New Perspective Evangelion

by Dartz-IRL

Newton's First law. An Object in motion will remain in motion until acted on by an external force. The events of Neon Genesis Evangelion, as seen by the Fourth Child. Self Insert:ACC

11. A good break

New Perspective Evangelion

Part 11: A good break.

I don't own NGE, somebody else does
Stuff might be mentioned that's copyright
I don't own it either
It's just a bit of fun anyway.

I…I

Tuesday.

I'd managed to avoid Nagisa all Monday, but the good feelings couldn't last. I'd had firearms training on Monday after school, and had managed to annoy the instructor by clearing my weapon the wrong way. Which was fine until the bang. Pull the slide after ejecting the Magazine, not before.

Guess what I spent Tuesday morning doing?

Bloody hardass.

I didn't see Motoko. I didn't see Nagisa. Shinji or Asuka… they were all at school. I spent the morning running through weapons drills so I wouldn't accidentally shoot myself…or worse, shot someone else. I didn't see what the fuss was about… the round went into the sand bucket… which was what that was for, wasn't it?

My anxiety was coming back… slowly. But it was there…the creeping worry that if I ever just let Noriko's own memories overwrite my own; either I'd drown in the surge or just go batty. I could accept that I was a girl. I could accept that I would still remain in a way, when all was said and done.

While I seemed to have found a good place for the time being, It still scared me.

There was still the small matter of my sexuality. Whatever my body wanted, I would never go with a boy, for as long as I lived. I drilled three rounds through the target to prove it.

The idea of sex, still turned my stomach. To have something inside me...

"Your aim is drifting!" the instructor bellowed. "Three shots within five inches. Again!"

Three more shots, muffled by my headgear. A stray…something…pinged against my glasses, distracting me for a moment.

"Good! Three more. Aim for the head."

The targets were vaguely anthropomorphic, with higher scores given for the more lethal shots. God damn this was hard. Not just lining up iron sights, but keeping my hands steady, keeping my breathing controlled. Right stance. Not too tense, not so loose. The smallest deflection made a big difference. There was a hard kick of recoil, there was the gunsmoke which made my eyes water.

It was so much harder than in an Evangelion.

If only Kaworu was here. I'd already had one accidental discharge, would another be too hard to believe? It was an evil thought, but it brought a smile to my face.

"You're pulling left again. Remember, not too tense. Last three. For the chest again,"

Misato said I should explore my sexuality... what did she mean? Should I date boys, or what? The idea of dating... it made me nauseous. Should I at least be aware of my feelings then... and what they meant. How the hell did I do that?... Without going crazy?

She didn't mean masturbation… I did that anyway. While thinking about guys, instead of girls?

That just made me…. Uncomfortable.

"Clear the weapon,"

Alright. Safe and decock the weapon. Magazine out. Tilt weapon down, pull slide back and catch any dropped round. Nothing came out. Inspect the chamber. Empty. Place on table, barrel pointing downrange.

"Done,"

"Good. Reload and start from the top."

Magazine in. Slide forward. Round is chambered. Safety off.

"Ready! Two in the chest, one in the head."

Finger off the trigger until I want to shoot. Take aim. Grip right. Don't tense up. Finger on the trigger and Squeeze. The pistol kicked in my hands. My hits were marked on the holographic target… a barely humanoid figure.

"Good accuracy. But do it faster. This person is trying to kill you, remember?"

If it wasn't for the pain in my wrists, it might almost be a videogame, everything beyond the muzzle was a computer graphic. I sucked at First-Person shooters, but left clicking a mouse was a hell of a lot easier than this… even if it was the same finger.

Or was I approaching this the wrong way. If the idea of sex made me uncomfortable, start somewhere else. Real women don't exactly jump straight into bed, do they?

What was it Misato pulled on me Sunday?

The pistol roared. B-KAMM B-KAMM, B-KAMM.

"Better! Again."

With Shinji. His warm arms around my waist, his firm body pressed against mine. His warmth… his smell.

Was making my mouth water. I swallowed quickly, a little unnerved.

"You missed the last shot! Do it again."

Maybe thinking about this at a firing range was a bad thing? Focus, three more shots.

B-KAMM B-KAMM… nothing. The trigger was stuck.

Huh?

"Malfunction?"

"What kind?" the instructor demanded.

Raise the pistol… one round in the chamber. Slide jammed back, another round caught between the chambered round and the slide. What was this?... in the manual…

"Double feed," I blurted, a little unsure.

"Nasty," he commented. "Alright. Remove the magazine. Don't drop it; you'll drop the unspent round aswell. Catch that and dispose of it."

Push the button, pull it out. The round fell into the palm of my hand. This isn't going to go off while I'm holding it, is it? I dropped it in the metal box beside me.

"Rack the slide three times."

One…two…three. Second round in my hand. Chamber empty. It joined its friend with a clatter.

"Now reload with a fresh magazine and keep going,"

Slide it home, rack the slide to chamber a round, and done. In an Evangelion, if we had a malfunction, we dropped the weapon and got a new one rather than bother going through the fuss of dealing with it.

"Done," I reported.

Well, that was a little exciting. Shooting had been fun the first time, but it quickly grew old as the pains in my arms and hands started to grow. Especially my fingers. The trigger was so stiff it was making my finger ache.

"Good work. Three more shots. Aim for the chest only."

Closed in in a wooden stall at the end of a long hall. It was just myself and the instructor behind me. The muscles in my arms where throbbing….even a Five-seveN started to weigh a ton after an hour. My eyes were aching.

B-KAM B-KAM B-KAM.

"Again. Three shot bursts until the Magazine is empty. Pick your own target."

Learn through pain. And some people thought this was fun? Maybe without a former Bundeswehr instructor barking orders in your ear it might be, but definitely not with. I was pretty sure he was that special class of Sergeant that reproduced through fission…like bacteria… nobody this nasty came from a mother.

Aim for the chest. Easiest shot to make.

What about kissing Shinji? His moist lips against mine. That still felt weird… It hit me somewhere behind the chest. A strange tension that seemed to build and spread up the back of my throat. A tightness I could feel as I breathed.

Like fear…

It was different, for a girl… but I couldn't quite put my finger on how. Because I was more aware of the feelings, rather than the meaning, I figured. My old self, had the benefit of a few years of puberty to understand what those feelings meant, rather than the content of what was happening. Like Misato said… I'd been dumped right into the middle of puberty

For all I knew, these feelings where just the normal 'Oh hey, there's a member of the opposite sex' response. How could I be sure of that? Or maybe it might be something deeper. I certainly don't get the same response from the instructor… he just made me feel plain uncomfortable. What was funny was, he was a man I thought women would find attractive. Fit, tightly built and clean shaven with a soft face and a gentle smile.

Which were blown away with military efficiency the moment he opened his mouth.

I tried the same Shinji trick… Picturing a hug, a kiss. His strong arms around my body. All I managed to do was turn my stomach.

And empty the magazine.

This was going to be complicated. How did original-body girls do it?

"Reload the weapon,"

"Last Magazine," I said, hoping for relief, sliding it home with a satisfying click. There was something pleasingly mechanical about the pistol that I couldn't quite put my finger on. A solid lump of metal, plastic and oil. Everything was smooth and positive, nothing sticking or binding. The slide-stop disengaged with a satisfyingly direct 'click', allowing the slide to spring forward with a metallic 'clack'. Nice gun or not it was a wonderful, well made machine and the engineer within me could appreciate that. It was a machine that did what it was supposed to do, only did what it was supposed to do…and did it very well.

I didn't enjoy shooting… but I couldn't blame the gun. It was doing its best. If you were going to go to prison, it was nice to have a comfortable cell. I'd never want to read Gunsmith Cats again when this was done…

"Ready! Two in the chest, one in the head."

I did it. Three more shots.

"Good. Now clear the weapon and hand it to me safely,"

Remember, magazine out first. Pull the slide open, catch the bullet that falls out. Inspect; yeah, it's empty. Slide locked open, chamber empty.

"It's clear," I reported, offering the pistol to him, grip first.

He took it from me and inspected it, checking the chamber before letting the slide come forward.

"Good work." He nodded, curtly. "Clear up the spent casings on the floor then take a fifteen minute break. When you get back, we're going to try something called Mozambique Drill,"

I groaned.

"Haven't I suffered enough?"

Without missing a beat.

"How much do you think I'd suffer if one of you were to die of a gunshot wound under my supervision? You'll stay here until I'm satisfied there won't be a repeat of yesterday's incident."

I'd rather be in school.

Somewhere deep in the darkest bowels of hell, some demons were dropping dead of hypothermia.

I…I

After about three more hours of putting holes in holograms at his command the instructor let me go. Another two hours of being laser-measured for something called a 'hard-suit' followed. Beyond the Bubblegum Crisis reference, I had no idea what that actually was… it didn't appear in our training manuals and nobody would tell me anything beyond 'All the pilot's have one.'

A plugsuit mixed with some form of body armour was my guess.

One of life's little mysteries, to be filed alongside the Gremlin in Unit 03's emergency ejection system, Reis mysterious tests, and the tendency for Asukas bras to disappear from her locker even while she was still in the room.

It wasn't me… I only took clean ones from home.

Still with time before my daily sync training, I lay down on the bench in the room, letting my arms dropped to my side, dangling on the floor. If I never saw a firing range again, it'd be too soon. I'd been pencilled to do my final qualifications in two weeks time.

I had three hours to spend with my… Noriko's mother. She still managed to scare me, little worries dancing through the back of my mind asking if today was the day she'd try grabbing her daughter back. She still welcomed me as her own child. Maybe because she knew that one day I would become her child.

My mother was in the EVA. One last test she said before she died. I could see her face when I closed my eyes, smiling warmly at me.

An empty chill ran through my body.

Noriko's mother, not mine, I corrected myself.

Could this be my strength? That I know my mother is the Evangelion. If I'd just been vanilla flavoured Noriko, I might never have caught it….not until I was staring at an MP EVA's hungry grin, screaming in terror. Like Asuka… my mother would protect me.

Noriko's mother, not mine, I corrected myself again.

Not that it made any difference, but something insisted I do it. It was a token resistance.

If I could contact her somehow… could I do what Asuka did in that final battle? Could I do that every battle? Super-Pilot Noriko brought a smile to my face. Could I help the others realise the truth about their Evangelion?

On top of that I knew there'd be an Angel this week. The parent teacher meeting gave it away. Shinji calls his father about it, right before the power goes down. Next one is Misato's promotion to major. The one after, some naked test. Next one, Shinji beating Asuka in Sync scores. Unit 03…which wasn't possible anymore. After that, Zeruel… but with Bardiel not possible, that one was up in the air.

I didn't have to worry about that for a while.

This was boring. Just waiting around. I'd already eaten something earlier in the day…and eating less than an hour before breathing LCL was a bad idea unless you liked the feeling of stomach acid burning your throat and lungs.

Shinji had the day off… Asuka had a medical exam. Nagisa might've been training… I didn't know what the hell that Angel did with himself. Probably took care of the stray cat population in town. I blew the thought away with an angry huff, fighting back another wave of fury.

I settled on a quick shower to wash any thoughts of him away. And the stink of gunsmoke. I didn't want to smell like a blood and guns reject from Roanapur. Hot water on naked skin was always nice, and when I was done, I could just slip into my plugsuit. I still had twenty minutes or more to wait while I fought with the plastic shrinkwrap around the suit.

Each plugsuit could only be worn once for a maximum of about 18 hours, then it was junked for hygiene and structural reasons. Each one cost about a million yen to make, give or take.

Getting into the suit was second nature, I barely even had to think about it. It snapped tight to my body, hugging my figure closer than a second skin. Deep breathing allowed it to contract a little more around my stomach, tightening a little across my chest and backside. A quick stretch was met with creaking plastic pulled taught around my shoulders. The better the fit, the better the signal to the EVA, the better the sync-rate.

Close my eyes, one long deep breath… a switch was thrown deep in my mind. The Pilot of Unit 03 opened her eyes, and smiled at herself in the mirror. I started to churn through system settings, induction modes, test procedures and technical configurations in my mind, confirming that I knew what I was doing.

I knew how to pilot. I didn't just mean I knew how to push the throttles and walk forward, that was easy. Physically moving the EVA was simple enough. If you could see yourself doing it, if you could picture in your mind how you would have to move your body to do what you needed to do, you could do it. Everything from sprinting to Bruce Lee martial arts. That was why we had firearms training… not to defend ourselves against an attack, but to build the muscle memory necessary to use a rifle in full manual mode.

In an open green field with nothing else to squash, and nothing shooting at you, Piloting was easy enough…relatively. The hard part was doing this, while balancing the load across the batteries manually thanks to a blown regulator, tracking friendlies on the ground so I don't step on them, watching where my rifle is pointing so I don't accidentally blow something expensive up if I miss the target, keeping a mental note of the nearest supply buildings and figuring out just what the hell the enemy might be doing when I'm paying attention to all of that.

Doing all that was hard. I could do it. So could Shinji. So could Asuka. So could Rei.

Forgive me if I allowed a little pride to fill my chest.

And as soon as I'd gotten my plugsuit on and comfortable, I needed to use the bathroom. Typical. It could wait until I was in the entry plug.

And there I was, alone again except for the rattle in the plumbing. Now what?

A girl in a plugsuit stood in the mirror. The suit made the hips look broader, the breasts look bigger and the waist look narrower. They weren't designed to enhance the figure, they just did so as a consequence of their actual function.

They did the same to Shinji.

Shinji in his plugsuit. His body stouter, his physique trimmed….

Stop!

I could've done without knowing I had these feelings.

I could do with knowing what exactly they were. Was I… did I want Shinji, or was this just the standard 'cute boy' response. Did I want to hold Shinji? Kiss Shinji? Go to bed with him? I could feel my body, inside the plugsuit, my nipples tingling as I breathed. They were rubbing against the inside of the plugsuit… just enough. My breath was short, my heart fluttering.

A panic was rising within me, electric and powerful, matching this feeling growing in my body

I have to stop this… I have to stop. Just cool down. Damn you Misato for making me notice this… it was like a bad hum or a distant car alarm when you're in bed trying to sleep, once you realised you could hear it, you realised you couldn't stop hearing it anymore. The more you tried to block it out, the louder it got, a strange positive feedback. After the initial hormonal kick, I was doing the rest inside my own head.

Before, I could've dismissed it as apprehension…. The kind that always came before stepping aboard an Evangelion, going out in public or doing anything where people might stare at you and comment on your miserable failures. Could it just be an apprehension now… a fear that I'm feeling something rather than a real feeling? Could my fears actually be driving these feelings beyond the initial impulse? I look for a sensation in my body. I find it, confirming the worst. So I look deeper?

Maybe.

I didn't just suddenly start finding males attractive as soon as Misato mentioned it. I didn't suddenly stop liking other girls either… it just sort of stopped bothering me one day.

How can I be sure I'm not just afraid?

It's not exactly something I could test scientifically, is it? Especially since I was pretty bloody certain I was afraid of feeling something for him anyway. I can't exactly ask another girl, or woman, can I? Not only was it a weird question that'd get me weird looks, but…well…if you ask someone what hunger feels like, the answer you get is 'hunger'. The word describes the feeling absolutely, the same as 'attraction'.

Or do I lack the intellectual subtleties to see it as anything else?

Hunger and thirst, joy and sadness, anger and love… everyone knows the feelings, but how often does anyone think about the physical symptoms beyond the expression on their face?

Feelings are defined by their context…right? A certain sensation that goes away when you eat is 'hunger'. A pattern of sensation when you see a beautiful woman walk past becomes associated with 'attraction' in the mind. A girl with a different body, would have a very different sensation, but assign it the same name.

As a theory, it worked. How did I know I was attracted to Misato, or Asuka when I first arrived? The answer was simple… the mind was driving the body to fulfil its expectation. Now, the body was driving the mind?

It meant asking someone what it felt like would be pointless… I wouldn't get an answer beyond 'uh…you do, idiot.', or one from Misato something containing the words 'your', 'his', thing' and 'in'. The only person who could possibly answer the question the way I needed, was someone else who had no context.

But who was that?

The door opened. I looked up at Rei walking in, who looked down at me lying on my back on the bench, before stepping over towards her locker and starting to undress with her back to me.

That was it! Rei was the answer! Rei Ayanami, a girl artificially grown, isolated from others her entire life. The girl the fandom was sure had feelings for Shinji, but lacked the ability to understand them…. having never had a chance to mentally grow.

If anybody would know the physical feeling behind attraction, it would be her, Miss 'What is this warm feeling I have around Ikari-kun, is this love'. The only question now was whether Rei would answer or not… or give an answer I could understand.

"Rei," I ventured, watching for a response.

She didn't even turn to face me. The girl did nothing but finish unbuttoning her blouse, before shuffling out of it, letting it drop to the floor at her feet.

Okay… well, it's not like I expected her to turn towards me and ask what I wanted.

"Can I question you?"

She unhooked her cotton bra, sliding both straps off her pale shoulders. It hugged her chest for a moment, before falling to the floor, joining the rest of her clothes.

She didn't exactly say no. Just spit it out!

"What… uh… what do you feel around Shinji?"

She took her panties off, sliding them down to her knees before stepping out… one silken leg, then the other. Gathering her clothes, she began to fold them in a distinct, deliberate fashion over the clothes hangers provided.

Still no answer. Disappointed, I figured she'd probably ignored me. I stood up, stretching a little. I had a sync test to get to…

"Protective," Rei answered. "I feel protective," Just like that, in that quietly controlled voice of hers, words carefully and precisely chosen. "And you. How do you feel about Ikari?"

Red eyes turned to face me, inspecting and analysing.

"Um…"

A little stunned, I stepped back. Rei asking me a question? She'd barely said two words to me outside of a battle simulation.

"I…" I started, not wanting to leave her hanging like she did me. Only then I realised the sense of what she'd done.. she'd taken time to properly consider, analyse and distill an answer she knew was right before speaking, while I was shooting from the hip, "…don't…." think! "…really um know."

"I see,"

Impassive… curious. Unnerving. Did she know something about me that I didn't? I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd just confirmed some private hypothesis of hers. She turned her back to me once more, pulling the wrappings off another of her plugsuits.

Why did she ask me what I felt for Shinji? That question followed me all the way to cage 05. Unit 03 was waiting, as she always did.

Mother. Her mother.

The thought made me smile, even as the familiar apprehension that her mother might drag her daughter back by force started to build. I accepted that would happen, that didn't mean I wanted it to happen.

"Pilot!" my crew chief called me over. "Snag sheet. I need you to sign it."

