Chapter 6

"Pack up, Asuka," Misato ordered, throwing a backpack at the girl's feet. "We're getting out of here."

Asuka immediately started putting food and drink into the bag, before Misato stopped her by dropping one of the blankets on her head. "I meant grab all the sleeping stuff. We won't be coming back here again."

The redhead looked perplexed as she shoved the blanket into the pack, after removing most of the snacks. "Are we finally going home?"

Misato shook her head. "Not yet. We're going to find Shinji." She turned to look out of the window. "There's a lot of city to search, and we'll save time by not having to return to one spot to rest. Once we find him, even if... I have to drag him around again, then we'll go home."

As the two of them cleared up their sleeping space, a thought occurred to Asuka, and she voiced it. "It's not like I'm being pessimistic but... what if he's already-" The glare that Misato shot her way was as good as a verbal interruption.

"Shinji. Is not. Dead," Misato slowly stated. "If he's dead, it means I failed. I've already failed my duty as the guardian of you two before, because of my obsession with the truth. But now I will not let anything stop me from protecting those I love. We will find Shinji, go home, and be a family. I will not fail again!"

There was nothing more to be said after her outburst, so they both finished packing in silence. Asuka shouldered the pack and stepped outside. It had taken longer than she had expected to recount her time with her mother, and it was now close to ten o'clock. The redhead looked up to the blue sky and hoped that the weather would not try and slow down their search.

Misato had found a sizable sack in a back room to carry the sleeping bag as well as more food. She stepped outside and turned to face Asuka, who was still staring up at the sky.

"Asuka... sorry for yelling at you like-" Misato started, but a raised hand from the girl stopped her.

"Eh, it's fine," Asuka airily replied. "You're right, it's stupid to lose hope now. I know it sounds weird, but I kind of feel like... if he was dead, we'd know about it."

A short sharp laugh came out of Misato's mouth. "You fought giant monsters with equally giant bio-mechanical robots, the world's been nearly destroyed, and we've both died and been resurrected. Trust me, that is not even close to weird. And I'll be honest, I'm believing it too. Now, enough standing around. Which way should we go?"

Without a word, Asuka immediately set off towards the last place she had seen Shinji. The pharmacy where he had run away with one of her neural clips. Its lonely twin was wrapped up in her plugsuit at the bottom of her pack. Misato had either not noticed the empty interface band or chosen not to comment, and Asuka certainly didn't feel like trying to explain.

Strangely, the lack of weight on her head had been easier to get used to than she expected. The iconic red connectors had stayed on Asuka's head practically as long as she had been an Evangelion pilot, and she normally felt naked without them. They had been a core part of her identity. Perhaps it was the destruction of her Evangelion, or maybe it was her own death and rebirth, but Asuka had come to realise that she simply didn't care if she wasn't wearing them anymore.

Seeing her mother's long and beautiful hair once more certainly made the decision easier, as Asuka now wanted her own hair to emulate that. The neural clips had held her red locks up for too long; now it flowed down, reaching the middle of her back. It would still take a while before her hair could rival that of her mother, but she was content to wait.

They arrived at the pharmacy in short order. A cursory inspection revealed that Shinji had still not returned. After collecting a few medical supplies, Asuka pointed in the direction that she had seen Shinji run off after their encounter, and she almost continued on when Misato spoke up.

"Wait, I don't think this is really going to work..."

"What? We have to find him!" Asuka protested.

"That's not what I meant, Asuka," Misato replied. "There are way too many buildings, far too many places to hide. It would take weeks to search this city, and we might still miss Shinji."

The girl folded her arms and leaned against a wall. The city was in shambles. Damaged and destroyed buildings were everywhere. Shinji could even be hiding nearby and they'd never know. "Well what do you suggest then?"

Misato put a hand to her chin and began pacing in circles as she thought aloud. "Shinji's obviously haunted by what happened, and from what you've told me he's probably scared out of his mind. What kind of place would he go where he'd feel safe and secure?"

"How about our apartment? He might be hiding under his bed. The idiot was always in his room whenever he got into one of his moods."

"Hmm... no. It's a nice idea, but he's sure to know that he'd run into us eventually there. It needs to be a quiet and secluded place where nobody would go. Some place like..." Misato stopped and her eyes widened as inspiration struck. "The overlook!"


