So I started writing this on FF.net a loooooooong while back. It started out as my own take on...
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Chapter 1 - Living Peacefully
TailoftheDevil
Youkai Enthusiast
- Location
- United Kingdom
So I started writing this on FF.net a loooooooong while back. It started out as my own take on the alternate universe we see at the end of the original Evangelion series, whilst being heavily influenced by The Shinji Ikari Raising Project manga. I felt like the characters of Eva could use something lighthearted and romcom, whilst trying to retain something of an Evangelion feel.
Synopsis:
Asuka and Shinji have been together as friends since childhood, and she'd always sort-of assumed they would be together forever. But the mysterious Rei Ayanami transfers into their school, and suddenly Asuka's peaceful adventure in love is ruined! Will she be able to make Shinji hers? Or will she lose to that red-eyed temptress?
Read on FanFiction
Chapter 1: Living Peacefully
Chapter 2: Gods of Creation
Chapter 3: In Holy Matrimony
Chapter 4: Shinji Has a Thing For Summoners!
Chapter 5: You Can (Not) Run Away
Chapter 6: Run!
Chapter 7: Do You Remember Love?
Chapter 8: Did You Forget About Fate?
Chapter 9: After School Shenanigans
Chapter 10: You Are Definitely (Not) Alone!
Chapter 11: Return to the Origin
Chapter 12: Shadows
Chapter 13 : Advent Children
Chapter 14: Breathless
Chapter 15: Inferno
Chapter 16: A Mother's Embrace
Chapter 17: The Least Expected Scenario
Omake:
Mere inches away from him, a girl was breathing heavily, a furious, bright red blush on her face. She had light brown hair that she normally kept tied in twintails, but having woken up not that long ago, it lay tousled as she leaned over the sleeping boy, wrestling with her emotions. Her soft blue eyes looked over his face as loose strands of her hair fell over his nose and cheek.
She was debating whether or not to wake him normally, as was her intention when she first walked into this room, or to wake him with a raunchy morning kiss. Compounding the problem was the fact that she had only recently realised, within the last week or so, that she was madly in love with this boy. The soul with the name Shinji Ikari had been her childhood friend since forever, but her feelings had been evolving, growing and growing to the point where she could no longer deny that the spell had been cast.
She leaned in closer, close enough that she could feel his gentle breathing tickling the tip of her nose. Her mind was pretty much made up. Edging closer and closer to the prize, she began to close her eyes as she readied herself. This was going to be her first kiss.
Nanometres away from Shinji's lips, she was seconds away from success when a grouchy voice echoed from the other room.
"Asuka! How long does it take to wake a teenage boy? You're both gonna be late for school!"
Their guardian, Misato Katsuragi, could be heard swigging a morning beer as she busied herself getting ready. Asuka could hear footsteps moving closer to the door, causing her to panic.
"Just give me a second Misato!" Sighing with regret, she began to shake her unrequited love's shoulder until groaning could be heard.
"Just another couple minutes, please..."
"No can do Baka. We gotta get breakfast going. Hell, even Misato's awake before you today." Standing up, she made for the door. One of Shinji's eyelids cracked open, catching a glimpse of Asuka wearing a simple yellow vest top and short shorts that left very little to the imagination. As she walked out of his room, he allowed himself a small grin. He had been awake the whole time since Asuka first entered the room, keeping it secret that he was already conscious. He was aware that Asuka had been doing strange things like this for a while, but he wasn't yet quite sure how to deal with it. The girl baffled his mind. Was she in heat? He was sure if he mentioned the idea, he'd meet the receiving end of some sharp object and be a lot worse off for it. Was she in love? With him?
Making a sound somewhere between a snort and a chuckle, Shinji got out of bed and began to pull on his regular school clothes. He was about as attractive as a mouse, and had the charisma of a fart, there was no way in hell she was attracted to him.
But the fact was, mere moments ago, the beautiful bombshell of a girl he had lived with for a considerably long time now had tried to kiss him. He had never been this confused in his entire life.
As he walked out of the room, he yawned again, already exhausted from having to think so hard this early in the morning.
"What do people want for breakfast?"
In response to his question directed to the household at large, Asuka ran out of the kitchen, now wearing her regular school uniform. Forcing a slice of toast into his mouth, she ran into her room whilst yelling at him.
"There's no time! We've overslept, we gotta get to school, ASAP!"
"Wait, what about breakfast?!" A horrified Misato sounded out her fears from her bedroom. If there was no time to make something for her, she would have to make herself something. An apocalyptic scenario if there ever was one.
"Don't you start your new job today? Aren't you late?" Asuka's muffled voice echoed from her bedroom. Several seconds of silence echoed throughout the house before...
"OH SHIT, I'M LATE!"
Shinji grinned as he wandered into his bedroom to grab his bag. First day back at school for the new semester and things were going fabulously. As he made his way to the door, the two female cohabitants barrelled out their respective bedrooms, Asuka grabbing his arm on the way out of the house, half-eaten toast hanging on for dear life as it bounced wildly from the corner of her mouth.
"Have a good day guys, watch the road, don't get hit by cars or anything." Misato yelled from her own vehicle's window as she pumped the ignition. Seconds later, she was racing down the road, speed limits be damned in their entirety.
"The only car we're going to have to worry about on the roads is that damned Alpine she drives." Asuka breathed as they both ran towards the station. After a lengthy ten minute jog to the station, they touched through the station gates with their cards and just barely made the train as the doors began to close.
"That... was... too close..." Asuka panted as she caught her breath. Shinji nodded in agreement, eyes fixed to the floor as his lungs stopped trying to kill him. He slowly stood up, catching his balance, when his first trial of the morning began by fire.
His beautiful roommate was sweating from all the running they'd just finished in the sweltering Japanese summer heat, causing her white shirt to look a little see-through in certain areas. And amongst that, it seems like they had been in far too much of a hurry for her to remember to wear a bra...
He felt his face ignite as a hot, red flush crawled up his face. There was a fair amount of people crowded onto this train, and one look at the wrong angle, and Asuka might begin to be considered an exhibitionist.
"Asuka..." He whispered frantically. "Come here!"
He received a look of confused anger for his trouble, but he didn't really care about her temper at the moment. Motioning with his hand, Asuka eventually came over to his side. He prayed to every god that would listen to protect him from the consequences of his forthcoming actions, and quickly wrapped his arms around the German girl. Her face lit up crimson as she began to try and push herself away, she wasn't anywhere near mentally prepared for Shinji's sudden forwardness.
"What the hell are you doing, idiot!?"
"You appear to have a slight wardrobe malfunction, and I'm protecting you from perverts."
"I count you as one too, asshole! The hell are you talking about, 'wardrobe malfunction'?" Asuka looked down at her dress, before quickly realizing Shinji had made the right, if unexpected move.
"You have got to be joking..."
"See?" Shinji grinned. "For my actions in the line of duty, I deserve immunity from concussion after this is all over."
"You'll be lucky not to get my foot up your ass as soon as we get off this damn train." Asuka mumbled as she held onto Shinji's shirt. "Don't you dare move until then. I hope to god Hikari's got a spare bra I can steal..."
"Will that even fit?"
"What in the hell are you trying to say Ikari!? Hikari and me are roughly the same size..."
"Fantastic, I now know roughly the bra size of our class president." Shinji grinned as he thought of informing Toji when he survived this particular hell.
"Why do you know my bra size!?" Asuka hissed, her face could boil water instantly. "Asshole! Pervert!" She began beating his chest angrily.
"Hey, who does all of the washing in our house?"
"Fair point, but that doesn't mean you have to memorise this stuff!"
"To be fair, I wash all of the clothes so often, I could recite Misato and your sizes from memory easily. Let me think, I'm sure you're something like a B-cup, and your..." A firm grasp on his ear made for an abrupt punctuation.
"Try telling the whole damn train Shinji, see what happens." The man standing behind Asuka shifted uncomfortably. The pain increased on Shinji's ear, and only stopped after a sharp yelp of pain escaped his lips.
"I'm sorry!" He half-meant it too. Back in the day, he had been too nervous to even talk to Asuka. Being able to tease her like his was something out of a dream, and he wanted to relish every second of it. Rolling her eyes, Asuka buried her head into his chest, partly to escape their confounding situation, but partly as a way to enjoy Shinji's scent under pretense.
"Stupid idiot..." She mumbled to herself.
What felt like an entirely too-short eternity to them both later, they arrived at their stop, after which they raced to their classroom, just making it in the nick of time. After a hasty conversation with the class president, Asuka and Hikari quickly dashed for the girls locker room, returning with a satisfied smile on both girls faces. Asuka's smile quickly turned to irritation after spotting Shinji's knowing grin and sat down on her chair, her mood in a strange place between sour and bashful after the events of the morning replayed in her head. Caught up in her bubbly daydream, she didn't even notice as their usual, old and frail homeroom teacher wandered in.
"Good morning class. I have an announcement. I may have mentioned to everyone last week how this class would be getting a new homeroom teacher soon, and I am pleased to announced she has arrived, albeit five minutes late for her first day." The class giggled in response, with Shinji agreeing with the crowd. Asuka, on the other hand, had a sudden sinking feeling that she couldn't quite explain.
"Without further ado, if you would please, Miss..."
"Katsuragi." A familiar voice echoed from the front of the class as an equally similar head of purple hair walked pridefully into their classroom. Their guardian, looking slightly tousled after what must have been plenty of near-death experiences with other vehicles, was standing at the front of the class, grinning directly at her two roommates.
"Good morning class, I'm sorry for the delay. As mentioned before, my name is Misato Katsuragi, and starting today, I'm going to be your new homeroom teacher! I hope we can all get along and have an awesome year together!" No sooner had she stopped talking then all the boys in the class erupted into cheers. The cheers stopped quickly however, when two indignantly loud voices cut through all of the noise and screamed as loud as they could.
"YOU COULD'VE GIVEN US A LIFT EARLIER!"
Synopsis:
Asuka and Shinji have been together as friends since childhood, and she'd always sort-of assumed they would be together forever. But the mysterious Rei Ayanami transfers into their school, and suddenly Asuka's peaceful adventure in love is ruined! Will she be able to make Shinji hers? Or will she lose to that red-eyed temptress?
Read on FanFiction
Chapter 1: Living Peacefully
Chapter 2: Gods of Creation
Chapter 3: In Holy Matrimony
Chapter 4: Shinji Has a Thing For Summoners!
Chapter 5: You Can (Not) Run Away
Chapter 6: Run!
Chapter 7: Do You Remember Love?
Chapter 8: Did You Forget About Fate?
Chapter 9: After School Shenanigans
Chapter 10: You Are Definitely (Not) Alone!
Chapter 11: Return to the Origin
Chapter 12: Shadows
Chapter 13 : Advent Children
Chapter 14: Breathless
Chapter 15: Inferno
Chapter 16: A Mother's Embrace
Chapter 17: The Least Expected Scenario
Omake:
========================================
Chapter 1: Living Peacefully
The gentle rays of the morning sun peeked through the small gap in the curtain, reflecting the slowly falling dust floating lazily to the floor. The light managed to reach the face of a teenage boy who was fast asleep. A peaceful expression was etched on his face as he continued to enjoy a pleasant dream.Chapter 1: Living Peacefully
Mere inches away from him, a girl was breathing heavily, a furious, bright red blush on her face. She had light brown hair that she normally kept tied in twintails, but having woken up not that long ago, it lay tousled as she leaned over the sleeping boy, wrestling with her emotions. Her soft blue eyes looked over his face as loose strands of her hair fell over his nose and cheek.
She was debating whether or not to wake him normally, as was her intention when she first walked into this room, or to wake him with a raunchy morning kiss. Compounding the problem was the fact that she had only recently realised, within the last week or so, that she was madly in love with this boy. The soul with the name Shinji Ikari had been her childhood friend since forever, but her feelings had been evolving, growing and growing to the point where she could no longer deny that the spell had been cast.
She leaned in closer, close enough that she could feel his gentle breathing tickling the tip of her nose. Her mind was pretty much made up. Edging closer and closer to the prize, she began to close her eyes as she readied herself. This was going to be her first kiss.
Nanometres away from Shinji's lips, she was seconds away from success when a grouchy voice echoed from the other room.
"Asuka! How long does it take to wake a teenage boy? You're both gonna be late for school!"
Their guardian, Misato Katsuragi, could be heard swigging a morning beer as she busied herself getting ready. Asuka could hear footsteps moving closer to the door, causing her to panic.
"Just give me a second Misato!" Sighing with regret, she began to shake her unrequited love's shoulder until groaning could be heard.
"Just another couple minutes, please..."
"No can do Baka. We gotta get breakfast going. Hell, even Misato's awake before you today." Standing up, she made for the door. One of Shinji's eyelids cracked open, catching a glimpse of Asuka wearing a simple yellow vest top and short shorts that left very little to the imagination. As she walked out of his room, he allowed himself a small grin. He had been awake the whole time since Asuka first entered the room, keeping it secret that he was already conscious. He was aware that Asuka had been doing strange things like this for a while, but he wasn't yet quite sure how to deal with it. The girl baffled his mind. Was she in heat? He was sure if he mentioned the idea, he'd meet the receiving end of some sharp object and be a lot worse off for it. Was she in love? With him?
Making a sound somewhere between a snort and a chuckle, Shinji got out of bed and began to pull on his regular school clothes. He was about as attractive as a mouse, and had the charisma of a fart, there was no way in hell she was attracted to him.
But the fact was, mere moments ago, the beautiful bombshell of a girl he had lived with for a considerably long time now had tried to kiss him. He had never been this confused in his entire life.
As he walked out of the room, he yawned again, already exhausted from having to think so hard this early in the morning.
"What do people want for breakfast?"
In response to his question directed to the household at large, Asuka ran out of the kitchen, now wearing her regular school uniform. Forcing a slice of toast into his mouth, she ran into her room whilst yelling at him.
"There's no time! We've overslept, we gotta get to school, ASAP!"
"Wait, what about breakfast?!" A horrified Misato sounded out her fears from her bedroom. If there was no time to make something for her, she would have to make herself something. An apocalyptic scenario if there ever was one.
"Don't you start your new job today? Aren't you late?" Asuka's muffled voice echoed from her bedroom. Several seconds of silence echoed throughout the house before...
"OH SHIT, I'M LATE!"
Shinji grinned as he wandered into his bedroom to grab his bag. First day back at school for the new semester and things were going fabulously. As he made his way to the door, the two female cohabitants barrelled out their respective bedrooms, Asuka grabbing his arm on the way out of the house, half-eaten toast hanging on for dear life as it bounced wildly from the corner of her mouth.
"Have a good day guys, watch the road, don't get hit by cars or anything." Misato yelled from her own vehicle's window as she pumped the ignition. Seconds later, she was racing down the road, speed limits be damned in their entirety.
"The only car we're going to have to worry about on the roads is that damned Alpine she drives." Asuka breathed as they both ran towards the station. After a lengthy ten minute jog to the station, they touched through the station gates with their cards and just barely made the train as the doors began to close.
"That... was... too close..." Asuka panted as she caught her breath. Shinji nodded in agreement, eyes fixed to the floor as his lungs stopped trying to kill him. He slowly stood up, catching his balance, when his first trial of the morning began by fire.
His beautiful roommate was sweating from all the running they'd just finished in the sweltering Japanese summer heat, causing her white shirt to look a little see-through in certain areas. And amongst that, it seems like they had been in far too much of a hurry for her to remember to wear a bra...
He felt his face ignite as a hot, red flush crawled up his face. There was a fair amount of people crowded onto this train, and one look at the wrong angle, and Asuka might begin to be considered an exhibitionist.
"Asuka..." He whispered frantically. "Come here!"
He received a look of confused anger for his trouble, but he didn't really care about her temper at the moment. Motioning with his hand, Asuka eventually came over to his side. He prayed to every god that would listen to protect him from the consequences of his forthcoming actions, and quickly wrapped his arms around the German girl. Her face lit up crimson as she began to try and push herself away, she wasn't anywhere near mentally prepared for Shinji's sudden forwardness.
"What the hell are you doing, idiot!?"
"You appear to have a slight wardrobe malfunction, and I'm protecting you from perverts."
"I count you as one too, asshole! The hell are you talking about, 'wardrobe malfunction'?" Asuka looked down at her dress, before quickly realizing Shinji had made the right, if unexpected move.
"You have got to be joking..."
"See?" Shinji grinned. "For my actions in the line of duty, I deserve immunity from concussion after this is all over."
"You'll be lucky not to get my foot up your ass as soon as we get off this damn train." Asuka mumbled as she held onto Shinji's shirt. "Don't you dare move until then. I hope to god Hikari's got a spare bra I can steal..."
"Will that even fit?"
"What in the hell are you trying to say Ikari!? Hikari and me are roughly the same size..."
"Fantastic, I now know roughly the bra size of our class president." Shinji grinned as he thought of informing Toji when he survived this particular hell.
"Why do you know my bra size!?" Asuka hissed, her face could boil water instantly. "Asshole! Pervert!" She began beating his chest angrily.
"Hey, who does all of the washing in our house?"
"Fair point, but that doesn't mean you have to memorise this stuff!"
"To be fair, I wash all of the clothes so often, I could recite Misato and your sizes from memory easily. Let me think, I'm sure you're something like a B-cup, and your..." A firm grasp on his ear made for an abrupt punctuation.
"Try telling the whole damn train Shinji, see what happens." The man standing behind Asuka shifted uncomfortably. The pain increased on Shinji's ear, and only stopped after a sharp yelp of pain escaped his lips.
"I'm sorry!" He half-meant it too. Back in the day, he had been too nervous to even talk to Asuka. Being able to tease her like his was something out of a dream, and he wanted to relish every second of it. Rolling her eyes, Asuka buried her head into his chest, partly to escape their confounding situation, but partly as a way to enjoy Shinji's scent under pretense.
"Stupid idiot..." She mumbled to herself.
What felt like an entirely too-short eternity to them both later, they arrived at their stop, after which they raced to their classroom, just making it in the nick of time. After a hasty conversation with the class president, Asuka and Hikari quickly dashed for the girls locker room, returning with a satisfied smile on both girls faces. Asuka's smile quickly turned to irritation after spotting Shinji's knowing grin and sat down on her chair, her mood in a strange place between sour and bashful after the events of the morning replayed in her head. Caught up in her bubbly daydream, she didn't even notice as their usual, old and frail homeroom teacher wandered in.
"Good morning class. I have an announcement. I may have mentioned to everyone last week how this class would be getting a new homeroom teacher soon, and I am pleased to announced she has arrived, albeit five minutes late for her first day." The class giggled in response, with Shinji agreeing with the crowd. Asuka, on the other hand, had a sudden sinking feeling that she couldn't quite explain.
"Without further ado, if you would please, Miss..."
"Katsuragi." A familiar voice echoed from the front of the class as an equally similar head of purple hair walked pridefully into their classroom. Their guardian, looking slightly tousled after what must have been plenty of near-death experiences with other vehicles, was standing at the front of the class, grinning directly at her two roommates.
"Good morning class, I'm sorry for the delay. As mentioned before, my name is Misato Katsuragi, and starting today, I'm going to be your new homeroom teacher! I hope we can all get along and have an awesome year together!" No sooner had she stopped talking then all the boys in the class erupted into cheers. The cheers stopped quickly however, when two indignantly loud voices cut through all of the noise and screamed as loud as they could.
"YOU COULD'VE GIVEN US A LIFT EARLIER!"
Last edited:
Chapter 2 - Gods of Creation
TailoftheDevil
Youkai Enthusiast
- Location
- United Kingdom
"Honey, I'm serious!"
"Gendo, I think you're finally starting to crack..."
"Yui, I'm not losing it. I have a daughter, her name is Hitagi Senjougahara!"
"No dear, you have a son. His name is Shinji Ikari. Unless you've been hiding something from me for all these years. But thankfully I have the past experience to know that you're dreams go out of control at the touch of a hat."
"...and she has a boyfriend called Koyomi Araragi, who saved her from her disease of weightlessness caught from the crabs."
"For the love of god..."
The two scientists sat over the diagram readouts, mumbling to each other over cups of strong coffee. Both looked completely exhausted, and Gendo's eyes danced around the room, his lack of sleep for over seventy-two hours beginning to spark insanity in his mind, whilst his wife looked on disgruntled. She was used to her husband being a little crazy sometimes, but the lack of sleep to her was testing her patience. Plus, the potential miracle of an experiment they were waiting to test was driving her mad. Having to wait to see the unbelievable that you knew was coming was testing her normally gentle and patient personality.
"...and she had beautiful, long purple hair."
"Gendo! We've got only a few hours before we have to let the kids know the experiments that will change their lives forever. And we sure as hell can't trust Kyoko to do it! Get your head out of your ass and focus!"
"...she was a bit of a bitch though. All tsundere, killed all the cute." With her blood vessels reaching a critical breaking point, Yui Ikari cracked her husband around the head with a heavy folder.
"You're going to be the death of me one of these days..." Yui mumbled as she massaged her aching head.
With the shock of their new homeroom teacher finally beginning to recede, Asuka hung her head behind her chair, staring at the ceiling. She didn't think she could handle more surprises today. She wanted Shinji's delicious home-cooked bento in her stomach, but lunch was still hours away. Stomach grumbling, she turned to face Shinji, who happened to sit next to her, flashing him a look of practiced annoyance. His response was a confused expression and a shrug, which wasn't the kind of attention she had been looking for.
Tearing out a scrap of paper from her notepad, she quickly began writing a message.
"I'm bored!"
Having received it, Shinji quickly read the note and glanced at her, flashing a smile that agreed with her.
"Me too. I'm not paying attention at all. You got any ideas to kill the time?" Asuka thought about the response for a little while, until a small grin crept into her expression.
"Let's play a game!"
"What kind of game?"
"20 questions, gone wild!" Shinji's eyes widened to impossible sizes as he read the response. It was all she could do to not laugh out loud. After she'd received the affirmative from Shinji, she began their little game.
"Out of all the girls in the class, who's the cutest?"
"That's not a fair question..."
"Answer the damn question, stupid Shinji!"
"A certain fiery fräulein I know..." He had the audacity to look sheepish, but his comment made her happy. At least he had noticed she was an attractive organism of the female species. Pencil in his mouth, Shinji finally came up with a question that surprised her.
"Is there anyone that you like?"
Her heartbeat flared as she struggled to find an immediate answer. She wasn't mentally ready to tell him that she liked him, but one wrong move and she could hint to Shinji that it wasn't him she liked, dashing her hopes of a future relationship entirely.
"If you mean like as in people I can bear with most on a daily basis, I'd have to choose you I guess." After sneaking him the note, she hid her face away from him, afraid she'd let slip her innermost thoughts. She heard a surprised gasp of air coming from his direction, before hearing the pencil scratching on the paper again.
"You write incredibly frustrating answers, I have no idea what that means in the female language."
She came close to whacking him across the head with her textbook, but settled with glaring at him as though looks could cause people to spontaneously combust.
"Read too much into it and I'll have you for lunch instead of the damn bento!"
As soon as she handed it over, she regretted writing the response. She meant it as something angry, but replaying the words in her head and it began to sound... flirty? Her fears were confirmed when Shinji covered his mouth, trying not to laugh. Whimpering in exasperation, she buried her head in her arms on her desk. The rest of the day passed by in a slow, painful, agonizing fashion.
"This is so disappointing."
"Gendo, focus!"
"But, but...!" Gendo Ikari was looking at his son, a mixture of disappointment and fear written over his face. "That's not my precious Hitagi!"
"...what?" Shinji mumbled, incredibly confused at his incomprehensible father's words.
"Hitagi! My daughter!"
*WHACK*
The elder Ikari male crumpled to the ground, with Yui Ikari standing over him, a look of pure rage covering her face.
"That's enough! Sleep there for a few minutes, I can do the introduction by myself at least." Both Asuka and Shinji looked suitably horrified. Shinji's mother rarely ever displayed anger, so whenever her rage did display itself, it was terrifying.
"We've brought you here today to explain to you the nature of our experiments. Neither of us have slept for over three days, so your father is going insane and I'm getting a little... irritated." Yui walked over to a nearby laptop connected to the ceiling-mounted projector, flicking everything on. The room dimmed as one of the walls parallel to the two teenagers lit-up with an image. From what they could tell, they were looking at a simple, white-walled room with nothing inside. There didn't seem to be anything interesting about the room, and Shinji looked at his mother fearfully.
"...maybe you've both been in here a little too long, mother."
A fierce look of boiling anger was his response, causing Shinji to whimper like a rabbit, cowering behind Asuka. The German girl had given him enough scary looks that he thought he was ready for anything, but even Asuka herself was shaking in fear.
"Admittedly, it doesn't look like much, but that room is the single, most advanced example of virtual reality engineering in the world. What you're looking at is the room in its default state. I need the both of you to go into that room, and... test its capabilities." After a flick of a switch, a small door materialized underneath the projected image.
"Go." At her encouragement, Asuka and Shinji walked towards the door and pushed it open. The exact same room as they had seen on the projection greeted them.
"Stand in the middle." Yui's voice could now be heard over a communications system, the metallic voice reverberating around the room. As they were told, they stood in the middle of the room, looking at each other with confused faces.
As she was typing furiously into the computer, Gendo began to awaken, getting to his feet as held his aching head. Yui noticed the sound of her husband returning to consciousness and swiftly pointed to the projection of the room, now with the two teenagers inside.
"It's your cue."
Gendo nodded as he looked towards the projection. Inside the now sealed room, his face appeared before the two children as a small, floating window.
"You are both now inside a virtual reality. However, your bodies are still physical, meaning you will be able to touch anything around you as though it existed in real life."
"We can... touch virtual objects? That's breaking a few laws of physics, isn't it?" Asuka said in disbelief towards the floating image of Shinji's father. The face smiled mischievously back at her.
"Would you like an example? Shinji, imagine a small animal, like a cat on the floor in front of you."
With an exasperated expression directed towards Asuka, Shinji began to look at the floor, imagining a jet-black cat. Within seconds, a physical cat appeared before them, looking up at them, slightly confused as to why it was there.
"You have got to be joking...!" Asuka slowly breathed as she watched the cat walk towards her, and physically rub its head on her leg.
"How...!? I can feel it!"
"It's a confirmed success!" An incredibly overexcited sounding Yui Ikari shrieked from the communications channel. "Stability at eighty-seven percent, no problems with the children's physical composition. Phase two, go!" She yelled the final words at Gendo, who clapped his hands with excitement.
"Next, Asuka, we need you to imagine an environment. Anything will do, but try not to overcomplicate it. Somewhere you would be familiar with would be ideal."
Her look of shock widened as Asuka looked back at Shinji, the black cat now in her arms as it purred contentedly. She closed her eyes, and a few seconds later, the classroom that they had been studying in only hours beforehand materialized around them. The detail was immaculate, and apart from the lack of other students, everything was a perfect replication of the room at their school.
"Phase Two, success! Anomalies holding steady at five percent, possibly due to hosts imagination processes. Phase three!" Yui was pounding the keyboard so fast, she was beginning to worry about her fingers breaking from the pressure.
"This time, Shinji, we need you to imagine a location from a long time ago, something you won't remember perfectly." His father directed him, and Shinji nodded, beginning to concentrate on a forest that his family had once taken him to when he was six-years old.
Slowly this time, the forest in his mind began to appear around him. But in certain areas, there were static patches.
"Success! Anomalies at sixty percent, host's health remains stable!"
"I remember this forest." His father looked around the room through his window. Yui turned to him and pointed at the entrance to the room.
"Phase four, get in there!" Gendo nodded and hurried to the door, entering and standing next to the two utterly confused children. Closing his eyes, he focused on the same memory that Shinji had summoned.
The static patches around them from Shinji's memories began to fuzz and stabilize into the remaining sections of forest that had been missing before. Before long, the complete forest surrounding the three open-mouthed people.
"Memory Merge, success!" Yui was beside herself as she came close to a mental breakdown from excitement. "Phase four is a success!"
Gendo nodded, grinning from ear-to-ear, before turning around and looking at the electrified Shinji and Asuka. Pointing towards the cat, his grin seemed to grow even wider.
"Take it outside of the room."
For everything that had happened so far, the next thing that would await them had seemed to shock them a hundred times more. But when Asuka nervously opened the door to the unbelievable room, and stepped outside holding the imagined cat, which didn't disappear as she exited and shut the door behind her, the realization of the experiments that had happened today would change everything as they knew it suddenly began to dawn on them.
They had created life, from the imagination of a teenage boy, that persisted and survived from outside its virtual incubator. The cat meowed happily at Asuka, who's eyes were as wide as dinner plates.
As of right now, Asuka Langley Soryu and the Ikari family were essentially gods of creation.
They were gods.
"Gendo, I think you're finally starting to crack..."
"Yui, I'm not losing it. I have a daughter, her name is Hitagi Senjougahara!"
"No dear, you have a son. His name is Shinji Ikari. Unless you've been hiding something from me for all these years. But thankfully I have the past experience to know that you're dreams go out of control at the touch of a hat."
"...and she has a boyfriend called Koyomi Araragi, who saved her from her disease of weightlessness caught from the crabs."
"For the love of god..."
The two scientists sat over the diagram readouts, mumbling to each other over cups of strong coffee. Both looked completely exhausted, and Gendo's eyes danced around the room, his lack of sleep for over seventy-two hours beginning to spark insanity in his mind, whilst his wife looked on disgruntled. She was used to her husband being a little crazy sometimes, but the lack of sleep to her was testing her patience. Plus, the potential miracle of an experiment they were waiting to test was driving her mad. Having to wait to see the unbelievable that you knew was coming was testing her normally gentle and patient personality.
"...and she had beautiful, long purple hair."
"Gendo! We've got only a few hours before we have to let the kids know the experiments that will change their lives forever. And we sure as hell can't trust Kyoko to do it! Get your head out of your ass and focus!"
"...she was a bit of a bitch though. All tsundere, killed all the cute." With her blood vessels reaching a critical breaking point, Yui Ikari cracked her husband around the head with a heavy folder.
"You're going to be the death of me one of these days..." Yui mumbled as she massaged her aching head.
With the shock of their new homeroom teacher finally beginning to recede, Asuka hung her head behind her chair, staring at the ceiling. She didn't think she could handle more surprises today. She wanted Shinji's delicious home-cooked bento in her stomach, but lunch was still hours away. Stomach grumbling, she turned to face Shinji, who happened to sit next to her, flashing him a look of practiced annoyance. His response was a confused expression and a shrug, which wasn't the kind of attention she had been looking for.
Tearing out a scrap of paper from her notepad, she quickly began writing a message.
"I'm bored!"
Having received it, Shinji quickly read the note and glanced at her, flashing a smile that agreed with her.
"Me too. I'm not paying attention at all. You got any ideas to kill the time?" Asuka thought about the response for a little while, until a small grin crept into her expression.
"Let's play a game!"
"What kind of game?"
"20 questions, gone wild!" Shinji's eyes widened to impossible sizes as he read the response. It was all she could do to not laugh out loud. After she'd received the affirmative from Shinji, she began their little game.
"Out of all the girls in the class, who's the cutest?"
"That's not a fair question..."
"Answer the damn question, stupid Shinji!"
"A certain fiery fräulein I know..." He had the audacity to look sheepish, but his comment made her happy. At least he had noticed she was an attractive organism of the female species. Pencil in his mouth, Shinji finally came up with a question that surprised her.
"Is there anyone that you like?"
Her heartbeat flared as she struggled to find an immediate answer. She wasn't mentally ready to tell him that she liked him, but one wrong move and she could hint to Shinji that it wasn't him she liked, dashing her hopes of a future relationship entirely.
"If you mean like as in people I can bear with most on a daily basis, I'd have to choose you I guess." After sneaking him the note, she hid her face away from him, afraid she'd let slip her innermost thoughts. She heard a surprised gasp of air coming from his direction, before hearing the pencil scratching on the paper again.
"You write incredibly frustrating answers, I have no idea what that means in the female language."
She came close to whacking him across the head with her textbook, but settled with glaring at him as though looks could cause people to spontaneously combust.
"Read too much into it and I'll have you for lunch instead of the damn bento!"
As soon as she handed it over, she regretted writing the response. She meant it as something angry, but replaying the words in her head and it began to sound... flirty? Her fears were confirmed when Shinji covered his mouth, trying not to laugh. Whimpering in exasperation, she buried her head in her arms on her desk. The rest of the day passed by in a slow, painful, agonizing fashion.
"This is so disappointing."
"Gendo, focus!"
"But, but...!" Gendo Ikari was looking at his son, a mixture of disappointment and fear written over his face. "That's not my precious Hitagi!"
"...what?" Shinji mumbled, incredibly confused at his incomprehensible father's words.
"Hitagi! My daughter!"
*WHACK*
The elder Ikari male crumpled to the ground, with Yui Ikari standing over him, a look of pure rage covering her face.
"That's enough! Sleep there for a few minutes, I can do the introduction by myself at least." Both Asuka and Shinji looked suitably horrified. Shinji's mother rarely ever displayed anger, so whenever her rage did display itself, it was terrifying.
"We've brought you here today to explain to you the nature of our experiments. Neither of us have slept for over three days, so your father is going insane and I'm getting a little... irritated." Yui walked over to a nearby laptop connected to the ceiling-mounted projector, flicking everything on. The room dimmed as one of the walls parallel to the two teenagers lit-up with an image. From what they could tell, they were looking at a simple, white-walled room with nothing inside. There didn't seem to be anything interesting about the room, and Shinji looked at his mother fearfully.
"...maybe you've both been in here a little too long, mother."
A fierce look of boiling anger was his response, causing Shinji to whimper like a rabbit, cowering behind Asuka. The German girl had given him enough scary looks that he thought he was ready for anything, but even Asuka herself was shaking in fear.
"Admittedly, it doesn't look like much, but that room is the single, most advanced example of virtual reality engineering in the world. What you're looking at is the room in its default state. I need the both of you to go into that room, and... test its capabilities." After a flick of a switch, a small door materialized underneath the projected image.
"Go." At her encouragement, Asuka and Shinji walked towards the door and pushed it open. The exact same room as they had seen on the projection greeted them.
"Stand in the middle." Yui's voice could now be heard over a communications system, the metallic voice reverberating around the room. As they were told, they stood in the middle of the room, looking at each other with confused faces.
As she was typing furiously into the computer, Gendo began to awaken, getting to his feet as held his aching head. Yui noticed the sound of her husband returning to consciousness and swiftly pointed to the projection of the room, now with the two teenagers inside.
"It's your cue."
Gendo nodded as he looked towards the projection. Inside the now sealed room, his face appeared before the two children as a small, floating window.
"You are both now inside a virtual reality. However, your bodies are still physical, meaning you will be able to touch anything around you as though it existed in real life."
"We can... touch virtual objects? That's breaking a few laws of physics, isn't it?" Asuka said in disbelief towards the floating image of Shinji's father. The face smiled mischievously back at her.
"Would you like an example? Shinji, imagine a small animal, like a cat on the floor in front of you."
With an exasperated expression directed towards Asuka, Shinji began to look at the floor, imagining a jet-black cat. Within seconds, a physical cat appeared before them, looking up at them, slightly confused as to why it was there.
"You have got to be joking...!" Asuka slowly breathed as she watched the cat walk towards her, and physically rub its head on her leg.
"How...!? I can feel it!"
"It's a confirmed success!" An incredibly overexcited sounding Yui Ikari shrieked from the communications channel. "Stability at eighty-seven percent, no problems with the children's physical composition. Phase two, go!" She yelled the final words at Gendo, who clapped his hands with excitement.
"Next, Asuka, we need you to imagine an environment. Anything will do, but try not to overcomplicate it. Somewhere you would be familiar with would be ideal."
Her look of shock widened as Asuka looked back at Shinji, the black cat now in her arms as it purred contentedly. She closed her eyes, and a few seconds later, the classroom that they had been studying in only hours beforehand materialized around them. The detail was immaculate, and apart from the lack of other students, everything was a perfect replication of the room at their school.
"Phase Two, success! Anomalies holding steady at five percent, possibly due to hosts imagination processes. Phase three!" Yui was pounding the keyboard so fast, she was beginning to worry about her fingers breaking from the pressure.
"This time, Shinji, we need you to imagine a location from a long time ago, something you won't remember perfectly." His father directed him, and Shinji nodded, beginning to concentrate on a forest that his family had once taken him to when he was six-years old.
Slowly this time, the forest in his mind began to appear around him. But in certain areas, there were static patches.
"Success! Anomalies at sixty percent, host's health remains stable!"
"I remember this forest." His father looked around the room through his window. Yui turned to him and pointed at the entrance to the room.
"Phase four, get in there!" Gendo nodded and hurried to the door, entering and standing next to the two utterly confused children. Closing his eyes, he focused on the same memory that Shinji had summoned.
The static patches around them from Shinji's memories began to fuzz and stabilize into the remaining sections of forest that had been missing before. Before long, the complete forest surrounding the three open-mouthed people.
"Memory Merge, success!" Yui was beside herself as she came close to a mental breakdown from excitement. "Phase four is a success!"
Gendo nodded, grinning from ear-to-ear, before turning around and looking at the electrified Shinji and Asuka. Pointing towards the cat, his grin seemed to grow even wider.
"Take it outside of the room."
For everything that had happened so far, the next thing that would await them had seemed to shock them a hundred times more. But when Asuka nervously opened the door to the unbelievable room, and stepped outside holding the imagined cat, which didn't disappear as she exited and shut the door behind her, the realization of the experiments that had happened today would change everything as they knew it suddenly began to dawn on them.
They had created life, from the imagination of a teenage boy, that persisted and survived from outside its virtual incubator. The cat meowed happily at Asuka, who's eyes were as wide as dinner plates.
As of right now, Asuka Langley Soryu and the Ikari family were essentially gods of creation.
They were gods.
TailoftheDevil
Youkai Enthusiast
- Location
- United Kingdom
- Location
- Canada
*chokes*
Is hard to imagine any kind of Rei who that description fits. XD
TailoftheDevil
Youkai Enthusiast
- Location
- United Kingdom
The closest I could reasonably imagine is that one Rei clone who stumbled upon Gendo Ikari's erotic manga collection and decided to experiment with poor Shinji xD
Chapter 3 - In Holy Matrimony
TailoftheDevil
Youkai Enthusiast
- Location
- United Kingdom
Asuka was bouncing her leg up and down under her desk as she leaned her face on her hand, trying to look bored. Together with Shinji, they had gone to school the next day after they had become literal gods. So trying to keep a disinterested look was proving to be difficult, as she thought of the million different ways this power could be used.
As a precaution, Shinji's parents had told them under no circumstances were they to tell anyone else about this ability. They had been clever enough to understand that nations from across the world would easily abuse this power, so keeping their mouth shut was of the utmost priority.
She glanced quickly at the bracelet on her left wrist. It's design looked almost futuristic, a deep crimson color with splashes of red decorated its design. Shinji wore an identical bracelet, although his was a mix of white and blue, complimented with the odd splash of black. These bracelets were designed to give them immediate access to their powers, without having to go back to the room. She wasn't quite sure how it worked, but it was apparently linked to the room in some way, enabling them to summon objects, or change their environment around them at will. And the most frustrating thing about the bracelets was that neither Gendo nor Yui had said a damn thing about how to activate them.
As Asuka cursed the two mad scientists, the door to the class slid open, revealing Misato looking cheerful.
"Good morning, my fellow nutcases. I have some good news for most of you and some bad news for two of you in particular."
