Author's Note(s)

Happy holidays and a happy new year (unless you're Chinese, then, uh, I guess I'll have to write y'all your own 过年 post!) to all my readers. As I had indicated with my post in the Evangelion Exchange forum ( forum/Caudimordax-s-Clubhouse/145294) this was going to be a double chapter of sorts. I really felt that the story was reaching some sort of a climactic moment, and that combined with the fact that I worked 135 hours during the highest volume retails months in the United States, I decided it was best to take my time with this chapter and, rather than breaking up something that shouldn't have been broken up for the sake of "chaptering", I could just deliver it right in the first place.

That being said, I would also like to say that of all the chapters to date, this is probably the one I am the most proud of, if for no other reason than for the exhaustive amount of research required to write it. Unless you have ever endeavored to write unfathomably descriptive NGE fanfiction yourself, you may be surprised to learn that information about many of NGE's physical locations and locales is surprisingly scarce—if it even exists at all. This is particularly true of the interior geometry and architectural layout of NERV Headquarters itself. Even some of the most esteemed sources of web information on NGE (Evageeks, and others) are maddening shy on providing more than a hint of the layout of this physically enormous place. Furthermore, you matter how exhaustive your search, you will not be able to deduce the actual use for the Reiquarium/Dummy Plug Plant. Still nobody knows who killed Ryouji Kaji, we don't know the true origin of SEELE, and other mysteries continue to abound throughout the NGE universe no matter how many new discs, manga, or supplementary materials and interviews are released. From here on out, I will be taking a few liberties in answering a few of these questions to some extent (as Anno himself so often encouraged his fans to do) based on my own perceptions of the series (and EoE), to advance the story but also to offer one's legitimate opinions about the subject matter. Yes, this is ultimately a silly little story about a highly-improbably genderswap and the antics which ensue, but I have never penned a word, no matter the genre, no matter the plot, that didn't contain a message. In this next whopper of a chapter, some of that message will (hopefully) begin to become clear.

Cheers,

~Caudimordax

"Even if it seems certain that you will lose, retaliate. Neither wisdom nor technique has a place in this. A real man does not think of victory or defeat. He plunges recklessly towards an irrational death. By doing this, you will awaken from your dreams."

Hagakure, Book of the Samurai

The S.C. Magi System thrummed noisily as it obediently analyzed the combined data from both the surviving Evangelion and the Command Bridge gathered during the initial engagement. The trio of irreplaceable supercomputers were themselves a milestone in an ever-growing list of NERV's scientific accomplishments. The hypercube architecture of its toroidal network consistently sustained a truly mindboggling 1.01667 exaFLOPS of data analysis and, cooled by numerous tiers of superconducting magnets made of copper-clad niobium-titanium, the programming of the machines themselves was so complex that it had arguably become self-aware, rewriting and perfecting many of its own original protocols to become more efficient. At the time legendary biophysicist and engineer Dr. Naoko Akagi created it, proponents and opponents alike went so far as to call it, and not always in jest, 'Skynet'. The Magi platform, emulated and reconstructed at enormous expense in virtually every other NERV branch across the globe, was the beating heart of NERV itself, for without the Three Wise Men, Casper, Balthazar and Melchoir, nothing NERV had accomplished to date would have ever been possible. More than this, it was a genuine remnant of Dr. Ritsuko Akagi's mother, and, at times, a haunting reminder that nothing great is ever without great cost.

Ritsuko contemplated this old adage in silence as her eyes darted quickly over the printouts of the Magi's results thus far. Such meditations often helped a woman of such rehearsed severity keep her cool. Complete detachment, she knew, was a requisite for survival at NERV; those who brought any sort of emotion into the workplace other than ambition didn't last long. Gendo Ikari had made that fact abundantly clear numerous times before. Still, the chief of Project E wondered if the senior Ikari ever considered the irony of the fact that the Evangelions themselves were, for lack of a better explanation, driven by the emotions of their pilots.

"Major Katsuragi must feel terrible," a somber voice said, rousing the scientist from her thoughts.

Upon rejoining reality, Ritsuko found herself staring into the troubled demeanor of her understudy, Maya Ibuki. "How do you think I feel? I'm the one who sent Asuka into battle."

"W-well yes, but she did contradict a direct order, so Ritsuko-sempai is not at fault," the first lieutenant replied.

Ritsuko ignored the sentiment. "They reeled in Asuka's umbilical cable, but the other end was missing."

"Then… without power…"

"There's not much energy left in the internal batteries; if Asuka doesn't waste it groping blindly in the dark, if she stays in the most minimal life support mode, then she can survive for sixteen hours."

"I see," Maya whispered quietly. The young analyst swiveled in her chair and looked at Dr. Akagi for a moment, her jaw tightening as though she wanted to say something, but decided against it, and once more turned to face her terminal.

Where the hell are you, Commander Ikari?

Ritsuko frowned, then turned, the swishing of her lab coat catching several nearby technicians by surprise. "Maya, I need to… take care of something… I leave the floor to you for the moment." She looked over her shoulder at the girl. "Don't let me down," she added, before strutting off, her heels clicking noisily on the floor as she left.

"I… I-I'll do my best, sempai!" the other responded, reddening visibly across her button nose.

