+++++ Tokyo-3 Academy. +3

Surprising even himself, Shinji was on his feet instead of once more leaving school in a wheelchair. That didn't necessarily mean that he didn't feel as if he belonged in one, just that he'd refused to be given special treatment again. Every attempt he made to stand in a position that gave honor or deference to Hikari or Sasami had been casually countered by both young women without any signs of pre-coordination. It infuriated him to no end, yet he kept what miniscule temper it inspired hidden well beneath his fear of bringing any form of sorrow to either. After a few minutes, the stopping of a car nearby drew their attention.

Stepping out first, a well-built man that looked a great deal like Toji Suzuhara if the youth had taken his fitness education seriously inclined his head in greeting to Gen and Nanako, both of whom were waiting far enough away from Shinji and the others to provide privacy. A man near Nanako's age hurried around the other side of the vehicle pushing a wheelchair. With the chair in place, the elder Suzuhara opened the rear passenger's side door to reveal a woman that was at the oldest a year more than her brother. With due care and great love, the father picked up his princess and set her in the wheelchair before covering her legs in a thin linen sheet for modesty's sake. Dismissing his assistant, he pushed his own child over to near Shinji.

"Good afternoon, Suzuhara-san," Hikari greeted the man, bowing as if receiving him in audience. Giving a warm smile to the woman, she bowed slightly deeper, "Good afternoon, Sakura."

While Sasami performed the same greetings, Shinji tried to piece together the situation. The 'sister' Toji was trying to avenge was not their junior. She had a bruise on her cheek, likely from a fall, and a scratch on her right hand, likely from the same fall. The wheelchair looked 'lived in', and not a recent affectation caused by the fight with the Angel. Realizing that he'd been staring as soon as he noticed that Sakura had been watching him watch her, he dropped his eyes to the ground in shame.

"Father," Sakura's voice was pure femininity, "I would like to ask him myself. Would you please introduce me?"

"Of course, dear." The elder Suzuhara's voice was a firm baritone, neither annoying nor assuming, "Ikari-san, I appreciate you taking the time to hear my plea. My name is Yasuji Suzuhara, I am the father of the impertinent brat that struck your friend in a vain effort at harming you. Would you do me the honor of meeting my daughter, Sakura? She has begged me for the honor of presenting our family's case at your feet."

Struggling to make eye contact, Shinji looked to Yasuji hesitantly and bowed properly for a youth meeting their senior. "I…uhm…I am pleased to meet you, Suzuhara-san." Giving the same to Sakura, he repeated the sentiment, "I am pleased to meet you, Suzuhara-san."

"The pleasure, and it is most decidedly a pleasure, is ours," Sakura responded with warmth. "I would first like to thank you for fighting to protect our city, on behalf of my family and the organization we have the privilege to be part of."

He had to respond. He had to let her know that he hadn't done anything worthy of her attention. "I…uhm…I am sorry I wasn't there earlier, m-ma'am. If I had moved faster, or…or been better…you wouldn't have been harmed."

While retaining its charm, a wry tone entered her voice, "A fall down a few stairs, a few bumps and bruises, are far from the worst pain I've endured in my life, Ikari-san. I likely made the worst error in attempting to exit my house on my own, as my brother felt that the whole thing was 'just another test', and in my haste to do my duty and depart the field of battle caused my own misfortune."

"N-no," Shinji shook his head firmly, his eyes rooted to the ground, "y-you were doing the right thing. I only succeeded by luck; it would have been safer to be in a shelter."

"Then you accept that he was wrong?" Having caught him in a logical trap, she noticed his eyes shot up to hers. With a teasing smile, she let him know that she knew what he was thinking, "That means, logically, that you accept that he was wrong to strike dear Sasami-chan in his rush to push his own guilt off on you." Sensing his attempt to find a way to backtrack, she raised a hand slightly to stop him from trying. "Which then means that my family owes you a debt, and that you hold our honor in your hands until that debt is fulfilled. Do you believe I have the right of it, Hikari-chan? I have always trusted you to be a fair arbiter in disputes."

