Angel [Evangelion]

[TailoftheDevil]

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.

​

 

[TailoftheDevil]

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?"

​

 

[TailoftheDevil]

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

 

[TailoftheDevil]

"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.

 

[TailoftheDevil]

Several beers and a bottle of red wine, then this happened.
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.​

 

[TailoftheDevil]

School was... different. Everyday there had been something new to keep the gossip flowing like a giggling hurricane through the lively corridors. It usually centered on a certain classroom, with four certain individuals targeted in the crosshair. Today, there was none of the usual gossip.

Only shock and disbelief.

Some students were questioning their sanity. Others were asking their teachers, who failed to come up with any reasonable answers, just as clueless as those in their care. One such teacher was in a similar position, albeit incredibly hungover.

Misato Katsuragi stood behind her desk, sighing. Shinji's apparently brilliant scientist parents had no answers for her, likewise with Asuka's mom. Her own, usually perceptive brain, had nothing, no logical explanation for the unusual apparition of trouble that had overtaken her apartment the night before. It only provided disturbing thoughts about what the future might hold for their everyday lives.

"Alright, come in guys. Let's make this as painless as possible, if at all possible..."

The door to the classroom slid open. Nobody in the class needed to guess who was going to walk through it. Everybody had already watched, open-mouthed as the Asuka and Rei, followed along by a strangely exhausted looking Shinji, had come to school that morning, with an identical looking set of Asuka and Rei.
But to the sharp-eyed amongst the students at the school, it was plain as day that something was majorly different about the newest additions to their class.

"Hello. My name is Rei Ayanami." The red-eyed Rei snorted from her chair as her imposter with the long, cerulean hair attempted an introduction. Narrowing her eyes at the rude interruption, the leaf-eyed Rei continued. "I understand that this situation might well be confusing for everyone, but it is my hope that we can all get along."

"Understandably, names are likely to get confusing during my time here, so for the moment, you may call me Rei II-..."

"Are you actually being serious, First Child!? Rei II? HA!"

The as-of-yet introduced Asuka clone laughed mirthlessly, an evil sound that chilled the spine of everyone sat down in their chairs. This Asuka was nothing like the one they knew and loved in class. They could feel it from the crazy look in her eyes, the maniacal tone to her spoken words, and her brutish actions that promised a swift and painful retribution to all that crossed her.

The Asuka they had known for so long did have a temper, and a scary one at that.

But their Asuka had never shown the bloodlust that this crazy version clearly had in her eyes. Apart from the fact that this Asuka had her hair in a ponytail, and was missing the bracelet, everybody in the class would have been able to tell the differences between them, even if they had matching hairstyles and accessories.

"Let me make it very clear to you shitheads. I am not her." Pointing at her cowering self who was content to lower herself as far as her chair allowed, the crazy Asuka continued, bitter anger injecting into every word.

"I come from a place, a world, far away and as close to hell as you can possibly imagine. I've fought messengers of God that threatened to turn everything everybody ever loved into skidmarks on the road. The Tokyo-3 in my world, alongside the world in general, is a fucking ruin, all thanks to a group of old fucktard Illuminati wannabes, a complete and utter dipshit that looks just like him-..." She spat the last word out with venom as she pointed at Shinji who was also trying to take cover under the limited defences of his desk. "And his fuckheaded, abhorred, genocidal arschloch of a father!"

Silence was deafening in the class of wide-eyed students. Even Toji, Hikari and Kensuke, who had travelled to the aforementioned hellish Otherworld, were speechless at the pure rage being thrown at them from the redheaded inferno of hate shouting from the front of the classroom.

"I'm here, because there is no where else for me to go. I'm not here by choice, I don't like any of this, I don't like any of you, ESPECIALLY YOU!" She screamed once again at the poor boy who was beginning to wish his desk would eat him whole. "And I don't intend to make this easy for any of you. Don't talk to me, don't come near me. I will kill you, and fucking eat what's left of your remains in front of your loved ones. And if the situation absolutely demands that you need to initiate a conversation with me..." Asuka glared at the class as a whole, making sure everyone could see that her eyes were daring them to question her, an evil smile dancing on her face as she felt the inferiority radiate from them.

"Call me Crimson."

Rei II, as she so helpfully decided to designate herself, took two slight sidesteps away from the incarnation of the devil herself, wondering if this Asuka had always been so volatile, back when she had a working memory of who she was.

"Out of all the names she could have picked, she chose the most agonizingly awkward one of them all?" The Asuka still peeking over her desk in fear whispered with a groan, before her eyes opened wide, just about managing to dodge a chalkboard eraser thrown with enough strength to easily knock her out.

"You wanna say that again, imposter!? Next time I hear any sass, I'll use your pretty little face as fucking toilet paper!"

Silence once again drowned the atmosphere, suffocating everyone to the point that nobody could physically move a muscle out of fear. Asuka from the Otherworld, or Crimson as she decided she wanted to be known as, had made it irrevocably clear who ruled the classroom. The pecking order was now firmly established. And to the remainder of the class who hadn't gone to the Otherworld, were truly and utterly convinced, that this girl was an utterly deranged psychopath.

Misato laughed nervously as the brutal self-introduction drew to a close.

"S-so does anybody have any... questions?"

---

The Artificial Research Laboratory had countless rooms used for experiments of various kinds. Rooms for research, development, virtual deification, a command centre in times of crisis and arguably the most important room to one of the prominent scientists in charge, an indoor hot spring.

It was in one of the research rooms that Yui and Gendo Ikari, alongside Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu, were sat around a table, armed with a forest's worth of paper strewn about in an unorganized mess, and laptops that connected to various feeds and databases. One of the laptops showed a security camera installed in Shinji's classroom, displaying the aftermath of Crimson's introduction. For some peculiar reason, the one girl who could make even the gods cower in their boots had decided to sit in the desk next to the one boy she had all but declared war on, ejecting the previous occupant by force. For the first time, Yui was glad Mana was sitting on the chair on Shinji's other side. At least she could protect him if Crimson decided she felt like snapping and eating her son alive.

"So."

The silence that had plagued the room after watching the abrasive transfer student was gently shattered by Kyoko, stretching her arms and clicking her back with a satisfied groan.

"What have we learned today?"

"My son attracts some weird people..." Gendo grumbled as he continued to watch the feed, just as worried for his son's safety as his wife. His eyes flickered briefly to the blonde doctor who had just sent him a withering glare and an irritated growl.

"My Asuka is not weird."

"No, but that one is."

"Granted, she's a little... angrier than the Asuka I conceived. But she's still Asuka. An Asuka who once had a mother by my name in that world. A mother who she lost at a young age, in an incident that can only be described as horrifying..." Kyoko looked downcast for all but a second, but bounced back almost as fast, smiling radiantly.

"I want to protect that Asuka, just as much as my Asuka. They're both my little Asuka's."

Yui smiled at the bubbly scientist. Just where did she get that optimism from? Even with the risk that Crimson might reject her maternal approach to the situation, that still wasn't enough to deter the smiling Kyoko.

"It's admirable, without a doubt, but be careful this Asuka doesn't try to kill you."

"Bah, it'll be fine! One day, they'll be just like sisters!"

"I'd be a bit worried if Shinji had a sister who screamed she was going to wipe her arse with his face..." Gendo mumbled warily. Both females in the room glared at him.

"We're trying to have a heartwarming moment here and you're ruining it."

"Sorry Yui..."

Turning her glare away from her husband back to the mountain of research in front of them, Yui groaned as she folded her arms on the table and rested her head on top. Nothing made sense to her anymore. Shinji and his friends had somehow been dragged into a world that could only be described as a parallel universe. After coming back, all of them had been shocked by the three teenagers that had followed them.
One was a literal phantom. Another was perpetually angry and clearly traumatized. And the last was an amnesiac. Three very different versions of the children they knew and loved. And to top it all off, the story of their world, their pasts, was almost nothing like the reality they all lived in.

"A world where 'Angels' came to destroy humanity, and children defended mankind by piloting abominable weapons that were to be used as a catalyst to end the world. I can't even begin to imagine the kinds of horrors those three have been witness to." It was a world Yui wanted no part of.

But a part of her, deep down, wanted to do something. Anything. Anything that might fix the damage that had occurred in that hell. At the very least, she wanted the three broken children that had dropped in from another world to lead something of a normal life, and maybe even repair some of the damage that had been inflicted on their psyche. But where would they even begin?

Asuka's mother had committed suicide, almost taking her daughter with her. Rei had been a hybrid-Angel who apparently had some of Yui's own DNA in her genetic makeup. Now she was almost stripped of her memories, but may or may not be a wholesome human. And Shinji had been forced to pilot a monster against his will by his own father, a man who sounded nothing like the one who sat next to her. A man who had attempted to orchestrate the near-genocide of mankind for a chance to reunite with the mother who had sold her own soul to a machine and left her son in a cruel, dark world, alone.

Not to mention Shinji was technically dead. A problem that would normally be impossible to solve. Yui wouldn't have even thought it possible the power of the bracelets would be able to resurrect the dead.

Yet, when the group came back from their field trip, her son and friends had explained how the bracelets had resurrected the Otherworld's Asuka and Rei, from skeletons no less. Reviving the phantom Shinji might be possible, but something was keeping the frustrated scientist wary of the spectre that resembled her son. An aura that told her in a little voice that, even though he was technically the same little boy as the one she had given birth too, something was off.

He could not be trusted.

---

Lunch had come to the whispering classroom. Normally that entailed a cacophony of students moving about, giggles and conversations about god only knew what, and the smells of various home-cooked or cafeteria-appropriated meals.

Today, the classroom was a graveyard, save for eight people. The majority of the class had decided a tactical retreat was in order to escape the stifling atmosphere of the class, leaving the infamous students a whole class to themselves.

Whilst Kensuke, Toji and Hikari were talking to, or rather, trying to mediate a heated discussion between the two Rei's, Shinji, Asuka and Mana were eating their food peacefully.
Or as peacefully as it could be next to the girl who had threatened classroom genocide only a few hours beforehand.

Perceptive to his new neighbour, Shinji had quickly realized that she wasn't eating anything. Partly because she had all but refused his offer of a bento box in the morning. Various sounds of hunger were making themselves known coming from the angry, or angrier version of Asuka, which seemed to only fuel her bitter expression as she glared at seemingly nothing in front of her.

"Here." Shinji took the lunch he had brought to school anyway, and placed it in front of the stewing teenager, hoping to any of the gods advocating peace in the world that she wouldn't take the thing and throw it in his eyes.

"I told you I didn't need it." He had been expecting a shout, but Crimson spoke in a low voice that didn't seem as angry as it had before. Sighing, he fished a spare set of chopsticks out of a case he kept in his bag, and placed them in front of her.

"Just... look. I can hear your stomach grumbling, and when was the last time you actually ate solid food? You've technically been dead for a while, eat this and you'll feel right as rain."

Doubting that his food actually had the stuffing to live up to his claims, Crimson took the bento box anyway, looking away from him.

"Whatever. If it shuts you up for five minutes, I'll eat your stupid food. Free food always tastes the best after all." Her face was tinged red. It didn't matter what universe they were in, some things really didn't change. And at least this version Shinji hadn't tried to destroy the world...
Shaking her head before any embarrassing thoughts came to mind, she put a mouthful of the fried chicken and rice into her mouth.

She had forgotten how good his food actually tasted. True to his words, it had been a long time since she'd eaten anything solid. And his cooking was even better than the Shinji's she had shared a world with.

"Probably because this Shinji isn't crippled with any of the destabilizing issues he had." Crimson thought to herself, not realizing she was devouring the food like a wild animal. Heck, even an animal would have some grace, compared to how Crimson was massacring her meal.
They say that food will always taste the best when you think of the person who's going to be eating it whilst it's been prepared. All of her favorites were in this box, and it all tasted incredible. Had Shinji been thinking of her when he made this lunch?

No. There was no way. It was identical to her imposter's bento anyhow. Two reflections of the same person were going to enjoy the same meal. It just made sense.

But if it tasted this good, what did that mean? Did the Shinji of this world like the Asuka who was here before she arrived?

Something inside her was gnawing away at her emotions. A whirlpool of mixed feelings filled her mind to the brim. Anger, loneliness, regret, confusion, jealousy. And for some strange reason, she really felt like she wanted to cry.

After finishing whatever was left of the meal, Crimson put the box down on the desk, a little harder then she intended, causing everyone to jump.

"W-was it good, Asu-...Crimson?"

"Thanks for the meal." The girl's eyes were covered by her bangs, as she stood up and walked out of the classroom. It was faint, but sitting right next to her, Shinji caught a glimpse of her expression.

Why did she suddenly look so upset?

"Did she just thank you!?" Toji said incredulously. "Not even our Asuka remembers to do that!"

A yelp of pain indicated that the boy was hit hard from both the girl in question and the class president.

"Can you learn to ever just read the mood? Just this once, keep that big mouth shut!" Hikari glared at him as she spoke. She was distracted by Shinji suddenly standing up, looking at the door where Crimson had hastily departed, looking worried.

"Go after her Shinji."

"Asuka?"

The redheaded girl was also looking at the door. She looked melancholic, and thoughtful at the same time.

