slightly from the impact.

John seemed to appear from somewhere just outside of her peripheral vision to help Jared to his feet. "You're lucky I came back."

Jared sighed. "Where did we screw up? Do we need another three weeks to toughen them up?"

"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?!!" Toji screamed. Asuka glanced at him, surprised to see him bleeding profusely from the mouth and covering one eye with his hand.

John sighed. "Jared and Andy have seen far too much anime, and figured that since we're in one, they could just do a... training montage instead of actually doing the training."

Discussion of the Goons' implacable insanity had ensnared the whole of NERV, but actually standing in the face of it was a different thing entirely. Like the difference between hearing about a tornado on the news and having one touch down in your living room.

Toji was the first to recover the power of speech. "What."

"Andy and Jared think this is an anime," John clarified, speaking with the certainty of an expert while his mouth was awash with the words of a madman. "And that it abides by the rules and conventions of an anime."

"And now you don't?" Asuka accused John, belatedly realizing Shinji hadn't let go of her other wrist and shrugging out of his grip. Her traitorous skin felt oddly hot where his fingers had lay.

"Aw, damn. You mean we can't do training montages?" Jared was whining at John.

"Yes. You cannot advance time by holding up a shower curtain and willing it so."

"I told you we should have brought cardboard!" Andy yelled at Jared.

"Where the fuck was I supposed to put that much cardboard? You were there when I did the hammerspace experiments!" Jared shouted.

"Fuck you! I was the one that had to put that thing in my bag!" Andy fired back.

"Are they always like this?" Toji asked Shinji.

Shinji shrugged. "More or less. We kind of got used to it. Uh... are you going to be okay?"

Toji shrugged back. "My lip just stings a bit. It looks worse than it really it."

Men, Asuka silently fumed at their shrugging and grunting.

Jared stepped away from John and Andy, looking genuinely apologetic, which was cause enough for Asuka to prepare a fist for deployment. "Asuka," he said, "I'm sorry. I thought you would react faster."

"Why... why you..." Asuka held the fist under his nose, searching for the right words.

"Let's start with some basic sparring, okay? Warm you up for some conditioning."

Andy turned to Toji, giving him the standard male 'are you alive' questioning nod. Toji returned to the nod and Andy ushered to two Children off to the corner for conditioning.

Rei and John watched Jared and Asuka enter the ring.

"I'll put a thousand yen on the psycho bitch," John said to Rei, watching Asuka raise the badfinger in salute without looking at him.

The Goon smirked.

* * *

Three weeks later, the scene was much the same, with the exception of the pilots looking a trifle more fit, and John wearing his usual uniform of dark but well-cut clothes instead of a gym outfit.

The Most Badass Training Room EVER had worn the last three weeks well, and the people inside moved about it like a second home. Toji and Shinji were taking out some Goon-induced frustration on the heavy bags at the back of the room while Rei and Asuka jumped rope in a clear area opposite the big ring. Jared was meditating, facing the far wall. Andy was doing his own kicks at a small target suspended on string.

A small timer set on the edge of the ring went off, and everyone stopped. The four younger pilots shook out their limbs and sat seiza in a row facing the mat. Andy took down his target to join them.

Jared jumped into the ring and promptly did a back tuck without so much as a warm up stretch. "John, how long have we got until the test?"

"Ritsuko said to give her an extra ten minutes, so... forty minutes," John answered. She had actually needed twenty, but Ritsuko Akagi was a driven woman and pride had demanded only ten.

"Good, we can get through everybody. Who's up first today?"

Shinji stood. "I am." He trudged to the ring as if bearing the weight of the One Ring.

"C'mon, Ace. Man up," Jared said, coming off as nagging rather than encouraging.

"I don't like getting beaten up by you every other day," Shinji said, climbing between the ropes.

"Don't you like seeing physical proof that someone cares about you? If I didn't like you, we wouldn't be here."

"And you give me the same speech every time," Shinji said, getting into a loose fighting stance.

"Has the truth changed?" Jared asked.

Shinji sighed. "No."

"Then you understand that I'm not Ikari's puppet?" Jared attacked mid-sentence, but Shinji was ready and deflected the first punch-kick combo. John's eyebrow raised in surprise; most modern prize-fighters would have trouble with that one, and Shinji was evading without setting himself up for a knock-out hit like he was a veteran fighter. Well, except for throwing anything back at Jared.

"C'mon Ace, stop trying to hit me and hit me!" Jared shouted.

"I'm not trying to hi--OOMPH!" Shinji caught Jared's foot in the stomach. An interesting blocking technique, to be sure.

Jared waited to strike like a panther circling a steak. Shinji kept his guard up while he took a few deep breaths and glared at Jared. Then the Goon was standing next to him, swinging at the First Children's head with all of his weight behind the blow. Shinji ducked and tagged Jared on the back of the shoulder, adding to Jared's momentum and sending him into the ropes. Jared took it in stride, rebounding off of the cables with his arms flailing, letting himself land on Shinji.

When the two separated and got to their feet, Jared got in Shinji's face, but spoke loud enough for everyone in the room to hear him. "A better counter would be to duck something like that, just curl up into a ball on the mat--it should come natural to you. Sometimes, you can make yourself into an obstacle in battle, and that's all that victory may require at that point. Got it?"