The snag sheet was a list of problems with Unit 03 I'd reported, and comments from the techs who'd fixed them.

"Thanks," I said, taking the sheet.

Problem: Ejection rails sticking again.
Comment: Ejection rails greased again.

Problem: Program error on switch to internal power causing overload warning.
Comment: Software patch requires operational testing.

Problem: IFF non-operational.
Comment: IFF normally non-operational in OFF mode.

That must've been Saturday. I'd been half asleep writing those up, along with a much longer description of the problems.

"Good, thanks." I smiled up at him, signing my name at the bottom of the sheet. The sticking ejection rails were still been broken in, the tolerances when new had been a bit too tight. The overload was a glitch while testing the railgun that nearly caused the batteries to explode, and the last one was due to me being present in the entry plug in body only at the end of the day and forgetting I'd turned IFF off to shoot at Unit 02.

The entry plug was ready… I was still testing in the EVA since the simulator plug hadn't been built yet thanks to errors in the test data sent from Massachusetts. I still had to cross the armour to get to the entry plug. Someone had messed up converting from metric to imperial units while building the thing. The plug didn't match the cradles on the cranes…it was a few centimetres too wide.

Replacement cradles would come with Unit 04.

The world could agree that the world needed to be saved but they couldn't agree on the units to do it in. Some things never changed. NERV was a worldwide organisation with many different people from many different backgrounds, all working together towards one cause. Cross cultural communications could be fun… like Asuka ordering three bottles of water and getting two because she held up two fingers and a thumb to count it out, rather than three fingers. It was surprising how well things worked, considering.

The entry plug beckoned. Another rumble of fear passed through my body, but I forced it out of my mind. Slide into the saddle, plugs moulded into the suit back and waist finding their proper sockets. As usual, there was the moment of panic as absolute borderline passed, followed by the rush of growing thirty stories in three seconds.

Mother was there, still watching me. Noriko's mother... not mine.

I scanned the onboard readouts looking, checking that nothing was obviously wrong. Just when did being mind-linked with a hundred-meter tall biomech become this routine?

"Control, Unit 03. Online and stable," I radioed

Control; "Acknowledged. Good afternoon Noriko,"

Akagi's voice.

"Good Afternoon," I answered… being polite.

Control; "Noriko, We're going to run for an extra two hours today to test a reprogrammed powerflow controller,"

Crap.

"Cancel Good afternoon," I transmitted, humourlessly.

Control; "Noriko," she clambered up onto her high horse, "That power glitch on Saturday, if it had happened with Unit 04, would've caused a massive overload of its internal power source. Unit 04 would've exploded, taking Nevada base with it. We have to fix this problem before Unit 04 can be safely activated."

"I understand,"

The work has to be done... I know that. I'm just tired is all. Having a German sergeant yell at you all morning will do that. Standing naked and as still as possible in a laser scanner while it mapped out the most intimate parts of your body for two hours will do that. A woman in the control room who went out of her way to treat me like a child, didn't help.

I just got on with the business of synchronising. Feeling myself flow through the vast body of the Evangelion was a lot more satisfying than listening to an acerbic and sleep deprived doctor.

Being a Pilot was hard work... but was worth it.

I...I

Getting to the top of the stairs, I checked my stopwatch. Damn... a little slow. It took a few moments for me to catch my breath. My heart was racing, my muscles starting to burn. I felt like I could get up another ten flights, and still have energy to spare.

Noriko had been something of an athlete, and I'd inherited that from her for sure. Before becoming Noriko, my idea of a strenuous run had been to chase after a bus… now, I was trim and toned, fit and fast… and I loved the feeling.

I'd also taken a shine to the sportswear. A sports-bra put the brakes on the Gainax effect while running as much as humanely possible, while a figure hugging tank-top and shorts kept me cool enough as I ran.

I didn't just meet the NERV fitness requirements, I was starting to get beyond them. Like everything, it took time and effort… and dietwise it must've been two weeks since I last had a Dorito. Blame Shinji's healthy Japanese cooking and my general lack of free time to munch on junkfood for that.

A few kids downstairs were playing.

"I'm playing the red one, you always play the red one Shotaro"

"But the red one's cooler, it's go four eyes!"

"Well if you don't like that, you could play the Angels," the first countered.

"The Angels suck," the second pouted, "They always lose,"

Thanks for the vote of confidence. I listened for a few moments… but there was no mention of a black one. For one thing, the black one had much better armour… a better fire control system and an onboard computer that could discriminate between information important to the pilot and what wasn't, filter it, then report what the pilot most needed to know in a way that was easy to read at a glance. She helped me pilot her.

Asuka didn't have that in Unit 02. She made up for the lack of technical aids with raw skill, training and talent. Coupled with her EVA's relative light weight, much better manoeuvrability and better technical reliability…it was a close match.

Unit 03 was very American… big, brash, a bit overcomplex and loaded with stuff to make life easier. She had a tendency to break down from time to time, but was generally pretty solid. Unit 02 was the epitome of Germaness… efficient, functional and reliable to a tee with nothing there that didn't need to be. Not necessarily the easiest thing to use, however.

Why was I measuring myself against Asuka?

I pushed the apartment door open, kicking off my trainers against the step inside.

"I'm home," I announced.

"Welcome back," Shinji responded. "Misato's on late shift, she's still sleeping."

Asuka poked her head up from behind the couch, "Hey, Fourth… Hikari loaned me her Xbox after her dad banned her sisters from it. Want to lose at StarBlazer?"

I didn't want to lose…

"Shower first. You not appreciate sweaty smell beside, will you?"

"Well, hurry up, the AI on this game can't keep up,"

StarBlazer wasn't an easy game. The AI was quick and malicious, punishing the most minute of mistakes. The controls were complex and combo based and the action so fast and thick, you couldn't turn away from the screen. It was the perfect game to test an EVA pilot's skills.

I fetched some clothes… just some cycling shorts and a t-shirt, before steaming myself for a bit under the shower. That made four for the day… I think I might have a problem. Clean and dressed, I sat down cross-legged beside Asuka on the couch, cushion on my lap to support my chest, controller in my hands.

She gave me an odd look for a moment… I sat like that because it was comfortable, if a little on the girly side. It didn't matter, it felt good.

"Ready?" demanded the console.

Playing games with Asuka was a great way to learn to swear in German, that's for sure, especially when she kept dying to that one evil boss. The skills we'd learned as EVA Children translated well to computer games.

A nice moment. Shinji cooking and listening to the radio, Pen-Pen curled up under Asuka's legs while the pair of us shot seven shades of simulated snot out of each other. We were just three teenagers at home alone, kicking around killing time.

A few moments of peace and comfort at the end of a long day. No psychosexual anxieties getting in the way of things. No holding back against Noriko's memories… I was just… it wasn't something I could put my finger on, but I'd been feeling better and more comfortable in myself ever since Misato's talk on Sunday.

The doorbell chimed.

"I'll kill you! I kill you!" Asuka yelled, stabbing at the B button.

Wearing a hungry grin, "Lance Attack time!"

Cue the German swearing. I appreciated the irony of tearing Asuka's Cosmo fighter apart pixel by pixel with lance attacks.

The doorbell chimed a second time.

A few moments.

Asuka and I were busy playing Top-Gun in space. Our guardian was sleeping before a night of paperwork and multinational videoconferences. Pen-Pen had no thumbs. That left only one…

"Fine, I'll get it" sighed the boy, leaving his kitchenette.

Evangelion pilots were capable of playing video games at a level beyond mere mortals… training designed to help us deal with all the information on our HUD's was just as helpful when dealing with the Grand Space army of Gamilas, as it was dealing with an Angel in a crowded city.

Shinji's voice first.

Followed by a man's.

I didn't recognise it at first, but Asuka froze. So naturally I took the opportunity to kick the tar out of her fighter while she wasn't looking. The lack of annoyed protest finally clued me in to the fact that something was wrong. Pausing the game, I turned around.

"Good Evening, Asuka." Doctor Langley, smiling like a US TV newscaster, wrapped in a cheap polyester suit. "My flight back to the States leaves in a few hours, I thought I'd drop by before I left and see how you were doing,"

"I'm doing fine," she stated, clearly hoping that that would be it.

"It's your father, Asuka," Shinji beamed, clearly thinking she'd enjoy it as much as he would if his father came through the door and asked how he was.

"I know that, idiot," she snapped, with far more venom than usual.

"Asuka!" her father bit back, "Mama asked me to check up on you. She's very concerned about you, you know. She wants to know if you're keeping up with your schoolwork, and how well your guardian is treating you."

Maybe sitting within punching distance of Asuka was a bad idea.

"I don't need to be checked up on, I'm alright without you," she stated haughtily, hands firmly on hips, legs braced apart on the floor. She was not moving.

"You're not alright, Asuka. You're sitting here playing videogames when you should be studying to apply for a master's, or training for war. Without me, your self discipline is going to hell… no wonder you nearly lost on Saturday." Oh Crap… not again. "You're my daughter. Who you are reflects on me as your father. If you fail, then I look bad… and I won't have you making me look bad,"

Asuka looked like she'd been shot… again. Anger was warring with fear was warring with the obvious desire to do her damnedest to get praised by her father. She was shaking… badly. Her hands clenched into fists. Asuka was about to burst…

"You do that yourself!" she screeched… like a bomb going off. "How many women did you get through before you got my stepmother knocked up and she forced you to marry… how many? How many did you get through while Mama was in hospital? You don't even want me as your daughter, all you want is some vicarious glory… to leech off my achievements,"

"Not this again," he rolled his eyes. Shinji shrank back to his cooker. "That's not true and you know it," he stated, his voice gruff and direct. "You are my daughter, and you wouldn't have any of those achievements if I hadn't pushed you forward,"

"You treated me like a child,"

"You are a child,"

"No I am not!" Asuka screamed.

"You're sure as hell acting like one," the man tried to stare her down.

"Oh like you ever acted like an adult,"

Where those tears? Just sit down, shut up and wait for it to blow over….

"That was a long time ago, and I've moved on. I love my wife, I love your stepbrother and I still love you,"

"You don't love me, you love how I reflect on you," she glared at him. "I heard you talking about me in Germany, at the State dinner before I shipped out… all you talked about was how 'I taught her everything', 'I helped her grow', 'I pushed her to fulfil her potential'… it was all about you and not about me," A breath, while she composed herself. Asukas voice cracked. "If you really loved me, then you would never have let her die,"

It was obvious to me who she was talking about…

"I didn't let her die, she did it to herself and you know it."

"As if standing around outside smooching her psychiatrist while her mind started to rot away had nothing to do with it," Asuka stepped forward, standing over me, "You pushed her over the edge and you were glad when she was gone,"

"Damn you," he snarled at her, "I loved your mother very much…. I just couldn't face…" he paused. His tone softened, "I just couldn't face what happened to her at the time,"

"Coward." Asuka spat. "Liar. I hate you."

Brutal, cold and flat.

"If you hate me, then why do you seem to be going out of your way to impress me? You hate me, but you still want to be my daughter,"

"I want…"

"Hey, hey, what's all the noise?," Misato interrupted, groggily scratching herself as she opened her bathroom door, "I'm on nights tonight y'know…" She blinked, then recognised Kyle Langley.

"I'm just here to check up on my daughter, ma'am," he said, his smile returning like it was on a lightswitch. Flick and Bing, bright white teeth.

Misato looked up at him, a full head taller than her, then at Asuka… shivering with a mixture of rage, fear and God-knows-what. She looked like she was about to cry, she looked like she was about to rip her father's head off with her bare hands.

"I think you should leave, Mister Langley," Misato said… polite, but firm.

"Now excuse me," his breast inflated, "But I think as a parent, I have a right to check up on my daughter,"

Without missing a beat, her expression turned to steel.

"As NERV Operations director, I have the right to restrict access to the pilots from anyone I feel may be a danger to their safety, or their ability to Pilot effectively. If they try to break that restriction, I can have them arrested and detained without charge, for the safety of the pilot,"

The threat was obvious.

"Well," Langley harrumphed, fixing his suit, trying to hide how much he was deflating. "If that's it then, I guess I'll be seeing you around Asuka. Good luck. Mama will call you soon,"

Asuka just stared.

Shinji watched as Langley left, probably glad he wasn't the only one who had father problems. I was almost glad I didn't have a father to have problems with. A pang of pain deep inside accompanied that thought…

Asuka was breathing hard, daring her father to burst through the door again. Shinji's pots started to bubble, while Misato watched the door in her nightshirt.

"Thanks Misato," the Second Child said, in a small voice…. Almost ashamed.

"It's my job, Asuka." Misato responded, switching effortlessly from Mother Bear to Big Sister mode "I'd do the same for the others,"

Some more silence. Pen-Pen warked. I hid down in the couch knowing better than to speak. Shinji had a bright idea…

"I don't get on well with my father, either," he said, offering a comforting smile.

"Oh shuttup you idiot!" Asuka yelled at him, "If I'm getting sympathy from a boy, maybe it's the end for me. Of course you have to get on well with your father, how else would someone like you become a pilot?"

Shinji just grimaced… like he'd expected to get burned, but stuck his hand in the fire anyway.

"Asuka," Misato put the brakes on her with a stern look.

Wide-eyes, she glanced between the three of us, while Shinji wondered just where he'd gone wrong… again.

"Dammit,"

She slammed the door on our shared bedroom so hard, it bounced back on it's railings before she slammed it a second time.

"Noriko," Misato's attention turned to me.

"What?"

Something bad was about to happen.

"You're supposed to be her friend, you should talk to her."

And die? I'd rather go to bed with Shinji…

"But if I say wrong thing,"

"Just ask her to talk to you," she advised, "Then let her speak,"

I threw her a look like she was ordering me to clear a minefield barefoot. She could order me to fight an Angel by myself, and I'd trust her… I'd trust my own ability to Pilot. But talking to Asuka about father issues was a whole different ball game. It was so easy to say the wrong thing… and so common for me to do it that I'd just stopped saying things full stop in situations like this.

"Alright,"

Reluctantly, I stood up. I wasn't to enthusiastic about being shouted at… I had no real background experience to talk with her either, from what I gathered, Noriko had gotten on well with her father… she even looked up to him, he'd been so strong after mother died, I wished I could be just like him.

Wait… crap I don't need that right now.

I shook my head to clear the memory, feeling an uncomfortable knot start to turn deep within. Right, here goes.

I slid open the door, to see Asuka lying face down on her bed. What am I supposed to say? Something as simple as 'Do you want to talk about it?'

"I heard Misato. I don't want to talk," said Asuka, her voice quiet but still with an unnerving hardness, "Not to her or you. I don't need your help. Just leave me alone,"

Oh thank God. I stepped back and threw a lock to Misato that said 'I told you so' even though I hadn't actually told her anything. She frowned at me, trying to guilt me into it, but it really wasn't an issue I wanted to force.

If the girl says no, she means no.

"Noriko…" Misato pressed.

The first pangs of guilt started to make themselves known. But really, I didn't know how to handle situations like this… If you don't know how to do a job, then don't try, you'll only make things worse if you do. In that case, find someone who does…

Who would Asuka talk to?

Who else but her best friend?

I'll call Hikari… that's what I'll do. And…what do girls do together? What excuse to bring her here?... A sleepover!

"I have… plan," I stated, feeling proud of myself for it.

I could suffer through a girl's night in for Asuka's sake.

"What is it?" Misato questioned, suddenly looking very concerned.

"I call Asuka friend Hikari. Asuka always talk with Hikari,"

"Hikari…" Misato thought, finger on her lips. "Oh her, she's sweet. Just be sure to tell security she's coming,"

"Thanks,"

Now just to ring her up. Just because I was a girl now, didn't mean I didn't feel slightly nervous before ringing her up. Her number was listed in the phonebook. The phone rang once, twice, three times… just long enough for me to remember all the times I'd been told 'no' over the phone.

"Moshi Moshi," a man answered.

Her father, probably.

"Hello. Is Hikari home?"

"Who is this?"

"Noriko, Noriko from school,"

"I'll get her. Hang on,"

Right, here goes. A few moments trepidation…

"Hello, Noriko?" Hikari's voice appeared through the earpiece.

"Uh…hi.." I gulped a little. I'm asking a girl over. "I…um… can you come over? Asuka feeling down, I think sleepover with friend will help,"

"What happened?" Concern, I heard.

"Her father," I explained, "They not… not get on well,"

"Oh… she told me he was in town, What did he do?"

"There was nasty argument,"

"Hmmm…" I could hear her thinking. "I do have a lot of chores to do. "..damn…"I'll be over in about two hours, alright,"

"Yes!"… If you could send hugs through telephone cables, I'dve been hugging Hikari tight. A girl said yes to me!.

Oh right… I'm a girl too. And we're friends… so she's got no reason whatsoever to say no.

"See you then Noriko… Bye!"

"Bye,"

We both hung up. And still, there was something exciting about that.

"Sleepover?" Misato quirked an eyebrow. "Fine, just remember you and Asuka are still on call in case an Angel attacks… and I don't want to hear reports from Section 2 about you girls being loud,"

'Oh great,' said Shinji's expression. Another night alone in his bedroom.

I was about to leave the phone, and run down to the nearest shop to pick up some snacks, when I remembered one other phone number I knew well.

I keyed Motoko's number into the phone.

I…I

It was still unsettling, to think just how fast Asuka went off on her father… no slow build up of frustration… just bang and gone. Asuka might be hard, but she's also pretty brittle. I got the feeling that it was a pretty common argument between the two, whenever they met.

From what I remembered… Asuka didn't even live with her family… she lived with Misato, and then Kaji. What she thought of her father was never really shown. Her stepmother was 'routine communication'. A stepbrother…. That was new.

Her father knew my mother, he said so. My mother cheated on my father. Noriko's mother and father… I could remember my father shouting at her…. Was I even his, or 'that American fuckers?' There was only one 'American Fucker' I could think of…

Was there a chance I was Asuka's illegitimate half-sister?

We did share our sizes close enough to comfortably share underwear and clothes. It was an awful possibility… a screwy one, an unlikely one… but a disturbingly possible one.

Our fathers were the difference between us. I think Noriko got on well with my father, after my mother died. He cared for her, and Noriko looked up to him. Asuka on the other hand, pretty much hated her father. But on Saturday, she'd shrunk back like a scolded puppy from him and then kicked my arse hard because of him. Today, she'd gone off on a hair-trigger.

I don't get it…

He yells at her asking 'are you my daughter', she answers yes, then lays the smackdown with a prog-knife. And the argument. You hate me, but you want to be my daughter. I want, says Asuka before Misato interrupts.