The wracking cough that escaped the senior Ikari's lips was the sort of thundering, guttural cough that would have torn the throat of a lesser man to shreds. Gendo Ikari, incidentally, was not a lesser man.

Bringing his right hand swiftly and defensively to his mouth, Gendo made a fist and wheezed into his white gloved hand. The horrendous croup that ailed him sent his spindly body into a fit of trembling and shuddering, and when his hand left his mouth to steady himself against the wall, he left a bloody smear along the polished paneling of the corridor. Then, as though nothing had ever happened, the commander fixed his glasses upon the bridge of his nose, wiped his mouth with his NERV-issue handkerchief, then straightened himself up, fastidiously rectifying his jacket collar.

"The sickness is accelerating," Rei observed, beside him, her crimson eyes fixed. "You should seek medical treatment for—"

"Fine," the senior Ikari rasped gruffly. "I'm fine. I don't need doctors. I don't need tests. I need you to do exactly as I ask. Nothing more. Is that perfectly clear to you?"

Rei stared hard for a moment. She slowly, almost intrepidly, began to reach out with her arm to touch the commander. "But sir, you can't—"

Gendo Ikari spun around quickly, looming over the blue-haired first child, his nostrils flaring, eyes bulging with barely-repressed ire. "I don't want sympathy or pity, least of all from you!" he admonished the young girl. "You were merely conceived in a Petri dish! Does the child of a test-tube even know how to feel sympathy?"

The first child shook her head. "No…"

"Then don't impugn me your false compassion! If you want to serve me well, you speak only when spoken to, and you will carry out your mission."

"But…"

Gendo's spectacles flashed. The corners of his mouth tightened. "…'but'?"

Rei's eyes locked earnestly upon the commander's. "The Commander is aware…that not everything is lost in the copy-over. While each cycle is a somehow… different… experience… often confusing and foggy… it is not entirely… unpleasant. A part of me from the time before lingers on… shadows in my consciousness. You might say it feels like… sharing one's mind with a lonely ghost." She nodded emphatically, her cerulean hair bobbing slightly. "It is… true… that I do not understand fully what it is to be…sympathetic...toward another person… but I… want… to learn. Will the Commander teach me?"

The senior Ikari scowled, brushing past the girl and grabbing her wrist, tugging her after him. "I don't have time for this," he barked. "We're under attack by an angel, if it hadn't occurred to you, and without a doubt before long the entire division is going to be combing these halls looking for me, if they aren't already. We don't have much time. We need to go down to the Rookery—immediately."

"Yes sir," the first child nodded.

Entombed in the most subterranean vaults of NERV HQ there lay a terrifying secret. Over a kilometer below ground level, beneath 22 reinforced plates of radiation-resistant silica nanofibres, one man's crucified obsession bled mutely into a bath of tangerine-colored slime. The 'ooze', dubbed by SEELE and its agents Lilin Continuity Liquid, cascaded forth from the punctured appendages of the giant masked entity and down the enormous cross upon which it was impaled, pooling at the base of the sanguine monolith before being piped upward into the shadowy recesses of the atrium.

The heretical altar upon which Lilith, the Seed of Life and progenitor of human existence on Earth, was pinned was not the only secret warehoused within the cryptic and labyrinthine floors of Central Dogma. The pipes and cables rising forth from the artificial lake of LCL beneath the second angel extended vertically two dozen levels upward, branching out like capillaries, pumping the lifeblood of NERV to various sections of the complex including the Evangelion Cages and Terminal Dogma from levels B-20 to B-28, the Backup Command Center on B-30, and the top secret and restricted Sigma and Archaea units spanning the remainder of the floors beneath. While only a handful of NERV personnel knew about the Pribnow Box and Artificial Evolution Laboratory housed within the Sigma region, fewer still were cognizant of the Dummy Plug Plant, or Rookery, buried so deeply in the bowels of NERV even the Human Instrumentality Commission wasn't entirely aware of its existence. An awareness Gendo Ikari had labored tirelessly to forestall.

The Commander of NERV had always found the name Dummy Plug Plant both distasteful and inaccurate; since its moniker implied a sort of manufactorum where dummy plugs were mass-produced and assembled, Gendo had taken to calling it The Rookery for much more appropriately symbolic reasons. Though he'd first heard it used by Dr. Naoko Akagi when describing the habits of penguins during the South Pole expeditions, the senior Ikari denounced the notion that his retention of the word was sentimental. Sentimentality, he maintained, was merely a hurdle for instrumentality. It was a difficult position to defend for a man who had spent half a lifetime trying to reunite himself with his dead wife.

Gendo hurried Rei swiftly through the meandering corridors of the hexagonal-shaped superstructure until they at last came to the one elevator in the entire headquarters that descended to floor B-42. Protected by military-spec cryptography, use of the lift required passing one of the most formidable Fujitsu security systems ever designed by man; a biometric Fuzzy extractor along with a retinal scan and voice print analysis ensured that only Gendo—and those most valuable to him—had access to the NERV's deepest vaults. As the senior Ikari voiced his name to open the titanium-welded locks to the elevator car, he heard a gentle, almost saccharine voice sound behind him.

"As a guest of this institution I would, under normal circumstances, consider my interruption of your affairs exceedingly impolite and uncivil, but given the circumstances as they are… well… I am sure a man of your caliber can certainly understand why I cannot simply allow such behavior to go unchecked during this time of… crisis."