"This'll be what she was so excited about this morning." Asuka thought as she recalled their guardian giggling like a drunk schoolgirl whilst they had all been eating breakfast together this morning. It had been in equal parts curious and terrifying. Try as they might, neither she nor Shinji could extract any useful information out of her.
"I have the pleasure of introducing a new transfer student to everyone today. Please treat her kindly everyone! Miss Ayanami, you may enter."
At her words, a young girl with eye-catching light-blue hair walked into the classroom. As she turned to face the class, Asuka noticed her eyes were a bright, slightly-unnerving crimson. But more importantly, she noticed that the transfer student bore a startling resemblance to Shinji's mother. And on top of that, she was incredibly cute.
"I swear to god, if I catch Shinji staring at her, I'm going to..." Asuka muttered as she turned around to look at Shinji. She wasn't expecting his expression to be laced with shock and horror in equal measure. As she wondered what had him so scared, the transfer student began to speak.
"My name is Rei Ayanami, its a pleasure to meet you." She did a small bow, and as she looked up again, Asuka noticed her flash a smile in Shinji's direction. Whipping her head back, she saw that Shinji's expression had grown a hundred times more petrified looking.
"And be careful boys, she's technically already spoken for!" Misato piped up from her chair near the window. All of the boys looked at her, both horrified and confused at the same time. Winking at Rei, she nodded towards her.
"It's time to reveal the biggest news of all." It sounded like Misato was having a hard time containing her excitement. Rei nodded, suddenly looking bashful and shy, began to walk towards the centre of the class, specifically to Shinji's chair. After having reached her destination, she smiled at him.
"It is good to see you after all this time, Shinji. Here, this is for you." She placed a small box in front of him, a very familiar-looking box.
"What on god's green earth is in that box Shinji." Asuka whispered, dreading the answer she knew was most likely coming. Shinji stared at the box, paralyzed in fear. This couldn't be happening. He had thought this whole thing had been forgotten about years ago.
He picked up the box with trembling hands. The whole class waited on baited breath, the atmosphere was electric, to an almost lethal degree. He gently prised open the box, confirming his worst fears. Sitting snugly inside the box were two, sparkling engagement rings.
The whole class erupted into pandemonium.
"...what?" Asuka looked mental, with one eye stretched far wider than it should have been able to, a demonic grin danced across her face. "WHAT? WHAAAT!?"
"SHINJI, YOU BASTARD!" Toji Suzuhara, his supposed best friend and pillar of support during most of their hard times together, looked about ready to punch him square in the face.
"THE HELL IS ALL THIS ABOUT!? You've already chummy with the hottest girl in the school, where the fuck are engagement rings coming from!? With this new chick!?"
"Suzuhara, language!"
"Shove it Class Prez! This is a national emergency!" His retort ignited a blazing fire under the temper of their class president, Hikari Horaki. Her face matched Asuka's current expression in terms of pure terror, immediately rushing to Toji and grasping his ear with the strength of an enraged lion.
"Would you like to repeat that, Suzuhara?"
Meanwhile, Shinji had about five seconds to live, as his situation changed for the worse when Rei suddenly put his arms around him. A pure explosion of rage erupted from Asuka, as her table went flying across the room.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO HIM!?" She was barely stopping herself from launching at the blue-haired girl, who looked back at her, confused by Asuka's rage.
"I'm simply hugging him. It's been at least six years since I last saw my childhood friend, and it's time for our promise to be fulfilled."
"What. Fucking. Promise?" Asuka aimed the icy question at both Shinji and Rei. "I'm pretty sure I've just crapped myself..." Shinji moaned as the two girls continued to glare at each other.
"IKARI, SORYU, LANGUAGE!" Hikari roared from behind him, still wrestling with Toji.
"His father promised my father that we would be engaged to marry when we both came to the right age. It has been a long time coming, but I have been waiting for this day to finally reunite with Shinji, for a long time." Rei glanced down at the terrified boy, a small blush creeping onto her face.
"But... why...?" Asuka's rage could be heard between every whispered syllable. "Why him?"
A moment's silence passed, as Rei thought about her response. She looked up, a firm determination present in her eyes.
"Without Shinji Ikari, I would not be alive today."
The silence returned, echoing around the classroom. Rei stood up, letting Shinji go.
"I was saved from a debilitating illness, not by medicine, nor by the magic of modern day science, but through the kindness that Shinji brought to me, everyday I sat in a lonely medical ward."
"For most of my life, I had been alone. I hadn't had any real friends, nor was my father around often, due to his job. My mother passed away at a young age, and I was too shy to make any friends of my own. Then, due to unfortunate circumstances, I found myself waking up in a medical ward at NERV, where my father worked. I was told that it would take a miracle to save me from my illness."
"It was then I first met Shinji. His parents both worked at NERV, and his father, who is my father's cousin, had brought him to work one day, to show him some of the experiments that were going on. By mistake, Shinji got lost and ended up in my room. And instead of leaving, he stayed with me and chatted with me. We stayed there for hours until his parents eventually discovered him."
"I begged him to stay, and through various circumstances, Shinji was allowed to visit me. Almost everyday he would come to my room, sometimes bringing games to play. And eventually, over time, my illness began to dissipate. Because of those happy days I spent with Shinji, he gave to me a miracle. The only thing I can give to him in return is my love, and everlasting matrimony."
The rest of the day passed agonizingly slowly, with Rei and Asuka butting heads with each other at every opportunity. The majority of their teachers were terrified of the spectacle, not to mention Shinji felt a constant fear of dying from a terror-induced heart attack.
The last bell ringing was heavenly music to his ears. He just wanted to go home, eat and sleep the nightmare of the day away. Catching sight of Misato walking towards him, a slightly apologetic expression on her face, he realized that his troubles were far from over.
"Shinji... How's it going?" She tried to sound as lighthearted as possible, but even she knew how tough today had been on him.
"I want to find my father and strangle him." He said, exasperated. "He told me he had 'smoothed things over' with this promise."
"Do you not like Rei?" Misato looked at him quizzically. He shook his head.
"It's not that. It just came out of nowhere, that's all. All these years, I wasn't too worried about it, because I thought Rei saw me as a friend, and nothing else. But then she transfer into my class, declares her love and dedication and I feel like somebody's thrown a metaphorical brick in my face. It's all too sudden, I don't know what's going on..."
Misato nodded sympathetically, ruffling his hair. "I understand kiddo. Love's never an easy battle to fight, especially when you've got a pretty thing like Asuka hanging around day and night. But things will get better."
Her smile quickly turned into a look of panic as she realized something.
"Actually, wait, scratch that, things are going to get a whole lot worse!" Looking up at her, his own face now in a panic, he trembled at the thought of more bad news involving the girls.
"I totally forgot to mention that Rei's moving in with us!"
After that, he was instructed to explain the news to Asuka. Misato offered him a stab/bulletproof vest she had for 'reasons'. Politely refusing, he made his way to where she thought she might be. Discovering her in their homeroom classroom, sitting on his desk, swinging her legs as she looked outside, she turned to face him as he walked in. Noticing his grim expression, her own face dropped into a dark scowl.
"Oh god... what now?"
After he quickly explained, he could have sworn the classroom had literally exploded with her fury.
They had entered the park that was on the way home. Asuka stomped ahead of him, fuming. She was that angry that he could literally feel the burning aura radiating from her. He hadn't felt this scared of her since when they were kids, back when he had been much more shy.
"Asuka..." He gently tried to talk to her, but his response was a dangerous sounding growl. His shoulders slumped as he mumbled towards her back.
"I'm sorry..."
Time froze. Along with Asuka's footsteps, and the world around them seemed to quieten. It sounded like a normal thing to say, but Asuka's response was a small sob. It was the most heartbreaking sound he could have heard from her. The invincible Asuka, the girl who never backed down. The girl that every single male at their school was attracted to, yet equally terrified of, was quietly sobbing in front of him.
"Wha- Asuka!?" He rushed up to her side, and caught a glimpse of her face. Crystal tears swept down her face as she stood there, trying to no avail to rub her eyes, attempting to stem the flow.
"Shinji... stop, don't... don't look at me..."
"Why are you crying Asuka? I'm sorry! If its something I said, I'm sorry!" He hadn't apologized to her like this since they were kids. Back then, she had yelled at him for apologizing all the time, threatening to punch him in the face if he kept on at it. He tried to curb his use of apologies since then, but he couldn't help it. Not when his best friend in the world, the girl who had stood by him through all hell, was crying his eyes out in front of him.
"Asuka..."
"She's... she's going to take you away from me!" She was talking about what had happened with Rei. "I've known you since god knows when, yet she swoops in out of nowhere, flashes her rings as though she's showing the world your shackles and... and... GRRAAHHH!" Screams echoed around the park as Asuka yelled towards the heavens, as though she was cursing the gods themselves.
"No!" After breathing heavily for a few moments, she clenched her fists and whirled to face Shinji head-on. Her eyelashes sparkled with moisture as she glared at him. Her gaze was so fierce, he took a step back, cowering slightly.
"I'm... sorry" His voice trembled. Realizing that she was probably frightening him, she rolled her eyes and walked over to him.
"I'm not letting her do as she pleases." Asuka looked away, embarrassed as she mumbled. "But with this, I hope you finally understand how I feel. I was hoping for a more romantic confession, but these things are never easy when you're involved."
It was his turn to feel embarrassed. Looking at his shoes, he suddenly felt an unexplained sense of guilt.
"I'm sorry..."
"Argh..." Asuka rolled her eyes again. "If you apologize to me one more time, I'm going to kiss you. And for every time you do it afterwards, I'm going to kiss you again. I don't care if we're in public, at school, or whatever, but I am sick of you saying sorry every five minutes. If this is the only way to shut up your incessant apologies, save using a ball gag, dammit I'll do it!" Asuka's beautiful, cerulean eyes dared him to argue. He was swept away by his pounding heart, and before his brain had any sort of chance to recover, his mouth began moving on its own.
"I'm... sorry?" Meant more as a question to her confounding statement than anything else, he clapped his hand over his mouth. But the damage had already been done.
Asuka's eyes widened in shock. But it was quickly replaced by a mischievous grin.
"That... was on purpose, wasn't it?"
All he could do was open and close his mouth, gaping like a fish. He felt like his doom was imminent. To whatever gods would listen to his prayer, he wished that he would survive to at least be able to eat some katsu curry, one last time.
Asuka began to close in slowly, standing on her tiptoes, her grin getting wider and wider as the tip of her nose brushed against the tip of his own. Her arms wrapped around his neck as her face flared with a crimson blush. A fiery determination exploded in her eyes, in which Shinji was now throughly lost in. "Just this once... I'll let it slide." She whispered, her eyes never once leaving his own. One of her hands began to ruffle with his hair as she continued to whisper.
"Ich liebe dich... dumm Shinji." And with that, her gentle lips pressed against his own, knocking out all of his senses, save for the touch of her lips and the sense of utter euphoria as they stood in the streetlit park, embracing each other to the sound of the chirping cicadas.
As a precaution, Shinji's parents had told them under no circumstances were they to tell anyone else about this ability. They had been clever enough to understand that nations from across the world would easily abuse this power, so keeping their mouth shut was of the utmost priority.
She glanced quickly at the bracelet on her left wrist. It's design looked almost futuristic, a deep crimson color with splashes of red decorated its design. Shinji wore an identical bracelet, although his was a mix of white and blue, complimented with the odd splash of black. These bracelets were designed to give them immediate access to their powers, without having to go back to the room. She wasn't quite sure how it worked, but it was apparently linked to the room in some way, enabling them to summon objects, or change their environment around them at will. And the most frustrating thing about the bracelets was that neither Gendo nor Yui had said a damn thing about how to activate them.
As Asuka cursed the two mad scientists, the door to the class slid open, revealing Misato looking cheerful.
"Good morning, my fellow nutcases. I have some good news for most of you and some bad news for two of you in particular."
"This'll be what she was so excited about this morning." Asuka thought as she recalled their guardian giggling like a drunk schoolgirl whilst they had all been eating breakfast together this morning. It had been in equal parts curious and terrifying. Try as they might, neither she nor Shinji could extract any useful information out of her.
"I have the pleasure of introducing a new transfer student to everyone today. Please treat her kindly everyone! Miss Ayanami, you may enter."
At her words, a young girl with eye-catching light-blue hair walked into the classroom. As she turned to face the class, Asuka noticed her eyes were a bright, slightly-unnerving crimson. But more importantly, she noticed that the transfer student bore a startling resemblance to Shinji's mother. And on top of that, she was incredibly cute.
"I swear to god, if I catch Shinji staring at her, I'm going to..." Asuka muttered as she turned around to look at Shinji. She wasn't expecting his expression to be laced with shock and horror in equal measure. As she wondered what had him so scared, the transfer student began to speak.
"My name is Rei Ayanami, its a pleasure to meet you." She did a small bow, and as she looked up again, Asuka noticed her flash a smile in Shinji's direction. Whipping her head back, she saw that Shinji's expression had grown a hundred times more petrified looking.
"And be careful boys, she's technically already spoken for!" Misato piped up from her chair near the window. All of the boys looked at her, both horrified and confused at the same time. Winking at Rei, she nodded towards her.
"It's time to reveal the biggest news of all." It sounded like Misato was having a hard time containing her excitement. Rei nodded, suddenly looking bashful and shy, began to walk towards the centre of the class, specifically to Shinji's chair. After having reached her destination, she smiled at him.
"It is good to see you after all this time, Shinji. Here, this is for you." She placed a small box in front of him, a very familiar-looking box.
"What on god's green earth is in that box Shinji." Asuka whispered, dreading the answer she knew was most likely coming. Shinji stared at the box, paralyzed in fear. This couldn't be happening. He had thought this whole thing had been forgotten about years ago.
He picked up the box with trembling hands. The whole class waited on baited breath, the atmosphere was electric, to an almost lethal degree. He gently prised open the box, confirming his worst fears. Sitting snugly inside the box were two, sparkling engagement rings.
The whole class erupted into pandemonium.
"...what?" Asuka looked mental, with one eye stretched far wider than it should have been able to, a demonic grin danced across her face. "WHAT? WHAAAT!?"
"SHINJI, YOU BASTARD!" Toji Suzuhara, his supposed best friend and pillar of support during most of their hard times together, looked about ready to punch him square in the face.
"THE HELL IS ALL THIS ABOUT!? You've already chummy with the hottest girl in the school, where the fuck are engagement rings coming from!? With this new chick!?"
"Suzuhara, language!"
"Shove it Class Prez! This is a national emergency!" His retort ignited a blazing fire under the temper of their class president, Hikari Horaki. Her face matched Asuka's current expression in terms of pure terror, immediately rushing to Toji and grasping his ear with the strength of an enraged lion.
"Would you like to repeat that, Suzuhara?"
Meanwhile, Shinji had about five seconds to live, as his situation changed for the worse when Rei suddenly put his arms around him. A pure explosion of rage erupted from Asuka, as her table went flying across the room.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO HIM!?" She was barely stopping herself from launching at the blue-haired girl, who looked back at her, confused by Asuka's rage.
"I'm simply hugging him. It's been at least six years since I last saw my childhood friend, and it's time for our promise to be fulfilled."
"What. Fucking. Promise?" Asuka aimed the icy question at both Shinji and Rei. "I'm pretty sure I've just crapped myself..." Shinji moaned as the two girls continued to glare at each other.
"IKARI, SORYU, LANGUAGE!" Hikari roared from behind him, still wrestling with Toji.
"His father promised my father that we would be engaged to marry when we both came to the right age. It has been a long time coming, but I have been waiting for this day to finally reunite with Shinji, for a long time." Rei glanced down at the terrified boy, a small blush creeping onto her face.
"But... why...?" Asuka's rage could be heard between every whispered syllable. "Why him?"
A moment's silence passed, as Rei thought about her response. She looked up, a firm determination present in her eyes.
"Without Shinji Ikari, I would not be alive today."
The silence returned, echoing around the classroom. Rei stood up, letting Shinji go.
"I was saved from a debilitating illness, not by medicine, nor by the magic of modern day science, but through the kindness that Shinji brought to me, everyday I sat in a lonely medical ward."
"For most of my life, I had been alone. I hadn't had any real friends, nor was my father around often, due to his job. My mother passed away at a young age, and I was too shy to make any friends of my own. Then, due to unfortunate circumstances, I found myself waking up in a medical ward at NERV, where my father worked. I was told that it would take a miracle to save me from my illness."
"It was then I first met Shinji. His parents both worked at NERV, and his father, who is my father's cousin, had brought him to work one day, to show him some of the experiments that were going on. By mistake, Shinji got lost and ended up in my room. And instead of leaving, he stayed with me and chatted with me. We stayed there for hours until his parents eventually discovered him."
"I begged him to stay, and through various circumstances, Shinji was allowed to visit me. Almost everyday he would come to my room, sometimes bringing games to play. And eventually, over time, my illness began to dissipate. Because of those happy days I spent with Shinji, he gave to me a miracle. The only thing I can give to him in return is my love, and everlasting matrimony."
The rest of the day passed agonizingly slowly, with Rei and Asuka butting heads with each other at every opportunity. The majority of their teachers were terrified of the spectacle, not to mention Shinji felt a constant fear of dying from a terror-induced heart attack.
The last bell ringing was heavenly music to his ears. He just wanted to go home, eat and sleep the nightmare of the day away. Catching sight of Misato walking towards him, a slightly apologetic expression on her face, he realized that his troubles were far from over.
"Shinji... How's it going?" She tried to sound as lighthearted as possible, but even she knew how tough today had been on him.
"I want to find my father and strangle him." He said, exasperated. "He told me he had 'smoothed things over' with this promise."
"Do you not like Rei?" Misato looked at him quizzically. He shook his head.
"It's not that. It just came out of nowhere, that's all. All these years, I wasn't too worried about it, because I thought Rei saw me as a friend, and nothing else. But then she transfer into my class, declares her love and dedication and I feel like somebody's thrown a metaphorical brick in my face. It's all too sudden, I don't know what's going on..."
Misato nodded sympathetically, ruffling his hair. "I understand kiddo. Love's never an easy battle to fight, especially when you've got a pretty thing like Asuka hanging around day and night. But things will get better."
Her smile quickly turned into a look of panic as she realized something.
"Actually, wait, scratch that, things are going to get a whole lot worse!" Looking up at her, his own face now in a panic, he trembled at the thought of more bad news involving the girls.
"I totally forgot to mention that Rei's moving in with us!"
After that, he was instructed to explain the news to Asuka. Misato offered him a stab/bulletproof vest she had for 'reasons'. Politely refusing, he made his way to where she thought she might be. Discovering her in their homeroom classroom, sitting on his desk, swinging her legs as she looked outside, she turned to face him as he walked in. Noticing his grim expression, her own face dropped into a dark scowl.
"Oh god... what now?"
After he quickly explained, he could have sworn the classroom had literally exploded with her fury.
They had entered the park that was on the way home. Asuka stomped ahead of him, fuming. She was that angry that he could literally feel the burning aura radiating from her. He hadn't felt this scared of her since when they were kids, back when he had been much more shy.
"Asuka..." He gently tried to talk to her, but his response was a dangerous sounding growl. His shoulders slumped as he mumbled towards her back.
"I'm sorry..."
Time froze. Along with Asuka's footsteps, and the world around them seemed to quieten. It sounded like a normal thing to say, but Asuka's response was a small sob. It was the most heartbreaking sound he could have heard from her. The invincible Asuka, the girl who never backed down. The girl that every single male at their school was attracted to, yet equally terrified of, was quietly sobbing in front of him.
"Wha- Asuka!?" He rushed up to her side, and caught a glimpse of her face. Crystal tears swept down her face as she stood there, trying to no avail to rub her eyes, attempting to stem the flow.
"Shinji... stop, don't... don't look at me..."
"Why are you crying Asuka? I'm sorry! If its something I said, I'm sorry!" He hadn't apologized to her like this since they were kids. Back then, she had yelled at him for apologizing all the time, threatening to punch him in the face if he kept on at it. He tried to curb his use of apologies since then, but he couldn't help it. Not when his best friend in the world, the girl who had stood by him through all hell, was crying his eyes out in front of him.
"Asuka..."
"She's... she's going to take you away from me!" She was talking about what had happened with Rei. "I've known you since god knows when, yet she swoops in out of nowhere, flashes her rings as though she's showing the world your shackles and... and... GRRAAHHH!" Screams echoed around the park as Asuka yelled towards the heavens, as though she was cursing the gods themselves.
"No!" After breathing heavily for a few moments, she clenched her fists and whirled to face Shinji head-on. Her eyelashes sparkled with moisture as she glared at him. Her gaze was so fierce, he took a step back, cowering slightly.
"I'm... sorry" His voice trembled. Realizing that she was probably frightening him, she rolled her eyes and walked over to him.
"I'm not letting her do as she pleases." Asuka looked away, embarrassed as she mumbled. "But with this, I hope you finally understand how I feel. I was hoping for a more romantic confession, but these things are never easy when you're involved."
It was his turn to feel embarrassed. Looking at his shoes, he suddenly felt an unexplained sense of guilt.
"I'm sorry..."
"Argh..." Asuka rolled her eyes again. "If you apologize to me one more time, I'm going to kiss you. And for every time you do it afterwards, I'm going to kiss you again. I don't care if we're in public, at school, or whatever, but I am sick of you saying sorry every five minutes. If this is the only way to shut up your incessant apologies, save using a ball gag, dammit I'll do it!" Asuka's beautiful, cerulean eyes dared him to argue. He was swept away by his pounding heart, and before his brain had any sort of chance to recover, his mouth began moving on its own.
"I'm... sorry?" Meant more as a question to her confounding statement than anything else, he clapped his hand over his mouth. But the damage had already been done.
Asuka's eyes widened in shock. But it was quickly replaced by a mischievous grin.
"That... was on purpose, wasn't it?"
All he could do was open and close his mouth, gaping like a fish. He felt like his doom was imminent. To whatever gods would listen to his prayer, he wished that he would survive to at least be able to eat some katsu curry, one last time.
Asuka began to close in slowly, standing on her tiptoes, her grin getting wider and wider as the tip of her nose brushed against the tip of his own. Her arms wrapped around his neck as her face flared with a crimson blush. A fiery determination exploded in her eyes, in which Shinji was now throughly lost in. "Just this once... I'll let it slide." She whispered, her eyes never once leaving his own. One of her hands began to ruffle with his hair as she continued to whisper.
"Ich liebe dich... dumm Shinji." And with that, her gentle lips pressed against his own, knocking out all of his senses, save for the touch of her lips and the sense of utter euphoria as they stood in the streetlit park, embracing each other to the sound of the chirping cicadas.
Chapter 4 - Shinji Has a Thing For Summoners!
TailoftheDevil
Youkai Enthusiast
- Location
- United Kingdom
At some point on the way home, it had started raining. Prepared as usual, Shinji fished out the compact umbrella from his bag. As soon as he had the thing unfolded, Asuka had her arm around his waist, her gaze determinedly looking the other way, for fear of her fire-red face glowing like a beacon in the night being discovered.
"Say one embarrassing word or anything and I'll be explaining to Misato why you suddenly have hundreds of bruises." She tried to sound as defensive as possible, but Shinji simply chuckled, beginning the wet but cozy walk home.
After a few minutes, she had begun to regret her fierce words. Looking at Shinji's arm dangling, she began to wish one of them was wrapped around her shoulders. She leaned in a little closer, attempting to nudge her intentions into him, but his usual obliviousness was preventing her 'Hold me!' signals from reaching his brain.
'I'm beginning to wonder who's the bigger moron...' She thought as she intentionally knocked her hand against his.
Shinji, on the other hand, was facing a dilemma. Her words could be taken seriously, knowing how Asuka used to be in the past. But this new, forward Asuka was a somewhat new creature to him. He had no idea how to react.
A while ago, Hikari had told him something very important.
"For us girls, and especially a girl like Asuka, who's never really honest about her feelings, never listen to what they're saying. Try to listen to the real words underneath, what they're actually trying to say."
He'd read enough manga to know that going straight in with that advice was practically suicide. Because it was Asuka, touching her carelessly would result in the offending limb being torn off.
But if she was already touching him, with her arm wrapped around his waist, holding tight as though to suck all his body warmth from the point of contact, what were the rules then?
With his umbrella in his right hand, he slowly sneaked his hand around to her shoulder, trembling just above it. The ever perceptive Asuka instantly knew what was going on. Her heartbeat sky-rocketed, not quite believing the normally shy Shinji would try something so daring. With baited breath, she watched him out of the corner of her eye. If she said anything, that fragile courage would be shattered. For the first time in a long time, she had to summon every ounce of patience she could muster.
After what seemed like a monumental struggle, she felt his soft touch as he clasped her shoulder gently. A warm smile enveloped her face as she leaned her head into him.
"I'm not that scary, am I?"
Shinji grinned as he held her tighter.
"Not anymore."
Standing outside the Katsuragi residence, the time had come for them to finally let go. Reluctantly, the two separated and rode the elevator to their floor. Suddenly, they were standing outside their front door.
Taking a deep breath, Asuka gathered her thoughts. Starting today, she was living with Rei Ayanami. She was living with a potential rival in love. She had to be prepared for anything.
As she opened her eyes, the front door had begun sliding open. In a heartbeat, a slim, pale white arm had reached out and dragged Shinji inside, screaming. The door slammed shut, audibly locking.
Asuka took another deep breath, this time attempting to quell the volcano of rage broiling inside her. A quick analysis of the situation told her one thing. Her romantic interest was now locked in a house with a prospective fiancée, who according to the various noises, was probably molesting him. The volcano erupted as she rammed the door with all her might, attempting to break it down. But as strong as her rage was, she wasn't quite physically strong enough to break down the door.
"Open this fucking door Ayanami!"
Her response was more of Shinji's wailing, serving to fuel her rage even further. She punched the door, kicked it, shoulder-barged it and screamed at it. Resting her head against its metal frame, she began thinking frantically.
"Come on genius. How can we get in there?!" More sounds of struggling could be heard and Shinji's startled voice echoed from what sounded like the middle room.
"Rei?! That's my belt, put it back!"
Asuka's eyes sparkled with reignited fury, a million degrees hotter than before. Her only thought was saving Shinji as she brought her fist up again, preparing to hit the door as hard as she could.
"GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY SHINJI!" The bracelet sparkled a furious red, as bright as her fury. Her fist connected with the door. Unnoticed in her rage, her arm had covered itself with a bright red metallic armour, which she used to smash the door off the frame of the wall. Debris and dust exploded everywhere. When the dust settled, a terrifying image of Asuka faded into view.
On the floor of the living room, a petrified looking Shinji was caught underneath Rei, who was in the middle of removing his shirt.
"Katsuragi-sensei will not be too happy with that."
"I don't give a flying fuck about the damn door right now." Asuka snarled. Rei looked back with an emotionless stare, and finally let go of Shinji, who looked close to passing out.
"So it appears the experiment was a success." Her eyes glanced towards Asuka's arm, still covered in the almost feral armour. Following her eyes, Asuka too noticed the strange development with her arm, and her anger was suddenly replaced with surprise and curiosity.
"Wait, what? What is this thing?!"
"Moreover, it's just like you to conjure something so beastly in appearance." Rei said as she held out her own arm. A similar looking bracelet to the ones Shinji and Asuka wore adorned her arm, except it was a perfect white colour. Closing her eyes, Rei went silent. After a moment, a similar armour appeared on her arm, in similar fashion to Asuka's. It looked a lot less scary than Asuka's arm, with a more elegant touch to its appearance.
"And what are you going to do with that?" Bringing her own weaponised arm into a fighting stance, Asuka prepared, come whatever madness may. Rei completely ignored her however, and turned towards Shinji.
"My ones prettier, don't you think?"
Shinji could only look between the two girls, dumbfounded. Was it a serious question? Was there going to be repurcussions if he said he did indeed think Rei's arm-armour thing was a little less scary than Asuka's? Probably, but he was thankfully saved from asking by the sound of a heavy six-pack of Yebisu dropping to the ground. The owner of the beer was currently looking at her front door, aghast.
"Does someone want to explain what happened here?" Misato eyed the three students, as well as the peculiar weapons attached to the girl's arms.
"We were just...-" Her excuses tumbled over each other inside her mouth, but before Asuka could get a decent word out, Rei spoke up.
"I was instructed by Yui Ikari to perform an experiment involving the bracelets. And before anything else, I believe it's my duty to clean up the mess of my... Subjects." Something like a smile curled across Rei's lips as she reformed her armour back into a bracelet. Holding her arm out again, she closed her eyes. Sparks and mystical lights began to flow around the room as the debris from the earlier incident began to lift and return to the wall. It was like watching an explosion happening in reverse.
Asuka watched the spectacle relieved that her outburst hadn't caused any permanent damage, but couldn't help feel a little antagonistic towards Rei. The girl had been playing them both the second they'd returned home. How was she expected to live with a girl who was clearly going to mess with her head.
"An experiment?" Shinji suddenly remembered how to use his voice. "Are you going to show us how to actually use this things? And wait, how are you involved with my parents?"
"Actually, I can answer that one." After placing her slightly dented beers in the refrigerator, taking one out for herself, she sat down on the sofa.
"Was it about a week ago? Something like that-" One quick swig of beer and then she continued. "So about a week ago, Yui came up to me and said, 'Misato', in that voice that tells me she's going to ask for something huge. Anyway, 'Misato, would you be able to do me a huge favour, and take care of one of my distant relatives for a while?'. Of course, along with Kyoko, we're sort of all in this together, so I can't exactly refuse her."
At the mention of her mother, Asuka perked up. It wasn't often she got to hear of her ever-busy parent, but as much as she would never admit it, she was a mommy's girl and wanted to spend more time with her. As a result of this deity-creating experiment, the Ikari's and her mother had spent so much time locked in their labs that she was begin to seriously worry about her mothers health. She was never really the type to take care of herself, and seemed to be constantly bumping into things. For all she knew, her ditzy mother probably forgot how to sleep.
"Wait, we're related?" Shinji asked curiously. He had met Rei as a child, and they had played together a lot as children, but leaving talks of marriage aside, this was the first he had heard of a blood relation. He'd always assumed her parents were business partners to his parents or something.
"Even I'm not really sure of the relationship, but something like very distant cousins?" Rei sounded just as curious as he was. Misato grinned at the pair of them.
"Nothing to worry about, a marriage between the two of you would be perfectly okay. Well, apart from the childhood friend having her say." She knocked back her head and laughed, downing the rest of her beer.
"Which isn't happening by the way." Asuka growled. Her lack of a say in this marriage arrangement was infuriating, but she'd be damned if she was going to let any of it go ahead.
"Are we declaring war?" Misato teased. The Asuka she knew was stubborn and wasn't about to place herself into a situation that may potentially embarrass her. But her jaw hung itself open as she watched the spirited yet flushed redhead link arms with Shinji, who looked close to having his own personal meltdown, and force herself to present a victorious grin.
"If she's come to challenge my territory that I've had claimed for over ten years, she can forget it." She looked up to the boy she had known her entire life, his eyes as wide as peaches.
"He's mine."
In a flash, Rei was hanging off his other arm, glaring at her competition. Stuck in the middle, Shinji suddenly thought of all the things he still had to do in life. With the way things were going, he was never going to get laid before Asuka killed him. He had been thinking of trying his hand at becoming a mangaka, but his characters and ideas were tearfully waving goodbye to him as the grim reaper came to introduce himself. He should've wrote a will at some point...
"This little drama is great to watch and all, definitely beats anything on TV these days, but can we pause this and resume that conversation about 'experiments' and freaky bracelets?" The rarely seen responsible Misato made her appearance, with the best intentions.
But Rei had other ideas.
"This might be a good idea to show what I've learned."
Her bracelet glowed once more. A length of thin, sturdy rope was conjured out of thin air. It rapidly wrapped itself around Shinji, pinning his arms to his side. Another rope did the same to Asuka, although her arms were restrained behind her, preventing her from moving.
"If you can't use the weapons available, you won't be able to win this battle." Rei said, a victorious smile playing across her face.
"I'm too young for BDSM, can't we just talk about this Rei?!" Shinji wailed in the middle. Asuka was struggling against the rope digging into her arms, infuriated from the brazenness shown by the red-eyed man-thief. She was still surprised at how real the ropes felt, for something that was essentially created from nothing.
"I thought the whole reason you were here was to show us how to use these damn bracelets?!" Her mind raced as she tried to remember how the technology worked.
Breaking down the door, she had wanted something strong, something that could compensate for her lack of strength. It didn't even matter what shape, but it morphed into a powerful arm. Her subconscious might've filled in the blanks, but she essentially imagined something strong. Just like in the room in the lab, Shinji had to imagine the cat into existence. With that in mind...
"Heh..." An evil grin played on her face.
"I don't like that face your making Asuka... " Shinji knew her various expressions well enough by now to know that her counterattack was imminent and would somehow be painful for him.
"It appears you weren't necessary after all Ayanami." Straining her muscles, stretching the rope, and eventually the rope restraining Asuka came free. Part of the rope tying her hands had been charred black as she had burned through them by imagining flame surrounding her hands. The power even ensured she hadn't felt the burn of the flame either.
"You just need an open mind."
"Oh I see!" It looked like Shinji had come to the same conclusion. Closing his eyes, he imagined a flame burning the ropes at the contact point of his body. Within seconds, and accompanied by a whooshing flame sound, the ropes fell to his feet, severed and charred.
"Ow!" He'd apparently forgotten that fire burns though, neglecting to protect himself as Asuka had done.
"Instead of explaining everything, it's easier to show you. And it will be easier to remember in the future too." Rei made no move to suggest any further antagonistic moves would follow.
"Teaching like a normal person isn't bad once in a while though."
"I agree with him. You better not become a schoolteacher someday, you might end up killing someone." Asuka sighed. But now she knew how the bracelet worked, she wanted to try something out. Holding out her hand, she closed her eyes and began to exercise her imagination.
Within a few moments, a bottle of Ramane appeared.
"Oh sweet, things like this can be summoned too!" She popped off the top and began to drink. It tasted the same as any other she had drunk in the past.
"Does that count as stealing?" Shinji looked sheepishly at her as she finished the whole bottle off.
"Does this mean I never have to buy beer anymore?!" Misato jumped up excitedly. She sat down despondently when Rei began to shake her head.
"There's still a lot we don't know yet, but because beer is something we haven't tried yet, we wouldn't be able to summon something we don't know the taste of. There's no record of it in our subconscious memory."
"Asuka, I'm willing to turn a blind eye as a teacher and a legal guardian this once, you can have one of my Yebisu, so please-..." Misato stopped short when she noticed Asuka was already holding a can of Yebisu. There was no trace of guilt in her face, not in the slightest. If anything, a sly smile was shining through.
"Asuka, we're minors..." Shinji sighed again. He felt like he'd be doing it a lot more in the future to come.
"Try telling that to my mom. She takes a very German approach to these things." Asuka chuckled as she threw the beer to Misato.
"It's even got the right temperature! It's ice cold!" Instantly popping the tab, Misato's grin looked ready to jump off her face. "Don't mind if I do!"
"You're not going to even try to correct all the wrong in this situation?" Shinji mumbled as he watched Misato down the beer in one go.
"Why? If I do that, I might stop getting free beer! And nothing in life tastes better than free beer!"
Shaking his head, Shinji thought to his own bracelet. If it worked by exercising his imagination, he wanted to try it with something that didn't exist in the real world. Holding out his hand, he mimicked Asuka's earlier actions and closed his eyes. He focuses hard, and within seconds, felt a heavy object in his hand.
"Someone's been playing too much Final Fantasy lately."
An oddly shaped watery-blue sword was in his hands. It looked identical to the one he had been using in the game he had been playing with Asuka a few days before they had gone to the lab.
"You were playing it with me!"
"That's true." In Asuka's hands was a long staff with a blue handle, with a golden head that incorporated an interesting design. "Woah... If I did any cosplay, this would save so much money on the outfits!"
"You have the power of imagination at your disposal and you're using it for... Cosplay?" Rei sounded out her disbelief.
"Oh come on! Haven't you ever wanted to be like your favourite character from a story or something? This is awesome!" Asuka glanced at Shinji. "Let's go the whole way!"
Asuka's whole body was quickly enveloped in red light. After a few moments, she was wearing a kimono-esque outfit, a blue flowing dress with a backless white design covering her top-half. Just like...
"Yuna! You look just like her!" Shinji could only stare at the immaculately detailed recreation of his arguably favourite character from the game series. Something that he suspected she had done on purpose.
"It appears I'm going to have to start playing more games with you Shinji." Rei smiled at him. Asuka smirked whilst pointing the staff at her.
"That's right, I know all of Shinji's favourite characters, his likes, dislikes and what buttons to press with him. You're not stealing him away, no matter what you do!"
Rei returned the smirk, folding her arms and taking a defiant posture.
"We shall see."
"Say one embarrassing word or anything and I'll be explaining to Misato why you suddenly have hundreds of bruises." She tried to sound as defensive as possible, but Shinji simply chuckled, beginning the wet but cozy walk home.
After a few minutes, she had begun to regret her fierce words. Looking at Shinji's arm dangling, she began to wish one of them was wrapped around her shoulders. She leaned in a little closer, attempting to nudge her intentions into him, but his usual obliviousness was preventing her 'Hold me!' signals from reaching his brain.
'I'm beginning to wonder who's the bigger moron...' She thought as she intentionally knocked her hand against his.
Shinji, on the other hand, was facing a dilemma. Her words could be taken seriously, knowing how Asuka used to be in the past. But this new, forward Asuka was a somewhat new creature to him. He had no idea how to react.
A while ago, Hikari had told him something very important.
"For us girls, and especially a girl like Asuka, who's never really honest about her feelings, never listen to what they're saying. Try to listen to the real words underneath, what they're actually trying to say."
He'd read enough manga to know that going straight in with that advice was practically suicide. Because it was Asuka, touching her carelessly would result in the offending limb being torn off.
But if she was already touching him, with her arm wrapped around his waist, holding tight as though to suck all his body warmth from the point of contact, what were the rules then?
With his umbrella in his right hand, he slowly sneaked his hand around to her shoulder, trembling just above it. The ever perceptive Asuka instantly knew what was going on. Her heartbeat sky-rocketed, not quite believing the normally shy Shinji would try something so daring. With baited breath, she watched him out of the corner of her eye. If she said anything, that fragile courage would be shattered. For the first time in a long time, she had to summon every ounce of patience she could muster.
After what seemed like a monumental struggle, she felt his soft touch as he clasped her shoulder gently. A warm smile enveloped her face as she leaned her head into him.
"I'm not that scary, am I?"
Shinji grinned as he held her tighter.
"Not anymore."
Standing outside the Katsuragi residence, the time had come for them to finally let go. Reluctantly, the two separated and rode the elevator to their floor. Suddenly, they were standing outside their front door.
Taking a deep breath, Asuka gathered her thoughts. Starting today, she was living with Rei Ayanami. She was living with a potential rival in love. She had to be prepared for anything.
As she opened her eyes, the front door had begun sliding open. In a heartbeat, a slim, pale white arm had reached out and dragged Shinji inside, screaming. The door slammed shut, audibly locking.
Asuka took another deep breath, this time attempting to quell the volcano of rage broiling inside her. A quick analysis of the situation told her one thing. Her romantic interest was now locked in a house with a prospective fiancée, who according to the various noises, was probably molesting him. The volcano erupted as she rammed the door with all her might, attempting to break it down. But as strong as her rage was, she wasn't quite physically strong enough to break down the door.
"Open this fucking door Ayanami!"
Her response was more of Shinji's wailing, serving to fuel her rage even further. She punched the door, kicked it, shoulder-barged it and screamed at it. Resting her head against its metal frame, she began thinking frantically.