What did she want?

Damn… this was so much easier when watching it in animation… for one thing, anime characters didn't yell at you or get insulted when you got things wrong. A few nerds in an IRC channel might, but I didn't have to live with them.

Asuka was a real human being, with motivations and hopes and dreams beyond what some scriptwriter in Japan decided. She wasn't the character I saw on screen a lifetime ago… she was like that paint and cel girl… but she wasn't her. For one thing, animé Asuka didn't have a stash of 'private' magazines under the bed.

Not that I read them…

Storm clouds hung over Asuka while we ate, her cold mood sucked the warmth out of the air. It was quiet…uncomfortably quiet. Needing to something to think about other than my building apprehension at having two girls over, I decided to finally get an answer to a question that had been bugging me for a while. With some beef between my chopsticks, I asked,

"Where you learn cook so Good, Shinji?"

The boy blushed slightly, a little surprised.

"My uncle," he answered quickly, "He said a man should be able to fix a roof, stop a leaking tap, drive a car, service a car, re-tile the bathroom, cook a good meal, hold down a job, keep his wife happy and keep his kids even happier. He taught me to cook… and I kind of like it."

The boy seemed almost ashamed of it. Something about that made me smile warmly…

"Can you do the other things?" questioned Misato playfully, "The water heater's been a bit unreliable lately…"

Shinji's expression darkened.

"Well I'm impressed, Third Child," Sohryu slammed hard into the conversation, "Cookery is a skill that takes time and effort and dedication to master. My opinion of you has just risen a little,"

She just had to get in there before I spoke again, didn't she?

"Only because you don't like Misato's instant stuff," he muttered. After all, why would Asuka ever want to compliment him, she didn't even like him…

"Oh it's not that bad," Misato batted it off with her hand, "Noriko eats it, don't you?"

"Better than NERV canteen," I shrugged.

Truth. Industrial grade food mixing with a stomach full of LCL was never a pleasant experience.

Asuka greened. "Ugghh… the last time I ate there I spent the next day throwing up." She was back in a good mood… or what passed for a good Asuka mood. A shell?

According to the chore-chart, I was the one doing the washing up. Bloody housework. It had to be done. We lived in that apartment; we didn't just pop in and out of existence for the duration of an episode… We had a lot of time and a lot of work in between battles.

Misato left for a night of paperwork, job scheduling and intercontinental conference calls with Germany and the States.

Better her than me.

Shinji and Asuka had monopolised the Xbox. I hated the smell of washing detergent. I hated the smell of the chimey mix of uneaten foods sloshing around the bottom of the sink. God knows I don't want to be a housewife, if I have to grow up to be a woman. So, what sort of woman did I want to be then? Noriko the Yamato Nadeshiko housewife just didn't feel right, but then it wasn't too long ago that wearing a skirt to school just didn't feel right either… among other things.

Growing up to be like Misato didn't seem too bad... I could almost picture that in my mind. Noriko Katsuragi... We did have a lot in common, almost too much to be a coincidence.

I had things in common with Misato... orphaned survivor of a disaster and all that. The things I had in common with Asuka, were the same things that made me her opposite. Our mother's were both thirty stories tall. Her father is a muppet, while Noriko looked up to mine. Hers was alive, mine was dead.

I wonder what he'd think of his only daughter being a Pilot.

That was a kick in the gut… an emptiness that opened wide inside me. Behind, Shinji was kicking Asuka's arse at Forza Motorsport on the Xbox… much to her chagrin.

He wasn't my father. Somehow, that rang hollow this time. Whether he was my father or not, he was still a good man, he still cared for me… her… whatever. I could feel his arms holding me as the plane went down.

I could close my eyes, take one long deep breath and just sit on it.

"Shinji, stop hitting my ass!"

"Well stop going so slow then!"

At least I wasn't alone here. I had Misato. I had friends coming over.

"I'm not going slow, you're going too fast into the corners. Using the leader as a brake is cheating you know?"

"Because you go so slow and get in my way,"

They really did have a thing for each other, didn't they? I watched Shinji argue, wondering just what my feelings were. I felt…something. I felt it again watching him….watching him smile, watching him bark back at Asuka. Just a biological thing nothing more, I told myself firmly.

All I had to do was remind myself of the many hundreds of Shinji/Asuka lemons out there that made The Aristocrats seem tame to kill it with a wave of nausea. Damn you Misato for pointing this out to me.

And what if I did start building real feelings for Shinji, and not just some biological echoes? What do I do when my mind decides to go along with it? The same unnerving tension came back, my body tightening into itself. I certainly got a stronger reaction from him, than other males.

Great…

I finished washing up, and stashed the dishes in their proper place, cleared up the mess, and generally started trying to figure out what the hell girls did on these sleepover things. Deciding it was futile to figure out… and that I'd find out soon enough anyway… I did the English language draft of that conspiracy thing Kyon had asked me to do. It'd have to be translated with a dictionary, but I was pleased with the result. A mashup of a hundred half-remembered fanfics, some of my favourite animé and enough keywords to attract the right kind of attention…. It felt good to write something again.

It was the truth about NERV. More or less. With just enough changes and flavouring to make it seem like a random coincidence. Nothing I could think of was more screwed up than the truth.

The final few moments before arrival time were spent shuffling around the internet. Despite how different the post Second Impact world was, it surprised me how much was the same…. Exactly the same in some cases. The internet for example, seemed to have just been time shifted by about seven or eight years. The web of 2015 wasn't that different to the web I remembered at all. Even some of the same websites were still up.

An example of parallel evolution?

I thought about trying my old login on some pop culture wiki site…it was close enough to what I remembered that I really thought it would work, even if by rights, that should've been a ridiculous idea… an idea which was interrupted by the door chime. Feeling the lightning bolt of excitement that always followed the arrival of female company, I closed the lid. The excitement died when I remembered they weren't here as my girlfriends, but as my friends because I'm a girl.

"Shinji, you have to go to your room now, this is a girls-only thing…"

Girls only. My God, what have I done to myself?

The boy gave a sour look, but complied. I stopped at the door, not sure what was going to happen when I opened it. What did girls actually do on these things? For that matter, what did anyone? I never had friends over before….

There were the traditional male assumptions…. Though those were more wishful fantasy, than grounded in reality. Watch a few films, play a few games… the first morsel of junk food I've had in about three weeks, then sleep.

No mystery.

I opened the door.

"Noriko!" Hikari greeted, with a cheerfulness that contrasted with her usual class representative persona, "What's this thing with Asuka?"

"Nothing," came the flat-tone answer from the couch, "The Fourth Child just overreacted when Misato prodded her to do something,"

Hikari frowned, looking at me, then at Asuka.

"Well, we're here now," she smiled.

"Motoko?"

"Downstairs with the security guards," Hikari answered,

"What?..." that shouldn't happen. "I told them she was coming, and who she was,"

"They said she was on their watch list," Hikari explained, "Probably because she was the one who originally outed Shinji as the Pilot of Unit 01," she said, sourly. "They might think she's a security risk,"

How stupid of Section 2. Then again, I've heard of worse excuses being used by airports. I left her to her fate, turning my back on a closing door. She'd be up in her…

"He~eey!"

Motoko's voice nearly made me jump out of my skin. How did she do that? Did she teleport up ten flights of stairs or what?

"Oh Hey," I recovered quickly

"Those damn guards of yours made me take all my stuff out of my backpack and scanned it," she complained. "At least the lift worked, I don't know why Hikari took the stairs,"

"Never work before," I said, "That first time," Really… first time since I moved in that that lift had worked. "It normal stick on third,"

Motoko glanced nervously back at the still open doors.

"I could've been…"

"I bought Pizza and snacks," I smiled, trying to pull back her attention.

Her expression dropped, "My mom put me on a diet," she said meekly.

"I diet by NERV." I stated, "But break nice," She gave me a puzzled look, not quite comprehending what I was trying to say. Damn it. "Mom not here!"

That, she understood. She found them in the fridge a few moments later.

"So, what films are we watching?" Hikari enquired.

"We have Moonlight: Riding Darkness," said Asuka, "I rented it yesterday,"

"Ew…" I cringed.

Three girls turned to face me, shocked like I was some sort of heretic for saying it. Motoko interrupted her browsing…

"What?" I blinked uncomprehendingly. That was the film I thought it was, right? "Jedward Langdon sneak into Jemma bedroom at night. He stand over sleeping body. Imagine he stand over you while sleep. He can do anything to you. Masturbate, rape…. But he just watch and leave. You see him next day, what do you say?"

Asuka turned green again. "Kimochi Warui,"

And sometimes, with the right direction, Asuka was exactly like her fictional counterpart.

"It's still very romantic," the class rep defended herself.

I knew I'd won. But I'd also missed the point, in a way. The point was that we were there, together, in our pyjamas with each other. The film was crap, but it wasn't the film that mattered, it was the act of watching the film with friends while gorged on junk food.

I think.

I learned never to watch Knowing again, or rather one particular scene of it. I learned that a hug from a friend is so much nicer without a few million years of biology wondering if that hug might be going any further. It was just nice to be held by Motoko, without anything getting in the way. I learned that while playing some version of Truth or Dare the correct answer to 'Have you lost your virginity yet?' is not an honest 'I don't know', but just a flat out 'No'…

"I don't think anyone who fingers herself so much could rightfully call herself a virgin anyway," snarked Asuka

"Hey!" I squealed, "You do to!"

"Not for half an hour or more every night when I think everyone's gone to sleep." She tittered.

Red faced with shame, I fired back, "You mumble names in your sleep, you know. Mmm.. Kaji so big. Kaji lick my…"

She drew herself up , "That's different. We're both adults," She was younger than me by nearly a year. "And besides, you still haven't answered the question."

I looked to the television for help.

"Frankly my Dear, I don't give a damn," the playing movie responded.

Thanks.

"I am fourteen. Of course I am."

"Shiori's thirteen, and she's pregnant," Hikari declared.

Wait, what? Three girls just stared at her.

"Uh-huh," she nodded sagely, "She got stuck with her boyfriend in a room together during the last attack and they….ick….did the deed," Her disgust was obvious. "She found out last week, and her parents are having a cat. They don't know whether to be glad she could, or mad that she did. "

"Poor thing," said Asuka.

"They're too young to marry," Horaki said, softly, "Though I think he said he'd stay with her."

Motoko giggled, "Jeez you're old fashioned,"

The class-rep glared, "My father raised me right,"

Asuka winced, "He'll dump her at the first convenient opportunity. He's probably only going along with it because he's being pushed," she declared.

"Her Father?" I misinterpreted.

"Are you stupid? Her boyfriend of course"

"Kazu never seemed that sort, actually," Hikari corrected her, before taking a few moments to ponder on it. I was stuck playing catchup, translating Asuka's last comment.

"They're all like that,"

Given who her father was, I suppose I could understand why she would think that. Then why the hell did she cling to Kaji like a limpet?

"Can we get back to the game?" Motoko chopped the topic off, "It's Asuka's turn, Truth or dare?"

"Truth," the Second Child answered with a flourish. Nobody wanted to be dared to eat Pen-Pen's fish. The bird will kill to protect it.

Hikari, Motoko and I drew into a huddle to consider are options. There was no option, with a whisper loaded with a commanders authority, Hikari spoke, "Let me try something," It wasn't a request, and I wasn't in the mood for an argument. Motoko just look glad she'd been kicked out of 2-A.

Steeling herself, with an expression behind her glasses like a miniature teacher in training, she spoke.

"Tell me the truth about your father," she said. Asuka was appalled at the betrayal. "Unless you want to lose the game,"

And that right there explained just how Hikari and Asuka had somehow managed to become friends. Hikari could be sharp enough to cut straight through Asuka's bluster.

"He's an asshole," Sohryu said, obviously hoping to leave it at that.

"That's not enough," Horaki needled like a good psychiatrist.

My own friend leaned forward, hoping to see the greatest secrets of the mysterious foreign red-head laid bare. I'd already seen them onscreen…. For the most part…. Still it was fascinating to watch.

"Alright," she held her hands up, before fixing the pair of us with a deadly gaze. "If any of this leaves this building, I will kill you," It was a promise she'd keep, I sensed. She sat silent for a second, digging through the darker parts of her mind. She squirmed and shuddered as she dug things out, filtered them down to the bare minimum she could get away with telling. Deep breath to centre herself.

"So, my father's an asshole, right? Well…. He's a total Jim Kirk. He cheated on my mom before I was born. He cheated on her while he worked late projects. He cheated on her while she was dying in hospital." A pause. Pen-pen was watching. Shinji was probably asleep… it was near three a.m. "He treats women like things to be conquered… and his children as nothing more than inconveniences, or another means of vicarious gratification,"

She gave me a moment to catch up. Horaki already regretted asking. Motoko was enraptured. Asuka was starting to look almost ashamed.

"I hate him," she stated with a coolness that made it all the more believable than some spur of the moment scream, "He got my stepmother pregnant. I don't hate her. She was trapped by him, and she had the guts to force him to marry her and actually take responsibility for my stepbrother. I…respect her," and that word was carefully chosen, "And she at least tried to be my mama. Kara does care about me, even though I'm not her daughter. She's a good person and we maintain routine communications."

A momentary break to let the information digest.

"But if I never saw that shit-eating sack of meat I have the misfortune of sharing a chromosome with again, it'd be too soon. The only time he ever treats me like his daughter is when I do something that he can take credit for."

There was real steel hate behind her voice. Another beat.

"Now is that enough truth?"

If she hates men like her father, then why does she glomp Kaji the instant he enters the same room as her? She hated her father… understandably, the man was a bollocks… but she still wanted his approval, how did that work? Wasn't there some Jung thing where a girl whose father ignores her looks for her father in other men… or was that Misato? For an EVA-fan, I never knew much about psychology, preferring oedipal jokes about how Shinji was more inside Yui than his father ever was, to serious thinking.

Hikari nodded, closing the matter.

"Jeez," snorted Sohryu, "You should be a psychiatrist. Anyway, my turn," that savage gleam returned to her eyes as all those dark thoughts were crushed away with practiced efficiency, "Motoko, truth or dare?"

"Dare," was the too-cocky answer.

Looks like my best friend gets to eat penguin food. Better her than me.

I closed the night living every fanboys dream. I slept in the same bed as Asuka Langley Sohryu. The pair of us where sandwiched between a silent penguin-scratched Motoko, and a snoring Horaki. I felt….nothing. I could smell Asuka's perfume… her face was inches from mine, her breath softly tickling my face.

I was hurtling towards the female event horizon…dropping faster and faster since Sunday. I wanted so badly to feel something… a tingle, a tickle, anything at all. There was no desire… none whatsoever.

I wasn't sure what was better…. Being able to sleep in a bed with three other girls and not being a nervous ball of sweating shame, flinching and thrilling everytime Asuka's arm brushed against my nipple, or still having that piece of myself that would stare at Misato's 'scar'.

Just another piece of me dissolved away. Another brown leaf of personality blown of the autumn tree that was myself. New leaves would grow in spring and then…. I found I hated that metaphor.

The good thing was I wasn't being kept awake with unrequited desires.

The bad thing was, I was being kept awake by my own identity worries.

If it wasn't one thing, it was the other.

I…I

Wednesday was a day of waiting.

Long, hot and sweaty… half asleep in class while the teacher spent a half hour trying to figure out how to make an old DvD player work with a pre-Impact TV, to play some public information film the government had decided to inflict on all schools in the Kanto region. The screen finally flickered to life when he found the right AV channel

Protect and Survive under Angel Attack.

It hadn't anything to do with me….When the sirens started to wail, I had other things to worry about… so I just busied myself translating my Haruhi project. The film started with an image of a pristine Tokyo-3, glittering in the sun.

The narrator spoke like an adult talking to children half our age.

"We all know the Angels are very dangerous, and we must get ready for them, just as we a ready for many other dangers that are around us. First, you have to know what happens when an Angel attacks… you will know when one comes, we hope one won't, but we must get ready. We must be ready every day, all the time to do the right thing, should an Angel attack."

Pictures of people living in the city. On trains, in cars, kids outside the school.

"There will be two kinds of attack; with warning, and without any warning. We think that most of the time we will have warning before the Angel arrives. You may be in your schoolyard playing when the signal comes."...A siren..."That signal means to stop what you are doing and get to the nearest shelter fast! Know where you are to go, or ask an adult to help you. You know the places marked with this Kanji? They're safe places to go when you hear the signal."

The school shelter was built inside the mountain behind it… and was probably the safest one in the city. The narrator's tone darkened.

"Sometimes… and this is very, very important… sometimes an attack can begin without any warning, or Non-nuclear weapons may be used. Then, the first thing you will know about it may be the flash of an explosion. That means get down and shield yourself fast, there is no time to look around and wait. A non-nuclear initiation looks something like this."

Stock footage of Old Tokyo being nuked 15 years ago. It looked like CGI, but was the real thing.

"There is a bright flash, brighter than a thousand suns, brighter than anything you've ever seen. You know how bad sunburn can feel; well the flash from an N-two explosion can burn you worse than a terrible sunburn. It's such a big explosion it can smash in buildings and knock signboards over, and break windows all over the city. It could knock you down hard, or throw you against a tree or a wall."

The damage to the old city… the parts that hadn't been flooded. Burned logs lay down in the streets.

"This is what to do if you should be in a corridor… get down and shield yourself. Try to fall away from glass or windows. Then, if the glass breaks and flies through the air, it can't fly through you."

Adult 'children' throwing themselves against a cardboard 'wall', burying their face under their hands.

"If you are in class when the attack comes duck down and take cover under the table. Then if the attack makes anything in the room fall down, it won't fall on you."

Just like the earthquake drills, which the Pilots also did.

"If an Angel attacks, the Evangelion may be used against it. The Evangelion is a powerful weapon, but can be as dangerous as an Angel to you. It is thousands of times your size, and may not always be able to see you on the ground. Try to stay out of its way. If you cannot flee to a shelter, then duck and cover yourself. Try to get close to a solid building which may protect you from rocks and broken glass kicked up by the Evangelion."

Computer generated Evangelion, fighting computer generated Angel.

"Yes, we must all get ready now, so we know how to save ourselves when the next attack comes. Remember what to do friends, now tell me right out loud, what are you supposed to do when an attack begins?"

"Protect and Survive", answered the movie's artificial class.

What myself and the pilots were supposed to do when the call came, was to run to a convoy of Humvee-alike trucks waiting in the school carpark, and be driven straight to Headquarters at full pelt through the city to try and get there and get the EVA's launched before the Angel arrived.

