Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction ❯ The Children's Crusade ❯ The Children's Crusade: God's in His Heaven... ( Chapter 2 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

And here it is: The Second Book of "The Children's Crusade", God's in His Heaven... I hope that you all have enjoyed the first book, and I hope that you will all enjoy the second just as much. Thanks go out once again to Tchernobyl, SxStrngSamurai13, DrunkDrake, Alexei Servanov, Bucky, Nodsri,Zero,Autophage, and to Ryoma1377 for his gracious lending of his own ideas. As you may or may not know, the continuation of this storyline by me was in serious doubt by the first two chapters. I wasn't doing to well emotionally at the time, but thanks to several friends I have been able to continue the story and am now in the pre-planning stages for Book Three.

I also have ideas in my head for Books Four and Five, and possibly Six as well, and my grand finale of The Children's Crusade. Also, as you may or may not have known: I have decided that I will try as hard as I possibly can to make this story one of the Legendary Epics of Evafiction. Though, as I see it, I'm not doing to hot right now. ^_^; But that's life, and if it doesn't become an epic, I'll feel no shame at all.

And now:

The Seldon Planner Presents:

A Continued Production:

Book Two











"Chapter One: Moments to Reflect"

Dedicated to Jess. A wonderful girl.

Stand up on your own two feet, and walk.

'That was it. His sole advice. His first and only words, as a father. Perhaps I should hate him for that...but, I can't.'

It was turning into a pleasant night in Tokyo-3. The stars were coming out, just as the last flickers of sunlight began to fade and dim in the west. The cicadas were alive and well, humming and singing their little tunes. The faint sounds of the ever-present construction, or repair, of the city was just a dull throb muted out by space and mass. People still moved around, still talked and played their little games of fancy.

It had been three days since the last Angel. And life, was moving much as it always had.

For Shinji, life would never...could never, be as it always had.

It didn't show much now, but he had been up for those three days. He hadn't slept, how could he? After what he saw...and what he remembered.

'...Father...what are you?'

Shinji sat there, alone on the one park bench that had a view of the city and the mountains that surrounded it. Sitting, staring, listening to the classical music gently coming from his SDAT, if Asuka was there she just might have mistaken him for a male Rei. He hadn't moved for the past two hours. Just watching, listening...thinking.

About many things. Terminal Dogma. His mother. Evangelion...Unit, 01.

His head dropped down into his hands for what might have been the hundredth time in those three days. So many secrets, so many lies. Never any truths. Not about the Evangelion, not about NERV...not even about his mother.

The music changed.

Canon in D, Pachelbel.

A sob drifted along the cool air of the gentle night.



Asuka was not having a pleasant evening.

Of course, the reason she wasn't having what might have been a pleasant evening was out at the moment. Either predictably cowering away from her wrath, or just outwitting her and keeping his ass out of the fire. It did not matter though, because she wasn't too sure that taking her frustrations out on Shinji would have helped her at all.

'I almost...kissed-'

Asuka shook her head hard, banishing her thoughts to the distant corners of imagination. She refused to even think of that moment in her life. It was embarrassing!

A slight blush erupted along her cheeks as she recalled the humiliating situation. She actually tried to seduce Shinji into kissing her while the two were lost in the halls of NERV! And then, just as she was about to actually go through with it, the power returns and the elevator doors slid open...to reveal an entwined Kaji and Misato.

Asuka's blush faded as she threw herself back from the kitchen table, her chair skidding into the far wall as she marched out into the living room and deposited herself onto her favorite beanbag.

'Stupid Shinji...stupid power...stupid Kaji...stupid Misato!'

The last object of her hate wasn't present either. From what she was able to glean from her guardian before she left, Misato was attending a wedding for some NERV lackey tomorrow, and so she was out shopping at present. Scrounging for a new dress that she couldn't afford.

Asuka looked blankly at the TV, idly considering whether it was worth the effort or energy to hunt down the remote control to turn the electronic device on. She debated, she considered.

She gave in.

After a few moments of searching, she located the rectangular device and switched on it's larger companion.

"-And in local news tonight, four more bodies were found in the remains of the last, uncleared building within the "Kill Radius". NERV has issued another series of letters apologizing for the loss of life, and-"

The television cut off with a crackle of static washing across it's glass screen.

Asuka stared at the blank screen for a long time, her hand still grasping the remote as it lay parallel to her sinuous and well-formed leg.

"...he didn't kill anyone he knew...but he did kill someone."

The door slid open. Asuka remained sitting, waiting for the first steps of the person into the house. It was something she had picked up on when she was a little girl; everyone she lived with had a different step, made a different sound when they walked across the room. Given long enough, she could easily tell who was coming through the door even if they hadn't spoken a word.

The newcomer walked gently through the foyer, stepping delicately and carefully as he made his way up to the living room entrance.

"Welcome home Shinji," she called as the boy walked through the door.

Shinji paused, looking intently at the red of her hair. Asking himself if it was actually worth speaking right now.

"You've been out since we finished synch tests this afternoon, where were you?"

'Concern? From her?' Shinji thought, still gazing at her unmoving head. 'No...no she wouldn't be concerned with me. She's not concerned about anyone but herself.'

Asuka waited for an answer, then turned in her seat as her patience finally wore through.

"Shinji-" she stopped, her eyes meeting up with his own. He stood there, watching and peering into the windows of her soul. Hoping for...nothing. His shoulders sagged under the weight of his bag and his head dropped, covering his eyes with a short crop of deep brown hair.

'He's been crying again,' her mind told her as she registered the swollen red of his eyes. Slowly, his lips parted. The wall of red broken by a small slit of darkness, then by a cat's eye.

"I've been out. That's all," he couldn't tell her about what Kaji had said to him. She couldn't understand that. He didn't even understand that.

Slowly, he pivoted on his heel and shuffled off. Heading for the black abyss of his monastic room. Asuka watched him go, silently hoping for...for what? Her eyes rapidly flickered back and forth as she contemplated what she was hoping for. She sorted through her feelings, discarding this one of disgust, ignoring that one of contempt. She almost had it, she almost had the feeling of hope pinned down, along with the meaning behind it.

Shinji's door slid shut, the sound like an axe slicing through paper only to hit the wood block underneath.

Asuka jumped, and her emotions scattered.

'Why was he crying?'

Go and ask.

Before she realized that it was happening, Asuka found herself leaning against his doorframe. Her tongue flicked out, wetting her lips as she racked her vocabulary for the right words. She felt her stomach twist and grind against itself. Butterflies in the stomach.

'Nervous? Why am I nervous?'

Asuka wet her lips again, the wind in her lungs already drifting upwards to her larynx as she prepared her first word.

The door slid open again.

"I'm home!" Misato's loud, rich voice rumbled through the apartment.

Asuka slammed her lips together and turned away from Shinji's door. Her feet moved crisply as she forced herself away from his room, as she forced herself away from the question she had been about to ask him.

What's wrong?

"Hello Misato."

Misato greeted her as she walked into her bedroom, her hands filled with a large clothing bag, "Wanna see what I got?"

Asuka smiled graciously for her guardian and nodded. After all, she was female and had an appreciation for fine clothing. Unlike men, who could barely color co-ordinate themselves on a good day.

Shinji never had to worry about that.



"The Lance is being implemented?" Kouzo asked his former student, his veiled eyes never lifting from the game board. With a cautious and slow motion, he lowered the lacquered piece down to the wooden board. The piece made a sharp tchipp as it landed.

Gendo looked sideways, out towards the NERV hospital wards as he answered, "Yes, I've delegated the task to Rei. She is completing her mission with Unit 00 as we speak."

The older man let out a small grunt of understanding and waited for Gendo's move.

'Something's bothering him.'

"I have just received a file from the hospital ward," Gendo reached into one of his desk drawers and pulled out a thick manilla folder. It looked familiar. "It's news is...disturbing to me."

Kouzo arched one white eyebrow, "Really? And who is it that disturbs you so?"

Gendo ignored the question as he flipped through several sheafs of paper. Some were written out in pencil, others in ink, most of the pages near the middle were typed in closely-spaced English. Nearly everything after that was written in Kanji or Romanji. Finally, he stopped flipping through the pages and pulled out one thin piece of NERV stationary.

"This patient," he stated coldly, handing the paper off to Kouzo. "I want him to be given the best of care."

Kouzo studied the short report and then lowered it to his lap, his eyes peering just below the ridge of his forehead as he did so.

"Who is he?"

Gendo crouched behind his interwoven hands and gave his teacher a cruel smile, "No one important."