"Come on genius. How can we get in there?!" More sounds of struggling could be heard and Shinji's startled voice echoed from what sounded like the middle room.
"Rei?! That's my belt, put it back!"
Asuka's eyes sparkled with reignited fury, a million degrees hotter than before. Her only thought was saving Shinji as she brought her fist up again, preparing to hit the door as hard as she could.
"GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY SHINJI!" The bracelet sparkled a furious red, as bright as her fury. Her fist connected with the door. Unnoticed in her rage, her arm had covered itself with a bright red metallic armour, which she used to smash the door off the frame of the wall. Debris and dust exploded everywhere. When the dust settled, a terrifying image of Asuka faded into view.
On the floor of the living room, a petrified looking Shinji was caught underneath Rei, who was in the middle of removing his shirt.
"Katsuragi-sensei will not be too happy with that."
"I don't give a flying fuck about the damn door right now." Asuka snarled. Rei looked back with an emotionless stare, and finally let go of Shinji, who looked close to passing out.
"So it appears the experiment was a success." Her eyes glanced towards Asuka's arm, still covered in the almost feral armour. Following her eyes, Asuka too noticed the strange development with her arm, and her anger was suddenly replaced with surprise and curiosity.
"Wait, what? What is this thing?!"
"Moreover, it's just like you to conjure something so beastly in appearance." Rei said as she held out her own arm. A similar looking bracelet to the ones Shinji and Asuka wore adorned her arm, except it was a perfect white colour. Closing her eyes, Rei went silent. After a moment, a similar armour appeared on her arm, in similar fashion to Asuka's. It looked a lot less scary than Asuka's arm, with a more elegant touch to its appearance.
"And what are you going to do with that?" Bringing her own weaponised arm into a fighting stance, Asuka prepared, come whatever madness may. Rei completely ignored her however, and turned towards Shinji.
"My ones prettier, don't you think?"
Shinji could only look between the two girls, dumbfounded. Was it a serious question? Was there going to be repurcussions if he said he did indeed think Rei's arm-armour thing was a little less scary than Asuka's? Probably, but he was thankfully saved from asking by the sound of a heavy six-pack of Yebisu dropping to the ground. The owner of the beer was currently looking at her front door, aghast.
"Does someone want to explain what happened here?" Misato eyed the three students, as well as the peculiar weapons attached to the girl's arms.
"We were just...-" Her excuses tumbled over each other inside her mouth, but before Asuka could get a decent word out, Rei spoke up.
"I was instructed by Yui Ikari to perform an experiment involving the bracelets. And before anything else, I believe it's my duty to clean up the mess of my... Subjects." Something like a smile curled across Rei's lips as she reformed her armour back into a bracelet. Holding her arm out again, she closed her eyes. Sparks and mystical lights began to flow around the room as the debris from the earlier incident began to lift and return to the wall. It was like watching an explosion happening in reverse.
Asuka watched the spectacle relieved that her outburst hadn't caused any permanent damage, but couldn't help feel a little antagonistic towards Rei. The girl had been playing them both the second they'd returned home. How was she expected to live with a girl who was clearly going to mess with her head.
"An experiment?" Shinji suddenly remembered how to use his voice. "Are you going to show us how to actually use this things? And wait, how are you involved with my parents?"
"Actually, I can answer that one." After placing her slightly dented beers in the refrigerator, taking one out for herself, she sat down on the sofa.
"Was it about a week ago? Something like that-" One quick swig of beer and then she continued. "So about a week ago, Yui came up to me and said, 'Misato', in that voice that tells me she's going to ask for something huge. Anyway, 'Misato, would you be able to do me a huge favour, and take care of one of my distant relatives for a while?'. Of course, along with Kyoko, we're sort of all in this together, so I can't exactly refuse her."
At the mention of her mother, Asuka perked up. It wasn't often she got to hear of her ever-busy parent, but as much as she would never admit it, she was a mommy's girl and wanted to spend more time with her. As a result of this deity-creating experiment, the Ikari's and her mother had spent so much time locked in their labs that she was begin to seriously worry about her mothers health. She was never really the type to take care of herself, and seemed to be constantly bumping into things. For all she knew, her ditzy mother probably forgot how to sleep.
"Wait, we're related?" Shinji asked curiously. He had met Rei as a child, and they had played together a lot as children, but leaving talks of marriage aside, this was the first he had heard of a blood relation. He'd always assumed her parents were business partners to his parents or something.
"Even I'm not really sure of the relationship, but something like very distant cousins?" Rei sounded just as curious as he was. Misato grinned at the pair of them.
"Nothing to worry about, a marriage between the two of you would be perfectly okay. Well, apart from the childhood friend having her say." She knocked back her head and laughed, downing the rest of her beer.
"Which isn't happening by the way." Asuka growled. Her lack of a say in this marriage arrangement was infuriating, but she'd be damned if she was going to let any of it go ahead.
"Are we declaring war?" Misato teased. The Asuka she knew was stubborn and wasn't about to place herself into a situation that may potentially embarrass her. But her jaw hung itself open as she watched the spirited yet flushed redhead link arms with Shinji, who looked close to having his own personal meltdown, and force herself to present a victorious grin.
"If she's come to challenge my territory that I've had claimed for over ten years, she can forget it." She looked up to the boy she had known her entire life, his eyes as wide as peaches.
"He's mine."
In a flash, Rei was hanging off his other arm, glaring at her competition. Stuck in the middle, Shinji suddenly thought of all the things he still had to do in life. With the way things were going, he was never going to get laid before Asuka killed him. He had been thinking of trying his hand at becoming a mangaka, but his characters and ideas were tearfully waving goodbye to him as the grim reaper came to introduce himself. He should've wrote a will at some point...
"This little drama is great to watch and all, definitely beats anything on TV these days, but can we pause this and resume that conversation about 'experiments' and freaky bracelets?" The rarely seen responsible Misato made her appearance, with the best intentions.
But Rei had other ideas.
"This might be a good idea to show what I've learned."
Her bracelet glowed once more. A length of thin, sturdy rope was conjured out of thin air. It rapidly wrapped itself around Shinji, pinning his arms to his side. Another rope did the same to Asuka, although her arms were restrained behind her, preventing her from moving.
"If you can't use the weapons available, you won't be able to win this battle." Rei said, a victorious smile playing across her face.
"I'm too young for BDSM, can't we just talk about this Rei?!" Shinji wailed in the middle. Asuka was struggling against the rope digging into her arms, infuriated from the brazenness shown by the red-eyed man-thief. She was still surprised at how real the ropes felt, for something that was essentially created from nothing.
"I thought the whole reason you were here was to show us how to use these damn bracelets?!" Her mind raced as she tried to remember how the technology worked.
Breaking down the door, she had wanted something strong, something that could compensate for her lack of strength. It didn't even matter what shape, but it morphed into a powerful arm. Her subconscious might've filled in the blanks, but she essentially imagined something strong. Just like in the room in the lab, Shinji had to imagine the cat into existence. With that in mind...
"Heh..." An evil grin played on her face.
"I don't like that face your making Asuka... " Shinji knew her various expressions well enough by now to know that her counterattack was imminent and would somehow be painful for him.
"It appears you weren't necessary after all Ayanami." Straining her muscles, stretching the rope, and eventually the rope restraining Asuka came free. Part of the rope tying her hands had been charred black as she had burned through them by imagining flame surrounding her hands. The power even ensured she hadn't felt the burn of the flame either.
"You just need an open mind."
"Oh I see!" It looked like Shinji had come to the same conclusion. Closing his eyes, he imagined a flame burning the ropes at the contact point of his body. Within seconds, and accompanied by a whooshing flame sound, the ropes fell to his feet, severed and charred.
"Ow!" He'd apparently forgotten that fire burns though, neglecting to protect himself as Asuka had done.
"Instead of explaining everything, it's easier to show you. And it will be easier to remember in the future too." Rei made no move to suggest any further antagonistic moves would follow.
"Teaching like a normal person isn't bad once in a while though."
"I agree with him. You better not become a schoolteacher someday, you might end up killing someone." Asuka sighed. But now she knew how the bracelet worked, she wanted to try something out. Holding out her hand, she closed her eyes and began to exercise her imagination.
Within a few moments, a bottle of Ramane appeared.
"Oh sweet, things like this can be summoned too!" She popped off the top and began to drink. It tasted the same as any other she had drunk in the past.
"Does that count as stealing?" Shinji looked sheepishly at her as she finished the whole bottle off.
"Does this mean I never have to buy beer anymore?!" Misato jumped up excitedly. She sat down despondently when Rei began to shake her head.
"There's still a lot we don't know yet, but because beer is something we haven't tried yet, we wouldn't be able to summon something we don't know the taste of. There's no record of it in our subconscious memory."
"Asuka, I'm willing to turn a blind eye as a teacher and a legal guardian this once, you can have one of my Yebisu, so please-..." Misato stopped short when she noticed Asuka was already holding a can of Yebisu. There was no trace of guilt in her face, not in the slightest. If anything, a sly smile was shining through.
"Asuka, we're minors..." Shinji sighed again. He felt like he'd be doing it a lot more in the future to come.
"Try telling that to my mom. She takes a very German approach to these things." Asuka chuckled as she threw the beer to Misato.
"It's even got the right temperature! It's ice cold!" Instantly popping the tab, Misato's grin looked ready to jump off her face. "Don't mind if I do!"
"You're not going to even try to correct all the wrong in this situation?" Shinji mumbled as he watched Misato down the beer in one go.
"Why? If I do that, I might stop getting free beer! And nothing in life tastes better than free beer!"
Shaking his head, Shinji thought to his own bracelet. If it worked by exercising his imagination, he wanted to try it with something that didn't exist in the real world. Holding out his hand, he mimicked Asuka's earlier actions and closed his eyes. He focuses hard, and within seconds, felt a heavy object in his hand.
"Someone's been playing too much Final Fantasy lately."
An oddly shaped watery-blue sword was in his hands. It looked identical to the one he had been using in the game he had been playing with Asuka a few days before they had gone to the lab.
"You were playing it with me!"
"That's true." In Asuka's hands was a long staff with a blue handle, with a golden head that incorporated an interesting design. "Woah... If I did any cosplay, this would save so much money on the outfits!"
"You have the power of imagination at your disposal and you're using it for... Cosplay?" Rei sounded out her disbelief.
"Oh come on! Haven't you ever wanted to be like your favourite character from a story or something? This is awesome!" Asuka glanced at Shinji. "Let's go the whole way!"
Asuka's whole body was quickly enveloped in red light. After a few moments, she was wearing a kimono-esque outfit, a blue flowing dress with a backless white design covering her top-half. Just like...
"Yuna! You look just like her!" Shinji could only stare at the immaculately detailed recreation of his arguably favourite character from the game series. Something that he suspected she had done on purpose.
"It appears I'm going to have to start playing more games with you Shinji." Rei smiled at him. Asuka smirked whilst pointing the staff at her.
"That's right, I know all of Shinji's favourite characters, his likes, dislikes and what buttons to press with him. You're not stealing him away, no matter what you do!"
Rei returned the smirk, folding her arms and taking a defiant posture.
"We shall see."
TailoftheDevil
Youkai Enthusiast
- Location
- United Kingdom
Shinji: No. No way. Uh uh. I need abs and more muscles then I'll ever be able to gain in a lifetime before I can pull off Tidus. Also not a fan of blond hair-dye and maniacal laughing.
Chapter 5 - You Can (Not) Run Away
TailoftheDevil
Youkai Enthusiast
- Location
- United Kingdom
I'd advise listening to In the Hall of the Mountain King by Grieg whilst reading the first scene. At least, that's what I was listening to when I wrote it xD
Morning had made itself known, shining blinding rays of light into a tiny sliver of a gap between Shinji's curtains. Through the magic of physics and reflections, that minuscule beam of sunlight had bounced off the metallic parts on his music player, and had somehow found a path straight onto Shinji's closed eyelids. Grimacing in response to the assault on his eyes, he gingerly opened an eye, wondering why his arms felt so heavy.
Never in his entire life had he regretted waking up more than today.
On his left slept a familiar head of bright, dazzling orange. On his right, a cool, yet enticing head of blue. Asuka and Rei were both asleep in his bed, each reserving an arm for a pillow.
And as if that wasn't enough to give him the shock of a lifetime, the alarm clock close to his bed told him he had about thirty seconds before it was due to go off.
Thirty seconds before complete and utter, absolute hell would undoubtedly tear apart his existence like a hurricane, and make the Armageddon look like a cake walk.
Actually no, it was twenty seconds now. Twenty seconds before a portal to hell opened in his room.
Needless to say, he had started to sweat buckets. He could fill a decently sized swimming pool with his overdriven anxiety sweat. And all that did was serve to add to his panic, wondering if the two girls would be grossed out.
Ten seconds.
He still never got around to writing that will. And he had never really got started with his bucket list either. At this rate he would never write that perverted manga he had been planning on since way back.
To begin with, what were they doing in his room? Were their own rooms not good enough? Was his bed comfier than theirs? Why!?
Five seconds.
"Oh god please no..."
Two seconds.
"God's not in his heaven, he's fucked off somewhere and abandoned me. AGAIN."
One second.
"AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH..."
As he mentally screamed his way into denial, the inevitable dindindindin of his alarm clock began to beep, and he felt Asuka nudge on his arm.
"Shinji... Please, five more minutes, come on... Who the hell has their alarm on this early in the morning..."
"I agree Shinji. Your alarm is set ridiculously early."
An awkward silence descended upon the room, penetrated by the still beeping alarm clock.
"Rei."
"Yes, Asuka?"
"Why are you in Shinji's bed?"
"I believe for the same reasons you are also in his bed."
Another awkward silence. The alarm clock was still beeping. It was doing that thing alarm clocks do, speeding up the beeps, as well as upping its volume.
But all Shinji could hear was the sound of his own heartbeat, racing a marathon at a deafening pace. He was sure his own nervous system was trying to give itself a heart attack.
"Shinji."
"I swear, this is not my-..."
"Why did you let that harlot into your bed."
"...fault."
"I take offence at being called a 'harlot'. Wench."
"OH NO YOU DIDN'T!" Asuka leapt out of Shinji's bed, grabbing the screeching alarm clock, then proceeding to throw it as hard as she could towards Rei.
Lifting her arm faster than anyone could have seen, Rei's bracelet sparkled with a shimmering light. A shield, or something like a forcefield had bubbled around Shinji and herself. The alarm clock collided with the shield at high speed, exploding into a flurry of plastic shards and silicon chips. The poor thing had never stood a chance.
"THEY'RE GONNA KILL ME!" Shinji screamed as he barrelled out of his room, bright lights and explosions following in his wake. His door frame blew up into a cloud of dust, smoke rushing down the hallways.
"YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED IN HERE!" Asuka bellowed as her bracelet morphed into a katana, of which the blade was on fire.
"And I suppose he gave you permission to sneak into his bed?" Rei's response was met with a sharp blade to the throat, sparks flying off the bubble shield still around her. Summoning her own weapons, Rei had opted for a pair of gauntlets on her arms, equipped with a gun and live ammunition.
Asuka had thrown up her own shield, and the bullets were ricocheting around the apartment. Several of which buried themselves into the walls around Shinji, who had remembered just in time how to use his own bracelet, allowing him to generate his own shield. He looked just about ready to wet himself, cowering in fear on the floor as he stared at the war going on in the living room.
"THAT. IS. ENOUGH!"
Another explosion rocked the apartment. A rarely seen, royally pissed Misato had jumped into the midst of the girl's fighting, pointing her own weapons at the two battling females. An eloquently designed flintlock pistol was pointed at Rei's head and a traditional wakizashi sword parried Asuka's flaming katana, which itself was slowly beginning to fade out of view, along with Rei's gauntlets. Their bracelets had mysteriously decided to power off. Glimmering on Misato's arm was a purple bracelet, matching perfectly with her hair.
If she hadn't been in her regular vest top and short shorts, Shinji would have felt that she looked incredibly cool right then.
"W-what happened?" Asuka looked surprised as she checked her bracelet. A holographic message had appeared above it.
[ADMIN LOCKOUT]
"Your bracelets are not toys! You both could have easily killed someone!" Misato stood up, glaring at the two girls as she lowered her weapons. It was really weird to see her acting responsible, and for once looking genuinely angry. It was almost scary.
"Wait, why do you have one?" Asuka looked at the similar bracelet Misato now wore on her left arm. Smiling, Misato held it out proudly.
"Yui gave me one. She needed to make sure that you guys wouldn't mess around and abuse your newfound 'powers', so she made me one with administrative technology so that I can remotely shut down your bracelets if things ever get out of hand." Glancing around the remains of what she once called her home, Misato sighed.
"I'd say this pretty much sums up what she was talking about."
The girls and Shinji together worked on repairing the damage that had been caused. Together with the bracelets, after Misato had re-enabled them, it wasn't a difficult job. Soon enough the apartment looked spotless. It was as though there had never been a fight at all, save for the trauma Shinji and the majority of their neighbours probably received.
"So with that out of the way, I think its time to lay down some house rules with these gadgets." Misato was sat in a chair, a summoned Yebisu cracked open in her hand.
"No violence in the house. At all. Yui has given me strict orders that the bracelets cannot be used for settling disputes of any kind with force."
Misato downed another gulp of her beer before continuing.
"You all wield powers that most would attribute to a deity. You're basically three out-of-control gods at the moment. Think about that for a second, and I hope you'll realise how dangerous this power actually is."
Asuka, Rei and Shinji all nodded together, all feeling a little ashamed of what had occurred.
"The only other rule would be to not abuse the powers in a way that would break the law. Can't have you three becoming phantom thieves with your crazy powers." She laughed as Asuka smirked in response.
"Says the one who's drinking magically summoned beer without paying a dime."
"Hey, there's exceptions to every rule, right?"
"I'll bet there is." Asuka muttered under her breath. Sitting next to her, Shinji grimaced. That meant more trouble waited for them in the future.
Pots and pans could be heard crashing about in the kitchen. He distinctly heard the sound of a plate crashing to the ground violently.
"Jesus Rei! You're so damn clumsy!"
"I honestly do believe that was your fault Asuka."
"I might not be able to use my bracelet, but don't make me slap you with a spatula!"
More arguing followed as Shinji prayed that his precious tools would survive the siege. He knew the bracelets could fix just about any damage, but he also believed that the two girls he lived with could easily defy logic and cause a cookery-induced apocalypse. Reaching for his music player, he jammed the two earphones in and played some Pachelbel. It was the only way he was going to be able to relax amongst the destruction.
For whatever reason possessed them, the girls had decided they wanted to make Shinji breakfast this morning. He had debated endlessly with them why this was not a good idea, and the pair of them had not given him any wiggle room to come up with a decent argument. In the end, not only was he confused as to why he was having breakfast made for him, he was also worried about whether or not he would survive eating the results.
After an agonising twenty minute wait, he heard a knock on the door, and a somewhat worryingly out of breath Asuka. Her hair was a tousled mess and she looked hot and sweaty.
"We... are... done. Come, eat... now."
Glancing over at the clock, Shinji decided against telling her it was way past midday. Breakfast time was well and truly over by now, but he really didn't fancy anymore concussions this week.
Gingerly stepping out of his room, he wandered over to where the smell of food was coming from, mentally noting that it at least smelled edible. Making it to the kitchen, which sported several charred scars over the walls, he spotted a plate of omelette, with a generous serving of sausages and bacon on the side. Most of all, it actually looked really good.
"She wrestled with the eggs, I handled the meat." Asuka collapsed on the sofa, next to an equally exhausted looking Rei.
Smiling at the two beaten girls, Shinji sat down at the table.
"Thanks for the food!" With caution thrown to the wind, he picked up his first mouthful and dug in. After about five minutes of furious eating later, Shinji put down his plate, and reminisced.
He was surprised he was still alive, and more importantly...
"That was probably the best breakfast I have ever had in my entire life." The two girls smiled after hearing the compliment.
"It had better have been. Dear god, cooking is way harder than anything I've ever done in my life!"
After the meal, there were plans to go out for the day. It was then Rei decided that she could show everyone another useful feature with the bracelets. Everybody was sat in front of Rei, Misato included, as she began her mini-lesson.
"We can use the bracelets to quickly and easily change clothes. The bracelet can store up to one hundred and eight different types of clothing that we can assign a name and category to. For example-...!"
"WAITWAITWAIT, stop!" Asuka quickly covered Shinji's eyes as the blue-headed girl began to activate her bracelet. "You're not going to change in front of him are you!? He'll see everything!"
"To begin with, if its Shinji, I wouldn't mind in the slightest..."
"HEY!" Asuka's eyes widened with rage as she tried leaping for Rei, stopped only by Shinji holding her back.
"But the bracelet covers for that, by applying a veil of light over the body. The exchange of clothes happens near-instantaneously, so we are effectively censored." Ignoring Shinji's muttered remarks of how Japanese censorship laws sucked, Misato suddenly piped up.
"So it's something like a magical girl transformation like you see in those old anime's?"
"I... think so?" Rei didn't sound entirely sure of herself. "I haven't really seen a lot of anime, if any at all if I'm being honest." Ignoring her, Asuka jumped up, excited to try out the new feature.
"This is going to save me so much time getting ready in the morning! Does it do your hair as well?" At Rei's nod, she practically squealed with joy.
"I swear I've dreamt of this day my entire life!" She lifted her bracelet arm up so that it pointed to the sky, attempting a cool pose she had seen in the anime's.
"I should probably mention that..." Ignoring Rei once again, Asuka happily chanted for the set of clothes she wore the most often.
"SCHOOL UNIFORM!"
"...that you need to be wearing the clothes and set them to the bracelet before doing it for the first time... the transformation will fail otherwise and..." Rei faltered off, sounding genuinely worried. She was not alone, the sentiment was felt by everybody in the room. Especially for Shinji who had been sat right in front of what was now a full-frontal birthday suit version of his childhood friend.
Asuka was in complete and utter shock.
Regaining his senses was by no means an easy feat, Shinji had wanted to burn the image in front of him into his retinas for a little while longer, but every single instinctual fibre in his being was telling him to run, and run as far as he possibly could.
But just as he was getting out of his chair and backing away towards the door, he heard the scariest voice in the world come out of Asuka's shaking mouth.
"Come here Shinji."
"I think its far safer if I stay over here to be perfectly honest." Asuka looked up at him with an unrivalled fury in her eyes as she leapt the distance between Shinji and herself.
"STAND STILL! I NEED TO BEAT THIS OUT OF YOU!"
It took almost two hours to calm the raging girl down.
"So what do we do now, Gendo?"
The bespectacled man sat at his desk, his orange-tinted glasses reflecting the monitor on his desk, head resting on top of his interlocked fingers. He wore a grim expression, which reflected on the tone of his voice as he spoke.
"We don't have many other options, do we?"
"You're being overly dramatic about all this."
"Overly dramatic!? This is SEELE we're talking about Yui! I'd say I'm being a little under-dramatic if anything!" Yui rolled her eyes as she glanced over his shoulder at the monitor.
"Misato will keep an eye on the kids, and she has her own bracelet now, so she'll be alright."
"What if they send the JSSDF into the school? Three kids and one teacher cannot protect an entire school, no matter what crazy powers we think they might have."
"You know, its normally me doing all the worrying. What's got you so spooked Gendo?"
His eyes turned to the desk, his face hidden in shadows and dark thoughts. Memories of a past life were coming back to haunt him. Memories of when he should have spent less time worried about his work and more time worried about how to be a father.
"I just... I don't want to lose him. I don't want to lose any of them..."
His sincerity and sudden sombre mood had Yui stunned. Where did this come from all of a sudden? Gendo wasn't normally one for revealing his troubles. Snaking her arms around his shoulders, she leant her head on top of his and smiled.
"They'll be fine. I promise you now, we've worked too hard to let anything happen to them. Not to mention, they're all incredibly smart kids for their age. And Misato is far more intelligent then she lets those around her think."
Her warm words brought a huge amount of comfort to him. A rarely seen smile flickered from underneath his hands that concealed his mouth. It was just what he had needed to hear.
The following morning, things were considerably peaceful, considering the mayhem that had occurred on the last day of the weekend. Walking along the road, Asuka felt the urge to skip, and almost gave in to her desires. But her pride wouldn't let her live with herself if the two knuckleheads behind her caught wind of what she was doing.
Still, she couldn't help herself but hum as she walked on the familiar path to school. Something that Rei had found it difficult to ignore for the past twenty minutes.
"You seem to be in an altogether cheerful mood this morning Asuka."
"You'll be too, after school tomorrow."
Shinji had promised both of them a date. Well, promised was a little subjective, but after cooking for him yesterday and after the vanishing clothes incident, they had both got a date out of the deal. Separately of course, but today was the day he'd be going out with Asuka. The following day would be Rei's turn.
He'd had to resort to petitioning the bank of Mom and Dad in lieu of funds for the operation, but she didn't care about that right now. Her head was full of thoughts on what exactly they were going to do with their afternoon together. And how to make Shinji as bankrupt as possible before it was Rei's turn.
Sitting on her chair in the classroom, she couldn't help but grin. Her leg was bouncing up and down wildly under her chair, something that her friend, Hikari, had picked up on almost instantly sitting in front of her.
"I've never seen you smiling so much Asuka. Are you feeling okay? Do you want me to take you to the nurses office?"
"Ha ha ha, shut up Hikari. I'm always in a fabulous mood and I take offence that you'd imply that I was ever a moody c-..."
"Nobody's going that far Asuka!" Hikari hastily stopped the chattering redhead, before letting out a giggle.
"But really... What's got you in such a good mood? I bet its to do with Shinji."
Asuka hadn't planned on how to cover it up if the topic had ever come up in class. As a result, the panic caused her to suddenly elbow her pencil case, sending it pinwheeling off her desk, its contents flying everywhere.
"Haha, I guess that answers my question." Hikari chuckled as she helped the flustered girl pick up the pieces.
"Does that mean it's a date? Are you going on a date with Shinji!?"
"Why don't you say it a little louder!? I don't think the entire class heard you!" Asuka hissed as she tried to keep the bubble-mouthed class president silent.
Instead of being quiet, Hikari made a strange squeaking noise, only fueling Asuka's rapidly spreading blush. She had to do something fast to stop the news spreading. Luckily, Misato chose that exact moment to wander through the door, looking strangely scared.
"Hey teach, I like the bracelet!"
Her new purple accessory shimmered in the light of the sun as she put her stuff on the desk.
"Thank you Toji, be sure you say the nice things to Hikari too when you have the chance."
Both students immediately went redder than the sun, with Toji stumbling over his words as he tried to make excuses, with Kensuke laughing at him.
"Miss, you can't-!" Hikari stopped her planned tirade when she felt Asuka poke her from behind.
"I'd say that's a pretty generous serving of karma, don't you think?" Grinning at her friend, Asuka laughed as she watched Hikari's face flash through about twenty different expressions, raging from indignant to embarrassed.
After the brief distraction, Misato's face went back to serious business, glancing specifically at both Shinji and Asuka with a worried glance. Feeling caught off-guard, both of them wondered what had their teacher so spooked. She even had her own all-powerful bracelet now, what could she possibly be so scared of?
"First things first ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to introduce a transfer student."
"Another one!?" Toji cheered from the back of the class. "Please let it be another cutie, and god please don't let her anywhere near Shinji."
Shinji nodded violently in agreement. He didn't need anymore crazy girls in his life. Asuka had also nodded crazily, her thoughts in almost perfect-sync with her romantic interest.
"Please treat her with respect and Hikari?"
"Yes teacher?"
"Make sure Toji doesn't end up molesting her." Hikari's eyes lit up with a raging fire, accented with a terrifying grin.
"You can count on me!" Nodding in approval, Misato ignored Toji's protests of innocence and turned her gaze towards the door.
"Okay, you may come in!"
The door gently slid open. After what felt like an eternity, a creamy white shoe entered through the threshold, and once again, Shinji Ikari felt like his world had ended in a heartbeat.
"Hello everyone, its a pleasure to meet you! I'm a little bit nervous but I hope we can all get along!"
A cerulean-blue pair of eyes had found their mark, centering onto Shinji's dark grey ones. He felt terror, unaware that he had never been this scared in his life. The lips under those eyes curled into a sweet smile. She brushed a strand of her darkened crimson hair out of face.
"Especially with you, Shinji Ikari."
Morning had made itself known, shining blinding rays of light into a tiny sliver of a gap between Shinji's curtains. Through the magic of physics and reflections, that minuscule beam of sunlight had bounced off the metallic parts on his music player, and had somehow found a path straight onto Shinji's closed eyelids. Grimacing in response to the assault on his eyes, he gingerly opened an eye, wondering why his arms felt so heavy.
Never in his entire life had he regretted waking up more than today.
On his left slept a familiar head of bright, dazzling orange. On his right, a cool, yet enticing head of blue. Asuka and Rei were both asleep in his bed, each reserving an arm for a pillow.
And as if that wasn't enough to give him the shock of a lifetime, the alarm clock close to his bed told him he had about thirty seconds before it was due to go off.
Thirty seconds before complete and utter, absolute hell would undoubtedly tear apart his existence like a hurricane, and make the Armageddon look like a cake walk.
Actually no, it was twenty seconds now. Twenty seconds before a portal to hell opened in his room.
Needless to say, he had started to sweat buckets. He could fill a decently sized swimming pool with his overdriven anxiety sweat. And all that did was serve to add to his panic, wondering if the two girls would be grossed out.
Ten seconds.
He still never got around to writing that will. And he had never really got started with his bucket list either. At this rate he would never write that perverted manga he had been planning on since way back.
To begin with, what were they doing in his room? Were their own rooms not good enough? Was his bed comfier than theirs? Why!?
Five seconds.
"Oh god please no..."
Two seconds.
"God's not in his heaven, he's fucked off somewhere and abandoned me. AGAIN."
One second.
"AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH..."
As he mentally screamed his way into denial, the inevitable dindindindin of his alarm clock began to beep, and he felt Asuka nudge on his arm.
"Shinji... Please, five more minutes, come on... Who the hell has their alarm on this early in the morning..."
"I agree Shinji. Your alarm is set ridiculously early."
An awkward silence descended upon the room, penetrated by the still beeping alarm clock.
"Rei."
"Yes, Asuka?"
"Why are you in Shinji's bed?"
"I believe for the same reasons you are also in his bed."
Another awkward silence. The alarm clock was still beeping. It was doing that thing alarm clocks do, speeding up the beeps, as well as upping its volume.
But all Shinji could hear was the sound of his own heartbeat, racing a marathon at a deafening pace. He was sure his own nervous system was trying to give itself a heart attack.
"Shinji."
"I swear, this is not my-..."
"Why did you let that harlot into your bed."
"...fault."
"I take offence at being called a 'harlot'. Wench."
"OH NO YOU DIDN'T!" Asuka leapt out of Shinji's bed, grabbing the screeching alarm clock, then proceeding to throw it as hard as she could towards Rei.
Lifting her arm faster than anyone could have seen, Rei's bracelet sparkled with a shimmering light. A shield, or something like a forcefield had bubbled around Shinji and herself. The alarm clock collided with the shield at high speed, exploding into a flurry of plastic shards and silicon chips. The poor thing had never stood a chance.
"THEY'RE GONNA KILL ME!" Shinji screamed as he barrelled out of his room, bright lights and explosions following in his wake. His door frame blew up into a cloud of dust, smoke rushing down the hallways.
"YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED IN HERE!" Asuka bellowed as her bracelet morphed into a katana, of which the blade was on fire.
"And I suppose he gave you permission to sneak into his bed?" Rei's response was met with a sharp blade to the throat, sparks flying off the bubble shield still around her. Summoning her own weapons, Rei had opted for a pair of gauntlets on her arms, equipped with a gun and live ammunition.
Asuka had thrown up her own shield, and the bullets were ricocheting around the apartment. Several of which buried themselves into the walls around Shinji, who had remembered just in time how to use his own bracelet, allowing him to generate his own shield. He looked just about ready to wet himself, cowering in fear on the floor as he stared at the war going on in the living room.
"THAT. IS. ENOUGH!"
Another explosion rocked the apartment. A rarely seen, royally pissed Misato had jumped into the midst of the girl's fighting, pointing her own weapons at the two battling females. An eloquently designed flintlock pistol was pointed at Rei's head and a traditional wakizashi sword parried Asuka's flaming katana, which itself was slowly beginning to fade out of view, along with Rei's gauntlets. Their bracelets had mysteriously decided to power off. Glimmering on Misato's arm was a purple bracelet, matching perfectly with her hair.
If she hadn't been in her regular vest top and short shorts, Shinji would have felt that she looked incredibly cool right then.
"W-what happened?" Asuka looked surprised as she checked her bracelet. A holographic message had appeared above it.
[ADMIN LOCKOUT]
"Your bracelets are not toys! You both could have easily killed someone!" Misato stood up, glaring at the two girls as she lowered her weapons. It was really weird to see her acting responsible, and for once looking genuinely angry. It was almost scary.
"Wait, why do you have one?" Asuka looked at the similar bracelet Misato now wore on her left arm. Smiling, Misato held it out proudly.
"Yui gave me one. She needed to make sure that you guys wouldn't mess around and abuse your newfound 'powers', so she made me one with administrative technology so that I can remotely shut down your bracelets if things ever get out of hand." Glancing around the remains of what she once called her home, Misato sighed.
"I'd say this pretty much sums up what she was talking about."
The girls and Shinji together worked on repairing the damage that had been caused. Together with the bracelets, after Misato had re-enabled them, it wasn't a difficult job. Soon enough the apartment looked spotless. It was as though there had never been a fight at all, save for the trauma Shinji and the majority of their neighbours probably received.
"So with that out of the way, I think its time to lay down some house rules with these gadgets." Misato was sat in a chair, a summoned Yebisu cracked open in her hand.
"No violence in the house. At all. Yui has given me strict orders that the bracelets cannot be used for settling disputes of any kind with force."
Misato downed another gulp of her beer before continuing.
"You all wield powers that most would attribute to a deity. You're basically three out-of-control gods at the moment. Think about that for a second, and I hope you'll realise how dangerous this power actually is."
Asuka, Rei and Shinji all nodded together, all feeling a little ashamed of what had occurred.
"The only other rule would be to not abuse the powers in a way that would break the law. Can't have you three becoming phantom thieves with your crazy powers." She laughed as Asuka smirked in response.
"Says the one who's drinking magically summoned beer without paying a dime."
"Hey, there's exceptions to every rule, right?"
"I'll bet there is." Asuka muttered under her breath. Sitting next to her, Shinji grimaced. That meant more trouble waited for them in the future.
Pots and pans could be heard crashing about in the kitchen. He distinctly heard the sound of a plate crashing to the ground violently.
"Jesus Rei! You're so damn clumsy!"
"I honestly do believe that was your fault Asuka."
"I might not be able to use my bracelet, but don't make me slap you with a spatula!"
More arguing followed as Shinji prayed that his precious tools would survive the siege. He knew the bracelets could fix just about any damage, but he also believed that the two girls he lived with could easily defy logic and cause a cookery-induced apocalypse. Reaching for his music player, he jammed the two earphones in and played some Pachelbel. It was the only way he was going to be able to relax amongst the destruction.
For whatever reason possessed them, the girls had decided they wanted to make Shinji breakfast this morning. He had debated endlessly with them why this was not a good idea, and the pair of them had not given him any wiggle room to come up with a decent argument. In the end, not only was he confused as to why he was having breakfast made for him, he was also worried about whether or not he would survive eating the results.
After an agonising twenty minute wait, he heard a knock on the door, and a somewhat worryingly out of breath Asuka. Her hair was a tousled mess and she looked hot and sweaty.
"We... are... done. Come, eat... now."
Glancing over at the clock, Shinji decided against telling her it was way past midday. Breakfast time was well and truly over by now, but he really didn't fancy anymore concussions this week.
Gingerly stepping out of his room, he wandered over to where the smell of food was coming from, mentally noting that it at least smelled edible. Making it to the kitchen, which sported several charred scars over the walls, he spotted a plate of omelette, with a generous serving of sausages and bacon on the side. Most of all, it actually looked really good.
"She wrestled with the eggs, I handled the meat." Asuka collapsed on the sofa, next to an equally exhausted looking Rei.
Smiling at the two beaten girls, Shinji sat down at the table.
"Thanks for the food!" With caution thrown to the wind, he picked up his first mouthful and dug in. After about five minutes of furious eating later, Shinji put down his plate, and reminisced.
He was surprised he was still alive, and more importantly...
"That was probably the best breakfast I have ever had in my entire life." The two girls smiled after hearing the compliment.
"It had better have been. Dear god, cooking is way harder than anything I've ever done in my life!"
After the meal, there were plans to go out for the day. It was then Rei decided that she could show everyone another useful feature with the bracelets. Everybody was sat in front of Rei, Misato included, as she began her mini-lesson.
"We can use the bracelets to quickly and easily change clothes. The bracelet can store up to one hundred and eight different types of clothing that we can assign a name and category to. For example-...!"
"WAITWAITWAIT, stop!" Asuka quickly covered Shinji's eyes as the blue-headed girl began to activate her bracelet. "You're not going to change in front of him are you!? He'll see everything!"
"To begin with, if its Shinji, I wouldn't mind in the slightest..."
"HEY!" Asuka's eyes widened with rage as she tried leaping for Rei, stopped only by Shinji holding her back.
"But the bracelet covers for that, by applying a veil of light over the body. The exchange of clothes happens near-instantaneously, so we are effectively censored." Ignoring Shinji's muttered remarks of how Japanese censorship laws sucked, Misato suddenly piped up.
"So it's something like a magical girl transformation like you see in those old anime's?"
"I... think so?" Rei didn't sound entirely sure of herself. "I haven't really seen a lot of anime, if any at all if I'm being honest." Ignoring her, Asuka jumped up, excited to try out the new feature.
"This is going to save me so much time getting ready in the morning! Does it do your hair as well?" At Rei's nod, she practically squealed with joy.
"I swear I've dreamt of this day my entire life!" She lifted her bracelet arm up so that it pointed to the sky, attempting a cool pose she had seen in the anime's.
"I should probably mention that..." Ignoring Rei once again, Asuka happily chanted for the set of clothes she wore the most often.
"SCHOOL UNIFORM!"
"...that you need to be wearing the clothes and set them to the bracelet before doing it for the first time... the transformation will fail otherwise and..." Rei faltered off, sounding genuinely worried. She was not alone, the sentiment was felt by everybody in the room. Especially for Shinji who had been sat right in front of what was now a full-frontal birthday suit version of his childhood friend.
Asuka was in complete and utter shock.
Regaining his senses was by no means an easy feat, Shinji had wanted to burn the image in front of him into his retinas for a little while longer, but every single instinctual fibre in his being was telling him to run, and run as far as he possibly could.
But just as he was getting out of his chair and backing away towards the door, he heard the scariest voice in the world come out of Asuka's shaking mouth.
"Come here Shinji."
"I think its far safer if I stay over here to be perfectly honest." Asuka looked up at him with an unrivalled fury in her eyes as she leapt the distance between Shinji and herself.
"STAND STILL! I NEED TO BEAT THIS OUT OF YOU!"
It took almost two hours to calm the raging girl down.
"So what do we do now, Gendo?"
The bespectacled man sat at his desk, his orange-tinted glasses reflecting the monitor on his desk, head resting on top of his interlocked fingers. He wore a grim expression, which reflected on the tone of his voice as he spoke.
"We don't have many other options, do we?"
"You're being overly dramatic about all this."
