Creation began on 10-15-21
Creation ended on 11-13-23
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Prowling in the Night
A/N: wrightdylen21 brought this up because they wanted to see it renewed for more excitement.
Returning to her apartment late in the night was the norm for Ritsuko Akagi. However, what she didn't expect to see while walking up the steps of her building was a cat that seemed to stand out beyond all reasonable doubt. Its fur coloration made it resemble the Taoist symbol. It was quite an impressionable cat.
What a strange cat, she thought as she saw it laying on the ground asleep.
She picked it up and took it into her apartment. Unbeknownst to her, this was what Shinji hoped she would do, being unable to resist her curiosity towards a cat with markings that were out of the ordinary. He didn't open his eyes, but he knew that she had him on his back before setting him down on a chair; he had to stay in character until he didn't need to.
"Mew," he heard a cat in the room with him; he didn't think Ritsuko had any already living with her, and then opened his eyes to see that it was a brown tabby with red eyes.
Oh, he thought as he closed his eyes again, a little creeped out; he didn't expect a cat to have red eyes when he believed green or blue eyes were more common.
-x-
"…So, he's going to be spying on Dr. Akagi as a cat at night?" Asuka questioned Misato after she was informed of Shinji's absence from the apartment.
"For now," Misato stated.
"Why did you want him to spy on her?"
"Personally, I think Ritsuko is hiding things from me. After Suzuhara declined to be the Fourth Child, there was a minor attempt to recruit Aida, but he was found to be inadequate. Why try to recruit two of Shinji's friends instead of someone from a different country? And there was something else, too. I checked a file that connects to the school based on an assumption…and it turns out that every one of your classmates is a pilot candidate."
"What?! But that's crazy! None of them know about what NERV really does! How can they be candidates if they barely know about the Evas?!"
"That's what I want to know."
Ring-ring! Misato's phone rang, surprising them both.
"Does Kaji call late at night?" Asuka asks.
"You wish," Misato responds as she answers her phone. "Katsuragi."
Her eyes widen at what she's being told and she looks at Asuka.
"What is it?" The redhead asks.
"An Angel," she reveals. "In the city."
-x-
Shinji, who ran out as soon as Ritsuko opened the door to leave, couldn't fathom the sight of the new Angel that floated in the middle of the streets at night.
Insane, he thought as he watched from atop a skyscraper.
The Angel resembled a sphere, but was black and white, bizarrely mocking the patterns of a zebra and just floating around. As Shinji looked around, he didn't see any sign of the Evas. It likely due to getting them ready or still repairing them from the last attack. Whatever the case was, this Angel just gave him the creeps for showing up in the middle of the night.
-x-
"…So, that's all we know so far," Misato informed Asuka and Rei as they were about to be catapulted up to the city.
"How did something like this just show up and not set off any alarms?" Asuka questions. "Security must be dragging its ass around."
Once they were catapulted up, Asuka had to wonder if there was going to be any attempt to get Shinji to pilot again, as he didn't show up or was requested to after he resigned.
"It seems he was serious about quitting after the last incident," one of the personnel stated about Shinji's absence from the base.
If only they knew why, she thought as she was armed with an axe, moving around the streets and buildings. But the second they know why, Shinji becomes a laboratory specimen because of how he was saved…or worse, a fugitive because he had to run.
Unit-02 was closing the distance between itself and the Angel. So far, it just continued to float in the air, seemingly oblivious to everything around it. If it was an Angel, this way of attacking was very unusual.
Shinji, what would you do? She wonders as she prepares to swing her weapon at the Angel. The Hell with it.
Unit-02 emerged from around the corner and swung as hard and fast as it could at the Angel.
-x-
Shinji saw Unit-02 swing its axe at the black and white-colored sphere…and it vanished from sight!
"What?!" He gasped, and suddenly felt a shift in his center of gravity as the building started tilting to the side. "What the Hell is going on?!"
He ran over to the edge of the roof…and saw nothing but darkness where a street should've been. A deep, deep darkness.
Oh, jeez, he thought as he looked over and saw Unit-02 sinking into the ground. No! Asuka!
In less than ten seconds, the Angel sphere appeared again, but was in a different section of the city…and in less than a minute, the red Eva had sunken into the darkness…with Shinji and the building he was on about to follow close behind.