Kouzo digested that little bit of information and then brushed it off, 'Let him do as he pleases. If he want's this man to be well-cared for, so be it.'

Kouzo set the paper beside the board, his eyes flicking over just in time to see Gendo place a piece of his own, "What about the Eleventh?"

"That portion of the Text was destroyed. We will not know until the Angel comes to us...though from what the text before it indicates, we will have a few weeks before it's appearance."

"It worries me Ikari," Kouzo frowned as he tried to work out his best option. "For all of the other Angels we have clear indicators of how and when it will appear."

"Except for the Twelfth and Seventeenth," Gendo coldly reminded him.

"Yes, except for the Twelfth and Seventeenth...we may have clues as to when the Eleventh will appear, but in essence we are going into this battle blind."

Another tchipp softly echoed in the cavernous office as Kouzo placed his piece. Gendo took it in stride and made his own move shortly after, seemingly not caring about Kouzo's move at all.

'Or did he already predict what I would do?'

"We will defeat the Eleventh, just as we have defeated all of the others," the statement almost sounded idealist. Hardly becoming of the calculating pragmatistic Gendo that Kouzo knew.

He said as much to his commander, who merely smiled in response.

Kouzo decided to move on to another topic, "What is the problem with the man you want taken care of?" "He had a hallucinogenic reaction to one of the medications he received for his injuries. From what they understand of his medical background, which they looked into 'after' the incident, he has had these kinds of reactions before; once during the Vietnam war, and another fifteen years ago."

"Second Impact injury?" Kouzo placed another piece.

Gendo placed his own piece a heartbeat later, "Yes."

Kouzo sighed and pushed himself away from the steel desk, "I'll see to his re-assessment immediately."

Gendo nodded as he swivelled his chair around to glare out across the Geofront.

'A Napoleon in his own empire,' was all Kouzo thought as he turned away.

Gendo never noticed the door open, and he ignored it when it closed. Content and happy as he gazed across his small realm. The realm of NERV.

'It's good to be the king.'





Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

The old man hardly noticed the sound anymore. It had been an irritation at first, but then he noticed that music was playing over the intercom. It was good music too, not the usual drivel of modern-day rock and roll bands, or pop star divas and beanie bopping boy idols. No...

This was classical music.

Woodwinds, strings, percussions.

The last wavering viola note fell, signaling the songs end. Precluding another's beginning. The death of one thing leads to the life of another. The short life of a song.

He couldn't hear the new song at first, and for a moment he thought that the nurses had turned the music off. Then...the first, slow, steady hum of violins. Soon joined by a deep plucking bass in the background.

'Suite number three in D...Air.'

The old man's lips slowly spread in a thin, tight smile. His eyelids slowly fell across his eyes as he lifted his hands into the air, index fingers extended with the middle bent at the second knuckle.

Rythmicly, he began to wave them before himself. As though he was conducting the song.

Such a haunting song.





Asuka stopped in her doorway, her eyes turning to watch the opposing door that lead to Shinji's room. She felt that feeling again, that emotion of hope and wanting. Asuka ignored it this time and turned to enter her room.

"Baka..."

There came a slow, vibrating hum from across the hall. Asuka stopped a moment and then turned back to the closed door. Another hum resonated from behind the closed door, soon it was followed by another and that one was joined by a second hum.

'Music.'

After a few testing chords, a song began. Asuka leaned her shoulder against the wall, then propped her head against the doorframe. She listened to his song from beginning to end. He never broke the flow of melody once.

After he finished the first song, Shinji started on another.

He couldn't get to sleep again. So he played.

Tonight was Thursday, and the museum had been closed.

The old man wasn't there.





"Chapter Two: Truth, Burdens, and Life"

Why do people annoy you?

Sometimes, one should be silent.

They aren't silent then?

They lack the ability to treasure the silence.

You treasure silence?

Everyone should, once in a while.

-Seldon.

I don't care about the truth...it's too large a burden for me to carry. My shoulders are full already.

Those were the first words Shinji thought as he woke up that morning. It was still early, the sun peeking the top of it's golden-red head just above the mountains in the distance.

He watched it clamber up the cool morning sky, gently easing itself onto the eternal track it ran every day. Color slowly flooded the valley of Tokyo-3; reds, pinks, dusky purples and deep blues. All overshadowed by that golden-red of the sun's first light, filtered and tinted by the atmosphere of the Earth.

'Such a lovely color...like the color of Asuka's hair.'

Shinji sat there, watching the life-giving sun rise out of his slumber to start the day, until his alarm went off. Even then, he continued to watch the sun. Pausing only momentarily to turn off the intrusive noisemaker before he turned back to continue his viewing.

The door slid open, but Shinji's eyes never wavered from the bright sun.

Asuka stood there for a moment, contemplating over the wrinkled and soiled state of his shirt. His school shirt, not his usual bedclothes. He hadn't bothered to change out before he fell into the peaceful oblivion.

"Breakfast is ready," was all she said before closing the door behind her.

Shinji didn't seem to register the words at first, but then gave a slight jerk as their impact wormed through his thoughts and inner conciseness.

'Asuka...made breakfast?' he asked himself, his eyes boring a hole into the thin body of his door. 'For me?'

He uncurled his legs from underneath his body, wincing as a small eruption of unfeeling washed across the blood-deprived nerves. Gently, he levered them over the edge of his bed; slowly he shifted himself out of the warm nest of blankets and pillows, tenderly pressing one foot down and then the other. Attempting to force the flow of blood through his legs as fast as he could.

With a grunt of impatience he slammed his palms down against the bed and held his arms stiff, the recoil from the mattress springs forcing himself up and forward...and then over, as his legs failed and gave way underneath him.

Shinji landed with a loud phwump and a sharp cry of surprise, 'Wasn't expecting that now was I?'

Fresh waves of unfeeling rocketed through his brain as he struggled to push himself off of the ground, he never noticed his door slide open again.

"What are you doing?" Asuka's amused voice asked the poor boy on the floor.

Shinji gave another sharp cry of surprise and once again fell to the floor, having lost his delicate balance. For a moment, Asuka just stared at him. Then she started laughing, just a small laugh...a nice laugh. After a moment, Shinji joined in with her.

"I don't know Asuka," he said after a moment of self-humiliation, pressing his palms against his still-red eyes. "I guess I sat on them for too long."

"Idiot. What were you doing up that early anyway?"

That caught his full attention. Slowly, Shinji removed his hands and looked at the suddenly quiet girl, "Asuka...how did you..."

Asuka looked sheepish for a moment, her mind caught in a furious battle between yelling at him and blaming him for something he didn't do...or actually telling him and playing the rest by ear.

Her mind choose the third option.

"If you don't hurry and get into the kitchen, your breakfast is going to get cold," she remarked with a flat, controlled voice as she turned and headed for her own room.

Stop her.

"Asuka--" Shinji started to ask, but his roommate had shut her door.

Shinji sat there, wondering about her actions, her questions. 'Could she really be concerned for me? I didn't think it was possible last night...but...'

A shuffling body of black and white wobbled into Shinji's room. Pen Pen stared hard at the prone boy, cocking his head to the side and blinking as he did so. Then he wobbled up along to Shinji's side...and pinched him hard on the leg.

"Oww!"

"Warrk," was all the bird said in defense. Or maybe it was an accusation.

"Fine, fine," Shinji said in deference to the bird as he rubbed his sore hip. "I'll get up and feed you."





Shinji sat through the lecture without a single complaint, yawn, or disgusted look. Which is more than Asuka could say about the whole affair. She was thoroughly bored with this disinteresting old man with his "Second Impact's Life Lessons". Pure propaganda, that's all it was to her.

'And all of these idiots are buying it hook,' she glared over Shinji's head at the browsing Kensuke Aida. 'Line,' her eyes moved one back to a sleeping Toji Suzahara. 'And sinker,' then she focused over onto her best friend Hikari Horaki.

Asuka once again shifted her gaze, this time over to Shinji. She blinked once and folded her arms underneath her breasts as she saw what was occupying his attention at the moment.

'Damn doll.'

But he wasn't looking at Rei, he was looking past her. Out into the shimmering heat of Tokyo-3. He was looking, searching. Hoping...and praying.

'I'll go by the museum today and see if he's there.'





"Finally!" Asuka crowed in relief. "Let's go Shinji, we need to pick up some groceries before we head home."

Shinji's hands stopped flitting over the keyboard of his laptop and he just, stared, at the departing red head. His eyes never blinked or wavered as he watched her strut for the door.

