Chapter 3

"My darling...

"Mama..."

"Asuka, my treasure..."

"Mama, is it really you...?"

The sun slowly rose over the city. The storm that had pounded the ruins of Tokyo-3 all night had eased off into a light shower. In a still-intact building near the edge of the city, Asuka grumpily awoke as the sunlight streaming through the window moved over her face.

The memory of her dream rapidly drifted away as she got to her feet. She was cold and sore from her awkward sleeping posture, as well as annoyed at being dragged out of whatever nice dream she had been having. For the first time in a long time, she had been feeling... happy. During the night, the girl had sprawled out on the floor of the service station, and her right arm was now protesting at having been used as a pillow all night. Other parts of her body began chiming in as well, letting their aches be known as the rest of her body woke up.

"Wow, wonder if this is what Misato feels like after a night on the town," Asuka muttered, carefully rubbing her right arm to try and ease the stiffness. She refused to remove the bandages, but was surprised that she was not in more pain after the massive wound the arm had received. There was not a single spot of blood on the bandages, even after two days, yet she distinctly recalled watching in horror as her arm separated from between the middle and ring finger nearly up to her shoulder.

After several minutes of contemplation, Asuka shook her head and decided to worry about it later as her stomach began growling. Recalling that all she had eaten since her awakening on the beach was a couple bags of chips, Asuka started wandering around the store, seeing what was available.

The chips last night had merely taken the edge off her hunger, but two tins of preserved fruit practically poured straight down her throat certainly satiated her stomach. The empty tins were tossed into a corner of the store, and Asuka moved to the window. She looked out at Tokyo-3 and the gradually slowing rain for a while, idly hoping for even a glimpse of a white shirt.

Asuka eventually realised the futility of that hope, and instead tried to focus on the dream that dawn had rudely interrupted. All that she could recall was the colour orange, as well as feeling immensely warm and snug. She released a loud sigh, before retreating to the store's bathroom to splash some water on her face. A horrific image stared back at her from the mirror when she raised her head from the sink.

Her once-brilliant red hair was a complete mess, now dull and sticking out all over the place. The red A-10 connectors were sitting lopsided, sand was still stuck in her hair, and she didn't even have a brush to fix it all up. Asuka had to grudgingly make do with her hands and the strange-smelling tap water.

"First order of business: find a shower," Asuka said to herself as she adjusted the connectors and stared at the mediocre improvement in the mirror. "Ugh, Good thing there's nobody around to s-" she continued, before looking down and frowning when she realised what she was saying. After a moment, she stared at herself in the mirror again.

"Well, there no point sitting around feeling bad," she decided with a determined look in her uncovered eye. Asuka turned around and almost left the bathroom, before stopping and turning back to the mirror as a thought occurred. She raised her left arm and gingerly patted the pad over her left eye. The sudden bolt of agony through her head was conspicuous by its absence. The frown returned to her face, and the girl poked the pad a little harder. Asuka could feel... something behind the pad, but her probing finger suddenly stopped.

A memory surfaced, of a two-pronged lance flying directly at her Evangelion's face, and the horrific explosion of pain in her own skull seconds afterwards. Her eye had been completely destroyed, and even now Asuka could still feel her lifeblood pouring through her gloved hand.

The staring contest with her own reflection continued for a few minutes as Asuka tried to work out what to do. Had her eye been somehow restored, or was it just wishful thinking that made her feel something under the pad? She could not tell if the eye was rotating in its socket, or even blinking. Surely the eyelid would at least be partially intact. Asuka shifted her one-eyed gaze to her right arm as suspicions started forming. Two crippling injuries, yet neither body part was even really sore now. She slapped her right hand against the side of the sink and, apart from the impact, felt only a moderate twinge run up her arm to her shoulder.

Asuka's left hand suddenly shot up to her face, and the gauze pad was violently ripped off before she could think twice. The only pain she felt was that of the tape pulling away from her skin, and her miraculously intact eye struggling to cope with the sudden influx of light. Even in the somewhat dark bathroom, only illuminated by a few small frosted glass windows near the ceiling, her sapphire eye almost teared up at the sudden influx of light. It took several long moments, but eventually Asuka stared at herself in the mirror with amazement.

'It's... it's fine. My eye is perfectly fine! There's not even any scarring around the socket!' If there had been anyone else around, Asuka would still not have felt embarrassed as she began cheering. Now she no longer had to fear being undateable... if anyone else ever came back to life. Asuka slowed down as the thought occurred that she had been worried about getting a boyfriend in the middle of an apocalypse.