Shinji nodded.

"One more round." Jared was attacking before he finished the sentence again, battering Shinji about the ring with strings of punches too fast to make out with the naked eye. He was tagging Shinji with a hit every few seconds until he drove the smaller boy to the edge of the ring, where he switched to slower but sweeping kicks. Unable to stop the more powerful attacks, Shinji switched from just covering his body to dodging without making contact, directing the flow of combat to keep from being cornered. He did an excellent job of it, too, remaining more or less unscathed until Jared called time.

John checked his watch. Four minutes and fifty-eight seconds.

"Number two!" Jared shouted.

Asuka rose and jumped into the ring. She charged Jared immediately, not waiting for him to start talking and fighting defensively. Jared met her charge with his own, and the two were clashing like colliding trains, their fists literally ricocheting off one-another as they circled the mat. After two minutes of non-stop attacks, Asuka finally faltered for a split-second, and Jared kicked her in the center of the chest, sending her sprawling across the mat.

Slightly out of breath, Jared nodded to himself with a very small smile.

Asuka got to her feet and charged at him again.

This time Jared simply took the hits with big body blocks, using his mass and size advantage to act like a big sponge for her attacks. John realized after a minute that his feet were constantly moving, allowing him to continually be at the wrong range, where Asuka's attacks were robbed of most of their power. After a minute of this he dropped her with a quick sweep. "Too stiff and predictable. You still move like you're in a movie or something. Do I need to use the Bruce Lee speech again?"

Asuka hopped to her feet. "No. It doesn't make sense anyway."

Jared shrugged. "Its pretty damn simple advice: don't telegraph your attacks."

"How do I stop?!" Asuka yelled.

"Fight wi--"

"If you tell me to 'fight without fighting' one more time..." Asuka hissed.

Jared didn't take his eyes off of Mt. Asuka as he tried to get his upper brain to function properly. "Okay, okay. Um... relax. Don't be afraid. Every movement in a fight should be natural, automatic."

Asuka launched a snap-kick aimed directly at his groin.

"Yes! That's it!" Jared shouted, side-stepping the attack and tagging her lightly in the shoulder.

His hand came back tangled in some white cloth. He looked at it. A sturdy sports bra. "...That was a little too automatic."

"You..." growled Asuka. "PERVERT!!!"

Jared used the garment to catch Asuka's punch, then smirked at her over the tangle of cloth around her fist. "Try harder."

Asuka kicked him, now in the stomach, sending him on a ballistic trajectory from the mat to the floor, where he immediately bounced to his feet and skittered away like a demented spider with a black belt.

John watched in amusement. He should have probably stopped them by this point. Jared seemed to be doing nothing but pissing Asuka off. She certainly wasn't going to try a Kamehameha on his ass over this, which meant Jared had gotten sidetracked by boobs. Again.

"You fucking pervert! You always pull this shit! I'm gonna skin you for this!" Both were running circles around the room like it was an obstacle course.

On the second lap, Andy grunted, stood, and pointed at Toji. "Suzuhara, in the ring."

Jared and Asuka took no notice. On the third lap, Jared spotted John and dropped the bra on his head, then assumed a bizarre pose like he was trying to imitate an Indian God.

The chanting really wasn't necessary.

"I'm not here, I am invisible. I'm not here, I am invisible. I'm not here, I am invisible."

Asuka skidded to a stop next to John. She'd seen Jared dump the loot. Nonetheless, John prepared for something which made preparation moot: The Righteous Fury of a wronged female.

Asuka smiled sweetly. John smiled back, muttering a short prayer that Jared would get caught in the fallout. That green color in Asuka's hair couldn't mean anything good was coming his way.

The Second Children snatched the bra back, then walked past John to erase Jared from this earth. She leaned in, and gave him a light peck on the cheek. "Thanks." The green light, and matching green hair were gone. She smiled a million-watt smile at Jared, who flinched like a gamer dragged into the hated, hated sunlight. Then she walked provocatively out of the room.

Without turning away from the closed door, Jared pushed John's mouth closed and wiped at his bleeding nose. "I need to... research this terrible power known as a Woman's Righteous Fury. It may be the key to unlocking her true potential."

"How about you quit stealing her fucking underwear!" John shouted, finally recovering and decking Jared.

On the floor, Jared rubbed his jaw. "That's it! Heroism! The throne of all that is truly Right and Just, hailing the ability to deliver judgment to anyone, regardless of relative skill."

Andy startled John by speaking up practically at his shoulder. "Yes! Suppose one were to supercharge it? By being essential the hero of a given story arc, one would be able to defeat all comers who interrupt the hero's grand adventure." He smiled at John.

"What the hell are you two talking about?" John asked.

Jared blinked at him. "Why, the Series Hero Effect!"

"S.H.E.? ...You disgust me," said John.

Jared bowed. "Why, thank you."

Andy hopped back into the ring and resumed his sparring match with Toji. Jared sat next to Rei, watching avidly.

John rolled his eyes and left in pursuit of Asuka.

* * *

Asuka was too doors down the hallway in the women's shower room. John propped the door open a few inches with his shoe and shouted into the room. "Sohryu! I can't believe you did that to him. He'll be scarred for life."