'Did she just offer, in a way I suppose, to go...Shopping with me?!'

"Baka! Now!" she ordered from the class door, her glaring visage burning a line through the air towards him.

He jumped to his task, "Yes Asuka."

"Man, has she got you whipped," that was Toji, commenting on the obvious as usual.

Kensuke smirked as he panned between the impatiently waiting Asuka, and the disoriented and rushing Shinji, "Yeah Toji, just like you and Hikari eh?"

"WHAT!?" Toji spun away from the Eva pilot and stared down at his shorter friend. "What did you say Kensuke?"

The military otaku shuffled back a few steps, but never moved his camera away from the pinched and red face of his friend. "Me? Nothing...I've said nothing that everyone doesn't already know."

Toji's right eye began to flitter and jerk, "Come here..."

'Oh...not good," Kensuke shuffled back a few more steps as Toji rapidly closed in on the smaller boy. "Um...how about, no?"

"Kensuke!...Come here!" Toji crooked a finger at the sandy haired boy and advanced another meter. Kensuke only moved back a half.

Asuka was watching these proceedings with half a mind of amusement, but she was more impatient than amused. And Shinji was still not ready to leave.

"Shinji! If you don't get over here in two minutes I'm leaving without you," she leveled her best military voice at the scrambling boy. He struggled to free his bookbag from underneath his desk, only to find that somebody had intertwined the straps with the legs of his seat.

He sighed, 'So much for having company.'

"Go ahead Asuka, I've got to go somewhere anyway," he flatly told her, his face slowly dropping and falling into an expressionless mask. Asuka watched him for a moment longer and then nodded.

"Alright, fine. Have it your way," she sharply wheeled around and marched down the hall. Never once looking back.

Shinji sighed again as he struggled to undo the tangled knots and wrapped straps of his bag. Whoever had done this was either a master at making hard knots...or just too plain stupid to make correct ones. Whichever it was, it took him nearly ten minutes to free the gray cotton from its entangled prison.

By that time, Toji had cornered Kensuke and was administering his favorite form of corporal punishment.

A noogie.

"OW! Come on- OW!!!, Toji! Please!"

"Not until you take it back!"

"But it's true, OWW!!"

"Take it back, take it back!"

Shinji watched them from his seat for a moment, one eyebrow arched while the other was drawn down. He was pretty sure that his jaw was hanging open. It was pretty amazing though...in a stupid kind of way.

"Later guys," Shinji called to his bickering friends as he stood.

"Later Shinji!" Toji called back to him, still rubbing hard against the long hair of his hacker friend. Kensuke didn't say anything, but that might have been because of the headlock and noogie Toji had him under. He did wave goodbye though, so Shinji waved back.

'Finally out of here...I wonder if he's okay...' he silently said for himself as he walked clear of the black asphalt lot of the school.

"Finally, I was just about to go back in for you."

Shinji stopped and looked behind him. Asuka smiled back at him from underneath the dark shade of the tree, hoisting her books back up to her shoulders. She quickly walked up next to the boy, still smiling like she had won a prize Eva Unit 02 doll.

"Asuka...you waited?" Shinji asked, not sure whether to believe this or not.

She shrugged and strolled off towards Tokyo-3, "Yeah, I just realized that my keycard is still at home. So I decided to wait around for you."

Liar.

"Oh," it may have been her, but Asuka could have sworn that he sounded...put out. "I see. Well, I can give you my card--"

"I don't mind Shinji, let's get going okay?"

Shinji was puzzled, no...confounded. It was the second time all day in which she had done this to him, it was turning out to be a common event.

"You sure?" he asked, still hesitant to believe that Asuka would willingly walk around Tokyo-3 with him.

"Yeah I'm sure Baka! Now stop asking dumb questions and get up here!" she yelled back at him, her last reserve of patience finally flying out her ears.

Shinji nodded and jogged up to her side. Together, they walked for the gleaming city off in the distance.

In the sun, the buildings seemed to dance.





The building was somewhat of an oddity.

It was the only structure build with an outer facade of stone and marble. Most buildings in Tokyo-3 were steel or a synthetic copy look-alike. Where buildings shone and reflected in the sun, this one sat and absorbed. Where other buildings stood hundreds of stories high, this one squatted at two.

An usual building. Made so deliberately by it's creator.

With it's intricately etched marble columns, with it's eloquently carved reliefs of cherubs and naturalistic re-creations of older works now long gone, with it's sweeping stairs of flecked stone.

With it's single statue, guarding the entrance with grace and eloquence. The sweeping wings spanning nearly ten feet across, the sword at it's feet nearly the length of three regular swords of it's kind, the strategically placed loincloth draped and folded in such a manner, that you almost believed it was real.

This statue, this Angel, hunched over in a contemplative look at it's own right hand, guarded the glass entrance of the museum with it's silent presence.

Never moving, never shifting.

But always there.

People arrived, then they left. Night fell and the city grew bright.

The museum was still dark though.

For another night, it would be dark.





"Chapter Three: Dreams of Time"

Dedicated to the lonely people of the world, for I suffer with you.

You wish to be a hero?

No, I wish to die like a warrior.

A warrior? You wish to die alone, cold, in pain, surrounded by your dead friends and foes alike?

...yes. That is how I wish to die.

Do you think you will die like that?

No.

-Seldon

He had no idea how long he had been asleep. Moments, hours, days, weeks...his mind felt fogged, clouded by the overabundance of sleep. His eyes were crusted by the continual buildup of what could have been weeks of continuous sleep. It was this he first noticed, as his eyelids strained to open. Held captive by their natural secretions.

This he brushed away quickly, the crust clawing at his delicate skin as it vainly attempted to remain in its comfortable position. The next thing he noticed...was where he was.

He had never seen this place before.

The room was large, spaciously large. Two beds laying side by side occupied one side of this room, both done in deep, rich, velvet blues and purples. A cabinet divided the two beds, with a small space down the center through which to walk down. It was in the bed nearest the wall that he occupied, the soft and furry blankets drawn up close to his chest. A book lay open in his hands, its binding was well-worn and creased over with the fingerings of many readings. The old man flipped it over in his hands and read the title: "Eye of the World".

He had never read the book before.

Or heard of it.

His head snapped up and instantly took in the remaining parts of the room. The walls were an off-colored white, still close enough to the original color though to make it painful to look at for more than a moment; near a man's waist though, the wall shifted into a darker brown-white and shifted out into wooden panels. The ceiling was plain, except for an overhead fan and light combination.

That fan was circling slowly...around, and around, and around.

It cast no shadows on the ceiling above it.

The floor was carpeted, with a strange, shifting pattern of deep blues and small motes of orange and yellow floating carelessly across its surface. And near the walls were hundreds of toys. Big ones, small ones; blocks for building a cardboard castle, scattered bits and pieces of bright Legos. Small action figures, made to look fierce and yet at the same time: gentle. Even smaller ones, set into movable round bases. Board games, a toy bin made to look like a pirate ship. With a blue hull and a yellow mast and sails.

And then...there was the boy.

He sat in the middle of the room, hunched over and crouched down with his face away from the Old Man. His brown head never shifted up or down, much less from side to side. He barely moved at all...and he didn't seem to breath, for his chest and shoulders never moved up in that delicate set of motions that allowed humanity to live.

Then, from the side: a door opened. And in stepped a shadowed figure of a man.

The door swung shut behind him.

The Old Man was sure that door hadn't been there.

Slowly, the shadowed figure walked into the room. Edging slowly up to the motionless boy. There came the sharp scrape of metal on wood, and the figure drew out a sword that shone silver in the bright light of the room. Soon after there came the metallic grinding of dull steel on steel, and the shadowed figure raised the sword high above.

'Is he going to kill the boy?' he shouted to himself in horror. He had seen enough of that when he was younger, and had no desire to see it again. With a surge of energy, the Old Man threw away the unheard of book and ripped off the velvet blankets.

But they would not stay off. They covered him again, wrapping tightly across his body. Moving like intelligent liquid as he struggled to push himself up. Dragging him back down.

"It is done," the shadowed figure said, his sword still raised high.

The boy moved, and lifted his head up to stare at the shadow. "Kneel, and remove your cloak."

The shadow did just that, lowering his sword gently to the ground before gingerly undoing himself from the shadows that were bound around his body. When the last shadow fell away, the Old Man could only gape at the man kneeling before the boy.