"Overly dramatic!? This is SEELE we're talking about Yui! I'd say I'm being a little under-dramatic if anything!" Yui rolled her eyes as she glanced over his shoulder at the monitor.
"Misato will keep an eye on the kids, and she has her own bracelet now, so she'll be alright."
"What if they send the JSSDF into the school? Three kids and one teacher cannot protect an entire school, no matter what crazy powers we think they might have."
"You know, its normally me doing all the worrying. What's got you so spooked Gendo?"
His eyes turned to the desk, his face hidden in shadows and dark thoughts. Memories of a past life were coming back to haunt him. Memories of when he should have spent less time worried about his work and more time worried about how to be a father.
"I just... I don't want to lose him. I don't want to lose any of them..."
His sincerity and sudden sombre mood had Yui stunned. Where did this come from all of a sudden? Gendo wasn't normally one for revealing his troubles. Snaking her arms around his shoulders, she leant her head on top of his and smiled.
"They'll be fine. I promise you now, we've worked too hard to let anything happen to them. Not to mention, they're all incredibly smart kids for their age. And Misato is far more intelligent then she lets those around her think."
Her warm words brought a huge amount of comfort to him. A rarely seen smile flickered from underneath his hands that concealed his mouth. It was just what he had needed to hear.
The following morning, things were considerably peaceful, considering the mayhem that had occurred on the last day of the weekend. Walking along the road, Asuka felt the urge to skip, and almost gave in to her desires. But her pride wouldn't let her live with herself if the two knuckleheads behind her caught wind of what she was doing.
Still, she couldn't help herself but hum as she walked on the familiar path to school. Something that Rei had found it difficult to ignore for the past twenty minutes.
"You seem to be in an altogether cheerful mood this morning Asuka."
"You'll be too, after school tomorrow."
Shinji had promised both of them a date. Well, promised was a little subjective, but after cooking for him yesterday and after the vanishing clothes incident, they had both got a date out of the deal. Separately of course, but today was the day he'd be going out with Asuka. The following day would be Rei's turn.
He'd had to resort to petitioning the bank of Mom and Dad in lieu of funds for the operation, but she didn't care about that right now. Her head was full of thoughts on what exactly they were going to do with their afternoon together. And how to make Shinji as bankrupt as possible before it was Rei's turn.
Sitting on her chair in the classroom, she couldn't help but grin. Her leg was bouncing up and down wildly under her chair, something that her friend, Hikari, had picked up on almost instantly sitting in front of her.
"I've never seen you smiling so much Asuka. Are you feeling okay? Do you want me to take you to the nurses office?"
"Ha ha ha, shut up Hikari. I'm always in a fabulous mood and I take offence that you'd imply that I was ever a moody c-..."
"Nobody's going that far Asuka!" Hikari hastily stopped the chattering redhead, before letting out a giggle.
"But really... What's got you in such a good mood? I bet its to do with Shinji."
Asuka hadn't planned on how to cover it up if the topic had ever come up in class. As a result, the panic caused her to suddenly elbow her pencil case, sending it pinwheeling off her desk, its contents flying everywhere.
"Haha, I guess that answers my question." Hikari chuckled as she helped the flustered girl pick up the pieces.
"Does that mean it's a date? Are you going on a date with Shinji!?"
"Why don't you say it a little louder!? I don't think the entire class heard you!" Asuka hissed as she tried to keep the bubble-mouthed class president silent.
Instead of being quiet, Hikari made a strange squeaking noise, only fueling Asuka's rapidly spreading blush. She had to do something fast to stop the news spreading. Luckily, Misato chose that exact moment to wander through the door, looking strangely scared.
"Hey teach, I like the bracelet!"
Her new purple accessory shimmered in the light of the sun as she put her stuff on the desk.
"Thank you Toji, be sure you say the nice things to Hikari too when you have the chance."
Both students immediately went redder than the sun, with Toji stumbling over his words as he tried to make excuses, with Kensuke laughing at him.
"Miss, you can't-!" Hikari stopped her planned tirade when she felt Asuka poke her from behind.
"I'd say that's a pretty generous serving of karma, don't you think?" Grinning at her friend, Asuka laughed as she watched Hikari's face flash through about twenty different expressions, raging from indignant to embarrassed.
After the brief distraction, Misato's face went back to serious business, glancing specifically at both Shinji and Asuka with a worried glance. Feeling caught off-guard, both of them wondered what had their teacher so spooked. She even had her own all-powerful bracelet now, what could she possibly be so scared of?
"First things first ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to introduce a transfer student."
"Another one!?" Toji cheered from the back of the class. "Please let it be another cutie, and god please don't let her anywhere near Shinji."
Shinji nodded violently in agreement. He didn't need anymore crazy girls in his life. Asuka had also nodded crazily, her thoughts in almost perfect-sync with her romantic interest.
"Please treat her with respect and Hikari?"
"Yes teacher?"
"Make sure Toji doesn't end up molesting her." Hikari's eyes lit up with a raging fire, accented with a terrifying grin.
"You can count on me!" Nodding in approval, Misato ignored Toji's protests of innocence and turned her gaze towards the door.
"Okay, you may come in!"
The door gently slid open. After what felt like an eternity, a creamy white shoe entered through the threshold, and once again, Shinji Ikari felt like his world had ended in a heartbeat.
"Hello everyone, its a pleasure to meet you! I'm a little bit nervous but I hope we can all get along!"
A cerulean-blue pair of eyes had found their mark, centering onto Shinji's dark grey ones. He felt terror, unaware that he had never been this scared in his life. The lips under those eyes curled into a sweet smile. She brushed a strand of her darkened crimson hair out of face.
"Especially with you, Shinji Ikari."
TailoftheDevil
Youkai Enthusiast
- Location
- United Kingdom
The temptation to give Shinji a big harem is there
but this one is the last transfer student. At least for the near-foreseeable future.I just noticed a small plothole where Asuka could summon cosplay in a previous chapter and not have to worry about it, versus here where summoning her school uniform caused a wardrobe disaster. I could go back and say she summoned the Yuna cosplay over her regular clothes, or that cosplay is considered/handled differently by the bracelets when summoned... Not too sure yet. Could just be a monkey's paw moment.
Chapter 6 - Run!
TailoftheDevil
Youkai Enthusiast
- Location
- United Kingdom
Standing at the front of the class with her sparkling smile gleaming, Mana Kirishima beamed at him as Shinji sat in his chair, paralysed by fear.
"Oh my god, really!?" Toji cried, echoing the sentiment of all the boys in the class. The girls had started whispering and giggling with each other at the sudden new development.
"Another girl!?"
"I thought he was engaged or something to Rei?"
"He's got three girls on the go!? At his age!?"
"What about Asuka? She is going to flip..."
The girl in question could hear nothing of the gossip floating around the class. All she could hear was the sound of her rapidly raging pulse.
Rei, on the other hand, was sat stock still in her chair by the window, in shock and looking very dazed.
"Shinji...? You feeling okay?" Misato asked gingerly, aware that he was probably going through an internal meltdown. Mana kept up her radiant smile as she took a step towards his table.
"He's probably just surprised."
"Let me slap him! Just once! It won't even hurt...!" Toji was furiously shouting from his chair as Hikari tried her best to keep him under control. She was beginning to consider taking a page from Asuka's book and putting him into a headlock.
"It's been about eight years Shinji." Mana had stopped in front of the visibly shaken boy.
"Do you remember me?"
Something inside him snapped. Standing up as fast as he could, he bolted for the classroom door as fast as humanly possible.
"SHINJI!"
Misato's shout of surprise went unanswered as the poor boy literally leapt over tables trying to get away.
"OH NO YOU DON'T!"
Mana's cry echoed around the classroom as she lifted up her arm. It was only then Rei, who had started recovering from her stupor, noticed that Mana was wearing a cerulean bracelet.
Just like the one she wore.
Seconds later, her attention was diverted to the fact that Shinji was now enveloped in a bubble-like prison, stopping the panic-stricken boy from escaping.
"Shinji... " Mana purred flirtatiously as she began to walk towards the entrapped boy.
"You mustn't run away."
"SOMEBODY SAVE ME!" Shinji shrieked in a voice that could only be described as the embodiment of blood-curdling terror as he banged from the inside of the bubble fruitlessly.
Needless to say, the whole class was in shock. Even Asuka, Rei and Misato, who were used to seeing this kind of supernatural science, were left dumbfounded.
"I've waited a long time to see you again." Inside the bubble, shackles materialised around Shinji's arms, locking them behind his back. A collar with a chained leash appeared around his neck.
"W-w w-what the hell is this!?" He looked down at his new accessories, utterly terrified. The bubble around him popped, and he dropped unceremoniously to the ground. Picking up the leash, a grin that would have a yandere running for the hills replaced her sweet smile from moments before.
"I've told you this already, but I'll tell you again." Mana stood over him, her figure a hundred times more intimidating than Asuka's could ever be. Somewhere in his brain, a little voice quietly muttered that her black-lace panties that were peeking out from under her skirt were rather daring, but it was drowned out by the rest of his brain shrieking from the horrifying smile she was giving him.
"You mustn't run away."
"What's their status!?" Yui yelled to the room. Maya, Shigeru and Aoba all jumped to attention, alongside Satsuki, Kaede and Aoi on their various terminals. Furious typing could be heard around the control room, overlooked by Gendo Ikari in his trademark pose, leaning on his interlocked fingers.
"Shinji's been kidnapped, and is being held hostage in a... bubble-like prison?" Satsuki looked at her monitor in confusion. "I don't understand what's going on at all..."
"You're telling me. Who is this girl?" Kaede looked at the video footage displaying one of the school's corridors, keeping track of the red-headed girl holding Shinji hostage. Her eyes suddenly widened. "Oh shit!"
All of the monitors in the room suddenly flashed.
"Explosion detected! Major damage to the school exterior on the third floor!"
"Are the kids okay!?"
"No injuries! Asuka and Rei are in pursuit of Shinji and the mysterious girl."
Yui gritted her teeth as she watched the ongoing battle on the giant main screen. It seemed like she knew the girl from somewhere, but the memory was proving to be elusive.
"Do you not recognise her, Yui?" The gravelly tones emanating from Gendo slightly surprised her. He wasn't usually in such a somber mood.
"What, do you?" She turned around to face her husband.
"Eight years ago. She was the survivor."
The memories flooded back to her, each more heartbreaking than the last. Turning to face the screen again, her eyes were glued to the girl's face, now recognisable to her.
"But... why? What's she doing?! And why does she have a bracelet!?" Gendo's eyes appeared colder than ice as he peered over his orange-tinted glasses.
"Our friends have managed to pull the rug from under our feet once again."
Alarms were blaring all over the school. The students had been evacuated and the perimeter had been surrounded by police and the military. Helicopters buzzed angrily overhead, occasionally blocking out the sun which was beginning to set, turning the sky an ominous crimson.
Misato was outside with the students, making sure everyone was safe, whilst occasionally glancing back at the school, panic-stricken.
"We have identified a potential terrorist threat on the school premises. Do not enter the school or surrounding area for any reason until further notice."
The school PA system was echoing what was also being broadcast outside to the civilians and students milling around the school gates. Asuka smirked as she continued running around the school corridors.
"Her first day here and she's branded as a terrorist. That's certainly an achievement."
She continued running down the corridors, her eyes peeled at every corner and doorway she came across. Judging from the giant hole that tore a large chunk away from the third floor corridor, she had come to assume that Mana wasn't taking any chances.
It was kill or be killed.
As she came up to the next corridor's corner, she suddenly heard footsteps. Slowing down to a crawl, she tiptoed her way towards the corner, her back pressed against the wall. Her hands were shaking, causing the bracelet to rattle.
"Come on Asuka... GO!" Clenching her teeth, she jumped around the corner and raised her bracelet arm's palm to attack. She was faced with Rei, in exactly the same stance.
"Jesus! I was ready to blow you to hell..."
"I can see that. Better luck next time, I suppose." Asuka was this close to giving the sarcastic girl a slap in response, but decided against it for the moment. "I assume this means you've had no success finding him either."
"What do you think, genius..." Asuka sighed as she ran her fingers through her hair. They had lost contact with Shinji a while back, after Mana had nearly obliterated them both.
"We better stick together from now, and watch each others backs. Splitting up was a good idea, but we're more likely to end up killing each other if we're jumping at shadows..."
"I agree." Rei nodded. Suddenly, Rei jumped forward, catching Asuka around the waist and pushing her to the ground. "Watch out!"
Another explosion tore through the windows they had been standing next to not a second earlier. Sparkling glass showered over them as the windows buckled. Shards cut into the both of them, leaving a nasty cut on Asuka's face and a similar wound over Rei's arm.
"She... is so dead... Owowowow..." Asuka twinged in pain as she stood up. Helping Rei to her feet, their eyes met. Nodding together, they began running towards the staircase.
"She's outside!"
"You've suddenly gone incredibly quiet Shinji"
"I doubt you'd be overly conversational either if your captor was a maniacal pyrotechnic who had you locked in a darkened gym storage room."
He couldn't really make out much in the dark, but he was well aware that Mana was straddled on top of him. When he squinted, he could just about make out the mischievous grin on her face.
"I'm pretty sure this is every teenage boy's dream, isn't it? To be underneath a hot girl in a dark room?"
"I see you're not aware of your own narcissism."
Mana just smiled even more as she leaned in closer to his face, wrapping her arms around his neck.
"But I am aware that I'm way cuter than Asuka or Rei." She whispered into his ear. A raging flush rushed across his face, and he was rapidly becoming aware that his trousers were becoming painfully tight across his groin.
His nerves were on fire as he struggled to look for a response. It was true that he found Mana incredibly cute, and her bold, daring behaviour was not exactly unwelcome.
But he was also aware that if he didn't do something soon, Asuka and Rei would find them both in this compromising situation. He was sure they would destroy the school between them if that happened.
"I can't really deny that you are incredibly cute, putting aside the fact that you are a terrifying person." Shinji started talking as he began to struggle against his shackles. Whatever Mana was doing with her bracelet was cancelling out his ability to use his own.
But he had a theory.
For whatever reason, it seemed that the bracelets reacted to emotion. Not only that, but using them for extended periods of time would leave the user exhausted.
His plan meant that not only would he have to try something risky, it was dependant on Mana being somewhat already tired.
And having her wrapped around his neck, breathing heavily into his ear was making it really hard to put his plan into action.
Mana giggled, tightening her grip around him as she continued to whisper into his ear.
"I'm glad that you think so, Shinji. I've been waiting for you to say something like that for a very, very long time."
Something about the way she said that didn't sit well with him. It almost sounded... sorrowful.
Leaning up slightly, Shinji was met with her eyes. Eyes that seemed almost ready to cry.
"Shinji... Did you miss me?"
Something was definitely off now. Where did all of her energy suddenly go? Why did she look like she was ready to have a mental breakdown? A million more questions rushed through his mind, but he realised he didn't have the time to think about it too hard right now. He had to do something before Asuka caught them together like this.
"Mana..." He felt his shackles crumble underneath him. He hadn't done anything to set himself free, so it must have been her own doing.
"Save me Shinji... You have to save me..." She whispered again, this time her voice trembling. Before she had the chance to break down, Shinji wrapped his arms around her back, twisting his body so that he was now on top of her. He had somehow ended up straddling her, their positions reversed.
"Mana, what's going on? Who do you need saving from?" Shinji had her bracelet arm held firmly with his right hand. But it seemed unnecessary at this point. It didn't look like she was going to fight back anymore.
"Promise me you'll save me... From them." He was just about to ask who they were. But with her free hand, Mana grabbed the back of Shinji's head, bringing him down closer to her face.
"You saved me back then. I know you can do it again." She smiled, a single tear streaming down her face. Closing her eyes, she brought herself closer, kissing a suddenly incredibly shocked Shinji.
Her lips felt soft. That seemed to be the only thought that was running through his mind. Or it had been, until the door of the gym storage room blew open, revealing a horrified Asuka and Rei. Breaking off the kiss, Shinji sat up suddenly, painfully aware that he was still straddling Mana.
"I know you wouldn't believe me if I said it's not what it looks like, but can you at least believe that she started it?"
"Oh my god, really!?" Toji cried, echoing the sentiment of all the boys in the class. The girls had started whispering and giggling with each other at the sudden new development.
"Another girl!?"
"I thought he was engaged or something to Rei?"
"He's got three girls on the go!? At his age!?"
"What about Asuka? She is going to flip..."
The girl in question could hear nothing of the gossip floating around the class. All she could hear was the sound of her rapidly raging pulse.
Rei, on the other hand, was sat stock still in her chair by the window, in shock and looking very dazed.
"Shinji...? You feeling okay?" Misato asked gingerly, aware that he was probably going through an internal meltdown. Mana kept up her radiant smile as she took a step towards his table.
"He's probably just surprised."
"Let me slap him! Just once! It won't even hurt...!" Toji was furiously shouting from his chair as Hikari tried her best to keep him under control. She was beginning to consider taking a page from Asuka's book and putting him into a headlock.
"It's been about eight years Shinji." Mana had stopped in front of the visibly shaken boy.
"Do you remember me?"
Something inside him snapped. Standing up as fast as he could, he bolted for the classroom door as fast as humanly possible.
"SHINJI!"
Misato's shout of surprise went unanswered as the poor boy literally leapt over tables trying to get away.
"OH NO YOU DON'T!"
Mana's cry echoed around the classroom as she lifted up her arm. It was only then Rei, who had started recovering from her stupor, noticed that Mana was wearing a cerulean bracelet.
Just like the one she wore.
Seconds later, her attention was diverted to the fact that Shinji was now enveloped in a bubble-like prison, stopping the panic-stricken boy from escaping.
"Shinji... " Mana purred flirtatiously as she began to walk towards the entrapped boy.
"You mustn't run away."
"SOMEBODY SAVE ME!" Shinji shrieked in a voice that could only be described as the embodiment of blood-curdling terror as he banged from the inside of the bubble fruitlessly.
Needless to say, the whole class was in shock. Even Asuka, Rei and Misato, who were used to seeing this kind of supernatural science, were left dumbfounded.
"I've waited a long time to see you again." Inside the bubble, shackles materialised around Shinji's arms, locking them behind his back. A collar with a chained leash appeared around his neck.
"W-w w-what the hell is this!?" He looked down at his new accessories, utterly terrified. The bubble around him popped, and he dropped unceremoniously to the ground. Picking up the leash, a grin that would have a yandere running for the hills replaced her sweet smile from moments before.
"I've told you this already, but I'll tell you again." Mana stood over him, her figure a hundred times more intimidating than Asuka's could ever be. Somewhere in his brain, a little voice quietly muttered that her black-lace panties that were peeking out from under her skirt were rather daring, but it was drowned out by the rest of his brain shrieking from the horrifying smile she was giving him.
"You mustn't run away."
"What's their status!?" Yui yelled to the room. Maya, Shigeru and Aoba all jumped to attention, alongside Satsuki, Kaede and Aoi on their various terminals. Furious typing could be heard around the control room, overlooked by Gendo Ikari in his trademark pose, leaning on his interlocked fingers.
"Shinji's been kidnapped, and is being held hostage in a... bubble-like prison?" Satsuki looked at her monitor in confusion. "I don't understand what's going on at all..."
"You're telling me. Who is this girl?" Kaede looked at the video footage displaying one of the school's corridors, keeping track of the red-headed girl holding Shinji hostage. Her eyes suddenly widened. "Oh shit!"
All of the monitors in the room suddenly flashed.
"Explosion detected! Major damage to the school exterior on the third floor!"
"Are the kids okay!?"
"No injuries! Asuka and Rei are in pursuit of Shinji and the mysterious girl."
Yui gritted her teeth as she watched the ongoing battle on the giant main screen. It seemed like she knew the girl from somewhere, but the memory was proving to be elusive.
"Do you not recognise her, Yui?" The gravelly tones emanating from Gendo slightly surprised her. He wasn't usually in such a somber mood.
"What, do you?" She turned around to face her husband.
"Eight years ago. She was the survivor."
The memories flooded back to her, each more heartbreaking than the last. Turning to face the screen again, her eyes were glued to the girl's face, now recognisable to her.
"But... why? What's she doing?! And why does she have a bracelet!?" Gendo's eyes appeared colder than ice as he peered over his orange-tinted glasses.
"Our friends have managed to pull the rug from under our feet once again."
Alarms were blaring all over the school. The students had been evacuated and the perimeter had been surrounded by police and the military. Helicopters buzzed angrily overhead, occasionally blocking out the sun which was beginning to set, turning the sky an ominous crimson.
Misato was outside with the students, making sure everyone was safe, whilst occasionally glancing back at the school, panic-stricken.
"We have identified a potential terrorist threat on the school premises. Do not enter the school or surrounding area for any reason until further notice."
The school PA system was echoing what was also being broadcast outside to the civilians and students milling around the school gates. Asuka smirked as she continued running around the school corridors.
"Her first day here and she's branded as a terrorist. That's certainly an achievement."
She continued running down the corridors, her eyes peeled at every corner and doorway she came across. Judging from the giant hole that tore a large chunk away from the third floor corridor, she had come to assume that Mana wasn't taking any chances.
It was kill or be killed.
As she came up to the next corridor's corner, she suddenly heard footsteps. Slowing down to a crawl, she tiptoed her way towards the corner, her back pressed against the wall. Her hands were shaking, causing the bracelet to rattle.
"Come on Asuka... GO!" Clenching her teeth, she jumped around the corner and raised her bracelet arm's palm to attack. She was faced with Rei, in exactly the same stance.
"Jesus! I was ready to blow you to hell..."
"I can see that. Better luck next time, I suppose." Asuka was this close to giving the sarcastic girl a slap in response, but decided against it for the moment. "I assume this means you've had no success finding him either."
"What do you think, genius..." Asuka sighed as she ran her fingers through her hair. They had lost contact with Shinji a while back, after Mana had nearly obliterated them both.
"We better stick together from now, and watch each others backs. Splitting up was a good idea, but we're more likely to end up killing each other if we're jumping at shadows..."
"I agree." Rei nodded. Suddenly, Rei jumped forward, catching Asuka around the waist and pushing her to the ground. "Watch out!"
Another explosion tore through the windows they had been standing next to not a second earlier. Sparkling glass showered over them as the windows buckled. Shards cut into the both of them, leaving a nasty cut on Asuka's face and a similar wound over Rei's arm.
"She... is so dead... Owowowow..." Asuka twinged in pain as she stood up. Helping Rei to her feet, their eyes met. Nodding together, they began running towards the staircase.
"She's outside!"
"You've suddenly gone incredibly quiet Shinji"
"I doubt you'd be overly conversational either if your captor was a maniacal pyrotechnic who had you locked in a darkened gym storage room."
He couldn't really make out much in the dark, but he was well aware that Mana was straddled on top of him. When he squinted, he could just about make out the mischievous grin on her face.
"I'm pretty sure this is every teenage boy's dream, isn't it? To be underneath a hot girl in a dark room?"
"I see you're not aware of your own narcissism."
Mana just smiled even more as she leaned in closer to his face, wrapping her arms around his neck.
"But I am aware that I'm way cuter than Asuka or Rei." She whispered into his ear. A raging flush rushed across his face, and he was rapidly becoming aware that his trousers were becoming painfully tight across his groin.
His nerves were on fire as he struggled to look for a response. It was true that he found Mana incredibly cute, and her bold, daring behaviour was not exactly unwelcome.
But he was also aware that if he didn't do something soon, Asuka and Rei would find them both in this compromising situation. He was sure they would destroy the school between them if that happened.
"I can't really deny that you are incredibly cute, putting aside the fact that you are a terrifying person." Shinji started talking as he began to struggle against his shackles. Whatever Mana was doing with her bracelet was cancelling out his ability to use his own.
But he had a theory.
For whatever reason, it seemed that the bracelets reacted to emotion. Not only that, but using them for extended periods of time would leave the user exhausted.
His plan meant that not only would he have to try something risky, it was dependant on Mana being somewhat already tired.
And having her wrapped around his neck, breathing heavily into his ear was making it really hard to put his plan into action.
Mana giggled, tightening her grip around him as she continued to whisper into his ear.
"I'm glad that you think so, Shinji. I've been waiting for you to say something like that for a very, very long time."
Something about the way she said that didn't sit well with him. It almost sounded... sorrowful.
Leaning up slightly, Shinji was met with her eyes. Eyes that seemed almost ready to cry.
"Shinji... Did you miss me?"
Something was definitely off now. Where did all of her energy suddenly go? Why did she look like she was ready to have a mental breakdown? A million more questions rushed through his mind, but he realised he didn't have the time to think about it too hard right now. He had to do something before Asuka caught them together like this.
"Mana..." He felt his shackles crumble underneath him. He hadn't done anything to set himself free, so it must have been her own doing.
"Save me Shinji... You have to save me..." She whispered again, this time her voice trembling. Before she had the chance to break down, Shinji wrapped his arms around her back, twisting his body so that he was now on top of her. He had somehow ended up straddling her, their positions reversed.
"Mana, what's going on? Who do you need saving from?" Shinji had her bracelet arm held firmly with his right hand. But it seemed unnecessary at this point. It didn't look like she was going to fight back anymore.
"Promise me you'll save me... From them." He was just about to ask who they were. But with her free hand, Mana grabbed the back of Shinji's head, bringing him down closer to her face.
"You saved me back then. I know you can do it again." She smiled, a single tear streaming down her face. Closing her eyes, she brought herself closer, kissing a suddenly incredibly shocked Shinji.
Her lips felt soft. That seemed to be the only thought that was running through his mind. Or it had been, until the door of the gym storage room blew open, revealing a horrified Asuka and Rei. Breaking off the kiss, Shinji sat up suddenly, painfully aware that he was still straddling Mana.
"I know you wouldn't believe me if I said it's not what it looks like, but can you at least believe that she started it?"
Chapter 7 - Do You Remember Love?
TailoftheDevil
Youkai Enthusiast
- Location
- United Kingdom
Sitting, or rather, chained to a chair in the lowest level of the research laboratory's labyrinthian maze of corridors, Mana Kirishima was beaming. By all accounts, many other people would be, for want of a better phrase, crapping themselves.
But not Mana. And she wondered why he had always seen her as a bit of an oddball.
"I suppose you're still in blissful shock over how good of a kisser I can be, huh?"
"Mana!"
"What? It's true isn't it? Why else are you bright red and trying your hardest not to to look at me in the eyes. Why is there a pyramid in your trousers, and why do Asuka and Rei look like they want to disembowel me from behind the bulletproof glass?"
"Can we please stay on topic? I'm supposed to be here to interrogate you..." Shinji sheepishly mumbled, wondering if this really was a good idea.
But if Misato, his parents and the tech crew all agreed that it was, then apparently they saw something in him that he wasn't seeing.
The two sets of eyes watching his every move that were not particularly pleased he was locked in a room with Mana were making him feel incredibly uncomfortable though.
"What the hell is he doing?" Asuka forced through gritted teeth. She pressed a button next to a microphone in front of her.
"CAN YOU PLEASE GET ON WITH IT STUPID SHINJI!? I'VE GOT BETTER THINGS TO DO TODAY THAN WATCH YOU FLIRT WITH THAT EXPLODING ASSHAT!"
Looking less than amused, Shinji sighed deeply before continuing his failing interrogation. But before he even had the chance to open his mouth, Mana was straight back on the attack.
"You know Shinji, all you gotta do is say those three magical words that every girl wants to hear, and I tell you absolutely everything."
"Like who you're working for?"
"Who I'm working for, my three sizes, what I would be doing to you right now if it was you tied to this chair and how you would love every second of it..."
"I'M GONNA RIP HER FACE OFF AND FRAME IT IN MY BEDROOM-Ack..." He could distinctly hear Rei wrestling Asuka away from the microphone behind him, and sighed deeply again. If you lost a piece of happiness every time you sighed out loud, he should have been a depressed wreck years ago.
"Mana... Today, you managed to basically blow up my school, almost killed two of my best friends-"
"OH NO YOU DON'T! WE ARE NOT GETTING RELEGATED TO THE FRIEND ZONE THIS EARLY IN THE GAME!" Somehow Asuka had managed to get back to the microphone.
"I agree with Soryu this time. We are more than just friends Shinji."
Turning around to face the window the girls were irritating him from, Shinji glared at them both.
"Girls, I will do whatever you want me to for a week if you can let me finish what I'm supposed to be doing here. At some point, I would like to go home and eat something before some ungodly hour in the morning. Go and buy me a coffee or something."
"He likes Cafe au Lait, let's go Rei!" And like that, the two girls sped off to the nearest vending machine in the facility, all smiles and evil giggles.
"Finally, some peace..." His thought process enjoyed the blissful seconds of quiet, before his mind reminded him he had something important to do.
Turning back around to face Mana on the chair, he wasn't expecting her to suddenly look so... depressed. Just like she had in those last few moments in the gym storage room.
"Shinji..." Cerulean eyes looked up at him, almost pleading with him as she spoke.
"Do you remember eight years ago?"
"Shinji!"
A six-year-old Mana Kirishima came flying at him, not five seconds after he had stepped foot inside her parents apartment.
"I'm sorry to bother you like this..." Yui apologized to Mana's mother.
It was clear who Mana got her crimson hair from, as her mother's own red locks flowed around as she shook her head. A long ponytail dangled a considerable length down her back as Natsuru Kirishima's green eyes practically sparkled as she ruffled six-year-old Shinji's hair.
"No, it's fine Yui! I'd happily look after this adorable ball of fluff anyday!"
Yui smiled at her long time friend.
"This takes me back to when we were in school together."
"Ah, when we were talking about the day we would eventually have children and that we'd make sure they were the best of friends."
"I'm pretty sure it was more of a contest over who would have kids first, if I remember correctly." Yui giggled at the memories.
"We used to fight over just about everything, huh? Natsuru Takahashi and Yui Ayanami, the friendliest rivals you'd ever meet." Natsuru smiled as she glanced over towards a photo on a nearby mantelpiece, portraying their graduation memory.
Yui was standing next to a smiling Gendo, holding her hand out in a cheesy peace sign, complete with a goofy grin, whilst Natsuru hung off the neck of her soon to be husband.
"I guess at some point we became 'Kirishima' and 'Ikari', but otherwise, not much has changed, has it?"
"Apart from you becoming a hermit mangaka and me going into mad science as our chosen professions." Yui pointed out cheekily.
"Hey, you can't call the author of your beloved series a hermit!"
"Speaking of which, hurry up and finish the next volume! I could have killed you for leaving the last book on a cliffhanger!"
"Haha, I'm sorry! It was a necessary evil, but..." Going over to her desk, Natsuru picked up a book and brought it over to Yui.
"It's not supposed to be on sale until the day after tomorrow but consider this a promotional copy." She grinned as she thrust the sequel to her series into a stunned Yui's hands.
"D-d you mean it? Are you serious?"
"It's the least I can do for my biggest fan, especially as you've given me an even more precious treasure all these years."
"What have I given you that even compares to this?" A stunned Yui asked.
Natsuru smiled fondly as she turned to the two playing children in her front room.
"You gave my daughter her very first and most treasured friend."
Half an hour passed by, with the adults lost in reminiscing the past. Whilst the adults were busy, Mana had gone to her room and brought some toys back.
"Shinji, let's play with these next!"
Mana had brought four robot-looking objects with her, each a different colour, and with an individual number on them.
A white model with two zero's. A purple-green model with zero-one. A red model with zero-two and the last was a mix of black and dark blue, with zero-four embellished on it.
Looking at them, Shinji felt a little scared by their intimidating forms. Even if they were only the size of his forearm.
"W-what are they?"
"They're called Evangelions!"
"E-evan... gelions?"
"Yeah!" Mana stood up and thrust her chest out proudly. "I'm writing a book, with a little bit of Mama's help, and these super-cool Evangelions save the world in it!"
"I designed them, and Mama did some magic with the 3D printer, after she fixed some of my scribbles, and they came out looking awesome, don't you think?!"
Shinji sat in awe as he watched Mana explain her somewhat roundabout plot about evil Angels attacking humanity, and how kids had to get into these robots to fight them and save the world. As he listened, he began to feel less intimidated by them.
"They sound so cool!" Mana giggled as she heard his enthusiastic approval.
"Well then... How would you like to be the pilot of Unit One?"
"W-what?"
"I'll write you into the story! You'll be the one who saves the world, whilst rescuing me from a nasty Angel! And then everyone can party, and be happy ever after!"
As Shinji cheered along with Mana, Yui suddenly gasped from the table as she looked at her watch.
"Is that the time!? I gotta go, Gendo is going to kill me!" She quickly stood up as she gathered her things. "Thanks for the coffee Natsuru!" She turned back as she ran to the front door.
"Shinji, make sure you behave! And no playing doctor or anything silly, you hear me!"
"Yes mama..." Shinji mumbled sheepishly at his embarrassing mother.
"Thanks for looking after him Natsuru!" Yui said as she fumbled with her shoes at the entrance.
"It's no problem at all Yui! Be safe!" Natsuru giggled as she watched her friend scamper. "Dear god, she can be so scatterbrained sometimes."
"I love my wife, but dear god she sure knows how to keep a man waiting." Gendo mumbled from his desk. A familiar woman was standing behind him, holding a clipboard and going through her notes, whilst trying not to giggle and failing.
"I'm sure she got caught up in her memories of the past with her friend. They barely get to meet these days, you can't be too hard on her."
"That's fine and all Dr. Soryu, but humanity isn't going to save itself and this research seems to be the key to our survival. Which is going nowhere, fast!"
"Relax. Humanity has pulled through worse scrapes before, we can do it again. And this research will be ready in time, I can guarantee it." Dr. Kyoko Soryu smiled softly. If not for her, then she would make sure the future was safe for her child. Her precious little Asuka.
"Yeah, but...!" Gendo jumped as Yui suddenly scrambled into existence behind him, wheezing.
"Sorry... Late... Natsuru... Bleargh, I'msounfit." Yui caught her breath and stood up.
"At some point, we are going to a gym and sorting out our cardio, Gendo."
"We have a gym though..."
"Since when?!"
"Since you designed the majority of the architecture of this place. I seem to remember you saying something along the lines of, "We may be super-genius scientists, but we also need to keep our health at its optimal levels." Gendo sighed. "You do remember we have like a swimming pool and an indoor hot spring on the base too, right?"
Yui's shocked face was a sight to behold, causing Kyoko to giggle once again.
"But enough about the facilities, which I can see your absolutely dying to try now that you've remembered about them. We have a job to do."
"You're such a party pooper Gendo..." Yui pouted as she sat down at her desk, firing up her computer whilst watching her gloomy expression on the monitor's reflection.
"Don't fret Yui, we can enjoy the indoor baths together if you'd like?" Kyoko said as she sat down next to the depressed Ikari.
"I'm gonna hold you to that." Yui typed in her login with practiced ease as she slid a sidelong look to the blond doctor.
"By the way, how's Shinji doing?"
"He's okay. I left him having fun with Mana, and he was all smiles and giggles when I was leaving."
"Oh my! Asuka won't be too happy when she hears that. All that girl ever talks about is Shinji, and when will she get to play with him again."
"I feel like Shinji's going to grow up with no clue how to deal with them when they start fighting over him." Yui laughed. "At least I know he's going to have two beautiful girls fighting over him when they get older."
"Three." Gendo mumbled behind his clasped hands. "It seems he has bonded very quickly with Rei as well."
"He's not even ten years old and he's already set-up with his own harem."
"I didn't plan it that way Kyoko!" Yui groaned, suddenly realizing she may have inadvertently made Shinji's teenage years a living hell before they had even begun.
"I have faith my little Asuka will be the one to steal his heart away, like the little phantom thief she is." Kyoko grinned. "I'm looking forward to the day they bring me a grandchild."
"They're not even out of grade school yet Kyoko..." Yui thought to herself, grimacing at the prospect that she'll be a fair bit older when that time did eventually come around.
Several hours passed by with the three scientists making good progress on the day's work. When break time finally rolled around, Yui decided her system was in a severe lack of caffeine and made her way to the canteen.
"I mean, I'm looking forward to kids too. But definitely still too early to be thinking of them now... right?" Yui said to herself, whilst simultaneously imagining what the kids would look like, depending on who Shinji eventually chose. The kettle was bubbling away happily as Yui switched on the television.
She made her coffee quickly, and was enjoying its aromatic flavour just as the afternoon news flickered on.
"Breaking news! As of 2.30pm this afternoon, a level seven earthquake has decimated a residential area in Tokyo-3's fourth district. Substantial damage has been caused to many of the buildings in the area, with many feared dead. There is currently no news on potential fatalities-..."
CRASH
The coffee cup went flying, destroying itself all over the canteen floor as Yui ran back to the lab as fast as she could. The footage on the news had shown the area that Yui had been at only a few hours beforehand.
And she saw something else. A sight that had sent every nerve in her body into meltdown.
Her best friends apartment block, in ruins.
"SHINJI!"
But not Mana. And she wondered why he had always seen her as a bit of an oddball.
"I suppose you're still in blissful shock over how good of a kisser I can be, huh?"
"Mana!"
"What? It's true isn't it? Why else are you bright red and trying your hardest not to to look at me in the eyes. Why is there a pyramid in your trousers, and why do Asuka and Rei look like they want to disembowel me from behind the bulletproof glass?"
"Can we please stay on topic? I'm supposed to be here to interrogate you..." Shinji sheepishly mumbled, wondering if this really was a good idea.
But if Misato, his parents and the tech crew all agreed that it was, then apparently they saw something in him that he wasn't seeing.
The two sets of eyes watching his every move that were not particularly pleased he was locked in a room with Mana were making him feel incredibly uncomfortable though.
"What the hell is he doing?" Asuka forced through gritted teeth. She pressed a button next to a microphone in front of her.
"CAN YOU PLEASE GET ON WITH IT STUPID SHINJI!? I'VE GOT BETTER THINGS TO DO TODAY THAN WATCH YOU FLIRT WITH THAT EXPLODING ASSHAT!"
Looking less than amused, Shinji sighed deeply before continuing his failing interrogation. But before he even had the chance to open his mouth, Mana was straight back on the attack.
"You know Shinji, all you gotta do is say those three magical words that every girl wants to hear, and I tell you absolutely everything."
"Like who you're working for?"
"Who I'm working for, my three sizes, what I would be doing to you right now if it was you tied to this chair and how you would love every second of it..."
"I'M GONNA RIP HER FACE OFF AND FRAME IT IN MY BEDROOM-Ack..." He could distinctly hear Rei wrestling Asuka away from the microphone behind him, and sighed deeply again. If you lost a piece of happiness every time you sighed out loud, he should have been a depressed wreck years ago.
"Mana... Today, you managed to basically blow up my school, almost killed two of my best friends-"
"OH NO YOU DON'T! WE ARE NOT GETTING RELEGATED TO THE FRIEND ZONE THIS EARLY IN THE GAME!" Somehow Asuka had managed to get back to the microphone.
"I agree with Soryu this time. We are more than just friends Shinji."
Turning around to face the window the girls were irritating him from, Shinji glared at them both.
"Girls, I will do whatever you want me to for a week if you can let me finish what I'm supposed to be doing here. At some point, I would like to go home and eat something before some ungodly hour in the morning. Go and buy me a coffee or something."
"He likes Cafe au Lait, let's go Rei!" And like that, the two girls sped off to the nearest vending machine in the facility, all smiles and evil giggles.
"Finally, some peace..." His thought process enjoyed the blissful seconds of quiet, before his mind reminded him he had something important to do.
Turning back around to face Mana on the chair, he wasn't expecting her to suddenly look so... depressed. Just like she had in those last few moments in the gym storage room.
