NGE characters belong to their respective owners.

Note: Apologies to Seeking Professional Help for the slight delay in this update, as FFnet still was going down periodically from my end.

Chapter 4


In his eerie but still very physical corner of the world, Keel Lorenzo faced the SEELE monoliths as he awaited his salvation with fingers crossed.

/"Latest report: the Geofront and the EVA Series are approaching E Layer, and still rising."/

/"EVA Series' self-impale mode to execute in five minutes."/

/"Unit01 Pilot's ego disintegrating at the ever increasing rate of . . ."/

Keel, who had been listening to the reports rapt all along, suddenly found his attention straying as he saw, through his visor, a brief glimpse of something that put him on alert.

He saw the late Kaji Ryoji, who stood side by side with what looked like the equally dead Dr. Katsuragi. There appeared to be innumerable humanoid shadows looming behind the two. They were gone almost as soon as he spotted them, disappearing without a trace into the surrounding darkness.

Old heart racing against the surrounding cybernetic components keeping it at work, Keel hurried to check for playback via his visor. The men and their shadows were nowhere to be found in the recording.

Kaji Ryoji, triple agent. Katsuragi, top scientist. They were but two of the innumerable people that he, as the head of SEELE, had killed throughout the long falling of years to further his own agenda. Keel realized then how he must be getting old, and with age came the unavoidable softness of heart and spirit. For why else would he be hallucinating about such insignificant pawns during this most important and glorious moment to humanity-and most importantly, to himself?

"Soon . . ." murmured the powerful old man to himself in self-reassurance, ". . . soon . . ."

"Are you doing this with me to try and forget about your mother?"

Shinji's question, coming so unexpectedly, impacted Asuka like an abrupt slap. Here she was, offering herself to him, trying to goddamned SAVE him from the strange angel. And he just had to bring this up now? "You . . ."

"I saw you crying out for your mother, earlier on," he explained. "We're sharing the same consciousness now, and I can kind of see glimpses of what's in your mind now." There now was this hesitant, almost hopeful glint in his dark eyes. "Just like me, you also got problems with your parents, don't you, Asuka?"

"YOU-" Asuka would've belted Shinji one, there and then, had she not noticed how the Angel, still latched onto him from behind, now was reaching around to undo the buttons on his polo shirt. "You . . ."

The boy's own hands, in the meantime, were fumbling at the front of his jeans. "It's okay if you want to use me this way, Asuka. I . . . I need the same from you too." Red in the cheeks, he licked his lips in acute neediness, before raising a tentative hand towards her face. "Let us help each other. I-I want you to be my first-"

"What the HELL do you GODDAMN TAKE ME FOR?!"

Asuka's screech had Shinji's hand freezing in midair.

"A-Asuka?"

"You don't understand anything!" hissed the girl at this boy who left her thoroughly disillusioned by being eager over all the wrong things, for all the wrong reasons. "Stay away from me!

". . . I do understand." Shinji's hand, awkwardly lowered, twitched like a dying insect. "By doing adult things, we can help each other forget all the unhappy things, so we may go on livin-"

"No you don't, you IDIOT!" Asuka kicked Shinji, whose hand convulsed. "You really think the self-absorbed, pervy likes of you can understand me!? You think you can 'help' me just by doing this . . . this dirty thing to me, huh?" Her eyes narrowed with rage-laced disgust. "You'd really believe I'm that desperate, huh?"

"Asuk-"

"You're godfrigging ARROGANT!"

She would have charged Shinji there and then, would have used all the combat techniques she had acquired through her training in Germany in beating up this slimy, disgusting male, had she not been held back by Misato.

"Asuka, this is Instrumentality, there is no buffer," said the adult. "Shinji-kun is behaving this way because he can't phrase things as tactfully as he could in real life-"

"Meaning this is what he's REALLY thinking with that little head of his!" snapped Asuka, struggling against the NERV Major's grip like a mad cat. "He REALLY wanted to take advantage of my situation with Mama! And he would really do it with anyone and anything like a dog in heat, even with . . . even with . . . THAT!" She pointed a foot at the Angel behind Shinji, still watching her with that condescending smirk; his amorous hands had never once left Shinji's body.

"Ikari Shinji!" the hurt girl snarled at the boy with as much hurtful hatred she could muster up. "YOU can't POSSIBLY understand ME! Not with that filthy mind of yours, you get that through your stupid head!"

As she gasped from the heat of her own anger, Asuka saw, to her unsurprised, how yet another familiar figure had showed up in this scene. It was Rei-who, according to the info Misato had transferred directly into her mind earlier at the Theatre, now controlled this Lilith/Adam hybrid they entrapping them all-entering the living room, with Pen-Pen following from right behind. Asuka struggled out of Misato's hold at seeing her.

"Why, if it isn't the mastermind behind all this craziness," she snipped, redirecting her anger at the Commander's favorite. "Even though you don't really got a mind or a will to call your own, do you, Wonder Girl?"

Ignoring Asuka in that infuriating way that was signature to her person, Rei stepped up and towards Shinji.

Asuka gritted her teeth at the diss. "Look, I don't care what order the Commander had given, but you'd better let us out of this Seed Body or Collective Consciousness or whatever right this instant-"

SLAP!

"Wha . . ." In front of her stunned eyes, Rei had struck the annoying but immensely powerful Seventeenth Angel across the face.

"You're letting the pettier aspects of your Lilin side get the better of you," she spoke to the Angel-whose face got tilted to one side by the impact-in an icy tone. "Antagonizing the Second while bewitching Ikari-kun through inappropriate sexual conduct will not help us accomplish our goal, Brother."