The commander of NERV whirled around to find the spindly, silver-haired SEELE spy staring him down, sorcerous red eyes glinting in the flickering light of the corridor. Though Gendo maintained his composure as best he could, he felt the blood drain right out of his face, and the uneasiness he suddenly felt made him extend his arm out and to the side, defensively shielding Rei as though from a potential attacker. The titanium locks hissed and slid open as the machine finished identifying the commander's identity. The three of them remained motionless, silent.

"To ignore your official mandate," the boy continued at length, "is a violation of your sanctioned duties as commander of this institution."

Gendo fixed his glasses. "What do you know of my mandate?"

Ignoring the question, Kaworu's eyes flashed over to Rei. She stared at him mutely from behind Gendo's outstretched arm.

"This is a restricted area," the first child stated bluntly. "It is off limits to unauthorized personnel."

"Quite right, First Child," Nagisa mused, taking one small, measured step forward. "To unauthorized personnel, this area is indeed off limits. But he knows already that I've been authorized. He knows already how I knew where to find him in this rats' maze of a place you call headquarters."

"This doesn't concern you," Gendo growled darkly. "I will return to the command bridge in due time. There is something… personal… I must do first. Now before I have you thrown out of my building, go back to—"

Kaworu took a second step forward as he spoke as Gendo's brow twitched anxiously. There was scarcely twenty feet between them. "How long, Ikari, did you think this preoccupation of yours could continue without SEELE taking the necessary steps to ensure the Instrumentality Project is seen to fruition? They, who have existed for hundreds of years, are many; you are but one. And you are still… human. With—or without you—Keel Lorenz will make the grand design a reality."

"Tch!" Gendo hissed. "You serve a master who is himself more machine than man. What right does he have to dictate how the end of human history—the end of Evangelion—to be written?"

Kaworu smiled, and took another step forward. "None. No more than you, that fascinating example of Lilin science beside you, or the key to your legacy upstairs fighting for who and what he believes in. Nevertheless, let us not mince words. All men have beliefs… have dreams… but few have the… means… to realize them. Keel Lorenz and SEELE have those means. You are here by their good graces, Ikari, and it is their favor you must curry if you insist on going further down this road you're on."

Gendo slowly ushered Rei backward with his arm, pushing her into the elevator car. His spectacles glinted in the light.

"There is something critically important you seem to forget, boy," the senior Ikari nearly snarled. "I am not nearly as vain or as cavalier as you make me out to be. I am not doing any of this because I want to be heralded as some kind of… God!" He coughed hoarsely, then spat on the ground before him. "I find the very idea of being lionized as such repugnant. No. When you have been in this business as long as I have, you come to learn that prestige is but a mere shadow of power, and power, you pretentious cur, is the only means that truly matters." The commander of NERV laughed as he took two strides backward into the elevator car. "Power," he said again, "is simply that—power. And since I have Evangelions, I have the power. SEELE is along on this ride by my good graces, and you will go back to them and tell them that I will no longer need the support of the U.N. to move ahead with the next phase of the project. Let it not be said that I am a needlessly cruel or unreasonable man; I shall certainly offer them all front row seats when the red curtain rises."

Kaworu brushed his silvery bangs from his face. His eyes gleamed. "Power acquired by violence is little more than a usurpation," he warned cannily, "and lasts only as long as the force of he who commands prevails over that of they who obey. In just the short time I have been here, even I can see that there are far too many compassionate souls here at NERV for you to manipulate, control and exploit indefinitely."

Gendo slammed his gloved-hand upon the switch to close the lift. As the titanium bars slid back into place, he beamed a smile at the fifth child. "I am NERV," he said as the doors closed.

The inside of Leliel's pocket dimension was dark, claustrophobic, and like a crypt. The only discernable sound was the steady thrum produced by the diminishment of most of Unit 01's systems being rerouted to life support. It was neither cold nor hot—although the second child guessed that was most likely due to the conductive properties of LCL—and the stank of blood was unusually poignant. When blaming others, berating herself, cursing Shinji's name, and muttering choice German obscenities grew wearisome, she reclined in her seat with an exasperated sigh.

"I never knew doing nothing could be this tiring," she moaned. She arbitrarily ran through a checklist of the Eva's data sensors by clicking the switches on the joystick controls. "It's been twelve hours since I switched to life support mode. My… my life will end in… four or five hours… And I'm going to die stuck in this body…"

After a while, the minutes and hours began to blend together into an indeterminate blur of timeless decay. The second child's eyes fluttered slowly open as though from a long-forgotten dream, then she gasped with a start.

"Th… the water's getting cloudy! That means the purification systems must be failing!" The scent of blood was now overwhelming, nauseating. "M… Mein Gott! It smells like blood in here!" Asuka reached out helplessly with Shinji's arms and fidgeted as best she could with the exit hatch to the cockpit. "Come on!" she screamed. "You're a man! You're supposed to be strong! Open up!"

When the handle didn't budge a fraction of an inch in response to Asuka putting the maximal amount of strength she could muster into the operation, she lapsed into a state of sheer panic. Clawing and pounding at the hatch to the entry plug, her frantic screams and yelps reverberated throughout the tiny cabin of the machine. "Open up! Pleeeeease! Let me out! Misato! Shinji! Ritsuko! Rei! Mother!"

