Chapter 11 - The NERV Of Some People...
A new day dawned on Tokyo-3, reflecting off the new addition to the scenery that was the corpse of Ramiel.
What remained of the blue diamond was still incredibly massive; it would take too many workers too much time to break it down into shippable pieces, so the decision had been made to leave it be for the time being. Plans were being made for attempts to either airlift it out of the city, or even to get the Evangelions to try and carry it.
Shinji yawned as he got up, throwing aside the thin sheet that was all he'd needed during the recent warm nights. Through his bedroom's open window, he could faintly hear the sounds of heavy machinery as repairs and reconstruction began in Tokyo-3.
The Fifth Angel had caused massive damage to the city itself, mostly when it had first attacked Unit-01, and chunks had been taken out of almost every hill surrounding Tokyo-3. There was also a hole in the city at the spot where NERV had triggered the explosive bolts and sunk an entire city block to get Unit-01 away from the Angel. Shinji wondered on the logistics of fixing something like that as he headed to the bathroom.
After performing some morning necessities, it was time to prepare breakfast. He was halfway done when he realised two things: that he'd now have to start making enough for one extra person, and that he would likely be the only one eating this early.
There was no word yet from his father on whether or not Rei would be allowed to stay with them, but that hadn't stopped Asuka. The adrenaline high from her victory had worn off quickly, so she had simply sent Rei to bed in Shinji's old room before heading next door and falling into bed. That had been around two in the morning. Considering what they had just been through, Shinji predicted that both female pilots would not be awake before noon.
An hour later, he ended up being only half right.
The doorbell chimed as Shinji was catching up on his homework, and he got up to open the door, expecting it to be Misato. He was therefore rather surprised to see Rei standing there.
"Uh, good morning Rei."
Rei returned the greeting, adding, "Pi- Asuka said that I should come here for breakfast when I wake up."
"Oh. Of course," Shinji lamely replied. "But... did you get enough sleep? Last night was rather, um... busy."
"I am feeling sufficiently refreshed." Indeed, Rei seemed perfectly fine, though her school uniform was a bit rumpled.
"Well, um, come on in then."
Rei gave a little bow, and followed Shinji to the kitchen. Shinji began heating up what would have been Asuka's portion of breakfast, reasoning that he would have to make something later anyway, before remembering something crucial.
"Er, sorry," he said, turning to Rei. "I forgot that the miso soup has fish stock. Would you like something else to go with the rest of your breakfast?"
"That is alright," Rei replied. "I am never very hungry in the morning, so there is no need to make a substitution."
Shinji nodded and turned back to preparing the meal, setting the miso soup aside. There was still rice and vegetables, so she certainly wouldn't be starving by lunch time.
Rei's attitude towards breakfast seemed to mirror his own somewhat, in that he didn't eat much either. Just recently Shinji had had to start wearing one of his teacher's old belts in order to keep his trousers up. Before learning of his lack of taste sense, Asuka had once declared that he ate like a bird. Guiltily remembering what she had... strongly requested of him after finding out, he prepared another bowl of rice for himself as well.
Shinji let Rei eat in peace as he took his bowl of rice and returned to his homework. Soon afterwards, he heard a tap turn on and went to the kitchen to tell her that she didn't need to do the dishes as well, but she merely replied that she wanted to in return for the meal. Realising that she was not going to budge on this, Shinji simply let her work.
Not long afterwards, there was another distraction. What Shinji took to be Rei's phone rang, and he heard her talk quietly. After a few minutes, Rei came into the lounge room where he was staring at his maths homework.
"It appears my transfer has been officially approved," she said.
"Oh?" Shinji brightened up. "My father agreed to you moving here?"
"I believe it has something to do with the fact that my former home has collapsed."
If Asuka had been awake, Shinji knew she would have made a sarcastic comment about this turn of events.
"Apparently an artillery shell hit the building. NERV believes it may have been deflected by the Fifth Angel's AT-Field."
"Well..." Shinji was somewhat lost for words. "I... guess that's one way of solving the problem?"
Rei gave him an unreadable look. "I will need to requisition new clothing, as I only have what I am currently wearing."
"I... think that's something you'd be better off speaking to Asuka or Misato about. They can tell you where to get new clothes, and help you pick things out."
"In that case, I will speak to Captain Katsuragi." Rei looked in the direction of Misato's apartment. "It looks like she has just woken up."
