Well. Good news. Inspiration has struck. Asuka and Rei have agreed to abide by the rules of the forum, and to avoid engaging in wanton violence. Getting Asuka to agree to that last part was a bit tricky.
In exchange, Asuka and Rei are free to compete with each other as much as they want. So without further ado....
Chapter 6
Being introduced to Asuka, and fighting an Angel at sea are the least of the surprises that day, the day that Lara Croft came into our lives.
She immediately took custody of us the moment the battle ended and we got out of the entry-plugs.
Lara Croft: "Starting right now, I'll be taking custody of these three pilots, Asuka Langley Soryu, Rei Ikari and Shinji Ikari."
Misato: "Now wait just a moment, you were hired to be their tutor, not their guardian! Besides, do you have any idea what I had to go through..."
Lara Croft: "Stop right there, Major. While I can appreciate how big of a shock this is to you, you have to admit there's a major conflict of interest involved here. The primary guardian is also the commanding officer? The one responsible for overseeing their well being is the one who is ordering them to put their lives on the line? Your overwhelming desire for revenge against the Angels versus their continued … well being; does that sound about right?"
Misato: "How, how the heck do you know all this?!"
Lara Croft: "I always do my research when I take on a job, Major. Besides, them living with you sounds nice, but your apartment is too small for you and three teenagers. I'm not casting you out of their lives, but I am gong to be enforcing a certain professional distance between you from now on."
Misato: "Hold on here, I'm the one who brought you on board, how can you..."
Lara Croft: "Major, you may have brought me in, true, but I work for NERV in this, not you. Besides, I have the Commander's orders right here."
Misato: "Why that four-eyed, bearded, backstabbing... He pulled the rug out from under me, AGAIN!"
Lara Croft: "Don't worry, they're not going far. My mansion is all set up, and there's going to be plenty of room. Why you should be familiar with the address, here you go."
Misato reads the note. "Hey! This can't be right, that entire neighborhood was condemned!"
Lara Croft: "Oh, it was, and it was certainly a fixer-upper, which my people took care of. I'll need you to help move Shinji and Rei's stuff tomorrow, but for the rest of today, I'll be showing them their new home. On the way there, would you mind sitting in while I interview the three of them?"
Misato: "HMPH! I may have to go along with this, but don't expect me to like it!"
Lara Croft: "That's fine. Besides, it's better that way. Keeps us both honest. Kensuke, Toji was it?"
Kensuke and Toji: "Yes?"
Lara Croft: "I could use your first hand interpretations of Shinji and Rei's daily school lives if you don't mind..."
While Dr. Lara Croft goes over with Toji and Kensuke a bit and the rest of us get grilled concerning our past prior to her arrival, the final questions she has are the most poignant.
Lara Croft: "Okay, Children, that pretty much wraps up everything and brings my records up to date, there's just one little question left. 'What brought you into this whole Evangelion thing in the first place?' True, I do have some notes about it, but I'd like to hear it from you directly, in your own words. Starting with you, Shinji-kun."
Of course, I tell her how I was escorted by Mistato to Tokyo-3 and NERV's geofront, all thanks to my father's letter with the only word legible being "come" and Misato's scantily-clad picture, which not only do I still possess, but Rei sees fit to openly display at the slightest excuse.
Lara Croft: "Now that is interesting. What else?"
Shinji: "Well, I was told to get into Eva-01, for which I had absolutely no previous training, while we were under active Angel attack, and told to pilot, or Rei here, all bandaged, bloody, and clearly unable to stand on her own, or anything else, would be forced to do it. It's a miracle we got out of that situation alive."
Lara Croft: "So you were basically drafted, and with no prior training or experience. Hmm. That's one strike for NERV, especially the top commanding officer. Yet you won. Congratulations. Rei. Same question for you."
Rei: "I was raised by Commander Gendo Ikari at NERV. Piloting Eva is all I know, it is my life. The future of Humanity rests upon me. If the commander's orders tell me to die, I would do it without hesitation, for I know I can easily be replaced... At least prior to marrying Shinji, he gives me other reasons to live, treasures me, unconditionally, and makes me feel very, very... pleasant. I only hesitate now because I don't want to leave him alone and hurting."
