Chapter 16 – Her Crimson Eyes

Rei stood before the mirror in the bathroom of her apartment.

Red eyes.

Every day she woke up, and stood before the mirror, and stared at her red eyes. Some days she woke up twice, three times, or even more, thanks to the resets. And each time she stood before the mirror, she stayed there a little longer. Logically speaking, if this kept up, soon she would spend the entire day in front of the mirror, thinking empty angry thoughts about her irrevocably red eyes.

My happiness now that I am with Ikari-kun should outweigh the fact that I have red eyes.

Why does it not?

She pondered this for some minutes.

Her hatred... no, hatred was too sullied a word. Her dislike. Her dislike of the color red was deep-seated, and she had not shared it with anyone, even her precious Ikari-kun. She loved the boy, but he was weak, and Sohryu would eventually torture it out of him, or the boy would slip and accidentally reveal it. If Sohryu ever learned that she hated... disliked the color red, it would all be over.

Infinity.

The length of time we will live thanks to the resets.

With an infinite amount of time, all possible outcomes will eventually arise. Sohryu will learn I dislike the color red.

It was unacceptable, yet inevitable.

This day was much like any other day, in that the sun was shining, the birds were singing, and the color red still existed. The Children walked to school, and the usual conversations and arguments wafted through the air.

"So, Mana, your reality's Touji is pretty much like ours?"

"Yeah."

"Have they... are the two of them..." Mana looked confused for a moment, then leaned over and whispered the answer into Hikari's ear. Giggle giggle blush giggle. Meanwhile Asuka had not stopped looking daggers at Mayumi, who was pissing off the redhead by completely ignoring her.

"I'm bored, Ikari-kun."

Shinji did not think much of this statement from Rei, except for the fact that it was slightly odd. But then Rei was slightly odd, so he shrugged it off. Thanks to the resets, boredom was something they would all have to endure. In between the seductions, the violent raging fights, and the pack of partially insane Angels that prowled outside of Tokyo-3.

The chamber with the purple coolant and fake entry plugs was quite crowded. The four Children were undergoing harmonics tests, and Mana was in a room off to one side in her own special pod undergoing neuro-sync training for her linkup with the Trident, which now sat in the launch bay beside the four Evas. Which were not at all happy.

"Why do I get stuck by the bucket of bolts?" Yui groused.

"You lost the match," Kyoko answered sweetly.

"I don't want to have to stand beside this walking scrapheap just because I suck at rock-Eva-scissors!" Yui said sharply.

"Quit complaining!" barked Naoko. "I'm trying to make Rei's harmonics test miserable, and 'Rit-chan' has made that more difficult than ever with these damned restraints!"

A technician happened to walk by Unit-01, and the biomechanoid's right arm broke out of its restraints, blurred over, and knocked the Trident into the wall and into a heap.

"Dammit!" Ritsuko yelled from her perch in the control room. "Not again!"

"Oh, I'm sorry," Yui's saccharine voice came through the control room speakers. "I thought that technician was Shinji, and I thought there was a girder coming down towards him, and so I was just trying to protect him!" Ritsuko ground her teeth together, not bothering to answer the irrepressible Eva.

Using all manner of cranes and lifting equipment, technicians began to put the Trident back into place, this time noticeably out of arms reach of any of the Evas, and Rei sat in her test-plug thinking deep dark thought about her eyes and Asuka's hair. Then the albino happened to notice something very important.

Ritsuko glanced at her monitor, and her eyes widened. She reached out and thumped the monitor as if she could not believe what it was reporting. "Rei," she started to say, but a hand covered her mouth, silencing her. A porcelain hand.

Meanwhile, a horrific scream of pain issued forth from Gendo's office, and the Rei undergoing the harmonics test began to smile. Israfel chose that moment to interrupt Rei's plan.

Asuka tried and failed to keep hold on the damnably agile leg of whichever half of Israfel she happened to have caught hold of.

"This isn't right!" the exasperated redhead shrieked, forcing her mother to raise a temporary AT-field inside the plug so the plug-wall itself wouldn't crack. "These… things… won't hold still!"

The Angel slipped out of her Eva's hands and immediately began spinning at a high rate of speed.

"gvrebblsellllephffft!" the Angel exclaimed, becoming a whirlwind of circular motion and joining its brother who had escaped Shinji's grasp. The two whirlwinds spun and bounced madly about on unpredictable paths of destruction throughout the city.

"Verdammt! Reset again, Shinji!" the frazzled German pilot yelled, the three other pilots watching helplessly as the Angels wrecked the city. "Shinji?! Why are we still here??"

"...ummm," Shinji found the words dying on his tongue as a familiar massive white figure snuck up behind Unit-02.

"What!?" the redhead screeched, her Eva's hands on its hips as she glared at Unit-01. "Why're you looking at me like-MMMPH!" Rei/Lilith's giant white hand had snaked around Unit-02's neck and placed a giant chloroform-soaked towel over Unit-02's face.

Now why would she do tha- Shinji's thoughts were rudely interrupted by a glowing white Rei-figure inside his entry plug that proceeded to seduce him. He promptly melted into a puddle of orange tang. As did everyone else on earth.

"-rdammt! Reset again, Shinji!" Asuka yelled. The three other pilots watched helpessly as the Angels wrecked the city.

"Okay..." Wait. Shinji looked at his video link to Unit-00 and did a double-take. "Wait, where's Rei?"

"Scheisse!" Asuka berated him. "Stop making people up and reset things, will you? I've got better things to do than sit inside a giant human fighting monstrous horrors from some other planet!"

A very confused Shinji reset them back to the beginning of the battle. The twin angels/tasmanian-devils promptly wiped the floor with them again. And again. And again. At this point, Misato ordered Shinji to reset things all the way back to the beginning of the day.

"You-all-need-more-training-and-I've-got-just-the-thing!"

Shinji, Asuka, Fate, and Mayumi stood before Misato in her apartment. Mana stood to one side, along with Touji, Kensuke, and Hikari. All of them were looking askance at two Twister pads which had been laid out on the floor, along with a boombox and two small monitors.

"What... the hell... is this?" Asuka finally asked.

"This," Misato vibrated happily, "...is-a-game. One I like to call: Twister-Twister-Revolution!"

Silence greeted the absurd statement.

"Now!" Misato's ear-splitting grin grew even wider. "All we have to do is decide the pairings!"