"If that was me, I'd want you to come after me. And considering she basically is me, I'm sure she can't be alone right now." With a nod, Shinji ran out of the classroom. The others turned to look at Asuka, confused.

"What's going on Asuka?"

Ignoring Hikari's question completely, she continued to finish her lunch. Holding up a bit of her fried chicken, she looked at it for a second, as though the meat could answer all the strange questions in her mind. Popping it into her mouth, she chewed, a slightly lonely smile displaying on her lips.

"His chicken is good."

---

It had taken Shinji little time to find the wildcard student. As if following what he knew was cliché, he immediately went straight to the roof of the school. Where else would a person who wanted to be alone want to be?

Somewhere they could see the sky. As if the heavens above could give you the answers you wanted.

He knew because he'd been playing by the same rulebook not that long ago. Back when the Asuka from his world had been less than friendly towards him. Back in a time he'd rather not remember.

Putting aside his nostalgia at how little had changed since he had last been whiling away his time up here, he spotted the objective, sitting on one of the decrepit benches lying in the middle of the area.

She was sitting with her arms wrapped around her legs, silently glaring at a spot on the floor around her. It reminded him of how the Asuka he had grown up with used to act. Unsociable, seemingly uncaring, but in reality...

She just looked lonely.

"I can say for certain..." The girl he'd thought hadn't noticed his presence suddenly spoke up. "That you're definitely not the same Shinji Ikari that I know."

"What makes you say that?"

Crimson Asuka didn't even look at him. She continued to look at the ground angrily, as though if she glared at it for long enough, she could melt a hole into it.

"At least he had some semblance of respect for privacy."

Her words threw Shinji for a second. On the surface, she was accusing him of invading her space, and that she wanted nothing more than to be left alone.

But he knew better than that. He knew better then to trust words, laced with everything but the truth. He'd had plenty of practice with a certain someone else, at least when it came to looking underneath the underneath.
Against his better judgement, he slowly walked over to the bench, and sat down next to her. Close enough that he didn't show his poorly concealed fear, but far enough to not be touching her.

"What are you doing?" Her question was once again in a low voice. But this time it was laced with an actual warning. Shinji braced himself as he spoke again.

"Not running away."

Getting punched in the face, really, really hurts. Getting punched by the girl who looked just like another girl who used to punch you in the face all the time, somehow hurt less than he had expected it to.

"THE FUCK IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN!?" Crimson Asuka was livid. He could clearly see the rage of fire in her eyes, and for a split second, he thought he had said something he shouldn't have. But it was gone in the second it took to pick himself up from the floor, where the punch had unceremoniously thrown him. Rubbing his now achingly sore cheek, Shinji chuckled, serving to infuriate the girl even more.

"Is that it?"

Shinji suddenly found himself hoist in the air, the breath being squeezed out of him as the girl he had just taunted lifted him by his shirt, her eyes promising him death.

"I'll enjoy snapping your neck, shit-for-brains." A second after her words had dissipated into the noontime heat, Shinji felt his world turn upside down as Crimson Asuka threw him to the ground, straddling him. A right hook connected with his intact cheek, blackening his vision. More punches came. His nose cracked horribly. Blood exploded from his nostrils as the girl kept pounding into him. His face was likely going to look like a mass of bruises and blood later, but he let the girl continue until it seemed she'd had her fill. Letting her blood-drenched fists rest, she looked down her nose at him, cold ruthlessness filling her eyes.

"That enough for you, or do you feel like some broken limbs too?"

A chuckle filled the air. It was actually more of a bloody snort as Shinji started laughing on the ground. The laughing lasted until his throat decided it needed to clear some blood out of his airways. Spots of the crimson liquid found a home on the wide-eyed Asuka's face. Why in god's name was he laughing?

"And cue-..."

"And what?-ooph!" Asuka bent over double, her mind shocked as her abdomen felt a strong punch connect, briefly winding her. In her moment of weakness, Shinji pushed the winded girl off him, pinning her down by her shoulders.

"You... pathetic...urrf..." Crimson coughed as she tried to wheeze some air back into her lungs. "What kind of lowlife scum... *cough* hits a girl..."

"I should tell you. I'm a man who believes in true gender equality. I've got no problems dropkicking a girl if the situation calls for it-... GEEEH!" Shinji's quote was interrupted when the palm of Asuka's fist hit his already battered nose, throwing him off the seething female. Rolling just in time to avoid being stomped, Shinji scrambled to his feet, putting up a guard as he grinned at his opponent.

"Lowlife scum like you are the type of men I utterly despise. Who the hell would punch a girl like that!? I'M GONNA TEAR YOUR FUCKING EYES OUT!"

A dodged punch from her, a narrowly missed uppercut from him, a graze on her face, a claw-mark on his face. Both teenagers traded blows, not giving any quarter to their opponent. The fight landed back on the ground once again, with both of them rolling around, trying to find an opening.

"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT, THIRD CHILD!?"

"I don't know anyone with a stupid name like 'Third Child'!" Asuka screamed in response, trying to bite his neck whilst Shinji tried hard to keep her at arm's length, his bracelet dangling violently. At some point, she succeeded in biting his arm, eventually drawing blood. Shinji screamed in pain, but somehow also managed to keep a weird smile on his face, even managing to choke out a laugh.

"STOP LAUGHING AT ME!" Crimson Asuka screamed through his flesh, muffling her words.

"I can't. Not even she ever actually bit me before!"

The fighting suddenly stopped. Crimson Asuka's mouth was still wrapped onto Shinji's arm, her teeth looking all but animalistic, but she wasn't physically biting down anymore.

"She?" Muffled words again. This time accompanied by a curious look.

"Asuka, the other Asuka I mean... we used to get into fights like this all the time."

It was a strange feeling. He was explaining himself to a girl who's teeth were still firmly lodged into his forearm. But he continued regardless. He was used to strange occurrences in his daily life by now.

"She was a lot like you are now. Never was a people person. Used to get angry at the touch of a hat. And she used to take great pleasure in taking out her frustrations on me. It wasn't the happiest of times for either of us."

"Our parents work at the Artificial Research Laboratory. Both Asuka's mother and my parents. More often than not, this meant we barely ever got to see them. There was a time Asuka didn't see her mother for a whole year. And to an eight year old, that didn't do much good to her."

At some point without realizing it, Crimson Asuka had let go of Shinji's arm, a trickle of blood dribbling down her lip. But she just sat there, listening to him.

"She used to get angry, a lot. A few times her mother had to apologize to my parents when I'd turn up looking like I'd been put through a blender. There was a time Asuka had to be kept away from me, for my own safety."

"But I always knew. I knew she wasn't hitting me, or hurting me because she hated me. She just wanted to vent, she wanted to let the world know she was angry, and hurt, and alone. Alone except for one friend." Shinji cracked out another smile. "Me."

"I know you're not the same as her. You come from a world far more broken, from a past that's scarier than any horror movie I've ever seen. There's just no comparing the two, with what little I know about you and the others. But..." Shinji lightly nudged her shoulder with a fist. "Instead of bottling it all up, if you ever need to vent, come see me. A few scrapes and bruises are nothing this little thing can't fix."

At his words, his bracelet lit up. Both of their injuries started to glow with an odd, eerie, but somehow warm and comforting green light, before fading away, taking the pain with them. Standing up, he offered her his hand.

"I'm sorry for hitting you. I wasn't doing it with malicious intent."

Crimson stared at the hand for a moment, before laughing. A true laugh, without any of the mirth, ruthlessness or hate she had displayed before. Taking the hand, she stood up and turned around, hiding her face from him.

"You're... really weird. Like, super masochistic kind of weird."

"I've heard. Mainly from the two male idiots I call friends."

"But even so. This wasn't a... bad little chat."

"She calls that a 'chat'?" Shinji thought grimly to himself as he watched her walk away. She stopped as she reached the door to the roof.

"Oh, and one more thing." She turned to face him, smiling. A smile that mirrored the warm smiles he had seen the other Asuka displaying lately.

"Shinji, you taste pretty good. I think I'll take you up on more of our little chats in the future..." She winked as she walked through the door lading down from the roof.

Shinji, for his part, was wondering what kind of monster he had managed to unleash on himself once again. He was going to have to cover his whole body in fish oil at some point.

 

[TailoftheDevil]

He hadn't been ready.

The plan to calm down Crimson had gone well. A little too well. He thought that after letting loose and venting her frustrations, Crimson might be a little more interactive and less hostile towards them all.

But it was not to be.

Beep Beep Beep Beep

His alarm was ringing. He wanted to turn it off. Most other days, all he had to do was reach over and tap the snooze button. But today, he was having some difficulty doing anything like that.

"Okay Shinji, lets actually use that brain for once and figure this out on our own." Shinji gritted his teeth as he tried to loosen his arms, which were currently tied to something at the top of his bed. He dared not look at what was tying his hands up, as it felt soft and cottony, with a slight sense of elasticity. He knew damn well what that was without even looking at it. He knew exactly who they belonged to as well.
The culprit to this dastardly scheme was currently snoozing on top of him. A familiar view of orange hair was obscuring most of his vision and he could feel the chest of the girl respirating on top of him.

Said girl sleepily reached over, picked up the alarm clock with a smile and threw it violently against the wall. This wasn't the first time the clock had met such a demise. It seemed to be every other day it was seemingly destroyed, only to be put back together again by the bracelets. Normally by Asuka as a way of apologizing for breaking it in the first place.

The offending girl today wasn't Asuka though. Even though she felt like Asuka, looked like Asuka and smelled like Asuka, the girl currently lying on top of him, returning to a comfortable position after ending the life of an innocent timekeeping device, was none other than the same girl that was biting his arm the day before, after beating the literal crap out of him.

Why in God's name was Crimson in his bed!?

Why was she lying on top of him!?

Where in God's name was her shirt!?

These and similar questions were currently racing through his mind, one of which was wondering why he was also topless, but a thought suddenly occurred.
If he was the type of unfortunate soul to encounter misfortune no matter what, he was expecting Asuka to slam open his door any second now and-

"CRIMSON!"

Yup, here we go.

"YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE SLEEPING IN MY ROOM!"

"You don't taste as good as Shinji though."

"Oh my god, WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN!?"

He couldn't tell if Crimson was insinuating what he thought she was just to drive Asuka crazy or that she had actually gone and bitten Asuka in her sleep.
Honestly, he sure as hell didn't really care for the answer. He just wanted to wake up to a peaceful morning for once. Was that too much to ask?

"I thought you hated him!?"

"I hate the ghost." Crimson was referring to Shinji's doppelganger who had been haunting their residence for the past few days. God only knew where he was right now though. Asuka was fuming as she took in the sight of the two teenagers lying on top of each other, topless. Crimson was smirking, directing her taunt to her lookalike that was all but ready to detonate.

"You… You need to get off him!"

"I'll be sure to get him off alright."

"THAT'S NOT WHAT I SAID, SKANK! GET. OFF. HIM!"

"Why don't you make me?"

"Because you scare the crap out of me, you shameless psychopath!" Asuka gritted her teeth as she tried to think of a way to vocalise that without getting her face shoved into a toilet.

"If I may have an opinion…"

"No Shinji. You need to shut up and let the girls talk."

"Sure, why not, let's all be late for school, that'll be even more fun." Shinji closed his eyes again, resigning himself to his fate as Crimson turned back to Asuka.

"You can either accept that this is going to be a thing from now on or we are going to have a lot of problems."

"You're supposed to be me right?" Asuka said through gritted teeth.

"Apparently. A slightly more educated version maybe."

"Then you already know my answer." Asuka put her bracelet arm out, showing the two residing in the bed her palm, a small ball of crackling energy charging in front of it, her face contorted with rage.

In the blink of an eye, Shinji had jumped out of the bed, placed his palm on the raging girl's own, cancelling out the magical science.

"Shinji, what the hell!?"

"Can we please not blow up my room again?"

"Ha, you tell her Shin-" Before she could finish, Shinji placed a finger on his free hand on Crimson's lips.

"...and that's enough out of you. I get that you two don't have to be nice to each other, but can we at least avoid having a fight all the time?" His eyes held a steely glow as his gaze jumped between the two of them.

"I care for you both and I don't want anybody to get hurt."

A strange, awkward silence fell over the room before Shinji turned bright red, quickly removing his hands.

"Please don't kill me."

Both girls looked at each other nervously, both tinged with a blush.

"I… uh…" Asuka gulped before turning to the door. "...need to finish my toast." She quickly departed.

"I should probably find my shirt…" Crimson was next to beat a hasty retreat. Suddenly Shinji was alone in his room, confused.

"...am I not dead?"

Before he could formulate an answer to his rhetorical question, Misato's head poked around the door, looking just as confused as he felt.

"Why did both Asuka's come out of your room? And why was one of them topless?" All he could do was look at her, looking completely lost.

"I… don't know?"

Somehow, everyone managed to leave the house on time. The awkward silence from earlier hadn't yet dissipated, meaning Shinji was cramped between the two girls on a busy train with nobody making eye contact. It was almost a relief when they made it to school and he could rest his head on his school desk.

"The days just started, why do you look like hell?" Kensuke had apparated by his desk, looking concerned.