"Hah, The Third is the only one around, and he's too scared to even be on the same street as you. What the hell are you panicking about, Asuka? There's more important things to worry about right now than vanity." The redhead chuckled softly at her reflection, before exiting the bathroom. Outside, the rain had finally ceased, and the grey clouds were starting to part and let in more sunlight. The still-working wall clock behind the counter showed that it was nearly ten o'clock.

"Well, there's no way I'm sleeping on the ground like an animal again," Asuka declared to nobody in particular. "I'm going to go find myself a bed!"


The sun had just passed its zenith, and the irritated redhead was no closer to her dream of proper sleeping arrangements. The small area of Tokyo-3 she had explored so far seemed to be sorely lacking in well-stocked Western furniture stores. Asuka eventually remembered that she was completely on her own, and unenthusiastically lowered her expectations from 'a proper king-sized bed' to 'something soft'. A store with several futons on display was then quickly discovered.

"I could have just slept in the store on one of those nice big beds, but... what if he gets it into his head to come back to me again?" Asuka had stopped keeping her thoughts inside her own head, with the lack of people around. Talking aloud helped the girl feel less... alone. "The last time he saw me was in the service station. He won't know where I've gone. I could leave a note, but knowing him, he'd probably miss it, or have no sense of direction in these ruins."

After arguing with herself about what to do for several minutes, a plan was eventually hatched. It would take a couple of trips, but Asuka would have what could charitably be called a bed set up in the service station by the time she went to sleep. Blankets and pillows were taken from the bedding section she had spent the last hour in and dropped off just inside the door of her temporary new home.

Her second trip took her to an outdoor supply shop she had discovered during her original search. Asuka stepped into the store and grinned slightly as she realised that one of the Stooges from school, Kensuke Aida, would have loved this place. The military nerd was always talking about going off camping in the hills around Tokyo-3, and trying to convince others to join him in his 'war games'. She had no idea what actually went on up in the hills, but she had decided immediately to never take part in them. While Asuka had no plans of roughing it in the wilds, there was still several valuable items for her. A backpack was the first acquisition, followed by a sleeping bag and two heavy duty torches.

While Asuka wandered around the store looking for things on her 'shopping list', her mind too began to wander, and settled on one of the rare times the Second and Third Child had agreed on something. It had been sometime after the Tenth Angel, the one that had simply tried to land on Tokyo-3, and it had just been the two of them eating dinner, as Misato was working late as usual.

Asuka could not remember now who had started the conversation, but the topic had turned to their plugsuits, and their somewhat lacking design. Shinji had mentioned the annoyance of having to almost completely remove the suit when going to the bathroom, and Asuka had replied with a complaint about the lack of pockets.

"This is a freaking military organisation, and they didn't think to put pockets on our damn uniforms! Who the hell designed these?!"

"Yeah, it's rather inconvenient. People always need pockets,' he said with a wry chuckle. "Hey Asuka, you've worn a plugsuit a lot longer than me, are these things designed to suck all the heat out of your body? I'm always close to shivering whenever I'm not in an entry plug while wearing them."

"Believe me, I know what you mean. I don't think the dumbass designers put any insulation at all in our plugsuits. I guess they decided that monitoring equipment is more important than keeping us from freezing our asses off."

"Do you think we can complain about it to someone?" Shinji had a thoughtful look on his face.

Asuka rolled her eyes. "Of course not. They'd just make up some excuse about how insulation would interfere with our synch ratios or whatever. If not that, then they'll claim that the budget won't allow for plugsuit modifications."

"Remind me, they spend how much on the Evangelions themselves?" Shinji asked as he picked up both empty plates and placed them in the sink.

"Billions, probably. They're massive bipedal war machines with guns half as big as them. Doesn't mean they're gonna waste money on something they see as irrelevant."

"I wouldn't call catching pneumonia irrelevant. I've spent enough time in the NERV medical ward as is," Shinji sighed. "I practically know half the nurses by name."

"Maybe you should try being a better pilot, then you won't be stuck in a hospital room so much. I mean, look at me! Ten years of training and the only time I was bedridden was because of a training accident."

Her train of thought was interrupted as she found the last item she was looking for, and potentially the most important. The lighter she had used on the beach was most likely still there, and she put the blame squarely on the NERV R&D department. There was no point blaming Shinji for everything. It was going to be another cold and wet night, and Asuka wanted to stave off the chill with a warm fire. Ominous clouds had gathered once more and were threatening rain in the next few hours. Third Impact had evidently wreaked havoc with the weather, and she wondered if it was going to be permanent like Second Impact.