He was barely nineteen, but his eyes spoke of a thousand years of age. The man wore plate armor, much like the Arthurian armors from Europe so long ago. But this armor...was ragged, beaten, on the very brink of being a heap of shredded metal. Claw marks, black lines of soot, ragged tears that bent and warped the protective plates were common all along and across his torso, and blood caked nearly every inch still remaining. For all of that though...there was not a single mark on the boy's deeply tanned skin.

Except for a scar, hidden by his long and wavy hair. It sprouted at the corner of his left eye in a starburst, then peaked downwards and traveled the length of his face. Ending in a ragged line at his chin. The boy looked at this man for a long time. For how long, he could not say. Finally though, he spoke. "It has ended then?"

The Old Man gasped: for the young man, a boy barely out of his teens, was crying.

"Y-yes. It is done."

The boy's head dipped again, and a chant drifted away from his hunched position. Its deep drone was laced with power, and yet...a calming. The room went dark, all light abruptly fading and dimming as the boy chanted and droned from his crouched huddle. Then, the light returned.

Not from the overhead lights, nor any electric source either.

The armored man...he was glowing.

"So it ends, the Fourth Age of your Time. The apocalypse has come and ended that which it was intended for. Judgment has come and passed on your Time. Rise, Seraphim. Rise, William of the Archangels. And greet those from your time at the gates of Eternity."

The glowing being rose, lifting his sword as he complied. Standing stiffly and rigidly as the boy continued.

"For you, the Eternities War has ended. May the grace of God be with you."

The glowing being, once a shadow, and then a man, flickered. Lines of darkness penetrated through his body...then grew. And with a sharp fweee, he disappeared, and it was dark again.

The Old Man sat there, his eyes blinking fiercely in the sudden dark. Then, a thunderous sound akin to someone throwing on a stage spotlight echoed through the small room.

The boy was illuminated in a perfect, unbroken pool of light. And he was staring gently at the imprisoned visitor. Fear paralyzed his body and mind, his gaze was like a cage.

"Welcome," the voice was like nothing the Old Man had heard before. It was deep and low, and high and shrilly, and everything else in-between. All at once, yet still understandable.

He finally found his voice and strained out a question, "W-where am I?"

The boy smiled, "You...are in a dream."

"A dream?"

A slight nod.

"I am dreaming this?"

"Somewhat...you are close. So, very close," the boy turned away and gestured to a random toy. It zipped across the room and landed with a sharp smack into his palm. "But it is not your Time yet."

"My Time?"

The boy juggled the paper block and spun it around on his fingertips, "Yes...your Time still has yet to complete itself. Most of the other Time's have finished their cycle of Ages...but yours...and a few others, still have a few turns of the Wheel still left to them."

The Old Man stared.

"You should be returning to yourself shortly. And I will see you again...in another Age."

The boy tossed the block aside and began to walk off, the circle of light following him with every step, when the Old Man wrenched an arm free of his entombing confines and flung it out towards the retreating boy.

"Wait! Who are you?"

The boy jerked to a halt, and lowered his foot gingerly. "You do not know?" his head drooped and his shoulders sagged. "Of course, who would want to know anyway? Why should anybody want to know who I am."

"But I do!" he shouted at the boy. A flash, pain. Spittle flew from his mouth as it gargled out unintelligible words and sounds. Something pulsed and flashed in his mind. A dull thudding, like a heart.

Da-thump

Da-thump

Da-thump

The boy's head perked at that, "Yes...very close to returning."

"W-wh-who are you?!" the Old Man screamed out. He felt veins bulging and pulsating along his neck. Suddenly the boy whipped around and stared at the Old Man, the white light that surrounded him suddenly flashed deep crimson. The color of blood. And the boy's face twisted and warped, lengthened and withered. The flesh grew pale and ivory colored, gaunt and shriveled.

The boy's eyes were pin-pricks of fire.

"I AM BECOME DEATH! DESTROYER OF WORLDS!" spittle, the color of thick blood, flew from yellowed and unnaturally long teeth. Pointed, teeth.

The Old Man drew in a breath to scream...





The doctors all lurched backwards as one as their patient suddenly flung himself upwards, mouth open and a line of spittle threading from the corner of his lips to the pillow on his bed.

Then they all covered their ears as the patient screamed.

In the corner of that room, unnoticed by all of the frantically rushing and scrambling nurses and doctors, a small grouping of lights blinked...then faded into the wall. Shrouding their corner of the room in darkness once again.

So easy to work with this computer.

So easy to change and manipulate these Lilium.

But, more time needed.

Strength is needed.

The motes of light, reduced to being nothing more than shifting patterns of heat and radiation, scuttled and scurried through the various complexities of NERV's hospital ward. Then they penetrated deep into the main base of NERV itself. So close, it was so close now. It could go straight on and combine with Adam...deep within this silly underground habitation of the Lilium.

No.

No, strength is needed.

Strength will be needed to control Adam.

A need to gather strength...then: strike.

Must be cautious, patient, ready.

The motes slowly gathered themselves, and then spread throughout the wall that they currently inhabited. It would wait here, and gather its strength. It would be patient and wait for its opportunity.

It would come.

Sooner or later...it would come.

A technician walked past the Eighty-Seventh Protein Wall, and made an entry.

Then he walked on to the Eighty-Eighth.

Patience...and strength.





"Any indication as to who ordered these sedatives and medications administered to him?"

Kouzo impassively looked at his former student, "None. The records indicate that the entry was made into the Magi system at 2000 hours yesterday. But,"

"But none confessed to making the change, and no one questioned the change in medications either?" Gendo sneered at the report, and felt the edge of the thick file start to crinkle under his fingers. This man was too important for him to be lost!

Kouzo watched Gendo with a mixture of confusion...and fear, 'What is so important for Ikari to be personally concerned with this man? He doesn't even know him by all accounts.'

Gendo forcefully exerted his iron will, and slowly he managed to gain control of himself. It wasn't easy for him to do, perhaps it was the hardest trial for him ever since Yui had been lost to...

"Terminate the nurses who administered the drugs to this patient, and tell Doctor Akagi to work on a program to insure that this doesn't happen again."

Kouzo stood for a moment, hesitating...almost at the brink of asking the question. Then Gendo leveled his impassive gaze on him. It was borderline deadly...a hidden fury and rage that Kouzo never knew existed flared and burned hot behind the orange of Gendo's glasses.

'Now is definitely not the time.'

Gendo kept that gaze leveled on Kouzo for the entire trek across his office, and then turned his head to the sky.

'Still trying to take him away from me? Just like you took Yui!? I will keep that man alive, just so I can find him again. I will do that, and may my spite be a spit into your eye!'

High above Tokyo-3, clouds began to gather.

It was going to rain.





"Come on Shinji!" Asuka shouted at the closed door. "We're gonna be late if you don't hurry it UP!" A dull thud rumbled out from behind Shinji's door, prompting Asuka to sigh once again.

'Geez...this idiot would be late to his own wedding...'

"Coming! I'm coming!" Shinji shouted as he scrambled around his room, hopping on one foot while he struggled to pull up his black dress pants.

"Well it's about time!" Asuka's muffled shout pierced through even with the wall there. Shinji sighed and fumbled with his belt, his eyes roaming the room for his black socks.

'Why do I put up with this?'

Outside, a light drizzle began. It was raining on Tokyo-3.

A blessed, cool rain.





"Chapter Four: Church"

Dedicated to God, even though I may not like Church anymore; I still have a place in my life for Him.

Shinji blankly stared at the gathered mass of family relations and well- wishing co-workers who were in attendance. They were not his family of course, but the family...or rather, families, of the bride and groom at the wedding he had been coerced into attending. No, he was here as a co- worker...and invitee. Not even that really. For, he wasn't even invited...Misato was though. As well as Asuka. They were the more visible of the threesome that lived in the Katsuragi household. The more outgoing...and friendly.

But here he was, all and in the same. Sitting in a black suit with a black tie and a white shirt.

His back ached from the hard wooden pews.

Misato had originally asked him if he wanted to go with her to the wedding. She didn't seem surprised when he said no. Unfortunately...no coming from one Shinji Ikari isn't a word that Asuka Langley Sohryu seemed to comprehend.

He took a moment to steal a glance at Asuka as he contemplated this. His eyes darting over to his right and quickly enveloping the beautiful girl he sat beside. Yes, he supposed that she would be considered beautiful. The kind of beautiful found in a fierce, almost lioness fashion.

'A red-manned lioness...yes. It almost fits her," Shinji thought, a small smile creeping across his lips.

"Shinji," Asuka whispered to the boy, causing him to snap his eyes up to where the bride and groom were exchanging vows. "Misato's going all weepy again, we need your handkerchief."