"How do you unawkward something Ken?" Shinji mumbled into the wood he was resting on.

"What did you do?"

"I wish I knew…"

"Very helpful Shinji."

The classroom door opened, with the regular and nuclear Asuka's walking in together, along with a Misato that looked as exhausted as Shinji felt. The two students wandered over to their respective desks as their homeroom teacher made a feeble attempt to address the class.

"Okay ladies, gentleman… and Toji."

"Hey!"

"I have yet another transfer student to introduce to you all today."

"How have we not run out of seats yet?" Shinji mumbled, still face-planting his desk.

"Is it another hot girl?"

"No Toji, is it not."

"Thank god…"

The whole class turned to face the gangly, tracksuited teenager, shock rippling through everyone's face. Even Shinji had raised his head to stare at him, wiggling his very raised eyebrows.

"What?"

"It's not a hot girl and you're… happy?" Kensuke looked utterly dumbfounded. "Hikari, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but he might be into dudes now."

The class president buried her head into her arms.

"Where did I go wrong?!" She wailed. Shinji wasn't a hundred percent sure if she was putting it on or not.

"Guys! Relax! All I'm sayin' is that I don't think I can survive anymore of Shinji's girlfriends."

"There's certainly some wisdom in that." A nod from Kensuke and the majority of the class.

"WE'RE NOT HIS GIRLFRIENDS!"

"Asuka… really? Really?"

"I'm technically his fiancé…" Rei piped up, raising a hand.

"I wouldn't mind being his master…" Crimson snuck a sly grin to her neighbour. Mana on Shinji's other side grabbed his arm, pulling it tight and in between her ample bosom.

"Forget her Shinji. You can be my master."

A loud bang suddenly made everyone jump. Misato had hit the chalkboard behind her hard to get everyone's attention. Shinji couldn't have thanked her enough.

"Guys. Transfer Student. Shush."

She motioned towards the open door, beckoning whoever was standing in the hall to come inside.

"I want you to treat him nice. And I promise he won't blow up the school... You won't blow up the school, right?"

"I can honestly say the idea never came to mind." The silver-haired male finished writing his name on the board before turning around to face the class. Oooh's and aah's came from some of the girls who found their new classmate attractive.

Shinji noticed something a little different about him.

Specifically the fact that he had crimson eyes.
Just like Rei did. Or at least one of them.

Smiling politely, he began his introduction.

"My name is Kaworu Nagisa. I look forward to our time together."

---

"KAWORU WHAT!?"

"Gendo, calm down."

"NO!"

"Should I go get some ketamine?"

"Kyoko, what the hell?"

"HE'S SEELE'S POSTER BOY! HE WON'T JUST BLOW UP THE SCHOOL, HE'LL NUKE IT!"

The Artificial Research Laboratory, Crisis Command Center.

Gendo Ikari had called an emergency meeting, directing everyone to their posts before explaining to his impatient wife who this new transfer student really was. Half the story at least.

"Gendo, you still haven't told me, putting the nukes aside for a moment, what kind of a threat he actually is."

A grim silence descended upon the man until he finally found the words he could use to effectively describe what they were dealing with.

"As you know with the Mana Kirishima incident, Seele found a way to get their hands on some of our technology. I don't know if its a spy in our midst, or once again Satsuki forgot to disconnect from Twitter-ing on the external networks, but thankfully what data they have is old and somewhat obsolete."

"However, thanks to our own spy, we know that they took that data as a foundation and were able to come up with a bracelet all on their own. That's where Miss Kirishima's bracelet came from when we analysed it. Not only that but they managed to take a step in their own direction, without any regard to ethics and human experimentation…" He pushed the bridge of his glasses back up his nose, sighing.

"This new boy. As far as I'm aware, instead of having to wear a bracelet, actually has a form of the technology embedded inside of him."

"You must be joking…"

"I'm quite serious Yui. The kids are only 'deities' with the bracelets on, but this Kaworu. He is a literal walking god and from what I've been told, has no limiters on his abilities, unlike our kids who can be locked-out should someone go spontaneously insane."

"...I wouldn't put that past Asuka." Yui mumbled, much to Kyoko's chagrin.

"Instead of worrying about my daughter's sanity, should we not be coming up with a counterplan in case the new student does decide to go and kill everyone he sees?"

"That's the whole reason we're here. So tell me ladies, any ideas?"

---

"So that's the gym. Not my favourite place on the campus, but compulsory education, whatcha gonna do, right?"

"I heard there is a pool too. Is that in a different area?"

"That's right, it's on the roof of the main school building."

Thanks to the powers that be and Misato insisting that she had one of her imaginary staff meetings to attend to, Shinji had the colossal responsibility of guiding the new student around the school. She could have picked any number of the girls in his class fawning over his silver hair and chiselled jawline, but no. Shinji was a slave, both in the home and at school too.

Not that he minded. Kaworu seemed polite enough and was soaking in everything Shinji said like a sponge. His eyes were hijacking Shinji's curiosity but he didn't know how to bring it up without making things weird. He'd had enough of an awkward day going on as it was.

"Is there something on my face? You appear to have found something of interest, Shinji Ikari."

"Oh! Uh… No no no... and you can just call me Shinji by the way. Full names make things way too formal for me."

"I understand. Though is there something that's caught your eye?"

He was smiling in a way that suddenly made Shinji feel very bashful. One wrong word and the yaoi fangirls were going to go ape.

"Okay, so… You've met Rei right? Rei Ayanami?"

"Which one?"

"Oh yeah, that's right, there's two of them now… Um, the one with the- ahem… Red eyes?"

"Ahhh, I see now." Kaworu laughed, easing Shinji's tension slightly. Now that he thought about it, he never once questioned Rei about why her eyes were red either. Maybe it was because he had know her for so much longer that he'd become used to it?

"Well, I'm not sure about our classmate. But I was born with some sort of eye infection that dyed the irises with blood. Thankfully the infection was prevented and I managed to retain my sight, but reverting my eyes to their natural color would undoubtedly be an extremely difficult process. One that carries too much risk and may end up robbing me of my sight."

"That makes sense. I'm sorry if it said anything awkward. And your eyes are fine as they are. It just made me realize that there's a lot about the world I don't understand yet..."

"You're welcome to ask anything at all Shinji. If I can help in any way, I'll be glad to do it."

That answered his burning question, but also made Shinji curious about Rei once more. Maybe she had a similar problem with her eyes as a child? She had spent a lot of time in the hospital when she was younger, so it wasn't totally outside the realms of possibility.

A few metres away from the duo, camouflaged in a way that could respectfully be called terrible, Asuka, Crimson, Mana and the two Rei's were spying on their conversation. Along with most of the other girls in the class dotted around the area.

"I don't like this."

"They could just be having a friendly conversation Asuka."

"They're practically holding hands Mana."

"I don't like this either." Crimson growled. "I'm going over there-"

"No you are not!"

"You don't get to tell me what to do, you second-rate imposter. Nobody steals my things away from me."

"Yesterday you hated him. Then you bit him and then apparently woke up this morning crushing him in your boobs. Like, what's going on with that exactly?" Mana was glaring at Crimson with a look somewhere between envy and a pout.

"He's entertaining. He doesn't come with the emotional baggage of the apocalyptic world. He's a great cook and the Shinji from my world is both broken-"

"Dead." Rei II helpfully pointed out.

"That and helped destroy the world. And sure, I died too, but I realized something from my trip through Instrumentality."

"That you're a future yandere?" Asuka cast a sidelong glance at her twin.

"Very funny. More that I died focusing on the wrong things. I've got a chance at a normal life now and the first thing I want out of it is to redo that kiss!" And with that, Crimson bolted towards the two boys, with Mana in hot pursuit.

"Did she say kiss?" It was Rei's turn to look jealous. Rei II looked at her own twin looking confused.

"What's a kiss?"

"Umm… well… it's…" Asuka decided to leave a furiously blushing Rei with her doppelganger to explain her way out of the hole she'd dug herself into and tore off to chase after the chaos that was about to unfold.

"Shinji! Watch your six!" She bellowed, causing the teenage boy to jump out of his skin, turn around, freak out for a second time after seeing the barrage of girls sprinting towards him, offer a hasty goodbye to Kaworu and then proceeded to run for his life.

"You idiot! Why did you open your stupid mouth!" Crimson yelled over her shoulder. All Asuka could offer in response was to stick out her tongue.

"Eh, whatever. It's always fun to chase your prey anyway." Crimson muttered with a smile.

Shinji, on the other hand, was panicking. He had no idea where to run, so he was pelting it towards the main building of the school, determined to find a door. Any door.
Eventually, he found a door, somewhere on the second floor of the building, belonging to what looked like an abandoned classroom.

"Great. Now where can I hide myself." He looked around the room until his eyes came across a relatively big cardboard box.

He grinned, his face resembling a mischievous fox.

---

"Where did he go!?"

"He's getting real good at not being caught…"

Crimson and Asuka respectively had burst into the room of Shinji's last known location. The other girls had split up to look in other places, leaving the two most likely to kill one another alone together.

"I don't see anyone in here…" Asuka was tired of searching. They had up-ended the school looking for the bastard in their measly lunch-break time but it wasn't long until it was time to go back to class.

"He owes me a bento. I don't care if I skip class, I'm finding him and throttling him until he coughs up my katsu bento!"

"I wouldn't be too partial to anything he coughs up but whatever. And what about that kiss?"

"Oh, that's happening. I just haven't decided if its before or after I eat. I'm pretty freaking hangry."

"Ugh, whatever…"

Shinji could hear the two girls creeping closer to his hiding place and was genuinely starting to get worried about getting caught. Rather, what they were going to do to him if he did get caught.

Granted, he'd thought using Metal Gear tactics to escape sounded good in his head, but when did reality ever go as well as it did in video games?

"He's gotta be in here somewhere. We've checked everywhere else…"

"I still can't believe you went into every men's toilet we passed… Everyone's going to think we're perverts…" Shinji came this close to gasping in surprise at the revelation that Crimson had probably given half the male population of the school a heart attack.
He almost went into cardiac arrest himself when Asuka crouched down, her striped-red panties in view for a split-second, right in front of his cardboard box and peeked through the hole on the side, locking eyes with him.

It was hard to tell who was the more surprised. Both teenagers had an expression akin to looking electrocuted. Asuka looked like she was about to open her mouth and say something when Crimson suddenly shouted from the other end of the room.

"Where the hell is he!? Anything over your side?"

Asuka squinted through the hole, giving Shinji a meaningful glare, before responding.

"Nothing over here. Look, lunch breaks over. We can kill him when he gets back to class."

"Ugh… fine."

Crimson opened the door to the abandoned classroom violently before stomping away. Asuka waited a moment before whispering to the box.

"You owe me for this, stupid Shinji."

He definitely owed her. He also really didn't want to go back to class right now.

---

"WHERE WERE YOU!?"

"I went outside the school for a quick second, I had to get something!"

"LIES! I WANTED MY BENTO!"

"It's inside your desk, moron!"

"IT IS NOT-oh shit, it is…"

"Oh my god…"

"But still! You owe me a kiss for making me waste my lunch break searching for you!"

"A kiss!? WHAT!? WHY!?"

Crimson and Shinji continued to bicker whilst the rest of the class looked on. Some were giggling at the romantic comedy scene playing out in front of them. Those with the bigger testes were wolf-whistling, though were quickly silenced when Crimson decided to chase them with a stapler. With her twin momentarily distracted, Asuka poked Shinji's back with a pencil.

"So Crimson gets a kiss. You thought of what my reward is going to be yet?"

"I haven't agreed to anything yet!"

"You owe me a favor, remember…"

"That I do…"

It was then their afternoon periods began, with the arrival of Honekawa-sensei postponing further discussion. Shinji couldn't ever remember a time he'd been looking forward to almost an hour of their wizened teacher's droning but with any luck, Crimson would fall asleep and leave him be for a while.

"Hey Shinji."

Of course, Crimson and Asuka weren't the only girls he had to deal with. Mana was tugging on his shirt from the seat to his left.

"Can I ask you for a favour?"

"Is it going to hurt?"

"What? No." She rolled her eyes. "I need you to come with me somewhere after school. Alone."

"That's easily the most suspicious thing you could have said... Sure, why not. Might give me a break from the Soryu twins."

"That's what I was thinking." She giggled sweetly. After their afternoon period classes were over, Mana dragged him out of the class before Asuka or Crimson could get a word in. Sprinting at breakneck speed, Shinji was beginning to wonder where exactly she was kidnapping him to this time.

"Here we go!"

"A bookstore? Is it real? Or is it one of those camouflaged BDSM shops?"

"What do you take me for?! Sometimes I want people to think I have a normal hobby from time to time!" Taking him by the hand, Mana dragged him inside. Shinji's eyes were darting everywhere, making sure he wasn't about to walk into a trap.

Surprisingly, everything about the shop looked normal. Mana had wandered over to the light novels, picked up the latest Monogatari story and was lost to the world. Before Shinji decided to join her, he'd spotted a small in-store café. Deciding to buy two lattes, he brought the steaming takeout cups over to hallucinating bookworm and offered her one.

"Thank you Shinji!"