Asuka wasn't sure how long it had taken to reach the winding path she and Misato were now on, but the position of the sun above them put the time at approximately midday. As they went up the slope, she was forced to grudgingly acknowledge that if it weren't for the devastation of the city, the overlook would have been a perfect place to relax.

She would also admit that the massive hole in the ground at the centre of the fortress city spoiled the view far more than anything else possibly could.

"What's so great about this spot anyway?" Asuka finally asked

"You can see the entire city from up there," Misato replied, waving a hand in the direction of Tokyo-3. "I took Shinji here after the Third Angel, to show him what he had saved."

"And you think he'll be here now?" Asuka asked disbelievingly as she looked up into the hills surrounding the city.

The woman nodded emphatically. "Yep. Before you arrived, sometimes he'd come home really late from school. I asked him once where he went, and Shinji mentioned this overlook. I checked with Section Two and they confirmed his story. He'd apparently go up here for a few hours and just stare at the city. A couple of times they actually had to tell Shinji that it was getting late before he'd leave, and they would drive him home."

"Why did he stop when I arrived?" Asuka turned around when Misato neglected to respond, and found the woman simply staring at her. "W-why are you looking at me like that?"

Misato covered her mouth to stifle a chuckle. "I think it was because he found something closer to home to take his mind off whatever he was unhappy about."

It took Asuka a moment to process what Misato meant, and when it finally clicked her face turned beet red. When Misato saw that, she could no longer hold the laugh in. Asuka stomped her foot in indignation. "That's not funny, Misato!"

Still grinning too much to formulate a response, Misato simply beckoned Asuka to keep following, and the two continued the long walk up the hill. When they finally reached the top, they were able to fully take in the desolate ruins of Tokyo-3.

"Horrible, isn't it?" Misato said flatly as she stepped up to the barrier on the edge of the cliff. "It's just fortunate that the city was almost completely evacuated. There were only skeleton crews left topside when the bomb hit." The woman leaned on the guardrail and closed her eyes in thought.

Asuka shook her head in disgust and turned away from the sight. Wandering over to the shelter, the object that caught her eye was enough to improve her mood. "Misato, I found something!"

It took several attempts to draw the woman's attention away from the vista. When Misato finally made it to the shelter, Asuka held up something. Misato had to stop and think for a moment to identify the misshapen objects in her hand. They were wet and horribly worn out, but she eventually figured out what they were.

Shinji's shoes.

"Looks like your hunch was right," Asuka remarked.

"Thank god for that," Misato replied. "This is the only place I can think of where he would go. I just hope he's still here. Stay put, Asuka. No offence, but I'm pretty sure you're the last thing he wants to see right now."

Asuka almost opened her mouth for an angry retort, but she knew Misato was only being truthful. Instead, she rolled her eyes and took a seat in the shelter, unpacking food and drink for their lunch.

Knowing that any further noise could spook the boy into fleeing, Misato had to practically sneak around the overlook while searching for more signs of his presence. She quickly found footprints in the still-damp dirt that matched the battered shoes. The tracks wandered around the site, going both to the edge of the cliff and a nearby tree where a half-empty water bottle was found, before terminating at the shelter. Of Shinji himself there was no sign, to her despair.

"Good news and bad news," Misato said to Asuka as she sat down next to the girl and began eating.

The girl waved a chip vaguely in the air as she said, "I'm sure I know what it is, but bad news first, please."

"Shinji isn't here, obviously. Good news is he must have come to this place fairly recently. The footprints are still fresh, there's been no rain or wind to disturb them yet."

"He might have left around night-time, or early this morning then. We would have seen him as we made our way here otherwise, wouldn't we? Damnit, if we hadn't spent the morning talking about my mother, we might have caught him!" Asuka just barely managed to stop from slamming her fist into the table.

"Calm down, Asuka. You don't know that for sure." Misato gently grasped her arm and pulled it down. She sat back as the girl suddenly got to her feet. "What is it?"

"You don't think..." Asuka's eyes darted towards the guardrail and the footprints in front of it, unable to voice the idea that had formed. She had noticed deeper depressions in the mud where Shinji must have stood near the edge of the cliff. The two of them quickly scrambled to the barrier and looked over. There was a moment of tense silence as they scanned the bottom of the cliff and then...

"Nothing, thank god," Misato finally said as they both leaned against the guardrail and sighed in relief. "Don't scare me like that, Asuka! I never again want to think of my boy committing suicide!"