"Shinji..." Cerulean eyes looked up at him, almost pleading with him as she spoke.
"Do you remember eight years ago?"
"Shinji!"
A six-year-old Mana Kirishima came flying at him, not five seconds after he had stepped foot inside her parents apartment.
"I'm sorry to bother you like this..." Yui apologized to Mana's mother.
It was clear who Mana got her crimson hair from, as her mother's own red locks flowed around as she shook her head. A long ponytail dangled a considerable length down her back as Natsuru Kirishima's green eyes practically sparkled as she ruffled six-year-old Shinji's hair.
"No, it's fine Yui! I'd happily look after this adorable ball of fluff anyday!"
Yui smiled at her long time friend.
"This takes me back to when we were in school together."
"Ah, when we were talking about the day we would eventually have children and that we'd make sure they were the best of friends."
"I'm pretty sure it was more of a contest over who would have kids first, if I remember correctly." Yui giggled at the memories.
"We used to fight over just about everything, huh? Natsuru Takahashi and Yui Ayanami, the friendliest rivals you'd ever meet." Natsuru smiled as she glanced over towards a photo on a nearby mantelpiece, portraying their graduation memory.
Yui was standing next to a smiling Gendo, holding her hand out in a cheesy peace sign, complete with a goofy grin, whilst Natsuru hung off the neck of her soon to be husband.
"I guess at some point we became 'Kirishima' and 'Ikari', but otherwise, not much has changed, has it?"
"Apart from you becoming a hermit mangaka and me going into mad science as our chosen professions." Yui pointed out cheekily.
"Hey, you can't call the author of your beloved series a hermit!"
"Speaking of which, hurry up and finish the next volume! I could have killed you for leaving the last book on a cliffhanger!"
"Haha, I'm sorry! It was a necessary evil, but..." Going over to her desk, Natsuru picked up a book and brought it over to Yui.
"It's not supposed to be on sale until the day after tomorrow but consider this a promotional copy." She grinned as she thrust the sequel to her series into a stunned Yui's hands.
"D-d you mean it? Are you serious?"
"It's the least I can do for my biggest fan, especially as you've given me an even more precious treasure all these years."
"What have I given you that even compares to this?" A stunned Yui asked.
Natsuru smiled fondly as she turned to the two playing children in her front room.
"You gave my daughter her very first and most treasured friend."
Half an hour passed by, with the adults lost in reminiscing the past. Whilst the adults were busy, Mana had gone to her room and brought some toys back.
"Shinji, let's play with these next!"
Mana had brought four robot-looking objects with her, each a different colour, and with an individual number on them.
A white model with two zero's. A purple-green model with zero-one. A red model with zero-two and the last was a mix of black and dark blue, with zero-four embellished on it.
Looking at them, Shinji felt a little scared by their intimidating forms. Even if they were only the size of his forearm.
"W-what are they?"
"They're called Evangelions!"
"E-evan... gelions?"
"Yeah!" Mana stood up and thrust her chest out proudly. "I'm writing a book, with a little bit of Mama's help, and these super-cool Evangelions save the world in it!"
"I designed them, and Mama did some magic with the 3D printer, after she fixed some of my scribbles, and they came out looking awesome, don't you think?!"
Shinji sat in awe as he watched Mana explain her somewhat roundabout plot about evil Angels attacking humanity, and how kids had to get into these robots to fight them and save the world. As he listened, he began to feel less intimidated by them.
"They sound so cool!" Mana giggled as she heard his enthusiastic approval.
"Well then... How would you like to be the pilot of Unit One?"
"W-what?"
"I'll write you into the story! You'll be the one who saves the world, whilst rescuing me from a nasty Angel! And then everyone can party, and be happy ever after!"
As Shinji cheered along with Mana, Yui suddenly gasped from the table as she looked at her watch.
"Is that the time!? I gotta go, Gendo is going to kill me!" She quickly stood up as she gathered her things. "Thanks for the coffee Natsuru!" She turned back as she ran to the front door.
"Shinji, make sure you behave! And no playing doctor or anything silly, you hear me!"
"Yes mama..." Shinji mumbled sheepishly at his embarrassing mother.
"Thanks for looking after him Natsuru!" Yui said as she fumbled with her shoes at the entrance.
"It's no problem at all Yui! Be safe!" Natsuru giggled as she watched her friend scamper. "Dear god, she can be so scatterbrained sometimes."
"I love my wife, but dear god she sure knows how to keep a man waiting." Gendo mumbled from his desk. A familiar woman was standing behind him, holding a clipboard and going through her notes, whilst trying not to giggle and failing.
"I'm sure she got caught up in her memories of the past with her friend. They barely get to meet these days, you can't be too hard on her."
"That's fine and all Dr. Soryu, but humanity isn't going to save itself and this research seems to be the key to our survival. Which is going nowhere, fast!"
"Relax. Humanity has pulled through worse scrapes before, we can do it again. And this research will be ready in time, I can guarantee it." Dr. Kyoko Soryu smiled softly. If not for her, then she would make sure the future was safe for her child. Her precious little Asuka.
"Yeah, but...!" Gendo jumped as Yui suddenly scrambled into existence behind him, wheezing.
"Sorry... Late... Natsuru... Bleargh, I'msounfit." Yui caught her breath and stood up.
"At some point, we are going to a gym and sorting out our cardio, Gendo."
"We have a gym though..."
"Since when?!"
"Since you designed the majority of the architecture of this place. I seem to remember you saying something along the lines of, "We may be super-genius scientists, but we also need to keep our health at its optimal levels." Gendo sighed. "You do remember we have like a swimming pool and an indoor hot spring on the base too, right?"
Yui's shocked face was a sight to behold, causing Kyoko to giggle once again.
"But enough about the facilities, which I can see your absolutely dying to try now that you've remembered about them. We have a job to do."
"You're such a party pooper Gendo..." Yui pouted as she sat down at her desk, firing up her computer whilst watching her gloomy expression on the monitor's reflection.
"Don't fret Yui, we can enjoy the indoor baths together if you'd like?" Kyoko said as she sat down next to the depressed Ikari.
"I'm gonna hold you to that." Yui typed in her login with practiced ease as she slid a sidelong look to the blond doctor.
"By the way, how's Shinji doing?"
"He's okay. I left him having fun with Mana, and he was all smiles and giggles when I was leaving."
"Oh my! Asuka won't be too happy when she hears that. All that girl ever talks about is Shinji, and when will she get to play with him again."
"I feel like Shinji's going to grow up with no clue how to deal with them when they start fighting over him." Yui laughed. "At least I know he's going to have two beautiful girls fighting over him when they get older."
"Three." Gendo mumbled behind his clasped hands. "It seems he has bonded very quickly with Rei as well."
"He's not even ten years old and he's already set-up with his own harem."
"I didn't plan it that way Kyoko!" Yui groaned, suddenly realizing she may have inadvertently made Shinji's teenage years a living hell before they had even begun.
"I have faith my little Asuka will be the one to steal his heart away, like the little phantom thief she is." Kyoko grinned. "I'm looking forward to the day they bring me a grandchild."
"They're not even out of grade school yet Kyoko..." Yui thought to herself, grimacing at the prospect that she'll be a fair bit older when that time did eventually come around.
Several hours passed by with the three scientists making good progress on the day's work. When break time finally rolled around, Yui decided her system was in a severe lack of caffeine and made her way to the canteen.
"I mean, I'm looking forward to kids too. But definitely still too early to be thinking of them now... right?" Yui said to herself, whilst simultaneously imagining what the kids would look like, depending on who Shinji eventually chose. The kettle was bubbling away happily as Yui switched on the television.
She made her coffee quickly, and was enjoying its aromatic flavour just as the afternoon news flickered on.
"Breaking news! As of 2.30pm this afternoon, a level seven earthquake has decimated a residential area in Tokyo-3's fourth district. Substantial damage has been caused to many of the buildings in the area, with many feared dead. There is currently no news on potential fatalities-..."
CRASH
The coffee cup went flying, destroying itself all over the canteen floor as Yui ran back to the lab as fast as she could. The footage on the news had shown the area that Yui had been at only a few hours beforehand.
And she saw something else. A sight that had sent every nerve in her body into meltdown.
Her best friends apartment block, in ruins.
"SHINJI!"
Chapter 8 - Did You Forget About Fate?
TailoftheDevil
Youkai Enthusiast
- Location
- United Kingdom
The district was utterly destroyed.
Yui should have been hearing the deafening rush of the helicopter's propeller blades, but all she couldn't hear a thing. Just a ringing numbness that threatened to crush her very soul.
The pilot took the broken scientist and her husband down to ground level. She could vaguely hear Gendo and the pilot yelling at each other over the sounds of the flying vehicle. Something about the building still being unstable or something.
But she didn't care. She had to find them. She had to find Shinji.
As soon as they were close enough to the ground, Yui jumped out, closely followed by a rarely-seen, utterly panicked Gendo.
"YUI! DON'T GO NEAR, IT'S TOO DANGEROUS!"
But she couldn't hear him. She couldn't hear anything anymore.
Only the sounds of a soul-destroying numbness.
"S-shin...ji..."
It was dark. Cold. And he was sure he was inhaling more dust than air by now.
"Shin...ji..."
Who was that? Who kept calling his name?
"Shinji... p-please... I need you to... wake up..." He felt something grab his hand. It was warm, but seemed to be getting colder and colder.
"Shinji..." He definitely knew that voice. His head was ringing. But there could have been a full-scale orchestra deafening his ability to think and he'd recognize that voice anywhere.
"Please... save me..."
His eyes shot open, only to be met by darkness. Only a sliver of light trickled through a tiny gap in the debris of what had been Mana's living room. Turning to his side, he saw whatever had been holding his hand had indeed been Mana.
Bloodied, bruised, but well and truly alive.
They were trapped under the table. Mana's mother had thrown them both under the table the second the earthquake sirens started going off, and the terrifying shaking had started.
Grabbing her blood-drenched hand, he squeezed it tightly.
"It's okay Mana... we're gonna be *cough* ...be okay..."
She nodded, providing a little sound in agreement. They were going to make it.
Trying to sit up was an incredible effort, but somehow he made it into a sitting position, and tried looking around him.
He sorely wished he hadn't.
From their position under the table, he could see blood trickling over the side. Along with a hand poking over the edge. Trembling in utter fright, Shinji gently crawled out from under the table, stood up, and looked back.
No six-year-old should have had to have seen it. Not many adults would have had the stomach to look at something like that.
But Shinji Ikari saw the unmistakeable sight of Natsuru Kirishima lying on the table, skewered by what looked like a fallen girder from the destroyed ceiling, straight through the torso. By some miracle, it hadn't penetrated through the table. They had been saved, but...
"ahh...uuhh..." He could feel his mind, his sanity evaporating. He wanted to cry, he wanted to scream, he was so close to losing his mind...
"S-shinji... is... everything... alright?"
She couldn't know. She can't know. She can't see this.
"E-everything's o-o-o-okay... Mana..." His voice was cracking, he was on the knife's edge of retaining his senses.
"That's... good..." Mana looked up at the clearly shaken boy.
"Where's Mama?"
The terror had upgraded to an apocalyptic version of panic. He could feel the crescendo of extreme stress building on top of what was already an uncontainable meltdown.
"She...s-she... I don't know... I can't see...her..." If Mana could see the reflection in his eyes, of what he could see right now, of Natsuru Kirishima's torn body, her blood soaking into her hair, turning it into an even deeper shade of crimson, her limbs splayed in weird angles...
He didn't think Mana could ever recover from that.
"We...we need to get out of here..." Shinji bent under the table, trying his hardest to put on a brave face. "We need to find an exit, and make sure we tell people we're okay."
"...but Mama..."
"Please Mana... Yo-you're hurt... we need to get you to a doctor right away!"
"I can't move Shinji..."
It appeared Mana had both her legs broken. Anytime she tried putting movement into them, the pain was enough to make her scream in agony. He would never forget those screams. It was like they had been etched into his very soul.
"SHINJI! IT HURTS... IT HURTS SO MUCH..." Mana began bawling, thumping the ground in front of her with her tiny fists. Tears were flooding down her face as she looked up to the terrified Shinji.
"I'll... I'll save you!" After explaining that it was going to hurt, Shinji managed to pull the broken Mana from out under the table. She was is no fit state to look around her, and eventually, it looked like the pain was getting to her.
"Shinji... please... save me." As Mana lapsed into unconsciousness, he began to panic again.
"Don't! D-d-d-don't die Mana... please!" He began sobbing as he watched the little girl's eyes closed. But he quickly noticed that she was still breathing.
Lifting the sleeping girl in his arms, he took one last look back at the corpse of the woman who had looked after him. Who had saved his life. And cried.
He was still crying as he somehow made his way out of Mana's miraculously still-standing front door.
The first thing he noticed was the setting sun, illuminating the wreckage from the outside. The stairwell going downstairs was also destroyed. Wiping his face on the top of his arm, his expression changed to that of pure determination. He needed to save his friend!
After ten agonizing minutes of carrying a fairly heavy Mana, he had managed to make it to the roof of the apartment block. He was only six, he wasn't designed to carry anything heavier than a teacup at his age.
Collapsing on his knees, he noticed helicopters buzzing around. Holding the injured Mana close to him, he took in as much air as he could in a single breath. And screamed as loud as he could to the world.
"MAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
"I would never forget that."
A determined Shinji responded. Mana gently smiled.
"Me too."
An awkward silence filled the room, broken only by Mana shifting uncomfortably on her chair, the chains on her hands rattling, the sound reverberating around the room.
"Have you ever heard of Seele?"
Shaking his head, he must of looked as confused as he felt. Who were Seele?
"They're an organization. They research things similar to what your parents are doing. But to be perfectly honest, they're stealing your parents ideas and trying to take over humanity."
She couldn't look at his perplexed gaze.
"After... after my mom died, a lot of things happened. My father... committed suicide. He couldn't take the grief of what happened and just... disappeared. Not long after that, I found myself in an orphanage."
"I remember the orphanage, but you never mentioned your father died!" He was taken aback by the new information. He had been aware that her father had passed away somehow, but... suicide?
"I was so thankful that you came to visit me at that orphanage Shinji. I think I would have met a similar fate, had I been left all alone."
"Was that why...?" He couldn't voice the remainder of that thought. At the orphanage, Mana had never played with any of the other kids, but every time his parents had brought him over to play with her, she would turn into a hyperactively ecstatic crazy child. Over time, her affection got more and more intense, but he still came to play with her as often as he could. Some of the games they would play had left him more than a little traumatized though.
"You were the only one I could talk to. You almost died that same day I had. When Mama... did." Mana sniffled, a single tear falling down her face. "So I had to latch on. I had to keep you close. Or I'd be all alone..."
More tears began to fall. Mana was silently crying in front of him. He had no idea what to do.
"I read something in a book once. 'Loneliness is a disease that can easily lead to death.' " She looked up at him, her cerulean eyes red from crying. "You saved me twice back then. Once from the earthquake. And once again. From myself."
Her crying had escalated. Mana was full-on bawling her eyes out. Shinji felt numb just imagining what she had gone through back then. So he did the only thing he could think to do.
He placed his arms around her, and hugged her tightly. And Mana continued to cry into his shoulder.
"Please don't leave me. Don't leave me again. You're the only one keeping me sane right now. You're... my entire reason for living right now."
"I won't leave you again. I'll do whatever it takes to stay close to you Mana."
"You gotta promise me! Before those Seele bastards take me away from you again."
"I won't let them."
"But you have no idea Shinji! These guys... they're insanely powerful. They took me away from that orphanage, trained me to be a spy, and... and..." She started to cry again, wetting his shirt to the point where he was starting to think he needn't bother wearing it anymore.
*Click*
"W-what're you doing?"
Shinji pulled back a little, dangling Mana's handcuff keys in front of her. Her cuffs fell to the ground with a loud clang.
"I trust you Mana. I trust every word you say." His eyes were full of a kind determination. His smile was infectious, causing Mana to smile through her tear-ridden visage.
"We'll protect you. Just tell everyone what you were telling me, and we can start again, wipe the slate clean. And protect humanity from this... Seele. We need your help Mana." Shinji held out his hand.
"Will you help us?"
Ignoring his hand completely, Mana leapt from her chair and tackled Shinji to the ground with a tight bearhug. Crying again, she snuggled into his chest as Shinji ruffled her hair, chuckling to himself.
"If its you... *sniff * If its you Shinji. I'll do anything. Just stay by my side. Forever."
They stayed in that position for a long time. The CCTV cameras on the wall were silently watching them, being fed to the main control centre. If Shinji had any clue that Misato, his parents, the entire tech staff and Kyoko Soryu were all watching his 'moment', he might have died from embarrassment there and then.
"...He gets that from you dear."
"What do you mean Yui!? I'd never do something..."
"First year of grad school, when I was convinced I was going to fail at life, a certain someone came into my dorm room and gave me a hug very similar to what I'm seeing right now-..."
"OKAY, okay, enough of that."
"I never knew you and your son had such ways with women Gendo."
"Clam it Soryu!" Misato was laughing hysterically at the arguing adults. It was quickly replaced with an evil grin as she eyed a different monitor.
"Hey guys. Should we warn Shinji now or should we just let that unfold?" She was pointing to the monitoring room with the bulletproof glass and microphone that Asuka and Rei had just returned to.
"Let it happen Katsuragi."
"Gendo! They might kill him!"
"And what, pray tell, are we supposed to do about it from here?" Yui grimaced at her husbands words. Turning back to the monitor, she put her hands together as though praying at a shrine.
"We can pray real hard!"
"SHINJI BAKAMORONASSHOLEJERFACE IKARI! WHAT IN THE NAME OF FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?"
"Once again, she started it... waitwaitWAIT ASUKA PUT DOWN THE BRACELET!"
Some say, if you work at the laboratory late at night, when nobody else is around, you can still hear the screams of Shinji Ikari reverberating around the building.
"Oh yeah..." Misato opened the door to the apartment gingerly, perplexing Asuka, Rei and Shinji sitting on the couch, watching television.
"Are you going somewhere Misato?" Asuka piped up. "If you're going to the convenience store, can you pick me up some chips? I need something to munch."
"Asuka, you can summon crisps now, or did you forget?"
"I thought you were the one getting all anal about the morals of summoning free crap Shinji?"
"I still think you shouldn't. You'll have no room left for dinner!"
*Ahem* Misato cleared her throat loudly. "I'm actually going to pick someone up."
For some reason, she looked incredibly nervous. Something Shinji had spied immediately, and was reunited with the familiar feeling of dread in his stomach. This could not go well, whatever it was.
"Due to extenuating circumstances..." Misato pulled on her shoes by the front door faster than anyone had ever seen before. Except before she was going on a beer run or a pub crawl.
All three teenagers stood up, now finally beginning to realize what had Misato so spooked. All three raised their bracelets, and pointed them at the poor, terrified woman as she pressed the button to open the front door. The bracelets began to charge with a terrifying energy as Misato looked about ready to cry.
"...it'sbeendecidedManaisgoingtolivewithusPLEASEDON'TKILLME!" Misato screamed as she ran out of her house as the front door decided to choose that very moment to spontaneously explode.
As soon as she was out of firing range, the three of them fixed the door, strengthened it to the point it could withstand a nuclear blast and unanimously decided that the girls would take turns keeping Shinji guarded that night, lest he get molested in his sleep by a certain crimson headed seductress.
Yui should have been hearing the deafening rush of the helicopter's propeller blades, but all she couldn't hear a thing. Just a ringing numbness that threatened to crush her very soul.
The pilot took the broken scientist and her husband down to ground level. She could vaguely hear Gendo and the pilot yelling at each other over the sounds of the flying vehicle. Something about the building still being unstable or something.
But she didn't care. She had to find them. She had to find Shinji.
As soon as they were close enough to the ground, Yui jumped out, closely followed by a rarely-seen, utterly panicked Gendo.
"YUI! DON'T GO NEAR, IT'S TOO DANGEROUS!"
But she couldn't hear him. She couldn't hear anything anymore.
Only the sounds of a soul-destroying numbness.
"S-shin...ji..."
It was dark. Cold. And he was sure he was inhaling more dust than air by now.
"Shin...ji..."
Who was that? Who kept calling his name?
"Shinji... p-please... I need you to... wake up..." He felt something grab his hand. It was warm, but seemed to be getting colder and colder.
"Shinji..." He definitely knew that voice. His head was ringing. But there could have been a full-scale orchestra deafening his ability to think and he'd recognize that voice anywhere.
"Please... save me..."
His eyes shot open, only to be met by darkness. Only a sliver of light trickled through a tiny gap in the debris of what had been Mana's living room. Turning to his side, he saw whatever had been holding his hand had indeed been Mana.
Bloodied, bruised, but well and truly alive.
They were trapped under the table. Mana's mother had thrown them both under the table the second the earthquake sirens started going off, and the terrifying shaking had started.
Grabbing her blood-drenched hand, he squeezed it tightly.
"It's okay Mana... we're gonna be *cough* ...be okay..."
She nodded, providing a little sound in agreement. They were going to make it.
Trying to sit up was an incredible effort, but somehow he made it into a sitting position, and tried looking around him.
He sorely wished he hadn't.
From their position under the table, he could see blood trickling over the side. Along with a hand poking over the edge. Trembling in utter fright, Shinji gently crawled out from under the table, stood up, and looked back.
No six-year-old should have had to have seen it. Not many adults would have had the stomach to look at something like that.
But Shinji Ikari saw the unmistakeable sight of Natsuru Kirishima lying on the table, skewered by what looked like a fallen girder from the destroyed ceiling, straight through the torso. By some miracle, it hadn't penetrated through the table. They had been saved, but...
"ahh...uuhh..." He could feel his mind, his sanity evaporating. He wanted to cry, he wanted to scream, he was so close to losing his mind...
"S-shinji... is... everything... alright?"
She couldn't know. She can't know. She can't see this.
"E-everything's o-o-o-okay... Mana..." His voice was cracking, he was on the knife's edge of retaining his senses.
"That's... good..." Mana looked up at the clearly shaken boy.
"Where's Mama?"
The terror had upgraded to an apocalyptic version of panic. He could feel the crescendo of extreme stress building on top of what was already an uncontainable meltdown.
"She...s-she... I don't know... I can't see...her..." If Mana could see the reflection in his eyes, of what he could see right now, of Natsuru Kirishima's torn body, her blood soaking into her hair, turning it into an even deeper shade of crimson, her limbs splayed in weird angles...
He didn't think Mana could ever recover from that.
"We...we need to get out of here..." Shinji bent under the table, trying his hardest to put on a brave face. "We need to find an exit, and make sure we tell people we're okay."
"...but Mama..."
"Please Mana... Yo-you're hurt... we need to get you to a doctor right away!"
"I can't move Shinji..."
It appeared Mana had both her legs broken. Anytime she tried putting movement into them, the pain was enough to make her scream in agony. He would never forget those screams. It was like they had been etched into his very soul.
"SHINJI! IT HURTS... IT HURTS SO MUCH..." Mana began bawling, thumping the ground in front of her with her tiny fists. Tears were flooding down her face as she looked up to the terrified Shinji.
"I'll... I'll save you!" After explaining that it was going to hurt, Shinji managed to pull the broken Mana from out under the table. She was is no fit state to look around her, and eventually, it looked like the pain was getting to her.
"Shinji... please... save me." As Mana lapsed into unconsciousness, he began to panic again.
"Don't! D-d-d-don't die Mana... please!" He began sobbing as he watched the little girl's eyes closed. But he quickly noticed that she was still breathing.
Lifting the sleeping girl in his arms, he took one last look back at the corpse of the woman who had looked after him. Who had saved his life. And cried.
He was still crying as he somehow made his way out of Mana's miraculously still-standing front door.
The first thing he noticed was the setting sun, illuminating the wreckage from the outside. The stairwell going downstairs was also destroyed. Wiping his face on the top of his arm, his expression changed to that of pure determination. He needed to save his friend!
After ten agonizing minutes of carrying a fairly heavy Mana, he had managed to make it to the roof of the apartment block. He was only six, he wasn't designed to carry anything heavier than a teacup at his age.
Collapsing on his knees, he noticed helicopters buzzing around. Holding the injured Mana close to him, he took in as much air as he could in a single breath. And screamed as loud as he could to the world.
"MAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
"I would never forget that."
A determined Shinji responded. Mana gently smiled.
"Me too."
An awkward silence filled the room, broken only by Mana shifting uncomfortably on her chair, the chains on her hands rattling, the sound reverberating around the room.
"Have you ever heard of Seele?"
Shaking his head, he must of looked as confused as he felt. Who were Seele?
"They're an organization. They research things similar to what your parents are doing. But to be perfectly honest, they're stealing your parents ideas and trying to take over humanity."
She couldn't look at his perplexed gaze.
"After... after my mom died, a lot of things happened. My father... committed suicide. He couldn't take the grief of what happened and just... disappeared. Not long after that, I found myself in an orphanage."
"I remember the orphanage, but you never mentioned your father died!" He was taken aback by the new information. He had been aware that her father had passed away somehow, but... suicide?
"I was so thankful that you came to visit me at that orphanage Shinji. I think I would have met a similar fate, had I been left all alone."
"Was that why...?" He couldn't voice the remainder of that thought. At the orphanage, Mana had never played with any of the other kids, but every time his parents had brought him over to play with her, she would turn into a hyperactively ecstatic crazy child. Over time, her affection got more and more intense, but he still came to play with her as often as he could. Some of the games they would play had left him more than a little traumatized though.
"You were the only one I could talk to. You almost died that same day I had. When Mama... did." Mana sniffled, a single tear falling down her face. "So I had to latch on. I had to keep you close. Or I'd be all alone..."
More tears began to fall. Mana was silently crying in front of him. He had no idea what to do.
"I read something in a book once. 'Loneliness is a disease that can easily lead to death.' " She looked up at him, her cerulean eyes red from crying. "You saved me twice back then. Once from the earthquake. And once again. From myself."
Her crying had escalated. Mana was full-on bawling her eyes out. Shinji felt numb just imagining what she had gone through back then. So he did the only thing he could think to do.
He placed his arms around her, and hugged her tightly. And Mana continued to cry into his shoulder.
"Please don't leave me. Don't leave me again. You're the only one keeping me sane right now. You're... my entire reason for living right now."
"I won't leave you again. I'll do whatever it takes to stay close to you Mana."
"You gotta promise me! Before those Seele bastards take me away from you again."
"I won't let them."
"But you have no idea Shinji! These guys... they're insanely powerful. They took me away from that orphanage, trained me to be a spy, and... and..." She started to cry again, wetting his shirt to the point where he was starting to think he needn't bother wearing it anymore.
*Click*
"W-what're you doing?"
Shinji pulled back a little, dangling Mana's handcuff keys in front of her. Her cuffs fell to the ground with a loud clang.
"I trust you Mana. I trust every word you say." His eyes were full of a kind determination. His smile was infectious, causing Mana to smile through her tear-ridden visage.
"We'll protect you. Just tell everyone what you were telling me, and we can start again, wipe the slate clean. And protect humanity from this... Seele. We need your help Mana." Shinji held out his hand.
"Will you help us?"
Ignoring his hand completely, Mana leapt from her chair and tackled Shinji to the ground with a tight bearhug. Crying again, she snuggled into his chest as Shinji ruffled her hair, chuckling to himself.
"If its you... *sniff * If its you Shinji. I'll do anything. Just stay by my side. Forever."
They stayed in that position for a long time. The CCTV cameras on the wall were silently watching them, being fed to the main control centre. If Shinji had any clue that Misato, his parents, the entire tech staff and Kyoko Soryu were all watching his 'moment', he might have died from embarrassment there and then.
"...He gets that from you dear."
"What do you mean Yui!? I'd never do something..."
"First year of grad school, when I was convinced I was going to fail at life, a certain someone came into my dorm room and gave me a hug very similar to what I'm seeing right now-..."
"OKAY, okay, enough of that."
"I never knew you and your son had such ways with women Gendo."
"Clam it Soryu!" Misato was laughing hysterically at the arguing adults. It was quickly replaced with an evil grin as she eyed a different monitor.
"Hey guys. Should we warn Shinji now or should we just let that unfold?" She was pointing to the monitoring room with the bulletproof glass and microphone that Asuka and Rei had just returned to.
"Let it happen Katsuragi."
"Gendo! They might kill him!"
"And what, pray tell, are we supposed to do about it from here?" Yui grimaced at her husbands words. Turning back to the monitor, she put her hands together as though praying at a shrine.
"We can pray real hard!"
"SHINJI BAKAMORONASSHOLEJERFACE IKARI! WHAT IN THE NAME OF FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?"
"Once again, she started it... waitwaitWAIT ASUKA PUT DOWN THE BRACELET!"
Some say, if you work at the laboratory late at night, when nobody else is around, you can still hear the screams of Shinji Ikari reverberating around the building.
"Oh yeah..." Misato opened the door to the apartment gingerly, perplexing Asuka, Rei and Shinji sitting on the couch, watching television.
"Are you going somewhere Misato?" Asuka piped up. "If you're going to the convenience store, can you pick me up some chips? I need something to munch."
"Asuka, you can summon crisps now, or did you forget?"
"I thought you were the one getting all anal about the morals of summoning free crap Shinji?"
"I still think you shouldn't. You'll have no room left for dinner!"
*Ahem* Misato cleared her throat loudly. "I'm actually going to pick someone up."
For some reason, she looked incredibly nervous. Something Shinji had spied immediately, and was reunited with the familiar feeling of dread in his stomach. This could not go well, whatever it was.
"Due to extenuating circumstances..." Misato pulled on her shoes by the front door faster than anyone had ever seen before. Except before she was going on a beer run or a pub crawl.
All three teenagers stood up, now finally beginning to realize what had Misato so spooked. All three raised their bracelets, and pointed them at the poor, terrified woman as she pressed the button to open the front door. The bracelets began to charge with a terrifying energy as Misato looked about ready to cry.
"...it'sbeendecidedManaisgoingtolivewithusPLEASEDON'TKILLME!" Misato screamed as she ran out of her house as the front door decided to choose that very moment to spontaneously explode.
As soon as she was out of firing range, the three of them fixed the door, strengthened it to the point it could withstand a nuclear blast and unanimously decided that the girls would take turns keeping Shinji guarded that night, lest he get molested in his sleep by a certain crimson headed seductress.
Chapter 9 - After-School Shenanigans
TailoftheDevil
Youkai Enthusiast
- Location
- United Kingdom
Rei Ayanami was bored.
One could say she had got very used to this state of mind, but in all actuality, nobody could get used to it. How do you enjoy boredom?
Most people settled for daydreaming. Either becoming a hero piloting super-giant robots defeating evil aliens, or imagining various fantastical situations with that one person they felt a certain 'flutter' for.
Who would've guessed that in her boredom, Rei Ayanami's eyes were occasionally flickering towards the boy she was more or less engaged to.
"...ei."
But he hadn't yet given her a straight answer. Not that he could be blamed. The girl who had single-handedly almost destroyed the school was sitting on his left, somehow having ejected the previous occupant of that desk with little to no effort. Rei could only imagine how nervous Shinji was sitting next to the one girl in class who scared him more than Asuka.
Most people were currently giving Mana Kirishima a wide berth after discovering her 'explosive' personality yesterday.
"Rei..."
But a strange feeling was beginning to bubble inside Rei's chest. What was it? It felt slightly... irritating.
"Earth to Miss Ayanami..."
She often felt this strange emotion whenever she saw Asuka and Shinji together too. What in the world had her so... mad?
"I get he's the current favorite for Mr. Tokyo-3, but I sort've need you to answer this question Rei..." Sighing deeply, Misato smiled at the lovestruck teenage girl. It's not like Misato couldn't see what was going through the young girl's mind. All you had to do was take one quick look at her face and it was obvious. Frowned expression, flushed face, what else could it be?
Walking over to Rei's desk, Misato stood there for a good thirty seconds, wondering if the girl would take any notice of her. The rest of the class was giggling at the apparently oblivious girl, but Rei kept glaring at Shinji, as though if she did for long enough, her angry gaze would laser it's way into his brain and burn him into turning around.
"And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why most teachers get annoyed with teenage relationships. How are you supposed to be learning anything if..." Misato gently tapped the top of Rei's head with a rather heavy English dictionary. "...your mind is totally focused on love instead of the wonderful world of Shakespearean literature?"
"Ow!" Rei, suddenly shocked out of her jealousy-fuelled reverie, sounded cute even when experiencing a jolt of pain. She looked up at Misato, the corner of her eyes watering, looking for all the world like Misato just kicked a puppy. "Why would you do that Sensei?"
She could've felt regret for her actions, but instead, Misato grinned evilly at the confused looking girl.
"Shinji."
"Yes, Misa-... I mean, yes Sensei?"
"It's your turn for clean-up duty after school today, is it not?"
"It is!? I thought it was Toji!?"
"Toji, do you mind awfully swapping with Shinji for today? Rei's going to need some help after school, and I'm sure this will give you perfect opportunity to take Hikari out shopping or something."
"SENSEI!" Both Toji and Hikari shouted out in surprise. One of them didn't sound too upset by it however.
"So it's decided. And now that you have at least an hour alone with him after school, do you mind awfully reading this passage out for me Rei?"
A sly grin snaked its way onto Rei's face.
"It would be my pleasure, Katsuragi-sensei."
Asuka Langley Soryu was fuming.
It wasn't like her regular irritated moods, she quite literally wanted to strangle people. Specifically, four people in particular.
And after the events in English class, she realized that the last thing she wanted to happen was to allow that idiot Shinji to spend more than a minute alone in an empty classroom with the girl who was probably undressing him with her eyes earlier.
Temporarily distracted with the idea of a slightly undressed Shinji, Asuka stomped her way to the classroom, face flushed.
I had him first! What the hell happened to my high-school romance!?
The classroom was deadly silent. Apart from the various sounds of brooms, chalkboard erasers getting spanked and the occasional cough Rei would let out as chalk dust threatened to suffocate her.
"I'm grateful to Katsuragi-sensei but..." Rei cast a sidelong glance at the boy who seemed to have overtaken most of her mental thinking capacity. "What am I supposed to do now!?"
With her thoughts meandering on borderline panic, she continued to bash the erasers together, causing more dust to enter her breathing tubes. It didn't take long for Rei to get overcome with a spat of coughing.
"Rei, you're doing it all wrong."
Out of nowhere, Shinji's hands had snaked their way around her, clasping her hands and forcing her to stop. Her coughing had subsided, but she suddenly felt feverish and even closer to a nervous breakdown.
"S-shinji!"
"You're supposed to be doing it like this."
She wasn't even watching his hands. All that was on her mind right now was how close they were. She could feel his torso pressing up against her back, and she could have sworn she felt a heartbeat that was equally as stressed as hers was.
Was Shinji nervous?
"I need to make sure..." The out-of-character thoughts were making sense to her now, but later on, she would wonder what was going on through her mind at the time as she leant in closer to him. She felt completely enveloped by him, and wanted nothing more than to make this moment last for as long as she could. Forever, if possible.
"A-are you alright Rei?"
"I feel a little lightheaded. I think I inhaled too much dust."
"Do you wanna sit down for a moment?"
"No. I'll be alright... Just..." She mustered as much courage as she could to slowly turn her head to meet his gaze. "Hold me like this... for a little longer."
He looked redder than the sun, and she could feel his nerves spasming throughout his body. He was just as nervous as she was.
But he also felt incredibly warm. And had a really nice scent of coconut and jojoba. Was that the type of shampoo he used?
Several minutes passed, with Rei enjoying the moment, and Shinji wondering if this was an appropriate time to pass out. His own thought process was malfunctioning, and he was seriously starting to wonder if Rei could feel the tightness in his pants as much as he could. He was really hoping she couldn't.
"Shinji."
"Y-yes!?"
"How do you..." She shuffled uncomfortably against him, causing the poor teenage boy further skinship distress. It seemed like her sentence had got lost somewhere in her mind however, as she looked up at him again as she struggled to find her words.
"...about me... howdoyou... I mean... oh, I sound so silly right now... Umm... give me a second..."
Credit where it was due, even a faltering Rei sounded absolutely adorable to him right now. True, he didn't have much of a lid on his own haywire emotions himself right now but...
It was going to make for a really nice memory.
Asuka was ready to kill. She had been secretly eavesdropping on the rendezvous in the classroom for a while now, and was deciding whether to run in and break it up before things got too hot in there.
But before she could make up her mind, she jumped out of her skin as she felt somebody tap her on the shoulder.
"JEEZUSMARYMOTHERAND- MANA!?"
"Ssssshhh!" Mana put her finger to her lips. "They're going to hear you!"
"Why are you here!?" Asuka whispered through gritted teeth.
"For the same reasons you are."
"I'm here to make sure idiot Shinji doesn't take advantage of the situation."
"Then... so am I!" Mana had nothing but a cheesy grin to offer an already enraged Asuka.
"It doesn't take two of us, go home!"
"I don't wanna. I want to be there to help pick up the pieces after Ayanami inevitably turns him down."
"I don't think that's happening anytime soon..." Asuka sighed. "You can see just as well as I can what's going on in there. And did we ever mention that Rei is basically engaged to him?"
It was a thing of beauty to see the ever-chipper Mana looked shocked, but she couldn't revel in it's beauty for too long. Mana had stood up from their crouched postion outside of the slightly cracked open classroom door and was ready to crash the party.
"What are you doing!?" Asuka grabbed the back of the girl's shirt as Mana tried opening the door.
"We have to stop them before it's too late!"
"Shinji is going to be pissed!"
"I'm pissed!"
"So am I, but what if he starts hating you!"
The two girls continued to bicker outside the door. But one strong lunge forward from Mana, and both of them tumbled through the classroom together, giving both Shinji and Rei a more than unwelcome surprise.
"W-wha...! Asuka!? Mana!?"
"I know you won't believe me if I told you this wasn't what it looks like, but at least believe me when I say she started it!" Asuka glared at Mana as both girls got up from the floor, looking sheepish.
"I didn't start anything! I was on my way home when I saw a certain someone crouched in front of the door, looking suspicious!"
"You traitorous sonofa-... Rei? What are you doing?"
Electrical energy sparked around the enraged blue-haired girl as Shinji quickly backed away. He had seen this pattern often enough, and his instincts were all screaming at him to run. For good measure, he enveloped himself in his bracelet's shield first.
"What are you doing here?"
"SHE'S GONNA BLOW!" Asuka lifted her bracelet arm and covered herself with her own shield, as Mana followed suit.
"Rei, calm down!"
"I AM CALM SHINJI" He decided that Rei screaming at him wasn't as cute as Rei stuttering at him.
"SHINJI DO SOMETHING SHE'S GOING TO KILL US!" Asuka screamed as the electrical rage coming from Rei was starting to poke holes into the classroom around them.
"But what can I...?" He suddenly thought of something that might work, but it was risky. Not just now, but for the potential aftermath.
Leaping in front of Rei, Shinji stood with his arms out, his shield deactivated.
"GET OUT OF MY WAY SHINJI!"
"I'm sorry Rei. But I can certainly do this for you instead." Rushing forward before Rei had the chance to fire whatever attack she had charged up, he wrapped his arms around her own, took one quick glance at her suddenly shocked crimson eyes, and kissed her.
"Why are girls lips so soft?" He thought to himself, as he felt the supernatural energy in the room deflate faster than light. His eyes were closed, but Rei's were wide open in shock.
"He... what is he... Shinji..." She closed her own eyes as she allowed Shinji to continue whatever he was doing. "Shinji..."