"No problem. Did you just want company then?"

"Sort of. I love these books, but coming into a shop to buy them by myself was a little nerve-wracking…"

"Eh? Blowing up a school is all good, but walking into a harmless bookstore is where you draw the line?"

"It's more… I have to pretend to be normal. That's the hardest part about all of this." Her eyes never left the book she was reading. She seemed to be engrossed in the story, whilst somehow being able to have a conversation at the same time.

"From where I'm standing, you look perfectly normal to me."

"Even though you know I was a spy, now a godhand-wielding high school girl with a traumatic past and stalkerish tendencies?"

"Normal is pretty overrated anyway. You're far more interesting like this. And besides, some of that applies to me too."

"Wait, are you stalking me Shinji?!" Mana giggled, reminding him of how cute she could be when she wasn't blowing things up. "I guess I wouldn't mind, if it was you."

"I'll… keep that in mind?"

Shinji decided to read some stories too, standing next to Mana as it started to rain outside the shop. The soft pitter-patter of the rain on the windows and skylights made for a beautiful orchestra of noise as they both fantasized about the worlds they were lost in. The outside looked cold, but he could feel the faint body heat coming from Mana, mere centimeters away from his right arm. It was a very cozy feeling.

"Hey Shinji…"

"What's up Mana?"

"This is nice. Isn't it?"

 

[TailoftheDevil]

The Artificial Research Laboratory was in chaos.

Alarms were blaring, scientists and security were running around wildly, areas of the complex were being locked down, it was utter pandemonium.

Gendo, Yui, and Kyoko sat in the command centre, fearing the worst. Yui looked over towards her husband, a rare look of fear etched into her expression.

"What do we do?" Her eyes looked lost. She felt her whole life coming apart at the seams. Her husband was in his traditional signature pose, as he usually was during times of crises like this. But even behind his tinted glasses, Yui could see that the man who could keep his composure in most situations was panicking. His response never came, his eyes fixated on the large monitor in front of him. Satsuki, Kaede and Aoi were sitting at their posts, barking orders.

"The MAGI are at a 32% intrusion level! Sever the network links with the outside!"

"The virus is… mutating!? Nothing we do is stopping it! Morphing the logic is having no effect!"

"Vice Director, what do we do!?"

Yui bit her lip. This was a bold move, even for SEELE. Everything they had been working on for years… All the research and data. All of it! Teetering on the knife's edge of being totally stolen away. Their contribution to not only the future of the children but to all of humanity was mere moments away from ending up in the hands of the fools that would rather see the world go to ruin.

This spectre had been haunting them for long enough. It was time to deal with the ghost in the machine.

Yui whipped out her phone, speed dialling a number in the swift action it took to get from phone to ear.

"Misato, bring the kids. I want them to do some ghostbusting."

---

"I love your mother, I really do… But her references are showing her age. And in doing so, it's making ME feel old!"

"I hate to break it to you Misato but the chicken that represents your life is no longer in it's Spring. If anything, I'd say the first leaves that drop in the Fall are a better representative than-… HEY!" Asuka's scathing remarks were rudely interrupted by Misato's swerving Alpine taking the inclines of the road as ramps.

"I've never seen the Fast and Furious movies but I'd stop Asuka, before we start to reenact them-… gurghhh!" The car landing back on its wheels managed to shock the air out of Shinji before he had a chance to delicately finish his sentence. His lunch was threatening to paint the car interior with bile and judging from the hue on Asuka's face shifting slowly to a greenish colour, she wasn't far behind.

"Anymore smartass comments and I'll show you my drifting skills next, Asuka." Misato grinned evilly. The ride back to the Artificial Research Lab was significantly quieter after that.

Rolling into the lab's underground car park, Misato had the kids up the command centre as quick as possible, give or take a few detours and consulting a technician for directions.

"You've been here how many times Misato!? God, I'm so embarrassed…"

"Yeah, thanks for all your help Asuka, you've been here before too!"

"All of once! Why on earth would the Ikari's make this place a labyrinth? How do they ever find their way around this place?"

Skidding into the command centre, all three of them panted, desperately trying to get some oxygen into their lungs. Yui grinned weakly at the dramatic entrance.

"Glad to see you eventually made it."

"No problem at all. But if I may make a request, can someone give me a map? Would be really useful to get these guys here as quickly as possible." Misato wheezed. Shinji spotted a familiar blunette standing behind his mother.

"Rei! When did you get here?"

"I had to do some testing, so I left school early…" Rei looked at him, almost pouting. "Did you even notice I had gone?"

"Well, I…" His words had magically chosen that moment to not appear out of thin air.

"It's not even the end of lunch break, you could've been in the bathroom! You were right there with us up until the bell rang at the end of last period. You've been here like… thirty minutes before we got here!" Asuka, still trying to catch her breath, came to his rescue. The two girls glared at each other.

"MAGI intrusion is at seventy percent! Vice Director, whatever you're planning, you better get them to it asap!" Satsuki bellowed from her workstation. Shinji and the others could now see that things were a lot more serious than they realised. All the technicians looked incredibly stressed, the large monitor was filled with warnings and errors. Shinji saw 'MAGI' and what looked like a slowly filling graph pulsing red splashed across the screen.

"Wait, is this…?"

"SEELE." His father grunted his overly large desk. His eyes were fixated on the screen. Shinji had never seen him look so serious.

"Mom, what's going on?"

"You heard your father. SEELE have decided to play a game with us. And if we lose, it threatens the future as we know it." Shinji noticed his mother was also struggling not to scowl at the monitors above them. Things were much worse than he thought.

"In order to combat and resolve the situation, we need you three to help us." Yui suddenly had a tablet in her hand, rapidly scrolling through the data. "Your bracelets will be key, but unfortunately, we can't just wave them and hope this situation will go away. So, in order to use them effectively, we're going to be sending you into the MAGI itself in order to defeat the virus."

There was a long silence at the end of her explanation. Asuka and Shinji looked at each other for a moment before returning their gaze to the lead scientist of the Artificial Research Laboratory.

"…wut?"

"I think she means we're going into a virtual reality… Right Auntie?" Rei's voice piped up in the distance, standing next to Gendo's desk.

"Well done Rei, that's right."

"Wait, VR? Like with those headsets? Ooh, I've always wanted to play Beatsaber…"

"No Asuka. It's not going to need a headset. But I suppose it wouldn't be too far off to call the experience a game…" Yui lifted her eyes from the tablet and glanced up at them.

"Misato, can you take them to the VR room? I've sent a map to your phone. Yes, yes, I know, you're welcome. Actually…" Yui suddenly looked thoughtful. "Get them into their plug suits first. I feel like they're going to need them."
Ignoring Misato's cheer of finally getting hold of a way to navigate the maze that made up the facility, Asuka and Shinji looked at each other again in confusion.

"What's a plug suit?"

---

"You have got to be kidding me…"

"They're a bit…"

Both Shinji and Asuka were holding the answer to the question that had bugged them all the way from the command centre. Misato hadn't said a word. Instead, she had been content to irritate them with giggles. Rei hadn't said anything either, but both Shinji and Asuka noticed the wild blush that had threatened to consume her face.

Now they knew the reason for it. A bright red suit made from what felt not too far from latex was dangling from Asuka's outstretched hand. Holding it as though it was made from the excrement of animals, Asuka looked at Misato, aghast.

"Please tell me this is some sort of sick joke."

"Unfortunately not Asuka. Some of the experiments here require a suit that has a bunch of cutting-edge technology in them. I don't know how they work exactly, but trust me, they're important."

"But… WHY!?" Asuka raged out the last syllable. "It looks, and there's no other word for it, kinky! And not in a good way!"

Misato let out a hearty laugh. "I can't totally disagree with you there. If you have a problem with the design, you'll need to take it up with the guys that run this place."

"Rei, you not going to put yours on?" The blunette was looking very anxious, her blush not having yet dissipated yet.

"For the purpose of the experiments, I never questioned it before but…" She looked nervously at Shinji. "But… I share Soryu's sentiment. Wearing it in front of Shinji is going to be… difficult."

"Oh for the love of…" Misato walked towards the girls, suddenly grabbed them both by the waist and plopped them both on each shoulder.

"MISATO, WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?"

"Miss Katsuragi, please, this is embarrassing!"

"If we wait until you guys are ready to do this, SEELE will kill us all. Oh, and Shinji?" Misato nodded towards the men's changing room. "When you do put on the suit, make sure you press the button on your left wrist. That'll match the form of the suit to your measurements. I know it looks a bit oversized now, but it'll fit, trust me."

With that, the three girls disappeared, the sounds of indignation getting quieter. Shinji sighed and looked at the blue and white suit in his hand. There was no avoiding it. He wandered over to the door of the men's changing room, but not before he heard an embarrassed scream come from the ladies.

"I MIGHT AS WELL BE NAKED!" He heard Asuka rage. That didn't bode well for his own suit. Stripping off his clothes, he debated about wearing his underwear. His initial instinct was yes but maybe it might cause problems?

Shaking his head and realizing that they never got any instruction about it, he decided to keep his boxers on. For emotional support if nothing else.
It was a lot baggier than he had expected. Pulling the strangely rubbery material over his shoulders, it felt more like a clownish fat suit than something used for cutting-edge science. He did notice some bits on the suit that looked like they might be sensors, including the bright red jewel looking object on his chest. The suit also came with what looked like sensors to put in his hair, almost like the hair accessories Asuka liked to wear.

After sorting them out and making sure the suit was on as best as possible, he looked at his left wrist.

"Is this it… WOAH!" A sound like air being sucked up a vacuum suddenly hissed all around his body. The suit rapidly compressed around him, clinging to his skin all over. It wasn't uncomfortable, but the material felt odd to him. He'd never worn anything like this before.

It really was as skintight as Asuka's cry earlier had made it out to be. Suddenly getting an uncomfortable thought, he looked down at his gentleman's area, aware that any kind of thoughts that would set that off would be visible from a mile away. Grimacing at the reality, he promised himself to only think clean thoughts when he saw Asuka and Rei.

It was hopeless. It had been approximately a nanosecond before he covered his groin in the presence of his two suited comrades. Rei was wearing a pure white suit that accented absolutely everything and Asuka was very much the same but in a completely red outfit. At least in their school uniforms, you couldn't tell immediately but in the plug suits, Asuka clearly had a size advantage in the breasts department. Rei had a rump that put her back in the competition easily, but they both also had a significant feature around their groin areas that reminded Shinji very much of the toes of an animal that you would usually find crossing deserts.

"Yeah, yeah, get it out of your system." Asuka grimaced, well aware that Shinji had been trying his best not to look like he was looking. "We can see your leaning tower of Pisa attempting to wave hello, we're not blind either."

"Wait, what? What tower?" Rei squinted at Shinji, scanning him over until she reached the lower half. "Oh… Ohhhh…"

It was time to get the party back to the command centre.

"Oh my, they look even better than I thought they would!" Yui Ikari beamed at seeing the three suited-up teenagers return.

"With all due respect Vice Director, it feels a bit… revealing…" Asuka nervously glanced all over herself. She'd been fighting the urge to clobber Shinji the whole way back but decided not to out of pity. The poor guy basically waddled back whilst trying his best to cover the silhouette of his unmentionables. All the blood in his body seemed to have gone to his face thankfully, so she left his punishment to mother nature to dole out.

"I understand it's not the most fashionable thing in the world, but it does really help us out with the science side of things." Yui smiled weakly. "Also, you can just call me Ikari y'know. Or even just Yui. Or even Auntie, like Rei does! It feels weird hearing Vice Director from you guys…" Something resembling the shadow of a pout flickered across the lead scientist's face.

"Yui come on. You're running the show here, it's not a surprise she has no idea how to refer to you." A familiar voice echoed from one of the workstations across the command centre. Asuka's eyes immediately lit up, woes about her suit completely forgotten.

"Mama!" Asuka ran over to her mother, grabbing her in a big hug. It was a surprise to see the blonde scientist out of her lab. Shinji couldn't remember the last time he had actually seen Kyoko Soryu. He'd been convinced that she had become a permanent sort of hermit down there, texting colleagues for food deliveries and forgetting to have regular showers. But the woman that greeted them looked as fit as a fiddle and perfectly hygienic, if a little sleepy.

"Sorry it's been a while, my little Asuka! These guys keep me pretty busy!"

"I hate to interrupt this touching reunion but…" The burly voice of a troubled Gendo Ikari boomed from his desk, before-

"MAGI Intrusion at eighty-five percent! Guys, do something!" The tech team seemed to be at their wits end keeping the intrusion at bay. Kyoko returned to her terminal, apologizing to her daughter.

"I'm sorry Asuka but I need to help them. Let Auntie Yui fill in the rest!"

"She's right." Yui Ikari once again took up the reins of the operation. "Misato, take them to the VR room. I'll be in communication when you get there. And guys…" She looked at the three kids, worry clouding her face. "Please, be careful in there."

---

The VR room looked very familiar. To Shinji and Asuka, it was the room where they first discovered what exactly it was that Shinji's parents were experimenting with. The bare room with nothing inside but white walls was back.

