Chapter 18 - This Just Isn't The Same

"Are you saying that you now have two Children piloting a single Evangelion, Ikari?"

Gendo nodded at the hologram of SEELE 02. "Correct. With the Third Child unable to project an AT-Field, it would be too risky to deploy Unit-01."

"Just have him pilot one of the others," SEELE 05 gruffly said. "The Second Child has already shown that she can pilot Unit-01 herself."

"But the test results and their recent battles show that the Second and Third fight better together than apart," SEELE 07 noted. "Besides, with the Third's inability to use an AT-Field, any Evangelion is at risk if he were to pilot it on his own."

"Then let's get rid of him and find the Fourth!" SEELE 05 angrily retorted. "That's what should have been done in the first place, rather than wasting time and money on trying to fix a broken tool!"

"As it is, preparations are already underway to locate the Fourth Child," Gendo cut in, his eyes darting to SEELE 05's hologram for a split second. "But these things take time. Rest assured that all three Evangelions will be fully operational before the time comes that we require a full complement."

SEELE 05 harrumphed. "Maybe you're just keeping the Third around because he's your son, Ikari."

"My familial relationship with the Third Child is of no concern here," Gendo stiffly replied. "If he were useless, I would have immediately discarded him. There is no place for dead weight in NERV. He has proven useful, so he shall continue to be put to use."

"That is satisfactory," SEELE 01 finally spoke up. "This is nothing but a minor bump in the road, and we will adapt to the situation. The Fourth Child shall simply be located ahead of our original schedule. Is there anything else to report, Ikari?"

Gendo shook his head. "No. The Angels appear as the Scrolls predict, and they will be removed from our path like the trifling obstacles they are. Nothing shall stand between us and our goal."

"Very well. You are dismissed, Ikari."

The holograms faded away, leaving Gendo in the middle of a dark room, illuminated only by the single weak light above the desk he sat behind. A minute passed before somebody stepped into the circle of light.

"I'm surprised they didn't dig into why the Third Child can't use an AT-Field," Fuyutsuki remarked, his hands folded behind his back as he stared into the darkness.

"Perhaps they assume incompetence. Besides, there is no explanation we could give the Old Men, as we don't yet know ourselves," Gendo replied.

"But we do know, don't we? Your son blurted it out in front of the entire bridge crew."

Gendo remained silent. When Fuyutsuki realised that no answer was forthcoming, he turned and exited the room, leaving the Commander alone with his thoughts.

XXX

Shinji looked around for a way out, but found nothing. All escape routes were blocked, and he was right in the path of incredible danger. He gulped, bracing himself to take the blast full on.

"I... I said that... your... um... b-beauty sleep is i-important?" he finally quavered.

"So you're saying that I need beauty sleep?!" Asuka retorted, arms crossed as she glared a hole through him, the wall of the lounge room behind him, and the next building over.

"N-no!" Shinji stammered, his body trying to both run away and freeze in place. "T-that's not w-what I meant!"

Asuka was now staring at him with an intensity to rival the Fifth Angel. "Then just what the hell did you mean, Third Child?!"

Shinji turned a desperate glance upon Misato, standing in the doorway between him and freedom, who simply raised her hands to show that she was staying out of this. The huge grin on her face didn't help matters.

"If you're going to call someone ugly," Asuka continued in a very icy tone, "then at least have the balls to come out and say it directly!"

By this time tomorrow, Shinji was going to be sixty feet under. Because Asuka would have hijacked her own Evangelion just to stomp him into the ground. As sweat started to bead on his forehead, Shinji decided there was nothing left to lose; he may as well just go all out.

"I-it's just a m-metaphor, Asuka! Y-you're so far from ugly that you... err... couldn't... spot it with a telescope...?"

It was the best he could come up with on such short notice, but to his great relief, Asuka relaxed her stare a fraction.

"So I'm not ugly after all?" Asuka wondered out loud, tilting her head to the side as she tapped a finger on her arm. Shinji nodded desperately, and her hands moved down to her hips as she took a couple of steps forward. "In that case, what am I?"

That relief quickly vanished.

"...What?" he ever-so-eloquently responded.

