Before I go any further I should back up and tell the readers how I got involved in all of this. Let me just say at first that except for some very short nearby trips Second Branch was my one and only home for the first thirteen years of my life.

Second Branch goes by several names. To the old timers this place is called Groom Lake, that's what used to be here a long time ago and by "lake" what they really meant was this big patch of salt a mile wide that's smack in the middle of the desert that used to be a lake about a hundred thousand years ago. Others called this place Tonopah, which was an old native name for this part of southern Nevada. Most of the world once knew this part of Nevada as Area 51, which was a secret Air Force test airfield. Some said that the US government once kept captured alien UFOs here and would fly them in experiments to try and figure out how they worked.

To NERV, the global agency that was created to fight the Angels and build and operate the Evangelion, this place is known as NERV-2 or sometimes NERV-02. There's a sister base, NERV-01 , located in Massachusetts, while NERV itself is headquartered in Japan. There are other NERV bases but apart from two others in Germany we're the largest one outside of Tokyo-3.

To me this place is Second Branch and it's basically desert as far as you can see in all directions. We're miles away from any civilized place, and there's only one road that goes north or south from here. The biggest place anywhere nearby is the old, abandoned city of Las Vegas. I went there once with my dad when I was little, and it's really surreal to go and see it as there's all of these giant hotels that were built in fancy shapes like castles and Egyptian pyramids. It used to have millions of people come and visit but now only lizards and snakes live there. The next largest city is hundreds of miles away.

In any case Second Branch is a part of NERV, the international agency created to fight the Angels. The Angels were these ginormous, practically invulnerable monsters who were predicted to attack the Earth in order to destroy all life on the planet. But back then the general public didn't know that as the "cover story" for NERV was about having a super-expensive, super-science program to protect Earth from killer asteroids like the one that everyone was told destroyed Antarctica in 2000. Only as we all know by now that didn't actually happen either. Second Branch was supposed to be where some of the Evangelion units, the giants NERV was constructing to combat and defeat the Angels, were being constructed through a very long and expensive process. Second Branch was never intended to actually operate the Evangelions on their own though and that's where my family enters the picture.

My first memories are of the three of us: me, my mom, and my dad. When I was very young I remember my dad being tall and strong, and seeming like a lot of fun. My mom was gentle and kind, and was nearly always around wherever I was. We lived on the base, not in the tower but in a house. I remember that it was hot, and seemed hot nearly all of the time.

Most of the time I was with my mother, and I guess she worked while watching over me but I don't remember being left with anyone else but either her or my dad. While it's been so long that I can't remember entirely what she looked like, she had my hair color and my eyes and wore glasses. Dad always dressed smartly and had neatly combed hair with a little trimmed beard that I thought looked like the guy on the fried chicken packages.

I don't have much memories of those earlier days but some things stick out. One was that my mother loved to work in a garden outdoors. She would take me and we would go outside our old house and she would get down on her hands and knees and plant things and then water and tend to them. I would always go with her, and sometimes get involved in watering or digging if I wasn't playing around.

There was one day we were doing this when I noticed that mom always looked out into the distance when she was gardening. Sometimes she's stop what she was doing and she'd just look towards the mountains that were southwest of us, far in the distance. I noticed that she was looking out there and she seemed very sad.

"Mommy," I asked her. "What's wrong?"

"Oh," she said in her soft voice, "I'm just thinking about something I left outside." I looked at her face and noticed that she had tears in her eyes.

"Mommy," I asked again. "If you forgot something we could go get it!"

"It's alright," she told me. "Mommy will take care of it." Then she went back to her garden, planting yellow wildflowers as I watched and thought little of it.

My dad often took trips outside the base and I'd stay with mom while he was gone. There were other times when mom took her own trips, and usually not with dad. In those times she's leave me with dad and I'd anxiously wait until she returned, usually in a day or two. Dad would usually play with me a little, then leave me in front of the computer all day to play games while he'd work.

But one day when I was four years old, Mom left on a trip and didn't come back.

I remember that day. I remember that it never really rained in the desert but that day it rained hard, and a torrential desert storm came and washed away her little garden.