She hadn't noticed him. "Oh, okay," he whispered back, handing over the article of cloth as he did so. It still wet from the previous three times it had been called for.

"Thanks," Asuka said as she passed the cloth on. "And try not to be so obvious next time."

He froze.

'She had seen.'

Asuka smiled and turned her vision forwards again, 'He smiled...it's been a while since he smiled.'





The wedding reception was well underway.

And Shinji had a headache.

He wandered through the church hallways, desperately seeking a quiet corner in which he could sit down and just ignore the world. A rare pleasure that he had even more and more trouble finding these days. He wandered through this house of God. An irony in that. To be in a house of the being who was trying so desperately hard to kill all of humanity.

He must be rolling on the floor now.

The church was old and well-worn. With simple wood paneling and very basic ornamentations the status quo all throughout the building. Tables and chairs lined the hallways, with sleek, dark laquer casting a deep brown throughout his mind.

Then the smell...that rich smell of humanity.

Shinji didn't know too much about humanity. More rather that he knew the failings of them. But he did sense the presence of humanity here. Many hundreds, perhaps thousands, had been through these halls. Had walked on the same creaking floorboards as he. Had found solace, or nothingness.

"Can I help you?"

Shinji jerked a the soft question, his head and body turning abashedly towards the speaker. He was one of the priests...or were they fathers? Shinji had no idea either way.

"Forgive me...I was seeking a quiet place."

The priest nodded, his balding head shining dimly in the soft light of the hallway. He wore a simple suit: black, just as Shinji's; but he was a good deal taller than the fourteen year old boy. Perhaps due to maturity, perhaps due to being a foreigner.

And his eyes. His eyes were the wellspring of wisdom.

"I know how you must feel. I often also must find a quiet space at times."

Shinji nodded, and regretted it. His head throbbed and pulsated with the motion.

"You don't look well, please, come and sit."

Shinji took the priest's offer and reclined in one of the overstuffed reading chairs that lined the hallway. It had a warm feeling about it. Even though no one had seemed to sit in it for days.

"You're here with the wedding? Family or friend?"

Shinji almost laughed at the soft-spoken question, "Me? Neither...I'm here because I was forced to come. That's all."

The priest scoffed at the question, "Lad, no one comes here because they were forced. Even if your girlfriend told you to come."

"W-what?" he sputtered, eyes going wide and disbelieving.

The priest gave a small chuckle, "Yes...I saw you looking over to her out in the pews. I must say, you two do seem an unlikely couple. But a handsome one at that."

Shinji leaned back a bit and looked the priest over again.

"You were the one conducting the service?"

The priest nodded, "Right in one!" He smiled broadly and tapped his nose. Shinji couldn't help but smile a bit at that small gesture.

"Well...I'm sorry to tell you, but we're not a couple," Shinji's expression turned sour and he rolled his tongue around in his mouth. "Asuka would more than likely punch me than even hug me...much less let me become her boyfriend."

"Ow," the priest gave a small wince and leaned back in his chair. "Well, it could be worse you know..." "How so?" Shinji gave the man an appraising look.

The priest raised his eyebrows and looked around the hall, "I dunno...she could be in love with you."

This time Shinji couldn't help but laugh. It sounded forced though, strained. "Asuka? Love me? Listen...um?"

"Father Sanders"

"Father...if Asuka was in love with me, she would tell me straight out. She wouldn't hesitate at all."

Father Sanders only smiled, "Love, makes the bravest heros, stupid fools."

Shinji could only shrug.

"Well, enough of that then. How is your headache?"

Shinji was about to answer him, until he noticed that it was gone. The dull throbbing that he had suffered throughout the tail-end of the ceremony and well into the reception was gone. He only stared back at the smiling priest.

"As I thought. Tell me lad...your suffering from something. Now, I don't know what kind of faith you have...but it is just as good to talk to someone about it. Even if it is not God."

Shinji's mirth died, "God? If anything he must have a hatred for me. Why else would he put me where I am?"

A frown spread across Father Sanders face, "What makes you say that?"

Shinji ignored the question for a few moments. Instead concentrating his attention to a small spot across the hallway.

A ladybug was crawling across the wall there.





The Old Man brokenly ascended the marble steps, climbing higher and higher up towards the museum. He paused a moment at the statue before the entrance, leaning heavily on his wooden cane as he reached out to pat the foot of the crouching angel. The patient guardian.

"Good to see you again, old lad."

He waited a few seconds, for what, he knew not. Perhaps he was waiting for the angel to say something back to him. Like: I've missed you. Or: Where have you been these last few weeks?

But it held its peace, and said nothing.

The Old Man turned away, and hobbled across the small plaza and up towards the glass facade. His key deftly slid the bolt aside, and with a strained pull he was inside.

The smell of age greeted him.

"I'm home."

The air conditioner cut on.





Asuka wandered through the expansive hallways of the church. Looking and peering through doors and office windows as she roamed through the corridors. The reception was still going strong behind her, but Misato, for once, was showing an amount of self-restraint and had decided to head back to her apartment. Perhaps it was because she was going to take two of three people who could pilot the Evangelions with her that made the lush Major decide to cut her drinking time short.

Perhaps.

'Dammit Shinji...where the hell are you. I want to get out of this place.'

Asuka didn't hold much faith in churches. Whether they were dedicated to God or to a collective of gods. Even the Shinto shrines of Japan didn't hold her appeal. But they certainly did receive her scorn. She had no love of any church. Why should she?

Where was God when her mother lost her mind?

Where was God when her mother killed herself?

Why should she bow and scrape before some nameless, faceless, formless belief?

She turned a corner, and abruptly came to a halt.

Just a few meters away sat Shinji, talking to the Father who had lead the Wedding Ceremony. Their voices were low, hushed almost. As if they were afraid someone would overhear them.

A drop of silver plummeted from Shinji's chin.

'He's crying,' she realized.

Soon after, the both of them stood. Asuka remained where she was, though her mind screamed for her legs to move so that she could listen to what they were talking about. But they didn't move, and she just stood there. Waiting. The Father reached down into a drawer from one of the many nearby tables, and when he withdrew his hands he held a book. Not an especially thick book, but the edges of the paper within the covers hinted at importance.

A snatch of conversation floated over to her, "I...I can't take this."

"Of course you can lad...anyone can have this if it helps them," the Father pressed the book into Shinji's hands, and then flicked a small glance down the hall at Asuka. "Now then, you'd better be off. Your...girl friend is waiting for you."

Asuka's eyes widened at that, and she felt a short and furious blush erupt across her cheeks. Shinji was blushing as well, though his feeling of embarrassment was soon replaced by a hanging dread.

'What is she going to do?' was all he could think of as he thanked Father Sanders before turning to face Asuka. The Father gave her a last departing look and smile as he turned away from the pair and disappeared around a corner.

Slowly, cautiously, Shinji approached his volatile housemate. Asuka noted that his knuckles were going white around the edges of the book he held.

'Does he want to be my boyfriend?' she quickly shook her head clear of that thought and quenched her fiery blush. 'Stupid pervert, spreading rumors.'

"Asuka...did you need something?" Shinji asked meekly, almost instinctively shying away from her even as he approached.

Asuka ground her hands to her sides, "Misato says that it is time to go."

A small sunrise of relief blossomed across his face, though there still remained the hint of wariness as he stood before her. "Oh...okay," he searched for words, and found cobwebs. His tongue had failed him it seemed. Abandoned by his own body.

"We should get going then," Asuka said, a mite colder than she had wanted.

Shinji nodded and followed the girl as she led the way back.

He felt his headache return as they neared the reception.

But he didn't mind.

He had lost something more important than the headache just earlier.

And he had gained something new.





"Chapter Five: Fumbling in the Dark"

Dedicated to Rachel Barkie. Crazy girl she is.

The last few days had been...different, for Shinji.

He felt lighter. As if his body had been unburdened by a large weight. His steps felt sure, and his legs and arms and hands felt strong. For the first time in...as far as he could remember really, he felt confident. He felt sure.

And he was bold.

"You've been staring at me for the last two blocks, Shinji Ikari," Asuka commented with a dry tone. Part of her was flattered by the attention, and the other part was a hair shy of knocking his block off. "Either tell me that there is something on me that is fascinating you, or look ahead."

Shinji blushed, pathetic, he knew. But still, he could not help his reaction to the situation. Slowly, he opened his mouth and lolled his tongue around for a bit. Getting the whole of his mouth nice and moist as his eyes continued to boldly watch the temperamental red head beside him.