"You have slighted me, Ikari," Asuka replied, pointing an imperious finger at him. "Doesn't matter if you meant it or not, you still did it. Girls don't like it when they are insulted, you know." She leaned forward. He leaned back. "What are you going to do to earn my forgiveness?"

Misato piped up, her voice sounding hideously saccharine to Shinji's ears. "Would a compliment do the trick? Balance out the insult, kind of thing?"

Shinji almost fell over in shock. Asuka glanced at Misato, eyebrows raised as she pondered the idea. After a moment, she gave their guardian a big smile. "Why, I think that would work just fine, Misato!" That smile vanished instantly as she turned her full attention back to him.

All Shinji wanted to do was flee as fear warred with confusion and mortification in the confines of his head. An Angel attack would have been met with a cry of joy at this point, and he would have gladly tried to kill it without Unit-01 if it meant an escape from this nightmare.

"So tell me, Shinji," Asuka whispered almost menacingly, leaning even closer. "If I'm so far from ugly that you'd need a telescope, what precisely does that make me?"

Shinji heard Misato stifle an amused snort and he groaned internally. Who would have thought that a simple reply to someone else's offhanded remark would cause such chaos?

"W-well... A-Asuka..." he began, before nervously clearing his throat. "Since I just accidentally insulted you without even realising, I... I don't think I could say the right thing... and why would anything I say matter?"

Finally, mercifully, Asuka relaxed her posture somewhat. Now she was just giving him a look of disappointment. "Look, Shinji... we're friends, aren't we?"

An easy question. Shinji thanked the gods. Finally, something he could actually answer properly. "Of course we are! What kind of question is that?"

"Good." Asuka folded her arms again, looking away as she muttered, "I'd hate to think that my first real friend didn't think of me as one."

"First... real friend?" Shinji slowly echoed.

Anger returned to Asuka's eyes. "Damn right you're the first real friend I have!" she exploded. "Hell, until I came to Japan you were the only goddamn friend I had!"

Shinji blinked in shock. How could someone as smart and popular as Asuka possibly not have made friends hand over fist?

As if she could hear his thoughts, Asuka went on, her voice turning bitter. "Turns out, skipping straight to college at ten years old doesn't sit well with some people!"

Sensing a minefield, Shinji tried to steer away from it. "T-then those people are idiots," he said in what he hoped was a placating tone. "It doesn't matter now anyway. You have friends here... besides me I mean." He glanced pointedly at Misato, who immediately nodded.

"Eh." Asuka shrugged. "Just meant I could focus more on kicking their academic asses. Anyway! Where were we? Oh. Yes."

Out of the minefield, back into the other minefield.

"So what is it, Ikari?" she demanded. "Are we not really friends like you said? Or are you just too much of a 'nice guy' to call me ugly directly?"

Put on the spot, with all attention squarely on him and his very life on the line, Shinji's hand began to spasmodically clench and unclench; something that hadn't happened for a long time. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths.

Well then... what better way for an Evangelion pilot to go out than in a blaze of glory? It would certainly be more fitting than just giving up. Shinji opened his eyes and squared his shoulders.

"Asuka... you're the first real friend I ever had as well," he began. "In fact, I'd even go so far as to call you my best friend."

Something in his voice obviously struck a chord with Asuka. Her arms slowly dropped to her sides as she stared at him.

"And... and... you'retheprettiestgirlI'veeverseen!"

The very instant those words left his lips, Shinji barged past Misato and ran out of her apartment. He didn't stop until he was safely in his room, where he flopped onto his bed and promptly began to hyperventilate into his pillow.

XXX

Stunned by Shinji's outburst, Misato had no chance to corral him as he made his escape; she could only blink at his retreating back. As soon as the door to her apartment closed, she inhaled deeply, letting the breath out in a long impressed whistle.

"Well, I think a simple 'you're cute' would have been fine," she remarked. When there was no response from Asuka, she turned to see that the redhead was now red-faced and staring at nothing. "...Ah."

Misato gently guided the shell-shocked girl over to a kitchen chair and sat down beside her.

"Did... he..." Asuka haltingly said after a minute of silence.

"He did," Misato affirmed. "And now he's probably hiding in his room. Now be honest, that bit of fun got a little out of hand, didn't it?"