For the next few days I'd spent my time waiting in the living room for mom to show up. I just didn't understand and kept asking my dad what happened to mom. Dad was reluctant to tell me, and that was often how he was: unable to tell the truth, he'd talk around it. Finally after a few days Dad, who was acting in a slow and gloomy way, sat me down on my bed in the bedroom. It was then he finally explained what had happened.

"Erin, dear," he told me in a sad, gravelly voice, "your mother won't be coming back for a while."

I was shocked. "Why not?" I asked.

"She has…she has become like one of the Angels," he said. "We will not see her for a long while."

I didn't quite know what to say, the concept of life and death still not quite understandable for the four year old me. "So is she in heaven?"

"Yes, dear."

"So, can we at least talk to her?"

"Yes, dear. We can talk, and she can listen to us, but she cannot talk back to us."

"But why did she go?" I asked, still trying to wrap my little brain around this. "She went because she needed to," my father struggled to say. "And only when we really need her she will return."

"But I need her now!" I cried out. "I need my mommy!" My father could not console me, instead saying only "I am sorry, dear," and then walking out of my bedroom. He just left me there while I cried.

I don't remember much else about my early life. I don't even quite remember when the word "dead" got into it but somehow after a few months I knew it. She wasn't coming back no matter how hard I prayed at night, and I think around age five or six I just gave up on hoping she would.

When I was six years old my dad took me for a walk where he worked. By now they had built the tall tower that we lived in, and I had a new larger bedroom and a new computer with new games, and the balcony on our apartment overlooked all of the sprawling complex that was being constructed. We walked from our apartment to dad's car, and then he drove me through the new, shining city that was being built in the middle of the desert. Back then I didn't know exactly what Dad did, except that dad wore both a uniform and a white lab coat to work, and that dad's hair had changed from brown to silver. He smiled a little more however and at times was still very warm with me. On this day, with my hand in his, he led me through hallways filled with other scientists and machines and equipment and all sort of "science stuff" and then took me to an elevator.

"Where are we going?" I asked him.
"I want to show you something," he replied.

The elevator ride seemed long and boring but I remember my ears popping during the ride. The doors sild open and then it opened up into what seemed like a cave. I was scared but Dad took my hand and assured me that it was safe here.

After walking for a while down a narrow and dimly lit passageway we entered another giant cavern and then dad used some sort of device to turn on the lights. A set of floodlights shined in front of us and then I saw it for the first time. At that time it was a skeleton and little else, but it was giant and terrifying. I screamed and hid behind dad.

Sensing my fear, he coaxed me out and then held onto me as he explained what this way. "Erin, dear, do you know what your dad does for work?" I honestly didn't and shook my head.

"I build this," he said. "A giant skeleton?" I asked in a perplexed voice.

"It's only this right now, but one day this will become the most powerful thing in the world," he told me. "And…" he then kneeled down and pointed right at my chest. "When I'm done this will belong to you."

"To me?"

"Yes. You will pilot it. It will be your purpose in life to do so."

I shrugged, now very confused as to what was going on. "What will I do with it?"

"Save the world," he said.

By the time I was six I was already very used to getting educated by the computer, as dad had pretty much had me learning on it since I could barely walk and talk. All of my lessons, my vocabulary, counting, the basics of things like science and history and all about the world outside, all came from the computer screen that I was plopped in front of for hours each day.

Of course not everything can be schooled that way so dad arranged for me to have other kinds of education too. There were regular swimming lessons, popular with me because it was a great chance to cool off in the desert heat for about an hour every day or so. There were other activities too such as tennis, which I was okay with, and karate classes, which I was definitely less okay with as each class seemed to be a continual process of me getting thrown to the mat by my instructors.

I had my first gymnastics lesson too about the same time, and that quickly became the center of my universe. For me gymnastics was something that actually taught me how to fly, and I mean that quite literally. There's no feeling in the world like being able to jump up on a pair of uneven bars and then go flipping and flying as fast as I could in between them. Or, for that matter, running down and vaulting and launching myself into the air and being able to do complete loops and come back down in one piece. While it wasn't always so easy, I discovered that I had a real flair for gymnastics as my limber little body could bend and twist and flip and balance and do somersaults, and then launch into flying somersaults off of balance beams and all sorts of things like that.