The rest of the day was as long as it was hot. Just waiting for the Angel to appear, ticking the time over in my mind. It was supposed to be after school, on the way home from school. Shinji called his father… the phone went dead halfway through the call, and then the pilots had fun crawling through random ducts and crawl-ways for a few hours before plinking the Angel.

I was a lot more confident than I had been going to the last Angel.

Nagisa had his own fanclub among the girls… but it didn't seem to faze him. He just went through the motions of being a student. If someone talked to him, he'd talk back and be so obtuse and confusing, they'd just give up. I think that's what some of the girls liked about him. Tellingly his fanclub mostly consisted of the school's Moonlight fangirls… he had the (mis)fortune of being a dead ringer for Jedward Langdon.

They even sounded alike. They spoke alike…using the same obtuse half-truths that could entice the unwary and allow them to draw their own conclusions. Naturally, some of the boys hated him already…. Only the fact that he was a Pilot was saving his arse from a good kicking. Schoolkids were still schoolkids…. But nobody dared bully an EVA pilot.

I hoped someone would give him a good intro to the darker side of humanity.

I didn't know if he'd met Shinji yet….Shinji himself hadn't said anything about him. I hoped Shinji hated him. I hoped I could poison Shinji against him. This made me smile.

The walk to the Geofront for an evening's testing was the longest in my life… just waiting until Shinji peeled off to make a phonecall, or for the lights to fall silent. I wanted to fight, I wanted to show off my new training. I wanted to get an Angel kill and this was one of the easiest Angels to beat, after all.

All it did was stand there, drop some orange acid and get shot dead.

Unless there was another crane moment. But what could go wrong? Everything, now that I'd cursed the mission with that careless thought. We could get lost on the way down to headquarters, for a start.

The longest day finished with no sign of the incoming Angel…except for rain. Barring any weirdness, tomorrow was going to be a fun day.

I…I

I jumped awake and screamed.

"My ears! My fucking ears!"

Panting.. panicking in the darkness, I was afraid to terrified of touching them, in case what I thought had been a nightmare… had been anything but. That had happened before. Hesitantly, I brought one hand up, brushing through a few stray strands of hair, before gently probing with a finger to check what was there.

Fearing plastic, I blew a sigh of relief as I felt only all natural flesh.

The rest of my body started to wake up, checking in with the brain to make sure everything was alright. I pulled up my nighshirt and checked my stomach… no polished yellow and black armour.. just that same nasty-looking scar. My chest… soft, perky and tingly. My legs, long and smooth… my arms. All normal, Mark-1 human.

I was…myself.

Thank God.

Raindrops pecked at the window, Asuka stirring in her bed beside me.

The night before Matariel…I guessed… and I'd just been reminded of one of the last Evangelion fanfics I'd had a chance to read. Of Asuka, burned down to a screaming bag of meat by the Angel's acid, then rebuilt into some creepy Evangelion/human hybrid. It was the fanart that stuck most on my mind…

I dropped lay back down on my back, feeling my chest bounce a little. I'd just barely gotten used to being Noriko… I didn't want to be…sangokiko.

It sounds stupid… but it kept me from sleeping for quite a while.

I…I

"What's got your goat today, Noriko?" Motoko asked over lunch. We'd found our usual spot, sitting on a low concrete wall by some shrubs at the edge of the yard, near the older school buildings.

I was buzzing, waiting for the Angel… just counting the hours until school ended. I'd even checked up on open routes down to the Geofront… anything to keep the thoughts of a yellow armoured Noriko-bot out of my mind. Even if there was just the little bit of me that liked cyberpunk stuffs and thought it'd be… interesting, the whole melting alive in acid beforehand just didn't appeal

"A feeling," I answered her.

"About what?"

"An Angel today," I said with a knowing smile.

She glanced nervously around at the schoolyard, "Really? They tell you about them beforehand?"

"No. Just feeling in bones,"

She gave me a dubious look, "Did you predict the last one?"

I gave her a cat-like smirk. "Yup."

"….really?"

A nod. "I have high midichlorian count,"

True…Someone working for Marduk loved Star Wars references. Supposedly, a midichlorian was a genetic marker that showed up after Second Impact… the higher the count, the greater fraction of cells with the marker, the better chance a Pilot could synchronise. It was of course, a total arsepull….For one thing, I was conceived with my genetics set in stone about seven months before the Impact.

"The Force is with you then," she joked, catching a reference I doubt many in the post-Impact generation would've.

I shrugged "I prefer Star Trek,"

"I don't care. I prefer Harrison Ford," she giggled.

I used to like Carrie Fischer… not anymore. Sitting on a hot school playground wearing a blouse and skirt, I felt that loss keenly.

"Mark Hamill," I said…. Reluctantly going along with what I guessed was expected.

"Too goodey-goodey… Han Solo is rough and tough,"

I shrugged it off. I may have lost my ability to feel an interest in women, but I'll be damned if I'll be drawn into boy-talk. Which I could file right alongside my statements of willing damnation upon feeling comfortable wearing skirt, masturbating and generally doing anything remotely girly up to that point that had now become a comfortable routine. What next? I may be talking about boys, but I'll be damned if I kiss Shinji? I may have kissed Shinji, but I'll be damned if I sleep with him. Okay, I may have slept with Shinji, but I'll be damned if I marry him. I may be marrying him, but I'll be damned if it's a Japanese style wedding.

Misato'd already pushed me down the slippery slope… and I was starting to fall so bloody fast. I don't want my life to be a stupid high-school romance. I don't want any do-I-or-don't-I feelings for Shinji or fucking anyone else for that matter. I don't want to be a normal girl…

But that's what I was becoming.

"Is something wrong, Noriko?" Motoko asked me, her face concerned. She placed a comforting hand lightly on my shoulder. Dammit… I was almost starting to cry again. Can't I do anything else these days?

"Just memories," I lied… and felt awful for doing it. "I think I hear plane, remember the crash,"

Which after what happened watching that film Tuesday night, made perfect sense. Motoko just looked uncomfortable, looking at her feet for a few heartbeats as she tried to figure out just what she could say.

"I really don't know" she said quietly, "Nothing like that's ever happened to me, so…. I can't say I know how you feel. I'm sorry I can't sympathise."…a pause…"I saw it on the news, and I remember hearing about a girl survivor…. It feels kinda weird to meet someone from something I saw on TV. I know it sounds funny," she laughed nervously, grabbing the back of her head, "..but stuff like that never seemed real until I met someone,"

It was a feeling I knew well….

I smiled warmly at her, "I understand. Hard to know what to say, or how to talk about. Afraid to say bad thing, offend me…or if you might hurt. "

Always wondering what you're supposed to say and do….how to act when you've got no experience yourself and you're thankful for not having had anything like that happen to you? You're afraid to ask what it was like, but still morbidly curious to know.

A black JSSDF chopper thumped its way across the city sky; doors open so I could see right through it. I watched it arc over the city for a half-second, cameraman hanging out the door like a Vietnam gunner, shooting the city beneath.

"Yeah…that's it. It makes it hard to talk to adults, too. My parents never talk about it… they just dodged the question when I asked about Second Impact."

Anyone over the age of about eighteen would be old enough to remember Second Impact, to remember being panicked, half-drowned and to have lost everything they own to the ocean… then get nuked, irradiated, crammed into a hellish refugee camp riddled with diseases once though eradicated and starved for a few months while watching family members die off or be killed by a government using deadly force to maintain some semblance of order. There was stuff about A country survivors and B country rebuilders in there, but I didn't pay attention to that in class.

"I was born in Usui camp," I said.

"Wow… with real running water," she cooed mockingly. "Someone was born with a silver spoon,"

The JSSDF chopper banked overhead, taking pictures of the school. Kensuke Aida returned the favour from the roof of the gym. It circled the yard once or twice, Rei sitting in her own private space watched it, before returning to her book. A Hotaru VTOL from NERV chased it away with a jet scream that sent chills down my spine.

Shinji was talking with Kaworu.

"Son of a bitch," I snarled, shocking Motoko,

"I was kidding," she shrunk back.

"… Not you,"

"What then?" she queried.

"New Pilot. I not like him."

"He seems fine to me," she said. "A bit weird, but all you EVA kids are,"

I glared. " You not work with him. Real creepy, real dangerous. Not even human!"

Again… just like with Shinji the other day.

"Jeez… " she held her hands up, "Alright, I believe you,"

"Sorry," I relaxed. I had to stop going off like a bomb each time someone talked about him…it was just going to alienate everyone and make me look like a total bitch.

"What did he do to you?" she asked me, tentatively.

Stole my life. Stole my gender. Stole my identity.

"Call it…female intuition," I said, trying not to snap her head off

"That's a bad reason," she stated, sourly.

"He still…. Weird to talk to."

"He's still handsome," she nudged me in the shoulder. "All the fanboys have the mysterious Rei to admire, it's nice to have a mysterious boy to think about at night. He's cool, he's bishounen, he's mysterious. He's just like Jedward Langdon," she cooed.

"He sink teeth into neck when you turn back,"

She sat there pensively for a moment, probably understanding that whatever had suddenly turned me into a bitch, was a hell of a lot deeper than I was letting on. I watched the two Pilots talk, Shinji questioning Nagisa, his expression puzzled.

He was answered with a quick word.

Shinji started, confused for a moment. What did Nagisa just say to him? Fighting the urge to charge across the yard and but in between the pair, I sat rigid on the concrete… staring…glaring. I wasn't going to let him hurt Shinji. I wasn't going to let him be kind to Shinji,

Another question from the Third Child.

Kaworu's answer made him cringe down into his trousers, the pilot of Unit 01 blushing across the cheeks… ashamed.

What the hell?

He said…something…quickly, blurting it out before hurrying away, thoroughly and obviously weirded out. It brought a sinister smile to my face to see the boy-Angel saunter off alone.

"Oh I see," Motoko's voice intruded, "Someone is jealous. Afraid the newcomer my steal your crush away?" she teased, grinning at me.

Uh… my mind deadlocked. I wanted to scream 'No' in her face, but it just wouldn't come out my mouth. Instead, there was just this horrible feeling inside me that at some level, she might've been right.

"I don't know," was all I managed, my voice lost in the bustle of the yard.

"Oh wow," she laughed, covering her hand, "That's it!" Like she'd uncovered the final secret of Fatima…

"Stop," I pleaded. "I don't know I…." I was blushing.. "I not know feeling," I was quivering like my insides had just turned to jelly. "I….I….This is all fucked up," I crashed back into my native language.

Motoko watched, puzzled. "….It's nothing to be ashamed of, especially since you live with him and all" she said, her tone conciliatory… but tentative like she was afraid I'd snap off n her face. "I mean, you're fourteen, not twelve,"

Which reminded me of what Misato had told me.

"The plane crash before I…"… what word did Misato use again… "before I grew." I pointed at my chest. "I puberty in sleep… and when I wake up.", I cupped my boobs and squeezed lightly.

"Oh…" understanding dawned. "That's… that's kinda fucked up," She was lost for words for just one moment. "Jeez," she rolled her eyes scornfully high "I wish I could go to sleep one night and wake up with boobs like those. How fast did they grow?"

Catching the joke, I appreciated the attempt.

"Female mech pilot," I said with a joking smile, "Do you watch animé? All mech pilots required to be a bit…big."

Asuka, Rei and myself were noticeably 'more developed' than the other girls in the school, something they liked to snark on behind our backs.

"I wonder if the boys are bigger too?" she mused aloud.

"Don't know," I shrugged, dismissively. And didn't want to know… regardless of how the hormones surging through my body felt about it, I can still control myself.

Now can I get back to worrying about being dissolved down into a screaming human potato along all the other myriad ways I could screw up today's Angel battle? That I could deal with easily enough…. I knew more or less what to expect from the Angel, and I'd done weeks of pretty serious training to be able to handle it. I'd been on an active mission and not screwed up…even if something a bit odd had happened.

The school's electronic bell called an end to lunchbreak, chiming like the destroyed Big-Ben.

"Noriko," Motoko said as we both stood up, "If there is an Angel today, Good Luck,"

That just made me feel warm all over.

"Thank you very much," I bowed down… surprising her. Did I get that wrong? Bowing was supposed to be a sign of respect and I was genuinely grateful for her just being there and talking with me.

"It's the least we can do," she said, a little embarrassed, "You pilots all risk your lives to protect everyone. We just sit in a shelter and listen to the rumblings of war overhead, hoping you win, while wondering if we'd live long enough to feel the ceiling collapse in on top of us if you don't. Noriko," she gripped my hands between hers firmly, warmly, "The only thing I can do to help is to be your friend. I can't get into the cockpit with you, but I can still be here for you to help you deal with it,"

"Thank You," I repeated, sincerely, feeling a little awkward.

Shinji had the other stooges, Asuka had Hikari, I had Motoko. Rei had… herself. So long as we had them, we could deal with anything. It made sense…. In the original series, Asuka turned to Hikari after Arael. When Hikari was evacuated, what happened to Asuka?

"I think… back to class," I suggested. The yard had almost emptied.

I felt good again. Was that the value of a friend in a world like this. I attended class in body only, my spirit was busy winging through the school's chatrooms… I thought about trolling the Nagisa fan-club…. But… I was being too much of a bloody bitch. I hate him… it didn't do me any good to take it out on everyone else. I'd just end up isolating myself, and driving everyone into his waiting arms. I'm not stupid, I wasn't going to make him into a martyr…. I wasn't going to make him the victim. I'd bet that was his plan all along. Motoko's reaction showed me that much.

And whatever Nagisa'd said to Shinji had really bothered him.

Looking to force my mind away from the Angel, I finished translating my little Haruhi piece, and emailed it on to Kyonichi. I kept turning Motoko's words over and over in my mind…. They made me feel a little better each time I replayed that moment. I'd swallowed my daily dose of angst and whining with a spoonful of Motoko Hino supplied sugar to help it go down.

I'd see her again tomorrow.

Class dragged on. I sat there like an excited child asked to sleep on Christmas Eve. The drone at the front kept nattering on about socio-political changes and how everyone single one of us was supposed to be grateful for all our parents suffering through the hells of Second Impact so that we could be born and live a life of luxury and comfort on the backs of their struggle.

Why didn't I just head straight down to headquarters then, instead of staying and listening to one long old-aged guilt trip? Because I couldn't explain why I'd skipped school and gone down there on the very day an Angel just happened to attack.

I just had to sit and wait.

And wait.

And sweat.

The school's bell chimed ending the day… I was gone like a bullet before it stopped. I could be early for my training… I might even make it down before the power died. If I can catch the electric train down, I might just be able to make it in time to have the Angel all to myself.

All It could do was drip acid on the ground, it'd be an easy shoot.

Which was a wonderful time to be reminded of last night's nightmare. That was just a fanfic! I snapped at myself. And so was the story about the adult male waking up in a teenage girl's body, and becoming a character in his favourite animé…. That seemed like a great laugh until I went to bed one night in Dublin, and woke up in a Tokyo hospital.

This wasn't the world I saw on TV. It was like it… but it was already different because of me.

"Hey, Noriko… wait for us!" Asuka called out across the yard, waving at me, "We're doing our harmonics today, remember?"

Shinji was with her, with Rei bringing up the rear. No Kaworu.

That put an end to any thoughts of a solo mission. Well, it wasn't like they'd send me out alone, I was still the newest active pilot and they didn't know this was one of the weakest Angels while I couldn't tell them it was.

"Alright. I just get out of sun," I lied. Looks like we were going together… I'd probably screw up by myself anyway.

I…I

The walk through the city was awful. I couldn't stop listening for any distant signs of the Angel. A crash, an explosion, a siren. My whole body stretched taught, ready to start running at an instants notice.

It was the hardest thing not to just rush the others ahead with me.

Kaworu was nowhere to be seen… either he took a different way down or didn't have any tests today since he didn't have an EVA to test in… I was determined not to worry about it.

"I was talking with the Fifth child at lunch," Shinji picked a wonderful time to bring it up. I winced, closing my eyes and biting back before I could say something I'd regret.

"Oh him, he's weird," Asuka announced.

Shinji frowned. "He is… a little." The boy seemed almost ashamed of himself for saying it.

I wanted to kiss him. Figuratively.

"He's like the First child." Sohryu explained, "He was probably brought up alone, with only scientists for company. He never met a child his own age and…"

"I am not like him," a soft voice from behind interrupted her like a hard slap. Rei had decided to remind everyone she was following.

Asuka glowered at her, standing right in front of her. "Yes you are! You both have the same eyes, the same skin… if I didn't know better, I'd swear you were brother and sister. He's just a little better at faking emotions."

'Why the fuck am I standing here listening to this?' Rei's expression asked. It was so hard not to laugh, it was the funniest thing to see. Either her body didn't quite know how to display just how annoyed she was, or she was squelching down hard on her frustration...

"I am not like him," Rei repeated. "We share a genetic disorder, that is all," Her voice had hardened, ever so slightly. She looked at me, then Shinji.

"Oh come on," Asuka took that as a direct challenge. "You're just a doll faking emotions. You're not even good at faking anger," she stabbed, hoping to a get reaction.

"Uh…" Shinji tentatively interrupted, edging forward like someone seeing just how much pressure it would take on the switch to detonate the mine, without setting it off , "Ayanami's not faking,"

He took the words right out of my mouth.

Asuka held her nose imperiously in the air, "Nobody could stay this calm, she has to be faking it."

One of Rei's arms twitched like she wanted to hit Sohryu a belt. Pissing Rei off... now that's impressive. Part of me hoped she'd just let go because Rei slapping Asuka... that'd be hilarious. No matter how much of Asuka's friend I claimed to be, I knew she could be a bleeding pain in the arse at times. Instead, Rei showed the self control of a Saint, wearing only a mildly bitter expression, like she'd swallowed a sour sweet by surprise.

"Can we continue," she said calmly, stepping around the Pilot of Unit 02. It wasn't a request.

"Damn you!" Sohryu sneered at her back. "Damn you Shinji for taking her side!"

The green-eyed monster reared its head. He looked like he'd expected that, resigned to his fate. Asuka took off after Rei, chasing her while. Shinji just took a breath, concluded it was worth it, then walked beside me.

"She really does have it for him bad," I commented to myself.

Shinji thought.

" Have what?"

What? Right, he takes English classes at school, all Japanese schoolkids do. I didn't, because I was taking extra Japanese. He probably wasn't anywhere near conversational… school language classes tended to edge towards getting the student passed the exam, rather than getting the student to say anything useful.