"Uleeeve mhuee! Uh dinnuant dooh anaatynnhe!"

"What the..." John frowned in thought. "Asuka, are you washing your mouth out with soap?"

A sound that was likely one of agreement came out of the room.

John wondered if he could keep a straight face as he tried to explain that Jared hadn't necessary done anything wrong. "Asuka, just relax. Jared has the attention span of a gnat on espresso. I'm amazed he remembers your name, day to day. Now, something weird is going on here, something that appears to be affecting your behavior. It hasn't caused anything... damaging, but I fear for the... delicate mental condition of the other Children."

Asuka spat into the sink. "Speak plain Japanese!"

"Your hair keeps changing color with your mood. When it does, your emotions run rampant and become extremely unpredictable. It might be bothering the other pilots and--"

"Yeah, I noticed."

John nearly swallowed his tongue. When the shock faded enough he could make all the parts of his mouth produce sounds distinct from a mating bullfrog, he choked out, "Excuse me?"

"About a week ago. You don't need to tell me what, just which one of you assholes did it."

John forced himself to stop wondering what in the fuck was going on here and keep his face perfectly emotionless. "Uh, okay."

Asuka sighed and shut off the water. "I've been keeping it under control pretty well. Shinji and Rei have been keeping an eye on me, reminding me to reign in my emotions. That's why I'm sucking so hard at this training. I can't relax, I just fuck up worse. I..." Her breath hitched. "Maybe I should just cut my hair. Couldn't hurt, right?"

"Speaking of 'manning up'," John muttered under his breath. "No, not yet at least. There's gotta be some solution to this hair problem. It hasn't affected your piloting skills or sync ratio."

The door was jerked open by Asuka, who glared down at him despite the fact that he had thirty-eight centimeters on the girl. "I haven't fired an A.T. blast yet."

"Neither have the dynamic duo," John countered.

Asuka's glare drifted away from his face like a fall leaf dropping from the tree. She said nothing, but backed into the bathroom, letting the door swing shut.

John pulled his foot back to let it shut completely.

* * *

Forty-three seconds after the pilots showed up, Misato was ready to call off the briefing entirely. She glared at the Goons. "This room is full of six teens who have all recently showered? You three have been fucking things up a lot lately, but this takes the cake. It's against the natural order of things, you abominations!"

"Hm..." John said, and began quickly making notes on his Mini-MAGI.

"Misato," Ritsuko chided gently.

The Major sighed. "Let's make this quick, since even my watch is fogging up. You know the drill. The rotation is John and Ikari up first. Oh, and a little thanks to Suzuhara and Ikari for keeping that ice cream truck... safe from Waddell and Mucha?" Misato looked up from the report in her hands. "What the hell was that about?"

"I'm sorry Major, I do not recall that incident," Jared said coyly.

"Are you talking to my cleavage?" Misato asked icily.

"What was that girls? You want me to move closer?" Jared said, tongue hanging out.

"Ugh." Misato jerked her jacket closed. "And finally, Bob authorized kill decals for your Evangelions, provided the legal team clears it. Lets move out!"

"How much is that gonna cost us?" Andy asked John.

"How would I know the going rate on assassins right this moment?" John snapped as the group ran from the room.

* * *

The pilots quickly assembled at the Eva firing range, little more than a spot of land NERV owned topside that no-one else wanted to live near. Apart from the massive hatch in the ground which admitted Evangelions one at a time to the grassy valley, the only other buildings of note were a small observation bunker filled with remote recording equipment, and an open observation deck for the terminally suicidal.

The plan was to have each of the Goons coach the pilots through using--or at least attempting to use--their A.T. blast attack on the distant targets. Shinji would be up first, then Jared coaching Asuka and Andy working with Toji. Dumb and dumber had been rotating the pilots during their conditioning, with John, Ritsuko, Misato, Sato, Bob, and several dozen other security officers monitoring their every move, but they paired off for training, following some stupid manual written an idiot in a cubicle farm.

Still, Unit-01 had finally risen into position on the elevator, and Misato was on the comm. "Okay, pilot Genoni, it's your show. For now."

"First, let's fire the writers," John grumbled. "Shinji, get into the position and lets see you just bring up an A.T. field."

Unit-01 looked at him like a particularly slow mutt, then faced the targets. After a second, a faint hexagonal pattern shimmered in the air in front of the Eva.

John eyed it critically. "Can you move it towards the target?"

"I don't think so," Shinji replied.

"Okay, take one step towards the target and keep the field up where it is. Don't make a big show of it now, just give me one step."

Unit-01 took a single step forward. The field moved forward with him. "That good?"

John sighed. "Well, I'm officially out of ideas. Jared?" John pulled up the observation deck feed in his plug view screens.

Jared looked directly into the camera, the imprint of a size four foot clearly visible across the middle of his face. "You aren't trying hard enough."

"Then you get up here and coach him!"

"I've got more important matters to attend to," Jared walked away from the camera.

John grumbled. "Okay, Ace. Let's go back to step one. Form an A.T. field."

"Okay," Shinji said.

Once the field was up, John took his hands off of his controls. "Now I want you to relax your body. Don't relax the Eva, just your physical body. Do it slowly. And tell me if you can feel the A.T. field."