For a long time gymnastics actually became so central to my life that I nearly forgot about EVA and piloting. It certainly made my wardrobe choices easier, as having gymnastics nearly every day meant I had a wardrobe full of leotards and it became nearly the only thing I wore. I mean, I could wear them at home, swim in them, put on a pair of shorts and shoes and play tennis or go outside in them, and if I needed to go anywhere with dad such as dinner or some sort of social thing at the base I could put on a nicer skirt and some good sandals or shoes and I was set. And it wasn't like there was anyone at home telling me how to dress myself as it was anyway. I pretty much did everything but sleep in my leos.

So I spent most of the rest of my single-digit years dreaming up how wonderful a gymnast I was going to be when I was older. I guess I was pretty motivated even then, I was so determined to get good at gym that I'd even start stretching out in the morning the moment I woke up. Dad was supportive in the way that he was supportive for just about everything else in my life: he'd arrange the lessons and then I'd tell him how it all went, but he rarely showed up for anything I actually did in gymnastics or swimming or really anything else.

You see, while I had good instructors and I learned an awful lot I was never actually in any competitions. Ever. Why? Because there were no other kids to compete with. My entire spread of schooling and lessons were done entirely with just instructors or the computer back at home. I never went to a real school, with real kids, of any kind.

Partly this was because of how Second Branch was set up. Like before when Second Branch was known as Area 51, we were an experimental test station and because of that it was considered hazardous duty to be here. Practically the whole operation was all top secret, and you didn't put families in places like that. Many of the people who worked here actually had families off base, and they might stay on base for a few days then go back home to their families in places like Utah and Arizona.

But not everyone did that and some people still lived on base all of the time, including the base commanders and also us because my father was the scientific director and he needed, or he wanted anyway, to live here. Some of those people did have families and they did live on base but it was nowhere near where we lived. So to summarize there were no kids in my world, and therefore no classmates nor any playmates.

It wasn't like I never came into contact with other children. Sometimes there were social events like holiday parties, where people would bring their families and I'd see kids my own age. But it was as if I lived in a different world from them. I was pretty shy about talking to any other children that I saw as a result, and so during such times I'd just hang close to my father or any other adults that I knew.

The result was that I was lonely. Very, very lonely.

There was one brief moment when that looked like it might change. At that time I was eight and there was one particular weekend when my father went away on a trip. He would go away every so often and leave me in the care of the base staff, often one or two nurses who would just supervise me during all of my lessons and make sure I got fed and into bed on time. When I asked my father where he went, he'd usually tell me he needed to go for important business, or to go to the US capital to ask for money for what they were doing, and which I sensed even at that tender age was a big frustration for dad and the others at Second Branch as it took a lot of money to build EVA and all of this other stuff and they never had enough.

Aside from just making sure I was on schedule however the nurses generally left me alone. And on that one Saturday I got sent back to the apartment building after having just my gymnastics lesson in the morning. As my dad's driver dropped me off in front I noticed a moving van in front of the tower, and there were all sorts of people moving boxes and furniture from the van to inside of the building. Standing and observing all of this was another girl that looked about my age and size. She had long black hair, dark eyes, and a dark skin tone and at first look seemed to be either black or Hispanic. The girl wore a purple dress and slip-ons, and clutched a stuffed bear as she watched her family and the movers unload the truck.

When I saw the girl I became excited and a bit nervous, as in our building I had never seen a kid my age ever show up before. Drawing up a deep breath, I decided to find out who she was. I then walked up to where she was standing, and it took her just a moment to see that someone else was there. "Oh, Hi!" she said cheerfully.

"Hi," I replied, just waving my hand.

"Do you live here?" she asked me. I nodded with enthusiasm and then she smiled. "Cool! I just moved in!" I couldn't help but smile at that. "I'm Nadia. What's your name?"

"Erin. Erin Forrestal."

"Nice to meet you. We're going to be neighbors."

"What floor do you live on?" I asked her.

"Sixteenth, I think," she replied. "Where do you live?"