Still. It gave me a choice. I could tell him exactly how Asuka felt about him… he did ask what she had for him, didn't he.?I could tell him how Asuka secretly had a crush on him, that the only reason she acted like she hated him was because she hated him being so meek, when she knew how courageous he could be. I could tell him how she wanted him to be strong and courageous, like when he dived into the volcano to pull her out without so much as a moment's thought.

I didn't.

As much as it seemed like an exciting thing to do…. I just couldn't bring myself to betray Asuka like that. She didn't even know her own feelings… I wasn't going to out them to Shinji. Well...not directly...

"Jealousy," I said

"Why would she be jealous," Shinji questioned me.

"Because, you defend Rei," I answered.

He looked pensive for a moment, "But, Asuka was wrong. I've seen Rei smile,"... he smiled to thing about it. "It just didn't feel right to let her say otherwise,"... another rush of shame.

And Rei told me she felt protective of him.

"Like she need..uh... you protect?"

"Unh," he nodded.

He's really sweet, I thought... before realising it. That 'tightness' started to spread through my body... a butterfly's flutter in my heart. Stop it!

"You talk with Nagisa," I jumped off that train of thought, "What he say?

"He's weird," Shinji said... again, looking pensive. "He told me that it was good to see me again. I don't think I've ever met him. And...well..." he just looked uncomfortable... "he said he loved me.." Which was pretty much the most disturbing thing to say to a fourteen year old boy... "Boys shouldn't say that to other boys,"

"He not know meaning of love," I stated, trying hard not to laugh.

"Maybe. Asuka was right about one thing. I don't think he's ever been around other people."

It was more than that. That was Rei. She had her feelings, she just didn't know how to express them. Kaworu had none. Nothing but an imitation. Hate smouldered inside me.

Shinji was edging nervously away.

"Why would Asuka be jealous anyway?" he laughed.

He'd have to answer that one on his own. We passed a public phone, before turning right onto 23d streeth, while I glanced up at the evacuation tower my training told me was supposed to be there.

"Hey Shinji," Asuka's green eyed monster called back, "Weren't you going to call your father today about the parent-teacher meetings?"

"I'll do it after the test," he answered.

"You can't keep putting these things on the long finger. Do it now or you never will!"

Obviously... she was just trying to stop me talking to him. Not wanting to be at the hypocentre of a red-haired A-bomb initiating, I kept that opinion to myself.

"Alright," he relented… looking forward to it like a cow looking forward to the slaughter.

"There's a payphone right here," Asuka pointed at the wall beside her, "You can use this,"

Rei stopped to watch, while Shinji held the phone to his ear. He frowned. "There's no dial tone,"

"Try my cell then," she practically forced the phone into his hand.

He took one look at the screen. "No signal," he said, dourly.

"Scheisse," Asuka swore in her own language, frustration starting to boil, "You're doing it wrong, idiot. Give it back." She ripped it out of his hands, stabbing at the keypad. "What did you do to it to break it?"

Being in on the joke, it was hard not to laugh.

"Mine is not working either," said Rei, holding up her phone.

Asuka looked like she wanted to bite her head off for a moment, before her common sense caught up and clamped down on her tongue. She looked around, watching a few birds fly overhead, before turning to her attention to a set of traffic lights.

They were dark.

"Power's out," Shinji stole the words from her mouth.

"Why payphone not work?" I wondered aloud. As far as I knew, landline phones took their power directly from the phone line itself, which was separate from the city's power grid.

"Down's down," Asuka killed the question. "The important thing is; what do we do now?"

Rei already had her emergency manual to hand. She cracked open the security seal. Shinji fumbled for his, while I remembered I'd left mine in my locker at school to make space for 'Nihongo Now' textbooks.

"Pilots are to proceed to headquarters on foot using road access routes. Pilots are to be ready and available for a manual launch." Rei read.

"And we need a leader," the Second Child added on with her usual arrogant flourish. "Naturally, it should be me since I have seniority,"

Naturally…

"Sure," I shrugged. What the hell, it wasn't worth fighting over, was it? Between herself and Rei, I didn't have to share a bedroom with Rei. Shinji looked dubious, but nodded. Rei gave her a glare behind her back that could strip paint.

"We'll go to the main gate," ordered Sohryu, "There's bound to be someone down there who can open the gates for us,"

"Without power the gates will be closed," Ayanami countered, "The manual requires us to take road routes only. "

"Subordinates shouldn't question their leader," Sohryu shot her down, hard.

"A good leader listens to her subordinates." Rei seemed as calm as a winter millpond.

They're not going to start a fight in the street, are they?

"I think Asuka's right," Shinji tried to be diplomatic, "The main gate is closer, and there's bound to be a way to manually open them,"

Not up for crawling through dusty ducts, I decided on the middle ground.

"Should we split? Me Rei down road run. Uh… Asuka, Shinji main gate. Two groups, double chances,"

And if we got there first, which we probably would since I could run like hell and so could Rei, I could be first in line to get my face melted off. To my surprise, she actually thought about it.

"No, we stick together. We won't get lost that way,"

And we wouldn't make her look the fool by arriving before her. Fine, whatever…. The longer we argued over it, the less time we had to deal with the Angel. Let's just get moving so we can kick its arse.

My confidence was starting to melt, replaced by a bristling fear that maybe… just maybe something I did or was about to do would screw this up.

I…I

Rei didn't say "I told you so" when we found that the gates wouldn't open. She didn't have to. Her expression said enough when Asuka ran her card through the reader only to be answered with silence.

"The emergency gate is down that corridor," the security guard directed us. "It's hand-cranked. The other boy is waiting for you,"

Crap.

Shaking lightly, I swallowed a building fear, forcing it down to the pit of my stomach… as usual. Not only could I get hurt, I could get hurt with Kaworu watching. He might even be my replacement if the worst happens.

He was standing by the door, nonchalantly leaning with his back against the wall, humming that stupid European anthem. Dim emergency lights illuminated the corridor, silhouetting the Fifth Child.

"I've been waiting for you. The guard gave me directions down,"

"Well, I'm in charge," Asuka stamped her authority on him. "So do what I say Fifth and we'll get along just fine,"

"Of course, Miss Sohryu," he bowed slightly, a malign glint in his eyes. "Lead on, Macduff,"

He misquoted that Scottish Play.

"We have to open the door first," she said, ignoring it. "Shinji, Nagisa… this is a job for men,"

"You only ever need me when there's effort involved," the Third Child grumbled, sourly.

The two boys cranked the door open, while the three girls watched on. Oil-starved hinges stiffened and squeaked. Gear trains that probably hadn't been moved since they were installed ground around. Better them than me.

I watched Shinji cranking hard, his breathing heavy and stressed….almost passionate as he cranked with Kaworu. I watched his muscles work, his arms bulging with the strain as they contracted pulling the handle in towards him, before pushing forward and out. In… out…. In… Out.

I felt myself blush hot. Riding a teenage rush, my body tensed. Feeling a flash of panic rising inside me, I spun around. Just because my body has a thing for Shinji, doesn't mean I do. Just because my body has a thing for Shinji, doesn't mean I do. The mantra for manly sanity. The guard at the gate was watching on, chuckling behind his hand.

Glad to see he was enjoying my shame…the git.

"Door's open Fourth child, let's go," Asuka tugged on my uniform.

"R…right," I stammered to the floor, still fizzing inside with a hormonal buzz. No wonder she asked the two boys to do it, she wanted to ogle them! What…of course she did… she's a teenage girl, he's a teenage boy….. and I'm a teenage girl.

How disgusting!

Sick to my stomach at the idea of being someone's...girlfriend...I trailed behind on purpose, wallowing in my own shame. My body was going all Quisling on me and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

Since when was it 'my body'... and not Noriko's?

Gah!.. this isn't the time for this.

Trying to put it behind me I caught up... psychosexual screwups were not best dealt with in a dimly lit corridor. A decade old layer of concrete dust sucked the moisture out of the air and made it ticklish to breath and itched at the eyes.

"Everybody stay close." ordered Asuka, he voice calm and commanding, "If you get separated you'll get hopelessly lost down here,"

"Should've taken the road," I muttered to myself. Nice, wide... no way of getting lost. Straight run to the parking garages. Straight run from there to the locker rooms.

Instead, we met a door held shut by a thin layer of spilled concrete.

"We should turn back," suggested Shinji.

"The ventilation duct will take us around," Rei pointed to an open vent on the ground, beside an upturned cardboard box that seemed strangely clean when compared to the tools beside it.

That explained the power failure….

"Pickaxe," I pointed behind the box.

"It will take too long,"

"Then we'll take the vent,"

Asuka was almost disgusted with herself for agreeing with Rei.

"We should turn back," Shinji repeated, firmly. The duct was dark, layered with dust, nobody with any common sense would willingly climb in there...

"I'm going first," Asuka killed his suggestion.

I sure as hell didn't want to go in there.

"We go around. Road route near!"

"It's just a little further," Asuka's voice answered back, chased by a hacking cough and a puffball of grey dust.

Oh, it's just not worth it.

Shinji chased Asuka in...reluctantly. Rei followed him. No way in hell would I turn my back on Kaworu, so that meant I went in last. I got to breath in all the dust that had been stirred up by everyone ahead.

It was getting in my hair, scratching at my scalp, mingling with my sweat and slowly turning to concrete.

"This sucks," I spat a gobbet of concrete spit on the steel floor.

With the five of us crawling forward on elbows, it sounded like we were crawling through a badly tuned steel drum concert being held inside an oven. It was hot, cramped, sweaty and pitch bloody black. The only sense that Kaworu had stopped ahead of me was when I crawled into his backside.

"Move it!"

"Sohryu has stopped,"

My ears were still ringing. I could hear her drumming hard on something up ahead, followed by Shinji's soft admonishment, then a string of frustrated Germanic swearing.

We crawled on, passing a distinctly dented grille.

Another stop... some more metal bashing. Some more swearing. Another dented grille that wouldn't bloody open. We couldn't even turn around and crawl backwards,

"Nice plan, First," Sohryu shot back.

It's not Rei's fault... it's our intrepid leader's. A leader is responsible for the conduct of troops under her command, for their successes and their smegups, regardless of whose idea it had been in the first place.

At least Rei had proved herself to be human and fallible.

Third time lucky?

Nope

We kept crawling. We kept coughing and sneezing. Asuka's scream when she put her hand down on what seemed to be long-dead rat was deafening. In the gloom, I couldn't see much more than its teeth highlighted by a small streamer of light.

Fourth grille.

No joy. We remained trapped in darkness. Oppressive, closing darkness. Pure black, penetrated only by a few brief glimmers of light filtering through a dented grate.

How the hell did Solid Snake see where he was going in these, I can't even seen the white tennis shoes of the unperson in front?

Not until one kicked me in the face.

Unseen chips of stone, concrete and rodent bones bit at my arms. Long socks saved my kneecaps for a while, but I longed for a good pair of trousers. I was sure my elbows were bleeding raw. I was sure I'd have to endure a sickening course of harsh antibiotics when this was done…. Can't have the special Children getting sick. Worst of all, I was sure I'd just ruined my favourite socks.

Which actually belonged to Asuka… but there weren't very many of them and long socks were a hell of a lot better than the alternative.

Fifth Grille.

Nothing.

Asuka hacked and banged at it for five minutes, crashing and punching furiously until…. It buckled a little.

Were we ever going to get out? In time for the Angel? I felt the first wiry tendrils of panic wring through my body. Trapped… in this tiny, dark shaft. A black hole crushing in on my shoulders, pressing down on my back. The draft in the duct deepened to the deafening roar of a turbine engine, mingling with Sohryu's hammering into an oppressive cacophony banging on the inside of my skull.

Get me out of here…

My body bristled… sweating…. Panting… half on the verge of panicking. I had to get out of here… I had to get out.. .Someone for the love of God get me the fuck out of here! I tried to stand up stupidly, smacking my head off the steel roof with a clatter, before dropping face first into the dust.

"Jeez, calm down back there, " Asuka called back to me.

"Hurry the fuck up!" I screamed back to her.

Before I go completely batshit.

"I'm trying. But it wasn't my idea to come in here,"

"It was your idea to go this way in the bloody first place," I shot back. And what a brilliant idea it was too. If we'd taken the road route we'd be there by now. Nice way to fuck up Asuka. Thank you very fucking much for bringing me down here… Thank you so much. Seriously…

"You were the one who followed my orders. A soldier should never blindly follow orders," she lectured, "Some of the greatest tragedies in history have been explained away with 'I was only following orders'"

Oh…that was low.

"Can we stop this?" interrupted Shinji… gently, "It's getting us nowhere,"

"Have you tried pulling instead of pushing?" suggested Rei.

"What? Of course I have, I'm not stu…" the unmistakeable tin rattle sound of sheet metal coming loose. "…pid,"… she finished solely for the sake of completeness.

We scrambled out into fresh air. I pushed Nagisa out, bowling him over in the desperate rush to just get the hell out of there.

Fresh Air!... relatively. Stagnant, hot and arid-dry, but still better than chasing an Angel's arse through a ventilation shaft.

"This normally doesn't take this long," Shinji said, dusting himself off. His elbows were raw and bloody, like mine. Anyone who thinks climbing through an air-vent is an easy thing to do is a moron.

"Shut up!" Asuka snapped him down.

She knew she was wrong.

We walked on down corridors I couldn't recognise. It was funny to watch us walk. Asuka let Rei lead, because that allowed her to get between Rei and Shinji. He was in the middle ahead of me, with Nagisa not quite behind me. It became a sort of strange ballet, all of us orbiting slowly around Shinji.

Asuka was muttering about the Commander's favourite First in Shinji's ear. Rei was trying her best to ignore her. I was keeping between Nagisa and Shinji and not really paying attention to it.

We waltzed along the darkened corridors, lit only by a few battery powered emergency lights, some of which were already starting to flicker.

The Angel above was on its way. Closer and closer… It might be the easiest Angel, but it can still really fuck me up if I give it a chance. All I could think about was that bloody fanfic… It was stupid and it was silly, but for the life of me I just couldn't get over it. It lingered there as an example of what might just be possible if it all went sour… a little petrol on the bonfire of my nightmares.

What did Nagisa say about the world cycling around? Wasn't that one of the fan theories about Rebuild…. That it took place after the ending of the original series? Might this be Rebuild, with me as the brand new character promised?

I lingered on that thought for a while for the sole sake of keeping my thoughts going anywhere else.

Each fanfic a cycle? The one where Shinji overcame his anxieties and recognised his true love for Rei. The one where Shinji overcame his anxieties and recognised his true love for Asuka. One where Rei Ikari was born instead of Shinji. One where a man from our universe woke up in the Rei tank and… was that ever finished?

I'd never know how it ended now.

I really must be clutching at straws if I'm recalling fanfics I've read to prove my identity. But what better proof? Along with the series itself, they were one of the few things I could guarantee hadn't come from this world. How could I have read a story about a past that was different…but the same… or a future that hadn't happened yet?

A possible future.

One that was changing already because I was here.

After another few minutes, we came to a fork in the path. Asuka halted us with a raised hand

"We go left," Rei carried on.

"Hey wait!" Sohryu yelled after her. The blue-haired girl stopped, "I'm the leader here and I say we go right,"

"I believe the guard said to turn left," Kaworu chipped in his own two cents. "And the passage continues to descend. The right passage heads up to the surface,"

"I don't know," Shinji was as indecisive as usual. Side with Asuka, or side with Rei? Who wouldn't take it as a personal insult to disagree with her?

"Left," I said… not having any great desire to meet Matariel face to face.

Asuka looked to us, weighing up her options. Three against One. She stopped and composed herself perfectly.

"Well, a good leader listens to the concerns her subordinates." She said, absolutely straight faced. "We will go left,"

To bad she didn't listen earlier when it would've made a difference and saved us from a long and dirty crawl. I might still have had skin on my elbows, and I wouldn't be subjected to a long an arduous course of antibiotics and antivirals on the off chance I might've caught something from the rats.

We kept going, plunging down into the gloom. That weird little dance around Shinji continued. I might've been the only person aware of what was actually going on, and how silly it looked, but I wasn't going to stop and let Nagisa get close to Shinji.

This really is stupid…

So why did I still keep it up?

After another ten minutes or so… we came to a door, illuminated by an orange low-light.

Asuka stopped in front of it, turning to face us. "Here we are!" she announced as if it was all a result of her glorious efforts. She brought her foot over in one giant arc, and kicked it hard open.

A loudspeaker-amplified voice blasted through the open door carried by a cold rush of air, pushing her back almost to the point of her falling over.

…"ANGEL. AN ANGEL IS ATTACKING!" I heard, followed by a bright flash of headlights and the roar of a diesel engine being strangled to within an inch of its life. A white painted blur crashed through the open door, drawing a yelp of terror from Asuka who landed hard on her butt. A squeal of tyres being torn against tarmac echoed off the concrete walls while Asuka sat… stunned.

"My foot," she whispered.

"What happened?" Shinji was by her side in seconds.

Eye's wide like saucers. "It… touched… my foot,"

The black sheen of her shoe was marred by a streak of white paint, running along the toe. Outside, there was a shout of voices, and the clunk of a car's doors.

Rei stepped outside, while Nagisa watched.

"Need a hand?" I crouched down, offering an arm to Asuka.

"No," she pushed me off, pulling herself to her feet with the help of the wall instead. Her skin had blanched the same pale shade as Rei's.

"There is a van out here," Rei stated, "Damaged. Lieutenant Hyuga is aboard,"

I put all the pieces together. Another few inches, and she'dve lost her leg to that van. "… Holy shit that was close,"

We save the world. We pilot giant robots against extraterrestrial monsters. We're the five most important children in the world and Asuka nearly got killed by a speeding van... Funny when you think about it. We were just as vulnerable to cruel chance as anyone else, despite us being well… important.

"Well!" Asuka composed herself as best she could… despite being obviously shaken by the near miss, "Now that we know that an Angel is attacking, we have to hurry and launch our Evangelions. Since there is a van outside, I think we should take it."

A satisfying cold breeze rumbled through the road tunnel… fresh, cooling air mingled with the smell of exhaust, spilled diesel oil and burning rubber. At the end of two black skid marks on the tarmac was a white Toyota van, with a buckled door smashed through its bonnet, steam from a broken radiator rising and boiling around it.

Its starter motor chattered, the engine coughed, sputtered, then died for the last time.

"Hey!" Hyuga waved to us, the dark haired technician still in his shorts and t-shirt. "There's an Angel coming, it's in the city already. I…" he coughed.. "have visual confirmation. Get to the command centre. Warn them it's coming!"