At that precise moment, the image of Asuka's dead mother Kyoko and her doll both hanging, side by side, from the structural beams of the dropped ceiling in a hospital chamber, surged unbidden into her mind. The shriek that escaped Asuka's lips reached a pitch unknown to the true owner of the body himself.

"That's it. That's the green light. The Krull Initiative was just approved," Dr. Akagi said, closing her flip phone. "The plan is," Ritsuko explained, "to drop all 992 existing N² mines into the target's center while simultaneously activating the A.T. field of the two remaining EVAs in such a way as to disrupt the hypothetical circuit that encloses the angel's pocket interior. If we concentrate enough explosive power during that same microsecond we could destroy the angel along with the Dirac Sea that makes up its body."

"But the damage to the EVA would be… Asuka wouldn't… what in the hell kind of rescue operation is this?!" Misato Katsuragi protested emphatically, hands flailing about before her as she accosted Ritsuko.

"Our priority is to get the EVA back," the other replied bluntly. "Even if it has to be destroyed in the process."

"Now wait a damn second!" the major protested angrily, her hands balled into tight fists.

"Under these conditions, the pilot's life is irrelevant."

Misato's open-handed palm arced down through the air, meeting its mark and hitting Ritsuko across the face so hard that the woman's spectacles were sent clattering to the floor several paces to the woman's right. The pseudo-blonde was caught by surprise, her mouth falling open as she brought her hand defensively—and instinctively—to her cheek. She blushed despite herself, biting her lower lip, momentarily aroused by the sudden physicality of the abuse. One of NERV's VTOL aircraft soared noisily passed behind them as the scientist straightened herself up, regaining her usual poise.

"It's your responsibility if Asuka's lost, Misato!" Akagi yelled, hand still pressed against her burning cheek. "You seem to have forgotten that! When the angel attacked, where were you exactly? Fucking that old fling of yours again?"

"That's none of your damn business!" Misato shot back angrily, visibly flustered by Ritsuko's assertion. "And that's sort of calling the damn kettle black, isn't it, given your current situation!" The scientist's jaw dropped open in shock, but the major continued on indignantly. "Why in the hell are you and Commander Ikari both so worried about recovering Unit 01 anyway?" She stepped forward and grabbed her friend by the frill of her lab coat. "What's so special about it?!"

"You've been given all the information, major!" the other shouted.

"That's bullshit!"

The purple-haired woman released her grip on the other's jacket, and the other stepped back two paces, straightening out her attire and fixing her hair arbitrarily.

"Misato… just… trust me," Ritsuko said coolly. "I'm taking command of this entire operation, effective immediately." She reached down, scooping her glasses up into her hand before brushing past her friend and speed-dialing the director of NERV field operations as she walked away. "Forward all flights to Kansai International Airport. Contact Air Traffic Control and the Air Transport Division…" The volume of the woman's voice diminished as she moved away, becoming indistinguishable amongst the humming of equipment, the shouting of military personnel and the nearby whir of occasional sirens.

Second Impact, Misato pondered quietly. Human Instrumentality Project. Adam. There's so many secrets that I'm in the dark about. Maybe I should ask him if he knows anything after all…

Major Katsuragi opened her phone and dialed Ryouji Kaji's digits against her better judgment. The answers she desired, Misato knew, could only be found in the enlistment of one man's confidence in particular. But whether she still possessed the requisite intuition—and glamour—to pierce the veil of lies he wore at all times remained to be seen.

There was a colossal glyph inlaid into the chamber floor, large and circular, exquisite in its intricacy yet antediluvian and out of place. A faithful reproduction of an ancient pagan summoning circle from the Ars Theurgia Goetia, it was perhaps fitting that the design, which encircled the central dais of the Dummy Plug Plant, was originally intended for sorcerers intending to harness the influence of otherworldly spirits. In the center of this stood a giant metal pylon and within it a tank large enough for an adolescent child, filled with LCL pumped into it from the steel veins and tubes coagulating to form a large, brain-shaped nexus just above it. Green lights engirded the periphery of the atrium, phosphorescing strings and patterns of letters like the base pairs of DNA. Gendo Ikari turned to face the small, blue-haired child beside him.

"As usual," he said flatly.

Rei nodded, and disrobed methodically. The first child tucked the stray locks of her beryline hair behind her diminutive ears before pressing the small button on her wrist, relaxing the adhesive fabric of her plugsuit and peeling it down over her pale, svelte shoulders. Like a second skin, the elastomeric fabric of the plugsuit clung to her body, and it required a small degree of fidgeting to pull the material down over her bust, hips and thighs. One it had been gathered around the girl's ankles, she gingerly stepped to the side, one delicate ankle at a time, before stooping down and collecting the garments in her arms. The first child then hung the plugsuit on the side of the bubbling LCL tank before her then turned to regard commander Ikari once more.

As the Rookery was so deep beneath the earth and so infrequently visited, the air temperature was cold enough to bring goose bumps to the first child's naked skin. The blue haired girl seemed to marvel inquisitively as the silky vellus hair along her arms and abdomen stood on end in response to the cool air of the room. Rei, who by virtue of her design was as anatomically benighted as she was thermostatic, practiced her usual stoicism, refraining from asking the senior Ikari the lingering question of why body hair and nipples reacted the way they did at lower temperatures.