Lara Croft: "I see... So far, what I'm hearing about NERV is certainly not good. Asuka, sorry you're last, but as the newest member here in NERV Tokyo-3, I had to get your senior's accounts first."
Asuka: "Oh, I've been training and practicing to be a pilot from age 4. Heck, when I was chosen for it, I was ecstatic! Until I ran to my mother to show her and saw with my own eyes that she hanged herself, and a doll with my name stuck on it! She'd been losing her marbles day by day for a while, and my father's behavior clearly didn't help. Her body wasn't even buried before he went and married his freaking mistress! Whom he'd been banging in the room right next to the both of us, so we could fucking hear it! Then the bitch nurse, who should have known better than banging the spouse of a patient, was shocked that I didn't like her, and tried to drug me into an obedient little wind up doll for her own damn peace of mind! I'm going to be a famous pilot, and the best there is, so I can stick it to both of them, and when they come to me, trying to horn in on my fame, I CAN FINALLY TELL THEM WHERE TO STICK IT! Oh and don't any of you dare pity me, or I'll go after you first!"
Lara Croft blinks rapidly a few times. "Okay. So the whole organization is rotten to the core, regardless of nation, but we can't do anything about it because they're the only ones with the tools to deal with the Angel threat. Eesh! And I though being an orphan having to explore ruins and facing doomsday cults coming after me since the age of 10, after both my own parents died, was bad. Father, airplane accident, gave up his parachute to save me.. Mother, well, not really sure what happened, but I got to see her disintegrate."
Lara Croft: "Well here's my preliminary results."
She ruffles my hair, and it feels good. "Shinji-kun, A+. Conscript aside, you've been the ideal little soldier so far. In fact, the one time you disobeyed orders was more than justified, from a purely tactical and strategic standpoint. I gather you hate being a Pilot, but that's okay. You just want to get home safe, to your loving wife, and that's how a soldier should think."
Asuka: "HMPH!" and she starts pouting.
Lara Croft: "Rei-san. B-. Sure, you've been good at this so far, but your death wish is alarming. While it does give your companions the reassurance that you'll take the bullet in their place, it opens you up to taking needless risks, that will eventually jeopardize them and the mission, and going by what we know of the Angels, that would be bad for all mankind, and I don't care what you've been taught, you are CLEARLY NOT REPLACEABLE!"
Rei: "Shinji-kun says the same thing to me all the time, crying.. I do not like seeing him cry, it hurts."
Lara Croft: "Shinji-kun! Extra credit! Good job!"'
Asuka; "Guess it's finally my turn?"
Lara Croft: "Asuka, luv. C-"
Asuka: "You give me, the ace, a C-?!!!?"
Lara Croft: "I'm being generous here. Ideally, you'd be borderline unfit to pilot. Your need to carve your name blazing across the sky so you can stick it to your father and step-mother is not only clearly unhealthy, but makes you a liability. As someone with a first-hand life of thrill-seeking, treasure hunting and having murderous cults going after her since childhood, I can say with absolute certainty that if your attitude and demeanor don't improve, and quickly, your life will end, badly."
Asuka clearly does not take that well, and rushes to Lara-Sensei to try and slap the insolence out of her, but Lara-Sense takes her down, effortlessly.
Lara Croft: "Okay, now I have to downgrade you to D-. Your propensity for violence to your own team-mates and superiors, not to mention the general public, would have you spending time in the brig in any anywhere near functional military outfit, period. It will be much easier for everyone, including yourself, if you just admit that you're a loose cannon and need to work on your internal discipline. I strongly recommend that you don't raise your hand in a violent or threatening way again to me, or your team-mates without what I consider a damn good reason, as I'm not just a pretty face, but an actual hardened combatant skilled in several martial arts, and numerous types of firearm. I could probably take you down in my sleep if I wanted."