And so, that is exactly what Shinji tried to do. For close to ten minutes, his A.T. field went up, went down, and flickered slowly in and out of visibility. Then he dropped the field completely.

"John, I think I've got it."

"Show me," John said, putting aside his waterproof copy of Plato's Dialogues.

Unit-01 stood ramrod straight, made its A.T. field visible, then stood still as the field slowly moved forward like a moving wall trap from a video game.

"YES!!!" John shouted, almost jumping out of his seat.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Unit-02 took the field.

Alone.

"Where the hell is Waddell?" Misato shouted over the area speakers.

From the observation deck a hand was thrust into the air. "Yo."

"What? You're--" Misato's voice went silent for a few seconds. "How the hell did you get out there without being seen by the cameras?"

"How does a bee fly?" Jared asked.

"Cut the zen crap! You're supposed to be working with Asuka!"

Jared ignored the speakers, turning to Unit-02. "Well, my goddess, are you wearing your lucky panties today?"

The Eva glared at Jared, causing the one idiot still standing near him--that would be Toji--to yelp in fear and run away like a kicked dog.

Jared pressed his luck like a man standing before a firing squad. "Oh, that's right. Plug suit, which means no panties. While you fail to summon any kind of useful attack, I'm going to imagine what you look like underneath your plug suit, m'kay?"

Unit-02 remained silent. The observation deck quickly cleared of all personnel, save for Jared, who was setting up and easel and loading some paint onto a pallet. "In fact, how about I express it through art? I mean, why hide your beauty from the--"

Jared, focused on mixing his colors, failed to see the A.T. field shimmering before Unit-02 collapse into a ball of light in the Eva's hand, and he was about to put brush to canvas when the cackling sphere of destruction left Unit-02's hands, heading for his head at the speed of sound.

As impossible as it should have been, Jared had enough time to turn his head and see what was making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up and recite their last will and testaments.

He had no time for a pithy one-liner before impact.

* * *

Misato watched the observation deck explode into a million flaming pieces on the main view screen, and was about to jump into the air with an exuberant shout when she remembered that other pilots had been near that fresh crater, and that the Goon may, just may have survived that.

"Pilots! Report!" She yelled into the comm. "Someone get me a status on the connecting hallway."

"Hallway mostly intact," Matoko said quickly. "Main hatch not responding, blast doors down. Secondary doors are all right."

"We're okay, Major," John's slightly annoyed voice announced over the voice line. "I shut the branch doors behind us. Andy was back there, and I don't know if... hm... someone should get a repair crew down here."

Misato was about to ask him for more details when a video display popped up, labeled as a feed from Genoni's Mini-MAGI. The camera panned shakily across a messy hallway. The walls were mostly intact, except for the huge slabs of armor embedded at one point--what remained of the blast doors. Beyond that was a smoking crater where the observation deck used to be. Some inane voice in the back of Misato's head mused that the crater in both the main feed and the Mini-MAGI was indeed the same, just shown from different angles. She sighed. "Firing tests are done for today. Clear a spot in the schedule for Suzuhara. Pilot Sohryu, get your Eva back to the elevator. Matoko--"

"Recovery crew ETA is four seconds," Matoko said with a wink.

"Thanks," Misato said.

"Well, at least her training ended in a bang," Ritsuko said casually. Everyone else in the Command Center looked at her. Not a word was spoken, except by Ritsuko as she said, "Well, someone had to say it."

* * *

Hours later in Commander Ikari's office, the explosion that took out the Eva Firing Range Primary Observation Deck was playing in a continuous loop on a small projection screen that seemed to pop out of the surface of Ikari's polished desk.

Ritsuko stood before said desk, looking irritated.

"Any new theories?" Fuyutsuki said, not moving from his post standing two meters to Ikari's right.

Ritsuko took a deep breath. "Unnecessary. As projected by the MAGI, these A.T. blasts are an extension of the measured neurological activity the Evas respond to on command. Everything is within projected parameters."

"Excellent," Ikari said, though Ritsuko often felt as though she were looking at a cardboard cutout with a well-hidden speaker. "And the Arrivals?"

"Still nothing useful. Waddell either won't or can't explain how he turned up in the lower hallway unharmed. Mucha was peeled off of a four ton blast door that should have squished him like a bug and of course he claims his survival was due to his power by birthright or similar nonsense. Genoni came forward and promised me he'd interrogate them with his own methods."

"Did he have anything to say about the missing plans?"

"The Angel Compatibility Project? Claims he's never heard of it. He was lying, of course."

"Of course," Ikari said, and sighed. "Our schedule does not require that information for quite some time, so let Genoni stew. Mucha has nothing of value for the moment, but Waddell..." Ikari's tone expressed his displeasure.

"Those are his words exactly," Ritsuko said. "He refused to elaborate, even under interrogation."

"It is not possible he was 'miraculously thrown clear' of that A.T. blast," Ikari said as if reiterating that two plus two equaled four. "I will have Section Chief Yamanaki deal with him this evening. Dismissed."

* * *

In spite of the inherent danger, Section Chief Yamanaki had ordered pilot Waddell to his office for the official dressing down. He had to admit, tardiness was not the first danger that came to mind.