"Aaaugh!" Shinji grunted as he leapt off the roof and onto a neighboring roof on his left, escaping the sinking skyscraper.
His current form was that of a large, anthropomorphic white tiger, standing five feet due to hunching over a little, but would've been seven feet if standing completely upright. He looked over to where he had jumped from and found that there were at least twelve buildings that were sinking into the darkness beneath him. Then, he saw Unit-00 preparing to open fire at the Angel with a rifle.
Wait, Unit-00? What happened to Unit-01? Shinji wonders as he quickly jumps from the roof towards another building until he reaches one that wasn't sinking into the darkness below.
-x-
Complications
Rei had been intended to sortie out in Unit-01, but her synchronization with the purple Eva was met with…a setback. It wasn't just her recent refusal to attack Unit-03 when she believed that Shinji was trapped inside it, but the Eva itself refusing to connect with her. Inside the plug, she covered her mouth in disgust, feeling like she was going to puke. She even saw the memory of Shinji moments before the men that Gendo hired to kill him went and killed him. It wasn't just a dreadful experience that he was forced to endure, but a hurtful reminder that the father was antagonistic towards his own son…for more than just his ridiculous luck that got him a vacation to Sapporo.
With the purple Eva not working, she was sortied in Unit-00. Not even Gendo was sure why the Eva was rejecting Rei, only that it was becoming an issue shortly after the Third Child resigned.
-x-
Standing by the age of the shadow that had consumed much of the city, Shinji, disguised as a simple beige-colored cat, wonder what was going on with Asuka inside Unit-02 within the shadow. Taking this stressful degree of time, he found himself running back and forth between the minimum safe distance between the shadow and the NERV mobile command center where Misato and Rei were with Ritsuko.
"…So long as she doesn't spend all that time wandering around," he heard Ritsuko say, "she can survive in the Eva for at least sixteen hours."
Sixteen hours. That was the minimum degree of life support for an Evangelion deprived of its external power supply and kept from doing anything strenuous. So long as Asuka didn't do anything rash or insane, that was how long she would be able to survive within the Eva…until every system within the Entry Plug stopped working.
But how long can she go in there without going crazy? Shinji wondered as he sat under the mobile command center to listen in on the information being distributed.
"…What? You're saying that shadow's the Angel's actual body?" He hears Misato utter.
"That's right," he hears Ritsuko respond. "It exists by means of an inverted AT-Field keeping it sustained. Instead of things bouncing off it, they get absorbed into it. Within this field is a space that can only be described by abstract mathematics. A Sea of Dirac, possibly connected to another universe outside our own."
"Then what's with that sphere that's floating up in the air?"
"It vanishes whenever the imaginary circuit between the field and body closes. In a reversal of bizarre existence, that sphere can be interpreted as the Angel's shadow in our world."
"So, the shadow that Unit-02 sank into…is the actual target. How do we face something like that? Dammit, Asuka, you'd better be alive in there."
Yeah, Shinji thought as he got up and ran back to the shadow Angel's body. You'd better be alive in there.
-x-
"…Still nothing but white noise," went Asuka as she switched from life support to try and observe where she was right now, and then switched back to life support. "It's been almost six hours since I had to switch over to life support…and still nothing from nobody."
She looked at the life monitor in her plugsuit that showed how much longer she had left on life support…and was worried about the potential negative outcome this situation could have. If something didn't change, her life would end in the next nine or ten hours. In addition, she was hungry; she wished she had something to eat that had been prepared by Shinji.
-x-
"…Why are you looking for Shinji?" Ritsuko hears Misato ask her, another hour into the new day as they were looking for a solution to dealing with the Angel.
"Because we need two pilots and two Evas," she explains to her.
"Well, he probably left when we had the city evacuated when the Angel appeared last night. He's a civilian now that he resigned from NERV. And what's wrong with your Dummy System? I heard it worked out for NERV in the last battle."
"We tried it with Unit-01 an hour ago. It didn't work."
"What do you mean, it didn't work?"
"The Eva refused to sync with it."
"It refused?"
When Gendo ordered that Unit-01 be sortied out with the Dummy System, NERV was surprised by the outcome of the attempt to install the Dummy Plug into the purple Eva. After the first attempt, it seemed like a success to the man, but after the second proved to be an issue, followed by three more attempts to get it to sync with the autopilot system, he had to stubbornly give the reluctant order to find the Third Child and bring him back to pilot the Eva.