Gendo Ikari removed his white gloves, one after the other, folding them scrupulously before placing them in the inside vest pocket of his suit jacket. He adjusted his spectacles before flexing the bare fingers of his hands. It felt strangely satisfying to the commander to be free of his trademark mitts, a privilege the burn scars along his palms rarely afforded him. And while the senior Ikari was fine letting the rest of the fools at NERV believe his choice to wear the gloves was a choice made out of vanity or chagrin, the real reason was far more sinister and secretive. So covert, in fact, that only Vice-Commander Kouzou Fuyutsuki had worked out the truth on his own. Although lately, there were several rogue elements within NERV who had become dangerously close to unraveling the mystery. And he'd have to deal with them—later.

"Are you ready?" Gendo asked Rei.

The adolescent girl nodded, exhaling deeply. "Yes, sir."

"Take me to Yui," the other replied, reaching forward and placing his right hand upon the first child's left breast. The flesh of her pale bosom swelled beneath Ikari's large, purposeful hand for a moment—before the hand itself disappeared inside of her chest.

It was a pleasantly tepid midsummer afternoon. A symphony of Cicadas played almost perpetually, recessing occasionally as a truck or bike went motoring past the shared-living apartment complex. Golden light spilled across the concrete balcony, past the fluttering curtains, and onto the bed where Gendo Rokubungi lay, tangled up in the sweaty body of Yui Ikari, gently nursing a post-coitus cigarette. It felt as though time itself had abandoned the two young lovers as they lay there, breathing still erratic, a hot mess of sticky skin and tired muscles.

Yui grinned broadly, scratching the stubble forming on Gendo's angular chin. "I think we've been here so long you're starting to grow a beard, Mr. Rokubungi," she teased.

Gendo exhaled deeply, then turned to regard the young woman beside him. "Oh, and exactly whose fault would that be, Ms. Ikari?"

"I wouldn't mind," Yui mused. "I think I might like you with a beard anyway." The woman laughed mirthfully as she playfully scratched Gendo's 5 o'clock shadow with her dainty fingertips.

"Hmph," the other huffed.

"What are you thinking about? I know that look all too well."

"We're both out of the university now, Yui," Gendo stated, his former nonchalance giving way to a semi-serious air. "We'll have to find work soon. Whatever carefree life we may have lived these past few years—it's over. We've got to get serious. Especially if…" He rolled over and placed his right palm upon Yui's naked belly. "Especially if you're serious about starting a family."

Yui smiled, but it was brief. She rose from the futon, snatching a lightweight silk kimono from off the top of her computer desk, wrapping herself in the fabric before walking out onto the balcony. Gendo observed her feminine body sway with a certain degree of satisfaction before extinguishing his cigarette in a dish and pursuing her. Rokubungi softly came up behind Yui, wrapping his arms around her waist and nibbling gently at her ear.

"You were serious about that… weren't you?" he asked, his hot breath on her neck causing her to moan slightly.

"Of course I was," the other replied.

"That's why we've got to make the necessary preparations. Be financially secure. Build a family reputation. So that our son or daughter will be provided for… and proud of his family's accomplishments."

"There's something I've been meaning to talk to you about on that matter, actually," Yui replied.

Gendo nuzzled his nose into the hollow between his lover's neck and shoulder. "What's that?"

"In a few weeks, there's going to be a science summit in Kyoto. Many important people are going to be there, Gendo, including prominent members from the U.N., including both the Security Council and the Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. Courtesy of our mutual friend Mr. Fuyutsuki, I've garnered the two of us invitations to the summit." The woman turned around to face him, still locked in his arms. "In terms of networking and job hunting, Gendo my love, this is about as good as it gets."

"I absolutely adore you," Rokubungi replied, kissing her deeply.

"Then why won't you listen to my advice anymore? You need it now more than ever."

Gendo Ikari pulled himself away from Yui and back into character. He was wearing his usual attire and she her own, the fashions of a doctor that mirrored strangely the regular apparel of Ritsuko Akagi. The senior Ikari gasped and shrank back.

"You promised me you would always look after our child. A promise you have failed to keep."

"You ask too much of me," Gendo muttered darkly. "You always knew from the start I was hardly proper father material. How could I be made to love something that reminds me of everything I've lost! Even now, you haunt me like a ghost every time I look at him!"

"So because our son reminds you of me you resolved simply to run away? To retreat further into this world of lies and treachery that we both swore to bring down instead of finding strength in the one remnant of me you still have at your disposal? What kind of coward runs away from his own son?"

"You couldn't possibly understand!" Gendo nearly shrieked. "You have never understood what it is like to live without meaning… to artificially conceive value for a life which hasn't any, and spend your entire career making others believe in it! You, Yui, who had family ties, who were beautiful and lusted after by dozens of men and women both, you who were naturally brilliant and gifted and possessed an eidetic memory that required such little study to retain the knowledge you acquired!" He spat to the side exasperatedly. "As a woman, particularly a beautiful woman, I do not expect you to understand. Your life, since birth, was fixed. Set. You could do whatever you wanted because others would always desire you, either for your body or your mind or your endless charisma. I, on the other hand, am merely a man, defined only through my accomplishments and the power I wield. When you left me, you took whatever identity beyond that I had, and left me only with power. What did you expect me to do?"