"Well?" she asked, growing impatient and turning to face him as well. Her ice blue eyes piercing deep into his stormy waters. Shinji felt his mouth go dryer than the Sahara.

"Well, I...uh..."

Asuka sighed and turned away, muttering and mumbling to herself as she glared into the reflective mirrors of glass that lined the buildings both fore and behind the walking pair. 'Can't even speak his mind when given a chance...idiot.'

"I was...ahh...just thinking about how nice you look today."

Shinji clenched his eyes tightly closed and forced himself to walk straight ahead. He feared the worst, and the pitch darkness of his eyelids wasn't helping him at all. Images of Asuka and a pair of red-hot pliers made him wince and clench his eyelids tighter, he could feel the discomforting press of wrinkled skin, crow's feet, spreading through the whole of his face as he continued to imagine horrible tortures that Asuka would inflict on him.

Then he stopped. And after a moment, opened his eyes.

Asuka had stopped well behind him, openly staring at the slight boy ahead of her as though he had polymorphed into a fire-eyed monster who had a lick of flame for a tongue. She could almost feel the heat from that imagined tongue as well...

'No...that's me blushing!' she thought, feeling the heat that rolled off her face and crept into her eyes intensify with the embarrassment of realization.

"Asuka?" Shinji asked, his voice on the verge of cracking with fear. 'She's blushing...that's good. Right?' She shook her head, much like she had done that night. That night before his door...that night when she was about to ask him-

"I'm fine," her voice was soft and calm, most unlike the roiling twist she felt knotting in her belly. "We should get going or Misato's going to be worried."

Shinji's ocean eyes quavered for a moment, a hint of fear and something else surfacing in their stormy depths. A nod. The emotions sank back into the deep, as if they had never been there. Asuka adjusted her bookstrap and walked up rapidly to draw even with the slighter Shinji. She never slowed though, and soon Shinji was back beside her.

Stepping light.





It had been many days, yes...days was the correct word the Lilium used to describe the passage of the sun and moon high overhead...since it had taken residence in the Eighty-Seventh Protein wall. It had been many days since it had manipulate that construction the Lilium had termed a computer and used it in a test of its prowess.

It was almost ready.

A few more days. No more. Then...it would strike. And the Lilium would be able to do nothing to it.

A few more days.

Just a few more.





The Old Man moved heavily through his cluttered apartment. The floor was littered with small piles of refuse and debris. Cast off wrappings he had tossed aside when a brief fit of impatience had flared in his body. Small bits and scraps of paper. Old plans, now long gone to the realm of dead muses' urgings. He clutched the photograph in his hands, the paper curling and bending to form a half-cone. He shuffled closer to a lamp, his gnarled and withered hand reaching out to find the rough-edged knob that would make the creation of man work.

The hard ridges of the knob bit deep into his parchment skin, and with a small effort, he turned the small piece twice to the right. Each stopping with a slight, deft click.

Light, golden and artificial, flooded the darkening room.

"Yes..." the Old Man said softly to himself, in the manner of all elderly people. His eyes, aged by time but still sharp with experience, quickly roamed the image. They narrowed and then widened as the pupil traveled across the sharp colors of orange, red, and yellow. Finally coming to a halt near the center.

On the three Evangelions, and the massive creature they held motionless in the sky above their precious Earth.

"...indeed."

Another enemy of the Children had been defeated. But the Crusade still had yet to be finished. In fact, as he lowered the photograph down to his warm lap, he had the distinct feeling that it was barely even begun.





...Then God said, "Let there be Light." And there was Light...

Shinji had read this portion many times already. He had read and re-read the pages so many times that he was afraid that the thin onion-paper was on the brink of tearing and ripping.

But he couldn't help himself.

Both he and Asuka were sitting in the living room now. One doing her homework, slowly one might add, and the other reading what he had almost committed to memory once more. Every so often, Shinji would quickly glance up from the small type-print of the book and look over to where Asuka sat, hunched over her thick Geometry books with a pinched look about her face and eyes.

'Perhaps I should offer...'

"Shinji, could you tell me what this is saying?" Asuka asked suddenly, almost slamming her left index finger onto the page she was working from. From the force behind it, Shinji was almost sure she had wanted her finger to go clean through the book itself. And maybe the table and floor besides.

"Sure Asuka," he said coolly, closing the book on his finger as he unwrapped his legs from around himself. With a calm that he certainly did not experience inwardly, he strolled across the room and seated himself opposite the table she was at.

Asuka gave him a frustrated look, "Sit over here stupid, I can't read upside down." She patted the floor next to her as though he was nothing more than a timid house cat. Shinji hesitated for just a moment, a bare moment, his eyes linked with hers. Probing, trying to feel her out...

Then he was up and moving around the side of the table.

"Which word is giving you trouble?" "This one...I can't remember what this little dip and the marking here is."

"Oh, well...in this case it means 'to the sum of'."

Asuka groaned, "There's another meaning of it?"

"Well..."

Pen Pen watched the two humans with an interested air. If he could smile, he would. But as he had no lips, he didn't. And then there was something else about this situation. A nagging doubt that lingered in the far, distant corner of his mind.

The bird felt like he had done this before.

Misato had explained that to him once, on one of her drunken bouts of hysterical explanations of human society. Telling about certain experiences that humans sometimes get when they are faced with a situation that confuses them.

Deja vu.

Yes, that's what it is...

But why didn't he feel comforted by that?

Asuka sighed, "God, you Japanese sure are a complicated lot."

Shinji winced but held his tongue. Asuka noticed all the same though, "What? Did I hit a nerve there?"

Shinji winced again at her mocking, cooing tone. Still he held his tongue, choosing to not comment about the insult she had leveled at him. Sure it was indirect...and she had given him a lot worse before.

After a moment, Asuka gave up and turned back to her book. She quickly scanned the next problem and swiftly pointed out another symbol.

"And this one?"

Shinji cleared his throat and wet his tongue before telling her what the kanji stood for.

But she didn't pay attention to him.

She already knew what it meant.





Kouzo noted that, once again, the office was colder than the ninth layer of Dante's Inferno. His sour expression would have given that thought away had Gendo cared to look up at his one-time professor.

"He is being watched, Ikari."

"Excellent," was all he got in reply. He stood there for a moment, briefly watching his superior examine his right palm. The white, satin glove was resting flat against the surface of the massive steel desk.

"There are signs Ikari...the medication given to...that patient, was tracked down to a hacked in data processor. And then there have been several probes detected within the Magi mainframe."

Gendo made no reply.

"Ikari...the Eleventh we know nothing about. But the signs we are getting are too obvious for us to ignore. The Eleventh has arrived and is in hiding somewhere within Tokyo-3."

Gendo flexed his hand, then slowly let the fingers unfurl. As though his hand was a delicate rose uncurling itself for the gentle, warming light of the sun.

"Ikari!"

Gendo clenched his hand shut again and reached out for his glove, "The time is still not ripe for our own attack on the creature. And we still do not know what form this one will take. It is dangerous to assume anything about our enemies that the scrolls do not portend for us."

'As you say Ikari...but sometimes I wonder if you're just fumbling in the dark...'

Kouzo held his peace though, settling for a harsh glare at his commander as Gendo pulled on his white glove.

'But then again, so am I. Fumbling in the dark.'





"Chapter Six: The Eye Before the Storm"

Shinji patiently sat.

Patience was something he was good at. Some might say that he excelled in the art of patience. For that is what it is...and art. A delicate and difficult form of art that is hard for even the wisest to practice, much less even master.

But he did excel at this art. Just as he did with music.

And in so practicing his delicate and masterful art, he found himself staring at the blank, bland, gray metal of his locker. In a small room filled with many such lockers, deep within the labyrinthine NERV Headquarters.

'So many lockers...'

They had always been there. Silent, still, stiff, waiting. As though they were meant to be used at one point or another. But they had never been used by anyone but him. Only Asuka, Rei, and himself had ever had a reason to use these lockers. But still they waited there, still they stood patiently, silently, stiffly, rigidly. Waiting. Waiting for someone to use them for a purpose.

Shinji prayed that he would be the only child to use them.

He had taken that up recently. Prayer.

It seemed silly to him at first, and he had blushed more than once because of the looming feeling that he was only rambling on with himself. But he had kept at it, and now he found himself saying small prayers every once in a while.

Though to whom exactly he prayed to...was a mystery.

He had pressed far into the book the priest had given him. But it's pages held more mysteries than answers.

