The groceries fell to the floor, the contents of the bag rattling and spilling across the kitchen tile like bones cast by an oracle. Shinji was immediately drawn to the sound by surprise, looking up from Asuka and into the glazed-over expression of his guardian, Misato Katsuragi. As soon as his eyes met hers, the image of his mother Yui surged forth unbidden into his mind, and he panicked. As a sudden deluge of guilt and shame swept over him, he quickly released Asuka from his embrace and held up his arms like a convicted felon. His mouth opened as if to say something, but he didn't know what to say. No words came to him.

From the doorway to the apartment, the scene unfolded before Misato in slow motion. Previous anger with the enigmatic mumblings of Ritsuko she'd heard earlier that day added to the fact that she was hung-over and, having given herself to Kaji yet again, she felt dirty and miserable. As she'd driven home, she'd pictured Shinji in her mind, busying about the kitchen in Asuka's body, dusting and tidying up. She had longed for the moment she could prepare dinner alongside him. She'd try talking to him about the recent mix-up, try to get him to confide in her. But…

"Asuka…you're the only thing in my life I care about."

The only thing.

In several millionths of a second, her world was swept into darkness. The justifications for her continued existence were being eroded, one by one, by her failures to feel genuine empathy for everyone in her life. Her failures at being human. Yet true to form, whenever the subject of her social incompetency was broached, she was quick to pass the blame. It was his fault that she didn't know how to love. How to show love. It was his fault that she was repeatedly used and abused by every male figure in her life. And it was his fault that she could not endure the day and maintain her sobriety because her soul had become an emotional minefield, and she was much to afraid to defuse the shortcomings of her reality. I hate you, father, for abandoning me.

And now Shinji was abandoning her, just like he had. Just like Kaji had before him. It was a cycle of endless repeats, a morbidly hilarious waltz of the Fates and she was never in step to the music. It was more humiliating, this time, that a woman as outwardly decorated and socially applauded as herself could be rejected by an insignificant and timid little child. And twice. First, he'd rejected her as a mother, locking himself away in his room, listening to his cassettes and ignoring her attempts at getting her foot in the door. Then secondly, he'd repulsed her physical advances, her attempts to make him a man. These too were inherently selfish, for it was she, not Shinji Ikari, that so desperately wanted to see him eschew the yolk of adolescence and step into the shoes of responsible adult. It was she.

Shinji's mouth fell open wide, and she fought back the urge to vomit, and steadied herself in the doorway. "I… I'll leave you two alone," was all she could muster, every word painstakingly sedate and hollow. She turned and left without another utterance, closing the door quietly behind her. Shinji started to climb to his feet and run after her, but Asuka grabbed his wrist and held him fast in place.

"Shinji!" she breathed heavily.

"What? Asuka, I have to—"

"Stay with me," she said shakily, averting her eyes to the floor, unable to even look at the third child. "Stay with me," she repeated.

"Asuka, I have too—"

"Stay with me."

Yui.

"Stay with me…"

Mother…

"Don't leave me…"

I have to…

"I need you…"

You musn't run away…

Shinji stood rooted in place, his heart pounding like cannonballs in his eardrums. He was terrified that his words had just obliterated Misato in the most cruel and unimaginable way and he needed to explain himself immediately. But on the other hand, he'd gotten somewhere with Asuka, and she was saying things besides calling him "idiot" or "baka", meaningful things that he may never be privileged enough to ever hear again. He was juxtaposed between the curious world of adolescent pursuits and the brink of manhood. It was a decision Asuka made for him.

Releasing her grip, Asuka let Shinji's hand fall to the floor. She watched the tears leave her eyes and stain the carpet.

"Just go," she muttered.

"What?" stammered the third child.

"Go do what it is you want to do," she said coldly, no emotion in her voice. "It's fine. I understand."

Shinji looked at Asuka—at himself—and wanted to say so many things. He wanted to tell her everything, right then and there, about how he felt about his father, about his feelings of betrayal and his mother, and of things in his life that made him so blundering and incompetent. He wanted to apologize to her for every time he'd hurt her, and he wanted to tell her how good of an EVA pilot she was. But he told her none of these things; instead, Shinji Ikari uttered a strange syllable, and his hand twitched like a priest splashing holy water upon the bare flesh of the newly indoctrinated, and he ran for the door. The thermostat switched on.