He was out of breath

"Noriko, you're the best runner, you go ahead," ordered Asuka, "First, go with her. We'll be behind you."

"Right," I nodded. That made sense.

And I liked running. My muscles pumping with my heart. The breeze tugging at my body, running its fingers through my hair. I'dve preferred a pair of shorts to a skirt, but it was still fun. I was such a good runner even Asuka admitted I was the best at this. Or she just didn't like getting all sweaty….

Praise from Asuka was high praise, I figured… and something I was compelled to justify.

A voice from behind. "I cannot keep up,"

Rei was flushed red and panting while I still felt reasonably fresh. I had to check myself a little to let her keep up.

It took us five minutes hard running to get to the Command Centre, and me another few moments to get over the sheer size of it. It was big enough inside to safely hold pay-per view Evangelion wrestling matches. The main viewscreen… darkened but still glowing a dim green due to some residual effect, was over 5 stories high on its own, with secondary screens running along each wall, each taller than a double-decker bus, and longer than an average commuter train.

The main tower itself was one solid lump of concrete rising like a battleships conning tower ten stories up from the pit containing now powerless holographic projectors for the main screen. Myself and Rei were on the lowest deck of the tower, surrounded by technicians working furiously at dimmed consoles to try keep the MAGI system above cool.

Above us, I could hear Akagi barking out orders, demanding checks on the coolant pumps and main breaker CT's. Above each station was a single flickering candle, giving the whole place an air of some strange Lovecraftian ritual.

Rei looked dead on her feet after the run. While I was breathing hard, I still had a little in reserve, but was too busy marvelling at the Command centre to actually say anything. Rei still spoke first.

"An Angel has been spotted near the city," she said between deep, gasping breaths, "Lieutenant Hyuga has confirmed it."

"Is this true?" a voice rang out from above as sombre and cold as a tomb. The Commander… out of sight… had spoken.

"Yes," I confirmed, finally waking up to the fact that I wasn't there to admire the scenery. "Other's behind. We ran ahead to warn,"

"Good work, Rei," he responded… ignoring me. Hey!

Rei smiled, propping herself up against the concrete wall. It felt like an exclusive privilege to see her subtle smile… just the slightest upturn of her lips, no more than needed. Nobody else seemed to notice, but it gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside for a few moments before she turned it off.

"Prepare the Evangelion for immediate launch." Ordered the commander, his voice still holding the same flat, sepulchral tone.

"Can we launch like this?" another hidden voice questioned… warmer.

"Of course Professor," I heard, "We have the emergency diesels."

I watched a figure start to clamber down a ladder several stories above me…. High enough to make him seem a lot smaller than he actually was. It was the closest I'd come to the Commander since joining NERV. The figure disappeared behind a parapet, and I didn't see him again.

I sat and watched the crew work while a young brunette I might've found cute a few weeks ago fetched some water for the pair of us. It was hot, noisy, and the air was beginning to stagnate and grow heavy. Sweat clung to our bodies, soaking our clothes.

Everyone was shouting at everyone else, the little headset radios had failed when the power had, leaving everyone with only their own voices to carry across several stories. With everyone else trying to do the same thing, it got a little loud.

I only started shaking when someone passed on the order to us to actually get ready to go. This was… it. Not training or a simulation, but the real deal. I beat the simulations… but the amount of times I'd also lost in them was hard to forget. My mouth was bone dry and my insides were fighting themselves to get out…

Was I scared? Too fucking right I was. But I couldn't exactly turn around and say to everyone that while all the training had been fun, I really didn't want to actually put myself in harms way thank you very much. If I wanted to Pilot EVA, I had to fight Angels.

And…cheesy as it might be… there were literally thousands of millions of people behind me. The entire world dies if I screw it up. The entire world was hoping I won. They'd all done their little bits, from building the EVA itself, to the rifles we used, right down to the little plastic neural clips on my head. The food we ate, all the military experts they called in to do our training…. All those people who built our stuff and shipped it and got the four of us to the point where we could even contemplate taking on the Angel face to face. Motoko who wished me luck. They'd done the best they could for me. What else could I do but my best for them?

Dear God… I just paraphrased that American General from last week. That was the most insidious thing about rousing speeches… sometimes they worked.

And left me feeling a little dirty inside as I scrambled into my plugsuit.

The emergency lights in the locker room had failed, but a high-powered torch pointed at the ceiling did a decent enough job. Stark shadows made Rei in her white plugsuit look positively demonic, her hair bleached almost white by the light, her eyes glinting red.

Asuka grunted as she pulled the normally powered door open on its runners, stepping through before kicking it shut again.

"Stupid power won't come back. How do they expect us to save the world if they can't even keep the lights on? They can't even launch us to the surface, we'll have to use our auxilliary battery packs and climb there,"

One side of her face was lit by the torch, the other seemed to be in pitch darkness. The Red Devil indeed. I didn't dare ask what had taken her so long to get here.

"It be easy mission," I said… focusing on the TV show version to reassure myself.

"Of course. This Angel doesn't even have a ranged attack… or it would've used it by now to blast into the Geofront,"

So… just neutralise the AT-Field, fill it full of lead and go home. Asuka was already naked, fumbling a little with her plugsuit in the darkness.

"Lucky us,"

Luck would've been to have it wait until we got the power back… but that would've been too easy.

"Y'know what that idiot asked me on the way here?"… no, but I was going to find out anyway, "He asked me why we had to fight the Angels. " she huffed, "They're attacking us,"

How did that conversation go again on TV?

"I think… he mean, why are Angels attacking?"

"What does that matter?" she shrugged, "What matters is that they are, and we have to stop them. It's only natural for us to clear sparks from our hair."

Actually… why are they still attacking? The easiest way to break the cycle would be to just not attack humanity and not set the whole ball rolling.

"This one will be an easy Angel," I repeated to myself, trying to build my own confidence.

"Someone's feeling confident,"

No Asuka… I wasn't. Rei stood behind me, her usual calm self, no different from any of the other times . Asuka was stoking herself up, wearing a grin like she wanted to tear the Angel apart with her bear hands. How did she do that?

She's not afraid, because she doesn't think about how she can die. That's what she told me after the last Angel.

Again, how did she do that when all I could focus on where the myriad ways EVA fans had come up with for this battle to go wrong?

Asuka and Rei had courage. Shinji too... little mister meek could jump into a volcano without a second thought. What did I have but an overactive imagination to show me every which way we could come to a gruesome end?

"It's an easy Angel," I repeated for the third time.

There was a knock on the door. A man's voice entered the room.

"The EVAs are ready. Report to the cages."

I looked up at Asuka. Her gaze was cold and firm, her features set hard and fast. She closed her eyes, took one long breath in through her nose and held it for a few moments, before slowly releasing it through her lips.

"Let's go… Asuka," she whispered to herself.

Rei was already pulling the door open. The door didn't seem to be liking it very much, grinding and squealing on its runners.

I wanted to be able to say something hot-blooded and courageous-sounding… if only to look as strong and confident as the other two… but realised that I'd never be able to pull it off right. The end result would probably backfire in my face and make it plainly obvious to the world how scared I was.

"Good luck," I said.

Asuka gave me a thumbs-up.

Deep breaths. Time to go.

I…I

I will not stare at Shinji in his plugsuit. I will not stare at Shinji in his plugsuit. I will not stare at Shinji in his plugsuit. I will not stare at his firm backside and broadening shoulders. And I most certainly will not steal glances at his…

Oh for God's sake.

I used to have one of my own once, it's not that special….just a little bulge between the legs.

I am not staring at Shinji, he just happens to be in my line of sight. I'm not attracted to him in any way… I'm just nervous about actually fighting in an Evangelion. I'm not about to cry because I can feel my manhood slipping away with each lustful breath… it's just the dust from the ductwork in my eyes…

At least I wasn't the only one. I caught Asuka watching his butt.

I'm being stupid again, I realised.

Shinji peeled off first, through a door jammed open with a mop. Unit 01's paint fluoresced in the dark, a green glow in the darkness. Asuka next, 02's four eyes glinting with reflected torchlight.

Then, my turn.

The black-armoured EVA 03 was a hulking shadow in the darkness. The entry plug was waiting, open and standing proud of the neck. I could hear my crew chief barking orders above the roar of a diesel generator. The engine coughed, lights flickering as it misfired.

Kaworu appeared beside me like a spectre in the dark, his deep purple and black plugsuit highlighting just how thin and wiry he was. The Angel-boy's grey hair seemed almost glowing as he smiled.

"I've been ordered to accompany you," he said, "It should be...interesting,"

"Why? Why the fuck would anybody do that?"

I tried to hide my anger, but my voice rang out through the cage. Him... inside the entry plug with me... alone.

"I have no EVA of my own. As Unit 04 will be similar to 03, Akagi felt it would be a valuable experience for me to accompany you,"

I couldn't help but scowl bitterly, even though I tried my damnedest to be polite.

"Thought noise. Two minds, different languages. EVA Shutdown,"

Episode Eight, as I recalled.

"My A-10 clips have been retuned to prevent interference," he reassured me, his voice as smooth and slick as an oiled pane of glass.

Is this being done on purpose to annoy me or something? There's no logical reason for him to be coming along, is there? It's got to be Akagi...she's trying to screw me up somehow.

And I'm getting paranoid. Like everything, it was no use fighting.

"Alright. Do not get in way,"

"I will stay behind you then,"

Was that an attempt at a joke? His expression gave nothing away.

I clambered across the shoulder…as I usually did, hoping the Angel behind me would slip and fall. Thirty stories worth of gravity would do a nice number on him. I stepped over some dragging cables, roughly spliced into the insertion motors for the entry plug. Taut chains held the hatch open. The Pilot's seat beckoned.

I climbed aboard, nestling myself into place as usual. Nagisa climbed in behind me, standing on one of the runners that supported the actual cockpit itself, within the plug. On it was stencilled 'No Step'.

I signalled to the crew chief on the gantry that we were both aboard and ready. He answered with a thumbs up, and gave the signal to drop the hatch. It slammed shut, ringing the metal walls, closing us in darkness.

"Have the interior lights failed?"

I switched them on,

"No. Just manual,"

A bit like having the courtesy light in your car only came on when you push a button under the dashboard.

Another question from Kawaoru; "Who is Kilroy?"

"Huh?"

"Someone named Kilroy drew a caricature of himself on the disk drive, along with graffiti saying he was here."

It was hard to be angry at such obvious innocence… it made me chuckle. He may have known the truth of life the universe and everything… he still didn't know the basics of human culture.

I switched power to the plugs own batteries, and decided not to warn the passenger before insertion. I heard him behind me pawing at the smooth metals walls, scrambling to brace himself as the plug rotated and locked forward. He fell under the cockpit with a clatter.

He was climbing back up when I opened the LCL valves. Feed-line de-icers booted their own disk operating system. Circulation pumps spun up, whining as I set them to full power… to handle two people in the plug instead of one. Check LCL Ph…in case there had been some caustic left in the feed lines when they were last cleaned. Hand on the LCL-dump handle just incase…. Inhaling super-strength Drano would not be a nice way to die. Ph neutral, all clear. Deep breath, feel the warm fluid fill my lungs… Kaworu didn't start coughing and wretching.

"First time in EVA?"

"Yes," he answered me."I am familiar with breathing LCL,"

"Right…" I switched back to my own language, remembering my own question. "So tell me then, if you want to break the cycle, why are the Angels still attacking?"

"I am not the others," he answered, without skipping a beat, "But we must fight humanity, it is not our choice….and some of them have come to hate you. A hatred that some of you deserve,"

Was that an attack on me? Damn him!

"I hate you for a reason," I grunted,

"Why?" A simple question, in a very simple tone of voice. "What did I do to deserve your hatred?"

I nearly thumped him one in the face. How the hell could he not understand? I gritted my teeth and bit back… starting a full blown fist fight in an entry plug would be bad, no matter how much I wanted to throttle him… no matter how many tears I could feel trickling down my cheek.

I am not going to cry over this. I am not going to scream, no matter how much I want to. I am going to calmly and rationally tell him.

"Nagisa..." I started, hearing the shaking in my voice. I tried to fix him with a Sohryu-style glare, but those awful red eyes of his still chilled even as he was still fucking smiling at me. "I want you to understand what you did to me."

A pause… just enough for me to take a hold of myself.

"You took me from my life." I said, coolly. "You destroyed everything I had. You didn't just rape my mind, you violated my very self. You destroyed my identity. You destroyed everything that made me who I am... or who I was. My friendships, my accomplishments, my plans for the future…. All gone."

And it was so hard not to cry again. Grimly, I locked eyes with him.

" I will never forgive you for that."

A few moments while he thought about it.

"The dead have nothing. The living can have everything. "

"I was not going to fucking die!" I screamed at him, my voice ringing off the metal walls.

Just for one satisfying instant, he seemed startled by that.

"You die in the accident," he said, solemly, "You always die. This time I kept you alive,"

"What acc…" I stopped dead. He wasn't talking about me me…. He was talking about Noriko. He was talking to me as if he saw me as Noriko, as if I had only ever been Noriko. He didn't even care what he'd done to me…

That son of a bitch!

With rush of hate an anger I punched the plug wall, cracking my knuckles and sending a nice shock of pain rippling up my right arm. I swore, and glanced back at him… still watching impassively… serenely…still not getting that what he did to me was wrong. Sure he gave Noriko life, but he took mine away to do it.

"Hey Fourth Child, are you having a problem in there?" Asuka's voice rang over the speakers. "Why haven't you started up yet?"

A nice reminder that the time for moping and screaming for my lost identity was after we killed the Angel.

"Program error," I transmitted back, lying.

"Well hurry up!"

Right… focus on the job. I can wangst pointlessly over this later. Manual startup of an Evangelion. I switched to voice control, the hardest part of which was knocking back my natural accent to something an American programmer would expect.

"Entry plug LCL full,"

A little red light on the consol in front of me told me so told me so. I flicked two switches beside it.

"Begin activation sequence,"… the computer indicated it understood with a green light. "Confirm,"

"Open primary nerve connection,"… I could feel the familiar tingle inside my brain, the sensation of something other than my own body,.. "Confirm."

"Starting data recorders,"… two more switches, two more green lights, "Confirmed,"

"Starting biomonitor,"… one more switch. An orange light flickered; it wasn't able to connect to the external computer. No problem. "Confirmed."

One last check. Nothing seemed out of order.

"Synchronisation sequence start…" a dramatic pause while the main displays booted up. "Now!"

The thirty story void within the Evangelion swallowed me whole. I checked myself first… no headaches, no pressures, no funny noises or itches… just the ghost sensations coming back to me through the nerve-links. I closed my eyes for a moment, getting a few flashes of light and shape from the EVA's own eyes projected across my own eyelids.

Next… check my instruments.

Auxiliary batteries at ninety-five percent. Hydraulic locks released. Power consumption set to 'Conserve' mode. Guidance to internal. Navigation to internal. Data-links disabled. The LCL pumps seemed to be drawing a few more amps than they should've been… but it was still tolerable… they just had to work a little harder to handle two people in the plug.

Another flash of anger, matched by a sympathetic shudder in the machinery beneath me.

Focus on the job… not on the bastard behind me. Oxygen usage was also nearly doubled by him being there. I had enough for about nine hours now, rather than over sixteen without him.

Finally to the world outside.

My crew chief was standing on the umbilical bridge in front of me, holding two red flags down by his side. He raised them up high, held for a moment, then lowered them again. I nodded the EVA's head gently, showing that I'd gotten the signal. He dropped both red flags and raised a single green one, calling something out over his walkie-talkie.

"Unit 03 active," I radioed Asuka,

The face of an angry redhead appeared beside me.

Sohryu; "About time,"

A few bellowed ordered from the Chief, and moments later I felt the lock bolts on my shoulders come loose, followed by the primary restraints. Moments later, the chief raised two green flags, motioning with them for me to start pushing on the restraints.

Moving a couple of thousand tonnes of steel and concrete was easy, moving it without bending it was tricky. Moving it without knocking the Chief off the catwalk was delicate in the extreme.

He had the sense to sit down before I started pushing.

The hardest was overcoming the static frictions in the system. One jolt would do it. Too much of a jolt, and the Chief went for a tumble. Gripping the throttles, I nudged them ever….so…slightly. The steel structure shuddered, lurching forward about a foot…

Catching himself, he started to guide me forward, beckoning me gently on.

Ikari; "Unit 01 Free,"

Shinji was followed by the Pilot of Unit 00.

Ayanami; "Unit 00 Free."

Sohryu; "Unit 02 Free."

Looks like I'm last. The chief raised both red flags, a signal to stop. The gantry stopped, he didn't… Again, he had to save himself from a long fall. Why didn't they install safety railings? Pushing back was easier… just step off the launching platform, and push the locks back.

"Unit 03 free," I joined the others, gently urging the big machine forward. If anyone got underfoot it was their own fault… I had no hope of seeing them.

Ayanami; "The Angel is on the surface above shaft 221-Kilo. We can take recovery track 180."

Ikari; "We'll have to crawl," he pointed out the flaw.

Sohryu; "It'll look stupid."

"It's still the fastest way," I said.

Ikari; "I don't think the Angels care how we look," the pilot of Unit-01 deadpanned.

Unit 03 was slightly taller than the other EVA's…. I was reminded of that when I took chunks out of the tunnel roof. Unit 01 in front of me was trailing sparks from its knees... the purple-armoured biomech squeezed into a tunnel designed to take one EVA on its back on an oversized railway car.

Unit 00 was behind, the only one of us with a rifle. I checked I still had my pistol. Ahead of Shinji, Unit 02 leading us forward.

Kaworu moved forward beside me, displacing a wave of LCL.

"He wants to die quickly," he said, whispering in my ear, "He will not change,"

"Die?"

Wants to die?

"He must die. He must fight. We all must."

Boo…hoo…hoo. I'm not going to feel sorry for it. The EVA shuddered, responding to my darkening mood. I focused on her, still watching patiently over me. I could feel Kaworu through the nerve links… barely. He disturbed the flow of nerve pulses like a rock in the centre of a stream…. An inert object that did nothing but get in the way and cause turbulence.

I sense a disturbance in the force….

I smirked at that thought.

We came to the main shaft, Asuka flipping her Unit 02 out, punching her hands and feet through the concrete to support herself. Shinji followed, kicking up debris, then my turn. I glanced down into the gloom… radar rangefinders telling my it was a fall of nearly a kilometre.

Above, the other two EVA's silhouetted against the sunlight of an open shaft. Behind, Unit 00 patiently waiting.

