Shinji woke up as the morning sun streamed in from the window. Or rather, what little of the window wasn't blocked by scientific equipment. There was something on the bed pretty much on top of him – did he really have so little space that he'd been forced to... ah.

Memories of the previous night flooded in. He opened his eyes and looked to his right, and sure enough there was a rather familiar mop of blue hair. So, he thought, How do I proceed from here? Panic, while tempting, would wake her up and then I'd have to find some way out of the awkwardness that would result. Would it really be awkward, though? She hugged me, not the other way round. Also, this is... really, really nice. It's actually kinda relaxing. There was nothing to actually panic about; she was safe, which for some reason had become a huge thing in his mind, and for once nothing seemed to -

His phone started ringing. Normally, this wouldn't be too much of a problem, but it was playing the ringtone he'd set for incoming calls from NERV. A scramble alert. Oh fuck no...

Of course, Rei chose that time to wake up as well. This morning was going to be fun...

"The fuck is going out there?" stormed Admiral Jones as Jet Alone stampeded through the VIP parking area. The morning had started off terrible, and seemed intent on getting worse.

"It... it's not responding to any of the commands! The on-board response system... what's happening!?" shouted Takumi, the latter part directed at some luckless technician, who just shrugged their shoulders and got back to work. "Damn it all! Someone FIX THIS!"

"Call up Longbow and put a spike through that bastard's head!" called Misato.

"NO!" said Takumi and Jones, in unison. They glared at each other, and Takumi backed down. "That thing's got an on-board nuke plant, and it's not worth spreading radioactive material around," continued Jones. "It's not an Eva, it won't get far."

"It's changing course!" reported one of the generic technicians. "Looks like it's headed for... Tokyo-two! And its on-board reactor..." The tech's eyes widened. "Sir... it's going for a self-destruct!"

"Shit, shit, SHIT!" shouted Takumi. "Damn it, we're going to have to call in a Longbow strike if it gets too close!" Jones pulled out a mobile phone and started talking into it.

"We have an Evangelion about a hundred klicks away," said Misato. "But it probably won't be ready for launch..." She pulled out her own phone and dialled a number.

Jones finished his own conversation, shaking his head. "Longbow's definitely out of the question for now," he said, "We've got three sats in orbit, but the UN says no until it's the only option. Doesn't that thing have an override code or manual shutdown or something?"

"I tried the override code – fuck what my bosses say – but it didn't respond," replied Takumi. Ritsuko seemed rather shocked at the news, and pulled out her own phone. "There's a manual override on the inside, but... well, that's inside the giant rampaging robot, and part of the self-destruct procedure involves flooding all the crawlspaces with radiation..."

"That... is quite possibly the stupidest thing I have ever heard." said Jones. "Alright. I've got a frigate parked a few kilometres away, and several cruise missiles in the tubes. If we can get someone close enough, maybe..."

"Knee-capping a giant robot sounds like a brilliant idea," said Misato, snapping her phone shut. "Unit One can be here in ten minutes. Does anyone have a radiation suit I can borrow?"

Shinji took a deep breath as he synchronised with Unit 01 -

and exhaled as a gigantic, nigh-indestructible war machine. That, and a fourteen-year-old boy sitting inside said war machine. The clamps on his shoulders pulled him up into the hold of a massive transport aircraft, and he suppressed a brief flicker of annoyance at the discomfort. Misato had briefed him on the plan before he'd even gotten into his plug suit – damned uncomfortable things – and he knew exactly what he needed to do. For a given value of "exactly", anyway.

A pair of RGM-84/KK Harpoon missiles streaked through the sky, guided inexorably to their targets by a rather small pair of red dots focussed on the rampaging Jet Alone's knees. While it was probable that Unit 01 was faster than Jet Alone, Admiral Jones was not taking any chances.

As they neared their target the special auxiliary boosters kicked in, pushing the missiles past their nominal top speed into the realm of Mach 1. The effect when the missiles, with their 200 kilogramme solid alloy tips, hit the robot was quite impressive. Jet Alone's legs from the feet up to the knee were left standing still.

The rest of the robot fell forwards, its knee joints obliterated by the impact.

That was when the clamps holding Unit 01 up in the sky were released, and quite a few tonnes of angry cyborg... thing plummeted towards the ground, a radiation-suited figure clutched in one of its hands.

"I'm in," reported Misato as she strode through Jet Alone's crawlspaces, a modified rifle held loosely in her right hand. Whoever sabotaged the robot could still be on board, after all.

Fortunately for the unknown saboteur, they were not actually present, and Misato had a quiet walk right up to the main power conduit. All she had to do was pull that lever there and...

"Um... did that actually do anything? It's kinda getting hotter in here!" she called.

"The temperature doesn't seem to be falling. Are you sure you pulled the right lever?" replied Takumi from the control centre. Misato rolled her eyes, then slapped her head in embarrassment.

"Yeah, I got the wrong one," she said, walking over to the right lever and pulling it out. There was a hiss as the reactor's control rods fell back into place – the designers not being stupid enough to have control rods that extended past the robot's armour – and Misato swore the room was already getting cooler.

"So..." she said, walking towards the exit hatch, "how am I supposed to get back?"

(Alternate ending:)

"Yeah, I got the wrong one," she said, walking over to that lever... no, THAT one damn it we don't want to drag this bit out much longer, and pulled gods damn it woman you got the wrong one again look do I have to come down there because I will do it!

So yeah she finally pulled the right gods damned lever and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth or something. Maybe I can get on with the actually interesting parts of the story now? What's that you say? They're still here? Oh like I give a damn I'm not being paid enough for this. Okay, fine, we'll say this was an out-take or something. Tune in next time folks, I promise it'll involve fish! No seriously that's what it says here why did my agent even get me this job, I swear this thing's written by a bloody five-year-old...

Today's weird out-take thing brought to you by a rather annoying headache.

I have to apologise for the shortness of this chapter; I was intending to get at least as far as the next major plot point (yes this story does have a plot and I have some plans for the next few chapters), but between the aforementioned headache and various other things I haven't been able to write as much. Rather paradoxically, I find that the more updates I upload, the more I actually feel like writing, so here you go. Have fun with it.