"I just thought... with everything that's happened, he might have... been that far gone."

"Never. Again," Misato repeated. Asuka waved a hand in agreement. She stared at the ground to avoid her guardian's glare, and spotted more tracks. These were simply vaguely oval shaped, with no shoe tread to be seen. "Hey. Looks like the idiot walked off in his socks."

A trail of muddy prints started at the shelter and paused at the barrier once more, before leaving the overlook down the path that Asuka and Misato had walked up an hour beforehand. Asuka ran down the path attempting to follow the tracks, but they quickly faded away leaving nothing more than vague smudges that easily blended into the ground.

Asuka growled under her breath as she stomped back up to the shelter where Misato was finishing off the chips that she had abandoned. She shook her head at the woman's unspoken question before plopping down on the bench. The lone neural clip was retrieved from the backpack and absently twirled in her hands as she sighed. After a few minutes, she held the red object up to her eyes as if seeking a clue in its once-shiny plastic surface.

"Misato, can I ask a favour?" she quietly asked, still staring at the clip.

"Of course, Asuka. After what we've been through, I'll do anything to help."

"...I want to go to the Geofront."

Misato raised an eyebrow before hurriedly swallowing. "Um, okay," she replied. "I'm not sure how we'd get down there though. The power generators are damaged, maybe even destroyed, and I'm afraid I never learned where all the emergency entrances are. They're probably all buried under rubble now. It'll be a tough job to get down there, and we still have Shinji to find."

"We can just go to the edge of the crater. This won't take too long."

"Asuka... what are you planning to do?" Misato suspiciously asked.

"It's nothing serious, just something I never got to do. I... want to say goodbye to Unit-02. To my mother."


The Geofront.

Once covered by over a kilometre of earth reinforced by twenty-two steel armour plates, it now sat open to the sky. The N2 mine dropped by the JSSDF to allow the Mass Production Evangelions easy access had done what not even the Fourteenth Angel could do: tear a hole into the Geofront with one strike.

Misato and Asuka stared in awe at the destruction as they neared the crater. The buildings that originally sat directly above the Geofront had been simply erased from existence, and the structures on the edge had been ripped to shreds by the shockwave. The two of them now stood among the rubble of what had once been skyscraper offices and armoury buildings.

"Mein Gott..."Asuka whispered. She could barely see the other side of the hole from where they were standing.

"This is... much more horrifying up close," added Misato as she too looked around. It was one thing to see such a sight from the air, but quite another entirely to be walking directly towards ground zero.

Asuka tightly clutched the red clip to her chest with both hands as she walked to the rim of the crater. For the entire trip she had been going over what she wanted to say in her mind. Misato halted a few metres away, hanging back to give the girl some privacy. Asuka stopped at the edge and closed her eyes, drawing a deep breath and letting it out slowly, before beginning to speak.

"Mama, I... I never got to say goodbye to you. Your heart and mind were stolen by Unit-02. When we finally found each other again, I still didn't get the chance. We both died fighting to our last breath. And when we were able to meet face to face, you were in such a hurry to get me to return and save Shinji that neither of us had the chance. But now I can-" Asuka stopped as she looked down into the crater. She whirled around to face Misato with a pale look on her face.

"Asuka? What's wrong?" she asked as Asuka frantically waved her over. Misato trotted to the edge and looked down.

"Look down there! What do you see?!" Asuka demanded.

Misato carefully took in the view beneath them. The once-pristine Geofront had been torn to shreds by the JSSDF and the Mass Production Evangelions. Wrecked military vehicles littered the ground, and the destroyer that had once sat upon the lake was now in several pieces far from its original anchor point. She mentioned all of this to Asuka, but then said, "What am I look- ...oh." It quickly dawned on her that there was a very large, very important detail that she couldn't spot. The entire reason they had come to this place.

The corpse of Unit-02 was missing.

"I... really don't mean to be rude," Misato hesitantly said, "but are you sure this is where you died? Maybe it was somewhere else? Asuka?"

Asuka seemed to not hear her. She was on her hands and knees now, looking down into the hole as if it were an illusion she could dispel with her desperate blue-eyed stare. Several thousand tons of dead flesh, armour, and machinery could not simply disappear. There was not even so much as a bloodstain left from her final battle to signify that something happened.

"Where the hell is it?" she whispered.

"Asuka!"