The Angel, so nasty towards Asuka, bore Rei's physical and verbal attack with surprising good grace. "Guilty as charged, Sister."

"And what exactly is this goal you're now sharing with the Angel?" asked Ritsuko-still present in this scene-of Rei, expression solemn.

Rei spoke without turning towards her superior at NERV. "To evolve Ikari-kun-and in doing so, the entire imperfect humanity-through Instrumentality."

"Evolve humanity through Instrumentality?" Asuka inhaled sharply. "You people are sounding about just as wacked as what those SEELE loons!"

"Nagisa, you've already mentioned something like this before," pointed out Misato, picking up PenPen as though by habit. "It's time for you to be more specifice. Just what does you and Rei's version of 'evolving through Instrumentality' entail, specifically?"

"We intend to rid humanity of a crippling condition known as the Hedgehog's Dilemma."

"Huh?" Asuka blinked at the alien term. "What the heck was that?"

Ritsuko filled her in. "It means the dilemma where people needs to make contact with each other out of the need for companion, yet also holding back out of fear of being hurt by other people."

"That's it?" Asuka's bafflement quickly turned into outrage. "That's the reason why the Angel and Wonder Girl are starting the Third Impact, and letting everyone get killed in like the most gruesome manners ever?! All to get over some stupid fear of just INTERACTING with each other?!"

"Don't you harbor this same fear as Ikari-kun and everyone else here?" asked Rei, and Asuka found herself tongue-tied.

To make it worse, the Angel also decided to pipe up just that moment. "Doesn't the fear of making contact with other cripple you in that same way it does him?" he asked. "Isn't the resulting misunderstanding what caused you to lose you mother a second time? Surely even someone as willfully blind as yourself cannot deny in your hearts of hearts that you, like all other Lilins, have the need to pass the hurdle of the Hedgehog's Dilemma?"

"How dare you . . ." Livid at getting salt on her most grievous wound, Asuka stomped right up toward the powerful, treacherous Angel with a fist drew back, intending on plummeting him or die trying. "You SHUT UP about my-"

"I . . . want to understand you."

Shinji, positioned right in front of the Angel, spoke in this soft, vulnerable voice that extinguished her rage like water on fire, leaving her stunned.

"I've been wanting to know more about you ever since that day we met," he continued on, "Asuka."

"Y-You . . ."

"But how can I understand you . . . if you don't say anything to me?" he asked, appearing genuinely agonized. "You don't say anything about what's really bothering you . . . You don't talk to me about anything . . ." Gradually, he came to gain that maniac desperate fury she had caught glimpses back when they were in their EVAs battling Angels; it was a fury that, once unleashed, could make even him approach something like formidability. "How can I understand you when you block out me? It's IMPOSSIBLE!" He now was screaming in her face, and the girl found herself actually forced into taking a step back.

"Shinji . . ." she rasped, not knowing what else to say in face of the raw, undeniably genuine passion this boy-whom she had just written off as a confirmed pervert-was now displaying to her.

"Ikari-kun," Rei spoke up quietly then. "Did you try to understand Pilot Soryu?"

At that, Shinji's prior passion visibly dwindled, as he then lowered his head in this childish, sulking manner that would always, unfailingly, annoy Asuka. "I tried . . ."

"Idiot!" Seizing Shinji's moment of weakness like she would the weakness of an Angel opponent, Asuka hurried to put "the idiot Shinji" back in his (usually pathetic) place for her own peace of mind. "I know about your jerk-off fantasies of me." At her reminding, the TV spontaneously powered on, showing the scene with the young lech taking advantage of her in the hospital.

As expected, Shinji crumbled at the reminder. Watching him tremble in shame under the others' gazes both thrilled and disgusted Asuka, who, even while knowing she was going too in dealing with someone who liked her-albeit in a sick way-pressed on.

"Go on." She drank in the shame-filled expression scrunching up his face like it was something at once tasty and disgusting. "Do it again like usual . . . I'll even stand here and watch." Having delivered the fatal blow, she then crossed her arms watching the red-faced boy, awaiting his inevitable crumbling.

Several things happened then. Knees buckling, Shinji's eyes rolled up as he collapsed backwards . . . and right into Kaworu's waiting arms. Rei was, of course, already by his side steadying him with gentle hands. Even Misato had since tossed Pen-Pen aside, and was up there hugging her charge to her ample chest in this motherly gesture. In no time at all, Ikari Shinji was clamored by this make-shift harem, and all was again made right with his world.

Yet still he was not satisfied.

"Asuka . . ." Eyes gazed over, he beckoned to her, shamelessly, pleadingly. "Please come to me; I need . . . I still need you . . . your help; I need-"

"SHUT UP!" shouted Asuka, stomping hard against on the floorboard and causing Shinji to jolt backwards . . . and dragged the group currently pampering him with physical comfort to the floor with him. "You really don't get it, do you, you idiot?"
Shinji's expression, fearful and dull and very much confused, told her that he really didn't. "Asuka-" He was promptly cut off by the girl getting up and standing menacingly over him.

Eyes on Shinji, Asuka delivered each and every one of the following words like they were blows from a hammer: "If you can't be mine alone, then I don't need you!"

She saw Shinji's eyes widening, as though he actually got what she was so plainly stating. His reply however, revealed that he really did not: "Then, be nice to me . . ." he said, gesturing at his love-giving entourage as though asking her to follow their example.

Amidst the rising of Asuka's blood pressure, the scene around them again began to change . . .


To be continued . . . ?