'If he loves us so...the why does he send his own against us!' Shinji's inner conscious snarled to the void of his mind. Shinji frowned and forced the voice to be silent.

He felt silly enough praying. He would not start to talk to himself now.

"Hey Shinji?"

The curtain had been there since the beginning of his Crusade. It had never changed, or moved in all of the months he had been fighting. Even after Asuka came, the curtain never moved...never changed. Always there. In the bright light of the room, he could easily make out her silhouette on the opposing side of the curtain.

"Yes?" he called back after a time, his mind finally clawing itself free of his thoughts.

"Are you dressed?"

Shinji blinked at the question. Not so much that she asked it, but rather that she did not know the answer. Both she and he had been instructed to enter their changing rooms, with additional instructions to not unclothe and suit up with their garish plugsuits.

He had been sitting there for a good forty-five minutes, same as she. And neither had said or done anything throughout the entire time.

"Yes Asuka," he answered after a pause, his breath catching in his once- again dry throat. 'Why is she asking a question like that?'

His answer was soon in coming.

Asuka lifted the heavy curtain, thick with dust and the weight of past memories away from the ground and stepped inside the male half of the changing rooms. Her nose wrinkled at the sight of it, though it was no different from her own, and with a flick of her wrist she threw the curtain back down.

The whisper of air almost seemed to carry a voice with it. As though it was speaking about the many things it had seen and heard in these rooms. Speaking of the moments it had been witness too. The words it had heard. With a lazy flutter, it waved back and forth across the cold, metal tiles that composed the floor and then fell still.

Asuka had hesitated when Shinji's eyes had moved to the curtain, and now she almost wished that she hadn't been so bold before. "Well, I was bored...so can I come in and sit or not?" she demanded, though she would have more likely than not just have taken a seat even if he had said no.

Shinji only stared at her, a faint blush awash on his cheeks. "Not at all Asuka," he finally sighed, feeling the warm burning dissipate as he cast his eyes down. "I was feeling bored as well."

She sat with a wide, Cheshire smile beaming across her face. Taking a seat on the same bench as he, but a good distance separating the two.

They sat there for a time, both staring hard at anything but the other...while at the same time looking at nothing but one another whilst he or she thought she or he wasn't looking. Finally, Shinji grew tired of the game he was playing, and with a forced calming of his nerves broke the silence.

"Do you know what sort of test Ritsuko has in mind for us?"

Asuka shook her head, "Not a clue...must be having trouble with it or something, keeping us waiting this long."

"Yeah," he nodded in absent agreeances, "Trouble...or something."

Quiet reigned again for a time, then Shinji broke the silence once more.

"Have you seen Rei at all today?"

He wished the question back the moment it left his lips, but he could only wince and prepare for the inevitable tongue lashing he was going to receive. Only to find that it did not come.

"No...she hasn't show up here. And I didn't see Wondergirl wandering around," a small sneer blossomed on her rich, red lips. "What do you see in her anyway?"

"What?"

"I mean, do you like her or what?" Asuka pressed on, determined to have an answer. 'Maybe..just maybe...'

Shinji felt the blush return, and it felt three times as bad as before, "No, no it's not like that...between her and me..." He let his voice trail off. In truth...he himself did not know what he felt for the strange enigma of a human that Rei was. He felt some tugging of his heart whenever he was around her though.

As if...

As if he knew her once, long ago.

"Then what is it like?" Asuka asked, still hungering for an answer that would suit her.

But what answer would you like him to give you, Asuka Langley Sohryu?

'Shut up, be silent!'

If Shinji noticed her small wince and flicker of her crystal eyes, he gave no sign of it. "Well...I don't know really. I don't think I'll ever know for sure. I-I can't explain exactly what I feel towards her...it's something...familiar. But then again, it isn't..."

Asuka stared blankly at the boy, who glanced up and then away from her stare. His cheeks were coloring again.

The door on the opposite side of the curtain swung open with a loud squeal. Neither teenager moved. And with her soft, quiet, almost mousey voice that even then sounded flat and dead, Rei announced her presence.

"It is time. Doctor Akagi is waiting."

The red head and the boy sat there for a moment longer. Then with one mind, they stood and departed. The steel lockers stood there. Looking so stiff and hard that the merest brush of a hand might send them toppling over with a thunderous crash. But they did not shift, they did not bend, they did not move.

But waited, listened, felt, and stood still.

Had someone been there, and stood very still and very quiet in that empty place...they might have heard someone talking. Someone moving about.

Someone there.





It felt that the time was close, yes...so very close.

Very soon. So soon. This very day even! As time was reckoned by the Lilium.

The Lilium.

Soon they would know fear, soon they would know pain, soon they would know death.

So very soon. All so soon. All so quick.

Yes.

So very quick.

The time was near.

Its time was near.





In a far corner of Tokyo-3, in a place that was graced only by the presence of shadow, leaf, tree, and blade of grass, two boys stood and watched.

One of these pair was taller than the other, but still of a middling height. With light, almost white, gray hair. And eyes of fire-blood red. He was wearing a plain and simple shirt. With plain and simple buttons and a plain and simple breast pocket to the left side of his heart. He wore similarly plain black slacks, with simple white tennis shoes.

The other, wore nothing but black. And looked as though he were no more than a child of ten years of age. His deep chocolate hair hung thick and rich, shining with the brightness of the day, despite the shadows. His face was smooth and innocent with the age of youth and the blessings of childhood.

But his eyes...deep whirlpools of gray that swirled and weaved and spun until one could grow dizzy and faint at the merest sight of them. They stared hard ahead of the boy, peering deep into the heart of Tokyo-3...as though he could see through the mass of metal, glass, concrete, and humanity that had gathered there.

"It is drawing near to the time," the taller boy said with a musical tone.

The younger nodded, and replied back in a voice that was both young and old, loud and soft, deep and high, squeaky and rich, so many things at once...and at the same time, nothing at all. "Yes, it is time indeed. This Age is coming close to the Reckoning set forth. But it has a span yet to weave."

The taller nodded, "Yes, still I must appear before him...and still I must leave it to him to make the decision once again."

"So it has been since the first time, the first Reckoning of this Time. You will still face that end or the other in every Time that has been created since the first...since the Original."

The taller boy sighed and let his shoulders slump, his hair fell with his head...masking his eyes.

"Is there nothing we can do to end this circle?" he asked, more like a plea in tone than question in thought.

The younger shook away, "No...for as long as the Original exists in the minds of Men, then there will be created new Times, and then all of those times will continue on until their day of Reckoning. Such as it was in the beginning, so it shall be for the end."

"And this one, will play much the same as others?" the voice was growing soft now, almost desperate with sadness and fear.

"Perhaps...this Time was only recently started. Yet the time of Reckoning for the Age is drawing near. It will end soon after your Time has come and claimed you," the younger's voice never wavered, never halted in its assured proclamation. No remorse or pity in that one.

"Can nothing be changed?" the taller cried, tearing himself away from the hilltop the pair occupied. Flinging himself deeper into the forest. Running away from destiny.

"Of course it can be changed lad," the voice said quietly. "For you yourself have been a part of that change...you have lived, lived, and lived it again."

The forest was silent.

Suddenly, an alarm began to wail its lonely cry across the city.

"But it always ends the same."

The boy remained there on that hilltop for a few moments longer, just long enough to hear the klaxon fall silent. Then, with a sudden lack of flare...

He was gone.





"Chapter 7: And they were Eleven"

I am a man of constant sorrow.

Just hold me up until the morrow.

I am a man of constant sorrow.

Push me and I fall, throw me and I tumble.

But I will not stumble, in the end.

The end of it all.

-Seldon

It was cold

Shinji stolidly stared at the bleak and unforgiving metal walls that made his enclosure. He was cold because of them, he supposed. Or maybe it was the lack of LCL in the entry plug that made him shiver in the dim darkness.

Or then again, maybe it was something else.

He really had no clue as to what was happening in the outside world. One moment, he was in the simulation body...and then...

He really didn't know exactly what had happened during those final moments. Those last few seconds right after hearing Rei scream. An unusual sound that. Hearing the placid and docile girl scream as if something was attacking her.

Hurting her.

'Maybe I should find out where I am,' Shinji thought to himself as he extended his hands out into the darkness around him. 'If Rei is hurt, and NERV may be preoccupied at the moment...'

It was a bitter thought, but one that could not be taken into consideration without a good measure of past experience behind it. A memory flashed through his mind's eye as he groped in the dark. His first meeting with the girl.

A gurney.