Asuka stepped outside, laden with everything she felt necessary for her own comfort, and turned to head back 'home'. Her head turned sharply as the sound of shattering glass was heard nearby. Dropping the backpack on the pavement, she almost frantically dashed down the street to where she thought the sound had originated. She rounded a corner, and her heart sank as she found the source of the disturbance.

A window frame had apparently finally come loose from the damaged wall it had sat in, and fallen onto the pavement. Asuka did not even bother trying to pretend she wasn't disappointed by the false alarm, and a light rain began to fall as she picked up the backpack and trudged back the service station.

"My feet hurt," she complained to the world at large.

That night, wrapped up in the sleeping bag with a couple of blankets cushioning the ground underneath her and a small fire flickering nearby, the redhead gloomily stared out of the window. She would have given anything, even her probably-now-useless status as a pilot, to see a certain boy walk through the door.

Almost her entire life, Asuka had felt lonely and abandoned. She had spent so much time perfecting her piloting skills, desperately seeking praise from those around her, and almost no time simply trying to make friends. Hikari had become a close acquaintance, Rei was merely a co-worker, and Misato was just her guardian and superior officer. Asuka's attempts to get Shinji to look her had been ignored- no.

With the benefit of hindsight, the redhead realised that the boy probably had noticed her attempts, but was too afraid to react to her. Even so, the Third Child was still the only one Asuka could even consider as a potential friend.

They had both been through the hell that was the Angel attacks, and the two of them had even spent a week practically glued to each other not long after meeting, thanks to Misato's insane plan for defeating the Seventh Angel. She had stormed out of the apartment after watching the First Child succeed where she couldn't, and Shinji had ran after her.

After what was admittedly a rather lame speech about teamwork, Asuka haughtily claimed that a pep talk wasn't needed, but afterwards their training had improved significantly. They synchronised with each other perfectly and managed to take down a difficult Angel with perfect teamwork. The two Evangelions had fallen on top of each other when the Angel self-destructed, but Asuka privately knew that neither pilot was to blame for it. She had merely lashed out at Shinji to burn off the built-up stress and anger, both from the mission and her feelings of rejection from the night before. Her subtle hints to Shinji about being alone in the apartment had apparently been too subtle. How could he have not noticed the Wall of Jericho comment?

A loud yawn shook Asuka's body, and a glance at the clock showed that it was past midnight. She was surprised at how much time was just spent lost in the past. The fire was burning low, and would likely go out within the hour. The girl gave up her silent vigil, curled up inside the sleeping bag, and eventually fell asleep.


"I don't want to leave you! You're the only one who cares about me, Mama."

"You know that's not true, my dear. There are other people who hold you in their heart."

"What? Who-"

Asuka was jolted awake by a peal of thunder that rattled the shelves and made the windows vibrate loudly. Outside, the mid-morning sky was dark and gloomy, but the rain was gradually slackening off. The door was slightly ajar, and Asuka was surprised by what felt like a slight cold breeze across her neck and chest. She looked down, and noticed that her plugsuit had de-pressurised during the night, and was nearly falling off. The button on her wrist that usually made the suit form-fitting merely flashed red and beeped at her when she pressed it, and Asuka let out a muttered curse at the plugsuit. It had obviously run out of power while she was asleep.

"Guess I know what I'll be doing today. Clothes shopping." Asuka wanted to feel excited at getting some new clothes, but the state of the world around her put a damper on that. "Well, it's a good excuse to get some freaking shoes. Another day of scavenging in this suit and I'd probably end up tying boards to my feet just so I don't have to keep accidentally stepping on debris."

The soles of a plugsuit were little better than socks for protection, only consisting of thin rubber soles for traction. They were so thin Asuka could feel every tiny pebble and crack in the pavement she stepped on. She could only be glad that there hadn't been any sharp objects laying on the ground during her walk yesterday. Being unable to walk at a time like this would have been a nightmare for the girl.

Outside, the rain was now a mist, and felt cool and refreshing on the girl's face. The loose plugsuit was hiked up by her good arm. Asuka had doubts there was anyone around to see her in a state of partial undress, especially not a certain boy, but she really did not want to trip on her suit and fall over on the pavement. A twenty minute stroll brought her to a clothing store in a dark shopping mall, lit poorly by the massive skylights over Asuka's head. She switched on one of the flashlights she had retrieved yesterday, and the reflection on the store window nearly blinded her. Blinking to clear her watering eyes, Asuka eventually found the adjuster and dimmed the light to a level that she could tolerate, while cursing whoever had set the flashlight to its highest setting.