Yui Ikari now wore a resized duplication of Rei's plugsuit. "Certainly not try to synthesize the daughter we never had for your own emotional gratification. And daring to call her Rei after all that…"

"I did it for you," the senior Ikari grunted.

"You did it for yourself. You're doing this all for yourself. And it's going to destroy you. Look."

She gestured behind them, to the mountains in the distance where a sudden, blinding explosion detonated in the hills just beyond Tokyo. The cicadas chirping stopped. Everything was silent. Gendo squinted his eyes, barely able to see.

"You will destroy everything, Gendo Rokubungi, and I will not allow you to do so in my name. If you continue to ignore our only living child while tearing down everything and everyone else around you as you try to build this brave new world of yours, I will stop visiting you. I will cease meeting you in the memory stream, and you will have truly lost the living memory of our life together."

The wave of light and destruction grew closer.

"Yui!" Gendo wailed. "Don't do this! Don't you dare do this to me!"

"Go," Yui ordered sternly. "Our son needs you. And shortly, you will discover that you and he are not as different as you'd like to believe."

As Gendo's psychological manifestation of the Second Impact collided with he and Yui, his eyes snapped open, and he frantically pulled his hand forth from Rei's petite body. The girl fell to the ground, coughing and vomiting blood to the floor. Gendo, on the other hand, felt his usual stamina return, flooding through him like pure, unadulterated energy.

"Rei. You must use the Regeneration Tank immediately. I will need you and Unit 00 active and deployed within the next half hour."

"Y… y-yes, sir," the first child managed to choke out as she continued to heave blood onto the ground.

The train car sped forward along an unseen track amidst an endless sea of murky, orange light. Only a single train car, somehow mirrored against itself and stretching on into infinity, was occupied by the second child who, despite the sheer terrifying panic that had overwhelmed her earlier, sat impassively staring out the windows into nothingness. What roused her back to her senses was indescribable, like an arc of lighting tearing through her subconscious mind. Whatever it was, Asuka both felt and heart the interruption concurrently. Stranger still was the voice she heard was her own.

"Wh…who…?" the girl stammered.

"Who? Asuka Langley Sohryu."

"Baka!" the second child barked irritably. "I already know that."

"I am you. This self incorporates another self. This self has always been composed of two selves."

"Two? What on earth are you talking about?"

"Yes," the voice continued eerily. "The self which is observed, and the self which observes itself. To expound, there is the Asuka Sohryu that exists in your mind, the Asuka Sohryu that exists in Shinji Ikari's mind. The Asuka Sohryu that exists in Misato Katsuragi's mind. The Asuka Sohryu that exists in Rei Ayanami's mind. And the Asuka Sohryu that exists in Gendo Ikari's mind. All of these are vastly different perceptions of Asuka Langley Sohryu, yet each of them is a true Asuka Langley Sohryu. Clearly, what you fear are the perceptions of Asuka Sohryu that exist in the minds of others."

"You're wrong! I don't give a fig what other people think about me! All that matters is what I think of myself and just how totally awesome and better than everyone else I am!"

"If that were true, you would not place so much importance on presenting your perception of Asuka Sohryu to others. You have a desire to impress others, to challenge others, and to outshine others, which clearly indicates that you do care about what other perceptions of Asuka are like. Furthermore, without others to compare your own perception of Asuka to, your system of beliefs would cease to exist."

The second child squirmed uncomfortably in her seat. "Th… that's not true. Everything I do I do for myself!"

"Then why are you so afraid of being alone?"

The irascible child flushed through her cheeks. "I… I'm not afraid of being alone! I've been alone my whole life and I've done just fine for myself, thank you very much! I don't need anyone else! I'm not weak or needy, like Shinji or Misato."

A flash of memories flickered through Asuka's mind like a cinematic montage of past events, instances all where she'd tried to outpace her comrades on the field of battle, surpass her colleagues academically in school, or garner the most attention from males whilst in a group of friends or classmates. The girl pressed her hands against her cheeks, squeezing her eyes shut.

"S… stop it! G-get out of my head!"

"Will you live the rest of your life burying your pain and loneliness beneath a mountain of quantifiable evidence that your perception of Asuka Sohryu is superior? Will you continue to try so hard and score perfect marks because the truth of your self-perception is a flawed truth?"

"Piloting EVA is what I was born to do! It's only natural that someone like me has to be at the top of her game! There's nothing flawed with my perception!"

"Even though you know you're deceiving yourself?"

"Deceiving myself? How?"

The voice in the second child's head continue to reverberate through Asuka's fragile mind as the train sped forward into nothingness. Across from the second child now sat a six-year-old version of herself wearing a striped dress and red bows in her pigtailed hair. The image sent an icy chill down Asuka's spine.

"Even now, the physical perception of yourself is not in harmony with the mental perception of yourself, and you claim there is nothing flawed with your perception. You seem neither adept at synchronizing with the changes you've undergone nor cognizant of the fact that the human body, the vessel for the human soul, is completely irrelevant when deciding exactly what your inner self—the most intrinsic self—will be like. This you must learn if you are to adapt, because all change comes from within, not from without."