"Huh?" Asuka snapped out of her daze and looked to Misato, who repeated her question. The girl shook her head and stared back downward. "No, I'm positive this is where I... we died. I clearly remember looking up, seeing the sun shining through the hole and reaching out for it, before the lances struck..."

"Could those Mass Production Evas have taken Unit-02?" suggested Misato.

"I wouldn't know, I was almost dead at the time." Asuka rubbed her stomach, remembering the sensation of their claws digging into her belly. "And besides, there would still be some sign of the fight. There's no blood or bits of armour. It's as if the fight never happened!" She was almost screaming at this point.

Misato laid a calming hand on her shoulder, and Asuka shuddered and hung her head as the anger drained away. "Damnit," she mumbled.

"Something strange is going on here, we both know that," Misato said. "But we don't have time to investigate. Our top priority is finding Shinji. Anything else can wait."

The girl sighed and nodded as she got to her feet. The two of them slowly began to walk away from the crater. Misato halted after a moment when she heard Asuka make a thoughtful noise. She was shifting her gaze to the other side of the crater, then back to where they were standing and behind them at the ruined buildings. "There's something else wrong here, Misato," she eventually said after a minute of searching.

"You mean with the massive hole in the middle of our city?"

"Were you in the command centre when the bomb hit? Did you see it happen?"

"No, I was taking Shinji to his Eva." Misato was unsure where Asuka was going with this query.

"Well I was almost directly underneath it. The hole was huge, no question, but I'm positive that it wasn't this big. This crater looks to be the size of the Geofront itself!"

The major opened and closed her mouth several times as she attempted to answer. Finally, she snapped it shut as she realised that her charge was completely correct. At their maximum yield, an N2 mine could possibly leave a crater of this magnitude, but an explosion capable of punching a kilometre-deep hole nearly half the width of the city would have destroyed the entire city and most of the surrounding hillside, leaving nothing left of Tokyo-3. Misato said as much to Asuka, who nodded in agreement.

"Add it to the mystery pile, Asuka, we need-" Misato was cut off by a scream in the distance. A sound that Asuka recognised instantly and turned her blood to ice. She had heard that horrible noise before, just before she died. It was something she would never be able to forget.

The scream of a tortured boy.

Despite the scream sounding like it had originated further along the lip of the crater, it also felt as if Shinji had been right next to Asuka. Without a word to Misato, she dropped her pack and dashed off in the direction it had come from even before the echoes had ceased. She could still hear the scream in her ears as she ran over and around the rubble.

There was no thought given to how she could still determine where Shinji was minutes after hearing him cry out. The destruction around her made it look like she was merely running in circles, but Asuka could feel something pulling at her like a magnet attracting metal.

As she was finally starting to wonder if her mind was playing tricks on her, Asuka crested a mound and spotted a limp form on the ground near a military truck.

"Shinji!" Asuka hastened over to where the boy lay and rolled him onto his back. Only the very slow rise and fall of Shinji's chest indicated that he was alive. The dark circles around his eyes suggested that he had not slept for several days, and Asuka doubted that his current state of unconsciousness was going to help at all. Especially after whatever had triggered the scream that could be heard from so far away.

Perhaps it was also responsible for the blood slowly oozing from the fresh wound on his forehead. Asuka regretted dropping the pack, as the medical supplies she had taken from the pharmacy would be getting used much sooner than she anticipated. A strip torn off her shirt was used to clean away the blood, and Asuka breathed a sigh of relief when the injury was seen to not be as severe as it first seemed.

Shinji began to twitch at her ministration, and a frown crossed the boy's already uneasy face. Asuka began to lightly pat his face and call his name, hoping to revive him, when the ground shuddered and slowly started to tilt underneath them. Looking up, she realised just how perilously close they were to the edge of the crater. A noise from behind drew her attention, and Asuka turned around and swore loudly at the sight of the truck rolling directly towards them.

Whether it was due to damage or a careless driver, Asuka didn't care. The vehicle was moving too fast to get both herself and Shinji out of the way. She wrapped her arms around the boy and threw herself to the ground, keeping their limbs as close as possible to their bodies. Asuka took one last glimpse at the truck before closing her eyes and laying face-down as the undercarriage passed overhead, missing the two teenagers by what felt like millimetres.