"It sounds correct to me," Hikari declared, clearly amused at seeing Shinji run up against someone with weaponized manners. "Poor Shinji apologized to Toji, thinking that he was telling the truth of things. He worried about Sasami for hours, not realizing that the idiot had managed to hit her hairclip instead of the side of her head. How is your brother's hand, by the way?"

"Healing, but the doctors say he needs to not play contact sports for the rest of the year in order to avoid aggravating it," Yasuji replied quietly. There was a clear undertone that it wasn't the doctor's prohibition that his son needed to fear in the words. "Let us get on with this, dear. I have a business trip to Nagano, and the sun is not staying its course."

"Yes, father." Despite clearly having the position of master of the household, Sakura displayed proper deference for the man that sired her. "Ikari-san, it is no understatement to say that I owe you my life. That my foolish brother felt the need to try and admonish you for daring to soar where eagles fear to fly brings unbearable shame to my heart. I heard, last night, that you have no place to call your own anymore, and that inspired me to propose some small way to begin repairing the damage that has been done to the bridge between you and my family. You see, I happen to own several properties in the local area." Lightly tapping one knee, she made what at first seemed to be a non sequitur, "As you have no doubt gathered, I am paraplegic. I lost the use of my legs during my birth, certainly not during your battle, so fear not that you've somehow ruined my life. I have spent the time others might have in athletics, or in idle play, learning the art of real estate. It may be somewhat boorish to say, but I have done rather well in the past few years. I spent my junior year, when Hikari-chan first started attending this school, purchasing several key business deeds in anticipation of what I believed would be a grim near-term future. I parlayed those into larger tracts of land that winter, and took advantage of an unexpectedly strong fall crop to let myself be bought out by several family-owned businesses at twenty percent above the listing prices. My name is on hundreds of deeds and titles across the city now, and I have a lovely little home that simply screams 'bachelor pad' that I would like you to look at. If it meets with your approval, we can discuss rental terms and give you someplace to call your own."

Before Shinji could reply, he was firmly moved back a step by Yasuji Suzuhara. The athletic middle-aged man placed himself between the pilot and a non-Japanese newcomer dressed in a professional suit wearing opaque sunglasses. "May we help you?" Four other people, including Nanako and Gen, took up positions to support Yasuji and defend the 'children'.

"Pilot Ikari," the foreigner ignored the implicit threat directed his way, "you are ordered to present yourself at NERV within the hour."

Without thought, Shinji attempted to step around Yasuji. His father requested his presence, and- Stunned slightly as Yasuji set one arm in his path, he uttered, "I-I-"

"I had thought our message last night was clear, dog." Gen and another man rounded both sides of Shinji and the ladies, flanking the suited foreigner. With the hand not instructing Shinji to stay still, Yasuji pointed directly at the other man's face. "Go back and tell that mongrel to expect our reply within the hour. He surrendered any right to the name or his offspring years ago, and Shinji Ikari will not be summoned by the likes of him again."

The first second passed, nobody making a move one way or another. The second second passed, the foreigner's lip curling up in contempt. When the third second tolled, Shinji acted on an instinct he didn't know even existed. The first bullet miraculously missed Yasuji's face by the barest of margins. Nanako tackled both Sasami and Hikari to the ground. Shinji dove across Sakura, sending the chair toppling over sideways and the woman he dared to protect with it. The next few seconds were a chaotic blur where he was unable to see anything except the calm, collected, gaze of Sakura Suzuhara looking up at him with determination and approval. He knew he must have looked pathetic, wincing at each gunshot, cringing like a child as he dared to pretend he could do anything to protect her…but he couldn't do nothing. If Sakura died, Hikari and Sasami would be sad. They used each other's first names, they knew each other. I mustn't fail them. I mustn't fail them. I mustn't fail them.

"Standing!" Yasuji's powerful voice cut the suddenly silent air. "Repositioning."

"Sound off," Gen called out.

"Seven," Nanako called, "plus two no casualties."

"Suzuki," another man called, "I dropped three. I'm hit, not bad."

"Two," the man that had helped Yasuji with the wheelchair called out, "I dropped two, I'm fine."