Shinji gave a slight chuckle. "Did you just hear her stomping towards her kitchen?"
"No."
His humour faded quickly. "Oh right. Your... er, soul vision thing." Rei nodded. "You can even see people through walls?" Another nod. "Doesn't that get... I don't know... irritating sometimes?"
"I have learned to adapt," Rei replied. "But it was impossible to ignore the state of you and Asuka when I first met you face to face."
"Yeah... easy to understand why..." Shinji glanced at his homework, then back to Rei. "Well, since Misato's awake, I'll go heat up her breakfast now."
As he was about to get to his feet, Rei held up a hand to stop him. "Since I need to speak to her, I can bring the food to her. Please tell me what needs to be done."
Once again realising that Rei wanted to do this, Shinji nodded and told her how to properly warm up Misato's breakfast. The First Child left, and he went back to staring helplessly at his homework.
A few hours later, Asuka came out of her bedroom. Shinji, desperate for any kind of stimulus that wasn't numbers, turned to greet her.
"Good mor- uh, afternoon, Asuka," he said correcting himself after glancing at the clock.
Asuka mumbled something that might have been 'morning' as she slowly walked towards the kitchen, one hand trying vaguely to keep her hair out of her face. Shinji practically threw his homework to the side as he got up and headed to the kitchen as well to start on lunch. He got there in time to see Asuka flick on the kettle before heading to the bathroom.
With almost perfect timing, a slightly less tired Asuka exited the bathroom just as the kettle boiled and turned itself off. Soon, Asuka was leaning over a hot cup of coffee at the dining table. Shinji began making small talk, asking if she slept well and such, and mostly got monosyllabic responses until Asuka had the chance to drink some coffee and properly wake up. He took that moment to tell her about what had happened to Rei's apartment, to which she cackled.
"Hah! Close enough to what I would have done if I could have gotten away with it," she said. "So she's officially staying here now?"
Shinji nodded. "Yes, but she said she's going to need new clothes now."
That got Asuka's attention. "Did I just hear someone say shopping?"
"No- well, yes, she's going to-"
"I distinctly heard you mention a shopping trip."
"What? I-"
"Of course you can come along, Shinji!"
Shinji blinked slowly at Asuka. "...If I say anything else, am I going to be in more trouble?" He immediately regretted opening his stupid mouth.
"What's that? You're offering to carry our stuff? Thanks!"
With a despairing groan, Shinji tried to take as long as possible to make the grinning redhead's lunch.
XXX
Perhaps because she was full of food and beer, Misato agreed immediately to Asuka's request to go shopping for Rei. However, she didn't even have the decency to look apologetic when she learned the unfortunate fate of Shinji.
Just as they were about to head off, Asuka suddenly turned to Misato and asked, "Hey, these cards are smart enough to pay in the local currency, right? I don't know if they'll use yen if I try to buy something here."
With a scoff, Misato replied, "What did I say about giving NERV some credit? We can use our cards anywhere in the world. With how much some employees have to move around, it'd be a waste of time and money to deal with currency conversion every time they jump on a plane. Just swipe the card and the appropriate amount gets deducted from your account. Don't even have to pay a fee for the conversion."
"That's a relief." Asuka frowned as she quickly glanced at Shinji. "Hey, is Shinji getting paid too? Before he got to start joining us in training and tests, he kept saying he wasn't a pilot, and it's got me wondering if NERV was actually paying him during that time."
Misato threw her beer can in the bin, once again without looking. "Shinji's been an employee of NERV since he arrived in Tokyo-3. Despite his... uh... handicap, he has been drawing pay as an Evangelion pilot, and received a combat bonus for his efforts against the Third Angel." She gave them a cheeky smirk. "I saw how much you guys get paid. If you hadn't moved next door I might have started charging rent!"
"Er, how much do we get paid?" Shinji inquired.
When Misato rattled off some numbers, Asuka's eyebrows shot up in surprise. Shinji, meanwhile, simply asked, "Is that a lot?"
Asuka turned to him with a look of bemusement. "'Is that a lot', he asks." She tsked and shook her head. "We're getting paid about three times more than a JASDF fighter pilot."
"Oh. Um..."