Asuka proceeds to unleash a string of words in German that I don't recognize, and I'd be told later that she was screaming profanities in a stream of consciousness fashion.
Lara Croft: "Oh, you have quite a mouth there, fraulein. I'm just going to hold you down until you calm down and come to your senses. If that means holding you down for the rest of the trip, so be it."
Sure enough, that's what happens. It takes the rest of the ride back to Japan on the Over The Rainbow before Asuka finally stops struggling like an enraged badger.
When we finally reach shore and Asuka has calmed down to the point that she doesn't need to be put into a sleeper hold, Misato, Rei, Asuka, and I are loaded onto Lara's helicopter with her in the pilot's seat. Arriving at Lara's mansion has us all stunned.
Misato: "How... How was that mansion built so quickly?!"
Lara Croft: "When I hire someone, Major, I hire the best. I don't tolerate foot-dragging and cutting-corners.'"
After landing on the helipad, disembarking, and actually going inside through the roof entrance, while Rei remains as stoic as ever, and Misato is quietly nonplussed, we can only look on and gasp in sheer awe as the mansion is mostly empty space, covered with fine art, scaffolding and implements that wouldn't be out of place in a circus trapeze act, although the ground level is mostly one (yet to be filled) giant swimming pool with numerous painted targets.. along the bottom.
Lara: "And THIS is my physical fitness room. Part of your after-school training will be navigating this course, especially the pool, once it's properly filled, that is. Yes, I am aware that you pilots are tasked with fighting in giant, for lack of a better term, 'robots' against horrors that are just as large, but you're going to need to be physically fit in the event something goes tragically wrong and you have to evacuate."
After she pushes a button or two on a hand-held remote, we start seeing mockups of soldiers with various weapons pop out at random.
Lara Croft: "I also expect you to be able to handle yourselves in a conventional fire-fight. It is my long, and hard-learned, first-hand experience that governments and armies tend to be ungrateful bastards to their heroes and servants who prove a bit too good at their designated task, and I've already heard that the JSSDF has a serious hate-boner for you Children, since they've been made to look bad by being utterly helpless before the Angel threat, and being shown up by 'little kids.' That means you!"
Asuka seems to get starry-eyed at that last part. "Wait, we actually get REAL training? As opposed to simply going through the motions?"
Lara Croft: "Of course, once I determine your baseline aptitude, yes."
Asuka: "YEEHAW! Just wait until you see what I'm really capable of, Third Child, Wondergirl! You'll be green with ENVY!"
Lara Croft: "That's the spirit! Any questions?"
Shinji: "So exactly what form is this training going to take? The closest I've had to training so far is 'line up the target, pull the switch,' and it hasn't helped much."
Misato: "Shinji-kun!"
Lara Croft: "It's a perfectly valid question, Major Misato Katsuragi, aside from learning how to handle a firefight, I'm going to expect you children to be able to navigate this obstacle course here."
She pushes a button and a massive cement slab closes the pool so that the walls start moving around and pillars come out from all directions.
Lara Croft: "Now pay attention, as I'm going to show you how it's done."
She proceeds to sky-dive off the catwalk we're on, grab the closest handle bar and start swinging through the air like a skilled circus acrobat until she reaches ground level, then starts racing to and fro among the obstacle course until she climbs a ladder at the other end and uses a zip-line to zoom back to us, all in about one minute, 45 seconds, which Misato confirmed with a stopwatch.
Lara Croft: "One minute 45? Hmm, must be slipping a bit. My best time is One-oh-five. Well, I don't expect you rookies to start off with the acrobatic stuff, at least not until the pool's ready so your lives aren't put at too much risk, but I will be running you through the ground gauntlet, daily, and what you've seen here is just the most public part, the rest of the house has all sorts of hidden paths and chambers that you are going to be exploring."
Misato: "While I can understand everything you've said so far, NERV asked for a tutor, for their academics, not a drill instructor!"
Lara Croft: "I am aware of that, Major, but academics are meaningless if the people who learn it don't live long enough to apply it."
Misato: "HMPH."