A screech of metal brought Asuka's head back up, and she immediately wished that the two of them were anywhere else. The truck had gotten caught up on debris at the side of the crater, and its weight was causing the chunk of road they were on to shift and tilt. The thought of how long the fall into the Geofront would be drove Asuka to her feet as she attempted to climb the increasingly steep slope, still holding onto Shinji.

Due to their combined weight, and the awkwardness of carrying another person up such a sharp incline, Asuka only made it about halfway when her feet slid out from under her. A thrown hand managed to find purchase in a large crack in the surface, but Shinji was now hanging solely by her right hand. She heard the truck slide into the crater.

'Shit, we're both screwed,' she grimly thought to herself. 'I can't climb up with only one arm, but there's no way I'm letting him fall! Damnit, Shinji, couldn't you have collapsed in a park or something?!'

The only good news Asuka could think of was that the ground was no longer moving. If the truck had remained stuck on the edge, she would likely now be hanging vertically. As it was, both arms were already protesting at the strain, and she had not had enough time to recover from the sprint.

"Misatoooo!" Even as Asuka screamed for their guardian, she realised that no help would come in time. She didn't even know if the woman had been able to follow her. The death grip she had on both Shinji's arm and the fissure was beginning to give out. Her left fingers were on fire, and her right arm almost felt as if it had been bisected again.

"MISATOOOOOOO!"

Her fingers slipped out of the crack.


Misato was left far behind as Asuka ran. She gathered up the pack the girl had dropped and started running after her as Asuka nearly vanished, her fireball of red hair the only thing standing out amidst the dirt and debris around the crater. Misato did her best to ignore the extra weight she was carrying as she took off after Asuka, using her hair as a beacon.

The cry had shaken Misato to her core. She could still feel the pure despair in that voice. Misato's vision soon became blurry as tears started to form in the corners of her eyes. Shinji needed help, she now had an idea of where to find him, and she was running too slow. The ground itself seemed to be attempting to stall the major as she found herself constantly stumbling on the rubble.

A loose rock sent Misato tumbling, and she just barely avoided landing head first on a piece of jagged metal. As she stood back up, Misato swore as she realised that the fall had made her lose sight of Asuka. She started running in what she hoped was the right direction. Tense minutes passed, but there was no sign of the girl. Misato was about to search for a higher vantage point when the faint sound of her name being called reached her ears. Misato turned in that direction and a second, much louder scream got her running again.

A minute later she made it to the top of a small hill and found Asuka sitting on the ground some distance away from a chunk of road that was tilted towards the hole in the city. Her arms were wrapped tightly around the chest of a very familiar form and the girl was staring unblinkingly towards the crater's edge as she hyperventilated. The heavy pack was dropped next to Asuka as Misato nearly fell to the ground and attempted to catch her breath.

"Are... are you alright?" Misato gasped out. The girl failed to answer, still staring at the edge, so she placed a hand on the girl's shoulder and gently shook her to get her attention. The stunned redhead jolted and turned towards Misato, and the woman could see fear in those eyes, an incredibly rare emotion for the German girl to show. Asuka's gaze slowly moved back to the crater, and then locked onto the head pressed against her chest. Her breathing finally began to return to normal at the sight of Shinji's messy brown hair, before she closed her eyes and buried her face in it.

Misato repeated her question, and Asuka nodded slightly. With a deep inhale and exhale the girl got to her feet, still carrying Shinji, and began walking away from the gaping hole in the city. She appeared to be paying only minor attention to what was in front of her, as she narrowly avoided wandering into a chunk of masonry.

Picking the bag back up after a moment of staring at Asuka's back, Misato set off after her. She refrained from commenting, sensing that something had greatly distressed her. Asuka would talk when she was ready. Or perhaps she wouldn't say anything for the rest of the day. It was difficult to tell right now.

Regardless, they had finally found Shinji, and he was alive. That alone almost brought tears of joy to Misato's eyes. From what she could see as she drew up alongside Asuka, the boy had been through quite a lot. There was blood mixed with dust streaked down the side of his face, and the knuckles on his right hand were swollen, possibly dislocated or even broken, and covered with drying blood.

Eventually they reached a less devastated area of the city. Asuka suddenly stopped walking and knelt down, laying out Shinji on the footpath in front of her. She took the pack from Misato and opened it up. A bottle of water, some sterilising wipes, and a roll of bandages were extracted, and the two of them silently began cleaning and dressing the wounds. Neither of them had thought to acquire splints from the pharmacy, so they had to make do with whatever small scraps of wood were nearby to immobilise the fingers on Shinji's right hand.