Missing this shot might be.

And so, Yamanaki turned his mind to the game of simulated golf before him, and was on the eighth green by the time Waddell rang the buzzer.

Yamanaki didn't shut down the simulator, didn't even put down his club as he pressed a button on his desk to buzz in the irritating American. "Late again? I expected nothing less for trash such as yourself."

Waddell threw himself at the nearest chair and defied fate and chance by landing in it without breaking any bones. "Geez, you sound like my boss."

"I am your boss," Ikki deadpanned.

"I mean my old--oh shit, I hope I don't get fired... what am I thinking? Of course I'm going to get fired, we've been gone for months. Heh, actually, I wonder how freaked out everyone is. Andy's mom probably pitched a fit... I feel really sorry about that, even though I wasn't the one that zapped us here..." Waddell stopped his monologue as Yamanaki sat behind his desk.

Yamanaki smiled thinly as he could manage and folded his fingers neatly together in front of him, hoping it would keep him from reaching for desktop-littering knick-knacks. "I'm sorry, did I break your concentration?"

Waddell looked back as if expecting him to reveal a hidden camera. "You did now. What's up?"

"NERV's repair bills," said Yamanaki, watching the pilot carefully.

Waddell did not so much as flinch. "And?"

Yamanaki took a deep breath and spat words at him like bullets. "Waddell, you contemptible fool!" His vocal chords shifted gears. More calmly, he said, "You were expecting something along those lines?"

The Goon shrugged. "More or less. I wish I had witnesses, though."

The Chief gave his comment a moment of thought and decided he would have to puzzle it out later. "The last time I chewed you and your friends out, I thought it might have had an effect."

"I'm glad we were able to rid you of that ridiculous notion."

Yamanaki nodded. Thanks for nothing. "Perhaps we could be civil--if such a thing is possible for an American such as yourself--and you could answer a question or two."

"No problem, boss," the Goon said with a smile.

"How is it you're alive and unharmed after getting caught in an explosion that left a twelve meter crater?"

"You know how in hand-to-hand fights the best blocks don't stop an attack, but just deflect the energy of incoming strikes so they're not much of a threat? It's kinda like that."

Now he knew what kind of snowstorm the Tactical Commander had been living in. "You managed to move from the cage to the observation deck without being picked up on internal security systems. If there is a flaw in our systems, it needs to be found and corrected."

"Boss, I could write a bookshelf worth of reports on the security flaws in this place. Do you want the short list or do you want me to set up a detail to fix them all?"

"Give me a list. You're not qualified to direct construction efforts," Ikki retorted.

"Why not? That's what my previous job was preparing me for," Waddell said.

"There's no such record of you having a job in NERV, in Japan, or even in the United States. In fact, there's no record of you to be found anywhere," the Chief said.

"Well, that was on another Earth, so to say. How's this: I get tested for competency in Mechanical Engineering and if I pass, I get to assist in tightening the security within NERV?"

"How about: No."

"Then I'll modify the Evangelions."

"You'll do no such thing!"

"After I finish modifying my company car."

"How about after my DEAD BODY IS COLD AND BURIED!"

"Boss, I have to say you are my favorite minor character by far."

Ikki scoffed. "Waddell, you are as air-headed as you are indecipherable."

Jared beamed. "Thanks!"

"Likewise, now get out of my office."

Waddell did something with his hands, and the office suddenly filled with cheap special effects smoke.

Ikki coughed. Once. Then announced to the office, "That's coming out of his paycheck."

* * *

Andy stepped out of the hospital and took a breath of free air. Not that there was really anything dramatic about leaving Infirmary 12 and entering the rest of NERV, it was just one little door with a white hallway on one side and a green one on the other. "Now, to get back to the office." He stood there for ten seconds, brain working furiously until he exclaimed, "Aha! So that's how to unify Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. So elegant... Bah! That's useless, brain! Useless! No one needs to know that! Forget it this instant!"

He slapped himself in the side of the head and was at the nearest vent in five seconds flat. Inside the dark, cold embrace of the base's ventilation system, his heart was at peace, his stomach descending rapidly. Almost like the entire vent was coming loose from its mounts and was about to plunge through the ceiling of the next level.

Wait a minute...

The thunderous crash sounded like the end of the world inside the duct. Andy could feel body parts he did not know he possessed still rattling as he climbed out of the mess of metal and onto a mess of smashed drywall and dented red metal... Andy blinked. The duct that had just broken loose from its mountings appeared to have crashed through a ceiling and trashed the roof of an otherwise cherry American muscle car. He looked around, immediately spying Jared looking at him as if he'd just walked in on his parents... no, Jared would take notes and maybe pictures if that happened to him, the perverted bastard. The look of horror was more like... Andy didn't want to delve any deeper into Waddell's psyche, so he moved on to the guy standing next to Waddell.

One point eight meters. Tan. Muscular without being too bulky. Leather jacket. Sunglasses. A hat like Paul Newman had in Crocodile Dundee. Boomerang in one hand, other hand stopped in a weird follow-through, almost as if he'd thrown a boomerang from it as well. Who used two boomerangs this day in age?