A few minutes later, Rei was passed out on the ground, a happy grin plastered over her face as Shinji slowly backed away from the two, now incredibly angry females that had watched his daring move.
"Y-you told me to do something and this was all I could think of to stop her!"
"I DIDN'T MEAN A SMOOCH IDIOT! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!?"
"I wasn't really thinking at all to be honest..."
"I COULD'VE TOLD YOU THAT, IDIOT!"
"Asuka, calm down..."
"I AM CALM, ASSHOLE!"
"I think I deserve a kiss next. I could forgive you for that." Mana raised her hand as she giggled, jumping on the terrified Shinji.
"OH NO YOU DON'T! I'VE WAITED FAR TOO LONG FOR YOU TO JUMP AHEAD."
As Shinji suddenly found himself entangled between the two warring girls, part of his mind wondered what he should make for dinner that night.
Fish sounded good. If only so that the smell of fish on his breath might stop his mouth getting molested as much as it had lately.
Her clock was telling her it was somewhere around two in the morning.
Asuka hadn't had an easy time getting to sleep that night. Her mind was full of angry thoughts about what had happened earlier on that day.
"I'm falling behind... He's leaving me behind..." Small sobs began to fall on her pillow.
This wasn't like her! She never cried for anyone, let alone that idiot! Pushing herself up from her bed, glaring angrily at everything around her, she made her decision.
"I'm not losing him to anybody, especially not those two!" She stood up, her vest top and panties gently illuminated from the moonlight from her window. Creeping over to her bedroom door, she gently opened it whilst trying not to make a sound.
The rest of the house seemed fast asleep. Which is exactly what she needed right now. She couldn't have anyone else interfering.
Luckily for her, his room was basically next door to her own.
Gently cracking open Shinji's bedroom door, she peeked in. He was fast asleep, one leg hanging off the side of his bed.
"Thanks for leaving me some room, idiot." She mentally cursed as she tiptoed her way to the side of his bed, and gently slid herself in.
"You're such an idiot." She whispered, poking her crush carefully on the cheek. Wrapping her leg around one of his, she snaked her arms around him as she cuddled up to his warmth.
"You're mine, stupid Shinji. I won't let those two harlots steal you away from me." She glared at him, as though he could hear what she was saying. Instead, she found herself shocked as Shinji decided to turn around in his sleep, and face her directly. His own arms found their way around her, pulling her into a tighter cuddle then before.
"H-hey, stupid Shinji! What are you doing!?"
"Asuka..." Her whole world froze as she heard the sleepy boy mumble.
"Are... are you awake Shinji..." The apparent answer was no, as the still sleeping Shinji proceeded to bury his head into her breasts, nuzzling happily.
"W-wha!" Taken aback by his sudden, if unconsciously-based forwardness, she was at a loss. She, by all rights, should beat the living snot out of him for this, but...
If he was asleep... Then maybe it was okay. For a little while.
"A...su...ka..." The perverted idiot continued to nuzzle into her. "You smell really nice."
A faint smile crossed her face as she tightened her grip around him, giving Shinji a quick kiss on the cheek.
"You're welcome, Shinji. I hope you enjoy your surprise in the morning."
One could say she had got very used to this state of mind, but in all actuality, nobody could get used to it. How do you enjoy boredom?
Most people settled for daydreaming. Either becoming a hero piloting super-giant robots defeating evil aliens, or imagining various fantastical situations with that one person they felt a certain 'flutter' for.
Who would've guessed that in her boredom, Rei Ayanami's eyes were occasionally flickering towards the boy she was more or less engaged to.
"...ei."
But he hadn't yet given her a straight answer. Not that he could be blamed. The girl who had single-handedly almost destroyed the school was sitting on his left, somehow having ejected the previous occupant of that desk with little to no effort. Rei could only imagine how nervous Shinji was sitting next to the one girl in class who scared him more than Asuka.
Most people were currently giving Mana Kirishima a wide berth after discovering her 'explosive' personality yesterday.
"Rei..."
But a strange feeling was beginning to bubble inside Rei's chest. What was it? It felt slightly... irritating.
"Earth to Miss Ayanami..."
She often felt this strange emotion whenever she saw Asuka and Shinji together too. What in the world had her so... mad?
"I get he's the current favorite for Mr. Tokyo-3, but I sort've need you to answer this question Rei..." Sighing deeply, Misato smiled at the lovestruck teenage girl. It's not like Misato couldn't see what was going through the young girl's mind. All you had to do was take one quick look at her face and it was obvious. Frowned expression, flushed face, what else could it be?
Walking over to Rei's desk, Misato stood there for a good thirty seconds, wondering if the girl would take any notice of her. The rest of the class was giggling at the apparently oblivious girl, but Rei kept glaring at Shinji, as though if she did for long enough, her angry gaze would laser it's way into his brain and burn him into turning around.
"And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why most teachers get annoyed with teenage relationships. How are you supposed to be learning anything if..." Misato gently tapped the top of Rei's head with a rather heavy English dictionary. "...your mind is totally focused on love instead of the wonderful world of Shakespearean literature?"
"Ow!" Rei, suddenly shocked out of her jealousy-fuelled reverie, sounded cute even when experiencing a jolt of pain. She looked up at Misato, the corner of her eyes watering, looking for all the world like Misato just kicked a puppy. "Why would you do that Sensei?"
She could've felt regret for her actions, but instead, Misato grinned evilly at the confused looking girl.
"Shinji."
"Yes, Misa-... I mean, yes Sensei?"
"It's your turn for clean-up duty after school today, is it not?"
"It is!? I thought it was Toji!?"
"Toji, do you mind awfully swapping with Shinji for today? Rei's going to need some help after school, and I'm sure this will give you perfect opportunity to take Hikari out shopping or something."
"SENSEI!" Both Toji and Hikari shouted out in surprise. One of them didn't sound too upset by it however.
"So it's decided. And now that you have at least an hour alone with him after school, do you mind awfully reading this passage out for me Rei?"
A sly grin snaked its way onto Rei's face.
"It would be my pleasure, Katsuragi-sensei."
Asuka Langley Soryu was fuming.
It wasn't like her regular irritated moods, she quite literally wanted to strangle people. Specifically, four people in particular.
And after the events in English class, she realized that the last thing she wanted to happen was to allow that idiot Shinji to spend more than a minute alone in an empty classroom with the girl who was probably undressing him with her eyes earlier.
Temporarily distracted with the idea of a slightly undressed Shinji, Asuka stomped her way to the classroom, face flushed.
I had him first! What the hell happened to my high-school romance!?
The classroom was deadly silent. Apart from the various sounds of brooms, chalkboard erasers getting spanked and the occasional cough Rei would let out as chalk dust threatened to suffocate her.
"I'm grateful to Katsuragi-sensei but..." Rei cast a sidelong glance at the boy who seemed to have overtaken most of her mental thinking capacity. "What am I supposed to do now!?"
With her thoughts meandering on borderline panic, she continued to bash the erasers together, causing more dust to enter her breathing tubes. It didn't take long for Rei to get overcome with a spat of coughing.
"Rei, you're doing it all wrong."
Out of nowhere, Shinji's hands had snaked their way around her, clasping her hands and forcing her to stop. Her coughing had subsided, but she suddenly felt feverish and even closer to a nervous breakdown.
"S-shinji!"
"You're supposed to be doing it like this."
She wasn't even watching his hands. All that was on her mind right now was how close they were. She could feel his torso pressing up against her back, and she could have sworn she felt a heartbeat that was equally as stressed as hers was.
Was Shinji nervous?
"I need to make sure..." The out-of-character thoughts were making sense to her now, but later on, she would wonder what was going on through her mind at the time as she leant in closer to him. She felt completely enveloped by him, and wanted nothing more than to make this moment last for as long as she could. Forever, if possible.
"A-are you alright Rei?"
"I feel a little lightheaded. I think I inhaled too much dust."
"Do you wanna sit down for a moment?"
"No. I'll be alright... Just..." She mustered as much courage as she could to slowly turn her head to meet his gaze. "Hold me like this... for a little longer."
He looked redder than the sun, and she could feel his nerves spasming throughout his body. He was just as nervous as she was.
But he also felt incredibly warm. And had a really nice scent of coconut and jojoba. Was that the type of shampoo he used?
Several minutes passed, with Rei enjoying the moment, and Shinji wondering if this was an appropriate time to pass out. His own thought process was malfunctioning, and he was seriously starting to wonder if Rei could feel the tightness in his pants as much as he could. He was really hoping she couldn't.
"Shinji."
"Y-yes!?"
"How do you..." She shuffled uncomfortably against him, causing the poor teenage boy further skinship distress. It seemed like her sentence had got lost somewhere in her mind however, as she looked up at him again as she struggled to find her words.
"...about me... howdoyou... I mean... oh, I sound so silly right now... Umm... give me a second..."
Credit where it was due, even a faltering Rei sounded absolutely adorable to him right now. True, he didn't have much of a lid on his own haywire emotions himself right now but...
It was going to make for a really nice memory.
Asuka was ready to kill. She had been secretly eavesdropping on the rendezvous in the classroom for a while now, and was deciding whether to run in and break it up before things got too hot in there.
But before she could make up her mind, she jumped out of her skin as she felt somebody tap her on the shoulder.
"JEEZUSMARYMOTHERAND- MANA!?"
"Ssssshhh!" Mana put her finger to her lips. "They're going to hear you!"
"Why are you here!?" Asuka whispered through gritted teeth.
"For the same reasons you are."
"I'm here to make sure idiot Shinji doesn't take advantage of the situation."
"Then... so am I!" Mana had nothing but a cheesy grin to offer an already enraged Asuka.
"It doesn't take two of us, go home!"
"I don't wanna. I want to be there to help pick up the pieces after Ayanami inevitably turns him down."
"I don't think that's happening anytime soon..." Asuka sighed. "You can see just as well as I can what's going on in there. And did we ever mention that Rei is basically engaged to him?"
It was a thing of beauty to see the ever-chipper Mana looked shocked, but she couldn't revel in it's beauty for too long. Mana had stood up from their crouched postion outside of the slightly cracked open classroom door and was ready to crash the party.
"What are you doing!?" Asuka grabbed the back of the girl's shirt as Mana tried opening the door.
"We have to stop them before it's too late!"
"Shinji is going to be pissed!"
"I'm pissed!"
"So am I, but what if he starts hating you!"
The two girls continued to bicker outside the door. But one strong lunge forward from Mana, and both of them tumbled through the classroom together, giving both Shinji and Rei a more than unwelcome surprise.
"W-wha...! Asuka!? Mana!?"
"I know you won't believe me if I told you this wasn't what it looks like, but at least believe me when I say she started it!" Asuka glared at Mana as both girls got up from the floor, looking sheepish.
"I didn't start anything! I was on my way home when I saw a certain someone crouched in front of the door, looking suspicious!"
"You traitorous sonofa-... Rei? What are you doing?"
Electrical energy sparked around the enraged blue-haired girl as Shinji quickly backed away. He had seen this pattern often enough, and his instincts were all screaming at him to run. For good measure, he enveloped himself in his bracelet's shield first.
"What are you doing here?"
"SHE'S GONNA BLOW!" Asuka lifted her bracelet arm and covered herself with her own shield, as Mana followed suit.
"Rei, calm down!"
"I AM CALM SHINJI" He decided that Rei screaming at him wasn't as cute as Rei stuttering at him.
"SHINJI DO SOMETHING SHE'S GOING TO KILL US!" Asuka screamed as the electrical rage coming from Rei was starting to poke holes into the classroom around them.
"But what can I...?" He suddenly thought of something that might work, but it was risky. Not just now, but for the potential aftermath.
Leaping in front of Rei, Shinji stood with his arms out, his shield deactivated.
"GET OUT OF MY WAY SHINJI!"
"I'm sorry Rei. But I can certainly do this for you instead." Rushing forward before Rei had the chance to fire whatever attack she had charged up, he wrapped his arms around her own, took one quick glance at her suddenly shocked crimson eyes, and kissed her.
"Why are girls lips so soft?" He thought to himself, as he felt the supernatural energy in the room deflate faster than light. His eyes were closed, but Rei's were wide open in shock.
"He... what is he... Shinji..." She closed her own eyes as she allowed Shinji to continue whatever he was doing. "Shinji..."
A few minutes later, Rei was passed out on the ground, a happy grin plastered over her face as Shinji slowly backed away from the two, now incredibly angry females that had watched his daring move.
"Y-you told me to do something and this was all I could think of to stop her!"
"I DIDN'T MEAN A SMOOCH IDIOT! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!?"
"I wasn't really thinking at all to be honest..."
"I COULD'VE TOLD YOU THAT, IDIOT!"
"Asuka, calm down..."
"I AM CALM, ASSHOLE!"
"I think I deserve a kiss next. I could forgive you for that." Mana raised her hand as she giggled, jumping on the terrified Shinji.
"OH NO YOU DON'T! I'VE WAITED FAR TOO LONG FOR YOU TO JUMP AHEAD."
As Shinji suddenly found himself entangled between the two warring girls, part of his mind wondered what he should make for dinner that night.
Fish sounded good. If only so that the smell of fish on his breath might stop his mouth getting molested as much as it had lately.
Her clock was telling her it was somewhere around two in the morning.
Asuka hadn't had an easy time getting to sleep that night. Her mind was full of angry thoughts about what had happened earlier on that day.
"I'm falling behind... He's leaving me behind..." Small sobs began to fall on her pillow.
This wasn't like her! She never cried for anyone, let alone that idiot! Pushing herself up from her bed, glaring angrily at everything around her, she made her decision.
"I'm not losing him to anybody, especially not those two!" She stood up, her vest top and panties gently illuminated from the moonlight from her window. Creeping over to her bedroom door, she gently opened it whilst trying not to make a sound.
The rest of the house seemed fast asleep. Which is exactly what she needed right now. She couldn't have anyone else interfering.
Luckily for her, his room was basically next door to her own.
Gently cracking open Shinji's bedroom door, she peeked in. He was fast asleep, one leg hanging off the side of his bed.
"Thanks for leaving me some room, idiot." She mentally cursed as she tiptoed her way to the side of his bed, and gently slid herself in.
"You're such an idiot." She whispered, poking her crush carefully on the cheek. Wrapping her leg around one of his, she snaked her arms around him as she cuddled up to his warmth.
"You're mine, stupid Shinji. I won't let those two harlots steal you away from me." She glared at him, as though he could hear what she was saying. Instead, she found herself shocked as Shinji decided to turn around in his sleep, and face her directly. His own arms found their way around her, pulling her into a tighter cuddle then before.
"H-hey, stupid Shinji! What are you doing!?"
"Asuka..." Her whole world froze as she heard the sleepy boy mumble.
"Are... are you awake Shinji..." The apparent answer was no, as the still sleeping Shinji proceeded to bury his head into her breasts, nuzzling happily.
"W-wha!" Taken aback by his sudden, if unconsciously-based forwardness, she was at a loss. She, by all rights, should beat the living snot out of him for this, but...
If he was asleep... Then maybe it was okay. For a little while.
"A...su...ka..." The perverted idiot continued to nuzzle into her. "You smell really nice."
A faint smile crossed her face as she tightened her grip around him, giving Shinji a quick kiss on the cheek.
"You're welcome, Shinji. I hope you enjoy your surprise in the morning."
Chapter 10 - You Are Definitely (Not) Alone!
TailoftheDevil
Youkai Enthusiast
- Location
- United Kingdom
What would you do if your hot childhood friend turned up in your bed wearing nothing but a vest top and panties?
Shinji Ikari was a man.
A man with morals.
He wasn't one of those crazy perverts who'd end up masturbating over a sleeping girl, hell no.
He was a gentleman.
At least... That was the argument his conscious was trying to shove down his throat at seven thirty-three in the morning, after opening his eyes to literal boobs.
Forget morning wood. He was almost the victim of a morning knockout!
Have you ever seen those old cartoons, or even those anime that have the main protagonist, his conscious represented by an angel on one shoulder, and his desires or lust represented by a devil on the other?
Shinji's devil and angel side were currently in the midst of a war.
"If she wakes up, she'll castrate us! WITH OUR INTESTINES!"
"I'll castrate you with your damn halo, bitch boy. Look at that cleavage and tell me you don't fancy yourself indulging in some carnal desire."
"If it was Rei, I wouldn't be here thinking up my excuses to Saint Peter!"
"Oh, so because Rei wouldn't fight back, you'd go for it!? You sick fuck, abusing defenseless girls like that."
"N-n-no, I didn't mean it like that!"
As Shinji looked between the metaphorical representations of his subconscious, he was beginning to wonder who was the real devil in their midst.
"...nnnngghh... Shinjiiii~" Asuka groaned in her sleep. "izz cooollllllld. Hug me tighter, idiooot~."
All mental fighting immediately ceased. A treaty was instantaneously signed, and the borders had been drawn on the map.
Angel, Devil and Regular Shinji all shut up, nodded, and proceeded to do exactly what the redheaded demoness had ordered them to do. It may end in death and suffering, but in the end, you just can't run away from death.
All you can do is enjoy the chaos and carnage before the apocalypse turned the world upside down.
And is was just a hug for Christ's sake!
He hadn't had many opportunities to hug her. Sure, there had been times in the past, but he never forgot her sweet scent. He would never understand how girls could still smell like flowers, even after sweating it out in midsummer Japan in a bed with a dude who just jumped off the BO train.
But she just felt so soft. So warm. Her boobs felt fantastic as well, even if she was currently suffocating the poor teenage boy in an unconscious death hug into a well-endowed bosom.
But hey, if it was his time, he at least wanted to die in the softest pillow the world had to offer.
It was around eight twenty five in the morning.
Asuka was wide awake, her face redder than a traffic signal, looking down at the boy she called her childhood friend who she had apparently crushed in her sleep against her own body. Never mind she was in his bed wearing nothing but a vest hanging off one shoulder and her favorite pair of panties and-
"ohmygod WHAT WAS I THINKING!?"
This was slightly different to that one time she had tried waking him up with a kiss. At least then she had been slightly more modest, but right now, she was practically in the nude. Give or take two more moves, but she was more preoccupied with what excuse she was giving Shinji when/if he woke up.
It seemed like a much better idea last night, when she was mad at the world and was slightly very lustful for whatever reasons her pubescent hormones had decided.
Though it didn't look like he would be waking up anytime soon. Shinji was still snoozing away, a stupid grin plastered over his face as he dreamt of whatever it was teenage boys do.
"Bet it's boobs." Asuka mused with a grin as she poked him in the cheek.
"Shi~nji." She whispered his name in a sing-sing voice, albeit slightly riddled with nerves.
"Shinji~... Are you waking up~?" She continued to poke him, her heartbeat starting to pump faster. When it appeared the dreaming boy was still far away in an erotic dreamland, she went for it.
Turning him on his back, Asuka found herself on top of him, her face practically glowing with all the blood being pumped to her face.
"S-shi-nji... D-do-do-do-don't wake up prettypleaseokay." Her voice was trembling as she had the boy straddled to his own bed, her hands pushing her up from either side of his face as her orange hair fell over her shoulders and face, sparkling in the early morning sunrise.
"Please don't wake up..." She silently begged as she leaned in closer. She couldn't wait anymore. She gently pressed her lips to his, holding it for as long as she dared.
It felt like forever had just passed her by in the blink of an eye. Her own eyes were closed, and her pulse had been thumping so hard she couldn't hear a thing except for the sound of her own insanity.
So naturally, she didn't have a clue the bedroom door had opened behind her.
"This is impossible."
Misato Katsuragi glared up at her ceiling. Turning on her futon, she looked at her alarm clock. The digital digits gleefully told her it was currently eight twenty five in the morning.
"You'd need all seven Dragonballs and summon Shenron to make this happen." She sat up in her bed, in her usual sleeping attire of vest and panties, much like a certain someone else, and scowled at the room around her.
She was awake early, on a Saturday. And not a hangover in sight.
"This cannot bode well." She thought to herself as she stood up, stretching out the kinks in her muscles. "This has got to be a bad omen of some kind."
"And I'm hungry too. Maybe I can drag Shinji out of bed and make me some breakfast, if he isn't already awake." Misato giggled as she entertained the thought of waking him up as she was dressed now. It was always funny to tease the boy, and it wasn't like she basically walked around showing as much skin as possible whenever she was at home anyway.
Walking out of her room, she tiptoed towards Shinji's door, an evil grin on her face.
"Time for your morning service Monsieur Ikari!" She opened the door, only to discovered she had been beaten by a certain other roommate.
Asuka Langley Soryu was straddling her prey, her mouth melded onto his, with what looked like no apparent intention of letting go.
By all rights, as their guardian, she should have got mad at Asuka for doing something so sneaky. But considering she was about to surprise Shinji with her own underwear show, Misato thought of an evil plan instead.
Tiptoeing back to her own room, she opened a drawer, rummaged around and found what she had been looking for. She grinned at her treasure, and tiptoed back to Shinji's room.
As suspected, Asuka was still preoccupied. Somehow, Misato had managed to get as close as she could to the bed and leant on her knees, holding the 'treasure' in between two fingers in front of her as she prepared to give the hormonal teenagers the shock of a lifetime.
"I think you might have forgotten something Asuka."
Have you ever heard that sound?
You know, the one that sounds like ringing in your ears after a bomb exploded nearby, or the occasional flash of temporary tinnitus that seems to pop into your life every now and again?
That was all Asuka could currently hear as she opened her shellshocked eyes, mouth still glued to Shinji's as she turned her face ever so slightly to see the 'adult' of the house, grinning like a madwomen, holding what looked very much like a condom package in between them.
"Whilst I don't exactly condone this kind of behavior, if you're going to do it secretly, at least be prepared for any unexpected consequences."
"I SAID I WAS SORRY ASUKA, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME!?"
All Asuka could do was scream in retaliation to Misato's question as the apartment was once again turned into a warzone.
Due to some technical issues, Misato's administrator bracelet had been taken in for maintenance. So the purple-haired teacher was currently cowering in fear behind Mana and Rei as Asuka proceeded to firebomb everything in sight.
"Really Sensei. Waving a condom in front of her face probably wasn't the best idea in the circumstances." Mana chuckled as she raised her shields to the maximum, deflecting a fireball into Shinji's wardrobe, setting all of Shinji's clothes on fire.
"What I really want to know is why Soryu was in Shinji's room to begin with. I'll be sure to interrogate her once she has calmed down." Rei said nonchalantly as her shields were also raised, defending the stricken Misato as she watched her apartment burn in fire and fury.
Both Mana and Rei had come running out of their rooms when they heard Misato's cry for help as the whole apartment had shook. It was as though an earthquake had targeted just their floor as the walls blew dust throughout the damaged structure.
Because it was deemed an emergency, they had not had a chance to change, and Shinji had woken up to what could only be described as the war of the panties. Mana and Rei didn't even have the luxury of shirts. But at least Mana had a bra on...
Sitting on the remains of his bed, a deadpan expression on his face, Shinji firmly decided he was going to buy a lock for his door. And he was definitely having fish today, if not for every meal he'd have for the rest of his life.
Chapter 11 - Return to the Origin
TailoftheDevil
Youkai Enthusiast
- Location
- United Kingdom
Shinji Ikari woke up with a start. Thankfully, his room was empty for once, his recently repaired bedroom dimly lit in the rising sun's lazy light. Pulling on his usual attire, he noticed a strange feeling. He knew what it was, but he couldn't quite put it into words.
Opening the door of his bedroom, he was beginning to confirm his earlier emotions. The house was eerily quiet. Misato, Rei, Mana... and Asuka. Nobody was home.
No. It was even quieter than that. Misato's tiny little apartment looked as though nobody had lived in it for years. Braving himself, Shinji walked around all the bedrooms in the apartment, knowing full well that if the girls were hiding in some corner, at least one of them would punch him into next Tuesday.
But he found nothing.
Misato's room was bare. No furnishings or furniture. It was as though nobody had lived there at all. He found a similar story going into Asuka's room. Not a soul had ever touched foot in that room, he was sure of it. Rei and Mana's rooms didn't even exist, which confused him even more. It had been necessary to use the power of their bracelets to make a sort of makeshift renovation for the girls to move in.
But where their bedroom doors should have been was the unmistakable sight of the apartment's bland colored walls. No door. No handle. No Rei. No Mana.
Panic was beginning to take hold. He didn't have a clue what was going on. Where was everybody?
Running to the apartment door, he swiped his keycard. The door's automatic systems were offline. Grabbing the manual release, Shinji shifted the surprisingly heavy door open and took a look outside.
...Or what was left of it.
A destroyed world greeted his view. A blood-red sky illuminated destroyed apartment buildings and collapsed skyscrapers over what should have been the view of Tokyo-3. Looking around the building he was currently in, he was genuinely surprised Misato's apartment block was still standing. Everything bar their apartment was in total ruins.
Girders were pointing out of huge holes in the structure, as though huge bullets or something similar had torn chunks out of the architecture.
But the most disturbing thing was easily the huge, alien looking hand that was resting on a good portion of the building. That entire side of the building the giant, severed limb was resting on was caked in what looked like a ton of blood. What scared him more than anything else, was that he vaguely recognized that hand from somewhere.
His whole body shaking, he picked his way closer to the hand, across the external balcony of their apartment building. Dodging countless holes and debris was difficult, but he made it to the other side, trying his hardest not to breathe in the smell of death and rot the blue and slightly black, robotic looking hand was giving off. Leaning over the edge of the balcony, he peered over to see if the hand was connected to anything.
And saw Mana's Evangelion Unit 00, albeit it being easily taller than the apartment building, and looking as though something had been eating it.
"W-what the hell is going on?" Shinji whispered, horrified by the titanic, robotic corpse in front of him. "What... why... Why is an Evangelion... here!?"
After somehow making his way out of the building, he slowly walked over to the head of the downed beast. Or what was left of it at least. Half of what he could assume was a skull was protruding from the giant robots helmet. It apparently used to have a single, cyclopedic eye too, though god only knew where that had gone, leaving a black, gaping abyss in its place.
Some distance away, Shinji noticed something else. A long, somewhat thin, cylindrical tube was lying on the ground, easily enough to fit a human inside, if not a few. Some sort of hatch was open on the tube. A terrifying sense of dread raced through him, as his feet slowly dragged his way towards the tube. He was more scared than he had ever been in his life. Partly due to the fact that he felt an incredible amount of familiarity when he saw the strange object.
Like he had seen it before somewhere.
But even though his memories from eight years ago were kind of fuzzy, he could clearly remember Mana hadn't shown him anything else with her toy Evangelions. He certainly didn't remember a tube-like object from back then. So why did he feel he knew what it was?
The hatch had opened facing the sky. After some difficulty, Shinji managed to pile some debris together, enough to help him make a stand to clamber on top of the metallic tube. Even touching it as he clambered on top left him with that same horrifying sense of familiarity. How on earth did he... recognize this thing!?
Standing on top it the metal hunk, keenly aware that he felt like a tightrope walker taking tentative steps towards his own doom, Shinji slowly made his way forward, aware that a strong gust of wind was threatening to blow him off lest he make any kind of haste. He eventually made it to the opened hatch, and took a very long time convincing himself to look inside.
It was dark, and he noticed a strange liquid pooled at the bottom of the container. Intricately designed machinery was inside, but it was still a little too dark for him to see anything clearly. Taking a deep breath, Shinji climbed into the hatch and let himself down, an audible splash echoing as he landed in whatever the strange liquid was under his feet. His breath was ragged, and he was only faintly aware his pulse was hammering through his chest. He looked up and his breath suddenly got caught in his throat.
Lying in a chair, curled into a fetal position, was another corpse, although it was easy to see that this person had once been human. A skeleton, wrapped in a strange, yet-once-again somewhat familiar suit of white that clung to the body tightly, highlighted with black in certain areas. And from what little he could see of the torso from where he stood, he could easily see the numbers '00' embellished just under the collar.
He should have been running. Run somewhere far, far away. But his whole body was frozen, his eyes unmoving from the corpse, the corpse of someone he was sure he knew.
"W-who are you..." His trembling voice echoed around the inside of the metallic walls.
"She was somebody I failed."
Whirling around, Shinji looked at where the strange, disembodied voice had come from, his pulse skyrocketing as he searched for whoever had just talked behind him.
"WHO ARE YOU!? W-WHERE ARE YOU!?"
"I am you. And I am right beside you."
"DON'T BULLSHIT WITH ME. I CAN'T SEE YOU." Shinji looked around him in a panic. He couldn't see anything. What the hell was going on? And that voice... sounded just like...
Standing on top of the hatch above him, he finally noticed the ghostly-looking boy looking down at him. A boy he instantly recognized, but could barely recognize at all.
The ghost of Shinji Ikari was talking to the living, breathing Shinji Ikari. The ghost was wearing a suit similar to the skeleton was, except it had a purple color scheme, with highlights of green and red.
"W-who... are you?"
"Come with me, and I'll show you."
Clambering out of the hatch, living Shinji once again found himself in the bask of the blood-red sky looming over what was left of Tokyo-3. Ghost Shinji was standing next to him, a tired expression worn over a stretched face. He had dark circles under his eyes, and his suit was torn in several places. What on earth happened?
"I am you. Although it would be a lie to say I am the same you."
"That doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense."
The ghost gave a weak chuckle. It was a depressing sort of noise, full of mirth and depression. It was like looking into a shattered mirror. Warped, and nothing like what Shinji could even imagine. He was looking at a broken version of himself.
"I'm not going to lie, it gets a fair bit weirder from here on out." Broken Shinji still seemed to have a sense of humor, although it was still riddled with a lack of sanity and warmth.
The ghost and Shinji left the metallic tube and starting walking into the ruins of the city. Not a soul was to be found, save for the schoolboy and the literal soul pacing around.
"You still haven't really answered my question."
"Before I answer that, there is something I need to show you. But before I do that, I need to ask you a very important question." The ghost stopped in the middle of a downtown high street, riddled with craters and destroyed buildings. Turning to face the living, the ghost looked grim.
"Do you believe in God?"
They continued to walk. Shinji was beginning to recognize parts of the city, at least from what was left of it. But there were some parts he didn't. Putting aside the destroyed remnants of huge artillery guns stationed at various parts of the city, and what looked like destroyed military tanks and VTOLs littering the streets, there were also signs pointing to evacuation shelters. Looking around him answered quite plainly that at some point they had been necessary, but in his Tokyo-3, he'd never seen any of those signs. Aside from earthquake-related shelters, but they didn't look anywhere near as hi-tech as some of the destroyed shelters they'd walked past. It was as though they were built to repel nuclear blasts, or some other weapon of mass destruction. And had failed.
"This is seriously messed up... What the hell happened..." Shinji murmured as they picked their way through the destroyed city.
The ghost was silent, walking towards whatever unknown destination he had in mind. It was frightening, but Shinji had no other choice but to follow his ethereal doppelgänger to wherever this madness ended.
Eventually, they reached what looked like a station. A station leading underground. Written in big letters above the entrance was the words 'GEOFRONT ENTRANCE B-2'. There was also a smaller notice underneath.
Entrance strictly prohibited to NERV personnel only. Unauthorized access will lead to prosecution.
NERV.
"NERV." Shinji whispered. He was sure he had never said the name in his life, but the word fell off his tongue effortlessly. Like it was used to it.
"Let us go." Ghost Shinji said somberly as he walked into the station.
"B-but the sign...!"
"It's alright. There is nobody there now."
Shinji didn't know whether he should feel relieved or even more scared by that. Where was everybody?
The inside felt like some sort of crazy military base. Metallic walls, riddled with what looked like gunshots and bloodstains continued down towards a broken sliding door, embellished with what looked like a logo of some kind. It was hard to make out from all the beating the door had taken, but he could clearly make out 'NERV' in red, along with something like a slogan circled around it.
"Gods in his heaven..." Shinji voiced with trembling nerves.
"...All's right with the world. Ha." The ghost finished with a bitter laugh. "Nothing's right with the world. Nothing..."
They walked a little further in, and came across what looked like a tram, with it's tracks leading deeper into the underground. It was surprisingly a lot less damaged than the rest of what Shinji had seen so far. Entering into the train, Shinji followed his ghost, looking apprehensively at the vehicle around him.
"I bet there's no power left, but maybe we'll be lucky. Grab that lever for me."
"What? Why me?"
"It'll be kind of hard to make this thing move when I can no longer touch anything." The ghost demonstrated his point by trying to grab the lever, and his hand simply passing through it. With his point taken, Shinji grimaced and pulled the lever. After a moment's uncertainty, there was a jolt as the train's deep slumber was interrupted, it's internals groaning in protest as the train began a slow descent into the darkness.
"What do you know, apparently there is some power left. I hope there's enough for a return trip." The ghost laughed mirthlessly, giving Shinji another reason to panic.
"Don't joke about that! Where are we going anyway!?" The laugh left the ghosts face quickly, and something like anger flashed over his face.
"Into the heart of everything. Where everything began, and everything ended."
Light flashed past the windows as the view suddenly expanded from jet-black. Shinji gasped in terror at what should have been a beautiful sight, but was now a wasteland. Greenland was now dyed red from huge amounts of blood, there was destruction and debris everywhere, and Shinji saw the remnants of what looked like a pyramid erected in the center.
But what caught his attention was the sight of another gigantic Evangelion. It was bright red, and had an embellished number of 02. Half of it's head was missing, several of it's remaining eyes had been gouged out, leaving only a single green eye remaining. It's arms and legs had been severed and even from the considerable distance they were, Shinji could still make out a meaty cross-section from the severed limbs.
The quick glance he had seen suddenly made his stomach lurch, and he was almost thankful the destroyed scenery had been blotted out as the train made its way through another tunnel.
"Heh. I don't think you'll be holding on to your lunch anyway, we'll need to go see Unit 02 up close."
"Are you joking!? Why?!"
"We need to go visit the grave of another I failed."
"Aren't you a ball of sunshine." Shinji thought grimly as the train pulled into a stop. After a considerably long walk across the destroyed ruins outside, Shinji looked up to realize he could see the sky, even though they had travelled what felt like miles underground.
"You never used to be able to see the sky. But after the Geofront was destroyed, well..." Ghost Shinji didn't have to explain. The blood-red sky peering at them from their giant hideaway hole was answer enough.
After a short while, they made it to the corpse of the red giant. Corpse felt like fitting word for a robot that apparently had blood, muscles and bones, like the ones Shinji could visibly see sticking out from the red Unit 02. He looked at his own terrified reflection from the single, lifeless eye left on the towering robot.
"What happened to you..." Shinji's mind echoed the question, along with the million other questions he needed answering about the state of the world he was in. The only one who could answer his questions had walked away, towards another tube-like object that he had found earlier. This time the hatch was open on it's side, allowing the ghost Shinji to simply walk inside.
Not looking forward to it, living Shinji followed him in.
And found another corpse. This time not in the fetal position, but lying back on the chair, it's hands still grabbing the two joysticks, the skull's morbid smile grinning at the terrified boy. Shinji spotted the same '02' markings as was on the Evangelion's body outside. But the number was quickly forgotten as he paid more attention to the skeleton's face, and noticed a pair of crimson head accessories where the hair should have been. Head accessories that looked an awful lot like the ones...
"A-Asu...ka...?!" A scared whimper escaped from him as Shinji took a step backwards, the liquid on the floor splashing loudly.
"That is correct. The second girl I failed." His ghost was looking at the corpse, an unreadable expression on his face.
"Asuka Langley Soryu. The Pilot of Evangelion Unit 02."
Shinji was beyond shocked. His mind was getting closer and closer to a nervous breakdown, but he still had one, excruciatingly painful question to ask.
"W-was that other... c-c-corpse we saw e-earlier...?"
"Rei Ayanami. The Pilot of Evangelion Unit 00."
"N-no... Asuka... Rei... NO!" Shinji wanted to scream, he wanted to throw up, he wanted to curl up in a ball, or run away or anything to stop this nightmare unravelling around him.
"A-and Misato?! Mana Kirishima?! My parents?!" Shinji could barely whisper. He didn't want to hear, but he needed to know.
"Misato is dead. My mother died when I was four years old, in what was known as a 'Contact Experiment'. My father..." The ghost looked ready to murder at the mention of their shared father.
"My father. Gendo Ikari." The ghost looked horrifyingly angry. Shinji backed away slowly, eyes wide, shivering in raw fear.
"Gendo Ikari is the man who helped me destroy the world."
His fear had become numb. The shock of those words turned off everything in his brain except the echo of his ghost's last words reverberating around his mind. His father, had helped me, destroy... the world?
"But I'm curious. You mentioned another..." The ghost turned around to face him, his anger replaced by curiosity.
"Who is Mana Kirishima?"
Shinji's mental collapse was temporarily halted by the next revelation thrown at him from his crazy ghost. What do you mean, who was Mana Kirishima?
"We... wait, what? You don't know Mana?" The ghost shook his head, cocking his head to one side, as though he'd forgotten something and was trying to remember.
"She's about yay-tall, deep red hair, cerulean eyes?"
"Are you sure that isn't Asuka?"
"No! Mana had short hair, was a much deeper shade of red than Asuka, not orange."
"Hmmm..." The ghost looked thoughtful. "I've never known someone like that. Not in this world."
"In... this world?"
Ghost Shinji clambered out of the tube's hatch, after taking one last look at Asuka's corpse, nodding with what looked like a silent promise.
"It's time I told you the reason you were brought here. There isn't much time, and as you can see, this world ran out of time. Way before it's time."
Shinji clambered out of the tube, himself taking one last terrified look at the grinning remains of what was a girl he cared about in his own world. Standing on the Geofront's blood-red burnt wasteland, he felt a strange wind blow through the place as he faced his ghost.
"Let me tell you the tale of the boy who became God, and the man who destroyed the world."
A long time had passed. Ghost Shinji explained his life from the very beginning. And from the sounds of things, had experienced a very different life to the one the living Shinji Ikari had experienced.
The Evangelions, who in his world were only the figment of a hyperactive six-year-old's imagination, were titanic weapons used to defend the world from alien 'Angels', intent on wiping out all life on the planet in this one.
His father had apparently been a basket case, using the pretense of fighting these 'Angels' as an excuse to use the potential awakening and deification of an Evangelion to wish his dead wife, and Shinji's mother, back to life. His mother, who was also trapped inside the core of Evangelion Unit-01, and powering it with her own soul.
Then it appeared Rei Ayanami was some sort of hybrid between an Angel herself, and a clone of his dead mother, to which countless 'replacements' had existed. She was to be used in something called the 'Human Instrumentality Project', relating to the existence of a dark organization called 'Seele', intending to turn all of humanity into a mass, conglomerated soul, in an effort to preserve humanity, for everyone to become one with each other, and to force humanity to evolve past it's apparent boundaries.
Not to mention that this world's Shinji Ikari had apparently been abandoned by his father not long after his mother died at some nameless train station, raised by a teacher, and was practically alone for the majority of his life.
And in the end, the dark plans that would destroy the world had succeeded. But in a very different way to how Gendo Ikari and Seele had imagined.
It appeared that in this fight, the Angels had won. Terminal Dogma, the lowest level of what had been NERV headquarters had been breached. Housing a captured Angel known as Lilith, it had been the purpose of the 'Children' to defend her, not knowing their true purpose for fighting.
But the mission had failed. As per orders of Misato Katsuragi, the Operational Director of NERV, ranking under his father, the central complex had been set to self-destruct. Lilith, Misato, his father, the attacking Angel and everybody who worked there had been vaporized. And not long after Asuka and Rei had failed in their own fight against the Angel, dying on the battlefield.