While the store she had picked probably didn't have the best selection, Asuka was not looking for high fashion. For almost the entire time she had been in Tokyo-3, it had been locked in what felt like mid-summer thanks to Second Impact knocking Earth off its natural axis. Now, possibly thanks to the end of the world, the weather was turning strangely cold, and a dress would not do very well at keeping a person warm. The sudden climate change now called for long sleeves, and possibly layers if it kept up like this.

Asuka spent an almost-enjoyable time picking a new outfit. With nobody around to impress with her fashion sense, she opted for a bright red jacket over a blue shirt and black pants. A few spare sets of underwear were placed in her backpack. She was careful putting her right arm through the sleeves, as Asuka was still wary of the damage it had received. Bending it still sent tiny jolts up and down her arm. A short walk to a nearby shoe store netted her a pair of sturdy brown hiking shoes. Before leaving, Asuka took a long look at herself in a full-length mirror.

"Well, we might not win any prizes, but at least we'll be warm," she told her reflection. As she was about to leave, something in the mirror made her turn back. A thin line of blood was trailing from her left eye down her cheek. Asuka quickly dabbed at her cheek with a sleeve, but it came back clean. She stared at her sleeve and frowned in confusion. Looking back at the mirror, she recoiled in horror, slamming her back into the shelves opposite the mirror. Shoe boxes fell down around her as she sat cowering on the floor.

Her reflection had a gaping black hole where the left eye should be, and blood was now pouring out of the empty socket. The Asuka in the mirror was also still wearing the red plugsuit, and its right arm hung loosely by its side, split in half and bleeding heavily on the floor. Asuka's own right arm began to throb with pain as the reflection brought its split limb up and began to clench it, as if attempting to strangle an enemy.

Asuka blinked, and the macabre reflection was gone, replaced by her own terrified image.

For a long while, Asuka could do nothing but sit in the store, surrounded by boxes, hugging herself as she tried to banish the waking nightmare she had just witnessed from her mind. For a brief moment, the white harpies were once again tearing at her body, their claws vivisecting her Evangelion as she lay helpless. A shudder went through her entire body as she got back to her feet, and her head was downcast as she picked up her discarded plugsuit and flashlight. These were roughly shoved into her backpack, and Asuka left the mall.

Outside, the clouds were beginning to part, and the shadows were long as a weak late-afternoon sun shone through the city. The strange red line cutting through the sky was slowly beginning to break apart. In a few more days, there would be almost nothing left except whatever was smeared across the moon.

The sight of a pharmacy with a broken window stopped the gloomy German as she trudged down the street. She gazed at her right arm for a moment, before coming to a decision. Asuka climbed through the broken window, after knocking out the shards along the bottom of the window sill. She dropped the chunk of concrete used for the task on the counter next to the cash register. Her flashlight beam swung around the darkened store, eventually stopping when the bandages were located. Plastic crumpled underfoot, and the flashlight revealed an empty packet, with a small bloodstain nearby.

'Someone was in here recently, after Third Impact. Since it's just me and Ikari in the city, it must have been him. Was this before or after the beach, I wonder?' Asuka shone the beam on the floor leading back to the window, and sighed softly in relief. There were only a few tiny drops of blood, not nearly as much as Asuka found she had been expecting. If the stains had been larger, it could have been a sign that the Third Child was badly injured.

Asuka shoved aside the mental image of a brown-haired boy laying in a dark room bleeding out thanks to a grievous and possibly even infected wound. There was precious little chance that she could locate Shinji soon enough if he was in trouble. Practically the entire city was destroyed, and Asuka had heard the distant rumble of a collapsing building earlier in the day. The dust cloud had hung in the sky for a long time, with little to no breeze to disperse it. Shinji might have been in there, or nearby. He might even have been in the mall, covertly watching Asuka as she tried on her new outfit.

That thought was quickly shoved away. Despite all the insults Asuka had flung at Shinji, he was most definitely not a pervert. At least not intentionally.

There were simply too many horrible possibilities to consider, so all she could do was hope that Stupid Shinji wasn't... well... being stupid. That he was safe. Asuka did not want to consider that she might be the only person left in the world. It was a thought too painful to consider, that she would eventually perish alone, and humanity would die with her.

Turning back to the task that had brought her in here, Asuka shoved a few bandages into her bag, as well as some sterilising wipes. As soon as she returned to her temporary shelter, she was going to check her injured arm, and replace the bandages. They had been on her arm for at least four days by this point, and despite the absence of red stains, Asuka knew she would have to take them off soon, and inspect the damage to the limb. It was not a task Asuka was looking forward to, but it was something that should not be delayed any longer.