Lara Croft: "Hmm, I suppose I'll have to put you through the course as well. Now as for the ground rules, while I am aware that Shinji-kun and Rei-chan are legally married, there's not going to be any hanky-panky in this household, as long as you're under my care, at least until I'm satisfied that it won't cause issues in your combat performance. That means separate bedrooms for everyone. Sorry about that. Any future Pilots will meet the same restrictions, don't you worry about that."
Rei is visibly crestfallen as she's quite fond of sharing my bed, and I must admit, I've grown to rather like the feel of her soft, naked skin up against me when we sleep.
Lara Croft: "Next, I have my own private bathroom, which I will showcase to you a bit later. Anybody who goes in there without my explicit permission, barring some major emergency, like the house being on fire, is likely to find themselves facing the barrels of my shotgun, and I do tend to shoot first, ask questions later, and no this isn't a joke. Before you ask, I'm just going to say I have issues that I'm not going to elaborate on."
I can understand wanting to protect your privacy and chastity, but pointing a shotgun at you for going into the bathroom seems a bit extreme to me.
Lara Croft: "Lastly, as long as we're going to be in my house, what I say goes. When I tell any of you to do something, and that includes you, Major, I expect it done right away. I won't tolerate back-talk, grumbling, or insubordination without a damn good reason, and any questions I get better be on how to do what I tell you, not if I'm sure, serious, or if someone else can do it instead. Am I understood?"
Shinji and Rei: "Yes, Ma'am!"
Lara rubs our heads. "Good! I've heard you're a great cook, Shinji, soon as we're done here, we're going to the kitchen and see what you can whip up!"
Lara Croft: "Major?"
Misato: "Fine, but I protest in advance that I'm only doing this under duress."
Lara Croft: "Fair enough. Asuka-san?"
Asuka: "Hmph! I don't see why, I, The Great Asuka Langley Soryu should have to be your lap dog!"
Lara Croft: "Oh? So you don't want to benefit from the training, and show off your stuff? You just want to go on the streets and panhandle like the loser you are?"
Asuka: "WHAT?!"
Lara Croft: "Because that's precisely what's going to happen if you give me any more lip like that, Miss Soryu."
Asuka: "Hmph! I won't stand for this unfair and preferential treatment against me!"
Shinji: "Anta Baka, Asuka? What 'preferential treatment' are you talking about? I don't think any of us would get away with talking to Lara-Sensei the way you are, or trying to slap her either."
Asuka: "Baka! Dumbkopf! Swinehund! I have a freaking college degree! I shouldn't have to lower myself to deal with the likes of you two marginal dropouts!"
Rei: "There's book smarts and street smarts, Asuka-san. While you claim to have the former, you certainly lack the latter. If anything, we're the ones lowering ourselves to deal with you."
Asuka: "Bwargharhagahrah!"
Asuka rushes over to try and strangle Rei, but Rei easily grabs her arms and pins them behind her back.
Rei: "I strongly suggest you do not struggle, Asuka-san, as I could break your bones like twigs, entirely by accident. I don't want to do that. I can tell you have problems with authority, but this is neither the time nor place to display them."
Asuka: "You blue-haired, ice-cold bitch! YAAAAARRRGGGHHH!!!"
I suddenly see very dark bruises appear on Asuka's forearms, and she's in clear pain.
Rei: "I warned you. Stop it now."
Asuka: "I'll kill you, I'll kill you, I'll kill you!"
Lara Croft cold-cocks her with her side-arm, rendering her unconscious in seconds. "Oh good grief. Why is she fit for being a Pilot again?"
Misato: "Supposedly, she's the only one who can pilot Eva-02."
Lara Croft: "Oh brother. So a raging war-machine is to be trusted to an unstable ball of anger with authority and inferiority-superiority issues? If this level of provocation is all that's needed to set her off, she's going to have to be side-lined, and hard."
Sure enough, when Lara-Sense is having Asuka examined in her private medical room by her trained medical staff, that she keeps on staff in case she has an accident while "training," they find that Asuka's forearms do indeed have hairline compression fractures where Rei grabbed them, to Lara Croft's horror.