"On the top floor." Nadia grew a big breath in surprise. "Really? All the way at the top?" I nodded again, now somewhat proud of my digs. "Yup. You can see everything from up there."

Then I took a chance. "Wanna come up and look?"

"Okay!"

After very quickly getting her parents to approve, Nadia came with me on the elevator as we went up to the top and our place. Once inside she was suitably impressed.

"Wow, you have so many computers in here!" she exclaimed as she saw my dad's workplace in the living room. "Is your dad a scientist?"

"He's the scientific director, which I guess makes him the boss scientist," I told her. "Come out, you can see the whole city from up here." I led Nadia to the balcony out from the living room and from there she took in the complete view of the Second Branch grounds. It was a breathtaking view and Nadia spent several minutes looking all over the valley.

"This place is so big," she told me. I pointed out to her different parts of the complex as she watched. "See, there's where all of the other scientists go, and there's the engineering buildings and then there's the security building, where they have all of these soldiers and stuff. And then there's this big airfield where airplanes come in and out all the time."

"That's awesome!" and then she asked me. "Do you go to school here too?"

I was a bit reluctant to answer at first. "Well, I kinda don't go to school…"

"You don't have to go to school?! Really?"

"I mean, I don't have school with anyone else. I get lessons on the computer or with teachers that come here."

"Wow," she pondered. "How 'come?"

"There aren't any other kids that live in this part, at least not until now."

"So, now maybe we can have lessons together then? That sounds better than just school."

"Could be," I replied. "Hey, do you want to go play in my room?"

"Okay!"

For about the first time ever I actually had another child in my room and that day we spent hours playing games on my computer or just talking about ourselves. Nadia's parents were both scientists of Indian ethnicity that moved here to from Massachusetts, where they were working at what would later be known as NERV's First Branch. As for Nadia she was wonderfully normal, although like me she had no brothers and sisters and grew up alone at home too, so we had that in common. This was sounding like it was going to be a great improvement. Interacting with another kid however did start to uncover some difficult topics I hadn't really talked to anyone else about before.

"So what does your mom do?" Nadia asked me. I was very hesitant to answer at first. "Um, well, she's…not here."

"Did she move away?"

"She died," I said in more quiet tone.

Nadia gasped. "Oh, no. Was it bad? Like, was she sick or something?"

"No. Just one day she left home and didn't come back." I realized that I really didn't know exactly how Mom had died, as Dad never really told me much about it.

"That must be sad," Nadia commiserated. "Who takes care of you then?"

"My dad does. Although he gets help from the other people here. Like right now he's out on a trip, so there's these nurses that come and make my dinner and spend the night here."

"My mom and dad are always so busy," Nadia told me. "I get lots of other lessons outside of school too, though. Like I do piano, and then I have math tutor, and then I do gymnastics on the weekends."

This was shaping up to be my best day ever. "You do gymnastics too?!" I excitedly exclaimed.

"I do, but I'm not very good at it."

"I can teach you! I can totally teach you!" It was like Santa Claus had suddenly dropped a Best Friend Ever right into my bedroom window. "Here, wear this first!" I jumped to my dresser and picked out a leo for Nadia, I had a purple one with no sleeves that I never wore so I tossed that to her and then slipped off my own shorts to reveal the green and white striped leo I was wearing. She quickly changed and then for the next hour or so I taught her how to do proper flips in my room, along with some other stretching and things I had learned. Nadia picked up everything pretty fast, even being able to do full splits by the time we were done.

By the end of the afternoon we were both exhausted from all of the play but happy nonetheless to have found each other. We lay on my bedroom floor in the middle of the mess my room had become and then just talked to each other as the sun started to go down.

Nadia turned to me as we lay next to each other on the carpet. "Erin?"

"Yeah?"

"You're really cool!"

I blushed bright red at that. "Gee, thanks!"

"Do you want to know my secret?" I looked over at her, not sure what to expect. "Um, okay?"

She looked up at the ceiling, biting her lip in anxiety, then she spoke. "I didn't use to look like this."

"What do you mean?"