A quick look around the rest of the pharmacy revealed nothing else of interest, besides a small selection of candy bars. Asuka immediately ripped one open and started eating. As she munched the bar and adjusted one of the twisted straps of her backpack, she heard the sound of crunching glass nearby. The flashlight practically shot back into her hand, the beam levelled at the window she had used to enter.

A thin figure was frozen in the middle of stepping into the pharmacy, one leg hovering above the sill. The familiar brown hair was even more dishevelled now, and the once-white shirt was barely hanging on the boy's shoulders, still unbuttoned. Asuka's stare went from the clearly visible ribs almost sticking out through the skin down to the leg inside the store, where an off-white bandage peeked out through badly ripped trousers.

The girl took a hesitant step closer, but stopped at a small gasp from the boy as he backed out of the window. His cobalt eyes were wide and bloodshot, and the hand not gripping the side of the window sill was clenching and unclenching rapidly. Asuka licked her lips, surprised at how dry her mouth was all of a sudden. Here was the person she had just been worrying about, and her mind was drawing a blank on what to say.

Shinji looked like a deer caught in her flashlight beam, ready to spring away at a moment's notice. Asuka lowered the light, so it wasn't shining directly into his face, opened her mouth, and said the only word that could come to mind.

"Shinji..."

The next few moments were a blur of motion. The boy backed away from the pharmacy, before turning and sprinting up the street. Asuka sprang into action, clumsily dumping both flashlight and backpack as she ran towards the window, but tripped on the sill as she tried to vault through it. The pavement rose up to meet her, and her hastily raised arms managed to absorb most of the fall. Asuka's head bounced off of the pavement as she tumbled, stopping against a streetlight.

The dazed girl could do nothing but lay there for a few moments, as she tried to shake off the dizziness. Finally she managed to make it to her feet, cradling her right arm as pain once again ran through it. Something rattled on the ground as she absently kicked it, and Asuka looked down to see that one of her A-10 connectors had been knocked loose. Her right arm reached down to pick it up, but it was now too sore to reach up and reattach the device. A scrabbling sound interrupted her attempts. Twenty meters away, the panicked boy had tripped over as well, and was now struggling to his feet.

Anger rose within the girl as Asuka once again saw Shinji trying to run away from her. Her knees were now aching from their sudden impact on the ground, and the best she could manage was a fast limp.

"Gott verdammt Ikari! Komm zurück du verdammte Schwächling!" Asuka forced herself to stop screaming. Not only was she hurling abuse at the poor boy, she was doing it in her native tongue, making her sound even more volatile. "Get back here, Third!"

But the sound of irate German cursing had already taken its toll. Shinji tripped over again as he tried to backpedal away. A small red object collided with his head, thrown by Asuka, who immediately clutched at her right arm again and hissed in agony from the exertion. Dirty hands blindly groped for the thrown item, and the boy finally managed to climb to his feet and escape the suddenly remorseful redhead, who could now do nothing but lean against a wall and once more watch her fellow pilot flee into the city.

"Scheiße," Asuka muttered, her rage dissipating as rapidly as it had erupted. "Me and my attitude ruined everything again..."

That night, Asuka sat in her sleeping bag with her arms around her knees, and stared out of the service station window for most of the night, struggling to keep her eyes open. Her single remaining A-10 connector now felt uncomfortable on her head without its twin, and it was set aside. The bandages had been stowed away in the bathroom, as he was too distracted by the day's events to worry about her arm, which still ached several hours after the incident. The fire had gone out an hour ago, but the sleeping bag combined with her new clothes were sufficient to ward off the chill. It was only when the grey of false dawn appeared in the sky that Asuka finally nodded off to sleep.

She dreamed of a volcano, and a giant purple arm saving her from certain death. Both pilots exited their entry plugs, and Asuka walked over to the purple robot's pilot and said two words. He smiled happily, and her own face mirrored that of the brown-haired boy in his blue and white plugsuit.


On a beach by a red sea, the dawn slowly crawled over the form of a figure on all fours, coughing out the foul-tasting water that had nearly drowned them. Their body spent after the swim to solid ground, they collapsed on the sand and gazed up at the slowly brightening sky as their hair fluttered softly in the morning breeze. After several minutes, the woman groggily sat up and raised a hand to her temple, softly rubbing it. In front of her, several grey statues were slowly sinking into the ocean, the water now almost covering the stumps of their necks. Behind them, the sight of the giant rotted white face caused an eyebrow on the woman's face to raise in confusion.

"Well," Major Misato Katsuragi, head of NERV's Tactical Operations branch, lamely remarked. "...That just happened."