"Put it this way, Shinji," said Misato. "If I wanted to buy a brand new car right now, I'd be paying it off for years. You, on the other hand, could probably own it by this time next year." She paused. "Oh wait, hang on. NERV decided a trust fund was required for you three since you're minors."
Asuka sighed and shrugged theatrically. "They trust us enough to sit inside their multi-billion dollar war machines, but not enough to pay us like normal people." She shook her head, then switched to German. "The NERV of some people..."
Misato and Shinji both laughed a little at the horrible pun.
A minute after Asuka and Shinji left to get ready for the outing, Misato was getting another beer out of the fridge when somebody suddenly spoke up from behind her.
"Will I be required to pay rent?"
Misato jumped, banging her head against a fridge shelf. Rubbing at the sore spot, she turned to face the speaker. "Damn, Rei, could you be any sneakier?"
"It was not my intention to startle you. My apologies," said Rei, giving a small bow.
Waving off the apology, Misato replied, "It's fine. Just... try and make at least a little noise when you move around. I'm still not exactly used to having someone living in the same place as me."
Rei nodded, then repeated her question.
"Nah, I was just having a bit of a joke with those two. I'm not expecting you to pay to stay here, especially when your own place got destroyed."
Someone, most likely Asuka, banged on the front door. Misato glanced in that direction then back at Rei. "Well, they're ready, so off you go. Try not to have too much fun!"
"I shall try to keep the level of entertainment subdued," said Rei, heading out of the kitchen.
Misato watched the girl leave. A minute later, right as her phone began to ring, she asked the empty room, "Did she just make a joke?"
XXX
Luckily for Shinji, the nearest shopping centre was relatively close to their apartment. Even more luckily, it seemed as though Asuka wasn't going to go as crazy with purchases as he had been dreading; he was only carrying four relatively light bags after an hour of following Asuka around. The two teenage girls had only gone into three shops before Asuka declared Rei's new wardrobe to be satisfactorily filled, and her own to be sufficiently expanded for the time being.
Rei herself seemed somewhat nonplussed at the attention Asuka was giving her, and had taken to clutching one of the bags of clothing to her chest. Shinji could just barely make out something light blue through the plastic bag.
The First Child's blue hair and red eyes had attracted some odd looks, but it never went any further than that, and Rei was either completely unaware or simply didn't care about the reactions of strangers.
As the three pilots took a refreshment break, Shinji asked Asuka about Rei's behaviour. In a low voice, she explained that Rei had originally intended to only get seven sets of school uniforms; apparently that was all Rei had owned in the past and she hadn't seen a need to change that. Asuka had then patiently explained that she deserved more than that, before asking for Rei's favourite colour and finding something that the quiet girl had actually taken a liking to even if, in Asuka's opinion, the colour absolutely did not suit her complexion.
Asuka had had to stop her from getting seven sets of that too.
"Alright, we've still got more to do," Asuka declared, throwing her empty drink bottle behind her in a mimicry of Misato. The sound of the bottle clattering on the ground showed how experienced she was compared to the expert, and she sighed as she got up to put it in the bin properly.
"What now?" Shinji wondered, depositing his bottle in the bin in a much more normal manner. "You two have your clothes." He hefted the bags for emphasis.
"We do, but you don't."
"Huh? ...Oh..."
Shinji had been putting off getting more clothing for himself both due to not really wanting to, and not knowing if he even had the money to spare. Now that he knew what his pay situation was like, it seemed like there was no excuse.
Asuka began to head off. "Yeah, I haven't forgotten that you don't have much besides uniforms. We may as well get you sorted out today as well, so come along."
"Yes, Asuka," Shinji said with a sigh.
XXX
Shinji was glad that clothing was light. With three bags in each hand, it already felt like he was carrying razor wire attached to weights. But at least the shopping trip was over.
Mostly over, at least. They still needed to get back home. And when the three pilots reached the shopping centre's car park, they ran into somebody that Shinji was not exactly happy to see.
A certain dark-haired athletic student and his nerdy accomplice, who was the first to speak as they all came to an awkward halt.
"Hi guys. Doing some shopping?"
Asuka looked pointedly at the bags Shinji was carrying for several seconds, then at the place they had just left, before turning back to Kensuke. "So that's what that building's for!" she exclaimed in sarcastic innocence, to which Kensuke chuckled.
Shinji took the opportunity to put the bags down for a moment. "Hello Kensuke. And um... Suzuhara..."