"Why two pilots and two Evas?" Misato wanted to know.
"Commander Ikari gave the order to blow the Angel up," Ritsuko answered her.
"What?!"
From under the mobile command center's back tires, Shinji poked his cat head out to observe the two women.
"If we dump our remaining N² explosives into the Angel, combined with containing the explosion with two AT-Fields, the Angel and the Dirac Sea that makes up its body will implode," Ritsuko had explained.
"But that kind of plan will… Asuka would be… This isn't a rescue operation at all!" Misato says in anger. "What the Hell is going on here?!"
"Our primary objective is to defeat the Angel, even if it means destroying the Eva. In that eventuality, the life of the pilot is secondary."
Shinji frowned, just as Misato slapped Ritsuko in her face.
"I'm starting to wonder if it was a mistake that tiger pulled you out of the heap alive instead of laying you with the deceased," she told the faux-blond.
"If the Second Child dies, that's on you," Ritsuko reminds her, and Shinji runs off to the shadow on the ground.
Not like this, he thinks as he looks at the shadow just inches away from him. Not like this.
With nothing left to lose, except his very life, he made a choice that he hoped would not have severe repercussions.
"Wait," he hears Rei's voice, and he refrains from jumping into the shadow body of the Angel. "Are you sure about what you're doing?"
He turns to see the albino girl standing away from him and looking down at him. Slowly, he walks over to her circles her legs.
"They want to blow the Angel up with Asuka still trapped inside it," he tells her, keeping his voice low. "There's a chance she won't survive it, even with the Eva. I can't risk her losing her life like this. I pulled enough dead bodies out of the wreckage to last me a lifetime. I don't want to see a corpse belonging to a friend."
Rei knew he was right. After the last attack, the thought of any of them getting killed was ever present, but the possibility that they could be killed by the very people they were being ordered around by, just to defeat a threat to mankind, was just as vile as the knowledge that one of them had put a hit out on Shinji, which led to his current situation that was this new life he possessed. And if any of them died, or rather, if Asuka or Shinji were to die, what then? She didn't have much regard for herself, as she could be replaced by Gendo any time he chose, but the Second and Third Children, they were invaluable.
"I can refuse to follow the order," she told Shinji, "or enter the Angel's shadow body and try to pull her out."
"No, don't do anything reckless," he tells her back, sitting beside her on her left. "Don't pilot the Eva. I got to try my hand at rescuing Asuka. The would-be attempt to defeat the Angel seems to depend on there being two Evas, not one. If they can't find me, then they can't do what they aim to do. They're looking for a teenager, not a cat."
Even with that logic, Rei was worried about the likelihood that Shinji could face repercussions that were beyond his comprehension. Still, it was his decision in the end.
"Be careful," she told him.
"Even if I'm not careful, we can pray that I have seven more lives," he tried to joke, and then ran out onto the shadow body…where he sank into the darkness.
-x-
"…Huh?" Asuka went, seeing scenes of herself, like the motion picture of a film being played in a theater, and seeing that these scenes were different from what she knew. "That's…not me. I don't do that."
The scenes she was seeing depicted her, or someone like her, attacking Shinji with some sort of human-sized version of her Unit-02 while he tried to defend himself with these armored arms he was wearing.
"Except you do do those things," she heard a little girl's voice say to her on her right. "In that lifetime, you do, at least. Quite aggressive."
She turns to see that there was a little girl with the same shade of red as herself, holding a stuffed monkey without its head.
"Who…who are you?" She asks her.
"An observer of the human mind," the little girl says, "an explorer of the further regions of existence created by the ripples of choices. For every choice one makes, there are ripples that create branches in existence, forming new planes where a different choice is made instead of the chosen choice."
The scenes changed to show another redhead that looked like Asuka, except that her eyes were red like the First Child's, and she was with someone like Shinji, sharing a bed in a house by the shore. The girl demonstrated that she was devoted to the young man who seemed plagued by loneliness and was in need of companionship and love.
"So, they're supposed to be me?" Asuka questions. "Different versions of me?"
"They are you, but due to choices made and unmade, the ripples that result in the choices chosen, everyone, including you, create these planes of existence where alternate choices were made in place of the choices you did make. These choices incorporate three versions of oneself."
"Three?"