"MY CAR!" Waddell shouted in apoplectic fury, suddenly moving like a video taken off pause. His hands pointed at both Andy and the weird boomerang dude as if disconnected from his brain but still trying to help out any way they could.

Andy hopped off the dented, antique vehicle. "So it appears to be. But enough whining, Waddell. We have to... to..." Andy trailed off, a rare and momentary memory lapse overcoming him.

Waddell paid him no mind, instead turning a look of utter rage on the only other person in the room, who audibly gulped, then as Waddell tackled him, screamed.

Andy ignored the sounds of violence, dodged a haphazardly-thrown boomerang and a few flailing arms, and tapped his foot furiously while he drew upon every scrap of his considerable and highly trained intellect to recall why he had come down here to redirect Waddell's efforts.

Speaking of Waddell, the self-righteous cur was standing in front of him again, wiping something off of his hand. "Okay, asshole. We can do laundry now."

"Laundry!" Andy announced in rapturous glee. Once again his superior insight and memory catapulting him above and behind the limitations of other puny humans. "Yes, we must do the laundry!"

"In your car," Waddell suggested graciously, though forgetting to append 'my liege.'

"Certainly," Andy said graciously. He scanned the room for another vent.

* * *

John had pretty much finished digesting his dinner by the time Andy and Jared blundered there way in through the front door of the apartment. He was honestly surprised they'd found their way home. "How did the laundry go?" He asked from the kitchen, listening to both take off their shoes in the entryway.

"Laundry?" Jared echoed, as they both went silent, apparently frozen in horror.

"Idiot!" Andy smacked Jared in the back of the head. "Dunce! Moron!"

"You were driving!" Jared shouted back, covering his head.

John sighed. "Good grief."

Andy eventually left Jared cowering on the floor and stalked straight to his room. Jared picked up things in the entry and threw himself on the couch.

"Any new theories?" John asked, continuing his slow stirring of the curious liquid in a small pot on the stove.

Jared shook his head. "Not really. That was my ace in the hole. Worked great."

"Except she wasn't able to do it twice," John countered.

"We need to cut her hair or something."

John snorted at the suggestion. "Subject change. How did you escape that blast?"

"That little firecracker? Feh. It was nothing."

"That's MY line, weakling," Andy thundered from the hallway.

"What are you cooking, anyway?" Jared asked, rising, walking to counter, and peeking over it to look in the pot.

"Brewing, actually," John replied.

"Same difference," Andy said, sitting down next to Jared.

"Well, as much as I appreciate Jared's special blend of coffee in the morning. I figured we needed something for other times of the day. So... I've decided to try to make Super Dew."

With the last two words out of his mouth, thunder cracked ominously outside. Andy looked at the windows, which gave him a view of Tokyo-3, clear skies, and the orange fingers of a setting sun. "Those freak lightning storms are getting annoying."

Jared frowned, and look at the pot's contents again. "Did you just say Super Dew?"

Another peal of thunder shook the balcony windows.

"Yes," John said, giving the Goons a mysterious look. Not that anyone could tell. A special team at NASA had calculated the positioning of the kitchen's rack lighting to keep that glare on John's glasses.

"How?" Jared asked.

"Well, first I boosted the caffeine content of Mountain Dew by extracting pure caffeine from tea leaves and coffee. The initial product was a complete failure in terms of taste, safety, and result. Since then I've been experimenting constantly to refine the end product and accomplish my goal."

"Goal?" Andy asked. "We aren't talking about soccer."

John ignored Andy's blithering. "All three of us are hyperactive, Andy. The Dew doesn't affect us like normal people. Because we're already at a heightened level of activity, stimulants like caffeine or Ritalin burn us out--they slow us down."

Jared's gaze into the pot shifted to one of suspicion. "So you're trying to give us a sleeping agent?"

"Hardly. Because we're hyper and attention deficit, it's hard for us to focus. Taking the aforementioned stimulants slow us down enough to focus on tasks. But what I'm trying to do is give us that kind of focus in our natural hyper state or possibly even higher, without the burn out. With just a sip we'd be able to enter the Zone. Basically, I'm trying to make Bullet Time in a bottle."

"Whoa. Cool," said Jared, in perfect imitation of Kenau Reeves.

"You're MAD! MAD I SAY!!!" Andy howled, then returned to his normal voice, which was still a loud yell to normal people. "Does it work yet?"

By way of reply, John dipped a spoon into the pot, and withdrew a liquid that was almost glowing, faintly. He sipped. His head instantly jerked to the side, flinging the spoon out of his mouth. It embedded itself into the wall while John disappeared.

"Awww man!" Jared complained. "He didn't make Bullet Time in a bottle! That idiot created a teleportation elixir!"

"What's that thumping noise?" Andy asked. The two rushed around the counter to see John in a fetal position on the floor before the stove, his body vibrating. After a few seconds, a shaking hand rose to and grasped at the edge of the counter. With a death grip on Formica, he pulled himself to his feet. His hair was standing on end and each eye was looking in a different direction.

"Not quite yet," he said, words warbling as if his diaphragm was fighting a wild bear, "But I'm close. I think I just saw into the future."

"What's it look like?" Jared asked.

John spoke as if carrying news from another planet. "Fist of the North Star."

High-fives were exchanged all around.

"What would happen if a normal human got a hold of the finished project?" Andy asked.