"My face. I used to have a sort of defect, when I was born." I looked at her more carefully. "I don't see anything wrong."

"I know, that's because I've had a bunch of operations. I'm better now, but when I was little my parents didn't used to let me have friends because they were afraid someone was going to tease me."

"Well, you seem pretty normal now," I told her quite honestly. She didn't say anything, but just nodded and smiled. I think she felt good to finally have someone to really talk to, and so did I. "I've got a secret too."

"Really, what is it?"

"My dad, he's building this, like, giant robot thing in a secret lab here."

"Yeah?"

"And I'm going to be the one to pilot it?"

"You're gonna what?!"

"I'm going to pilot my own giant robot! I mean, it's not ready yet. But I'm all of this training and stuff one of these days I'm going to ride inside of it."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Fight these big alien-like monsters! And save the Earth! At least that's what my dad says. Anyway, it's a really big secret so don't tell anyone."

"Oh, okay."

I felt like I needed to enforce my secret a little better than that. I sat up off the floor and offered my hand to her. "Pinkie Promise?" I extended my right pinkie and she wrapped hers against mine. "Pinkie Promise!" We both smiled and giggled at that for minutes afterwards.

Once the sun went down my nurses showed up with my dinner and instructions from my dad for more homework at the computer. Nadia bid goodbye to go back to her new apartment and then found the elevator to go downstairs. While I stood outside she waived at me with a big smile as the doors closed, still wearing the purple leotard I had loaned her, and even though I was sad to see her go I felt incredibly happy as finally I wasn't alone.

I woke up the next morning excited to go and see my new playmate. I already had the plan in my head to go and see her in her own place this time, and maybe also show her the swimming pool nearby. So once out of bed I searched around for a good swimsuit (I had about a dozen of those too, usually intermingled with my leos) and picked out a navy blue Speedo racing one-piece. Pulling on a pair of white shorts over it and finding a hat, I then walked out of my bedroom to get breakfast and get ready for another fun day ahead.

To my surprise sitting at the dining table was Dad. The nurses were gone, and Dad had instead returned early from his trip. On the table was breakfast cereal and toast, and orange juice as we normally had in the mornings. "Dad!" I exclaimed in surprise, "you're home early!"

"Yes," he said to me with a forced smile. "Erin, please sit down." His tone of voice was more serious than he normally was, so I knew something bad probably happened. I sat down at the table at my usual spot and looked up at him.

He got right to the point. "Erin, did you tell anyone about what we're doing here?"

When in doubt, try innocence. "Like what?"

"Did you tell anyone about EVA? And about you piloting EVA?" It was then when I realized what was going on. "Well…" I said, trying to think of the best way to say this without my father being upset. My father rarely lost his temper but when he did lose it he was horrifying. "Well, not strangers or anything."

"But you did tell someone, didn't you?" It was then when I learned what had happened, and apparently Nadia had been quite the chatterbox when she returned home last night, with the contents of our "pinkie promised" double-secret conversation somehow getting back to him. Seeing I wasn't going to get out of this I told my dad everything and while he wasn't flaming mad he wasn't going easy on me with this either.

"But dad," I told him, trying to make an excuse and afraid that I might lose my only friend. "She lives here now. She's my best friend. She isn't going to tell anyone else about me anyway."

"Yet she didn't keep your secret when she got home, did she?" I had no other way left to me except to agree with him, and I reluctantly nodded.

He got out of his chair and walked over to me. I just sat there, dejected, as my own desire to confide in another had gotten me into trouble. "Erin," he said in a softer tone as he kneeled on the floor next to me. "You must be very careful. What we do here is very important, and there are lots of enemies out there that would try to harm us."

This was the first time I had ever heard about having any enemies, other than these Angel-things that were going to come someday. "But…but Nadia's nice. She's not like that."

"She is not, but she is foolish and so were her parents. We were fortunate to watch over this very carefully, before this information could get out."

Fear crept into me, fear that I was going to lose my one and only friend. "What's going to happen?"

"I have made it very clear to them that what you said is not to ever be revealed to anyone else. I believe that they will not do so after the arrangements that I have made."

"But…" I didn't like my dad's tone of voice at all, and I knew it meant something bad. "But can I see her again?"