"The one who observes, the one who makes the choice…and the one who is the result of a different choice. All three versions are the same version, but the one most different is the one that made a different choice than the one who made the primary choice."
Then, Asuka saw a different scene in which she appears to be fighting nine Evangelions that were all the same, albeit with different levels of battle damage caused by Unit-02, and wondered which type of choices had been made to lead to that moment in time. It seemed like she was going to defeat them all with ease because they seemed pathetic as combatants…until she saw this strange blade make contact with her Eva's AT-Field and change into a dark gray bident that impaled it in the head…and her the alternate of herself started bleeding out her left eye.
"Mein Gott," Asuka covered her mouth in disgust.
"The cruelest of choices led to the most unforgiving of outcomes that resulted in the harshest of endings to planes of existence that were victims in ways that didn't need to be," the little girl expressed as the scene changed to one of Shinji inside of Unit-01, screaming at the sight of a dismembered Unit-02. "In other lifetimes, you two are often dealt the coldest of hands that give the hollowest of fates."
"Couldn't he have done something?" Asuka asks her.
"Not when his will is shattered. His will to go on, his motivation to see something through, and his heart left to rot in despair. You give someone the power to make things better or worse, but when they feel like everyone wants them to do the very opposite of what they say, they end up making the choice that leaves more frowns in places better left to the imagination…or at least when the mind is driven past its breaking point and that person can't think straight for even the slightest moment to decide what they want for themselves because they hear voices talking and saying the worst things one shouldn't have to hear because they feel it relates to themselves."
The scene changes again to show Asuka facing a version of Shinji that was, lack of a word, unusual and had a weird taste in funeral attire while adorned with several weapons like some sort of medieval man that found himself in the modern era and entered a world of violence and bloodshed. She wanted to question who this man was when she saw him raise his right arm up, revealing it was just a metal gauntlet covering a skeletal limb that actually functioned without muscles or nerves.
"Who is that?" She asks the girl.
"Someone whose very life didn't make any difference to anyone, including himself, until after he died and became more than a mortal," she answers. "He's probably among the greater of choices that resulted in a situation where his death was the only thing that led him to where he is now."
"So, then…what? I mean, for him, dying was the best thing to have ever happened to him?"
"I believe his actions speak for him."
Asuka watched as the alternate of herself was being protected by some Section Two agents that went up against the dead Shinji, who reduced them to dismembered corpses with a kama sickle, with no emotion on his face. She never saw Shinji move with such a fierce grace, like a ghost or samurai; he was untouchable, but he had this style, this flow that was unlike anything she saw other people do in video games or in films. When the slaughter was done, she was left speechless as to how this version of Shinji could be capable of murder when he should've been… Except that she was already told that there were alternate possibilities, other realities that existed that stemmed from choices made in the past that created ripples that resulted in many people that turned out different from the ones that other people knew. Whatever happened to this Shinji, it made him someone that was both dangerous and on a path that seemed more fulfilling than any life could've ever hoped to be for someone like him.
The scene then shifted to one that was far different from the previous realities: Shinji, sitting on a hill overlooking Tokyo-3, the same hill that she, him and Rei sat on after the blackout and the Ninth Angel, except he was with a little girl that seemed to bear a resemblance to him, smiling a happy smile before hugging him on his side, something she saw him reciprocate…willingly.
"Who…is that girl he's with?" She asks.
"Someone innocent who was the result of hurtful choice to hurt him," the little girl answers, "but someone he cares for who cares about him back. What is it that people say? People that are the result of undesired unions are both blessed and damned by the very reasons behind their existence? It seems that this girl, despite the undesired, unwanted intentions of whatever union he was forced into, is nothing more than a blessing to this young man."
Asuka found this to be disturbing; it appeared that in some alternate lifetimes, Shinji had a kid of his own at an early age, and sometimes due to being in an unwanted relationship with someone else that gave him no other choice. But she saw this Shinji being accepting of the girl, like he really wanted her around. And then, the scene changed to one of herself, in her plugsuit, lifted up into the air by a girl with grey hair in front of some people and Unit-01.
"Whoa," she reacts, seeing the girl tell her alternate to back off from Shinji and tell others that he and the Eva were no longer theirs to manipulate.