Suzuhara gave him a curt nod before folding his arms and looking away. Noticing this, Kensuke roughly elbowed the taller boy. Suzuhara let out a grunt of irritation, turning an angry glare on his friend.
"Don't make me go to your sister," Kensuke warned. As Suzuhara began to protest, he pointed a finger at the jock's face. "I'll do it."
Letting out a hiss of frustration, Suzuhara rubbed the back of his head before looking at Shinji.
"Ikari," he slowly began, his eyes darting around, unable to maintain eye contact for more than a second at a time. "I'm... sorry for hittin' ya."
"Gee, you sound real apologetic there," Asuka remarked, still sarcastic.
"Can it, ya red demon!" Suzuhara snapped back. "This is hard enough without you stickin' yer nose in again!"
Asuka exaggeratedly raised her hands in a surrendering gesture before taking a couple steps back.
"Anyway, Red told me about what happened during the first attack," Suzuhara continued. "How NERV dropped the ball 'n such. Y'know, I actually talked to my lil' sis after I heard the truth. You know what she said?"
Too nervous to say anything, Shinji simply shook his head.
"She said that she could never blame the pilot. Apparently she could tell that you were havin' trouble. We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time." He stopped, then set his jaw and strode up to Shinji. "Ikari. I need you to punch me."
Backing away in surprise at the jock's sudden approach, Shinji found himself standing next to Asuka and the two of them shared a look of puzzlement.
"C'mon!" Suzuhara nearly shouted. "If my own damn sister ain't gonna hold you responsible, then I've fucked up by hurting you! I gotta make this right!"
"He's serious," Kensuke piped up. "If Toji tells you to hit him, he wants you to hit him."
Shinji wasn't so sure. The boy in front of him looked more like he was about to start swinging first. People nearby were beginning to give the teenagers a wide berth, perhaps sensing a fight. He didn't even want to hit Suzuhara, not even after the sucker punch he'd received the first time they'd met. Anyone had the right to exact revenge on someone like him, especially if it was due to an injured sibling. Even if that sibling knew it was an accident.
A heavy hand on Shinji's shoulder drew him out of his self-loathing.
"Just get it over with, Shinji," said Asuka, before giving him a light shove forward.
Shinji stumbled a little, giving Asuka a betrayed look over his shoulder, before gazing at Suzuhara.
"Um... you're sure about this?"
Suzuhara gave only a nod, then raised his chin.
The punch wasn't anything spectacular; despite his training in an Evangelion, Shinji still didn't really know how to throw a punch properly. He simply put everything into a wild left hook that smacked into Suzuhara's jaw with a meaty thump, spinning the jock's head around.
Shinji then proceeded to cradle his left hand, which was now throbbing angrily at him.
"Just as I expected, you went right for the face."
Asuka's sardonic comment caused him to turn around. She then walked up to him and grabbed his left wrist. After a little prodding, Shinji opened the fist his hand had clenched into in pain. Asuka examined his hand carefully, letting it drop half a minute later.
"Lucky," she said. "Your hand's going to hurt for a while, but you didn't break anything." She looked away. "Hey Stefan, how's your face?"
Suzuhara was working his jaw side to side, rubbing his cheek at the same time. At Asuka's question, he looked at them and said, "'s fine. Might get a bruise, but I've been hit harder."
Asuka nodded. "And we can now agree that nothing more needs to be said on this matter?"
"Yeah, yeah."
After saying farewell, two of the teenagers doing it somewhat gruffly, Asuka, Shinji and Rei left the shopping centre and got on a bus to go back home. There were more odd looks, and Shinji caught people staring, but Rei seemed to have focused most of her attention on the bag in her hands, and the rest to looking out the window.
It might have been Shinji's imagination, but he thought he could see the faintest hint of a smile on her face.
XXX
"Did you really have to drag me in right now?" Misato moaned as she entered Ritsuko's office. "I was hoping to get some more time to relax before having to fly out to this stupid Jet Alone thing."
"Science doesn't rest," Ritsuko retorted, her eyes not straying from the monitor in front of her.
"Science, or you?"
"Yes."
"Ugh. What's so science-y and important that you needed me here for?"
Ritsuko finally looked up. "It's something that concerns your charges." The corners of her mouth turned up a little. "We've finally cracked that anomaly in Asuka's AT-Field."