"Hard to say. My first answer would be they might burst into flames. But it might also be that they get so hyped up that they actually move in Bullet Time. They could just go completely insane. I can't really say..."

"That reminds me," Jared said.

"Reminds you of what?" John asked.

"Love Hina in giant robots? Not happening."

"Agreed," said Andy and John in unison.

* * *

Not much later that evening, Jared was going through his kata on the roof of the apartment complex. Had he come up a few hours earlier, he would have gotten a nice Karate Kid groove what with the setting sun for a backdrop and all. As it was, he could barely see his hands when Misato called him on his Mini-MAGI. "All right, Commander, who do you want me to kill?"

Misato's voice came over the connection. "Knock it off, Waddell. The police are complaining--"

"Didn't do it."

"--Of course not. There are two Americans looking lost and suspicious. They might be friends of yours. I've uploaded their tracking data to your Mini-MAGI. Find 'em, find out what they're doing."

"One question, Major," said Jared.

"If you're wondering why suspicious Americans get automatically booted up to us, its because of what you three have been pulling ever since you showed up here."

"Uh, okay. That answers my question exactly."

"Call me if anything goes wrong, otherwise file your report with Yamanaki in the morning." Misato signed off without a goodbye.

Jared sighed, watching the audio icon disappear. He was terrible with directions, even with the Mini-MAGI map. He might have been able to get around in his home town okay, but it was one hundredth the size of Tokyo-3, and he'd lived there for a decade. "Hopefully this won't take all night."

* * *

Jared spent less than an hour getting to the troublesome Americans, during which time they appeared to move in a slow circle around an outdoor shopping arcade. Both were a head taller than the average Japanese, and both were wearing mundane suits, minus ties. Jared spied on them from the shadows for a minute, then ducked into one of the shops and bought a cheap black suit just as the joint was closing. He changed in an alley, then he circled around the Americans and stopped them as they were leaving the arcade.

In English, he greeted them. "Good evening, gentlemen."

By a blessed twist of fate, guns were not immediately pulled on the Goon. The one with shorter hair merely breathed an exaggerated sigh of relief. "Good evening! Boy, it's nice to find someone here that has an American accent!"

"Er, yeah. Listen, you guys seem really lost, and my boss wants me to see if I can get you where you want to go in a hurry."

The duo looked utterly confused by this. Short Hair said, "Um, okay. I think. We're just trying to get to the far side of town, apparently the seventh station on the the red line."

At least they were headed in the right direction. Jared wondered if he would be getting overtime pay for this while he gestured down the sidewalk. "Well, you're in luck, you were headed in the right direction. I'll take you all the way out to the seventh station, but no further. Sound okay?"

"Yes," said Short Hair. "And thank you."

A few moments later, the station was coming into view and Short Hair felt up to making small talk. "So, how long have you been in Japan?"

"Just a few months," Jared replied.

"Oh. Work?" Asked Short Hair.

"Yes," Jared said.

"What kind of work?" Short Hair asked.

Jared glanced at the pair, seeing Longer Haired Guy holding his briefcase to his chest like it might jump out of his arms and make a run for it. He decided to avoid mentioning his NERV affiliation. "I do private security contracted to government operations. Normally, a uniformed police officer would have approached you and offered to help, but I was available."

They stepped onto the platform. Jared tapped his Mini-MAGI and pulled up a train schedule... which was comprised entirely of numbers and icons he'd never seen before. "Useless," he muttered, and killed the display. "Oh, never mind. There's a train now."

Indeed, the red line was incoming. Just one train change and another forty minutes. Then he could get back to chasing skirts and pretending like he had the faintest idea of how this insane city was laid out.

Jared paid for tickets for all three of them without thinking about, and was almost startled by the English 'thank you' that came from the pair. Minutes later, they were speeding down the tracks aboard a mostly empty train car.

Short Hair dude waited for almost a minute before opening his mouth to ask Jared a question, only to be cut off as the inter-car doors opened to admit four youths that were poorly dressed and hoping they looked tougher than they really were. Jared debated for a minute whether to prompt Short Hair to ask anyway, or feign a sudden attack of nacrolepsy and see how things developed. The youths collectively looked like a cat that had just gotten into a birdcage, and their very presence screamed danger at Jared. He fought off the urge to yawn and feign sleep.

Little did they know that this particular birdcage housed a cybernetic attack dog that could shoot laser beams from its eyes.

Jared sighed as the only other person in the car fled in carefully ordered, rigidly Japanese terror. He leaned towards Short Hair. "Hey, I didn't catch your name."

Short Hair didn't take his eyes off of the toughs. "Oh. Uh... Jerry. Jerry Gullman."

"Jerry, tell your buddy not to move," the Goon said. No sooner had the words left his mouth, then the business end of a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun made intimate contact with his forehead. "It must be a Monday," he said, casually putting the kid into a painful arm bar, and flinging him out of the nearest window.

Damn it! He was going to take that gun and use it to give the other three morons a lead enema. Sometimes, he was too good for his own... er, good. Yeah.

Wait, was that a shoe-wrapped foot headed for his face? Jared ducked under the kick, giving the passing foot just enough of a slap that his attacker's balance was thrown off for a split-second. When the youth's eyes shifted to the Goon's right, Jared let loose a quick jab with his left hand, knocking the kid over.