The only one left standing, piloting Unit-01, the Shinji Ikari of this world went insane, awakening to his powers, and ended up destroying the world in the process. Any who was alive had turned into a liquid known as LCL, their soul binding with others who had perished, into a ball of souls that now floated above the surface of the world, for eternity.
"That... is utterly insane."
"When I came to my senses, Unit-01 was empty, a lifeless husk. The soul of my mother just vanished, and starting from then, I was the only one left, not even alive, wandering the surface of this broken world. As alone as I had been that day father left me at that train station years ago."
"But... " Shinji hesitated. "Why are you...?"
"Why am I still here, and not together with the rest of the souls?" Ghost Shinji looked up at the blood-red sky.
"I think... it's the Curse of the Eva."
In many ways, his answer made no sense at all. But in some ways, Shinji could understand. But he still couldn't understand why, after hearing his counterpart's story, he could believe the tale as easily as he could. As though a part of him had actually been here, experiencing the same things.
"That's because I am you. And so are the other Shinji Ikari's in all the other world's that exist out there." Another hard-to-understand answer.
"When I achieved the power of a deity, I saw something. I was going through, as you can imagine, an incredible amount of emotional stress, but I clearly saw other worlds. Other Shinji Ikari's. Some of them were fighting the same fight I was. Some of them had won the fight and experienced a happy-ever-after. Some world's, like your own, didn't even experience the horror's and lived a relatively peaceful life, a normal life." His ghost looked wistful at the end.
"But for the world's that failed. For the worlds that didn't get a happy ending, what's left to do? How do I atone for destroying a world through insanity, and redo everything?"
Shinji looked worried as his ghost turned to him, a somewhat evil grin on his face.
"And that is the reason you are here. You, a being who is me from another world, have the power to fix what was broken. You are the hope that can save the souls circulating the planet, and return everything back to the way it was." Ignoring the living Shinji's jaw drop to the floor, the ghost continued.
"You are my only hope."
After several minutes of blind shock and his brain attempting to process everything he had just heard, he had only one question for his crazy reflection.
"How!?"
"Shinji! SHINJI! Wake up, stupid idiot! We're going to be late for school!"
A familiar voice was shouting at him. His mind felt groggy, like he hadn't slept for over a hundred years. Who was shouting at him?
"Shinji! Come on, get your ass out of bed, we gotta go!" He felt his body being shaken from the shoulders.
"Wait... what?" Shinji blearily opened an eye, and caught a blurry flash of orange hair and a set of bright red hair accessories.
It was her!
Sitting bolt upright in his bed, Shinji reached out and grabbed the suddenly very confused and flushed girl in front of him.
"S-shinji! What are you doing all of a... wait, why are you crying!?"
"Asuka! I'm so... glad..." He didn't care he was probably gunking up her school uniform was snot and tears. "I'm glad... you're... okay..."
"Of course I'm okay... why wouldn't I be?" The flustered girl tried grabbing his shoulders, but Shinji refused to let go. "Shinji, what the hell, did you have a nightmare or something?"
A nightmare...?
It took a few minutes, but eventually Shinji calmed down enough to let Asuka go, much to the annoyance of the two other girls waiting for him at his bedroom door. After making a quick excuse about having to get his clothes on, Shinji stood out of his bed and looked out of his bedroom window to a perfectly crystal clear blue sky. Everything was normal. Asuka, Rei and Mana were all alive, and judging from their reactions, everyone else was okay too. The world hadn't gone mad. Right?
"Was that really a dream? It felt so real..." Shinji murmured as he buttoned up his school shirt, absent-mindedly fiddling with his bracelet as he did so.
"You'd be a fool for thinking that was a dream."
Looking at his own reflection in the mirror, Shinji saw the unmistakeable visage of his ghostly counterpart from the destroyed world standing behind him, grinning madly.
"I look forward to working with you, me."
Misato's entire apartment block echoed with screams of terror.
Opening the door of his bedroom, he was beginning to confirm his earlier emotions. The house was eerily quiet. Misato, Rei, Mana... and Asuka. Nobody was home.
No. It was even quieter than that. Misato's tiny little apartment looked as though nobody had lived in it for years. Braving himself, Shinji walked around all the bedrooms in the apartment, knowing full well that if the girls were hiding in some corner, at least one of them would punch him into next Tuesday.
But he found nothing.
Misato's room was bare. No furnishings or furniture. It was as though nobody had lived there at all. He found a similar story going into Asuka's room. Not a soul had ever touched foot in that room, he was sure of it. Rei and Mana's rooms didn't even exist, which confused him even more. It had been necessary to use the power of their bracelets to make a sort of makeshift renovation for the girls to move in.
But where their bedroom doors should have been was the unmistakable sight of the apartment's bland colored walls. No door. No handle. No Rei. No Mana.
Panic was beginning to take hold. He didn't have a clue what was going on. Where was everybody?
Running to the apartment door, he swiped his keycard. The door's automatic systems were offline. Grabbing the manual release, Shinji shifted the surprisingly heavy door open and took a look outside.
...Or what was left of it.
A destroyed world greeted his view. A blood-red sky illuminated destroyed apartment buildings and collapsed skyscrapers over what should have been the view of Tokyo-3. Looking around the building he was currently in, he was genuinely surprised Misato's apartment block was still standing. Everything bar their apartment was in total ruins.
Girders were pointing out of huge holes in the structure, as though huge bullets or something similar had torn chunks out of the architecture.
But the most disturbing thing was easily the huge, alien looking hand that was resting on a good portion of the building. That entire side of the building the giant, severed limb was resting on was caked in what looked like a ton of blood. What scared him more than anything else, was that he vaguely recognized that hand from somewhere.
His whole body shaking, he picked his way closer to the hand, across the external balcony of their apartment building. Dodging countless holes and debris was difficult, but he made it to the other side, trying his hardest not to breathe in the smell of death and rot the blue and slightly black, robotic looking hand was giving off. Leaning over the edge of the balcony, he peered over to see if the hand was connected to anything.
And saw Mana's Evangelion Unit 00, albeit it being easily taller than the apartment building, and looking as though something had been eating it.
"W-what the hell is going on?" Shinji whispered, horrified by the titanic, robotic corpse in front of him. "What... why... Why is an Evangelion... here!?"
After somehow making his way out of the building, he slowly walked over to the head of the downed beast. Or what was left of it at least. Half of what he could assume was a skull was protruding from the giant robots helmet. It apparently used to have a single, cyclopedic eye too, though god only knew where that had gone, leaving a black, gaping abyss in its place.
Some distance away, Shinji noticed something else. A long, somewhat thin, cylindrical tube was lying on the ground, easily enough to fit a human inside, if not a few. Some sort of hatch was open on the tube. A terrifying sense of dread raced through him, as his feet slowly dragged his way towards the tube. He was more scared than he had ever been in his life. Partly due to the fact that he felt an incredible amount of familiarity when he saw the strange object.
Like he had seen it before somewhere.
But even though his memories from eight years ago were kind of fuzzy, he could clearly remember Mana hadn't shown him anything else with her toy Evangelions. He certainly didn't remember a tube-like object from back then. So why did he feel he knew what it was?
The hatch had opened facing the sky. After some difficulty, Shinji managed to pile some debris together, enough to help him make a stand to clamber on top of the metallic tube. Even touching it as he clambered on top left him with that same horrifying sense of familiarity. How on earth did he... recognize this thing!?
Standing on top it the metal hunk, keenly aware that he felt like a tightrope walker taking tentative steps towards his own doom, Shinji slowly made his way forward, aware that a strong gust of wind was threatening to blow him off lest he make any kind of haste. He eventually made it to the opened hatch, and took a very long time convincing himself to look inside.
It was dark, and he noticed a strange liquid pooled at the bottom of the container. Intricately designed machinery was inside, but it was still a little too dark for him to see anything clearly. Taking a deep breath, Shinji climbed into the hatch and let himself down, an audible splash echoing as he landed in whatever the strange liquid was under his feet. His breath was ragged, and he was only faintly aware his pulse was hammering through his chest. He looked up and his breath suddenly got caught in his throat.
Lying in a chair, curled into a fetal position, was another corpse, although it was easy to see that this person had once been human. A skeleton, wrapped in a strange, yet-once-again somewhat familiar suit of white that clung to the body tightly, highlighted with black in certain areas. And from what little he could see of the torso from where he stood, he could easily see the numbers '00' embellished just under the collar.
He should have been running. Run somewhere far, far away. But his whole body was frozen, his eyes unmoving from the corpse, the corpse of someone he was sure he knew.
"W-who are you..." His trembling voice echoed around the inside of the metallic walls.
"She was somebody I failed."
Whirling around, Shinji looked at where the strange, disembodied voice had come from, his pulse skyrocketing as he searched for whoever had just talked behind him.
"WHO ARE YOU!? W-WHERE ARE YOU!?"
"I am you. And I am right beside you."
"DON'T BULLSHIT WITH ME. I CAN'T SEE YOU." Shinji looked around him in a panic. He couldn't see anything. What the hell was going on? And that voice... sounded just like...
Standing on top of the hatch above him, he finally noticed the ghostly-looking boy looking down at him. A boy he instantly recognized, but could barely recognize at all.
The ghost of Shinji Ikari was talking to the living, breathing Shinji Ikari. The ghost was wearing a suit similar to the skeleton was, except it had a purple color scheme, with highlights of green and red.
"W-who... are you?"
"Come with me, and I'll show you."
Clambering out of the hatch, living Shinji once again found himself in the bask of the blood-red sky looming over what was left of Tokyo-3. Ghost Shinji was standing next to him, a tired expression worn over a stretched face. He had dark circles under his eyes, and his suit was torn in several places. What on earth happened?
"I am you. Although it would be a lie to say I am the same you."
"That doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense."
The ghost gave a weak chuckle. It was a depressing sort of noise, full of mirth and depression. It was like looking into a shattered mirror. Warped, and nothing like what Shinji could even imagine. He was looking at a broken version of himself.
"I'm not going to lie, it gets a fair bit weirder from here on out." Broken Shinji still seemed to have a sense of humor, although it was still riddled with a lack of sanity and warmth.
The ghost and Shinji left the metallic tube and starting walking into the ruins of the city. Not a soul was to be found, save for the schoolboy and the literal soul pacing around.
"You still haven't really answered my question."
"Before I answer that, there is something I need to show you. But before I do that, I need to ask you a very important question." The ghost stopped in the middle of a downtown high street, riddled with craters and destroyed buildings. Turning to face the living, the ghost looked grim.
"Do you believe in God?"
They continued to walk. Shinji was beginning to recognize parts of the city, at least from what was left of it. But there were some parts he didn't. Putting aside the destroyed remnants of huge artillery guns stationed at various parts of the city, and what looked like destroyed military tanks and VTOLs littering the streets, there were also signs pointing to evacuation shelters. Looking around him answered quite plainly that at some point they had been necessary, but in his Tokyo-3, he'd never seen any of those signs. Aside from earthquake-related shelters, but they didn't look anywhere near as hi-tech as some of the destroyed shelters they'd walked past. It was as though they were built to repel nuclear blasts, or some other weapon of mass destruction. And had failed.
"This is seriously messed up... What the hell happened..." Shinji murmured as they picked their way through the destroyed city.
The ghost was silent, walking towards whatever unknown destination he had in mind. It was frightening, but Shinji had no other choice but to follow his ethereal doppelgänger to wherever this madness ended.
Eventually, they reached what looked like a station. A station leading underground. Written in big letters above the entrance was the words 'GEOFRONT ENTRANCE B-2'. There was also a smaller notice underneath.
Entrance strictly prohibited to NERV personnel only. Unauthorized access will lead to prosecution.
NERV.
"NERV." Shinji whispered. He was sure he had never said the name in his life, but the word fell off his tongue effortlessly. Like it was used to it.
"Let us go." Ghost Shinji said somberly as he walked into the station.
"B-but the sign...!"
"It's alright. There is nobody there now."
Shinji didn't know whether he should feel relieved or even more scared by that. Where was everybody?
The inside felt like some sort of crazy military base. Metallic walls, riddled with what looked like gunshots and bloodstains continued down towards a broken sliding door, embellished with what looked like a logo of some kind. It was hard to make out from all the beating the door had taken, but he could clearly make out 'NERV' in red, along with something like a slogan circled around it.
"Gods in his heaven..." Shinji voiced with trembling nerves.
"...All's right with the world. Ha." The ghost finished with a bitter laugh. "Nothing's right with the world. Nothing..."
They walked a little further in, and came across what looked like a tram, with it's tracks leading deeper into the underground. It was surprisingly a lot less damaged than the rest of what Shinji had seen so far. Entering into the train, Shinji followed his ghost, looking apprehensively at the vehicle around him.
"I bet there's no power left, but maybe we'll be lucky. Grab that lever for me."
"What? Why me?"
"It'll be kind of hard to make this thing move when I can no longer touch anything." The ghost demonstrated his point by trying to grab the lever, and his hand simply passing through it. With his point taken, Shinji grimaced and pulled the lever. After a moment's uncertainty, there was a jolt as the train's deep slumber was interrupted, it's internals groaning in protest as the train began a slow descent into the darkness.
"What do you know, apparently there is some power left. I hope there's enough for a return trip." The ghost laughed mirthlessly, giving Shinji another reason to panic.
"Don't joke about that! Where are we going anyway!?" The laugh left the ghosts face quickly, and something like anger flashed over his face.
"Into the heart of everything. Where everything began, and everything ended."
Light flashed past the windows as the view suddenly expanded from jet-black. Shinji gasped in terror at what should have been a beautiful sight, but was now a wasteland. Greenland was now dyed red from huge amounts of blood, there was destruction and debris everywhere, and Shinji saw the remnants of what looked like a pyramid erected in the center.
But what caught his attention was the sight of another gigantic Evangelion. It was bright red, and had an embellished number of 02. Half of it's head was missing, several of it's remaining eyes had been gouged out, leaving only a single green eye remaining. It's arms and legs had been severed and even from the considerable distance they were, Shinji could still make out a meaty cross-section from the severed limbs.
The quick glance he had seen suddenly made his stomach lurch, and he was almost thankful the destroyed scenery had been blotted out as the train made its way through another tunnel.
"Heh. I don't think you'll be holding on to your lunch anyway, we'll need to go see Unit 02 up close."
"Are you joking!? Why?!"
"We need to go visit the grave of another I failed."
"Aren't you a ball of sunshine." Shinji thought grimly as the train pulled into a stop. After a considerably long walk across the destroyed ruins outside, Shinji looked up to realize he could see the sky, even though they had travelled what felt like miles underground.
"You never used to be able to see the sky. But after the Geofront was destroyed, well..." Ghost Shinji didn't have to explain. The blood-red sky peering at them from their giant hideaway hole was answer enough.
After a short while, they made it to the corpse of the red giant. Corpse felt like fitting word for a robot that apparently had blood, muscles and bones, like the ones Shinji could visibly see sticking out from the red Unit 02. He looked at his own terrified reflection from the single, lifeless eye left on the towering robot.
"What happened to you..." Shinji's mind echoed the question, along with the million other questions he needed answering about the state of the world he was in. The only one who could answer his questions had walked away, towards another tube-like object that he had found earlier. This time the hatch was open on it's side, allowing the ghost Shinji to simply walk inside.
Not looking forward to it, living Shinji followed him in.
And found another corpse. This time not in the fetal position, but lying back on the chair, it's hands still grabbing the two joysticks, the skull's morbid smile grinning at the terrified boy. Shinji spotted the same '02' markings as was on the Evangelion's body outside. But the number was quickly forgotten as he paid more attention to the skeleton's face, and noticed a pair of crimson head accessories where the hair should have been. Head accessories that looked an awful lot like the ones...
"A-Asu...ka...?!" A scared whimper escaped from him as Shinji took a step backwards, the liquid on the floor splashing loudly.
"That is correct. The second girl I failed." His ghost was looking at the corpse, an unreadable expression on his face.
"Asuka Langley Soryu. The Pilot of Evangelion Unit 02."
Shinji was beyond shocked. His mind was getting closer and closer to a nervous breakdown, but he still had one, excruciatingly painful question to ask.
"W-was that other... c-c-corpse we saw e-earlier...?"
"Rei Ayanami. The Pilot of Evangelion Unit 00."
"N-no... Asuka... Rei... NO!" Shinji wanted to scream, he wanted to throw up, he wanted to curl up in a ball, or run away or anything to stop this nightmare unravelling around him.
"A-and Misato?! Mana Kirishima?! My parents?!" Shinji could barely whisper. He didn't want to hear, but he needed to know.
"Misato is dead. My mother died when I was four years old, in what was known as a 'Contact Experiment'. My father..." The ghost looked ready to murder at the mention of their shared father.
"My father. Gendo Ikari." The ghost looked horrifyingly angry. Shinji backed away slowly, eyes wide, shivering in raw fear.
"Gendo Ikari is the man who helped me destroy the world."
His fear had become numb. The shock of those words turned off everything in his brain except the echo of his ghost's last words reverberating around his mind. His father, had helped me, destroy... the world?
"But I'm curious. You mentioned another..." The ghost turned around to face him, his anger replaced by curiosity.
"Who is Mana Kirishima?"
Shinji's mental collapse was temporarily halted by the next revelation thrown at him from his crazy ghost. What do you mean, who was Mana Kirishima?
"We... wait, what? You don't know Mana?" The ghost shook his head, cocking his head to one side, as though he'd forgotten something and was trying to remember.
"She's about yay-tall, deep red hair, cerulean eyes?"
"Are you sure that isn't Asuka?"
"No! Mana had short hair, was a much deeper shade of red than Asuka, not orange."
"Hmmm..." The ghost looked thoughtful. "I've never known someone like that. Not in this world."
"In... this world?"
Ghost Shinji clambered out of the tube's hatch, after taking one last look at Asuka's corpse, nodding with what looked like a silent promise.
"It's time I told you the reason you were brought here. There isn't much time, and as you can see, this world ran out of time. Way before it's time."
Shinji clambered out of the tube, himself taking one last terrified look at the grinning remains of what was a girl he cared about in his own world. Standing on the Geofront's blood-red burnt wasteland, he felt a strange wind blow through the place as he faced his ghost.
"Let me tell you the tale of the boy who became God, and the man who destroyed the world."
A long time had passed. Ghost Shinji explained his life from the very beginning. And from the sounds of things, had experienced a very different life to the one the living Shinji Ikari had experienced.
The Evangelions, who in his world were only the figment of a hyperactive six-year-old's imagination, were titanic weapons used to defend the world from alien 'Angels', intent on wiping out all life on the planet in this one.
His father had apparently been a basket case, using the pretense of fighting these 'Angels' as an excuse to use the potential awakening and deification of an Evangelion to wish his dead wife, and Shinji's mother, back to life. His mother, who was also trapped inside the core of Evangelion Unit-01, and powering it with her own soul.
Then it appeared Rei Ayanami was some sort of hybrid between an Angel herself, and a clone of his dead mother, to which countless 'replacements' had existed. She was to be used in something called the 'Human Instrumentality Project', relating to the existence of a dark organization called 'Seele', intending to turn all of humanity into a mass, conglomerated soul, in an effort to preserve humanity, for everyone to become one with each other, and to force humanity to evolve past it's apparent boundaries.
Not to mention that this world's Shinji Ikari had apparently been abandoned by his father not long after his mother died at some nameless train station, raised by a teacher, and was practically alone for the majority of his life.
And in the end, the dark plans that would destroy the world had succeeded. But in a very different way to how Gendo Ikari and Seele had imagined.
It appeared that in this fight, the Angels had won. Terminal Dogma, the lowest level of what had been NERV headquarters had been breached. Housing a captured Angel known as Lilith, it had been the purpose of the 'Children' to defend her, not knowing their true purpose for fighting.
But the mission had failed. As per orders of Misato Katsuragi, the Operational Director of NERV, ranking under his father, the central complex had been set to self-destruct. Lilith, Misato, his father, the attacking Angel and everybody who worked there had been vaporized. And not long after Asuka and Rei had failed in their own fight against the Angel, dying on the battlefield.
The only one left standing, piloting Unit-01, the Shinji Ikari of this world went insane, awakening to his powers, and ended up destroying the world in the process. Any who was alive had turned into a liquid known as LCL, their soul binding with others who had perished, into a ball of souls that now floated above the surface of the world, for eternity.
"That... is utterly insane."
"When I came to my senses, Unit-01 was empty, a lifeless husk. The soul of my mother just vanished, and starting from then, I was the only one left, not even alive, wandering the surface of this broken world. As alone as I had been that day father left me at that train station years ago."
"But... " Shinji hesitated. "Why are you...?"
"Why am I still here, and not together with the rest of the souls?" Ghost Shinji looked up at the blood-red sky.
"I think... it's the Curse of the Eva."
In many ways, his answer made no sense at all. But in some ways, Shinji could understand. But he still couldn't understand why, after hearing his counterpart's story, he could believe the tale as easily as he could. As though a part of him had actually been here, experiencing the same things.
"That's because I am you. And so are the other Shinji Ikari's in all the other world's that exist out there." Another hard-to-understand answer.
"When I achieved the power of a deity, I saw something. I was going through, as you can imagine, an incredible amount of emotional stress, but I clearly saw other worlds. Other Shinji Ikari's. Some of them were fighting the same fight I was. Some of them had won the fight and experienced a happy-ever-after. Some world's, like your own, didn't even experience the horror's and lived a relatively peaceful life, a normal life." His ghost looked wistful at the end.
"But for the world's that failed. For the worlds that didn't get a happy ending, what's left to do? How do I atone for destroying a world through insanity, and redo everything?"
Shinji looked worried as his ghost turned to him, a somewhat evil grin on his face.
"And that is the reason you are here. You, a being who is me from another world, have the power to fix what was broken. You are the hope that can save the souls circulating the planet, and return everything back to the way it was." Ignoring the living Shinji's jaw drop to the floor, the ghost continued.
"You are my only hope."
After several minutes of blind shock and his brain attempting to process everything he had just heard, he had only one question for his crazy reflection.
"How!?"
"Shinji! SHINJI! Wake up, stupid idiot! We're going to be late for school!"
A familiar voice was shouting at him. His mind felt groggy, like he hadn't slept for over a hundred years. Who was shouting at him?
"Shinji! Come on, get your ass out of bed, we gotta go!" He felt his body being shaken from the shoulders.
"Wait... what?" Shinji blearily opened an eye, and caught a blurry flash of orange hair and a set of bright red hair accessories.
It was her!
Sitting bolt upright in his bed, Shinji reached out and grabbed the suddenly very confused and flushed girl in front of him.
"S-shinji! What are you doing all of a... wait, why are you crying!?"
"Asuka! I'm so... glad..." He didn't care he was probably gunking up her school uniform was snot and tears. "I'm glad... you're... okay..."
"Of course I'm okay... why wouldn't I be?" The flustered girl tried grabbing his shoulders, but Shinji refused to let go. "Shinji, what the hell, did you have a nightmare or something?"
A nightmare...?
It took a few minutes, but eventually Shinji calmed down enough to let Asuka go, much to the annoyance of the two other girls waiting for him at his bedroom door. After making a quick excuse about having to get his clothes on, Shinji stood out of his bed and looked out of his bedroom window to a perfectly crystal clear blue sky. Everything was normal. Asuka, Rei and Mana were all alive, and judging from their reactions, everyone else was okay too. The world hadn't gone mad. Right?
"Was that really a dream? It felt so real..." Shinji murmured as he buttoned up his school shirt, absent-mindedly fiddling with his bracelet as he did so.
"You'd be a fool for thinking that was a dream."
Looking at his own reflection in the mirror, Shinji saw the unmistakeable visage of his ghostly counterpart from the destroyed world standing behind him, grinning madly.
"I look forward to working with you, me."
Misato's entire apartment block echoed with screams of terror.
Chapter 12 - Shadows
TailoftheDevil
Youkai Enthusiast
- Location
- United Kingdom
School was a relatively normal affair. Or at least, it would have been, had Shinji not been constantly glancing over his shoulder, mumbling something like 'He's still standing there...' over and over again. Asuka stared at the boy's back in front of her, wondering if he had finally snapped. He had screamed most of their neighborhood awake earlier, not to mention the unexplained 'nightmare' he'd had and the way he had...
Asuka blushed furiously as she remembered how tightly Shinji had been holding her earlier. She would have preferred a slightly more romantic situation, but her curiosity was starting to get the better of her. Why had he been crying? Why had he been acting like she had been killed or something?
By the window, Rei Ayanami was having similar thoughts, albeit with some jealousy of not having received a hug herself. Spinning her lead pencil in her hand, her crimson eyes glared at Shinji's back.
There! He did it again. Looking over his shoulder, not at her, but at something in the back of the class, his eyes quivering as they found what they were looking for. Those same eyes quickly darted towards her, meeting her own, before quickly turning back to his desk, back hunched, sweating profusely.
What on Earth had Shinji Ikari so spooked?
Not being able to bear it any longer, both Rei and Asuka had frogmarched Shinji to the roof as soon as the lunch break bell had tolled, with Mana, Toji, Kensuke and Hikari following suit.
"Shin-man, you feeling okay?" Toji, ever-so-delicate in these situations, opened the interrogation as directly as possible. But to no avail.
""I'm fine, I'm okay, I'm not crazy."
"Shinji, no one's calling you crazy. Yet." Asuka was really beginning to consider calling the mad scientists Shinji had for parents, but felt it was best to wait just a little longer before calling in Shinji's funny farm family. The feeling was replaced with the idea that she should call in the big guns with all haste when she caught him looking at what must have been a strange looking patch of oxygen floating over her shoulder.
"Shinji, what in god's name are you looking at?" She groaned as she physically turned around to see what it was. But all she could see was the remainder of the roof, overlooking the school sport's field.
"Wait a minute..." She squinted. Something was... bending light? Or at least, that was the only way she could accurately describe it. Something was weird with the air in the direction Shinji was looking at. Was she going crazy too?
She was suddenly distracted by Rei standing up violently behind her. Her bracelet arm was outreached and pointing to the same patch of weirdness Asuka had been looking at.
"WHO ARE YOU?! SHOW YOURSELF!" Everyone in the surrounding area jumped at Rei's sudden outburst. Hikari, who hadn't yet noticed the oddity in the air around them, giggled slightly.
"Rei, not you too. There's nobody the-..." Hikari's voice caught in her throat as she turned to face what everyone else was suddenly looking at.
And saw Ghost Shinji, looking as maniacal as ever, grinning to the crowd of astounded teenagers. Save regular Shinji, who looked ready to climb over the roof's fencing and launch himself into oblivion.
"What..." Asuka began.
"...the actual..." Toji continued.
"...fuck." Rei finished, eyes wide in shock. Asuka tore her eyes away from the spectral version of Shinji for a moment to glare at the blunette.
"Since when did you learn how to curse?"
"I must admit, I'm just as surprised." Shinji's ghostly twin laughed, the same mirthless and almost evil laugh the original had heard before. "The Ayanami in my world would have never done something like that."
"Your world?" Asuka whispered back, not sure she had understood what she had just heard. The Shinji she was now describing as Shadow Shinji just laughed at her words, raising a hand.
"NO, DON'T DO IT!" Shinji screamed, standing up, attempting to run towards the ghost.
But he never made it. Shadow Shinji had changed their world into the one from his dream, and once again the world was bathed in a crimson sky and destroyed remnants of what had once been society.
"I told you before." Shinji faced his shadow, whose grin had turned into a deadly serious expression. "You are my only hope. Save this world."
"And I still don't have a clue how!" Shinji whimpered as he took a step back.
"And that's why I have brought your friends along. A certain someone once told me..." Shadow Shinji glanced over at Rei. "You are not alone."
"So you're telling me..." Asuka repeated for the umpteenth time. "That this is something like a parallel world to our own."
"With Evangelions..." Mana, her eyes stretched open wide, still hadn't recovered from the fact that her childhood-induced story about giant robots fighting weird aliens was a reality in this world.
"And that everyone is dead, except they're all floating in that ball of souls..." Asuka continued, pointing towards the sky, where there was indeed an ethereal sphere the size of a huge moon swirling not far from the planet's surface.
"To top it all off, we're going to visit my corpse, after having just seen Ayanami's..." Asuka looked back at Rei with some degree of pity. She looked visibly traumatized and had thrown up outside the 'Entry Plug' after visiting her dead counterpart in this world. It hadn't given Asuka any confidence about how she was going to react herself, and she wasn't sure she really wanted to check out how her bones looked on the inside.
The trip to the remains of the Geofront was equally as spooky, with the whole group silent as they rode the tram to the underground. For his part, Shinji was surprised there actually was still power for them to ride it. The familiar view of Unit 02's rotting corpse was back, a sight he was never going to get used to.
"I still don't understand what you think we can do." Shinji said softly as he gazed over at the dead robot. His eyes briefly drifted over the second Entry Plug, their destination. His shadow smiled grimly.
"You'll see when we get there."
They got there after several more minutes, and found themselves standing outside the Entry Plug. After several more minutes of deep breaths and panic, Asuka finally climbed into the hatch.
An agonizing silence followed. Nobody else had dared go into the plug with her, wanting to respect her time alone with her deceased self. Shinji kept glancing over at his shadow self, who was looking oddly... concentrated on the plug in front of him. As though he was waiting for something.
His patience had paid off. A scream echoed from inside the plug, reverberating through the chilled air of the ruined Geofront.
"ASUKA!" Shinji ran to the plug's hatch, letting himself inside to save her.
What he saw stopped him in his tracks. The Asuka from his world was there, looking horrified as she pointed towards a second Asuka, clad in the crimson Plug Suit bearing Unit 02's insignia. And more importantly...
This Asuka was no longer a corpse. She was a living, breathing, and very pissed Asuka who no longer looked nothing like a skeleton.
The dead had been resurrected.
"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING, THIRD CHILD!?"
The newly resurrected Asuka had living Shinji raised in the air by his shirt collar. Struggling for breath was about the best he could do as the raging girl continued to scream bloody murder at him.
"THE WORLD'S DEAD BECAUSE OF YOU!"
The screaming continued, shaking the living Shinji not only physically, but mentally.
"WHY!? WHY DID YOU DO IT!?"
He could hear years of anguish and sorrow from the girl in front of him. Her eyes were wild with fury, and he was starting to worry that this Asuka was genuinely going to kill him.
The rest of the gang piled in to separate the soon-to-be murder attempt, with Toji and Kensuke having to physically restrain the out-of-control redhead. Even with Toji's athletic build, he was still having trouble holding her still.
"Suzuhara!? You're supposed to be dead!" Her eyes bloodshot with fury, her rage quickly began to subside when this world's Asuka took a look around at the people in her vicinity.
"Hikari...?" The class president nodded nervously.
"Aida?" Kensuke also nodded.
"How... are you...?" Raising her hands in front of her, she continued, her voice trembling. "How am I...?"
"You've been resurrected. You are the first to come back."
Rage flashed through her eyes once again as this world's Asuka heard Shinji's voice. But when she turned to face the source, her rage once again vanished when she noticed it came not from the living, but from the ghost.
"What...?" She began, looking between the two Shinji's. "Why are there two of you? And why is one of you... dead?" Her gaze fixated itself on the ghostly Shinji.
"Tell me everything."
"So you're telling me..."
Déjà vu hit the group strong as the newly reborn, crimson-clad Asuka repeated for the umpteenth time. "That they're from something like a parallel world to our own?"
"Is that how I honestly sound to other people?" The Asuka wearing her school uniform had her face in her hands as the group continued their trek back to the remains of Unit-00. Rei was glued to Shinji's arm, understandably panicking at the thought of having to go visit her corpse one more time.
The idea was, just as they had done with Asuka, they were going to try and revive the Rei Ayanami from this world. However, according to the semi-living residents of this world, they needed to take utmost caution with this revival.
One wrong move, and they could resurrect a hostile Angel.
The group as a whole were still a little unfamiliar with the concept of what these 'Angels' were, but something that sounded like a godsent alien bent on world destruction didn't sound like something they wanted to awaken anytime soon. Silence fell on the group as they continued walking, well aware that they could be walking towards their own doom.
"And what about you?" The plugsuit-wearing Asuka asked her otherworld counterpart, who looked almost frightened of her destroyed world variant.
"W-what!?"
"I'm asking about your world." The two sides of the mirror had fallen back from the main group and were talking quietly amongst themselves. For her part, the Asuka who was alien to this world was still processing the fact that she was essentially talking to herself, realizing that she had no idea how to talk to a reflection that had clearly seen some traumatic stuff.
"My world? What about it?"
"How are things any different from here?" Her doppelgänger waved her arm around, indicating the destruction around them. "How is your world different from a world that died fighting alien messengers of God?"
It took a while to formulate a response. She had no idea where to begin. How were the two worlds any different? The problem was basically everything was different.
"In my world... For the moment at least, everything is peaceful."
There were no Angels. Evangelions were apparently Mana's childhood-induced recipe for some crazy manga. Their godhand-powered bracelets were a thing, but she had still yet to master how to use it completely.
"The only thing I've had to worry about lately is some clandestine organization that apparently wants to steal the power of the bracelets. We have no idea what they want with them, but apparently you can take over the world or something if you know how to use them..." Asuka said sheepishly. She was almost ashamed at how little she actually knew about what they were up against.
"Who's trying to take them?"
"Uhhh..." What were they called again?
Mana had been a spy for them. Shinji's parents knew about them. It was on the tip of her tongue, but...
"Shinji!" She called out to live version, but both Shinji's turned around.
"What?" They said in unison.
"Uhh, okay so this question is directed to the Shinji with a pulse, but what was the name of that creepy organization that wants to steal the bracelets?"
Shadow Shinji had the audacity to look slightly offended, but the living Shinji just scratched his head. Mana fidgeted next to him, looking awkward as she remembered her previous employers.
"I think..." Shinji concentrated as he thought back to his 'interrogation' of Mana. "Weren't they called..." His eyes lit up as he remembered the elusive name.
"Seele?"
The temperature of the atmosphere dropped rapidly. The second the last syllable left Shinji's mouth, both the Asuka and Shinji from this world looked ready for murder.
"ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!? SEELE!?"
"This is bad." Shadow Shinji looked at the living replica's with a deadly serious expression.
"If there's an incarnation of Seele in your world, we need to move fast."
"Seele helped turned this world into the sea of crap it is. I don't care what world you're from, but Seele are bad news." The plugsuit Asuka grabbed the shoulders of her schoolgirl reflection, shaking them violently. "We need to do something to stop this from happening again!"
The group fell silent once more after the outburst over Seele. They had made it out of the Geofront, and were slowly walking over the destruction of Tokyo-3 to where the remains of Unit-00 lay. Along the way, destroyed world's Asuka and Shinji explained the machinations of Seele, Gendo Ikari, the Angels and the Evangelions as briefly as they could.
To those from the peaceful world, it sounded worse than hell on Earth.
The brief history lesson was beginning to conclude when Unit-00 came into view once again. Rei whimpered at the sight of the intimidating Evangelion, clinging at Shinji's arm. He was sure his circulation was going to stop at any second with Rei's iron grip.
The two Asuka's were at the back of the group once again, mumbling about the differences between the two world's.
"Wait, Rei and the idiot are technically engaged!? And that girl... Mana was it? She used to be a spy for Seele, but now work's for Shinji's parents as a bracelet-user and a double-agent to spy on Seele?" Plugsuit Asuka smiled grimly.
"She sounds like Kaji. And you're saying she likes Shinji too?"
"Yup."
"And what about you?" Her plugsuit reflection asked nonchalantly.
"Did your Shinji ever manage to topple the 'impenetrable wall of Jericho'?"
"What in the world are you talking about!?" Asuka hissed at her irritating counterpart. She could hear hints of a sexual innuendo with the 'Jericho' spiel, and god knew her nerves weren't ready to begin thinking of how good Shinji might be in bed, her imagination immediately conjuring a muscular, shirtless Shinji with strong arms that wrapped around her like silk, pressing against her whilst they-
"Oh my god, STOP!" Asuka internally screamed at her wildly out-of-control imagination.
"Do you love him?"
Looking ahead at where the living and Ghost Shinji were, walking towards their depressing destination, Asuka smiled at herself as she found her eyes fixated on the back of living Shinji's head.
"Yeah, I do."
The Asuka of this world smiled too, albeit a smile that looked almost sorrowful, as her line of sight found the back of Shadow Shinji's head.
"That sounds kinda nice."
Unlike when Asuka went to revive her other self, there was no feasible way the traumatized Rei was getting back into the Entry Plug by herself. Shinji went in first, holding Rei's hand. As irritated by the idea as she was, Asuka allowed it to happen, realizing they wouldn't get anywhere otherwise.
Plugsuit Asuka glared angrily as Ghost Shinji, as though he had done something equally offensive. For his part, he just looked fairly confused.
"No no no no..." Rei was wide-eyed in fear, crying behind Shinji as she looked at the skeletal remains of this world's version of herself, looking the same as the day Shinji first laid eyes on the corpse in the fetal position.
"I can't... I can't look at her... No, please, I need to get out of here..."
"It'll be fine Rei." Holding her hand tightly, Shinji silently begged the girl to stop crushing his arm, before he seriously considered amputating it. "I'm right here, it's going to be okay."
Crimson eyes looked up at him fearfully. Rei nodded silently as she raised her bracelet arm, pointing it towards the corpse. Shinji could hear the cerulean blue bracelet rattling with nerves as Rei held it towards her target. Wrapping an arm around her shoulder, Shinji felt the frightened girl calm down a little. Inhaling deeply, Rei held her breath for a moment, before exhaling her nerves, a sliver of determination returning to her eyes.
"Resurrection!"
An eerily green glow surrounded the skeletal form of Rei Ayanami. Bones creaked, organs and skin rapidly regrew, all whilst the skeleton was pulled out of it's fetal position and into a sitting position on the Entry Plug's control seat. It was slightly gruesome to watch, but it was like watching a person melting in reverse. Bright blue hair regrew rapidly, and as a noticeable difference to Shinji, was growing way past Rei's normal hair length. It fell long, way past shoulder-length, and stopped at what he guessed would reach her lower back if she stood up.
The frightened Rei had been watching in terror-stricken awe up until this point, when the skin on her face starting regrowing, and the corpse's eyes popped back into the sockets with sickening, slimy sound. Shinji's ears had started to ring with Rei suddenly screaming at the horrifying image.
But as quickly as it had all started, it was over. A fully-restored, plugsuit-clad Rei Ayanami from the destroyed world was sat in her chair, eyes closed but breathing.
At Rei's scream, the rest of the group had clambered onto the Entry Plug and were now peering into the darkened depths.
"Rei! Are you ok...ay..." Asuka started to shout into the plug, but stopped when she noticed the restored girl in the chair.
"I... think so..." It hadn't been the Rei she was used to talking. The newly resurrected Rei had just awoken, rubbing her head as though some nameless pain was annoying her.
And then she opened her eyes. Everyone present gasped in surprise as they noticed something else different to this version of Rei Ayanami. Her eyes were no longer the penetrating crimson they had been before.
Unit-00's Rei Ayanami, had bright green eyes. Eyes that looked around the plug around her, and in a scared voice, quietly whispered.
"Who are you?"
Asuka blushed furiously as she remembered how tightly Shinji had been holding her earlier. She would have preferred a slightly more romantic situation, but her curiosity was starting to get the better of her. Why had he been crying? Why had he been acting like she had been killed or something?
By the window, Rei Ayanami was having similar thoughts, albeit with some jealousy of not having received a hug herself. Spinning her lead pencil in her hand, her crimson eyes glared at Shinji's back.
There! He did it again. Looking over his shoulder, not at her, but at something in the back of the class, his eyes quivering as they found what they were looking for. Those same eyes quickly darted towards her, meeting her own, before quickly turning back to his desk, back hunched, sweating profusely.