"Sakura," the woman beneath Shinji called out while lightly stroking his cheek to help soothe him, "plus one, no casualties."

"Yasuji?" Gen waited a half second, "Yasuji, sound off."

"It hurts to talk," Yasuji growled in response. "He hit my cheek, I'm fine. Did we get them all?"

Before Gen could reply, a familiar voice took charge of the situation. "I do not believe you need to worry about another assault, my friend. I have it on good authority that the immediate area is clear of…silliness."

Upon hearing his teacher's voice, Shinji's head popped up, "Hakubi-sensei, it's not safe!"

"Shh, shh," another familiar voice replied. This time, the woman speaking was far closer, and her lustrous black hair dipped into his field of view before her face could. Minaho smiled calmly, tousling his hair. "Everything is safe now. Let's get this lovely young woman back on her feet, so to speak." Helping Shinji to his feet, she let him take the lead in setting Sakura to rights.

Shinji's eyes were everywhere, his heart racing along with his anxiety at the thought that people were going to be hurt, that people had been killed. "I-is everyone…are you…." He couldn't ask anyone first; he couldn't prioritize one over the others. He second guessed his decision to throw himself over Sakura instead of Sasami or Hikari, he second guessed his second guessing. His voice fled, his anxiety too much to overcome.

"Oof, that's going to sting tomorrow," Nanako teased Suzuki, looking at the bruise he was exposing under a well-concealed bullet resistant vest. "Have you considered this crazy new technique called 'dodging', old man? It's all the rage with us kids."

Hikari sighed out in disgust, slapping at her school uniform and the dirt that had been smeared across it. "This is going to take hours to get out." She eyed Sasami, noting that her uniform had avoided such peril somehow. "Oh you lucky bitch."

"I landed on you," Sasami chortled. "Those child-bearing hips of yours completely prevented me from touching ground."

Sakura's voice drew his attention back to her, "Thank you, Shinji-sama." Catching the horror at her honorific, she gently took his fingers in her hands and shook her head. "No. This is twice now you have saved me by enduring pain on my behalf. This time, you leapt to protect me when no other could. You risked your health, your very life, to ensure that I would be unharmed. I am forever indebted to you now, and I will not have you belittle your spirit with misjudged slander."

"He is a very good man, isn't he Suzuhara-chan?" Minaho patted Shinji's cheek gently, her smile bright and joyous. "Beneath the pain and worry, there's the heart of a guardian beating proudly." Taking a deep breath, she set her foot down on a point of order. "We will have to go into your work, though. Your sensei is going to have to request an explanation from your father, and as her good friend I am going to have to make sure she's safe. Since I want to make sure you're safe, you'll be coming with us."

"I'll go with you too," Sasami announced, coming over and dusting some of the gravel off of Sakura's clothes and blanket. "After everything today, I think it might help Shinji to have someone his own age around in case he needs…advice. We'll tour the house tomorrow, Sakura-chan. I don't know that we'd get a good opinion out of him right now, and I'm sure we both would rather him be calmer when making a major life decision."

"Indeed." Knowing that she'd just been overruled, Sakura nonetheless gave Sasami a friendly smile. "Thank you, for making sure that he remains safe. The world needs people like him in it."

+++++ NERV Tokyo-3. +3

Sasami had spent the slow car ride towards Shinji's work trying to explain to him why nobody was nearly as rattled as he was over what had happened, without specifically telling him about 'the secret' that everyone else present but him and the Section Two goons had known about. "This was your first time being shot at by a human being, after all. I've had several people shoot towards me in my life, and so has Hikari, and so has Sakura. The world isn't a nice place, and we've had to grow a pretty thick skin to make our way in it. Suzuhara-san put himself between you and that thug because Suzuhara-san was wearing protective equipment and you weren't. Nanako-chan pushed me and Hikari down to shield us behind her protective equipment, and really the only person that wasn't immediately shielded was Sakura-chan."

"It was very brave of you to do that," Minaho called back from the driver's seat. "Those men were not likely to actively shoot at you, so by putting yourself between them and Suzuhara-chan you made sure they weren't going to be shooting at her either."