It was freezing outside, and Shinji was only dressed in minimal attire. His teeth began to chatter as he swiveled his head from side to side, trying to tell which way Misato had gone. Suddenly, he saw the residue of puke by the far left staircase, and he was hot on the woman's trail. He took the stairs in sets of two, his bare feet clunking noisily upon the metal. He thought of Misato.

I musn't run away…

The moon was hiding behind clouds, and it wasn't very bright, but Shinji found that the second child had remarkable night vision, and he could make out Misato's stumbling silhouette headed for the parking lot. He called out to her, and heard her curse, and he launched into a sprint.

"Misato!"

"Leave me alone! You're just like everybody else!"

"What? No!"

"Shinji, just go back upstairs! You'll catch a cold, damn it!"

Shinji rounded Misato and placed Asuka's hands firmly on the major's shoulders. He shook her.

"Hey! Listen to me for a moment!" he shouted.

Misato started to weep. Shinji let his arms fall to his sides. He hadn't truthfully worked out what he had planned to say to try to console the woman, or even how. He wasn't good at improvising, though, and he knew it.

"I'm bad at things like this," he tried to explain. "I'm sorry I hurt you! I always find a way of hurting people somehow—that's why I just try to stay out of everyone's way… I… I don't know what I was saying back there but it wasn't true. I care about you too, Misato! I care about you a lot!"

Misato couldn't look at him. She couldn't watch the boy try to produce a false apology out of sympathy for her emotional state. But she was still vaguely intoxicated, and his words helped her focus on the here and now.

"Misato I just… I never really had a mom so I don't know how to act… I… I'm not a very good make-believe son to you, am I?" he concluded dimly.

The purple-haired commander began to cry, joyful tears, and she hugged him tightly to her chest. All of her sexual frustration, for the moment, dissipated, and she once more became the motherly figure she had once tried to be for Shinji Ikari.

"I failed you," she said. "I failed you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Shinji shook his head. "No, no it isn't that at all, Misato. You're wonderful. You didn't have to do any of this for me, but you did. My father never did anything like this for me. He would never let me live with him."

Misato continued to cry, her shoulders shaking as she wept. She just felt glad to have Shinji Ikari in her life. He was special. Young and naïve, but special. And he meant the world to her.

"Promise me," she whispered in his ear. "Promise me that you will always talk to me about everything you are feeling," she ordered.

"I promise," Shinji said, with a smile that looked terribly out of place on the irascible German's freckled face.

---

The buzzing of the alarm clock at six o'clock the next morning was perhaps the most unpleasant and dissonant noise Shinji Ikari had ever awoken to. He groaned, turning in his bed and pulling the blankets up over his head. He heard a shuffle from outside his room, then a door being opened. He cursed quietly.

"Shinji, get your lazy ass out of bed!" he heard his own voice say. His eyes flashed open, and he sat up in bed, finding himself staring at his own face that was contorted into what he guessed must have been a look of irritability. He wasn't entirely sure.

"What… what time is it?"

"Time to start getting ready for school, nimwit!" Asuka blared like a company of trumpeters.

"School?" Shinji moaned. "Really? Do we have to?"

Asuka's jaw fell open. "Hey!" she retorted, "isn't that my line?"

"Okay, whatever," Shinji muttered, "let me just sleep ten more minutes…"

"Ten more minutes my aunt!" roared the German girl, yanking the covers off Shinji's half-asleep form. She shrieked, throwing the covers back over him quickly.

"You didn't tell me you sleep naked!" the second child hissed.

"You didn't ask," Shinji snorted uncomfortably.

"Well here," she said, throwing a pile of neatly-folded clothes down on the foot of the bed. "It's my uniform, and if you so much as get one tiny ounce of dust on it I will slap you senseless, even if you are leasing my own damn body! You hear me, third child?"

Shinji looked at the clothes and turned a deep shade of red. "You want me to wear your uniform?"

"Better than you going to school in my birthday suit!" she shot back quickly. "Get in the shower. And be quick."

"Are you always this bossy in the morning?" Shinji asked.

"Yes. Now haul ass."

Shinji wrapped the blanket around himself and padded over to the bathroom. Asuka followed him.

"What are you doing?" he said mortified.

"Waiting for you to shower," she answered simply.

"Wait, what? You can't be in here while I take a shower!"

"I'll be damned if I'm not," the German folded Shinji's arms across his chest. "I'm going to be on Shinji Patrol twenty four hours a day, seven days a week until Ritsuko can figure out how to change us back to ourselves. Making sure you don't do anything perverted."

"I would never do something like that!" the third child hissed defensively.