"Oh, one of the rare few that exist because of unexpected unknowns of what we understand as fate," the little girl expresses. "People can be involved with the same person, over and over again, in many lifetimes. In others, they can be involved with different people in the same way. In your case, you two were together in several, and in others, he was with that other girl you see as competition of sorts, and in others, he is with people that have nothing to do with what you three are involved in…but would rather be involved with him."
The scene changed to a later scene, with the same grey-haired girl with Shinji, walking down a city street with her, Rei, Hikari, Toji and Kensuke, Misato and some other woman that had a resemblance to Rei and Shinji, but with a more triangular face. It seemed that some considerable time had passed because Shinji looked a little older than he was right now, and he was happier than she had ever seen him be.
"What is the point to all of this?" Asuka asks the girl.
"Fate is a strange and fickle thing that affects everyone," she responds. "It can be benevolent or malicious, depending on who is the person of interest. What is your fate in nearly every other lifetime? You pine for the affections of another that has no idea of what you are after. You seek power for the sake of being remembered by a world that has no idea of who you even are. You would rather face a humiliating death than to be rescued by someone you despise because of who they are. Your very existence is often of pride, of vanity, of arrogance and loneliness; you want others to know who you are, but they don't ever see the real you, whoever that person is. And in most cases, you fall from grace along with everyone else because fate decided to be cruel to those that were unable to find happiness."
Asuka then saw a scene of herself floating beside a version of Shinji that looked too tired and withered to do much of anything, his hair prematurely white, premature wrinkles under his red eyes, an expression of agony on his face. He looked like he was just tired of everything and wanted to die. But her alternate, bandaged on her right arm and left eye, watching him with a sadness in her own eyes as they were alone in the abyss of space. Whatever happened to them, it seemed as they were bound together…but not really together. It was sad and depressing. She wasn't sure which of them had it worse than the other one.
"I guess now the question is this: What is your fate to be among other fates that have been dealt?" The little girl asked Asuka. "Will you fall and die, or will you move on? That is the question that seeks an answer."
There were more scenes of Asuka from other lifetimes, other realities that were the result of different choices made over the ones that had been made. She saw herself treating Shinji a little better in some where they were a couple, others where she pushed him away to the point of committing suicide, which shocked her, and even one lifetime where they had to live in an empty world where there were no people and several crucified, headless Evas and the entire oceans were as reddish-orange as LCL often was, a world of red oceans. It seemed that while some of these different possibilities had their ups and downs, others were full of dread because of how they seemed to be the result of horrific aftermaths, like the feared Third Impact that NERV was tasked with preventing by facing the Angels. She didn't want that to happen. She would do anything to prevent it from ever happening in her own lifetime.
"Huh?!" She gasped, finding herself back in the Entry Plug as the purification system was starting to fail, resulting in the LCL becoming murky, and the temperature was dropping. "Shiest. How long do I have left in here?"
She checked her plugsuit…and found she had less than a few minutes left before the life support ran out of power.
"I don't want to die like this," she shudders. "Where are you when I need you, Shinji?"
That was a crazy question to ask out loud. The only time Shinji had ever really saved her from certain death was during the Angel incident at Mt. Asama, keeping her from sinking into the volcano after she defeated the Angel. She didn't really expect him to just show up again and save her from this, even as a cat. Although it was a little wishful thinking to expect him to do so at a time like this.
She felt drowsiness coming over her as she closed her eyes. It seemed like this was the end for her…and she didn't have much to do except hope for a better future than the few she had seen where she suffered alongside Shinji because of the Evangelions. There was a minute sound that felt like something being scraped against, but she was already asleep that she couldn't make out the noise.
"I'm not letting you go out like this, Asuka," she thought she heard once somewhere, not even feeling herself being touched by something. "I'm bringing you home."
-x-
With Shinji unable to be found, they had no choice but to have Rei do the operation solo. They were going to deposit the remaining N² bombs into the Angel and detonate them. As much as Rei didn't like this operation, what other choice did she have…if not the choice to reveal what she knew about Shinji to Gendo and Dr. Akagi? But she couldn't endanger Shinji like that, letting them know about how his life was saved.
"Preparing to commence the operation," she heard Dr. Akagi say over the intercom.
CRACK! The shadow body of the Angel fractured around like an earthquake shaking the city.
The Angel's three-dimensional shadow then turned black and shifted, like it was made of rubber or a stretchy material.