The car slowed at the security gate leading into the NERV parking garage, coming to a halt in front of a wooden bar controlled by a mildly annoyed guard.

"I'm going to need you to turn around, ma'am," the woman began a long-rehearsed statement.

"I'm currently driving Shinji Ikari to see Doctor Ritsuko Akagi." Holding up Shinji's ID, and rolling down the back window so that he could be seen, Minaho met the guard's irritation with a dismissive nonchalance, "I believe he's expected?"

The guard searched her mind for a way to regain control over the situation, "…Ikari-kun, if you'll step out of the vehicle, I'll-"

"Yeah, no." Spiraling her finger, she indicated a bright red spot that had suddenly appeared on the guard's chest. "I'm afraid that the last NERV employee with a gun that asked him to come with them pulled that gun on him and tried to kill his friends. Make even a twitch towards that little peashooter and you're going to have a cantaloupe-sized hole where your heart used to be." Opening her door, she stepped out and relieved the guard of her weapon casually. "So here's how this is going to go. I'm going to give you back your ammo," she took the magazine out of the sidearm, using her thumb to eject each round one at a time towards the guard's chest, "and once I'm in the garage I'll toss your little toy here off to the side. I'm really not here to cause you trouble, and I wouldn't want you to be charged for losing the armorer's weapon. My friend will keep an eye on you from their perch, and if you do anything but calmly walk down there and retrieve it, then calmly walk back here and take a seat, they'll assume you're trying to hurt Shinji-kun. Ok? Ok." Shoving the empty magazine in the pistol and racking the slide, she sent one last bullet towards the guard. "Tsk, tsk, tsk, keeping one in the chamber? That's just asking for someone to be hurt."

Shinji's anxiety faded to a frown. He wasn't familiar with how firearms worked, but he was fairly sure that it would be difficult to fire a bullet if there was no bullet ready to be fired. "P-please…uhm, please be more careful in the future. You don't want the guilt of accidentally hurting someone…it feels terrible." They wouldn't be upset with him for cautioning them, would they? People were meant to learn from those who had experience, and people didn't just…hurt people to hurt them, right?

Climbing back into the car, Minaho dropped a thumb back towards Shinji with a meaningful look at the guard. "You heard him. Make certain that you're very, very, careful in the future. Lift the gate, please." Once the path was clear, she drove towards the parking garage and tossed the pistol into the stairwell on one side of the entrance to the structure. "Shinji-kun, I need you to stay with Sasami-chan, ok? Your teacher and I are going to find the right people to ask questions of, and we don't want her to get lost in this maze."

With the onus of Sasami's safety now on his shoulders, Shinji began thinking of all the ways that he would need to act in order to not fail Minaho. "Y-yes ma'am."

"Ah, ah, ah," she corrected gently, "Mina-chan, remember? We're friends, right?"

+++++ NERV Tokyo-3. +3

Shinji carefully walked with Sasami along the path towards the 'bridge'. There were clearly marked signs, once you parsed the abbreviations and esoteric terminology, that probably would have saved them some time had Misato followed them before. After a dozen or so minutes, and completely by accident, Shinji bumped into Maya as the Bridge Bunny exited a blind corridor nearby on her way to the same destination. "O-oh!" He'd been lent support by Sasami grabbing his arm and holding him upright, but Maya took the entirety of his momentum and was knocked down onto her posterior. "Oh, I-I'm sorry, Lieutenant!"

While not pleased that she'd been knocked over, Maya rapidly lost any signs of irritation at seeing Shinji reaching down to help her. "No worries, Shinji-kun. I'm tougher than I look." Accepting his hand, she stood upright and switched who was grasping who to keep his hand in both of her own. "It's good to see you again, and…being escorted by…." She eyed Sasami warily. "I'm sorry, I don't recognize you. What department do you work in?"

Still unable to withdraw his one hand, Shinji used the other to gesture to the woman he was escorting. "Oh, uhm…this is Sasami Masaki, she's my classmate from school. We came here with my teacher, Hakubi-sensei, and I was asked to keep her…Sasami I mean, with me while I went to the bridge."