"It's nothing bad, is it?" Misato worriedly asked.
Her smile widening microscopically, Ritsuko turned the monitor around so that Misato could see it too.
"Uh, what am I looking at?" To Misato, the image on the screen looked like nothing more than a red sine wave.
The smile slackened, and the scientist sighed. "Sometimes I forget you're not as intellectually inclined as me. This is the waveform pattern of Asuka's AT-Field. Look closely, see if you can spot the issue."
Misato dragged a chair over to the desk, and sat down to look closely. "Looks... wavey. Is this normal? What exactly am I supposed to spot?"
Ritsuko tapped a button, and the sine wave zoomed in. "Anything yet?"
"Nope."
Another tap, this time the sine wave began to move. "What about now?"
Misato leaned closer. "Nothin- wait... Zoom in again."
There seemed to be something flickering over the red sine wave. At her request, Ritsuko slowed it down by several orders of magnitude. Now she could see a blue sine wave replacing the red one every half-second.
"Two waveforms, huh?" Misato said as she leaned back in her chair. "Gonna take a wild guess and say that the second one is Shinji's."
"Correct. This is some of the data from when Unit-01 was first attacked by the Fifth Angel." Ritsuko turned the monitor back towards her before resting her chin in her hand. "The two AT-Fields worked in concert to reduce the damage Unit-01 sustained by rapidly alternating which one was in front."
Misato exhaled slowly. "You obviously have a lot of data from that encounter, so tell me something." She fixed her friend with a steely look. "What would have happened if Shinji had been able to use his AT-Field and got sent out there?"
Ritsuko stared at her for a few seconds before replying. "You shouldn't concern yourself with what-ifs, especially when the situation has already passed."
"Tell me."
Shaking her head, Ritsuko looked at her monitor as she shot a quick calculation request to the MAGI. A moment later, she had her reply. "In all likelihood, Shinji would not have been able to sustain his AT-Field. The feedback would have quickly rendered him unconscious, at which point the field would drop and Unit-01 would have been badly crippled or even destroyed, depending on our response time."
Misato was silent for a long time. Ritsuko evidently felt the need to fill the void. "Whatever has happened between Shinji and Asuka, it was a good thing here. Asuka only sustained minor, easily healed injuries and Unit-01 was able to be quickly repaired for the second attempt. The Angel is dead and your pilots are fine. Focus on that, Misato."
"I suppose," Misato finally said after a long time spent staring at nothing. "Has this gotten you any closer to finding a way to let Shinji fight?"
"I'm afraid not," Ritsuko admitted. "This has just let us solve the issue of the anomaly. As yet I have no idea how we could... give Shinji his AT-Field back. I did suggest the idea I've been working on to Commander Ikari, but he vetoed it."
"Vetoed?" Misato raised an eyebrow. "Just what is this idea?"
Ritsuko told her. Misato blinked several times, then said, "And you think it'll work?"
"With the limitations we have, it's the only thing I can think of short of keeping Unit-01 in a rearguard position as a sniper or something. Even then, there's still a high risk of danger without an AT-Field."
Tapping a finger against her chin in thought, Misato mused, "Well, it would let Shinji get out there and feel useful. If the Commander hadn't vetoed it, how long before you could produce something we can work with?"
"A month at most," replied Ritsuko after a moment's consideration. "We'd need to do a lot of coding and debugging, not to mention tests. The hardware side would be the easy part, since we already essentially have what we need."
"Well... keep me informed. You know; just in case he changes his mind."
"Of course. By the way, speaking of Shinji... have you actually told him the real story of Second Impact yet?"
XXX
The day after Shinji's wardrobe was reluctantly improved, he was somewhat surprised by Misato's request to speak to him in private when he got home from school. Asuka was no help at finding out what their guardian wanted, and he didn't even bother asking Rei. So while the two girls were in his apartment doing homework, Shinji went next door to Misato's.
An hour later, he left in a daze. He ran a hand through his hair as he stepped into his apartment, going over the story again in his head. An expedition to the South Pole. An experiment on the... thing they had found there. A cataclysm.
Half of the world's population wiped out in the aftermath.
Since learning about the 'meteor impact' in Antarctica, Shinji had been a little sceptical about the story. Weren't scientists capable of tracking anything that came close to Earth? Wouldn't there have been more warning? Now he knew that that had all just been a cover-up, as well as why Tokyo-3 had been turned into a fortress that, so far, every Angel had attempted to breach.