"Only because you know what I would do to you if I found out you did!" Asuka countered.

"Ok whatever," mumbled the other, switching on the water and waiting for it to heat up. He looked at Asuka. "Do you mind looking the other way?"

"It's my own damn body!"

"It's still embarrassing!"

Asuka sighed deeply. "Oh, for crying out loud! Fine!" The German looked at the sink while Shinji Ikari quickly scrambled behind the shower curtain.

"You touch me…"

"…I'm dead. Got it."

Asuka listened, mortified, to the sound of the shower water splashing against her body, her mind conjuring all kinds of disturbing images as to what Shinji was doing behind that flimsy curtain. "Make sure you shampoo my hair," she added, trying to distract herself from the humiliation of everything.

"You know," Shinji said from the shower, "you've had a look at my naked body too, you know…"

"Believe me," Asuka said darkly, "there's not much to look at."

Both of them finished the rest of the event in silence. When Asuka heard the faucet stop running, she stood up and handed Shinji a towel. "Dry off," she said. "I'll blow dry my own damn hair."

Back in Asuka's bedroom, Shinji sat on the chair in front of the German's vanity table, his eyes shut, a pleasant smile glued upon his face as he felt his own fingers work their way through Asuka's long hair, massaging his scalp, letting the warm air currents heat his skin. The feeling was so good that goose bumps rose all along his neck and arms.

"Asuka?" he blurted.

"What?"

"This feels really good."

"Don't get used to it."

"Okay."

When Asuka was finished, she threaded hair clips into her long russet bangs, examining herself into the mirror, before handing Shinji the uniform again. She dressed him as quickly as she could, blushing profusely. It was an extremely strange feeling, dressing herself from the perspective of Shinji Ikari. She'd imagined it many times in her head, but now she was witnessing it all first hand. She shook the image from her mind angrily. What a dork!

"How do I look?"

"Sexy, duh. You're me."

Shinji giggled girlishly, the covered his mouth, mortified.

"What the hell was that?"

"I don't know," he admitted.

"Don't ever do that again."

"I'll try not to. It felt really strange."

"Whatever, now go make breakfast really quick. I'm always starving in this damn body."

"What would you like?"

"I don't know, numbskull, whatever Misato has around!"

"How about omuraisu*?"

"Sure, that's fine."

Asuka followed Shinji into the kitchen and watched him start preparing the food. He was fast, efficient, and seemed to take pleasure in it. This confused the hell out of Asuka.

"How did you learn to cook?" she asked finally, unable to stand him being better at something she rightly knew she ought to be far superior at.

"I don't know… I guess from my mother maybe."

"I thought your mother died when you were young and you don't remember much about her," Asuka said flatly, then checked herself as soon as she'd said it. How the hell had she known that? Had Shinji ever told her about his mother? She didn't recall a moment they'd discussed their parents—it was a topic she was extremely desirous of avoiding. Then how…?

Shinji was staring at Asuka with an equally confused expression. "Did I ever tell you…" he trailed off strangely.

Asuka shook her head. "I… I'm not sure to be honest."

Shinji returned to the stove, quiet for a moment, then said, "Well my father never cooked for me, so I don't know where else I would have learned it."

"Taught yourself maybe?" Asuka offered.

Shinji shrugged. "It's kinda weird, but I don't remember a lot from my childhood. Maybe I don't want to remember…"

"So who has a childhood worth remembering anyway?" the second child said quickly, awkwardly.

"I don't know," Shinji said quietly.

At that moment, Misato walked into the kitchen and grinned. "You kids almost ready? Oh, Shinji, what'cha makin'?"

Asuka's irritability was renewed by Misato's shameless vitality. "Omuraisu," she cut in. "And it's not like you had anything to do with it."

"After school today, Ritsuko would like to meet with you both," Misato noted, floating over Shinji's shoulder and gazing down into the pan. Her mouth began to water. "Shin-chan, you're so good at this. I'm jealous."

"Hey, easy there cadet, give the guy some room to do his thing," the German said.

Shinji turned around, holding the frying pan, a huge grin on his face. "Itadakimasu**!"

---

Shinji's nervousness at going to school as Asuka didn't actually hit him full force until he entered the parking lot. He turned white as a sheep, recalling how he'd been taunted and jeered as a child by his so-called peers. He gripped the door handle of Misato's car as if for fear of his life. Asuka was already out of the vehicle before Misato noticed his apprehension.

"Shin? What's wrong?"

"I can't do this," he whispered.