"...Yeah. I didn't expect him to say... that. I was just... you know... enjoying pretending to be insulted. I thought he would have either picked up on that or just... I dunno... caved in and begged for forgiveness."

"So why are you so surprised?" Misato wondered. "Surely you've been complimented before."

Asuka nodded; her blush was finally starting to die down. "Yeah, boys at school have tried flirting with me, but... it's pretty damn obvious what they're really after." She shuddered, then sighed. "I don't know why what Shinji said hit me the way it did."

"I think I do!" Asuka turned to look at her, and Misato grinned cheekily. "But it'll be more fun for me to let you find out yourself!"

Asuka got to her feet. "Misato?"

"Yeeeesss?"

"I hate you." She stalked out of the lounge room.

"No you don't!" Misato called after her. Her apartment door opened and closed again, and she proceeded to burst out laughing.

The kids were so much fun to tease.

XXX

As was to be expected, the next couple of days were... slightly uncomfortable for Shinji. He couldn't look Asuka in the eye at all, and apparently she couldn't manage it either. At least, she was always looking the other way whenever he worked up the courage to glance at her.

But eventually things returned to normal. They started having proper conversations again, ones that didn't devolve into a mess of stuttering, and Shinji managed to stop blushing constantly in Asuka's presence.

Then she invited him to join her on a shopping trip after school.

"But we got clothes already, Asuka," said Shinji. "We went shopping when Rei moved in."

"Oh dear," Misato remarked, theatrically putting a hand to her face before giving him a sad look. "You just don't understand women, Shinji."

"...Is there a book?"

Asuka and Misato glanced at each other before chuckling.

"You wish," Asuka remarked, unable to keep a grin off her face. "You, and every other man on the planet."

XXX

The school day crawled towards its end, and Shinji was not very surprised when Horaki came along with Asuka when they passed the school gate. Toji and Kensuke gave him some envious looks before heading home. He tagged along behind the girls, feeling somewhat awkward as Asuka and Horaki chatted about things he knew nothing about.

When they got to the mall, Asuka surprised Shinji by not immediately heading for the shops. Instead, their first stop was the food court where she made a beeline right for a stall that sold crepes. Only once the three of them were fuelled by the sugary treats did Asuka head for the true destination. When Shinji realised what store she was about to go into, he came to a sudden stop, turned red and turned around.

From behind, he heard Asuka laugh at his embarrassment. "Come on, Shinji. Don't you want to see all that sexy swimwear?"

"W-wait!" Horaki sputtered. "You want h-him to go into there with us?!"

"I'm staying out here," Shinji resolutely said. "That is not a place for me to go."

"They have men's swimwear too," Asuka said invitingly, right next to his ear. "Could get something for yourself."

Shinji just shook his head.

"Pfeh. Wuss."

The last thing he heard before the girls went into the shop was Horaki wondering why Asuka was trying to bring him in as well. Figuring that Asuka would probably be in there for a while, he sat down on a nearby bench, making sure to sit so that he was most definitely not looking at that store.

Shinji breathed a sigh of relief. Trap avoided. Being out here meant that Asuka wouldn't be able to call him a pervert or tease him until the accumulated embarrassment caused him to detonate powerfully enough to kill an Angel. Horaki probably would have been even more embarrassed than him at Asuka's antics, so at least she should be fine in there now.

Time passed. Shinji kept his eyes on the store opposite the one the girls were in. While this one was also a clothing store, its contents were a lot more sombre, consisting of what looked to him like the exact same business suit on every mannequin.

"Thinking of being a salaryman?"

He turned to loo- "Gyah!"

Shinji jumped in surprise at Asuka's sudden proximity to his face, falling off the bench and landing on the ground in an undignified heap. Asuka stared at him bemusedly for a moment before reaching out and dragging him to his feet. He rubbed his sore rear end as Asuka proceeded to rummage around in her shopping bag. Horaki was nearby, looking somewhat red in the face.

"Since you refused to come in with us, I had to guess at what size you were," she said before letting out a short cry of triumph as she pulled a piece of clothing out of the bag and held it in front of Shinji.

It was possibly the only pair of purple and neon-green shorts in the world, and Asuka had somehow managed to find them.

"I took a wild guess and decided you wouldn't want something more... ah... revealing," she continued, grinning when Shinji's face began to pink up to match Horaki.