"However, this room is not the same. It's been extensively tuned and refitted with mechanisms that can extend its length and width, as well as provide safety. Unfortunately, Misato can't join you in there until she gets her own plug suit-"

"I'M GETTING A PLUG SUIT TOO!?" Shinji and Asuka both mentally agreed that their guardian and teacher sounded way too excited with that bit of information.

"…-so she will be monitoring you both via a smaller control centre over there. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to give you all a briefing so we're going to be explaining things to you on the fly. We'll be launching the experiment in ten seconds. Brace yourselves!"

On his left, Rei looked nervous. Suddenly she yelped in surprise. Shinji had gently started to hold her hand.

"It's going to be alright Rei."

She had participated in a fair few experiments at the lab, helping Auntie and Uncle. But this one felt a lot more overwhelming. The future of the lab was at stake and she didn't want to mess up. She squeezed Shinji's hand gently in return, thankful for the reassurance.

"Yeah. It'll be okay… I think."

Shinji suddenly felt his other hand being clasped. Turning his head, he saw Asuka looking straight ahead at one of the blank walls.

"You better not forget about me Shinji. It's not just Rei you need to look after." She was trying not to show anything, but her face was slightly tinged red. Smiling, he squeezed her hand too.

"Yeah. I don't want to let anything happen to you either."

"Good! Then let's go kick this thing's ass and go home!"

"T-MINUS 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, START!"

The world around them erupted into a kaleidoscopic abstract flurry of colours. The three teenagers awed at the world around them, looking as though they had dived headfirst into a radiant galaxy. Shinji was immediately reminded of a school trip to the planetarium a long time ago. However, what they were seeing now was making that experience pale in comparison. It wasn't long before the lightshow around them ended and they were suddenly greeted with the sight of-

"Wait, is this our classroom?"

---

"I brought them, Vice Director." The voice of a man who looked to be in his early 30s appeared in the command centre.

"Ah, Kaji! It's good to see you again!" Yui Ikari glanced over at him, noting the ponytail that forever irked her was still present. Behind the smiling man were two girls. Crimson, with her ever present scowl was glaring at Yui. The scientist could understand why the Asuka lookalike usually had an angry disposition but it always felt like she done something to the irritated teenager personally.

Standing at a comfortable distance away from the angry redhead, Rei II had also joined them, with a curious expression. To her, especially with the large gaps in her memory, this must feel like the first time standing in a facility like this, Yui reasoned to herself.

"I just hope it isn't going to bring back any unpleasant memories, especially at a time like this." She thought to herself.

"So why are we here... And what the hell are they wearing!?" Crimson had spotted the monitoring window on the huge display in front of everyone. On it, she could clearly see Shinji, Asuka and Rei in their plug suits.

Yui suddenly realised why the girl looked ready to boil water with her face. Crimson's eyes raged with the fire of a supernova. On the day that Shinji had brought Crimson home, alongside the amnesiac Rei and the creepy ghost, they had all been wearing similar suits. Asuka's suit was an almost perfect recreation of the one that Crimson had worn from her own world. And it was no coincidence either.

Yui and the rest of the scientists had analysed the suits from the mysterious other world and had realised that they did indeed contain useful functions, such as life support and various other sensors that gave real-time monitoring abilities to many of the body's functions. They had been deemed useful and became an integral part of the experiments.

In the beginning, Yui hadn't been overly ecstatic using them. Using technology from a world that sought to basically destroy itself wasn't chiming with her moral compass. But the logic in her scientifically geared brain won out in the end. After all, any tool could be used for good, not just evil.

But she had completely forgot about what it might do to the mental stability of the teenagers from the destroyed world. Judging from Crimson's expression, it was about to rain blood-

"ARE YOU JOKING!? PLUG SUITS!? WHAT, ARE YOU GUYS HIDING A GODFORSAKEN ANGEL IN THE FUCKING BASEMENT TOO?"

"No! We just need them to- "

"TO WHAT!? No, don't even say it! I've heard this schtick before! Giant, soul-powered robots, fighting messengers of God but actually… no! Vessels, to initiate a world-ending apocalypse, all to resurrect a dead wife and stick it to some Illuminati dickheads and turn all of humanity into some giant Haunted-Mansion style blob in the sky where EVERYONE gets to see all of your secrets and memories. The fucking janitor in that world from my old school has memories of me getting off to the translucent baka and god forbid I can't bloody look him in the eye in this one! Everyone's dead, the sea's blood red, Ayanami's fucking face just chilling in it, grinning at the fucking moon, not to mention being the size of one. And you know what…" The temperature of the room was Arctic. No one dared breath as Crimson slowly but purposefully walked up to Gendo Ikari.

"It was All. Your. Fault."

No one knew what kind of expression lay behind the orange-tinted spectacles of the Commander. His signature pose suggested a sense of stoicism, but under the façade, Yui knew that Gendo Ikari, the leader of the Artificial Research Laboratory, the man who braved facing off against the likes of SEELE, was absolutely freaking out.

"I do believe this is the first time we've met, Miss…"

"Crimson! I may share the same name as the other, but I am not the same Asuka! I am one that YOU DESTROYED! Along with an entire planet!" A long silence followed. Everyone bar a few scientists had been completely distracted by the drama unfolding in front of them. It wasn't everyday you saw the Commander being absolutely bullied by a teenager.

"Miss… Crimson. I do not know what it was like in the world you came from, I cannot possibly even begin to fathom the darkness that swallowed up the planet. We do not intend to keep secrets from you, or Rei, about what it is we do here. But I ask you to understand. We are not NERV. We don't have weapons here of any kind. There are no… Angels, to fight. The only thing that stands in our way of providing a future for the generations ahead, is SEELE. A name that I am aware you are familiar with. What we do here is research, and experiment, in order to progress humanity. Not to conglomerate it in a false sense of paradise. We defend ourselves against SEELE, not with weapons but with science. We use the tools that we develop with good intentions, including what you see the children wearing. It is not an indication that we have malicious intentions." Gendo sighed, pushing up his glasses.

"I realise that it will be nearly impossible for you to accept any of this. Anything I say about it is words echoed from a man that resembles the chaos from where you came from. So all I can do it show you the actions we take here with full transparency and…" Almost everyone in the room silently gasped in surprise. Gendo Ikari, the man with an image to maintain, had just taken off his glasses. Standing on his feet, he gave his full attention to Crimson. And bowed.

"Apologize, for the trauma you have been through. Miss Soryu-… no. Miss Crimson, I am sorry for what you have been through. And I can assure you, we are going to do anything we can to stop evil from taking root in this world and prevent another apocalypse in this one."

There was another long silence.

"I am not going to help. If that's the reason you brought me here, you can think again."

"We will not force you to do anything."

"Fine then. I'm going home."

"Asuka!" It was her mother's voice. A voice she had not heard in a very, very long time. She knew an incarnation of her mother existed here, but out of fear, Crimson had not sought her out. Her memories were painful enough.

She found herself unable to move. Frozen to the spot. She wanted to run away. To hide at the ends of the earth. She was afraid. Afraid of her memories. Afraid of that voice. Afraid of herself.

"Asuka…" Dr Kyoko Soryu took a tentative step forward. She could see the girl referring to herself as Crimson shaking all over. Another step forward. Kyoko wanted to reach out, to console the girl trapped in the throes of her own mentality, after all of the suffering. But Kyoko could see that any sudden moves would cause Crimson to flee. She'd done enough running. She needed to heal.

"Everything is all right now. Everything is going to be okay."

"You. You're…" Crimson felt her throat locking up. She hated it. She wanted to scream. To shout. To let this imposter know her place. She wasn't her real mom. But…

She couldn't bring herself to do it. Why? It was just words… Right? She couldn't even face looking at the scientist right now. A tsunami of hot, angry tears was threatening to flow and destroy her where she stood. So, she remained there, frozen in place, not sure of what to do.

Did Shinji ever feel like this?

Kyoko made it around to stand in front of the stricken girl. Worry was etched over the blonde scientist's face as she searched for the light of hope in the trauma taking over Crimson's mind. The girl's breathing was increasing in pace. She looked ready to crumble into dust at the merest touch of a light wind.

Stretching out her arms, Kyoko was about to embrace the girl, not knowing what else to do to soothe her pain. But before she could-

"You… told me… to die."

Once again, the room froze. All eyes were on the two in the middle of the command centre. Most of the people there had only heard fragments of Crimson's story. Only Yui, Gendo, Kyoko and the other children knew what Crimson was talking about.

"I…" Kyoko was lost for words. She heard what happened. The Shinji and Asuka from her world had relayed as much information that they had managed to glean from Crimson. But it still wasn't really enough to explain the sheer magnitude of what she had gone through.

"The Contact… Experiment…" Crimson could barely breath. Trickles of tears started to flow down her face. But she had long since given up trying to stop them. What did it matter anyway?

"The day I lost you, was the day I was told I was going to be an Evangelion pilot. I was proud, I couldn't wait to tell you. But truthfully, I had lost you long before that. The woman I knew as Kyoko Soryu, my mother, died the day she decided to sell her soul to those abominable creations. The only thing that was left was a husk of a women, driven mad, convinced that a stupid doll was her daughter, not the living, breathing child that begged her to get better every day. And in the end, not only did you kill yourself… But you tried to take me with you."

"That was it. From that point on, I couldn't be a normal child anymore. I had to be there for myself, because no one would. The only thing anyone ever cared about me for was piloting an Eva. Everyone except… him. And I even managed to destroy that shred of happiness too."

"Maybe… If I had been nicer to him… The world might not have ended. Maybe I could've helped him to actually save the world. Maybe part of the reason that world is now an actual hell, is because I let it happen…"

"Maybe if… If I had a mother, who was there for me, the whole way… I would've turned out better. But you… You left me. All alone. In a world full of despair and destruction. Why!? WHY!?" Tears had become sobs. Every negative emotion was coming out, aimed squarely at the woman who stood in front of her. She wanted to scream to the ends of the earth. She wanted to shout until she lost her voice. She wanted to cry until she couldn't anymore. She wanted… What she really wanted…

Arms wrapped around her. Tightly. Warm. An embrace, for the first time she could remember in forever.

"No… No… I don't…!" Crimson tried to beat away, to break free of the embrace. She wanted it so badly, but she was so angry. So sad. Miserable. She had no strength to break away. So all she could do was stand there, and sob into the chest of Kyoko Soryu. Her mother.

"I'm so sorry… I'm so sorry… Asuka." Kyoko had managed to hold back her own sobs just as well as Crimson had. Both women had let their knees collapse onto the ground, still embracing each other.

Yui Ikari looked on at them both, a paralytic agony dancing around her heart. What Crimson had gone through was exactly what they were trying to avoid. She didn't want anyone else to go through what Crimson had to suffer through. She would make sure of it.

As if to temper her determination, alarms began ringing throughout the command centre.

"MAGI intrusion at ninety percent, we have to hurry!"

"Guys, we could really use your help right about now!" Shinji's voice blared through the monitor's. Everyone looked up to see the progress of his mission with the other Asuka and Rei. Things were not looking good.

 

[TailoftheDevil]

"Shinji! Watch your back!"

An explosion rocked the school corridor. It might be VR but everything felt incredibly real. If it wasn't for Asuka's yell, he would have been thrown out of the window and onto the harsh tarmac outside. VR or not, that was going to hurt a lot.

In his hands, he held a pistol. If Kensuke were here, he'd have spent a decent amount of time being lectured on how it was an M1911, how it was one of the most famous weapons of all time and all the wars it had ever been in, ad nauseum.

To Shinji, it was a gun that fired bullets. Not that he had ever fired a weapon outside of a video game before. It felt like they were using actual bullets too, judging from all the holes in the wall from their missed shots. It was pretty loud too.

"Did they have to replicate the weapons this accurately?" Shinji thought as he ducked into an empty classroom, hot on Asuka's tail.

It all started when they found themselves plonked into their classroom after entering the VR room.

Things had become weird in short order.

---

"So… why the school?" Asuka looked around. When the technology the bracelets had been based on was first shown to Asuka and Shinji, one of their tasks had been to imagine a location familiar to them. She had imagined their school classroom, and the location was bringing back memories of that first time but now school was laced with a sense of danger.

"So luckily when it comes to these skirmishes with SEELE, we seem to be able to decide the place, although unfortunately, they get to decide when." Misato's voice blared out from an invisible speaker somewhere above their heads.

"The school was decided as everyone here has ample knowledge of its layout, hopefully giving us some tactical advantages-"

"Wait, Misato… what's that?" Asuka had spotted several things floating around outside of the classroom. They looked like jewels, something like rubies about the size of a human head, levitating a few feet from the ground.

They reminded Shinji of the red object implanted in his suit.

"Those would appear to be your enemies, Asuka."

They didn't look very threatening. They did make Shinji feel unnerved, almost as if he recognized them from somewhere.

"So we just have to take them out?" Asuka's bracelet glowed red and suddenly she was holding a gun. Shinji vaguely recognised the shape from a James Bond movie. A voice in his head that sounded a lot like Kensuke Aida helpfully reminded him that it was a Walther P99.