No sign of the Angel. Good. We might just make it to the surface before it started to drip acid. That'd make things very quick. Grabbing a gantry crane on the tunnels roof for support, I swung my legs forward, putting them through Shinji's footholds.

I climbed up the shaft using the clip-locks on the EVA's forearms, rather than gripping concrete. It seemed to give me a better purchase and kept my hands free if I had to carry a pistol. With the benefit of a few moments hindsight, it might've been a better idea to draw the pistol before climbing out into the shaft.

I started mumbling an old song I remembered while climbing, to help keep a rhythm.

"Shiawase wa, aruite konaii,"
I sang quietly to myself, slamming my left forearm into the wall.

"dakara aruite yuku 'n da ne,"
I pulled the EVA up.
"Ichinichi, ippo. Mikka de sanpo."
Right forearm slam!

" Sanpo susunde, niho sagaru,"
And pull up.
"Jinsei wa, one-two-punch!..."
Left again, hard this time. A slab of concrete the size of a car came off, dropping on Unit 00.

"A good song," purred the Angel behind me, "About facing adversity. Three steps forward, two steps back…but still moving forward,"

I huffed. A ruined song now. I didn't even remember where I heard it… just that I knew the words even though it was in Japanese. Another bit of Noriko bleed-through?...

I crushed the thought. That's not something to worry about in the middle of a mission.

Something glittered as it fell past me. Probably just come concrete. Focus on the rhythm. Slam and pull. Slam and pull. Check batteries… already below forty percent and still plummeting. Navigation… nearly two thirds up the shaft.

Looks like we're going to make it too the surface.

I should've known better than to tempt Murphy with that thought.

Soryhu; "I see the Angel. It's right above us!"

Aw shit… Quickly, I glanced around, looking for a way out of the shaft.

"We have to get out," I broadcast. "Sitting duck,"

Ikari; "There's a passage a hundred meters above,"

Again, something slashed through the air beside me. More debris?

Sorhyu; "Keep going," she ordered, "We're almost there. If we stop we'll be pinned,"

I tried to glance past the two EVA's above, but all I could see was Unit 01's armoured arse. Beyond that, a silhouette of Unit 02, and a splash of sunlight that was overwhelming 03's lowlight filters.

Ayanami; "Unit 03, watch out."

Rei warmed me as urgently as he voice would allow.

I wondered what she was talking about for a half-second, before warnings started to sound. I felt a flash of panic, expecting some awful burning sensation any moment. Nothing. I scanned my instruments, looking for the problem. Another half second or so, and I found it.

The thrusters in the left shoulder pylon had failed. Fuel tank pressure sensor failure. Other sensors began to malfunction in short order, failures spreading like fire through the pylon. A horrible knot in my gut told me this wasn't an accident.

Obviously.

I glanced at my shoulder, to see concrete where I should've seen steel. The top half of the pylon had gone completely, cut off by a bubbling orange liquid that was starting to nibble away at the emergency battery.

Worse… I could see what had once been the barrel of my pistol hanging loose, the rest of it having dissolved away to vapour. The battery fell a few moments later, damaged locks finally giving way. Alarms warned of the drop in power while I tried to steady the EVA, cursing under my breath.

A quick thought inspired me to jettison the remains of the pylon, before the acid started eating away at anything painful. Explosive bolts blasted it free, sending it tumbling into the darkness below, trailing gas. Three seconds or so had passed since Rei's warning.

I had enough time to think about warning Rei to watch out, before Asuka screamed. I glanced up just in time to see a falling Unit 02 smash into Unit 01… Shinji tried to hold her, but the walls of the tunnel couldn't take the sudden shock load. The concrete exploded beneath his hands and feet, a combined fifteen thousand tonnes or more of metal and flesh dropping towards me.

Kaworu grimaced, grabbing on tight.

"Aw crap,"

I held on tight, but it was useless. The hit was hard… harder than I expected. Kaworu fell, cracking his skull against the cockpit. Something smacked me hard in the face, blurring my vision and jarring my brain. I reached up to grab…something… desperately trying to keep myself from falling.

I felt sick as I grabbed thin air.

"Stop us you idiot!" Asuka was screaming.

"Too heavy!" the boy grunted through gritted teeth

I crashed back first into Rei.

"Watchout!" I yelped, after the hit.

For a heart-stopping few moments, I thought the whole lot of us where doing to drop all the way to the end of the shaft. A kilometre and a half's fall in an Evangelion wouldn't be lethal, but it'd certainly wreck us.

And leave us in a wonderful position for the Angel to dribble all over us.

Sparks showered past, something tearing gouges out of the walls. It took a few heartbeats for me to see four distinct furrows being made. Fingers! Rei was trying to hold on. Feeling the gradual deceleration, I reached out to try and help, grasping at the walls.

Rubble spalled off.

With a bone crunching lurch, all 4 EVA's stopped. The four of us hung on mid air, supported only by Rei.

Ayanami; "I cannot hold for long," she advised us.

Feeling like I'd just been through a quick boxing match, I struggled to get a grip on the wall. Shinji rolling around on top of me didn't help… he was busy try to untangle himself from Asuka.

"That was…unpleasant" Nagisa muttered behind me.

Briefly concerned until I remembered who I was concerned about, I turned around to check on him…. His cheek had been split open, bleeding nicely as he pulled himself back up. He pressed two fingers against his bloodied cheek, and seemed almost shocked at the fact that it hurt.

Wide eyed, he stared at the red liquid on his fingers.

"Ouch." He stated, sounding almost curious.

His first time experiencing this thing called 'pain'… I hope he enjoyed it.

Sorhyu; "We've got to get out of here, there's a tunnel just above. Hurry!"

Four giant machines clambered up into the tunnel, each of us dropping our dead batteries. We sat and watched a rain of acid pour down outside, sealing us in. I checked my internal batteries… about three minutes left. Set system to idle to save power. Adjust gyro's to deal with the imbalance of losing a pylon, sit back against the wall and…

Ikari; "Well, now what?" he took the words right out of my mouth.

Sorhyu; "We'll destroy it, of course!" Asuka replied smugly.

Ayanami; "I dropped the rifle," the girl stated.

"My pistol's gone too," I reported. Bugger… that could've been handy.

So…. Just wait for Asuka to come up with her idea, and for everything to work out. Matariel seemed happy to stay where he was and keep doing what he'd done on TV.

Sorhyu; "Alright, here's the plan," she started. "Offence will take the rifle and shoot the Angel. Defence will shield offence from the acid, and neutralise the AT-field. Support will be beneath offence to catch offence if they fall. Backup will drop down and retrieve the rifle, pass it to support, who'll pass it to offence.

Ayanami; "I will take defence,"

Sorhyu; "Not a chance," the second child snapped her down. "That's my position,"

Shinji looked worried.

Ikari; "But isn't that dangerous Asuka?"

Sorhyu; "That's the point, dummkopf!" she said, "I owe you one for the last battle, so you get the easy job of being support,"

I felt a sudden, nervous thrill. Kaworu watched on, patiently smiling. He knew the outcome as well as I did.

Sorhyu; "That leaves wondergirl to take backup, and the Fourth to take offence, clear?"

I get to kill it! My heart clenched… what if I screw up?

Ikari; "Got it!" Even though he didn't look too pleased about it.

"Roger," I responded.

Rei merely nodded her assent.

Unit 02 was first out into the shaft, vaulting out to face the Angel head on. My turn next. My heart was pounding as I placed Unit 03 into position beneath. Mumbling Shephard's prayer, I took time to make sure to get a good hooking grip on the walls with my locks.

Rei was next, jumping into the darkness, followed finally by Shinji, he took position beneath me, bracing himself hard.

"Impressive," said Kaworu.

I could see the Angel now… barely… a black shadow at the top of the shaft, about five hundred meters above. It vomited orange liquid which splashed and hissed across Unit 02's chest.

Hurry up Rei. I glanced at Shinji, who winced as Asuka began to scream. Kaworu was smiling. Was that bastard enjoying Asuka's pain? Something spattered on my arm… I had just enough time to wonder what it was, before it started to tingle.

Then chafe.

Then burn like someone was holding a blowtorch to my biceps. I gasped in pain, barely having the presences of mind not to clench my arm back. I could see the acid bubbling and munching its way through plastic and flesh… I could feel it burning.

Clenching my hand into a fist…I tried to grit my teeth and bare it. Concentrate on the mission, concentrate on sync… it's not my arm. If I can pass the agonizer, I can pass this. Just focus…

Asuka above must've been in a furnace, liquid fire cascading off her armour. A few more spots splashed across me like cigarette burns.

A minute forty-two left in the battery... more than enough. Unit 03 seemed to be holding... I could feel her, helping me, taking her fair share of the pain. I could feel…her warmth. She was right there.

Ayanami; "I have the rifle"

She threw it, and Shinji caught it in one hand.

Ikari; "Nagato! Catch," he called up to me.

I reached down, heart thumping inside my chest. Don't fuck up… don't fuck up. He tossed the rifle up. I held my breath, reaching out. I closed my hand and…

For a moment, only air.

No!

I felt my hand close around the pistol grip… tightly. Hanging only from my left cliplock, I hooshed the rifle up into a position to shoot. No time to use the targeters, I had to do it manually.

"Asuka!" I warned.

Unit 02 turned in mid air, pressing itself against the wall to give me a clear shot. For one brief moment, I could see the Angel… its bowl shaped carapace, its impossibly spindly legs… its staring saffron-tinted eyes weeping corrosive tears

I stared right into one of them, eye to eye thanks to a miracle of camera technology, and lined the barrel of the rifle up with it. Like shooting the pistol in the range on Monday… line up the front sight with a point on the target.

Finger on the trigger.

A heartbeat.

I squeezed down on the button. The rifle kicked and bucked as it fired in a way it wasn't designed to. I held the trigger down until the gun emptied itself… two seconds of sustained fire.

The Angel spasmed… rocked on its legs then collapsed down onto itself. It was dead.

"So it goes, Matariel," Nagisa whispered beside me.

I whooped like an Indian Chief. Unit 02 finally fell… still holding on one-handed, there was no way I could've caught it. The hit was jarring, but I was too giddy to care. The pair of us crashed down into Shinji, who caught us both effortlessly.

"I killed it!" I giggled to myself. "I killed an Angel,"

I really killed an Angel.

Motoko was going to go ape when I told her tomorrow morning.

I...I

No electricity mean no water pressure, meant no working showers in the locker rooms. We earned a collective 'good work' from Misato for our troubles…and a little danger pay, but nothing more. I wasn't showered with praise or adulations for finishing it off… I hadn't done anything special, I'd done exactly what I was expected to do….exactly what I'd been trained to do.

That didn't stop me from feeling good about it.

Keen to get rid of us before we really started to stink, Misato had us driven up by some poor unfortunate to an old viewing spot that had been popular back when Tokyo-3 had once been a golf course.

The evening grass was cool… the evening breeze even cooler. Sure we smelled like an old slaughterhouse… but it was a good smell. A victorious smell. A smell that got us free cokes from a nearby shopkeeper, just so it wouldn't linger in her store.

Who knows what she made of us, and what we were wearing.

Above, the entire milky-way was laid out, a river of stars running across the sky. The moon was full, but low in the sky, casting long shadows. It was a beautiful night.

I took the time to trace through the stars, looking for a familiar constellation. I found The Plough, laying low on the horizon. Remembering an old cub-scout trick, I traced a path along the handle, out to the brightest star just beyond.

Polaris. The North Star.

The former North Star. It was noticeably out of position, thanks to Second Impact kicking the planet off-axis. A few crickets chirruped, while down in the city I could see the black remains of the Angel, swallowing the moonlight rather than reflecting like the concrete around.

I killed it.

The thought still made me feel giddy, even though it had been nearly six hours.

"The stars are beautiful," Shinji broke the quiet." So brightly packed, like a crowd of people all together in the sky with a candle."

"They seem close," Kaworu spoke, "Yet the distance between them is vast and empty. "

"People or stars?" I ruined a really nice metaphor by asking the obvious question.

"They are connected by space." Rei stated, after a quick moments thought. "Not separated by it"

Wait… I didn't know she watched Planetes.

Asuka leaned back onto the grass, crossing her legs. "My, it seems like we've a pair of philosophers,"

"I wonder if that's what makes humans special," said Shinji. "Maybe that's why the Angels are attacking us,"

"Probably," I shrugged.

"What are you stupid?" Sorhyu snorted, "Who cares what they think?"

"Mind different from human. Alien thought. Alien…motivation," I found the right word after a moment,

Below us, the lights in the city flickered, before flooding the sky with a yellow haze.

"There, much better," Asuka said, "Now it feels like people actually live there," she rolled over to face the boy beside her. "Hey Shinji!"

"Yeah?"

"Did you ever ask your father about that thing…?"

Shinji nodded.

"And?"

"He said he didn't have enough time, he had so much work," the boy answered, smiling a little to himself. He might've been told 'No', but he was still glad he asked. At least he got a reason.

I yawned and lay back in the grass. This was nice. Basking in the warm glow of victory and friendship.

Nobody had been hurt, and the only damage had been cosmetic.

A good end.

I…I

The school had Friday off. I spent the entire day sick to my stomach thanks to whatever antibiotics Akagi filled me with. Saturday was an occasional half-day, to make up for time lost to the Angels.

I tried to contain myself as long as possible... I really did. I was fizzing as I crossed the schoolyard. Bubbling as I entered the girl's locker room. Asuka was giving me weird looks, while Shinji happily scarpered off to his friends.

Some of the girls were talking about the power-cut,and the Angel. That only made it harder to keep quiet. Motoko was standing by her locker, fetching her indoor shoes.

I couldn't hold it in.

"I killed it!" I erupted with a squeal.

Everyone stared at me.

"There's no 'I' in team," Asuka called over to me, caustically, "All you did was finish it off. I did all the hard work,"

True.

But I still killed an Angel. I was entitled to some smug self-congratulation.

"Congratulations!" beamed Motoko.

"DakkaDakkaDakka, Dead!" I mimed firing a rifle at an overhead light.

"Ooh," she boggled. "All I did was pass my English test,"

"Nice one!" I offered a thumbs-up. The English language was harder to master than piloting a giant robot, I knew that from experience. I still had problems getting apostrophes right.

She hugged me. For a brief moment, I was surprised. Tentatively…a little unsure if I was supposed to, I returned the gesture. Her body was warm and soft against mine… Not in a sexual way… it was always nice to be held by someone. She sprang back a moment later, a broad grin plastered on her face.

"We are so win!" she cheered.

A few of the older girls scorned... but who cared? We both had good reasons to be cheerful, and we weren't going to waste the opportunity to enjoy the feeling.

I could hear Asuka complaining about how annoying the Fourth got when she had such a 'swelled head', how annoying Shinji was when he didn't make lunch in the morning because he didn't do his homework last night and...

Motoko noticed my expression turn sour, "What?"

"I forgot my homework," I said, my voice shrinking. "Too busy with Angel,"

"I'm sure they'll understand," she shrugged, "You saved the world, they can't expect you to be up to date with homework,"

I... saved the world. It seemed such a ridiculous thought, I had to laugh.

"Yeah, I know...silly isn't it?" she giggled.

Yup... but it didn't half inflate the ego. My good mood continued up to the classroom. Nobody else really cared that much… it'd been a few months and summer break since Sachiel first appeared. The Angels and the Pilots had become just another part of life.

I settled down at my desk, waited for Hikari to run through her daily rise-bow-sit drill, and logged into the school's intranet.

A message popped up from Kyonichi.

::Nice work! Might have to change a few things because they seem a little unbelievable however. And your grammar is a mess.

I messaged back ::Like what?

:: Well, the part about the Pilot's mother's soul being inside the EVA , for one thing. The guardian stuff was good :) . Some parts reminded of Blue Aru a bit.

So, the stuff I made up about Misato psychologically manipulating us was believable, but the truth about the Evangelion wasn't. Real life had one advantage over fiction…. It didn't have to be believable. I wanted to go on a long winded rant about how I was the pilot of a giant robot fighting extraterrestrial monsters, how I'd come from an entirely different universe to do the job, and how that part was actually true. But I lacked the language skills to do all of that before lunchtime.

::Point is, We have to talk about changes, so we can be consistent when talking with Sakura. Can you meet me at TG today after school? Room 204, old building.

::No problem.

Asuka would probably scoff and snort at the nerds and otaku within…if I ever told her. But up until a few weeks ago, I had been one of them. I knew I was safer in there than anywhere.

"Now," the teacher finished his lecture, "I trust you all had plenty of time to do your assignments in the shelters."…damn… He scanned the Pilot's expressions.

" Nagato, Ikari, and Sohryu, your NERV duties are no excuse for sloppy or late work especially if Ayanami can still manage to hand satisfactory work up with the same schedule. Hand it in Monday and I'll decide on a penalty then."

Nuts. I barely passed the last one I got in on time, and I knew even less about the Tokugawa plan and its social consequences than I did about the Valentine peace accords. I decided not to bother with it… since it was a sure thing I'd fail it anyway, I figured that time I'd otherwise have wasted failing, could be put to better use in a subject I might have a chance with. Which, if I recalled right was the exact approach the Tokugawa plan took with all the coastal cities and their residents.

I could hear giggles around the classroom, some loved it when the Pilots were brought down a notch.

The teacher was surprised when Shinji handed something up… He scorned Asuka for having nothing at all, but was a little more conciliatory with Nagisa because he hadn't actually been in the class when the assignment was given.

I got a nice remark about how I was already falling behind after only a few weeks and how I'd have a hell of a time catching up with my language difficulties and how I had to think of my future and my college education. What college would accept a student with a bad evaluation from their middle school, he threatened.

If Third Impact happened tomorrow, he'd still insist my puddle hand up his assignments. The teacher's mentality was a universal constant.

I did well enough in mathematics to pass the year in anyways. I liked going a bit beyond what was expected Calculate the speed over a distance for a given time? They just wanted us to divide by the time… I made a point to integrate with respect to t. Which led to the same result assuming initial conditions were zero.

It was a bit silly, but it was also a self-affirming thing to do. Since the rest of the class hadn't done calculus yet, the only place I could've learned would've been in my own schooling.

I'd taken two maths tests, and scored a full twenty in each of them.

The maths teacher loved me…especially since she doubled as our science teacher. We were supposed to have a teacher for every subject, but about half the school's teachers and students had left after the Angels started attacking leaving the remaining ones to cover what was left, so more than a few were shared.

Class ended for the day at what would normally be lunchtime. I met Motoko for a few minutes, and nearly managed to forget that I had to go to the old building to meet Kyonichi.

