"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.