The weapon made a loud cracking noise, as deafening as he would imagine a real-life pistol to sound. Quickly followed was the sound of shattering glass as one of the classroom windows into the corridor collapsed. A bright red flash suddenly shone through the windows as one of the ruby-like objects popped out of existence.

"Really? That's it? This is gonna be easy!" Asuka grinned as she fired off her weapon a few more times. Red flashes followed her wake as she ran out of the classroom and down the corridor. Her gleeful giggling started to sound downright maniacal to Shinji and Rei.
Both had their hands to their ears, their dislike for loud noises on full display.

"Hey Misato, those bullets aren't… live ammo are they?" Shinji asked fearfully. All they needed right now is the gun-crazy Asuka to accidentally hit them with friendly fire.

"If I'm reading this right… If you get hurt in the VR world, the system is going to 'simulate' pain. In other words, it's probably going to hurt a lot but probably not as much as if you'd been shot in real life. That being said, if you receive the equivalent of what would normally be a fatal injury, the system pulls you out.
The good news is that that means infinite respawns! But we don't have a good deal of time to be working with so hopefully it won't come to that…"

"We better get after her…" Shinji glanced at Rei. Nodding back, she ran out of the classroom, Shinji following close behind.

---

With his ears ringing and his kill count steadily climbing, Shinji had his back pressed up against Asuka's, firing for all he was worth. His pistol was on the ground, out of ammo, with Shinji not having any time to reload it. He was currently holding an M4 assault rifle, something Asuka had summoned and thrown to him in the heat of battle.

The Rubycores (as Asuka had helpfully designated them), had multiplied ferociously. It turned out that they could fire small lasers, sort of like blasters from every space movie ever. All three had been hit at least once by one of the lasers, which stung like hell on impact, but had a slightly more emotionally distressing effect, especially for the girls.
Whenever a beam landed on target, it would melt the suit a little, revealing skin underneath. The effect normally produced a hole in the suit about the size of an adult hand. Asuka had been caught on her naval and slightly under her left breast, Rei had a couple of holes on her back and several going down her legs and Shinji had the great misfortune of having one on his left buttcheek.

Thanks to the revelation of the suit-melting weaponry, both girls had turned the insanity up to the nth degree. Asuka had been firing RPGs and grenade launchers, switching to katanas and twin daggers for close quarters combat, howling the whole time.

Rei was… wild. He was starting to think there were many layers to the red-eyed girl he still didn't know, but he certainly hadn't been expecting her to be wielding a submachine gun with one hand whilst killing close quarter enemies with a claw gauntlet on the other. He was briefly reminded of the time Rei had been showing how the bracelets worked originally, asking Shinji if he thought her armour gauntlet had been nicer than the one Asuka had summoned that day.

The memories blasted out of his head when a grenade exploded, decimating many of the Rubycores. The corridor was a mess, it genuinely looked like a warzone, with spent ammo casings, destruction and scorch marks everywhere. The Rubycores didn't leave corpses, but Shinji could almost imagine what it might look like if they had.

"Mi… Sa… To…" Asuka breathed, desperately trying to oxygenate herself. "When… does this nightmare… end…?"

"I wish I could tell you… Another wave is coming from the gymnasium to your position. You've got maybe two minutes before they're on to you…"

"Oh my GOD!" Asuka growled, checking her weapons and ammo, summoning anything that was depleted. "We've got to come up with a plan!"

It was like fighting in a zombie survival game, with waves that seemed to get more and more aggressive. They were allowed a brief respite between waves, but things seemed to get more and more challenging every time another wave started.

"What about Mom and Dad? Any bright ideas from them?" Shinji had his hands on his knees, panting after a quick reload. Rei was not fairing much better, a visible amount of sweat glistening over her face.

"They… uhhh… appear to be having a bit of a situation on their hands at the moment…"

"Wait, what!? Are they okay?"

"Uhh… don't worry about that! Your mom and dad are just having a uhh… chat with uhhh… Crimson…" Misato glanced nervously at the other monitor broadcasting the command centre. Things were looking emotional to say the least. It didn't help that she could hear everything that was going on in one ear, and also being able to hear Shinji and the others within the VR environment in the other. It was like trying to watch a soap drama with one eye and an action movie with the other. Her head was spinning. Did the Artificial Research Laboratory have healthcare that covered therapy?

Shinji and the others weren't paying attention her anymore. The next wave had started in earnest… but something was different.

"Misato!?"

On her monitors, Misato could see a humanlike form instead of the regular Rubycores. It was still the same colour, but it was unmistakeably a clone of Shinji. It was as though someone had taken their Shinji Ikari and drowned him in ruby-coloured paint.
The paint was starting to evaporate, a red misty steam rising from the clone, until it revealed a perfect replica of the Shinji they knew, complete with his regular school uniform. The most disturbing part was that it was grinning, evilly.

"Kids, you have to run! Get away from him!"

The trio didn't need telling twice. They ran from the destroyed corridor, moving towards the staircase.

"We have to get outside. Bottlenecking the cores worked for a while but they keep pincer manoeuvring us. We need more open space!" Nobody had the time to disagree with Asuka, but as they made their way to the staircase, more Shinji clones began to walk up the stairs, all with the same evil grin plastered on their faces. Shinji swore he could see a red glow from their eyes.

Two bullet holes appeared above the clones, accompanied by the sounds of the gunshots.

"Asuka, you missed!? You're like three feet away from them, how did you miss!?"

"It's harder to kill these things when they…"

"When they look like you, baka Shinji!" Asuka gritted her teeth, forcing herself to remember that these things were just clones. Not human beings, not her Shinji. Just bastardized mimics of her one and only treasure. Flipping the pin on a grenade, she lobbed it down the stairs before grabbing both Rei and Shinji's hand.

"Back past the classroom, there's another stairwell. Hopefully that one isn't overrun with bakas!" Asuka dragged them into the direction they started at, a deafening explosion in their wake.

After having made it to the other side of the school, Asuka's eyes lit up when she saw the stairwell, only to turn into fires of rage when she saw more figures slowly walking up the stairs.
This time though, they weren't clones of Shinji. A clone of herself was slowly walking towards her, alongside a few Rei clones as well. All of whom had the same terrifying smile and glowing red eyes.

"As if I needed any MORE clones of me!" Asuka snarled, pulling out her pistol and landing headshots on every clone she saw. Seeing herself get shot in the head was a weird and existential feeling if there ever was one, but seeing the core clones evaporate into a red mist was enough to bring her imagination under control.

Thankfully, there hadn't been as many clones on this side, so they still had a chance to make it downstairs.

"Guys we have to-…" Asuka spotted Shinji and Rei staring at one of the corkboards on the wall of the school corridor. They both looked terrified.

"Are you seriously doing this right now!? We have to move-…!" She spotted it. Her brain was refusing to process the demand though. The cogs in her brain had jammed, to the point where she could almost visualize the sparks trying to force them to move.

On the wall, pinned on the corkboard, was around twenty or so photos. All of Asuka. All of which could be politely described as indecent.

Changing in the school locker room. Lying in her panties and shirt at home. Several of her on the toilet, panties by her ankles. A shot from behind with her holding a towel to her front, her bare behind on display.

Various other pictures that appeared to be taken from a distance, as though with a telescopic camera. Plastered all over the wall.
Unable to process it, she walked numbly into their classroom, ready to plonk her head onto her desk and call it a day.

Her fate would have other plans. Walking into the classroom, she saw more of the same. Photos the size of posters everywhere. Stuck to the chalkboard, falling out of every desk in the room, in student planners, bags, bento boxes.
It was like a printing press of some dirty voyeur magazine had decided to set up home in their classroom.

Shinji and Rei had tentatively followed Asuka into their classroom. Asuka didn't even have the energy to shout at them not to look. Her eyes simply rolled into the back of her head and she collapsed where she stood.

"ASUKA!"

Holding the limp girl in his arms, he checked for injuries. It appeared she'd fainted from the shock. Thankfully that meant nothing had physically knocked her out but now they were down to just Rei and Shinji. Versus a whole horde of clones.

"Guys, we could really use your help right now!" Shinji yelled towards the heavens.

---

The command centre had suffered a lot of drama already, but what they were seeing on the monitors was catastrophic. Shinji and Rei had summoned anything they could to prop the doors and windows. The toll of using their bracelets was noticeable. One of the tech nerds had likened it to using too much mana in a video game. And now the two teenagers were running on fumes.

Yui watched opened mouth in horror as several of the clones began firing through the gaps in the defences, laser beams flying from outstretched palms. Several beams caught Rei, striking her head and suit. Her entire top half had melted away. But Shinji didn't have the spare thought capacity for boobs right now. The impact to her head had caused her to faint, and suddenly vanish out of existence. The same had happened with Asuka.

"REI! ASUKA!"

"Shinji, we've pulled them both out of the VR environment. They're alive but you have to think of some way to stop them!"

Misato's words only gave Shinji the barest hint of reassurance. What was he going to do!? He had failed them both, and he was the weakest fighter out of the three by his own admission. He was panicking and the defences were not going to hold much longer.

The pulse in his ears was starting to drown out the chaos. His thoughts were rapidly looking across his entire lifespan for anything that might help him right now. Suddenly, his thoughts focused in on a memory, from a long time ago.

~I want you to be the pilot~

Would it work? Did he have enough strength? He didn't really have much of a choice right now. It was do or die!

Thank you… Mana…

"I'm… the pilot…" Shinji whispered. His entire form began to glow with a golden light.

"Misato! What's happening to him?" Yui was yelling down the comms from the command centre.

"I have no idea…" Misato breathed, unable to take her eyes away from the monitors. "Shinji…?"

Shinji's form was almost blinding. That hadn't stopped the clones from firing, but it appeared none of the laser beams were able to touch him anymore. A forcefield had appeared in front of the boy, shielding him.

"IS THAT AN A.T. FIELD!?" Crimson was staring at the monitors too, dumbfounded. Was it possible? In this world too!?

Her words were cut short by the roar that bellowed from the monitors in the VR environment.

"I AM SHINJI IKARI, PILOT OF EVANGELION UNIT 01!"

A deafening explosion rocked the school. Smoke and debris mushroomed from the devastation, blinding everyone at the command centre.

"We need a visual, anything, please!" Yui was staring at the monitor, her heart caught in her throat. She felt just like she had when she discovered the earthquake all those years ago. The day she almost lost her little boy. Terrified couldn't begin to do justice to the roller coaster of emotions she was experiencing right now. Her husband had stood from his desk, a look of shock and bewilderment filling his face.

"Shinji!"

The smoke began to descend and fade from view. A monstrous shadow began to form. Flashes of purple and green began to make themselves seen through the clouds of dust.

Crimson looked up at the beast she had fought alongside for what felt like years, before it tore her world to shreds. Her whole body was shaking, as though electrified. Her mind wasn't believing what she was seeing. This world wasn't supposed to have them!

"Evan…gelion… Unit…01…" She whispered out loud.

---

The bestial form of a huge, robotic monster towered on what was once the school playing field. It made Misato think of a transformer with a purple and green paintjob. A terrifying transformer with angry looking teeth and eyes and a roar that could shatter every window for miles around.

"What the hell is that!?"

She could only watch as an army of clones piled out of the school. All of whom took a moment to stand stock still and stare up at the giant robot. All grinning maniacally.

"We've been waiting for you… Shinji Ikari."

A chorus of creepy voices echoed from the crowd of clones in unison. It was like watching a bizarre horror movie. Misato could almost laugh at the silliness of it all if it wasn't such a dire situation.

"What's the plan Shinji… What are you gonna do?" Misato stared at the giant monster glaring down on the clones. He needed to figure out his plan, fast!

---

He had found himself inside a cockpit of sorts. He was sat in a chair that seemed to stretch down a long tube, with controls by his hands. He'd never controlled anything in his life before, outside of video games. He had certainly never played a game that needed controlling with what looked to be two sliding joysticks. Grabbing them, he decided to at least try moving the thing first.

"Okay, here goes… WHAAAA-…!"

The entire command centre watched in horror as the giant robot took one tentative step forward, before slipping and collapsing onto the ground. It had been like watching a lamb take its first steps and falling over, except a whole lot less cute.

"He doesn't… Oh gods…! He doesn't know how to…" Crimson breathed. Kyoko looked at her daughter anxiously.

"What? What doesn't he know?"

"He has no idea how to pilot it!" Crimson was on the verge of having another mental outburst, before an idea suddenly popped into her head. It wasn't an idea she was crazy about, but if she didn't do this, there wouldn't be much of a future left for any of them.

"M-mom?"

Kyoko Soryu squeaked in surprise. She never thought the day would come that Crimson would refer to her like that. Deciding that the situation needed more focus than thinking about how cute her daughter sounded, she nodded in response.

"Yes?"

"Are there anymore plug suits around I could use?"

---

Shinji was hurt. Falling and hitting the ground had felt like as though it had been him who had fallen over. He didn't understand why it happened, but he was going to have serious talks with his parents about how they designed their VR experiments in the future.

Managing to get the beast back up on its feet, he was beginning to realise that he could get it to walk through a combination of the controls and his own will. It was still clunky and he was having a hard time getting used to it, especially with the damn clones swarming all over him like rabid ants!

He was managing to shake them off, but he could feel pinpricks of pain all over his body, as though the clones were trying to tear off the armour cladding the giant robot.