Burst! A blood-red claw forced its way out of the shadow, spilling blood onto the two-dimensional shadow body below, followed by a second claw.
"What's going on here?!" Ritsuko demanded.
"We don't know!" One of the personnel members responded at their console.
The shadow was ripped away to reveal a blood-red being that looked like Unit-02…but more menacing because it possessed a mouth like that of a mammalian creature.
"Rrrrrrrrrrrraaaaurgh!" It roared as it tore its way out of the shadow and onto the fracturing ground of the Angel's body. "Grrrrr!"
"Is that…Unit-02?" Misato questioned.
"What in God's name have we made this from?" Ritsuko questioned.
Then, in an instant, the creature returned to looking like Unit-02, with its back opening to eject the Entry Plug, flushing out its LCL. What nobody knew or could even see, a small creature had fled from the body of the Eva and disappeared as the buildings that had been absorbed into the Angel were instantly restored. This had been Shinji, fleeing the scene to avoid being found.
Misato will make sure she gets to the trauma ward, he thought as he ran into an alley. That was intense, far beyond what I thought I was capable of.
-x-
"…Asuka! Asuka!" Asuka heard her name being called out by someone as she stirred from unconsciousness. "Asuka!"
Flash! A light shined over her face as she opened her eyes, seeing a figure over her.
It was Misato, her face stained by woe.
"Asuka," she cried, embracing the girl.
"That…idiot saved me again," Asuka sighs before passing out again.
-x-
As Unit-02 was being sprayed with sterilizing solutions to wash the blood-like substance off its body, Gendo and Ritsuko were standing in front of it with expressions of concern.
"I would've expected something like this from Unit-01, but not Unit-02," Ritsuko tells Gendo. "Still, I never imagined seeing Unit-02 look the way it did today. It was like a beast for a moment before returning to normal. It makes you wonder if they're truly on our side…or if they hurt us as much as the Angels do. There's something else, too. I think Katsuragi suspects something going on."
"Leave her be," Gendo replies, unconcerned. "At least for now."
But Ritsuko wasn't convinced, and for good reason. First the Third Child resigns, then Unit-01 refuses to activate with the Dummy System, and now Unit-02 demonstrates a bizarre change in appearance that lasted just long enough for it to escape from the Angel. Something was amiss here, and it bothered her.
It would be one thing for Shinji and Rei to know the truth about the Eva, but if Asuka were to ever know the truth, as well, they'd never forgive us, she thought.
-x-
Opening her eyes again, Asuka found herself in the trauma ward, staring up at the ceiling, exhausted, physically and mentally.
"Shiest," she cursed.
"You're finally awake," she heard Misato say to her and she turned to her right to face the woman. "You've been asleep since yesterday."
Then Asuka had to ask a question that only Misato could answer without it sounding weird.
"Where is that idiot?" She asks her.
"They wouldn't let him in after he reigned," Misato explains, and then lifts up her left hand to reveal a wrapped bento. "He asked me to make sure you got this, though."
"Mew," a mewing sound was heard by them, and Misato chuckled a little bit.
Asuka made an expression of suspicion and wondered what was going on.
"I did find this little guy on my way here, though, and thought he'd be good company," Misato reveals as she reaches into her jacket and pulls out a small kitten with red fur.
"Heh," Asuka chuckles. "He's adorable."
Shinji turned himself into a small kitten to get through security in order to check up on Asuka; nobody at NERV would be the wiser to suspect that he was anywhere else due to his resignation.
"Mew," the kitten went again, raising its front paws up to climb onto the bed and sit on Asuka's lap. "Mew."
Meanwhile, outside the room, Rei, overhearing the conversation, felt relief towards the fact that the Second Child was alive…and that Shinji had saved her. If what she saw was some kind of extension of what Shinji was capable of, then he was becoming more powerful than she had previously expected of him to become with his new life.
If his father were ever to know of this, she thought as she walks away, he would likely try to have him returned to NERV's custody and studied to understand what happened to him…or have him locked away in a cage.
To be continued…
A/N: Trying to work on many things and watch what I'm far behind on, like Transplant, Ahsoka, Loki, etc. Until the next chapter, and yeah, I'm bringing this into my Multiverse of Evangelion by having Asuka become aware of what has been going on and she will eventually inform Shinji and the others about it. And as for the Unit-02 scene, that will be explained later on, as well.