"Sure you can, what's the big deal?" Their eyes met, and she understood. "Don't worry, everyone already knows, and they're ready to help you out with the adjustments."

"Yeah, that's exactly what I'm worried about," Shinji whimpered, imagining the looks on Toji Suzuhara and Kensuke Aida's faces when they saw him.

And their faces when they saw him were exactly how he predicted. His ears turning purple, he pretended not to notice them and went and sat as quietly and as unobtrusively in his window seat as was humanly possible for a tall, ginger-haired girl in a classroom full of petite, raven-haired Japanese, to be. Asuka seated herself next to Hikari as usual and leaned back in her chair in typical Asuka fashion. She tried not to notice the fact that everyone in the class, the teacher included, was staring at them both incredulously. Hikari leaned over and teased, "My, Asuka, you sure do look hot today!"

"Shut it," Asuka grimaced.

Toji and Kensuke descended upon Shinji like pillaging Huns. Toji barred the window to his left, leaning against the wall, folding his arms and smiling goofily, and Kensuke knelt to Shinji's right holding a camcorder in one hand.

"Guys, please don't make a big deal out of this," he muttered.

"Shinji, is that really you?" Kensuke said. "Please state your name for the record."

Shinji shot him an icy glance. "Not now, Kensuke!"

Toji leaned forward, leering like the pervert he was, his entire face blushing a vibrant pink. "Hey Shinji, during the break, I expect a little courtesy fan service, I hope you know. I might never have a chance like this again."

"Don't you remember what happened the last time you snuck a look at Asuka's underwear?" Shinji protested.

"Well you're not going to slap me if I peek, are you?" the jock spat. "I mean, come on, Shinji, you're telling me you haven't… you know… checked things out?"

"No!" Shinji half-shouted, drawing still more attention to himself, and he instantly regretted it.

"Alright, class, please be seated," the instructor said. "Let's begin today's lesson." The teacher began leafing through his textbook. "Where were we?"

Asuka raised her arm. "Yes, Shinji," the teacher called.

Asuka frowned. "It's Asuka," she reminded him. The teacher reddened. "Oh, right, I'm sorry. Asuka."

"Page 118. Complex prepositional phrases."

"Right."

After summarizing the text in brief, the instructor wrote a sentence in English on the black board.

"Okay, who can tell me what parts of this sentence are prepositional phrases?"

Again, Asuka raised her arm.

"Shin…ah...Asuka."

"in the city' and 'to the store' are both prepositional phrases."

"Correct."

"The sentence is still wrong, though," she added haughtily.

"How so?"

"Because you can't say 'I'm going in the city to the store.' You always say what the place of action is first, then indicate direction or where the action is occurring. So you would say, 'I'm going to the story in the city.'"

"Well done, Asuka," the teacher beamed.

"Well now I know for sure you switched bodies," Toji jabbed.

"Anta baka," Shinji shot back quickly, then spent the rest of the class in irritable silence.

---

Ritsuko quickly picked her way through the crowd of whispering NERV employees to where all the commotion was. She espied Maya Ibuki, huddled up by her computer station, clutching herself defensively, sobbing, her blouse partly unbuttoned. She shot an acerbically questioning glance at First Lieutenant Makoto Hyuga, who pointed across the room to his right. She followed his finger to where First Lieutenant Shigeru Aoba had managed to restrain Kaji, the grizzle-chinned double agent grinning and rolling his eyes. He saw Ritsuko, and smiled.

"Will you tell your goons to unhand me?" he half-chuckled.

"What the hell is going on here?"

"He tried to rape her," Aoba said angrily, alluding to Maya.

Kaji snorted. "Now that's harsh, Shigeru. I've never forced myself on anyone."

"Shut the hell up!" the other barked. "Ritsuko, let me take this guy outside and let him have it!"

Ritsuko walked over to Kaji and smacked him hard across the face. The resounding whap was so loud that all the conversations going on between the NERV employees ceased forthwith. The slap echoed throughout the chamber.

"Ouch," Kaji mumbled.

"What the hell are you doing here?" the scientist demanded.

"Asking that beautiful programmer over there out on a date," the man gleamed.

Ritsuko slapped Kaji again, from the reverse side, causing a slight blood spray from his mouth.

"That was the last time I'll ask you before I make you simply disappear."

Kaji's face suddenly went dark. "Well, now that you mention it, I was trying to figure out where you guys were testing those artificial A.T. fields."