His left hand was tightly curled around a slightly battered and familiar chunk of red plastic. It took so much effort for Asuka to prise his fingers away from it, she was surprised that the neural clip hadn't cracked under the pressure of his grip. While she didn't like the thought of taking away something that Shinji had apparently been using for comfort, she liked even less the possibility of him letting go, dropping it somewhere it couldn't be found. Instead, she tucked it into the pocket of his trousers.

When they were finished, Misato was packing the supplies back up when a movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. Asuka's hand was slowly drifting towards Shinji's face, before it suddenly clenched into a fist and returned to her side as the girl huffed. Misato pretended not to notice, before opening the bag again and drawing out two water bottles, one of which was passed to Asuka.

"Thanks," the girl muttered as she unscrewed the top and began to drink. Misato sat back and watched the girl as she stared at Shinji's face. As the silence started to become uncomfortable, Asuka finally spoke.

"I found Shinji. He was right near the edge of the crater for some reason. I was trying to clean his head wound when the ground shifted and a truck rolled towards us. I managed to avoid it, but the weight at the edge only made things worse. We were nearly hanging over the crater itself when the ground stopped tilting. I couldn't pull myself and Shinji up, so I started calling for you, hoping you were close by."

Misato nodded. "I'm sorry, I lost sight of you and was starting to go in the wrong direction."

"If I had gone a little slower, you would have been able to keep up-"

"If you had gone a little slower, Shinji might not be here right now," Misato interrupted as she shook her head. "Don't worry about it, Asuka. The important thing is that we're all safe now. But... how did you get back onto solid ground?"

Asuka sighed and leaned back against the wall, looking up at the sky. "As much as I'd love to say so, it wasn't me. Someone else pulled me up."

Misato's eyes widened in surprise. "Someone else?" she repeated. "There are other people in the city now?"

"No, the rescuer clearly wasn't human," Asuka said. "In fact, if my guess is right, we were saved by an Angel."

There was shocked silence for a minute as Misato attempted to understand. "An... an Angel?! As in one of those things we were fighting last year?!"

Asuka slowly nodded, and looked back down at Misato. "Tell me something. What did Kaworu Nagisa actually look like?"

The sudden question confused Misato for a moment before she recovered and replied, "He had silver hair, red eyes, and he was always wearing the same uniform the boys at your school have. Wait..." She frowned. "Are you suggesting you were rescued by the Seventeenth Angel?!"

"Well it certainly wasn't Wondergirl standing on thin air and giving me a shit-eating grin," the girl snapped, before calming back down. "He grabbed me just as I lost my grip and pulled me onto solid ground. When I got my bearings again, I saw that Nagisa person standing above the crater looking all... glowy. He was staring at Shinji with this... I guess unhappy expression on his face, then he looked and me and got all smug. He must have heard you coming, because he vanished right before you showed up."

"Uh, wow," Misato said after a moment. "I can definitely say I was not expecting that to happen. When I heard you screaming I was afraid I'd be too late. Guess all we can do is be thankful that Nagisa came back from... from the dead to save my two kids."

"But how the hell is he still around? You said he was killed by Shinji."

Misato sighed and got to her feet. "Know what? I'm tired and I want to go home, so let's just do that. Save all the questions for when we're not exhausted."

Asuka rolled her eyes as she also stood up. "Do you even know where we are? Your apartment could be at the opposite end of the city."

"Nope! It's about a ten minute drive from here." The woman pointed at a sign hanging from a building across the street. "That's the auto-shop where I got my Renault serviced. Wonder if they have anything we can... 'borrow'."

A quick look inside the auto-shop revealed that there were no vehicles they could use. Asuka didn't seem to mind, as she went back to where Shinji lay on the ground. As he was picked up, the girl spoke.

"So which way are we going then?"

Thinking for a moment, Misato finally pointed in the direction they had been originally travelling. "The apartment is this way. It took me about an hour or so to walk home. I would have called for Section Two to pick me up, but Ritsuko made a joke about my weight earlier that day and I was still in a bit of a mood."

"Did the walk help?" Asuka grinned as she lifted Shinji into a fireman's carry, distributing his weight across her shoulders.

"Hell no, the next day she said I was looking too skinny." Misato fumed for a moment before turning serious again. "Hey, are you going to be okay carrying him?"