Shinji was jolted out of his musing when somebody bumped into him. He mumbled an apology as he slowly walked towards the lounge room.
"Hey Shinji, you alright?" came Asuka's voice.
"Huh?" He turned to face her, realising that he had been wandering in a daze. "Yeah, I guess so."
"What did Misato talk to you about? You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Second Impact," Shinji mumbled. "She told me what really happened."
"Oh. Huh, I thought you'd have been told by now. I was told not long after starting to learn how to pilot." Asuka shrugged and headed towards the door, where she slipped on her shoes.
"Where are you going?" Shinji asked.
"Some bigwig company's trying to create a 'replacement'-" Asuka made finger quotes around the word and rolled her eyes, "-for the Evas. Misato's been invited to the demonstration, and I guess I'm her plus-one."
Shinji glanced at the lounge room. "What about Rei?"
"You and I are remaining here on standby, in case of emergency," said Rei, without turning her head away from her homework.
"Oh, okay."
Asuka raised an eyebrow. "What, not gonna complain about being stuck here? I know I would."
Shinji shrugged. "It's a giant robot, right? There's three of them right here already."
"Yeah, but this one's different. Completely mechanical and remote controlled. Oh, and it's nuclear-powered."
"What?!" That brought him up short. "How is that a good idea for something that'll be fighting Angels?!"
Asuka chuckled at his reaction. "That's been the reaction of a lot of people. But this company believes they can make it work. I'm just going because I want to see the project fall flat on its face."
"Just..." Shinji took a step closer to her. "Just be careful, alright? If something goes wrong..."
"I'm sure it'll be fine," Asuka replied, giving him a reassuring smile. "It'll fall over or stop responding, or intelligent people will realise it's too dangerous, we'll all laugh at how dumb it is and how moronic its creators are, then go home." She looked up at the clock. "I'd better get going, Misato should be ready soon."
She left with a farewell wave over her shoulder. The door slid shut, and Shinji eventually stumbled into the lounge room. He still needed to finish his homework, but now he had two crazy things to think about.
He sat down and stared at the homework. Rei had apparently already finished, judging by the fact that she was reading in a chair. Since he didn't want to disturb her, Shinji resolved to suffer in silence.
XXX
Hours passed, and Shinji only managed to get a few problems done. Just as he was putting pen to paper for another attempt at the current one, he heard the apartment door open. The pen was practically thrown from his hand as he got up and almost ran to the door.
Asuka and Misato were there, both looking tired and worn out.
"Um, hello," he said. "How... did everything go?"
"Well, I was sort of right," Asuka tiredly replied, staggering to the dining table and sitting down. "It did fail. Nothing to laugh about though."
Shinji moved to the kitchen and began preparing dinner. "Why? What happened?"
"Damn thing went out of control," Misato snarled, sitting across from Asuka. "Started walking towards the city while it was overloading. We had to get Unit-01 flown out so Asuka could stop it."
"Hey, all I did was keep it still," said Asuka. "You're the mad woman who climbed inside to shut it down."
Shinji almost dropped the knife he'd just pulled out of its block. "Wait what?!" He spun around to face them. "You went inside a nuclear-powered robot that was about to blow up?!"
"Somebody had to shut it down," Misato retorted, throwing her arms up before slapping them onto the table in anger. "And the people who were supposed to be controlling it had no chance! Besides, I was in a radiation suit."
"That's not the point!" Shinji exclaimed. "It could have exploded! You might have died!"
"I don't think I was ever in any real danger, Shinji." Misato leaned back in her chair. "I can't say much, but I'm pretty sure it shut down by itself before I managed to do it."
Letting out a breath, Shinji turned around and tried to busy himself with dinner again.
"Hey."
He glanced over his shoulder. Misato was twisted around in her seat to face him. She gave him a warm smile.
"I appreciate the concern, but I'm not going anywhere for a long time." She reached up and patted him on the shoulder. "Okay?"
"...Okay," he replied, returning her smile with a shy one of his own.
"Great. Now then, how long on dinner? I'm starving!"
"Me too!" Asuka chimed in. "Hurry up!"
Sighing good-naturedly, Shinji hastened to provide them with sustenance.