This exchange takes place in the Lara's nearby office.
Lara Croft: "I've seen these wounds before, when someone was run over with a truck! Just how strong is this Rei girl? And that Shinji boy married her? He must be scared out of his mind every day!"
Misato: "Actually, from what I can tell, he proposed to her, and she's the one who accepted. Not to mention that he loves her dearly."
Lara Croft: "That's not what I mean. I'm sure Shinji is scared because if he pisses her off, she could utterly break him like a twig!"
Misato: "Yeah, I'm betting that's why he asked her to marry him before they had sex, despite the fact that our 'esteemed commander' saw fit to put them in the same one-bedroom apartment while they were both still single."
Lara Croft: "Oh, that's interesting, do go on."
Misato fills Lara in on our backstory...
Lara Croft: "Co-dependent. That's what they are, alright. I don't see any benevolent reason for this. I trust that what I say next is not to be repeated out of this room."
Misato: "Well I certainly won't, not as long as we have to work with NERV, as is."
Lara Croft: "Good. Frankly, I've seen Rei's behavior and mindset before, in child suicide bombers. Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, you name it. It's utterly despicable what those kids go through. Their hopes, dreams, sense of self-worth, love for their friends, family, and community are all thoroughly crushed or twisted beyond reason, utterly driving them to despair, so they want their miserable little lives to end, then they're given the promise of going to 'Paradise' or their heads are filled with all sorts of propaganda about how some 'evil enemy' is the reason for their suffering, and if they just go strap a bomb to themselves, and blow up this 'hated enemy' everything will be all right, and they'll make 'god' happy! It's absolutely sickening, and frankly, if I could, I'd hunt down every last mullah, 'prophet', or other self-proclaimed 'holy-man' that teaches this is a good thing, and shove their own so-called religious texts right down their throats! Killing them horribly in the process, or better yet, strap them with bombs, unaware, and then blow them up right in the middle of their congregations. But that's not the scary part here."
Misato: "Then what is?"
Lara Croft:"There's no religious or ideological bent to Rei's behavior. No central premise to deconstruct. Sure, she has an almost religious fervor to Gendo himself, but she doesn't have any ideology or agenda to her complete obedience, except that she just wants to die. Right now, Commander Ikari is using her as a leash, a leash with a bomb on it, to control Shinji's behavior. Neither she nor Shinji are aware of this, and that's a good thing. I shudder to think what's going to happen when the Commander reaches a point in his agenda where he thinks he doesn't need a leash on Shinji any more."
Misato: "So we have to find a way to break ties between Rei and the Commander?"
Lara Croft: "Sure, eventually, but the real scary part is how SHINJI is going to react."
Misato: "Shinji?! He's harmless, a doormat, he has to stop and ask permission to defend himself!"
Lara Croft: "No. He's a pressure-cooker. What's worse is that he's been so starved for affection that he latched on to the very first person who treated him kindly, and we're lucky it's Rei, who has no agenda for him, at least not as far as we know, or that even she's aware of. And that's a good thing."
Misato: "What do you mean by that?"
Lara Croft: "I hate to have to lecture a Japanese person on Japanese culture, but here goes. Shinji was abandoned by his father, at age four, in a crowded train terminal, after his mother's apparent death. He is considered by most, thankfully not by you or Rei, as 'cursed by the gods,' and people don't want to acknowledge he exists, which is actually the more benign outcome as Japan tends to treat anything different or out of the ordinary with fear, revulsion, and hate, brutalizing those that stand out until they stop standing out, even if making them stop standing out means they're killed as a direct result. The phrase 'the nail that sticks up gets hammered down' is a phrase you should be very familiar with, Major. That's why Shinji looks like a doormat to the untrained eye. He has no socially acceptable outlet for his pain, grief, and most importantly, rage. His marriage to Rei helps alleviate that pain, immensely. So if anything happens to Rei, I suspect all the pain, grief, and anger will come to the surface at once, and he'll utterly explode like a high-yield nuke. Need I remind you that Rei and Shinji both pilot giant robots against giant 'Angels' for a living? Need I also remind you that Rei was raised to be utterly suicidal?"