"Asked by," Maya's question was interrupted by a beep from her phone. Taking it from her hip pouch, she looked at what her senpai had sent and nodded slowly in confusion. "Ok…then let's go to the bridge together. I'll make sure you don't get lost."

"Thank you, Miss," Sasami stated with appreciation for how Maya appeared protective of Shinji's safety. "Hakubi-sensei is an old friend of my family, and as Shinji-kun has quickly become a good friend of mine she feels rather protective of him as well. Instead of exposing us to a…spirited discussion between adults, she asked that he and I go find Doctor Ritsuko Akagi. We were told she was 'on the bridge' by someone sensei asked for directions, and so we followed those directions while sensei was escorted to 'The Commander'."

Maya gained a sense of Sasami's personality, and read easily between the lines that it was Sasami keeping Shinji safe and not the other way around. "Well then, follow me."

+++++ NERV Tokyo-3. +3

Watching two different video feeds, Gendo was faced with yet another moment filled with confusion and anger. On one feed, Shinji was calmly escorting an outsider through what was supposed to be the most secure facility in the world. On the other, two women were dismantling everything being sent to stop them from proceeding. The trail of dead Section Two agents was horrifyingly grim, the shattered integrated defense systems dizzyingly expensive, and the manner in which the two women never once injured a non-combatant distractingly confusing. Scowling at the MAGI terminal in his desk, he asked himself, "Why haven't the security alarms sounded?" A visual sweep of the location of his command staff on another array of monitors showed them all entirely ignorant of the disaster unfolding, another several button presses told him that he was still trapped and unable to communicate outside of the room he sat within, the 'no network' notification on his phone was the final nail in the coffin.

After several long, tense, moments the door slid open to admit the two women he'd been anticipating, then slid closed once more to leave him alone and at their mercy. The shorter of the two, with unnaturally red hair and a vulpine grin, strode towards him with full awareness of the difference in power between them. The taller, serene and unruffled, glanced around the room without so much as a hint of being impressed by anything she laid eyes upon.

Remaining seated, he folded his hands in his lap and stated, "Your presence here is in violation of-" A band of light, impossibly flat and unbreakably strong, wrapped around his mouth to silence him.

"Shh, shh, shh," the raven-haired woman stated soothingly, her cold, dead, gaze growing larger and more ominous the longer he beheld it. "No talking. Talking will only make this worse on you."

+++++ NERV Tokyo-3. +3

As would be proper manners, and what would make the most sense for her to be doing, Sasami should have been paying attention to the dialogue between Maya, Ritsuko, and Misato, as they were all directing Shinji to engage in various actions. Standing as she was, not one hundred feet away from Unit-01, Sasami instead found herself fighting a brutal war for control over her external dialogue. There is a fucking soul trapped inside of this crime against sentient life!

On the other end of the telepathic conversation, Washu acknowledged both the statement and sentiment. Yes. It is Shinji's mother, the wife of the man I'm currently expressing my displeasure to.

Why is Shinji's mother's soul trapped…HOW is Shinji's mother's soul trapped?! Her face remained serene, and she responded to an external question with a warm laugh. "No, no, it's really nothing. Hikari-chan and I were happy to make some food for him to enjoy, without any previous experience for him to draw on we're able to get some truly honest critiques on how palatable it is."

We'll have to work that out ourselves, Washu continued. He won't say, and I'm not going to escalate this past nailing him to the floor, for now. Your half-brother's daughter is a real treat to work with, you know?

The complicated family tree that bound her and Minaho Masaki together on one side, and the complicated spiritual matters that tied her and Washu together on the other quite frankly gave her a headache if she thought about it too long. I am taking as many passive scans as I can right now. There is no way for us to leave a transmitter on this…thing without them detecting it. Their sensors are far more advanced than they ought to be.

Play it safe. We can't stop some awareness of our presence from reaching Shinji's ears, but we don't want to make it seem like we don't trust him.

Do we? Trust him, I mean.

Washu's retort was both firm and chiding, That young man is not some odd reflection of his father. Shinji Ikari deserves better than to be buried under the mountain of sins his forebear committed, and you know that very well sis.