"W-wait, you got these for me?" There was certainly nothing wrong with the shorts, but he wasn't expecting to be getting something out of this trip as well.

Asuka's whole body slumped as she sighed. "No, I got them for Pen-pen, genius," she sarcastically retorted.

"Oh. Um... why?"

Both Horaki and Asuka looked at each other, then at him. "Weren't you paying attention yesterday, Shinji?" Asuka asked exasperatedly. "Our class is going on a trip to Okinawa next week."

"Oh. Right." Shinji had faintly heard something to that effect, but hadn't been paying much attention at the time and thought it had something to do with the school's pool area. "Wait, they're not going to try and make us wear the school bathing gear?"

Horaki shook her head. "School uniform policy isn't enforced on trips like this."

Asuka snorted. "And good luck trying to get a bunch of teenagers to wear uniforms on what is essentially a holiday."

"I suppose that makes sense," Shinji mused. "So, is there anything else we need to do here?"

"Nah, we're done. Hikari's gotta get home soon anyway to start cooking dinner."

With that said, the teenagers left the mall and headed home. Horaki split off halfway, waving goodbye as she turned a corner, and Asuka and Shinji continued on.

"Damn, this is gonna be great!" Asuka enthused. "A whole week of relaxation, sunbathing, and swimming!"

"Hang on," said Shinji as he remembered something. "Don't we need to get Misato to sign the permission slips first?

"We can do that tonight when we're together for dinner," Asuka replied, brushing the question off with a wave of her hand. "It's just a formality anyway. She's bound to let us go."

XXX

"What do you mean we can't go?!"

Misato raised an eyebrow at the irate girl in front of her. "I'm sorry, did I stutter or something? I said you can't go to Okinawa."

"Why not?!"

Shinji struggled mightily to suppress any reaction as Asuka petulantly stomped her foot. Fortunately he was on the other side of her to Misato, so he was out of her sight.

Misato put a hand to her forehead in exasperation. "I would have thought that would be obvious, what with you being a genius and all," she grumbled. "You can't leave Tokyo-3 at all because you're an Eva pilot. As such you are to remain close to the Geofront at all times in case of an attack."

Asuka let out a long and exaggerated groan as she dropped her head onto the table with enough force to rattle the plates they had just been eating from.

"Sorry, but that's just the way it is," Misato added sympathetically.

Shinji heard Asuka mutter something unintelligible, before she raised her head. "Thanks for letting me know after I wasted my cash on swimwear."

"If you want to go swimming, there is a pool in the Geofront," Rei suggested. "I go there quite often."

Asuka looked sidelong at her, before slouching. "It won't be the same, Wondergirl. There's a massive difference between a lovely beach and an indoor pool."

"I'd advise you to take what you can get," said Misato. "Besides, there's something else that would have made me consider whether or not to let you go."

Sitting up straight in her chair, Asuka gave their guardian a look of puzzlement.

"I contacted your school and asked how you three were doing in classes," Misato clarified. "I'd like to say I'm impressed with all three, but let's be frank here." She looked between her wards. "Rei, while your test scores are among the highest in your grade, apparently you spend a surprising amount of time either absent or staring out a window. And Asuka and Shinji... I know you you can do better than what I've been told."

Before Asuka and Shinji could retort, she raised a hand to quiet them. "Now I understand that you did miss a week of school recently due to NERV commitments, and NERV does demand quite a bit of your time on occasion, but if you're having trouble keeping up then you should say something. I asked the school to prepare some make-up work that you can do next week while your class is gone."

Shinji joined Asuka in groaning at that unwelcome news. "So, we're going to be spending all next week cramming to catch up?" he gloomily asked.

"I'd like to think I'm not a harsh mistress," Misato replied. "As long as all the work is done by the end of the week, you can spend as much time at the Geofront's pool as you like."

The pilots glanced at each other. Rei's face was inscrutable, but then she didn't have to worry about extra homework. Asuka's face, on the other hand, reminded Shinji of a grey cloud threatening to let loose with lightning.

He decided to try and be diplomatic. "Alright, we could always take the homework to the Geofront and do it poolside."