"No."

I didn't know what to do or say. Here was the best thing in the world and suddenly my dad was taking it away just because of a conversation between two girls. I swallowed hard and tried to think of any way to plead my case as tears started to run down my cheeks. "But Dad! Can't we just be friends?"

"I'm afraid not, dear. The risk of something like this happening again is just too great."

There, he went and said it: this wasn't just about Nadia, this was about me never having anyone else to play with ever. It wasn't an accident that I had no classmates or any other kids around. My current situation was something that Dad had very much intended, all of it to keep me isolated.

At that moment I didn't care anything about EVA or piloting or any important thing to save the world from giant monsters, I just wanted to feel the way I did yesterday, where there was someone that I could just be me with and act like little girls, like I was supposed to. I felt like there was this big, giant gaping hole in my heart, but little did I know then just how wide it was and what else had caused it to be ripped open. I tried to put up a stiff fight and not disappoint the man in front of me, the man that despite the pain I felt I loved very much. But I couldn't do it, my heart was just torn asunder.

"Daddy," I said as my face was flushed red with tears, my little hands trembling with emotion. "I just want to have friends! I just want to play with someone! Why can't I do that?"

My father took his hands and held me by my own arms. Softening the tone of his voice, he said to me "am I not your friend, too?" I didn't reply but still crying I nodded my head.

"And all of your teachers and coaches, some of which come from very far away just for you, are these not your friends also?" I still nodded, but knew my point was not being made. "But I can't play with them," I said softly. "I just want someone else to play with."

"I understand, dear," he said to me, "but you need to also understand that the burdens that both you and I face are very unique. We're not like other people, and because of that it can be very lonely." My dad continued with his position, looking me in my teary, reddening eyes. "Your mother understood how important this was, important enough to give her life to make sure you had this chance."

Dad had never talked much about Mom after she had died, but brining her up in this suddenly had my attention. I didn't just miss not having friends, I had missed not having mom too. That her death was somehow related to dad's work seemed to make the obstacle of loneliness only that much more. I looked up at him, sniffling as my nose started to run after so much crying.

"Erin," he told me, "you need to be brave, and you need to be careful with you heart. Never give it to anyone, always keep your true self hidden. One day you'll understand why this is so." I certainly didn't understand at the time, but I tried to nod while still crying, to show that I did understand. My throat was so choked up that I couldn't say anything further.

After a couple of minutes more Dad left me in the apartment, with instructions not to leave until he said I could. I didn't protest, I knew I couldn't. I sat at the table and tried to eat but found myself with no appetite. Instead I ran off to the balcony.

Looking downward I saw the moving trucks, the same ones that were here yesterday. They were again in front of the building, now taking the same boxes and furniture that were carried into the building earlier and returning them up the ramps into the trucks. Next to the vans was a minivan and I saw two adults who I assumed were Nadia's parents. They hurried into the van, followed by Nadia.

Just as she was about to board the van she looked up at the tower. From thirty stories up it was hard to see much but it seemed like she was looking up at the balcony above. I waived my hand at her but either she didn't see it or just didn't respond. Instead her mother whisked her into the van and slammed the door. A few seconds later the van left, followed by the trucks, and travelled to the road that led outside of the base. Despite how hot it was that day I got the chills, and then spent the rest of the day underneath the blankets in my bed trying to keep warm and away from the outside world.

In reading the Evangelion manga I had always liked that we saw a lot more of Shinji's personal development before he went to Tokyo-3. We knew of the difficulties he had getting along with his aunt's family, and of how isolated he felt prior to his encounter with EVA. We didn't see much of this same development in the franchise for the other pilots, especially for Asuka who seems to go from age four to fourteen at full speed tsundere. I always thought it might be interesteing to know what Asuka was like at age ten or eleven. There's at least one fanfic story in there for someone who wants to take it on.

I felt it important to see how our pilots become what they are, and do that I have to start at the beginning. Erin has some similar experiences with the others but also there are things unique to her situation. Her isolation is quite deliberate, and if you've had parents or guardians that were a bit on the paranoid side you know how that can feel.