Misato: "Oh, oh my GOD!"
Lara Croft: "Exactly. Asuka's anger and problems with authority may be well-founded, but the last thing we need is to throw a live grenade into a nuclear stock-pile. That's why I'm coming down on her so hard. I just hope she realizes that her outbursts and hot-dogging are not going to give her the affection she so desperately needs before it's too late."
Misato: "And what do you mean by that?"
Lara Croft: "Think about it. At age four, her mother becomes seriously mentally ill, to the point that she eventually commits suicide, and Asuka watched her mother deteriorate day by day, with her callous father boinking his goddamned mistress in the room right next to them, so they'd hear it, and then chances upon her mother's hanged corpse.. and her callous father marries his mistress before the body's even buried, shipping Asuka off to NERV Eva training because he couldn't put up with her grief and rage anymore, and his 'new wife' couldn't medicate Asuka's 'problem personality' away. So now Asuka desperately wants to get close to people, to get hugged, and squeezed, pampered, and most importantly, loved. But she can't do that. She's too damn scared to get close to others because she's horrified that they'll just wind up leaving or hurting her too. So she lashes out. She demands fame, glory, praise. She demands to be treated like royalty because she's actually a very, very scared little girl who wants to cry in a corner, but is too hurt by ridicule to do it."
Misato: "Dear sweet Lord, is the Marduke Institute deliberately searching for the most broken children they can find to pilot our war-machines that we need to protect us from the Angels?"
Lara Croft: "I can't answer that question, and frankly both psychiatry and psychology are two of the very few fields that I haven't mastered. But here in Japan, good luck finding a therapist that isn't going to be treating these children like monsters because they walked in the door, with the whole 'insanity is a dishonorable lack of strength of character for the whole family' sickness the Japanese culture, as a whole, has been suffering from for centuries."
Misato: "Then what CAN we do about it?
Lara Croft: "Now remember, I'm neither an expert nor a licensed therapist, so take what I say next with a grain of salt, though I what I am about to propose is going purely by what I've witnessed, first-hand."
Misato: "Alright, Ms. Harvard. You've got the legal disclaimer out of the way, what is it?"
Lara Croft: "Well, Major, we have three options, all of them carry considerable risk. Option one, we break Asuka down, make her hit rock bottom, and then, when she doesn't have the energy to resist anymore, or put up her iron-wall defenses, nurture her back to health and build her up again. I very, very strongly discourage this approach, as we already have one suicidal pilot on our hands, we don't need another."
Misato: " Uh.. Yeah! So what's option two."
Lara Croft: "Well, we enable her fantasy and escapism. Praise her as the best at all times, and never let her have to worry about the consequences of her hot-dogging. Sure, we'll get her cooperation, short-term, but as you've already seen, she's already a loose cannon, and if we enable her, she's going to doom everybody while showing off and not giving a crap about herself or others."
Misato: "Yeah. That doesn't sound good either. The last one?"
Lara Croft: "Okay, this is going to be the trickiest to pull off. Those other kids, Shinji and Rei, are going to have to sneak past her defenses and drown her in kindness, until she's willing to come out of her shell, and then they're going to have to love her up one side and down the other until she realizes they're neither going to betray nor abandon her. Considering how jaded, abrasive, and violent, she is, that's going to be rather hard. This is why I've been so hard on her. I want her to vent her hostility at me so those kids can have a chance. So far, it's not really working."
Misato: "Well, for starters, Rei should apologize. I'm sure she was only trying to restrain Asuka, but breaking her arms is a bit too far."
Lara Croft: "I agree, and hmm."
Misato: "What?!"
Lara Croft: "Oh. Oh, I see. That may just work." She starts nodding to herself. "Yes, yes. Major, please bring The First and Third Child in. I have an idea."
To be continued in Chapter 7.