"Good." Misato got up, collecting their plates and depositing them in the sink. "Alright, I'm gonna get out of your hair for now. Goodnight." She gave them a parting wave and left.

"I shall do the same," said Rei, who also bid them goodnight before departing.

Shinji began to wash the dishes. Apart from the sounds of water and crockery, the apartment was silent, and he soon began humming a nameless tune. Just as he thought that Asuka had sneaked out of the kitchen without him hearing her, the hairs on the back of his neck suddenly stood on end. He stiffened, then tried to resume scrubbing a particularly resilient stain on the final plate.

"You seem rather... nonchalant about this."

As he feared, Asuka was standing right behind him; practically breathing down his neck. He gave the plate one final vain wipe, then turned to face her, wiping his hands on a towel.

"Pardon?"

Asuka waved a hand. "About not being able to go to Okinawa. You don't seem to care too much."

Shinji rubbed the back of his head, looking away slightly. "Well... I was kind of expecting something like this, to be honest."

"What." The flat stare that Asuka gave him started alarm bells ringing in his head.

"I... I thought something was going to happen to stop us being able to go," he attempted to clarify.

Asuka's voice went low and sibilant. "You knew about this? You knew and yet you left me to get psyched for the trip?!"

With the sink at his back and Asuka in front of him, Shinji was trapped. He patted the air in front of him, trying to lean away from her as much as possible. "N-no! It was just a feeling I had! Me being pessimistic! I didn't want to bring you down just because I thought that something might happen!"

Narrowing her eyes at him, Asuka remained silent for several long and tense seconds before abruptly about-facing and stomping off; the slam of her bedroom door told Shinji where she had retreated to. He remained where he was, hands still raised, for a short time afterwards before sighing and returning dejectedly to the sink.

Once again, he felt like he'd just damaged their relationship.

He was letting the water out of the sink when a whisper from behind caught his ear.

"Shinji."

Turning around, he saw Misato poking her head around the corner of the small hallway leading to the front door, waving at him to come closer. Puzzled at her presence in the apartment, Shinji made his way over to her.

"Don't take it personally," Misato said in a low voice as she moved towards the front door. "Asuka's really mad at me; you were just caught in the blast radius."

"Why are you-"

"I stuck around to see how she'd react," Misato swiftly answered, obviously expecting the question. "Sadly, she pretty much did what I expected. Just give her a little time to calm down. She should be fine tomorrow. Mostly. Well... she won't be hostile towards you at least."

Shinji glanced forlornly in the vague direction of Asuka's bedroom. "Are you sure? It seemed like I... betrayed her or something by not wanting to ruin her good mood."

"Trust me, Shinji. If you had really betrayed her, you'd know about it," Misato drily replied. "You, me, and the entire building. Tomorrow, she'll be venting to you about how I'm the worst person in the world or something. Don't try and defend me, by the way. Let her get it out."

"Um... okay..."

"Now I'm gonna actually head off. Goodnight, Shinji."

"Goodnight."

XXX

Saturday morning did not get off to a good start for Shinji. Even the simple act of getting out of bed stymied him as he became tangled in the cord of his SDAT, which he had been listening to before falling asleep, as well as his bedcovers. He wound up flopping gracelessly onto the floor before he could untangle himself.

Breakfast was tense once again. While Asuka didn't say anything beyond a muttered morning greeting to Shinji, frustration was evident on her face. Once or twice he thought he caught her muttering Misato's name under her breath along with some less than flattering comments.

The day wore on. School came and went, with Horaki expressing her disappointment at the pilots' inability to join the class in Okinawa. Toji was less sympathetic, and was suitably chastised by Horaki after a careless remark about the trip being more enjoyable without Asuka. That only gave her something else to mutter about as Shinji and Asuka walked home that afternoon.

Asuka had just mentioned something about monkeys wearing tracksuits when Shinji realised that they weren't quite going home the same way as usual.

"Got a problem with that?" Asuka testily asked when he brought it up. "I just felt like going a different way this time."

"Not at all," Shinji replied. "I was just curious if you were going to get something from a shop on the way home."

Asuka snorted in derision. "What, so Misato can ruin my enjoyment of it by saying that Eva pilots aren't allowed to have it?"