What on Earth had Shinji Ikari so spooked?
Not being able to bear it any longer, both Rei and Asuka had frogmarched Shinji to the roof as soon as the lunch break bell had tolled, with Mana, Toji, Kensuke and Hikari following suit.
"Shin-man, you feeling okay?" Toji, ever-so-delicate in these situations, opened the interrogation as directly as possible. But to no avail.
""I'm fine, I'm okay, I'm not crazy."
"Shinji, no one's calling you crazy. Yet." Asuka was really beginning to consider calling the mad scientists Shinji had for parents, but felt it was best to wait just a little longer before calling in Shinji's funny farm family. The feeling was replaced with the idea that she should call in the big guns with all haste when she caught him looking at what must have been a strange looking patch of oxygen floating over her shoulder.
"Shinji, what in god's name are you looking at?" She groaned as she physically turned around to see what it was. But all she could see was the remainder of the roof, overlooking the school sport's field.
"Wait a minute..." She squinted. Something was... bending light? Or at least, that was the only way she could accurately describe it. Something was weird with the air in the direction Shinji was looking at. Was she going crazy too?
She was suddenly distracted by Rei standing up violently behind her. Her bracelet arm was outreached and pointing to the same patch of weirdness Asuka had been looking at.
"WHO ARE YOU?! SHOW YOURSELF!" Everyone in the surrounding area jumped at Rei's sudden outburst. Hikari, who hadn't yet noticed the oddity in the air around them, giggled slightly.
"Rei, not you too. There's nobody the-..." Hikari's voice caught in her throat as she turned to face what everyone else was suddenly looking at.
And saw Ghost Shinji, looking as maniacal as ever, grinning to the crowd of astounded teenagers. Save regular Shinji, who looked ready to climb over the roof's fencing and launch himself into oblivion.
"What..." Asuka began.
"...the actual..." Toji continued.
"...fuck." Rei finished, eyes wide in shock. Asuka tore her eyes away from the spectral version of Shinji for a moment to glare at the blunette.
"Since when did you learn how to curse?"
"I must admit, I'm just as surprised." Shinji's ghostly twin laughed, the same mirthless and almost evil laugh the original had heard before. "The Ayanami in my world would have never done something like that."
"Your world?" Asuka whispered back, not sure she had understood what she had just heard. The Shinji she was now describing as Shadow Shinji just laughed at her words, raising a hand.
"NO, DON'T DO IT!" Shinji screamed, standing up, attempting to run towards the ghost.
But he never made it. Shadow Shinji had changed their world into the one from his dream, and once again the world was bathed in a crimson sky and destroyed remnants of what had once been society.
"I told you before." Shinji faced his shadow, whose grin had turned into a deadly serious expression. "You are my only hope. Save this world."
"And I still don't have a clue how!" Shinji whimpered as he took a step back.
"And that's why I have brought your friends along. A certain someone once told me..." Shadow Shinji glanced over at Rei. "You are not alone."
"So you're telling me..." Asuka repeated for the umpteenth time. "That this is something like a parallel world to our own."
"With Evangelions..." Mana, her eyes stretched open wide, still hadn't recovered from the fact that her childhood-induced story about giant robots fighting weird aliens was a reality in this world.
"And that everyone is dead, except they're all floating in that ball of souls..." Asuka continued, pointing towards the sky, where there was indeed an ethereal sphere the size of a huge moon swirling not far from the planet's surface.
"To top it all off, we're going to visit my corpse, after having just seen Ayanami's..." Asuka looked back at Rei with some degree of pity. She looked visibly traumatized and had thrown up outside the 'Entry Plug' after visiting her dead counterpart in this world. It hadn't given Asuka any confidence about how she was going to react herself, and she wasn't sure she really wanted to check out how her bones looked on the inside.
The trip to the remains of the Geofront was equally as spooky, with the whole group silent as they rode the tram to the underground. For his part, Shinji was surprised there actually was still power for them to ride it. The familiar view of Unit 02's rotting corpse was back, a sight he was never going to get used to.
"I still don't understand what you think we can do." Shinji said softly as he gazed over at the dead robot. His eyes briefly drifted over the second Entry Plug, their destination. His shadow smiled grimly.
"You'll see when we get there."
They got there after several more minutes, and found themselves standing outside the Entry Plug. After several more minutes of deep breaths and panic, Asuka finally climbed into the hatch.
An agonizing silence followed. Nobody else had dared go into the plug with her, wanting to respect her time alone with her deceased self. Shinji kept glancing over at his shadow self, who was looking oddly... concentrated on the plug in front of him. As though he was waiting for something.
His patience had paid off. A scream echoed from inside the plug, reverberating through the chilled air of the ruined Geofront.
"ASUKA!" Shinji ran to the plug's hatch, letting himself inside to save her.
What he saw stopped him in his tracks. The Asuka from his world was there, looking horrified as she pointed towards a second Asuka, clad in the crimson Plug Suit bearing Unit 02's insignia. And more importantly...
This Asuka was no longer a corpse. She was a living, breathing, and very pissed Asuka who no longer looked nothing like a skeleton.
The dead had been resurrected.
"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING, THIRD CHILD!?"
The newly resurrected Asuka had living Shinji raised in the air by his shirt collar. Struggling for breath was about the best he could do as the raging girl continued to scream bloody murder at him.
"THE WORLD'S DEAD BECAUSE OF YOU!"
The screaming continued, shaking the living Shinji not only physically, but mentally.
"WHY!? WHY DID YOU DO IT!?"
He could hear years of anguish and sorrow from the girl in front of him. Her eyes were wild with fury, and he was starting to worry that this Asuka was genuinely going to kill him.
The rest of the gang piled in to separate the soon-to-be murder attempt, with Toji and Kensuke having to physically restrain the out-of-control redhead. Even with Toji's athletic build, he was still having trouble holding her still.
"Suzuhara!? You're supposed to be dead!" Her eyes bloodshot with fury, her rage quickly began to subside when this world's Asuka took a look around at the people in her vicinity.
"Hikari...?" The class president nodded nervously.
"Aida?" Kensuke also nodded.
"How... are you...?" Raising her hands in front of her, she continued, her voice trembling. "How am I...?"
"You've been resurrected. You are the first to come back."
Rage flashed through her eyes once again as this world's Asuka heard Shinji's voice. But when she turned to face the source, her rage once again vanished when she noticed it came not from the living, but from the ghost.
"What...?" She began, looking between the two Shinji's. "Why are there two of you? And why is one of you... dead?" Her gaze fixated itself on the ghostly Shinji.
"Tell me everything."
"So you're telling me..."
Déjà vu hit the group strong as the newly reborn, crimson-clad Asuka repeated for the umpteenth time. "That they're from something like a parallel world to our own?"
"Is that how I honestly sound to other people?" The Asuka wearing her school uniform had her face in her hands as the group continued their trek back to the remains of Unit-00. Rei was glued to Shinji's arm, understandably panicking at the thought of having to go visit her corpse one more time.
The idea was, just as they had done with Asuka, they were going to try and revive the Rei Ayanami from this world. However, according to the semi-living residents of this world, they needed to take utmost caution with this revival.
One wrong move, and they could resurrect a hostile Angel.
The group as a whole were still a little unfamiliar with the concept of what these 'Angels' were, but something that sounded like a godsent alien bent on world destruction didn't sound like something they wanted to awaken anytime soon. Silence fell on the group as they continued walking, well aware that they could be walking towards their own doom.
"And what about you?" The plugsuit-wearing Asuka asked her otherworld counterpart, who looked almost frightened of her destroyed world variant.
"W-what!?"
"I'm asking about your world." The two sides of the mirror had fallen back from the main group and were talking quietly amongst themselves. For her part, the Asuka who was alien to this world was still processing the fact that she was essentially talking to herself, realizing that she had no idea how to talk to a reflection that had clearly seen some traumatic stuff.
"My world? What about it?"
"How are things any different from here?" Her doppelgänger waved her arm around, indicating the destruction around them. "How is your world different from a world that died fighting alien messengers of God?"
It took a while to formulate a response. She had no idea where to begin. How were the two worlds any different? The problem was basically everything was different.
"In my world... For the moment at least, everything is peaceful."
There were no Angels. Evangelions were apparently Mana's childhood-induced recipe for some crazy manga. Their godhand-powered bracelets were a thing, but she had still yet to master how to use it completely.
"The only thing I've had to worry about lately is some clandestine organization that apparently wants to steal the power of the bracelets. We have no idea what they want with them, but apparently you can take over the world or something if you know how to use them..." Asuka said sheepishly. She was almost ashamed at how little she actually knew about what they were up against.
"Who's trying to take them?"
"Uhhh..." What were they called again?
Mana had been a spy for them. Shinji's parents knew about them. It was on the tip of her tongue, but...
"Shinji!" She called out to live version, but both Shinji's turned around.
"What?" They said in unison.
"Uhh, okay so this question is directed to the Shinji with a pulse, but what was the name of that creepy organization that wants to steal the bracelets?"
Shadow Shinji had the audacity to look slightly offended, but the living Shinji just scratched his head. Mana fidgeted next to him, looking awkward as she remembered her previous employers.
"I think..." Shinji concentrated as he thought back to his 'interrogation' of Mana. "Weren't they called..." His eyes lit up as he remembered the elusive name.
"Seele?"
The temperature of the atmosphere dropped rapidly. The second the last syllable left Shinji's mouth, both the Asuka and Shinji from this world looked ready for murder.
"ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!? SEELE!?"
"This is bad." Shadow Shinji looked at the living replica's with a deadly serious expression.
"If there's an incarnation of Seele in your world, we need to move fast."
"Seele helped turned this world into the sea of crap it is. I don't care what world you're from, but Seele are bad news." The plugsuit Asuka grabbed the shoulders of her schoolgirl reflection, shaking them violently. "We need to do something to stop this from happening again!"
The group fell silent once more after the outburst over Seele. They had made it out of the Geofront, and were slowly walking over the destruction of Tokyo-3 to where the remains of Unit-00 lay. Along the way, destroyed world's Asuka and Shinji explained the machinations of Seele, Gendo Ikari, the Angels and the Evangelions as briefly as they could.
To those from the peaceful world, it sounded worse than hell on Earth.
The brief history lesson was beginning to conclude when Unit-00 came into view once again. Rei whimpered at the sight of the intimidating Evangelion, clinging at Shinji's arm. He was sure his circulation was going to stop at any second with Rei's iron grip.
The two Asuka's were at the back of the group once again, mumbling about the differences between the two world's.
"Wait, Rei and the idiot are technically engaged!? And that girl... Mana was it? She used to be a spy for Seele, but now work's for Shinji's parents as a bracelet-user and a double-agent to spy on Seele?" Plugsuit Asuka smiled grimly.
"She sounds like Kaji. And you're saying she likes Shinji too?"
"Yup."
"And what about you?" Her plugsuit reflection asked nonchalantly.
"Did your Shinji ever manage to topple the 'impenetrable wall of Jericho'?"
"What in the world are you talking about!?" Asuka hissed at her irritating counterpart. She could hear hints of a sexual innuendo with the 'Jericho' spiel, and god knew her nerves weren't ready to begin thinking of how good Shinji might be in bed, her imagination immediately conjuring a muscular, shirtless Shinji with strong arms that wrapped around her like silk, pressing against her whilst they-
"Oh my god, STOP!" Asuka internally screamed at her wildly out-of-control imagination.
"Do you love him?"
Looking ahead at where the living and Ghost Shinji were, walking towards their depressing destination, Asuka smiled at herself as she found her eyes fixated on the back of living Shinji's head.
"Yeah, I do."
The Asuka of this world smiled too, albeit a smile that looked almost sorrowful, as her line of sight found the back of Shadow Shinji's head.
"That sounds kinda nice."
Unlike when Asuka went to revive her other self, there was no feasible way the traumatized Rei was getting back into the Entry Plug by herself. Shinji went in first, holding Rei's hand. As irritated by the idea as she was, Asuka allowed it to happen, realizing they wouldn't get anywhere otherwise.
Plugsuit Asuka glared angrily as Ghost Shinji, as though he had done something equally offensive. For his part, he just looked fairly confused.
"No no no no..." Rei was wide-eyed in fear, crying behind Shinji as she looked at the skeletal remains of this world's version of herself, looking the same as the day Shinji first laid eyes on the corpse in the fetal position.
"I can't... I can't look at her... No, please, I need to get out of here..."
"It'll be fine Rei." Holding her hand tightly, Shinji silently begged the girl to stop crushing his arm, before he seriously considered amputating it. "I'm right here, it's going to be okay."
Crimson eyes looked up at him fearfully. Rei nodded silently as she raised her bracelet arm, pointing it towards the corpse. Shinji could hear the cerulean blue bracelet rattling with nerves as Rei held it towards her target. Wrapping an arm around her shoulder, Shinji felt the frightened girl calm down a little. Inhaling deeply, Rei held her breath for a moment, before exhaling her nerves, a sliver of determination returning to her eyes.
"Resurrection!"
An eerily green glow surrounded the skeletal form of Rei Ayanami. Bones creaked, organs and skin rapidly regrew, all whilst the skeleton was pulled out of it's fetal position and into a sitting position on the Entry Plug's control seat. It was slightly gruesome to watch, but it was like watching a person melting in reverse. Bright blue hair regrew rapidly, and as a noticeable difference to Shinji, was growing way past Rei's normal hair length. It fell long, way past shoulder-length, and stopped at what he guessed would reach her lower back if she stood up.
The frightened Rei had been watching in terror-stricken awe up until this point, when the skin on her face starting regrowing, and the corpse's eyes popped back into the sockets with sickening, slimy sound. Shinji's ears had started to ring with Rei suddenly screaming at the horrifying image.
But as quickly as it had all started, it was over. A fully-restored, plugsuit-clad Rei Ayanami from the destroyed world was sat in her chair, eyes closed but breathing.
At Rei's scream, the rest of the group had clambered onto the Entry Plug and were now peering into the darkened depths.
"Rei! Are you ok...ay..." Asuka started to shout into the plug, but stopped when she noticed the restored girl in the chair.
"I... think so..." It hadn't been the Rei she was used to talking. The newly resurrected Rei had just awoken, rubbing her head as though some nameless pain was annoying her.
And then she opened her eyes. Everyone present gasped in surprise as they noticed something else different to this version of Rei Ayanami. Her eyes were no longer the penetrating crimson they had been before.
Unit-00's Rei Ayanami, had bright green eyes. Eyes that looked around the plug around her, and in a scared voice, quietly whispered.
"Who are you?"
FF and SV versions now at the same point.
TailoftheDevil
Youkai Enthusiast
- Location
- United Kingdom
Looks like I've finally caught up with the FanFiction.net release. Although I guess SV's version can be considered a V2 release, ironed out some random errors I caught whilst migrating it over here. Nothing major though, just typos and odd bits. Haven't really figured out a way to refer to two sets of the same characters, so hopefully this will work until I've figured out an alternative. Crimson Asuka, Shadow Shinji and Green-Eyed Rei all sound pretty badass, but it all feels a little off somehow. They also sound like pirate nicknames, although that's not necessarily a bad thing xD
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Chapter 13 - Advent Children
TailoftheDevil
Youkai Enthusiast
- Location
- United Kingdom
"W-what?"
Asuka's stuttered response to their situation at large reflected what the group as a whole was thinking, regardless of what world they were from.
This new Rei was an enigma.
At first, it appeared that her eyes were the only thing that were different, as well as the mountain of hair she had grown since her rebirth. But it rapidly became certain that there was a whole lot more going on behind those new leaf-colored irises. The only thing she seemed to remember for certain was her name.
She had no idea who the 'strange' people surrounding her were. She also didn't have a clue why she was sat in an odd pod-like object, wearing a peculiar skin-tight suit.
She was even more confused by the girl clinging onto a certain somebody's arm that looked just like her.
Standing up, albeit a little wobbly, this world's Rei wombled over to the frightened Rei holding onto Shinji for dear life, and glared at her. The new Rei's extra-length hair curled around her body and fell in front of her face, which she fruitlessly tried to blow out of her field of vision.
"Who are you?"
"I-I was k-k-kind of hoping I could ask you that..." Crimson-eyed Rei sort of whimpered into Shinji's back, the latter of whom was wondering if this wasn't all some insane hallucination.
"What is your name?"
"R-rei... Ayanami"
"But... I'm Rei Ayanami!"
As the two Rei's argued over who the real Rei was, Ghost Shinji and Crimson Asuka were having a heated debate over the memory-loss of their once fellow pilot.
"Maybe it's amnesia?" Shadow Shinji looked at the girl he had risked his life for countless times thoughtfully.
"And amnesia somehow knocked the red right out of her eyes huh?"
"You got any better ideas Asuka?" Shinji of the Dead glared at his former pilot-mate, who shot him an even more venomous glare right back.
"Lilith is dead. You remember Lilith right? That godforsaken Angel we apparently had locked up in the basement at NERV?"
"You and Rei died before you guys even knew about Lilith, how do you know about that?" Crimson Asuka groaned before pointing towards the sphere of faintly screaming crazy that floated above their heads.
"Instrumentality. Or at least, the part of it that almost worked."
"Oh..."
"Is that, 'Oh, that Instrumentality, the one where humanity's every secret is laid bare to everyone else' kind of 'Oh...'?"
"Ah..." Ghost Shinji didn't look too happy with what that apparently meant. Not that it meant much of anything to the rest of the group.
"And you know what, whilst we're on the subject, I saw all kinds of other worlds where we were fighting Angels and crap. There was this one world where you were standing over me whilst I was comatose in a hospital bed..."
"DON'T SAY ANOTHER WORD ASUKA!"
"DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO THIRD CHILD!" After her roar of fury that silenced the whole group, Asuka continued bitterly.
"Who even does that? Who faps to an unconscious girl in a hospital bed, seriously?"
"YOU DID WHAT!?" It was the other Asuka's turn to scream, picking up the living Shinji by his shirt collar, shaking him around like a leaf in a hurricane. "WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO ME WHILST I WAS ASLEEP YOU FAPPY BASTARD!?"
"I...didn't...do...anything." Shinji managed to choke out whilst being subject once again to another angry Asuka's screaming two feet off the ground.
"And not to mention..." Ghost Shinji said adamantly. "This was a Shinji who existed in another world. Neither him..." He pointed to his other self currently getting asphyxiated. "Nor me did anything like that! We're innocent!"
Crimson Asuka shot the ghost a livid look that would shake hell to it's very foundations.
"You. Destroyed. The. World." She was seething with every syllable. The people around her were genuinely surprised she wasn't spitting fire. "If you weren't already dead, I'd kill you myself, here and now!"
"And...you do...all that weird stuff...to me...when I'm sleeping..." Meanwhile, living Shinji, on the verge of oxygen-deprived unconsciousness, blurted out something that caused the whole group to rapidly change their attention to the other fight.
"You..." Now it was Ghost Shinji's turn to look creeped out. "You utter hypocrite..."
With a face as rougé as her plugsuit, Crimson Asuka was at a loss for words. She just looked at her otherworld counterpart with a horrified expression. She only had one, despair-filled word to give.
"Why...?"
"THAT'S NOT... THAT'S... ARRGGHHHHHHH!" With her scream gurgling in frustration in her throat, the other Asuka dropped the near-dead Shinji unceremoniously on the ground, and started to back away from Mana and red-eyed Rei, both pointing charged bracelets at her.
"Today's been an odd kind of day, huh guys?" Hikari had been mostly silent for the whole trip. But with her first bit of dialogue since they left the school roof, Toji and Kensuke agreed. It had certainly been an odd kind of day.
"So the plan is, we go back to our world, find out as much as we can about the bracelets, Seele, and anything we could potentially use to fix this world." Shinji said as his ghostly counterpart nodded.
"We can't do anything here at the moment. The Angels no longer exist and have no reason to attack even if they did. Rei's new look seems to lend some credence to that theory." Ghost Shinji looked at the new Rei. "Though I would like to know where her memories ran off to."
The group assembled together, getting ready for departure. Shinji, looking a little worse for wear after Asuka's rough treatment, was looking forward to going home. He really didn't like the death-riddled atmosphere of this world.
Raising his hand, Ghost Shinji began to talk as his world started to fade away to black.
"Looking forward to our new life together." His maniacal grin was back, bringing with it some unpleasant thoughts.
"What did he mean by..." Before he could finish, Shinji found himself sitting on the roof of the school once again. It was night time, so they must have been in the otherworld for a lot longer then they all realized.
"We've missed all our afternoon classes!?" Hikari shrieked when she realised what time it was. "My perfect attendance record, gone..."
While the class president cursed the ghost for his awful sense of timing, the rest of the group began to head home, thoroughly exhausted after the events of the day.
Not a word was said as they all left the building. Quick goodbyes were shared as Kensuke, Hikari who was still sobbing, and Toji, attempting to comfort the girl left to go their separate ways home.
Which left the awkward atmosphere shared by Asuka, Shinji, Rei and Mana as they slowly walked the familiar route back to their abode. It was only when Misato's apartment building started coming into view that Asuka suddenly spoke up.
"Well, at least you aren't crazy!"
The others turned to look at her, deadpan expressions everywhere.
"What?"
"Shinji, the second you get home you need to summon and install a lock for your door."
"I'm starting to think a lock isn't going to be enough Rei."
"She has a bracelet too. A molester with the powers of a deity... That's terrifying when you think about it."
"WHAT THE HELL!?" Asuka yelled furiously at the rest of them. "I'D NEVER DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT!"
"I dunno... History's telling us that you're lying and horny as hell."
"I could say the same to you Mana Kirishima!"
"She could turn herself invisible, create a portal in her room that opens up in his, hypnotise him into sharing her wildest fetishes... gehehehe..." Rei had started to drool with a goofy grin as she counted all the things that could be done with the powers they all shared.
"You could turn him into a girl for a day... Shapeshift him into any form you could think of... Drown his body in chocolate..." Mana wore an identical expression to Rei as Shinji began running for the questionable sanctity of his room.
"You three are freaking me out! You're all perverted!"
Making it up to the apartment door a few minutes later, Shinji stopped to catch his breath before he opened the way into his veritable prison.
Getting his keycard out of his bag, he hastily swiped it, intending to lock himself in his room and reinforce it as much as possible as the receiver beeped and a green light shone into his eyes, allowing him access.
Taking three steps into his home, he dropped everything he was holding as he saw the only thing that could possibly make his day a hell of a lot worse.
"Shinji, how the hell have you gotten so much faster..." Asuka huffed and wheezed as she made it to the door behind him. Looking up at the sight that Shinji saw, she wanted to scream agony to the center of the world.
"Welcome home guys, you sure are late!"
Ghost Shinji, Crimson Asuka, who was wearing what looked like the original's yellow sundress that was surely appropriated from the fuming girl's wardrobe and green-eyed Rei, wearing what looked like Asuka's short, black skirt and white tank top that also appeared to come from the same source, were all sitting on the couch watching what looked like a magical girl anime on TV.
The scene was wrapped up nicely by a clearly insane looking Misato sitting at the kitchen table, which was overladen with various types of strong spirits. A bottle of tequila was open and half-empty as the crazed woman looked at the front door, smiling with what looked like the intention that she wanted to eat them alive.
"Guyz! Can you *hic* tell the school tomorrow... that I'z taking a sick day? Or..." She finished the glass of straight tequila in her hand in one gulp. "geurhhh... or a *hic* mental health day?"
"Um... Misato, we can explain..." Shinji sheepishly tried to reassure the clearly shaken Misato, whilst wondering where on earth he would begin with this latest series of events.
"No need! Those three told me everything!" She wobbled an arm towards the inhabitants of her couch.
"Two Ashuka's, a Rei that had a major makeover where she traded all her memories and a dead Shinji that destroyed another world! With alienz and shtuff!" She burped as she poured herself another strong drink in front of the aghast Shinji, whilst the couch-side Asuka snickered.
"Some things never change."
"Wait til Mama Ikari finds out about thiz! She's gonna blow a musket! Cheers!" Misato giggled as she raised her glass in the air, before promptly passing out on the table, the contents of her glass spilling out all over the table.
The night was only beginning, but Shinji realized he might need a day off school tomorrow too, if only to have any chance in hell of sorting out all the mess that had happened tonight.
But when he finally managed to clear Misato and her assortment of strong alcohol off the table and get her into bed, the others had all already gone to bed, doppelgängers with their respective originals, and had the terrifying prospect of having to sleep in a room with a ghost standing watch over him all night.
"Please don't do anything strange to me."
"I would never dream of it." His ghost snickered as he lay on the floor. Something in his voice told Shinji he wasn't to be trusted.
Needless to say, the living schoolboy never got a wink of sleep that night.
Asuka's stuttered response to their situation at large reflected what the group as a whole was thinking, regardless of what world they were from.
This new Rei was an enigma.
At first, it appeared that her eyes were the only thing that were different, as well as the mountain of hair she had grown since her rebirth. But it rapidly became certain that there was a whole lot more going on behind those new leaf-colored irises. The only thing she seemed to remember for certain was her name.
She had no idea who the 'strange' people surrounding her were. She also didn't have a clue why she was sat in an odd pod-like object, wearing a peculiar skin-tight suit.
She was even more confused by the girl clinging onto a certain somebody's arm that looked just like her.
Standing up, albeit a little wobbly, this world's Rei wombled over to the frightened Rei holding onto Shinji for dear life, and glared at her. The new Rei's extra-length hair curled around her body and fell in front of her face, which she fruitlessly tried to blow out of her field of vision.
"Who are you?"
"I-I was k-k-kind of hoping I could ask you that..." Crimson-eyed Rei sort of whimpered into Shinji's back, the latter of whom was wondering if this wasn't all some insane hallucination.
"What is your name?"
"R-rei... Ayanami"
"But... I'm Rei Ayanami!"
As the two Rei's argued over who the real Rei was, Ghost Shinji and Crimson Asuka were having a heated debate over the memory-loss of their once fellow pilot.
"Maybe it's amnesia?" Shadow Shinji looked at the girl he had risked his life for countless times thoughtfully.
"And amnesia somehow knocked the red right out of her eyes huh?"
"You got any better ideas Asuka?" Shinji of the Dead glared at his former pilot-mate, who shot him an even more venomous glare right back.
"Lilith is dead. You remember Lilith right? That godforsaken Angel we apparently had locked up in the basement at NERV?"
"You and Rei died before you guys even knew about Lilith, how do you know about that?" Crimson Asuka groaned before pointing towards the sphere of faintly screaming crazy that floated above their heads.
"Instrumentality. Or at least, the part of it that almost worked."
"Oh..."
"Is that, 'Oh, that Instrumentality, the one where humanity's every secret is laid bare to everyone else' kind of 'Oh...'?"
"Ah..." Ghost Shinji didn't look too happy with what that apparently meant. Not that it meant much of anything to the rest of the group.
"And you know what, whilst we're on the subject, I saw all kinds of other worlds where we were fighting Angels and crap. There was this one world where you were standing over me whilst I was comatose in a hospital bed..."
"DON'T SAY ANOTHER WORD ASUKA!"
"DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO THIRD CHILD!" After her roar of fury that silenced the whole group, Asuka continued bitterly.
"Who even does that? Who faps to an unconscious girl in a hospital bed, seriously?"
"YOU DID WHAT!?" It was the other Asuka's turn to scream, picking up the living Shinji by his shirt collar, shaking him around like a leaf in a hurricane. "WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO ME WHILST I WAS ASLEEP YOU FAPPY BASTARD!?"
"I...didn't...do...anything." Shinji managed to choke out whilst being subject once again to another angry Asuka's screaming two feet off the ground.
"And not to mention..." Ghost Shinji said adamantly. "This was a Shinji who existed in another world. Neither him..." He pointed to his other self currently getting asphyxiated. "Nor me did anything like that! We're innocent!"
Crimson Asuka shot the ghost a livid look that would shake hell to it's very foundations.
"You. Destroyed. The. World." She was seething with every syllable. The people around her were genuinely surprised she wasn't spitting fire. "If you weren't already dead, I'd kill you myself, here and now!"
"And...you do...all that weird stuff...to me...when I'm sleeping..." Meanwhile, living Shinji, on the verge of oxygen-deprived unconsciousness, blurted out something that caused the whole group to rapidly change their attention to the other fight.
"You..." Now it was Ghost Shinji's turn to look creeped out. "You utter hypocrite..."
With a face as rougé as her plugsuit, Crimson Asuka was at a loss for words. She just looked at her otherworld counterpart with a horrified expression. She only had one, despair-filled word to give.
"Why...?"
"THAT'S NOT... THAT'S... ARRGGHHHHHHH!" With her scream gurgling in frustration in her throat, the other Asuka dropped the near-dead Shinji unceremoniously on the ground, and started to back away from Mana and red-eyed Rei, both pointing charged bracelets at her.
"Today's been an odd kind of day, huh guys?" Hikari had been mostly silent for the whole trip. But with her first bit of dialogue since they left the school roof, Toji and Kensuke agreed. It had certainly been an odd kind of day.
"So the plan is, we go back to our world, find out as much as we can about the bracelets, Seele, and anything we could potentially use to fix this world." Shinji said as his ghostly counterpart nodded.
"We can't do anything here at the moment. The Angels no longer exist and have no reason to attack even if they did. Rei's new look seems to lend some credence to that theory." Ghost Shinji looked at the new Rei. "Though I would like to know where her memories ran off to."
The group assembled together, getting ready for departure. Shinji, looking a little worse for wear after Asuka's rough treatment, was looking forward to going home. He really didn't like the death-riddled atmosphere of this world.
Raising his hand, Ghost Shinji began to talk as his world started to fade away to black.
"Looking forward to our new life together." His maniacal grin was back, bringing with it some unpleasant thoughts.
"What did he mean by..." Before he could finish, Shinji found himself sitting on the roof of the school once again. It was night time, so they must have been in the otherworld for a lot longer then they all realized.
"We've missed all our afternoon classes!?" Hikari shrieked when she realised what time it was. "My perfect attendance record, gone..."
While the class president cursed the ghost for his awful sense of timing, the rest of the group began to head home, thoroughly exhausted after the events of the day.
Not a word was said as they all left the building. Quick goodbyes were shared as Kensuke, Hikari who was still sobbing, and Toji, attempting to comfort the girl left to go their separate ways home.
Which left the awkward atmosphere shared by Asuka, Shinji, Rei and Mana as they slowly walked the familiar route back to their abode. It was only when Misato's apartment building started coming into view that Asuka suddenly spoke up.
"Well, at least you aren't crazy!"
The others turned to look at her, deadpan expressions everywhere.
"What?"
"Shinji, the second you get home you need to summon and install a lock for your door."
"I'm starting to think a lock isn't going to be enough Rei."
"She has a bracelet too. A molester with the powers of a deity... That's terrifying when you think about it."
"WHAT THE HELL!?" Asuka yelled furiously at the rest of them. "I'D NEVER DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT!"
"I dunno... History's telling us that you're lying and horny as hell."
"I could say the same to you Mana Kirishima!"
"She could turn herself invisible, create a portal in her room that opens up in his, hypnotise him into sharing her wildest fetishes... gehehehe..." Rei had started to drool with a goofy grin as she counted all the things that could be done with the powers they all shared.
"You could turn him into a girl for a day... Shapeshift him into any form you could think of... Drown his body in chocolate..." Mana wore an identical expression to Rei as Shinji began running for the questionable sanctity of his room.
"You three are freaking me out! You're all perverted!"
Making it up to the apartment door a few minutes later, Shinji stopped to catch his breath before he opened the way into his veritable prison.
Getting his keycard out of his bag, he hastily swiped it, intending to lock himself in his room and reinforce it as much as possible as the receiver beeped and a green light shone into his eyes, allowing him access.
Taking three steps into his home, he dropped everything he was holding as he saw the only thing that could possibly make his day a hell of a lot worse.
"Shinji, how the hell have you gotten so much faster..." Asuka huffed and wheezed as she made it to the door behind him. Looking up at the sight that Shinji saw, she wanted to scream agony to the center of the world.
"Welcome home guys, you sure are late!"
Ghost Shinji, Crimson Asuka, who was wearing what looked like the original's yellow sundress that was surely appropriated from the fuming girl's wardrobe and green-eyed Rei, wearing what looked like Asuka's short, black skirt and white tank top that also appeared to come from the same source, were all sitting on the couch watching what looked like a magical girl anime on TV.
The scene was wrapped up nicely by a clearly insane looking Misato sitting at the kitchen table, which was overladen with various types of strong spirits. A bottle of tequila was open and half-empty as the crazed woman looked at the front door, smiling with what looked like the intention that she wanted to eat them alive.
"Guyz! Can you *hic* tell the school tomorrow... that I'z taking a sick day? Or..." She finished the glass of straight tequila in her hand in one gulp. "geurhhh... or a *hic* mental health day?"
"Um... Misato, we can explain..." Shinji sheepishly tried to reassure the clearly shaken Misato, whilst wondering where on earth he would begin with this latest series of events.
"No need! Those three told me everything!" She wobbled an arm towards the inhabitants of her couch.
"Two Ashuka's, a Rei that had a major makeover where she traded all her memories and a dead Shinji that destroyed another world! With alienz and shtuff!" She burped as she poured herself another strong drink in front of the aghast Shinji, whilst the couch-side Asuka snickered.
"Some things never change."
"Wait til Mama Ikari finds out about thiz! She's gonna blow a musket! Cheers!" Misato giggled as she raised her glass in the air, before promptly passing out on the table, the contents of her glass spilling out all over the table.
The night was only beginning, but Shinji realized he might need a day off school tomorrow too, if only to have any chance in hell of sorting out all the mess that had happened tonight.
But when he finally managed to clear Misato and her assortment of strong alcohol off the table and get her into bed, the others had all already gone to bed, doppelgängers with their respective originals, and had the terrifying prospect of having to sleep in a room with a ghost standing watch over him all night.
"Please don't do anything strange to me."
"I would never dream of it." His ghost snickered as he lay on the floor. Something in his voice told Shinji he wasn't to be trusted.
Needless to say, the living schoolboy never got a wink of sleep that night.
Omake I - Asuka Vamp
TailoftheDevil
Youkai Enthusiast
- Location
- United Kingdom
Several beers and a bottle of red wine, then this happened.
I have no regrets.
I have no regrets.
It had got to the point that they were sick of their regular nightly entertainment. Between them, Shinji and Asuka had somehow managed to binge every optical-disc based movie in the house, watched almost the entire catalog that Netflix and the other entertainment services had to offer them and Japanese reality TV was something they had never had the energy to bother with.
At his suggestion they could watch an anime or something, Asuka rolled her eyes and started thumbing through their DVD collection. She enjoyed certain anime but everything she could remember they'd ever bought a physical copy for had been over-watched to death.
"How do you feel about an older series?"
"If it's Angel Beats, no. I can't remember the last time I cried that hard at an anime."
"Jesus almighty, help this boy put his balls back in before I permanently confiscate his man card..."
"You were crying too Asuka! And don't get me started on what you were like with Clannad."
She popped one of the discs out of the case and slid it into their player sitting comfortably under the TV.
"This coming from the guy who wept uncontrollably at Your Lie in April."
"It's a tragic story involving musicians. I play the damn cello. I felt that one on a spiritual level."
"What an idiot..." She sighed as she hunted for the remote. As she looked under the couch for the whereabouts of the essential device, the main menu for the series popped up on the screen, revealing her chosen title for the evening.
"Wait, why this?" Shinji eyed the name dancing in front of him on the screen. He definitely liked the series, but what worried him was that Asuka didn't show much interest in it the last time they'd watched it. Or so he had thought.
"I guess I'm in the mood for it."
"Mood for what?"
She turned round, showing Shinji the sneaky expression in her eyes.
"Vampires."
***
"You say vampires, but..." They'd just finished episode three of Bakemonogatari. It was certainly a story about vampires, but it was also about a ton of other supernatural oddities, the latest being a story about the ghost of a young girl.
Something was up. He could tell that Asuka wasn't paying attention to the series at all without even looking at her.
But when he did decide to finally glance at her, watching an anime suddenly became the furthest thing from his mind.
Asuka Langley Soryu, his resident pain-in-the-butt and childhood friend/hot roommate, was wearing a black one-piece, slightly translucent dress that barely had the decency to cover a minuscule amount of thigh. Kneesocks of an equally dark color filled in starting from her toes, and she had what looked like arm warmers made of a translucent, thin material on her arms. Her hair was the color of the night, her eyes had enough mascara to make a gothic visual-kei-lolita proud and most importantly...
He could see what looked like fangs in her mouth.
The same mouth that was grinning, whilst those eyes were staring at him, hungrily.
"A-Asuka...? Are you doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doin-... What are you doing!?" Shinji tried his best to keep his words straight whilst simultaneously backing away from what he hadn't yet decided could be his hottest nightmare ever.
"Do you prefer this kind of vampire, Shinjiiii~?" Asuka purred as she closed the distance between them with a pounce, pinning his arms against the couch. He could feel himself losing his grip on a lot of things, such as sanity, reason and oddly enough, his chastity seemed to be slipping away, getting ready to depart forever.
"Th-this is a blatant... abuse of your bracelet... Ah-Asuka..."
"Are you seriously complaining about having a hot vampire girl on top of you?"
"I-I'm... trying to..."
"So you want me to stop?"
Shinji's only response was a muffled whimper as he felt Asuka trace circles on his neck seductively.
"I'm not hearing a no." Her voice was whispering into his ear, as Shinji suddenly felt like a puddle of hormones melting into the couch's soft fabric underneath him.
"And I'm not hearing you repenting for your transgressions either!"
"And what do I need to repent for?" She gently nibbled the lobe of his ear with one of those godforsakenly-sexy fangs. "I'm not known for my good deeds. And I don't intend to become an angel anytime soon either."
With no time left before lines were crossed, Shinji had to come up with a plan. And the only one that seemed to filter through his brain...
...had seemed like a good one at the time.
"Are you-... wait, what?!" Asuka looked at the glowing boy underneath her, his bracelet glowing. Her eyes stung from the bright light a little, but as soon as it had appeared, it faded away. Leaving behind...
"S-shi...n...ji?"
Asuka wasn't sure anymore. The Shinji Ikari she had been straddling until moments ago... was now a girl?
'She' had long, black hair and was wearing the same school uniform the girls would wear going to their school. Her body was slender, and she was about the same as Asuka in the breasts department. But this girl had Shinji's face. And somehow, it suited better than when it had been on a boy's body!
"I mean, hey! If you gotta cockblock somebody, you might as well get rid of the coc-... turn into the opposite of a guy..." Shinji, with a considerably more feminine voice, said sheepishly.
"I-... what?!" Asuka did not have a clue how to deal with this. A sentiment felt by the rest of her housemates who had just chosen that exact moment to return home.
"So I'm going to need you two..." Misato, wide-eyed and very much bushy-tailed, directed her dialogue to the equally shocked Rei and Mana standing at her sides. "To tell me if you see a vampiric Asuka, straddling what looks to be a genderbent Shinji?"
"Misato..."
"Yes, Rei?"
"Could you admin-lock their bracelets?"
The deed was done. And for the rest of the weekend, Asuka remained a vampire in her goth outfit, whilst Shinji spent the remainder of his free days without a certain little friend of his.
...Not that it seemed to faze the three girls in the slightest.
If anything...
Their pursuit of him was a horrifyingly lot more aggressive than usual.
I feel like I can blame Halloween for this one. I want to try drawing the scene out too.
Because gothic vampire Asuka needs to be drawn.
Because gothic vampire Asuka needs to be drawn.