Random bit. Rebuild 3 should be coming out this fall: since I want to do something with the new character I may need to wait. I have some idea what her issues are, but I don't want to get halfway through something and then realize it's all been Jossed. That's not good for finishing projects.

He hadn't anticipated this.

It was often an effort to keep smiling, but normally that was because he wanted to stare, or weep, or scream.

Not because he wanted to kill.

He'd seen Gendo Ikari before, a fleeting glimpse in the shuttle, and it hadn't evoked this reaction. But that time, Kaworu had been alone on the moon. Shinji and Rei hadn't been with him.

Nor had he smelled the man. It was doing odd things to the Lilim brain he inhabited right now, things it hadn't done to the cat brain of his other body because the cat didn't have quite the same emotions wired in. Tomcats cared very little, if at all, for their kits.

But since this brain had his data stored in it, it knew Gendo's scent, from that cat's body, and automatically cross-referenced it with memories of Gendo and what Gendo had done to determine the proper way to react to the scent: was this a hint a predator was nearby, that food had spoiled? It was really a very good system, and one of the best at drawing buried memories out of Lilim.

The man that had hurt Shinji and taught Rei not to value her life was present. So were Shinji and Rei, and they were young, still vulnerable to his attacks, his words still had the power to hurt them and Gendo intended to continue to hurt them. He intended to kill them, because what was Instrumentality but death?

This obviously evoked the physiological reaction known as anger: this was one of the situations that physiological reaction was for. A system meant to monitor entire planets had no trouble understanding the mechanisms behind the release of adrenaline to boost strength, the deliberate chemical clouding of human reason in order to enable a human to harm a fellow human being without remorse or hesitation (at least not until after the enemy was safely dead) and all the other processes happening because this body had determined that Gendo Ikari was fucking dead.

Normally he wouldn't have any problem vetoing that, the way he'd shut down the entire system behind sexual attraction because for him it wasn't anything but a waste of time. The trouble was that emotional response?

The anger, no, the wrath of an angel was a dangerous thing. Not something to be invoked lightly. If they used the powers carelessly they would devastate worlds, the way this one had lost more than 80% of its life in Second Impact.

But there was one time when it was …acceptable for an angel to fight with everything they had. When all the reasons they had not to fight, not to destroy life, had to be overridden. When a world had begun to evolve the precursors of its future children, but they weren't yet sentient, hadn't yet gained their own AT fields. Couldn't protect themselves, not yet.

Shinji, and now Rei… they were all Kaworu had in this world. So a part of him was evaluating the amount of free LCL in the vicinity ('in the vicinity' by angel standards, which meant 'ten light-minutes or so, unless someone else's planet is closer than that') and exactly how to make that LCL part of his consciousness, an extension of his physical form, so he could bring it down on this entire geofront, on all of Gendo Ikari's works, like, well, what it was. The fist of a wrathful… No, not an angel, not a messenger: once he had his own world he would no longer be a message sent to the universe, a bearer of life into the darkness, he would be a creator. A god. All of the life of the world not protected by its own AT field would be his flesh: everything would seek Gendo Ikari's death. And although life could exist in a vacuum, no life could exist on its own. Would his flesh be devoured by his own symbiotic bacteria? Would…

And now he was imagining gory deaths for the man. That was wrong, but this man was a threat to this world, and kill it. Despite all that was good and holy, despite all ideals and justice and civilization and rules, the existence of that which threatened children who could not yet defend themselves could not be permitted kill it.

Kill it.

No. He would not.

"Shinji? Sorry to bother you, but…" Emotions were easier to convey than words anyway.

He felt Shinji's surprise, then how it made him happy as much as it bothered him that it was so hard for Kaworu not to kill on his behalf. "I won't have to walk or talk or anything, right? Just hold the body in existence until the briefing is over."

"If you don't mind. It's not just that I'm worried I'll attack him, I'm worried that I'll flare my AT field." As a threat display, to show this insult-to-insects what he was dealing with, that he'd better run and leave the world that was not Tabris' world but that of the Lilim alone.

"Yeah, there's no way they'd miss that." Shinji had a lot of practice keeping a poker face while talking to Kaworu inside his head. Years of boring classes, 'family dinners' trapped with his aunt and uncle. Shinji still thought it was pretty clever of him to get Kaworu to entertain him by saying, 'Well, we'll have to talk to each other while I'm piloting, right? So I should learn not to react now, even if you say something funny or read me more Jules Verne.' "Don't worry about it. It'll give me something else to think about, too."

"Oh?" What happened? Why was Shinji angry? Not that he didn't have plenty of reason to be, but this was new.

"It's all Asuka's fault. Are you sure there isn't some way to burn these horrible mental images out of my head?" Shinji begged.

"It's not good for you. What happened?" Concern for the distress Shinji suffered now overrode his hypothetical thoughts about Gendo and how easy it would be to kill him, it would just take a second. Planetary humans were so fragile and the Commander was under a lot of stress: triggering one of the reactions known as 'strokes' in the right place would destroy most of his brain and at this close a range, in that small a scale, there would be no way to detect the involvement of an AT field.

He really wished he'd been able to get SEELE to stop making him learn 'self-defense' that really amounted to assassination a lot earlier. He couldn't help knowing about the bacteria and how important the Lilim immune system was because all things strived to live, but planetary humans were so inventive when it came to killing. Thankfully SEELE had eventually admitted that despite all the fun possibilities offered by a physical AT field, they really didn't need an angel to carry out assassination missions, not when they already had agents who were more than good enough at it. Thank goodness for the ones who hadn't wanted to use the Holy Messenger as an errand boy, or stain pure alabaster hands with the blood of infidels and all that kind of nonsense that normally made Kaworu have to try not to wince.