Shinji, remembering Misato's advice, took a moment to clamp down on the first thing he was going to say. Instead, he said, "It's a shame we're the only pilots. I wouldn't have minded a little time off to wind down. Maybe go camping with Kensuke again." He blinked, looking around at suddenly familiar surroundings. "Hey, speaking of which, I think I know where we are now."

Hastily looking both ways for traffic, Shinji crossed the street to stand in front of the building he recognised. "This is the cinema I slept in," he noted aloud.

"That time you ran off?" asked Asuka as she came up behind him. "Why did you sleep in a cinema?"

"Not intentionally," replied Shinji with a hint of embarrassment. "I was sort of half-watching a movie that was still playing while wondering where I should go. No idea what the movie was about, especially since I ended up falling asleep partway through."

"Huh." Asuka looked up at the board displaying the films currently showing. Shinji saw her squint her eyes and silently mouth some words, before she turned back to him and said, "Eh, none of those sound very interesting. Let's get going."

Shinji nodded, mentally sighing with relief. Somehow, he'd managed to get Asuka's mind off disparaging Misato for the time being.

He had no idea how long it would last though.

XXX

"This just isn't the same," Asuka complained. "Sure, it's bigger than I expected, but it's just so... bleh."

Shinji looked up and across the table at her, then at their surroundings. He was inclined to agree with his disgruntled friend; the Geofront pool area was little more than a hole full of water inside a sterile white box of a room. No effort had been made to make the place look even remotely inviting. The table and chairs they were currently using were likely spares from the cafeteria, considering they looked exactly the same, and there were no deck chairs for swimmers to relax in.

Rei didn't seem to care though, seeing as she had jumped into the pool moments after their arrival.

"Problem is, it's either this or nothing," he said. "Unless you want to go swimming at school."

Asuka made a face. "Hell no. They probably wouldn't even let us in anyway."

Shinji gave a hum of agreement before returning to his work. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Asuka stretch out languidly, the thin white cotton of her shirt doing nothing to hide the fact that she was wearing her newly bought bikini; a fact he struggled mightily to ignore. He himself was clad in a shirt and the board shorts Asuka had generously purchased for him, but he had no intention of getting into the pool.

With a sigh, Asuka ended the stretch by practically slumping over the papers in front of her before aimlessly grabbing at the pen that nearly rolled off the table. She missed, causing it to clatter onto the ground, and Shinji could sense her rolling her eyes as she leaned down to pick it up.

Shinji idly tapped his own pen on the paper in front of him, trying to make sense of the subject matter. While he wasn't stupid, some things occasionally felt way beyond his mental reach. Like science.

"Problems?" Asuka piped up. Shinji looked up at her. "With your work I mean. You look like you want to just chuck the paper in a shredder."

"Eh..." Shinji hesitated, before giving up. He certainly wasn't getting anywhere on his own. "It's this science thing. Thermal expansion or whatever. I just can't wrap my head around it."

"You don't know what thermal expansion is?"

"Um... no?" Why he phrased it as a question, Shinji had no idea.

Asuka gave him a bemused smile. "Thermal expansion is when a material changes size due to fluctuations in temperature." She looked at him, to which he gave an unsure nod. "Okay, let me give you an example. Ever tried to open a jar only for the lid to apparently be glued on? The reason why is because the metal lid has cooled down and shrunk slightly. Putting it under hot water causes the lid to heat up, which makes it expand and lets you open the jar."

Shinji groaned in realisation. "Wish I'd known that when I was younger," he mused, recalling several times where he'd had to get his teacher to open a jar for him.

"Thermal expansion is an important thing," Asuka continued. "Rail workers need to build train lines in such a way that the metal has room to safely expand, otherwise the tracks will warp in hot weather and trains could get derailed."

He set upon the question that had held him up for so long, angry at himself for not being able to understand until it had been practically spelled out to him. When he was done, he looked at his answer, then up at Asuka. "Um, could you take a quick look at this just to make sure I got it right?"

A look passed over her face, coming and going so quick that Shinji wasn't quite sure he'd seen anything at all, let alone what it signified. She blinked a couple of times, then said, "Sure, pass it over."

He slid the paper over to Asuka's side of the table, then watched as she hunched over it. When she began to silently mouth the words, a worrying thought occurred; one that he could not bring himself to say out loud.