Stamping on them didn't seem to be doing much. For all the destroyed clones, another hundred appeared to take their place. If he could find a source for where they were coming from, he might be able to destroy that, but he had his hands full trying to keep himself upright.

"HEY BAKA! OVER HERE!"

All of the clones and Shinji turned around. What they saw was Asuka, dressed in her bright red plug suit, grinning evilly.

"Asuka!? You're okay!?"

"No you idiot." The girl's smile continued as she began to glow with a radiant light, just like Shinji had before.

"I told you." Another explosion rocked the school field. Shinji's mouth felt like it dropped to the floor as he saw what was being revealed by the dissipating smoke.

A red version of his robot was standing in front of him. It had many green eyes, scary teeth and a terrifying aura. Reminding him heavily of someone else he knew. The emerald eyes all focused on him. It looked like even the robot was grinning at him.

"Call me…"

Crimson.

---

Misato really needed a beer right about now. Another scary looking robot, Crimson demanding to get into the simulation, somehow able to get authorisation to use a bracelet which had almost too conveniently been ready for her.

"Almost as if they were planning to have Crimson cooperate with them eventually, eh?" Ryoji Kaji had joined her in the VR's control centre. His normally smiling visage was lost in thought, looking at the monitors.

"I wonder what would have happened if Crimson had refused to work with the lab? Kept that bracelet as a spare?"

"I doubt Gendo would try to force her into doing anything, judging from that speech earlier. Yui wouldn't have allowed him to do so anyway."

"I'm just surprised Crimson is doing this at all! You heard what she said about that world she came from. I would never have come near one of those creepy robots again if I'd been through what she had." Misato was racking her brains trying to think about what changed the young girls mind. "It's gotta be…"

"Shinji."

---

"It feels… just like my original one did."

Crimson found herself once again behind the wheels of EVA Unit 02. Stretching out her arm, she found her EVA's arm did the same, flawlessly.

"Okay, at least I can control this thing." She looked around at the various diagnostics around her. "Huh, that's different."

Normally in an EVA, she had an entire tech crew monitoring the Entry Plug's diagnostics, as well as readouts all around her displaying battery life, life support system status and other technobabble.
The graphs were all there but the only way she could describe them was freaking out.

Her battery life flickered through numbers so fast that it made her think of a Nixie tube clock on crack. Everything else was reading out about the same. Sod the numbers, she'd have this wrapped up in a few minutes anyway.

"Oh shit, do I have any weapons?"

No rifles and no weapon buildings to get them from.

"How about… YES!" Her shoulder pauldrons! The right shoulder opened to reveal one of her favourite toys, the Progressive Knife!

Pulling it out, she felt the familiar blade start to hum with high frequency vibrations. At least she had something! It looked like she was going to need it too.

The crowd of clones had been acting strangely for a while. Individual clones were appearing to meld with each other, almost like the reverse of a cell dividing. The process was rapidly speeding up to.

"Asu-… I mean, Crimson, can you hear me?"

So they still had inter-Eva comms apparently.

"Yes, baka. Now let me show you how a real pilot controls an EVA!"

Slamming her knife down, she aimed for the areas where the clones merging was starting to get noticeably big. The field and the school noticeably shook, as though an earthquake had ripped through the area.

Crimson's knife wasn't having much of an effect. The clones had begun melding around her blade, rapidly conglomerating before the eyes of the two pilots.

"Shit, it's happening too fast!"

"Crimson, what do we do?"

It didn't take long before all the clones had merged into something big. A colossus, standing about as tall as the Evas. Another being that Crimson was only too familiar with. Her heart almost stopped just looking at it.

"IS THAT A FUCKING ANGEL!?"

She had never actually seen this Angel before. However, she recognised its look from watching previous battle records. Before Crimson had made her way to Tokyo-3, her world's Shinji Ikari had fought the third Angel, beating it but just barely. Mostly because the dumb thing had decided to self-destruct. Looking at what was in front of her, it looked awfully similar.

"That can't be… Sachiel?!" She breathed. It looked just like what she had seen before. It had the aura of an Angel, but not quite. It felt… artificial? Like it wasn't real. Like it was more some sort of bizarre automaton.
But if it was real, or at least, very similar, the weaknesses should be the same, right?

"Shinji!"

He jumped, hearing Crimson suddenly bark over the airwaves.

"Y-yes?"

"I've fought these things before, in my world. I'm not sure if that's exactly the same thing, but it looks close enough, which means I know how to beat it."

"You do!?"

"Watch and learn!"

Unit 02 broke into a sprint, heading straight for the monstrosity. Crimson's progressive knife was ready, aiming at the sparkling red core she had destroyed countless times before. She was seemingly meters away from her target, her aim true.

A rush suddenly erupted from the ground beneath her. She had expected some form of resistance, but instead of an A.T. field like she spotted earlier, a rush of melded clones had formed a wall between her and the Angel. It was like a wall of half-formed humans, arms and legs sticking out at weird angles, heads were popping out… It was another thing that made everyone watching think of cheap horror movies.

"I don't want to rush whatever it is you guys are trying to do, but the MAGI are 98% infected. Hurry!"

Misato's cry pushed Shinji to act. There wasn't much he could do; he could barely control his… Eva. But after glancing over at Unit 02, he caught the eyes of Crimson on the communication monitors. They both nodded at each other, understanding what needed to be done.

Unit 01 clumsily started to run. From Crimson's perspective, it was like watching a toddler running towards a toy. She almost laughed at the comicalness of it all, but she needed to keep her focus sharp. She'd only have one chance at this.
Unit 01 finally reached the wall, where, instead of stopping, Shinji decided to barrel through it, ripping the wall apart and exposing the core once again.

Without thinking, Crimson willed Unit 02 to dive forward, not allowing anything else to come between her, her knife and the sparkly jewel that needed to shatter, right now.

A crack ripped through the air, followed by a deafening crashing noise.

An explosion ripped through the world, followed by darkness.

---

"So."

Gendo Ikari was once again sitting behind his desk. In front of him were various documents. Reports, on how SEELE had managed to infiltrate their networks and cause untold catastrophe for the past eighteen hours.

Yui Ikari was standing next to him, facepalming at the sheer stupidity of it all. She didn't have much to say to the crowd of tech crew, scientists, the kids, along with Misato and Kaji. Gendo began to clear his throat, wondering how to deal with the cretins he called comrades.

"It appears, from initial reports… That we were hacked. Quite magnificently, as you can imagine, by SEELE. You would think that it might have taken them a long time, lots of effort and patience but the truth is…"

Gendo sighed. He was considering whether this was more excruciating than losing to those idiotic men at the cult cabal.

"Someone had used the MAGI system to check social media, and not via network safety protocols. For the sake of everyone here, no names will be mentioned but the warnings about using the Internet here were for a reason. As a result, there is a huge amount of system damage done that is going to take months to repair." Gendo turned his gaze towards the desk. He kept sighing to himself, feeling himself get older with every breath.

"Why SEELE decided to use this method to insert a virus, we're not sure. Why or how it took on the forms that it did is also unknown. It's a small miracle Crimson was here to not only help us defeat the target, but to also have data that might help us in the future." Yui Ikari had taken over, giving the uncomfortable Crimson a thankful wink in the process. "Not to mention Shinji, Asuka and Rei for fighting valiantly for the defence of this facility."

The three teenagers shuffled awkwardly while receiving a round of applause. Sure, they all fought but they also got their butts kicked. It was humiliating, even though they technically won.

"Can I just ask…?" Asuka raised her hand. "The… pictures. What was… that about?"

Everyone in the command centre had just managed to forget about all the indecent images of Asuka flashing up in the VR room. Unaware of the discomfort she had just caused, Asuka continued her barrage of awkward questions.

"Why just me? Why stuff like… that? And who on earth took them!?"

"As for the who, we don't know." Yui attempted to answer the understandably distressed girl. "However…" She gestured weakly to Shinji, who almost begged his mother with his eyes to not answer the question.

Realising there was no stopping the crazy train just yet, Shinji pulled out his phone.

"Have you checked your socials today Asuka? I think… you're the one that might've been hacked…"

There was a return of the arctic freeze in the command centre as Asuka stood stock still.

"No…"

She slowly pulled out her phone, which she had neglected to look at since she had left school. There were dozens of notifications on the lock screen. Some of them, even with their short headers, had sentences that looked like warnings from her friends.

"You might want to check your timelines! I think you've been hacked!"

A message from Hikari only further brought on the dread as she opened LINE and her other social media applications. All of the lewd photography was there, just like she had seen in the VR world.

"W-why…?"

Just like she had done in the VR world, Asuka collapsed onto the ground, unconscious.

"ASUKA!" Shinji ran to the second-time collapsed teenager.

"But really though, why her?" Misato looked thoughtfully. "And if the hack was today, how could it have been Asuka? She was at school all day, the attack had already started before we even got here?"

"It obviously happened on a different day she was here. Probably a virus lying dormant until certain triggers went off…" Crimson said in a low voice, glaring daggers at her counterpart. "I can't believe she'd be someone to flaunt herself like that."

"She isn't like that! My Asuka would never do such a thing!" Kyoko glared at Crimson, coming to one of her daughter's defence. "Why would you think she'd do anything like that? It's clear that someone has been spying on her for a while now. But why would they pick her as a target?"

Crimson looked nervously away from Kyoko, feeling for the first time since arriving in this world, an overwhelming sense of anxiety and fear. There was something about being in the presence of her mother that stripped away all her anger, replacing it with a constrictive knot in her chest that made it difficult to talk. She felt like a child caught stealing cookies and instead of reacting how she normally would with out-of-control rage, she caught herself staring at her shoes.

"I-I believe the hackers might have been… attempting s-something like a penetration t-test? And Asu… She would-… w-work well as a target b-because of her links to the… lab and her… popularity… She'd be a… good… catalyst…" Crimson couldn't believe it. She was stammering. Her! Sounding for all the world like a shy bookworm, she sounded like one of the Rei's for God's sake!

Kyoko instantly realized why Crimson was reacting like this. She was the spitting image of the poor girl's mother in Crimson's past world, and she was demanding answers. Though she might not have meant it, Kyoko probably appeared intimidating and that was the last thing she wanted to do.

"Oh dear…" Stumbling over to the stricken girl, Kyoko enveloped her in a tight embrace, causing even more emotional confusion on Crimson, although she didn't altogether dislike it. Gendo sighed, adjusting his glasses as he began to address everyone once again.

"The young lady is right. SEELE will do anything and everything to disrupt and invade our operations. This has been a lesson for us all."

"We'll need to bolster our countermeasures to prevent things like this from happening again in the future." Yui glanced towards the tech team. "And maybe make sure that social media use is blocked on site for the foreseeable future..."

A collective groan echoed throughout the command centre. Breaks times were about to become excruciating. Personnel were going to have to socialize.

Before he found himself caught in the crossfire of an uprising, Shinji decided to pick Asuka up and carry her towards the medical bay. He figured that she would probably appreciate it more than waking up on the floor of the command centre. Or in his lap.

---

Asuka suddenly woke up, her eyes finding a cold, bare ceiling above her. She recognized it, seeing as it hadn't been the first time she'd awoken in the medical bay. Blinking her eyes a few times to shake the weariness out of them, she thought back, piecing together the memories of how she got here.

"Okay, so we went to the command centre… The revelation that indecent images of me have been hacked out of my phone and flooded on social media was discovered, ah…" She felt a wave of dizziness flood over her. That would do it. Shock on that level would make anyone crumple to the floor.

She suddenly felt her hand twitch. Not by her own power, but from the faintly warm sensation she felt wrapped around it. She marvelled at the fact that she had only just noticed it. Her head really wasn't in the game today. She had a pretty good idea who it was, clutching her hand as if to stop her from floating away.

Turning her head, Asuka's suspicions were confirmed when she saw a passed-out Shinji, his head resting on one arm, a sliver of drool dribbling out of the corner of his mouth. Bizarrely, she seemed to find it somewhat attractive. A blush flared across her face, followed by indignation. Was there anything else weird about him that she liked?! Was she about to start having strange fantasies about his scent?!

Her body froze. Oh no. She wasn't… Was she? With her internal debate in full rage about why this was/wasn't a good idea, she suddenly found herself inches away from the top of Shinji's head.

"No no no no no, stop... stopstopstopnononon... AHHHHHHHHH!" The embarrassed screams in her head were drowned about by the thunderous claps of her heartbeat in her ears. She held her breath, begging with herself not to do anything she might end up regretting later.

She was already regretting it and she hadn't done anything yet!

Her nose inched further along its half-intended trajectory. She could feel the tips of his hair tickling her nostrils. She was going lightheaded from holding her breath. It was almost as if she wasn't giving herself a choice. She would have to breathe eventually. Yeah, that was it. It wasn't as if she was doing this because she wanted to. Breathing was a necessity! Never mind that she had by now buried her face into Shinji's bird nest he called hair and inhaled deeply, hit by curious notes of chestnuts and other earthy scents.

She stayed there, longer than she subconsciously promised herself that she would. It was addictive, her senses being enveloped by Shinji.