Asuka stared at the childlike manifestation of herself hatefully. "That's a bunch of crap! People only see what's on the outside anyway! That's all that matters!"

"If you do not accept that you are capable of initiating change within yourself, you will not be able to continue."

"Why should I have to change anyway? This world is full of nothing but pain and suffering! The only way to overcome it is to win and triumph at everything you do! The only real requisite for change is defeat!"

"Change is part of life," the voice instructed. "Without the forces of change, there would be no evolution. There would be no civilization. Time itself would cease to exist. You have been shutting your eyes and covering your ears making yourself blind and deaf to that which you wish to avoid."

More images blazed through her mind, searing her subconscious with remembrances of events and situations the second child desperately longed to forget. Asuka groaned and tucked her knees up against her chest. "S… stop it! I don't want to hear this!"

"It seems the transference you and the entity Shinji Ikari experienced has shown you both to be more similar than either of you realize. When confronted by the truth, you both simply run away from it. Naturally, your fragile ego has shielded your perception of yourself from this flaw; nevertheless, the human subconscious is the one place the ego cannot go."

"Wh… what…. Why are you…?" Asuka grimaced through eyes pooling with tears.

"Nobody can justify their existence by linking their strongest attributes into a sort of rosary whilst denying their weakest attributes. Inherently, this perspective is flawed. For this reason, the truth becomes obvious when a human entity is most vulnerable. Your greatest fear, Asuka Langley Sohryu, is that you are, and always will be, alone. And it is a sad thing, one that I cannot abide, for looking into your consciousness I have found the truth. The truth that you are not alone, Asuka Langley Sohryu. And not only that, but the perception that you are so alone could not be further from the truth."

"What's wrong with trying to be perfect in the eyes of others? Why won't you just leave me alooooooone?!"

Suddenly, Asuka's eyes snapped open as if from a grotesque and insufferable nightmare. The second child hyperventilated for several minutes before getting her breath under control. She curled up into a ball, her teeth chattering and fingertips numb.

"J… just a dream," she sighed deeply, relieved. "The heat systems and oxygen are failing. I'm… so cold… so hungry..." A small red light began to blink on the wrist cuff of her Shinji's plugsuit. "The suit's giving out too," she muttered. "S-S-So… c-cold… This… this is the end… So… so tired of everything… J… J-just once… it might have been nice… to be held in th-the arms of s-someone who c-c-cares…"

And with that, Asuka Langley Sohryu, the second child, closed her eyes and let what she was certain would be her final sleep take her.

"Both EVAs are in position and standing by!" Makoto Hyuga reported over the NERV combat frequency.

"A.T. fields are ready to generate," Maya Ibuki added.

"Roger," said Ritsuko, ignoring the deathly stares Misato was giving her as the woman leaned against her coupe, smoking a cigarette nervously.

"T minus 60 seconds to mine drop. We're passing the point of no return," Shigeru Aoba sounded. "Are we mission go?"

"Absolutely," came the stern, measured voice of Gendo Ikari over the intercom.

"Commander!" Ritsuko gasped.

Misato snatched the hand radio off the driver's seat of her coupe and shouted into the microphone. "Sir! We don't have to do this! We haven't exhausted all of our options yet! The pilot is still—"

"Dr. Akagi, you are to proceed with your plan. Please be certain that Major Katsuragi does not interfere."

"Yes sir."

"Why you!" Misato fumed, tossing the hand radio off the side of the cliff where the JSSDF forces had established an admirable attempt at a perimeter.

Then, at that precise moment, there was a gargantuan quake which issued forth from deep within the earth where the shadow of Leliel had been contained. The dazzlingly bright silver light of a rising moon highlighted a truly incredible sight as the ground beneath the twelfth angel heaved and groaned, a large fissure rupturing from within subterranean darkness, an eerie red light spilling forth from within it.

"What the hell is that!" Shinji screamed with alarm, positioning his EVA for greater balance.

"What's going on!" Misato yelped as she ran up beside Ritsuko.

"We don't know!" the NERV analysts reported frantically, rapping at buttons and switches as fast as their fingers would move.

"All of our meters and gauges are going off the scale!"

"But we haven't even done anything yet!" Ritsuko shouted disbelievingly.

"Could it be Asuka?" Major Katsuragi said.

"Impossible!" argued Ritsuko. "Unit 01's power level must be at zero!"

At that precise moment, the "shadow" of Leliel began to pulse and throb, twitching rapidly and warping its perfectly spherical shape just before the giant, determined fist of Evangelion Unit 01 ripped its way through the quantum material of its captor's body with a spray of crimson blood. Everyone wearing a NERV personnel tag gasped in unison as they beheld a terrifying spectacle never before seen; from within the nucleic center of the abyssal black pearl hovering over downtown Tokyo 3, the now-berserk silhouette of Shinji's trademark purple-green Evangelion, white eyes glowing fiercely, tore its way out from within the womblike orb, howling madly as it did so.

"God in heaven," Ritsuko whispered. "What kind of monster have we made this from?"

Though nearly all were awestruck—and justifiably so—Shinji Ikari was the first to shake off the stupor of disbelief. Before Asuka, he'd been the only one of the chosen children to pilot an EVA while it was going berserk, and he knew well the risks—and terror—associated with it. His bright blue eyes widened in horror.