"Yeah, that's good," Asuka suddenly said, passing the sheet back to him. Just as suddenly, she slid her chair back and got to her feet. "Anyway, I think we've done enough work to earn a bit of a swim."

"You can go on without me," Shinji hastily replied, looking down at his work as Asuka removed her shirt.

As it turned out, taking his eyes off her was probably a bad thing to do. Moments later, he felt two arms swiftly wrap around him from behind and lift him bodily from his seat.

"It's just a bit of swimming," said the owner of the arms as she marched him over to the edge of the pool where she let go. Shinji turned around and was about to give Asuka a perfectly good reason why he didn't want to go in the pool, when he briefly felt two hands push him backwards.

Time seemed to slow down. It seemed like Shinji was falling forever, staring at the grin on Asuka's face as she ever-so-slowly put her hands on her hips. His back soon felt the chill of the pool water, and he had just enough sense left to hold his breath as time sped up again. He scrunched his eyes closed as he sank into the pool. Panic set in, and he began to flail wildly, not even knowing which way was up.

With much of the air in his lungs lost to the forceful shove, Shinji's chest quickly began to ache. A hand bumped against something, but with his eyes closed he couldn't tell if it was the side of the pool or the bottom.

Just as Shinji was about to resign himself to oblivion, an arm wrapped around his midsection and he felt himself turned around and pulled through the water. Seconds later, his head broke the surface and he gasped a welcome lungful of air.

"Are you alright, Shinji?" Rei asked right next to his ear, and he nodded in response.

"Shit shit shit!"

Asuka's voice drew near, along with the slapping of bare feet on concrete. Rei pulled Shinji towards the side of the pool, where familiar hands grabbed him under his arms and pulled him out of the water. The moment he was on dry lands he laid himself down, still breathing heavily as his body worked to recover from its near-death experience. He rubbed at his eyelids, trying to remove any trace of the pool, before blearily opening his eyes to see a shock of red hair framing a worried face.

Their eyes met and Asuka closed hers, sighing in relief. "Damnit, Shinji..." she mumbled. "You could have said you didn't know how to swim."

"I was... just about to when you pushed me in," Shinji weakly retorted.

"In the future, I would appreciate it if you did not act so recklessly with a fellow pilot's life," Rei interjected, causing the others to look at her.

Asuka shrugged expansively. "I just thought he was being stubborn about getting his work done!"

Rei simply gave her a frosty look before turning around and diving back into the pool with almost no splash. Shinji, now mostly recovered, sat up and idly watched her continue her laps. After a moment of awkward silence, he looked up at Asuka, still sitting by his side. Now seemed as good a time as any.

"Speaking of things we don't know..."

Asuka's head reared back slightly, suspicion on her face. "...What?"

"You're having trouble reading kanji, aren't you?"

What followed was about half a minute of embarrassed stuttering and denials from a red-faced Asuka. When she saw that nothing she said was dispelling Shinji's scepticism, she gave up with a groan.

"Fine, yes, I'm having some trouble," she grouched. "Happy?"

Shinji frowned and shook his head. "Why would I be happy about that? Are you happy that I can't swim?"

"No, but..." Words seemingly failing Asuka, she settled for looking away and crossing her arms.

"All you need to do is ask for help," Shinji reasoned. "I'm not happy that you're struggling, but I'd be glad to assist."

Asuka glanced at him, narrowing her eyes. "And what about you? You could have asked me to teach you to swim instead of making me think you already knew."

"I didn't say anything because I just don't care for swimming."

"Care or not, it's still a useful and important skill to learn." Asuka got to her feet and looked down at him, offering a hand.

Shinji took the hand, rapidly rising to his feet as Asuka pulled him upward. "So is being able to read kanji," he countered.

Asuka threw her hands up. "Fine, how about this then? I teach you to swim, you help me out with reading your weird language. Swimming's good exercise anyway."

Shinji sighed in defeat. "Alright, I suppose."

"Oh relax," Asuka airily replied as she turned to head back to their table. "Honestly, being a male, you're getting the better end of this deal by far."

"What do you mean? By learning how to swim?"

Asuka opened her mouth to retort, but then slowly closed it as she ruefully shook her head. "You're hopeless sometimes, Shinji."