Makoto and Aoba exchanged nervous glances, and Ritsuko grabbed Kaji's arm and pulled him away from his restrainer. "Come with me," she snapped, leading him back down the corridor and into a vacant adjacent chamber, shutting the door behind them and locking it.

"I don't know what you may think you know," the scientist said as Kaji wiped the trickle of blood from his lip, "but it's best you let this trail go cold."

"Can't do it Rit," Kaji grinned, licking his lips. "You know that."

The woman sighed, then sat upon a swivel chair and glared hard at Kaji. "You really don't know what's good for you, do you?" she asked rhetorically.

"Nope."

"I see…"

"I'm going to get to the bottom of this," he said. "Whatever it is, it's so big even Misato doesn't know about it. I want some answers. This is the most tight-lipped I've ever seen anyone around here being about anything. I want to know what's going on down here."

"Have you ever heard of the Pappus Chain?" Ritsuko asked after a moment.

"Yes," Kaji nodded. Ritsuko stared hard at him. "No," he admitted.

"In the 3rd century AD, there was a wise Greek named Pappus of Alexandria. He was the last great mathematician of antiquity, and he produced the first outline of an infinite geometrical shape which he called the Pappus Chain."

"I assume you'll be getting to a point in the near future," Kaji said impatiently.

"What few people know is that Pappus had a son named Hermodorus who became infatuated with ancient Sumerian texts and the Egyptian cult of Amen Re. In his later days, he obsessed in the shape his father had described, finding several instances of it within the pyramids at Giza and also on ancient stone tablets dating back to the times of Hammurabi. In the only writing of his that survived, Hermodorus contends that this shape was the watermark of the divine, and that it was the gateway to paradise."

"I didn't come here for a history lesson," the double agent said stoically.

"NERV has also witnessed the Pappus Chain," Ritsuko continued, undaunted. "It manifests in the infinitesimal code the MAGI produce, it appears in the genetic structure of angels. It is a pattern of concentric circles that repeats on into infinity and represents the oneness of all things through which pulses the very heartbeat of the universe. In fact, Gehirn has known about the presence of this shape in the angels themselves since 2000."

She waited for Kaji to do the math. He looked at her, disbelievingly.

" What are you saying?"

"This shape occurs in all of the angels and in the energy the angels give off—A.T. fields. The molecular structure of the LCL fluid that fills the cockpit of each EVA is arranged in the shape of the Pappus Chain. The shape could very well be the key to human evolution, or it could even be the Higgs-Boson*** that science has been searching for since time began. All we can tell here at NERV is that if we understand this shape, we can understand the true nature of the enemy we are fighting."

"So you're experimenting with this 'shape' to try to use the angels' own DNA against them? You're creating a biological weapon."

Ritsuko hushed him quickly. "We've only been able to simulate an A.T. field at best, a weak one that wears off after a small cool-down period. Nothing groundbreaking or even remotely dangerous, let me assure you. All necessary precautions have been taken to—"

"Who greenlighted this project?" Kaji demanded. "Was it Gendo's bright idea to try to turn NERV into a bio-nuclear weapon manufacturing plant?"

"It's much higher then Gendo," Ritsuko almost laughed.

Kaji scrutinized the woman carefully. "How much higher?"

"I don't know," the scientist admitted, like scientists often do when their evidence runs out and their grant money runs dry. "I'm at the very bottom of all of this."

Kaji fumbled in his pocket and produced a cigarette. "You can't smoke in here," Ritsuko said, but he ignored her.

"So you're creating A.T. fields," Kaji mused. He thought a moment. "Does this have anything to do with Shinji and Asuka's latest misadventure?"

"We're not sure about that either," Ritsuko said. "However…"

"However what?" Kaji exhaled deeply.

"However the day it happened, we had outfitted both Unit 01 and Unit 02 with the experimental new force field."

"And you told no one?"

"We couldn't."

Kaji hopped off the table and started walking toward the door. Ritsuko suddenly looked nervous, and made to follow him.

"Where are you going?" she demanded.

"To talk to someone who can give me the answers I need," Kaji said, then left. Ritsuko listened to the sound of his footfalls grow faint, then sighed deeply.

"I'm sorry," Ritsuko said quietly.

*Omuraisu – Japanese rice omelet.

**Itadakimasu – "Let's eat!"

***Higgs-Boson – a hypothetical massive scalar elementary particle predicted to exist by the Standard Model of particle physics. It is the only Standard Model particle not yet observed. An experimental observation of it would help to explain how otherwise massless elementary particles cause matter to have mass.