While the remaining two pretended they knew something about fighting, Jared calculated a few trajectories. Then he dodged a punch, deflated a lung, and paused to stop the other guy's heart while blocking a pair of kicks with his other arm.

Mister Two Left Feet then decided that kicking wasn't really his thing and pulled out a knife.

"Oh, bother," Jared monotoned. He slapped the knife away on the first swipe. "Look, you're hardly even--" And side-stepped the sucker-punch, hitting the youth right in the floating ribs, snapping several. The boy dropped like a sack of wet sand, gasping and choking.

Jerry was about to open his mouth, prompting Jared to put a hand up to forestall him talking. He corrected his stance, senses still screaming at him to pay attention. This left him a little confused--after all, there weren't any cute girls nearby.

The lights in the train went off. Jared raised his guard, knowing that now would be the perfect time to strike. Now was when something sharp pierced the center of one open palm. He dropped back, body-checking Jerry's friend into the nearest seat as something took out the window over his shoulder. He pulled out the bladed weapon that he had 'caught' with skin and muscle, and blocked. Unable to see, he could only guess that it was a sword his meager throwing knife was holding at bay.

The train passed a light, casting dim yellow beams of illumination into the train, sweeping from the back of the car to the front. A shadow was attacking him. A black shadow with a thin shadow blade pressed against his stolen weapon. Then darkness again.

Please don't let there be fangs in that shadow. Please please please please pleeeaaase not again...

The pressure lifted from his blade. He turned, slashed across the seats, kicked at the space just in front of Jerry. Nothing. Damn. Okay, follow your instincts Jared. Instincts! His free hand, though wounded, answered the call of duty, lashing out at chest level. Just before Jared could curse his reflexes, he grabbed something soft, giving, and made entirely from cloth. He recognized it about halfway through a hip-throw that could flip a tank. A collar. He'd grabbed someone by the collar. Possibly Jerry's buddy. Yet the collar wasn't right. Too thick. Rough but worn... Like a gi. Or... A ninja uniform.

Jared followed the throw with a sweep, hitting only the seat. He covered his head as his ankle screamed for attention, and nearly broke his wrist deflecting another sword strike aimed to cleave his skull in two. They passed another sodium-yellow light, and Jared stood to face the seven foot tall shadow that glared at him from two crimson orbs glowing like supermarket bar-code scanners.

Once darkness reclaimed the train car, Jared struck, intending only to kill anything that was still moving. His blows seemed to just barely brush smoke, always deflected without hitting. He might have been fighting the Smog Monster. The occasional sword attack came out of nowhere, blocked by pure luck and and an undersized blade that let the impact rattle his bones. Then a random barrage of shiruken, dodged at the last second, or cut out of the air with his tiny knife. Then it was the sword again. He blocked the first slash, then dove forward, plowing into the next one and pushing it back. The ninja slid to one side, and Jared had him. He jumped into the air and kicked in both directions at once, performing a perfect mid-air split that would either end the fight or get him castrated.

His right foot connected. Thrown into the left seat, he threw the knife as he rolled to his feet, heard it 'ping' off of the blocking sword, and knew instantly how the blade was positioned, and with it, the ninja. He moved without a second thought, seeing the invisible battle play out in his mind.

Slash. He ducked, the ninja kicked. Knew right where he'd be. Jared had his arm ready, swung it behind the knee, and caught the foot with his other arm as he twisted, bringing down his opponent in a leg-lock. The ninja tried to kick him off, of course, and that was the opening he'd been waiting for. He let go of the leg, dropped an axe-kick on the ninja's wrist, smashing bones between his shoe and the floor. One flick of his foot, and the sword sailed neatly into his hand.

Pointy end first.

"MOTHERFUCKER!" He screamed even as he grabbed the handle with his uninjured hand and spun, decapitating the recovering ninja just as the rail light swept through the train for the third time, illuminating an airborne head with surprised eyes. Also, the huge swath of blood spewing from the neck stump and said severed head sailing merrily towards the Goon and the two poor guys behind him.

Then it went dark again, and the liquid landed on everything. Jared remained still for a second, took a deep breath, then pulled the sword out of his twice-pierced hand as quickly and gently as he could.

"Ooow..." He dropped the sword and stood tall. "Okay! Turn the fucking lights on!"

Obediently, the train car filled with light again.

Unnamed dude with long hair was okay. Jerry was okay. Long Hair had his suitcase in a death grip, and both were white as sheets in a lake of bleach. Three mostly or completely dead bodies filled up the middle of the train car, with a bisected ninja and a blood-soaked sword next to Jared.

The Goon sighed. Wiped in futility at the blood on his face. Pulled out his ID. Aimed it at Jerry. "Now... What. The fuck. Is. In. That. Briefcase."

End Chapter 9

---

A note from the author: Holy shit! I'm still alive! The Goons (well, one of them at least) are murdering ninja! What on earth (or in anime) is happening to our beloved whacky giant robot story? You'll find out (maybe) in the final chapter of Book 1, coming April first!

No, that's not an April Fool's joke.

Seriously.

No, really. Now quit bugging me.