'Haruhi' was around…. But I managed to avoid her. It seemed ridiculous….how screwed up would someone have to be in order to think they were someone else…to assume an identity to hide from reality?

An identity based on a popular animé.

Her friends were doing a Goodbye Lenin act around her to save her from the truth. It all seemed a bit like the traditional goofball highschool animé plot. But, real life wasn't worried about clichés, or common sense.

It didn't take long for me to find the room, on the second floor in a part of the building that turned into a furnace in the afternoon heat. I could recognise a few of the voices coming from inside… Shinji, Touji and Kensuke were in there, among others.

I stopped outside the door for a moment, a paper sign reading "The Amalgamated Animé, Manga, Video and Traditional Gaming club' taped to it.

I remembered my last time going to my college game society, then knocked on the door.

"Come in!"

Kensuke's voice. I waited a moment, taking a few moments to overcome a strange nervousness before sliding the door open.

"I am here for Kyonichi," I stated, oddly shy.

The room was small, with a window half-blocked by a flatscreen television opposite the door, and shelves lining both walls. The shelves were loaded with a mix of DvD's, animé, boardgames and sourcebooks, some of which I recognised. Kensuke, Touji, Shinji, Kyonichi and someone I didn't recognise sat around a table in the centre…. With a Noriko Takaya figure in the centre.

"Noriko," Shinji blurted, not quite believing I was here.

The unknown boy giggled. He was tall, a little lanky with jet black hair combed over to one side. Touji muttered darkly in Shinji's ear, while Kensuke struggled with his surprise for a few seconds.

"I got the stuff printed off in my bag," said Kyon, "We can go through it when the guys are playing…but…" he looked to the doll, and suddenly looked very uncomfortable. "…well, when I said you were coming…"

"We were wondering if you could sign this Noriko Takaya figure for us," Kensuke finished for him, in a hurry.

Shinji sighed and rolled his eyes.

I stepped back a little, for a moment feeling a little ambushed.

"Why?"

I'd never been asked for my autograph before.

"Well, you're the real thing. Noriko the mecha pilot," Aida explained.

I assumed I was supposed to be angry…but didn't really feel it. Truth be told I was a little bit flattered.

"Dude," groaned Touji, "Have some self respect sometime,"

Shinji smiled a little. I knew what Asuka's answer would've been…some colourful German, followed by a stinging red handprint on each face. I considered doing the same, but just didn't feel up to it. For one thing, I'd always been a Gunbuster fan

I smiled a little nervously, "Sure, I liked Gunbuster,"

The dark haired one spoke up, "Can you say 'Buster Beam'?"

I scowled at him. Shinji buried his face in his hands "I will sign," I stated, firmly, remembering Asuka's advice about dealing with them.

Kensuke handed the doll, and a marker to me.

"I volunteer for EVA," I told them, "Because I want be like her. I want be giant robot pilot,"

"You're one of us who's a real living the dream," Kensuke said, stumbling over himself a little "I mean… I 'd say yes in a heartbeat too, even though I know it's hard work and…even your voice sounds a little like Nono…with guts and…"

He was speaking so fast I had a hell of a time keeping up.

"I come here to get away from EVA," Shinji cut him off, hard. It actually surprised me. The Third Child threw me a dark look, obviously not appreciating my intrusion.

"Sorry, Shinji," apologised Kensuke.

"Maybe I should go," I offered,

"It's okay," said Kyonichi, "We're just not used to having someone who's so open to talking about the Evangelion. You can understand that we're pretty fascinated by it," I nodded. "And…well… it's obvious from reading the conspiracy you wrote that you like animé."

I blushed a little… embarrassed. "It kept me in touch with Japan, when I live abroad,"

Another lie, but a good one. Not daring to use my name incase it appeared on eBay, I wrote on the figure's stand;

"From the real Nonoriri.
Third Children. Pilot of Evangelion Unit 03. With Guts and Effort,"

I held the Noriko Takaya doll I'd just signed, staring at it. Its joyful brown eyes stared lifelessly back at me. I ran a finger along its body, tracing its figure down from its chest, over its hips and down its legs to the stand. The vinyl plastic was perfectly smooth under my finger... utterly unlike real skin. But still...

I…

I had one of these once. The exact same Bomé figure with the out of proportion left leg.

I…

I have a body just like this.

I looked up at Kyon, then Kensuke, then down to Shinji sitting at the table watching me. Something inside me just switched. Back to the doll… my signature still drying on the stand. I have a body, just like hers. I am... the same.

Again, back to the assembled boys, watching me like something was about to burst out of me.

I…

...am a girl.

Just like that. Feeling my heart race in my chest like an engine on neutral. I felt faint, a little overheated. I turned to face the wall, propping myself up with one hand.

I am a girl.

Still nothing wrong with that thought. No howls of protest from my formerly masculine mind. That was literally it. Fear flared through my body, my stomach tensing up. I... I'm …. I feel like … My thoughts just ground to a halt. I looked up at them, swallowing...

I was aware of myself... I was aware of my body. I was aware I was different to them. I was aware

how. I was aware of how attractive I was… I'd known I was a good looker, but now I actually felt it.

"Noriko, you feel okay?" someone enquired.

I feel like I'm a girl.

"Overheated," I responded, lying.

This shouldn't be okay, I wanted to whine. It shouldn't be this easy. I knew it could happen… but I only figured it out five days ago. I should be screaming. I should be fighting…. It should not be this fucking easy to go from the man in the girl's body, to just plain old girl.

"But you're crying,"

"I am not!" I barked back, stunning everyone.

In the silence that followed, I felt a tear run down my cheek. Just one. I checked my body once more, hoping for the right answer this time. I'm a girl, was the answer I got back.

I had accepted my life as a member of club female. Whether I felt like a girl, or young woman, or whatever, I'd come to terms with the fact that I'd have to live as a man in a woman's body for the rest of my life. I'd known that someday, I might finally just wake up one day and be a woman… full stop.

But not like this… and not this soon.

I wanted to feel uneasy walking into a girl's bathroom again. I wanted to feel awkward watching Asuka undress. I wanted the concept of tampons to make me scream to the heavens. I wanted to be ashamed at the idea of even thinking about masturbating in the shower. All those little fears and shames that had dissolved over the last few weeks, I wanted them all back… every single one of them, just so I could be me again.

Nope.

Gone forever.

A moment of silence for my dead manhood please. I had my memories… I had some of my personality. I had the unique despair of knowing that they were going to be absorbed into the greater whole of Noriko and that I couldn't stop it. I could feel myself loosing my mind…and worse, feel another one muscling in on the empty space.

No… I wasn't losing my mind. Kensuke stood up beside me, concern on his face.

"You can have my seat, if you'd like," he offered.

He's only offering it to you because you're a girl, part of me warned. I thought about fighting back…about saying no. I wanted to. But Kensuke was just being kind… and I didn't want to be rude.

"Thanks," I return a soft smile, taking the seat. I had to force the smile.

He blushed… a light pink across his cheeks.

"Ah… I'll get you some water aswell,"

"Thanks," I said again.

His blush deepened.

"I'll… just… gogetit," the last few words of the sentence ran into each other like a drunk driver into the back of a truck as he ran off out on a hormonal rush.

The five other boys in the room just stared at the door he bombed through for a moment, before returning their attention to me… then to the door… then to the Noriko doll I'd signed.

What did I just do?

"Kensuke you cheeky git," Kyonichi commented under his breath, Shinji was trying his damnedest not to laugh. "That was like, straight out of Trembling Hearts three," continued Kyon. "When Kimiko feels faint in the clubroom…"

What… wait what?

"I never played Kimiko's story," Touji declared. "Tina's the better ending. But I know what you're talking about man,"

"Saya's the easiest," the dark haired one spoke up.

"What's the point in playing a game on easy, Mamoru?"

"You get to the good pictures faster," he grinned lecherously.

"But she's fuck-ugly and her personality is horrible," Touji argued back.

Kyon palmfaced.

"That doesn't matter. They all look the same from behind anyway," snarked Mamoru.

Nice tact. The four remaining males gaped, then stared at me, expecting me to go off on some feminine rage about perversion and dating sims and how Mamoru was a total friendless arsehole. Followed by female on male violence. A minute or so of expectant silence followed… they were waiting.

I was too busy trying not to have my second psychological break of the week to care.

Kensuke came back, placing the plastic cup in front of me.

"Thanks," I smiled again, earning another blush for my troubles.

"No problem," he said, meekly.

"So Ken, Saya's ending on Trembling Hearts three?" Mamoru started to dig for allies.

"Why? It doesn't even count as a game completion," said Kensuke, diplomatically "It's a bad end where she cheats on you, unless you take the time to actually help her."

"Why bother, the fun part's over?"

I hoped he was just joking... people weren't really that damn thick. I had to say something.

"I play dating game too," I stated, trying to sound as cold and malevolent as possible, trying to channel Asuka. "Like fishing. Fish like Mamoru easy catch, but too small to keep." … fish being an obvious parallel to something else… "Big fish hard but worth effort,"

It was hard not to laugh at him… there was an odd pleasure to be had from watching him fizz with anger.

"I don't give a crap!" he roared, red faced, "You say I'm small, I'll show ya how big I am!"

"Mamoru," Kyon interrupted him, deadpan "Don't antagonise the girl who pilots the giant robot."

"Asuka would've killed him," Shinji giggled.

Wow… Shinji… laughing. I don't know how, but it helped my mood. I'd never seen him laugh like that. He was so unguarded and comfortable.

There was something I could do… It's idiots like him that give men a bad name. No Asuka, all men are not this stupid and weird….especially nerds and otaku. They're not creeps or weirdo's… I should know, I used to be one. The hardest part about talking to any girl was knowing that she'd probably already dismissed you as nothing more than an obsessive weirdo, based on the actions of a couple of braindead cabbages like this.

My last manly act, I supposed, would be to call him on it. I looked to the figure. Give me strength, Noriko.

"Mamoru. You know Asuka?"

"Yeah,"

"She tell me, fanboy, gamers… otaku... are all like you. I know not true," I took a few moments to compose in my head, "Kensuke sell girl photographs, right? But… " I recalled our meeting on the roof, "You have good reason for pilot EVA. You want to protect, and for Shinji not to worry. You want be his friend."… he blushed again… "Touji sell pictures too, but Hikari tell me you have sister, and you care lot for her…spend a lot of time."

"Yeah….well," he shuffled his feet, a little ashamed."Family's family,"

"Kyonichi. You care about Sakura so much, to go to the effort of…. Um…. Tolerating Haruhi, to keep her safe,"…. It took him a moment to catch up to that. I thought carefully what to say next. "And Shinji, you really are brave,"

The 'brave' Pilot of Unit 01 just looked like he wanted to hide under the table. He was also honest, dedicated, hard working, humble, courteous and… I killed the thought before it went any further.

"I see their Good. Mamoru," I steeled myself, "What good do you do?" He slid back from me for a moment, wide eyed… terrified of being placed on the spotlight. "I know type. So afraid of being seen as not man, you act like you think a man is. A…. um…" what was the word, "Stereotype," I used the English one. "Destroy real person inside with it. What is good about you?"

Silence reigned, while I tried to glare right through him.

"He's our friend," Touji answered for him, calmly

"Huh?" I blinked.

Mamoru almost seemed as surprised as I was.

"Sure he's an ass, dontcha think we know that?" Touji continued, "But he's still our friend,"

Kensuke slid his glasses up his nose, "I don't expect a girl to understand it. Betrayal may come easy to women, but us men live by cast iron codes of honour,"

I ran my hand through my hair… I guess I walked into that one. Shinji just quietly watched me, not quite sure what exactly to say.

"Fair enough," I conceded, with a resigned smile.

"But you're still a jackass Mamoru," Kyonichi added.

Mamoru himself just quietly sunk down into his chair, not sure if he'd won that or not. That was the proof of it. My last 'manly act' had only served to confirm that I wasn't one anymore.

"Thanks guys," he finally said, his voice barely a whisper.

I kept it out of my mind while I ran through the Haruhi sheet with Kyonichi. Most of the changes were just linguistical… sometimes I'd pulled the wrong Kanji from the dictionary. Sure they sounded the same, but they had two wildly different meanings. Great for making puns, a pain for writing.

I took a few moments to admire some of the collection…a lot of post impact seemed comfortingly familiar. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann was there, hidden among Gundam ZZ and something called the Blue Aru Platinum Directors Cut Final Edition. A few of the games and sourcebooks I recognised, some of them were even pretty old.

It really seemed as if pop-culture had just been put on hold for about seven years by the Impact, then started moving on where it had left off.

Kensuke was explaining the rules of some wargame to Shinji, while Touji just looked bored with it all, only hanging around because two of his friends were here. Mamoru deliberately and obviously kept his distance from me, burying his face in a Doujin.

With that done, Kyonichi thanked me… I considered hanging around waiting for Shinji and walking home with him, but I'd intruded enough on his private life for the day so I left and walked home by myself.

Half an hour later, I stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror. One last try.

"I am a man," I stated, calmly.

No, you're not, my body answered. I couldn't even picture myself as anything but the fourteen year old girl. It felt wrong to even try…. Completely and totally wrong.

"I am a girl," I stated… again calmly.

Yes, I am, confirmed my body.

That was it. Gone for good. I thought I should've collapsed into the floor, bawling in a heap for my lost manhood, but… fuck that…. It wouldn't change anything. I'd gone past the point of no return. I mourned for a few minutes in the shower…another bit of 'me' gone forever…. before taking time consider what to do next while drying my hair.

"I am…a girl," I re-stated.

The result was still the same, not that I'd genuinely expected it not to be. My probationary period was up… I'd become a full-patched member of the fairer sex. I really felt I should've been a crazy ball of despair on the floor… but, I really didn't feel that bad. It was a fate I'd resigned myself to, even if it had come a little faster than I'd expected.

Maybe if I hadn't gotten that nice little ego boost from killing the Angel…calling up that memory still filled me with a surge of pride… it might've been the final tipping point, but it wasn't. Psychologically, I was still hanging in there.

But my self identity hadn't been overwhelmed.

I still preferred to dress in jeans and a t-shirt, or wear shorts if it was too hot out. I still liked the exact same things I'd liked when I'd gotten out of bed in the morning. The concept of pink frills still gave me chills. I still baulked at the idea of wearing makeup, taking Shinji as a boyfriend, becoming the traditional Japanese housewife or doing any other so called 'girly' thing.

I recalled what I'd said to Mamoru, about doing stereotypical manly things because he was so afraid of being seen as a girl….to the point where he'd managed to do an overrun screw on his own natural personality.

Had I been doing the same thing?

No, I concluded after some thought.

Just because my brain now considered itself female, didn't mean I had to act like a female stereotype. After all, with a few unintentional exceptions, I'd hardly acted much like a male stereotype when I was trying to hang on to my masculinity, had I? I just tried to be myself, and do the things I liked, or felt most comfortable with doing.

Regardless of what my body insisted it was… I was still myself. I just had to act like that.

So what did that mean exactly?

Who am I?

I am a former university student turned Mecha Pilot. I like Animé, I like Manga… I used to love it for the vicarious thrill it was, the chance to glimpse an 'interesting' life without ever having any of the risks actually involved. I had a thing for Asimov's short stories…especially The Immortal Bard which was something I believed every English teacher should be forced to read. I dabbled in RPG's, considered the Amiga 500 to be the greatest gift to computation since binary mathematics, was socially awkward and had the tendency to put myself down, rather than talk myself up. I could be snarky and childishly vindictive at times. I was a regular staffer at a local animé convention. I built Gundam kits, and played Warhammer… hell, I was actually a half decent miniature painter. I still enjoyed a cold beer…even more now that I couldn't have any anymore.

This was me, months ago…these traits were part of me long before I'd ever considered the whole 'turned into a girl in another universe to Pilot the big giant robot' as anything more than a fanfic scenario. I still did these thing… one look through the web browser cache on my own computer proved it.

Add to that a newfound enjoyment of athletics, long stockings when I absolutely had to wear a skirt and religious wearing of a steel bracelet around my wrist… these were among other little quirks I'd gained from Noriko.

Misato was right.

I wouldn't lose myself. All those things I'd enjoyed… I still would. I would gain more from Noriko….that still scared me a great deal…but it would still become part of this thing that is 'myself'.

Myself was always changing, evolving as I met new people or encountered new concepts. Two months ago, myself would never have even considered facing an Angel in combat with the fate of the world on my shoulders. Now, I'd beaten one

And so.

Well before Episode 26.

I accepted this 'myself' as this changing person, always evolving as a sum of experiences and ideas. I am myself, and it was okay to be myself.

There were no trophies, no congratulations on top of a big blue ball with poor bus service… there didn't have to be. I truly felt good about it. A heady feeling of freedom.

To celebrate, I treated myself to boiled pasta shells in curry sauce for dinner. Nice and healthy, nice and spicy.

I…I

And that's the end of that chapter. Jesus that's a big one. Thanks to Cattynebulart, and the inhabitants of Spacebattles, TFF and Evageeks, for comments and such.

First of all, Noriko's nightmare is a reference to part 7 of "And if that Don't work" by Sunshine Temple. I won't give away too many details about it because it's a pretty big spoiler. There're also a few slightly obvious references to "I was a Teenaged Dummy Plug" around in the story… which in some ways ended up inspiring this thing.

The end of this part surprised me a bit…. I'd originally planned for it to have a much more despairing resigned feel to it, but based on some C&C, I gave Noriko a little bit of happiness and progress rather dropping the weekly mountain of angst on her to whine through. It's a little bit of a mood whiplash. Does it work?

It also means I've to re-plan part 12. In a similar vein, Asuka does a lot this chapter… especially her 'leadership', her father appearing and accidentally spurring Shinji into talking with his father. How does this come across?

I'm trying to do the changes building upon changes thing…..

Also. Because it's been highlighted by a few people... you're supposed to notice most of the pop-culture references. It's not just me being twee. They're there to be noticed, and are pretty plot relevant. Just think, how would 'a pop culture wiki' exist in a way Noriko could remember and recognise well enough to even consider trying her old login? It should be inconceivable with such a different universe, shouldn't it?

Next time, Noriko reads her diary,
Misato gets promoted to Major,
Shinji gets to do character development courtesy of alcohol and Noriko's recollection of a fanfic she once wrote,
The Tenth Angel decides it's not going to do what some damned TV series says it should,
Noriko faces and Angel she might really lose to.
And there may be prime starfish if I can't think of a better way to shoot down an orbiting Angel in the meantime.
And there'll be lots of fanservice...

-Dartz