Asuka looked at the unconscious boy's face as the two of them set off for home with the setting sun at their back. "If Shinji can carry me, I can carry him," she eventually replied. "I'll be fine, I'm much stronger than him, and... he's not nearly as heavy as I was expecting."

The boy was wearing the exact same clothes as the last time Asuka had clearly seen Shinji, on the beach nearly a week ago. As well as not sleeping properly, he had apparently not been eating well either. His ribs were just starting to poke out through the skin under his still-open shirt.

"Scheiße. He's in pretty bad shape." She tilted her head towards his face before continuing in a whisper, "Stupid Shinji, not taking proper care of yourself... now we have to carry you home. I hope you appreciate this, Depp."

"St'p us'ng..."

The sudden mumbled reply almost made Asuka drop the boy in surprise. Misato appeared not to have heard him, but after a short time of walking alone she looked back to see Asuka staring at Shinji's face.

"What is it? Is he awake?"

Asuka said nothing for a moment, still listening intently for anything more from Shinji, but soon turned her head and said, "I think he said 'stop using her face'."

They stared at each other, wondering if the other person had a clue about the cryptic sentence. Misato could ultimately do nothing but shrug helplessly before continuing down the road. Asuka remained still for a moment longer, staring at Shinji's closed eyes, before she set off after her guardian.


Half-lidded red orbs watched the trio move away from where two teenagers had almost lost their lives. The owner of the eyes was panting slightly but trying to remain stoic. Deep inside his chest, a presence radiated feelings of relief.

As the sun set and the stars began to light up the sky, the boy closed his eyes and spoke.

"Are you going to tell me that I shouldn't have done that?"

"No. I am merely curious as to your reason for doing so."

He turned around, and faced his counterpart. The blue-haired girl was standing on thin air, just as he was. She tilted her head slightly and continued.

"After all, if they had perished, you would have been guaranteed to succeed."

"But I do not want to win by default," the boy answered with a smile. "It would be a hollow victory and prove nothing. My children must fight yours at their best. Anything less is unacceptable."

What he neglected to mention was that the presence inside him had suddenly urged him frantically towards his actions, and he couldn't work out why.

Lilith gazed up at the bloodstained moon as it made its ascent and absently rubbed her neck. "What of your... Revenants?" she asked. "They will be incapable of fighting at full strength for a long time."

"Neither of us can create perfect life from nothingness. They will suffice." Adam turned back to stare in the direction of the Lilin he had saved. "You should concern yourself more with your champions. Our ceasefire will not last forever."

The eyes of Lilith turned blank as she saw something beyond the sight of either of them. "Even here, I cannot see into his mind anymore. That is... unfortunate. I can only sense indistinct snatches of pain and grief. All I can do now is hope that I have done enough to aid him." She sighed heavily and began to float away. "We should return now. Our forms can no longer maintain permanent stability outside of the Sea, and I know that your rescue effort has taxed you greatly."

Lilith stopped and looked back over her shoulder. "But... thank you for saving him. When I had the sensation that death was soon to visit Shinji Ikari I resigned myself, and the rest of my children, to our fates. I refused to believe that there was anything to be done. I could not even cast my sight out of the sea, but you broke out, not even knowing if you would be able to help... but determined to try."

"I don't think it'll be something I can do again, though," Adam remarked with a grin.

He noticed that Lilith was starting to breathe heavily now too. A faint sheen of sweat was visible on both their faces. He held an arm up to his face, watching the skin slowly melt in the moonlight as his corporeal body started losing cohesion, before turning in a circle to view the ruins of Tokyo-3 one more time. Lilith had already disappeared, and Adam followed suit a few minutes later.


A/N: A couple of reviewers asked about memories and Instrumentality. The topic of the 'hive mind' of Instrumentality will come up later in the story. Asuka on the other hand...

This is just what I saw when I watched EoE, so your mileage may vary. That scene with Asuka and Shinji in the kitchen where she refuses to help him? That was just in Shinji's head. It's that scene that causes him to finally give everything up and say 'to hell with it', starting Third Impact. After all, look at how... excessive Asuka acts. It's like somebody turned her anger up to twelve. Not to mention that she somehow knew about what he did in the hospital. 'She' is just a manifestation that Shinji subconsciously created to try and cope with what was happening to him. A... caricature? Is that the right word?

That's why Asuka doesn't remember the hospital or the kitchen scene. She wasn't there.