"She said that she'd thought Rei might have the bad taste to be interested in me the other way," before Rei knew they were siblings, or so Shinji hoped: if Asuka really had been implying Rei was that level of… then Shinji was going to have to punch her teeth out, and if he beat Asuka in a fistfight, then once people's jaws undropped they would wonder where he'd learned any of it, although since Shinji had been casually referring to his teacher since he came her he hoped Misato would just think that oh, so he had learned some martial arts (and still was that bad at willing himself to fight, which meant he really was kind of hopeless at it), and wouldn't actually check his background to find that there hadn't even been a club for it at his school, forget an actual dojo anywhere nearby. And it was hard enough to get his uncle to let him take cello lessons from a neighbor, although promising to walk himself there and back had helped once his uncle actually believed he was serious. It was only a couple of miles, less than half of the distance to school and it wasn't like his aunt hadn't made him get himself there once she was relatively sure he wouldn't get lost.

Shinji had grown up rambling all over semi-deserted post-apocalyptic rural Japan in order to get out of the house. To him, anyone who would actually drive to the store to get groceries, forget complaining about what was only a half-mile walk was either amazingly lazy or a real wuss, because Shinji didn't consider himself really strong and it was a breeze for him. Except Misato. He definitely wasn't going to even think anything like that about Misato.

But, leaving his aside his desire to keep his balls intact, "Then she wondered if I had any twin fantasies, since from what she'd heard it was legal in Japan for cousins to marry."

"There wouldn't be anything wrong about it if you did. It's only natural for humans to want more of the people they love." How on earth had Lilim gotten the idea that they were a monogamous species in the first place? Surely it was obvious from the amount of differentiation between genders that they were not a promiscuous species, certainly not, but neither polygamous nor monogamous either. Well, on average. They should choose what made them happy.

Honestly, of all the things that could have been screwed up, shouldn't sex have been the last to go, when it was such a fundamental drive? Hedging it about with all these conditions, trying to protect themselves and not just from being abandoned with a child or health risks… Well, it wasn't something he could exactly understand to begin with, and it wasn't as though the terraforming drive of his fellow angels hadn't become equally twisted. Still, Shinji had been sexually mature for years now and he still hadn't done anything even though a lot of his friends from his old school had asked if he was interested in experimenting. While yes, Kaworu understood that Shinji didn't want to risk having a child that he wasn't yet prepared to look after and certainly couldn't abandon, that really couldn't be normal, could it? He'd gone online for answers and if Shinji needed some form of therapy Kaworu wasn't qualified to give only to find that this 'saving oneself for marriage' …concept had been around for thousands of years before Second Impact.

Millions of permutations of humanity in his generational history database, and this planet still managed to shock him with how weird it was.

"…My father's trying to get Yui back again. And there's Rei, that looks like her. So Asuka talking about that made me think about how he treats Rei, and how he's nice to her, or something like it, when he isn't to anyone else."

Not even Ritsuko, although Tabby hadn't passed that bit of news along to Shinji, who didn't recognize his own father's scent well enough to even subconsciously recognize it on Ritsuko. It wasn't as though Ritsuko regarded Shinji as a member of her family because of this, even though the children of those she loved should have been children she loved.

Well, it wasn't as though Tabris wasn't well used to the Lilim's ability to act as proper parents, or rather near-complete lack thereof. Perhaps because Lilith had been so neglectful, making the choice the false mother had in Solomon's tales and failing to shield them from the nightmares of the other angels? It wasn't as though their Allmother was providing a good example. And yet, "Shinji, if you are implying that Gendo had a child of your mother made," a mix of her genes and Lilith's, so Rei was genetically Shinji's half-sister, "in order to have something identical to his lost mate in the context of what you just said about twins…"

"It burns!" Shinji agreed, sending a wince.

"We can talk about it later, but not when I'm trying not to kill your father!" For Gendo to abuse Rei in that way as well, potentially creating yet more children of Kaworu's child to twist and torment as he had these two little ones, so strong to endure what they had and retain the will to strive for more, for what they should have had?

"…Sorry." And Shinji really did fell bad. Misery did love company, but he didn't want to make Kaworu miserable. Or make him blow his top, and maybe blow the top off the geofront with it. "I've never felt you this mad before." He'd have to tell Rei, Shinji thought. She'd felt how Kaworu was, not just from his sendings but the memories Shinji had shown her. So she'd know how close to impossible it was for him to get truly angry, how much he had to care to come this close to losing control and turning Gendo into a pincushion on her behalf. "He hasn't. I already figured out a way to ask." Obliquely, so his little sister wouldn't figure out what he was talking about if she still had that much of her innocence left.

"That wouldn't happen anywhere else, not so easily. It wouldn't be possible to conceal something like that, not unless they were obviously a monster, not without imprisoning the child so no one could feel them. This world…"

Shinji could feel how it made Kaworu sick, the way humans did when they saw something horrible, something that made them want to throw up in the hopes something was making them hallucinate, or doing that would keep it from poisoning them, from contaminating them. The way finding out that people triggered Second Impact and intended to do it all over again made Shinji feel, because how could anyone… If humans were capable of doing something like that, would he be capable of it, if he was contaminated with whatever madness this was? It was his body as well as his soul that rejected it so violently Tabris had actually had to avoid him for a couple days. Shinji's mental AT field was so determined to annihilate whatever the source of this evil was it would attack anything that moved until he calmed down.

Shinji hated the thought of killing, but if he was ever in the same room with Kihl, the bastard was going to spend the rest of his life drooling after Shinji burned away the mind that could contemplate anything so, so… Urgh.