"Aaaaaasukaaaaaaaa!" he screamed shrilly at the top of his lungs.

Unit 02 surged forth, rushing toward the explosive carnage wrought by Unit 01 and the now clearly incapacitated angel.

"Shinji! No! Stay away from there!" Ritsuko ordered over the radio.

The boy was deaf to orders, indifferent to his own safety. He worked the throttle of the EVA as fast as it would go, and when he ran out of umbilical cable, he disconnected it without even thinking, dashing forward and to the side of the collapsed heap of blood-soaked metal that was Evangelion Unit 01. When he reached his destination, Shinji rolled Unit 01 onto its back shortly before force-ejecting the dummy plug from his EVA and clambering out of it as swiftly as he could.

"Shinji! Shinji, can you hear me! Stay clear of Evangelion Unit 01 until search and rescue security personnel are on-site! Shinji! Do you copy? Get a camera on that position!" shouted Dr. Akagi.

"Yes, m'am!" Maya nodded, acquiring a satellite and increasing the optical zoom to a level of detail which might have put most first-world military intelligence divisions to shame.

All of NERV watched in silence at what happened next. On the enormous high definition monitors on the Command Bridge and the supplementary screens that had been setup at the staging area, nearly everyone at NERV watched as Shinji Ikari, his long, LCL-drenched, umber-colored hair trailing behind him, climbed up the side of Unit 01's head module, working his way recklessly to the hatch of the dummy plug. He coughed up a glob of residual LCL as his lungs continued to depressurize, wiped his mouth, then placed both hands on the handle and twisted with all his might. There was a hissing sound as the intense heat caused by the Unit 01's systems being drastically overclocked sizzled through his plugsuit, burning his hands. Shinji growled in pain, but never released his grip, continuing to ply at the handle with as much strength as he could muster.

"Come on!" he hissed. "Open! Come on! Asuka! Wait for me! I'm coming for you! Please wait for me! Come ooooon!"

The junior Ikari finally managed enough torque to force open the dummy plug hatch, hot tears pouring down his cheeks as he climbed inside to where the second child lay motionless in her seat.

"Asuka! I'm here! Please be alright! I'm here to get you out of this! Can you hear me? Asuka!"

Within the NERV Command Bridge, the technicians all sat motionless, fingers poised above keyboards, tears in the eyes of several of the more prominent employees. Fuyutsuki glanced sideways at Gendo Ikari, who had seated himself at his usual station, gloved hands folded, a strange and unseemly grin creeping into his countenance. At the staging area, rivers of tears had begun to cascade down Misato's blanched cheeks while Ritsuko simply stared, jaw hanging ajar, at the scene that unfolded before her very eyes.

"Asuka!" Shinji sobbed, his voice feed still patched into the radio. "I'm so sorry I couldn't get to you in time! I'm so sorry!" He placed his small hands upon Asuka shoulders—shoulders that had once been his own. He shook her, trying to rouse her as though from a deep sleep. "Come on! Please! You have to be alright! Asuka!"

His hot tears splashed down onto Asuka's plugsuit. He gnashed his teeth together as his jaw trembled with helplessness and sadness. "P… please… d-don't leave me… don't leave me here like this… Asuka…"

Maya Ibuki's voice was shaky and tremulous as she reported, "S… Shinji… There are… no life signs… coming from Unit 01… the pilot… the pilot is dead, Shinji… P… please return back to base for a d-debrief… let NERV handle it from here…"

Shinji stared, eyes glazed over, at the sallow, motionless body—a body that had once belonged to him—of Asuka Langley Sohryu. Rage and anger filled him then, an all-consuming wrath born of denial and fear.

"No!" the third child screamed. He placed his palms on Asuka's chest and began to administer CPR. "One! Two! Three! Four! Five!" Tears and split splashing all over the inside of the cockpit, the junior Ikari administered thirty chest compressions to the lifeless body of Asuka Sohryu before lowering his face to hers, checking her airway and administering auxiliary rescue breathing. It would not occur to him until much, much later that, technically, this would be the first time the pair would officially touch lips. In any other circumstance, it would have seemed bizarre and surreal; Asuka's long, fiery bangs framing Shinji's unconscious face as she pinched shut his nasal passages, pressing her lips to his and dispatching her hot breath down his windpipe, her pale, freckled skin pressed against Shinji's citron countenance.

Misato brought her hand to her mouth, choking a sob as she continued to listen to the radio feed in absolute silence.

"I won't let you give up!" Shinji continued to scream while he attempted to resuscitate the second child. "You've never given up on one goddamn thing in your whole life! I'm not going to sit here and watch you start now! Get up, damn it! Come on! Come back to me!"

He pounded his fists angrily, desperately against Asuka's chest. When there was no reaction, he slapped her face vehemently, first from the left side, then from the right. "Asuka! I know! I'll let you slap me as much as you want! As hard as you want! You can make fun of me and call me a coward and a failure of a man and all those things you like to do so much! J… just p-please come back to me! I don't want to live without you! Asuka please don't die! I need you! I…" he slumped against his own body, his face against his own chest, sobbing against the second child. "I… I love you… Asuka… and… and I don't want to be part of a world that doesn't have you in it… so… so p-please… don't leave me like this… I… I beg you… Don't die, Asuka… because…I love you…"