"Would it be the same if he gave me a long hug, I wonder?" She giggled to herself, indulging in her weirdness for just a bit longer. He was still snoring, she was safe for now. She was enjoying herself, for the first time in what felt like forever, she was happy, letting life and her hormones take the wheel. At least it wasn't something even weirder, like lusting over his BO…

With that thought snapping her straight back into reality, her heartbeat still beating a million miles an hour, Asuka sat bolt upright, her eyes still transfixed on the sleeping Shinji.

Rapid thoughts involving stealing his clothes at home, from the laundry… Inhaling their scent, losing herself into a lust-filled adventure of self-pleasure invaded her mind. Somewhere under the covers of the hospital bed, she could feel a wetness beginning to dampen where she'd very much rather not think about right now. As much as she tried, she still felt her hand slowly slinking its way under the covers, slipping past the elastic of her undergarments as her breathing slowly turned into panting. Her face felt like a radiator, a small voice in the back of her head was wondering if she was breaking out into a full-blown fever, and Shinji appeared to be stirring-… ! ABORT MISSION, ABORT-…!

"Asuka?" A sleepy voice, adorable as they come, wandered into the stricken girl's eardrums. She tried every trick in the book to banish her thoughts from moments ago. She tried to think of anything that would, in lack of a better phrase, turn her off!

Old people, a dog peeing on the road, Honekawa-sensei's deadly boring lessons, Misato's cooking, Shinji's SDAT player, Shinji's unwashed boxers lying on top of the washing machine, defenceless and all her's to-ARGHHHH!

It was a fruitless battle. Realizing now that she had been repressing her urges for a long time, it felt as though a dam had burst. Though not completely.

Cracks had appeared, spouting out surges of water but the mental sanity department inside her mind was working at insane pace to put the metaphorical band aids on before she lost herself completely.

"Jesus Asuka! You're bright red! Do you have a fever or something?!" Shinji picked that moment to do the one thing that would demolish her internal Walls of Jericho and gently touched his forehead onto hers, checking her temperature. She internally cursed to all the gods in existence ever.

WHY WAS THIS A THING?!

Japanese and their skinship…

At least she knew who to blame for her following action.

"Asuka, let me go get the nurse! You're burning u-MMMMMPH!" Shinji was cut off by a pair of lips finding a home on his own, Asuka's hands firmly around the back of his head. He was a fish out of water, his whole nervous system was electrified. His eyes were wide with shock and his fried brain was sure he was seeing what looked like hearts instead of irises in Asuka's.

He feared for his life. After she inevitably calmed down, Shinji wasn't sure if this was going to continue, or she'd be out for murder.

Of course, as his fate seemed destined to suffer misfortune of all kinds, the sound of an automatic door pneumatically opened behind him. He didn't need to look around. He felt the eyes staring into the back of his head.

The whole gang had just walked in.

 

[TailoftheDevil]

It wasn't the first time someone had walked in on her in the midst of an embarrassing situation.

That being said, she was going to need a long time and a lot of therapy to completely suppress the look on her friend's faces as her mouth remained melded to Shinji's lips, her eyes wide with abstract horror.

Misato had also decided to be a responsible guardian for a change and join the party.

Where her expression should have been shock and disappointment, Asuka could see glee on the so-called 'adults' face.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Asuka wondered how long it would take before the entire laboratory staff knew about the latest gossip.

Somehow, she was able to kick her brain into first gear and peel her lips away from her love-interest's delicious lips, with the tiniest notion of reluctance. Opening her now unoccupied mouth, she tried to synchronize with her brain any of the excuses that were trying to tumble their way into the airwaves.

"I can explain-"

"Class Rep, I would like you to uhh, pardon my french as it were for... but a moment." Toji Suzihara cleared his throat before ceremoniously yelling.

"I FUCKING CALLED IT!"

"It's not like we all didn't kinda already know it was happening but it's still odd to see it... Live-action..." Kensuke Aida was grinning ear-to-ear. Asuka was surprised he hadn't yet whipped out his camera and started playing the part of the paparazzi.

"It's not-"

"It's totally what it looks like Asuka. There's no alibi in the world that can explain that away." Hikari looked so smug. Asuka loved her as a best friend but sometimes she was a bit too much of a middle-school girl.

"You wanna help me out here Shinji?" Asuka turned back to face him but quickly realized his slacked jaw and dazed eyes meant his brain was still in the process of rebooting. He was going to be out of commission for a while longer.

"Oh for god's sake..."

"Don't blame him, you've gone and fried his circuits." The so-called guardian had found her words. "Maybe we should leave you two in peace, eh?"

With that, she shepherded the gaggle of overexcited students out into the hallway, leaving Asuka slumped forward on her bed, defeated.

Today was going to be a long day.

---

After several hours of tests and general fussing about by various no-name doctors and nurses, Asuka was allowed her freedom.

Hand in hand with Shinji, fingers intertwined, no longer caring about appearances after the 'demonstration' from earlier, Asuka was walking cheerfully towards the apartment. The rest of the tenants were in tow, including both of the Rei's. Usually one of the Rei's stayed at the Artificial Research Laboratory but Asuka had noticed that the two somewhat-twins were attached at the hip these days.

"Maybe she found comfort in her own company?" Asuka thought to herself.

There were a few notable absences from the usual motley crew. Mana hadn't been seen for a while. Usually, Asuka was battling to keep the thieving cat from molesting Shinji, so the peace and quiet was nice. But something felt off about her now lack of presence.

Alongside Mana, Crimson was also nowhere to be seen. This was also a peaceful relief, but it was causing Asuka to think that maybe the two were colluding. She'd have to keep an even closer eye on Shinji over the next few days, lest a kidnapping happened right under her nose.

---

Crimson was, in fact, not consulting with her roommate. Breathing heavily, she was slumped over the controls of her previously imagined EVA.

"Do you maybe wanna run by me one more time why you're doing this?" Misato had found herself back in the VR control room, grimacing at the state Crimson had got herself into. Her voice sounded extra static-y over the comms.

"Ugh... I don't remember it being this hard..." Crimson was muttering to herself.

Granted, it had technically been a while since she sat in the cockpit of an EVA. Her last battle was helped by a generous dose of adrenaline and her lack of focus may have something to do with the bracelet's power, but she was really struggling to get the EVA to heed her.

"Is it because there's no soul inside?" She began pondering as she ignored Misato rolling her eyes on the visual feed.

Fed up with being ignored by the teenager, Misato turned to her other companion who wasn't virtual and was at least willing to hear her out.

"She's probably got a million thoughts to process. Especially if what Mana said was true." Inspector Kaji had graced her with his presence.

His eyes were looking at the monitor that was keeping an eye on Crimson, but Misato knew that he wasn't really looking at her. They both had the latest bombshell running through their mind.

Not long after leaving Asuka and Shinji alone in their hospital love nest, Misato had a call from the lab, direct from Yui.

"I'm gonna need you to come in and talk to Mana. It's urgent."

With the pit of her stomach knotting into a spider's web, Misato had floored it to the lab after dropping Asuka and the others home. Yui and both Mana and Crimson of all people had been waiting for her, all looking grim.

"Mana has been contacted by Seele directly." It only took a few words from Yui to send the spider's web into a dark void.

Having joined Gendo and Kyoko in the command centre of the lab, a discussion was held about what it was exactly SEELE had told Mana.

"They told me... Or rather, demanded, that I gather as much physical data on the bracelets as possible." Shifting her eyes, Mana looked beyond anxious.

"They told me that if I don't follow orders, they'll do things the hard way."

"What does that mean? Do they have access to weapons or something?" Kaji had asked.

Nodding her head, Mana continued.

"I'm surprised they haven't used a more violent method yet-"

"Did you forget you basically blew up the school on your first day here?" Misato pointed out.

"True. But this time, what if instead of sending in a single spy, they could send in an army..."

"What!?"

"Like the JSSDF?" Yui looked mortified. "How would they even get permission?"

"They almost definitely have spies in the government, I can tell you that much..." Kaji muttered, looking unnerved for the first time that Misato had ever seen.

"If they could, why haven't done so already?" It was Gendo's turn, his gravelly tones also laced with concern.

"The lab is too well known by the public. An attack is going to be difficult to plan without it making anyone lose face..." Yui was biting her thumbnail, frustrated. They had zero defence against the actual military. Their only choice would have to be surrender.

Which wasn't much of a choice at all. Giving their technology over to SEELE would be handing the human race over on a silver platter.

"I can't believe this is happening again." It was Crimson's turn to mutter under her breath. "Doesn't seem to matter what timeline, SEELE still know how to be a pain in the ass."

After talking very briefly with her 'mother', both Crimson and Kyoko had left the command centre, with no elaboration on their plans. It wasn't till much later that Misato found herself overseeing Crimson training in her EVA.

"Where's Mana?" Crimson had finally acknowledged Misato's existence over the comms.

"Mana?" Misato's only response was confusion, until she heard a loud explosion coming from the monitor.

"Oh, there she is!" Crimson sounded cheerful as Misato could only watch dumbfounded as yet another EVA wondered into view on the monitor watching the virtual world.

"I can't believe I get to pilot an EVA!!!" Mana sounded far too excited to be behind the wheel of a potentially world-ending weapon of mass destruction. "Gosh, I can remember when these things were only sketches and toy models I showed to Shinji god knows how long ago..."

Mana's Evangelion was an outrageous pink colour, highlighting in Misato's mind how absurd these walking atrocities were. Surprisingly, Mana appeared to be able to control her Eva with ease, despite this apparently being the first time she'd ever stepped foot into one. She was running around, leaping and overall, putting on the strangest acrobatic show in living history. None of this proved amusing to the now seething Crimson, who proceeded to chase after her, albeit a bit wonkily.

"Tell me your secrets woman!"

"I thought you were supposed to be the one who knew how to control these things? Guess only the original author knows best huh?"

Mana's taunting was only inflaming Crimson's bruised ego, causing the next twenty minutes to devolve into the most lethal game of tag Misato had ever seen. Eventually she decided she would need to put her foot down and try to retain some semblance of order if they were going to get anything done today.

What sounded like a foghorn blared into the virtual environment. Both Evangelions stopped at the sudden noise and turned around, making Misato think of confused dogs. Her hand lifted off a big red button labelled 'horn'. It was a new dream of hers to have a button like this for any other occasion she could think of. Suddenly realising she could just buy an air horn if she wanted to be randomly annoying, she turned her attention back to the two patiently waiting Evangelions.

"Now... Can one of you explain to me what exactly it is that needs to be achieved with this so-called 'training' session?"

"Essentially..." Mana's voice crackled through the comms. "We need to 'retrain' Crimson's way of handling an Evangelion."

"Retrain? Why? She seemed fine using it yesterday?"

"I was fine. I don't understand why I'm suddenly unable to do half of what I used to be able to do with an Eva..."

Between the three of them, and some disturbing contextual explanations from Crimson about how the Eva's in her world essentially functioned with souls via human sacrifice, versus the ones in this world that seemed to run on bracelet-mana and the power of the imagination, as Mana fumbled her way around explaining, the girls were no closer to figuring out what had Crimson suffering a sudden mental block.

"…a mental block…" Misato murmured to herself. "I wonder…" After some deliberation, she activated the comms once again.

"Crimson, what is it exactly you want to do with the EVA?"

"Uhhhh… Destroy Seele?"

"Yes, that's great and all, but how exactly? Seele, from what I'm understanding, is a clandestine organisation on-par with the Illuminati. It operates like a phantom, puppeteering the government in the background. In other words, it's a shapeless, formless entity. How do you destroy something that's essentially a phantom?" After a lengthy period of silence to allow her charges some time to think, Misato spoke again.

"I believe you're struggling with your EVA today, because you're suffering from a mental block. Yesterday you were fine because you had a target, whatever that angel thing was. Your bracelet was able to co-operate with you because you had a tangible objective. But today, there is no physical, immediate target to focus on.
It's sort of like writer's block. You have a beginning, and you sort of have a vague, hazy idea of what you want the ending to be, but filling out the middle can be the most challenging part when there's no obvious objectives to complete.
The EVAs in your world, as you described, were controlled via something like willpower, utilising the souls of loved ones as a catalyst by the sounds of it. But in this world, you need to give the bracelet a target to work with, otherwise it's not gonna work properly."

After another lengthy silence while Crimson processed everything, a sneaky smile flashed on her face.

"Hey Mana!"

"What's up?"

Crimson's bracelet suddenly glowed, flashing through various phases of red and orange as if it were imitating a pool of lava. A giant assault rifle was summoned into the air, caught deftly by the scarlet Evangelion. Moving into position, Crimson had the sights of her weapon trained directly on Mana's bubblegum monstrosity.

"You up for some target practice?"

The next ten minutes definitively proved that not only had Crimson understood the assignment, but she was also having great fun with it as she effortlessly chased after a terrified Mana, bullets ricocheting everywhere. Misato huffed with a smile, proud of her brain.

"Your ability to pull incredible results out of your ass at times like this never fails to amaze me!" Kaji was laughing whilst the sounds of Mana screeching for help echoed over the intercoms.

"It's what I do." Misato winked at him in response, pushing her posterior out at the same time for emphasis.