Bandages.

Eva.

Blood.

'She was still going to pilot it though,' he couldn't help telling himself as his fingers slowly traced over the smooth metal walls. 'Even on the brink of death...she was still going to do it.' Finally, after a long stretch of what could have been eternity, Shinji's slowly numbing hands found what they were seeking. With a short cry of exuberance, he pulled the two handlebars down and gave them a sharp twist to the right. A small pop sounded in his ears, and a loud hiss rushed through the long tube as air rushed in.

Repositioning himself for leverage, Shinji manhandled the hatch up and off of the entry plug. Letting it hit the side with a dull, metallic twang. Taking a moment to breath in a few short gasps of the precious fresh air, he perkily reached up to grab the sides of the plug. And with a quick boost from his chair, which now decorated the right wall, he launched himself out of his prison.

And almost as quickly ducked back down.

"Of all places to be...they had to send me into the middle of a lake."

For a few more moments, Shinji groaned and complained about his accursed luck. Then with a sigh of regret and more than a bit of reluctance, he shakily raised himself up once more.





Asuka was cold.

Not that it was her fault mind you. Oh no, this was all Shinji's doing...somehow. Asuka didn't know how he managed to screw up so badly as to get them emergency ejected out of the simulation bodies...but somehow, it was his fault.

It Was.

'I sound like a fool,' Asuka finally admitted to herself after a time at staring in the darkness. 'This is no more Shinji's fault than it is mine...or even Wonderbitches.' Asuka still sat there in the darkness though, waiting, shivering, arms clamped firmly around her breasts and thighs clenched tightly together. Her hips and legs burned from doing that for...how long had they been in here anyway?

'Is anyone coming to get us at all?' was her bleak thought. Suddenly she looked down at her unclothed body once more, and her eyes went wide as if she was realizing her predicament for the first time.

"Ah! Somebody help me!....please?"

Her shout echoed in the steel tube. But nothing responded.

She was alone.

Asuka curled in on herself, drawing her legs up and against her breasts and wrapping her arms tightly around them. 'For warmth,' she told herself...though more than one part of her admitted to being scared at that thought. That one haunting thought that had plagued her for all of her life.

Alone.

'Shut up!' her teeth gnashed and gritted against each other as she slammed shut her eyelids, concentrating on anything...something, someone, who would take the silence and the darkness away. Images flashed through her mind.

Friends.

Family.

Father.

Stepmoth er.

Mother.

Herself.

Kaji.

Shinji...

'Shinji?' suddenly, she was upright and feeling along the sides of her entry plug. The metal was cold to the touch, unpleasant to say the least. Considering her condition. 'I wonder if he's out there...'

A frown crossed her face, "Dammit Shinji, if you've left me in here on purpose!" Even those softly muttered words seemed to echo in the hollow tube as her hands roamed and probed. After a few moments of searching, she too found the exit hatch above her head.

With deft fingers driven by a speed known only to those who fear the thing they are with, Asuka pulled the levers down and opened the hatch. Red- orange sunlight of late afternoon filled a sharp-edged square at her feet, and with a simple pull of her arms Asuka lifted herself up to the edge and peered out.

Not far away were the other two entry plugs, each floating in the small lake that formed beside NERV Headquarters. One, Rei's she believed, was still shut tight and floating calmly.

Still, emotionless, calm, implacable.

Just like its occupant.

Her frown deepened for a brief second before she turned her eyes away from the closed entry plug and moved over to the other. Its hatch was flung wide open, much as hers was, and huddled atop the device was one Shinji Ikari.

Hanging it all out in the buff, so to speak.

He was hunched up, much as she had been in the entry plug below, and staring out across the Geofront at the thin monorail lines that connected the immense underground cavern to the world of sunlight above.

Even as she watched, Asuka could spy the tail-tale glimmer of refracted sunlight reflecting off the windows of a speeding box of metal that mankind deemed to call a train.

She hung there for a moment, watching both Shinji and the train. Soon though, the burning in her arms demanded her to do something other than just hold her there.

"Shinji you idiot! Why didn't you come let me out!" Asuka shouted at the boy.

Surprise was clearly evident as he leaped up high into the air, giving her a brief view of...well, where his briefs would, should have been. Her laughter rang for a moment as she viewed the embarrassing moment, she rarely got to do this to him these days. But the laughter died as soon as she noticed the direction he was falling.

Towards the water.

'Didn't he say something about not being able to swim?' doubt flashed across both her features and her mind as she stood there by the plug. Her heart slowed as time seemed to slow. Both slowing in order for her to painfully see every clear detail of Shinji plummeting towards the implacable waters below him.

She could see every bit of him. From head to toe. Shoulder to shoulder. And everything in-between. However, what held her attention the most was the look of fear on his face.

Undercut by a look of painful resignation.

'He CAN'T SWIM!'

That was all she had time to say to herself before Shinji collided with the water's shimmering facade. A plume of white erupted as he plunged deeper and deeper into its cool depths. And another plume soon followed it.

Asuka's entry plug bobbed in the water.





Rei was cold.

She did not mind the cold though. Rather, just ignored it for the minor thing that it was. She focused her mind on other things. She frowned and concentrated harder on the image she was trying to project into her mind's eye.

The image of a white rose, perfect and newly-cut. With droplets of morning dew still clinging to the silk soft petals and the thin green stem. She held the image for a brief eternity, lasting but a moment in real time, until it wavered with the shout of someone outside of her small universe.

The image wavered, held, then wavered again.

Rei's frown deepened and her throat made an unwilling sound of disappointment as she focused even harder. She imagined herself to be surrounded by a world of silence, where the quiet was no more than layers of fabric that one could pluck off where they hung and used as a person saw fit.

She wrapped these layers of noiselessness around herself and her throne of souls.

She willed the world to be silent.

All became quiet.

And still.

That task finished, she focused her will and reconjured the rose.

It held. Then, she imagined that the sun's gentle warmth was caressing the roses pale petals. And they opened wide, with a slow and smooth grace that would make the best of dancers rage green with envy and blush with clumsy embarrassment as they realized their own movements for what they were.

The petals opened wide. The sun rose higher. Then began to sink behind the pale creation of her mind. Slowly, and with the grace of a queen, the petals folded back up onto themselves.

The silence shattered with the abrupt rocking of the hollow throne. Two splashes sounded close-by.

'Ikari?'

Rei stood and smoothly undid the exit hatch with her slim fingers. A small push sent the hatch open wide, and a carefully placed foot stood her high on the seat, up to her collarbone. Just enough to view the surroundings she was in, but not enough so that she would be exposed to all who looked her way.

The three thrones were in the lake, as she suspected, and the other two were opened already. But neither had their occupants visible, though the one to her left was bobbing up and down as though someone was jumping up and down at one of the ends.

Several ripples of the placid surface water spread from two points close by to the abandoned entry plugs. And a thin trail of bubbles rippled the surface over the centers of both. Soon, those bubbles merged, then the water seemed to boil with expelled air.

'They are coming up now,' was all Rei needed to say to herself.

Soon she was proven right. Asuka and Shinji, who's head lolled back and forth as Asuka held him tightly from behind, broke through the surface. Immediately, Asuka started to pull for the close-by shore. It was a hard pull though, with a nearly unconscious Shinji weighting her down and only one free hand to pull with.

She was startled badly when Rei surfaced next to her, matted blue hair appearing less than a foot before her struggling form only an instant before crimson eyes locked with Asuka's icy blue. She almost lost her grip on Shinji right then and their, but she quickly turned back to him and wrapped her other arm back around him to keep him floating.

"Move or help Rei! I can't hold him much longer!" Asuka furiously shouted at the girl, trying to keep her slippery grasp on the unmoving boy.

Rei blinked once, to clear the water droplets off of her eyelashes, then quickly and silently sped to the pair's side. Gentle hands gripped the still unconscious boy and slim, powerful legs kicked hard underneath the water.

The trio moved fast across the lake.





Toji looked across the sea of metal and glass, and sighed.

"You're wondering about Shinji?" Kensuke asked, barely looking away from the book he held.

"Yeah," Toji admitted, drawing a brief glance from his slighter friend. "He was supposed to be done by now...all of them were." He rubbed a palm across his lips and frowned into his hand, "I would even prefer to hear something, anything, from them by now. Even Asuka would be a welcome relief."

Kensuke raised an eyebrow at the name, but held his tongue. 'Not now, it would only make it worse for him.'

"You don't think anything's happened to them? Do you Ken?"

Kensuke finished the paragraph and slowly dog-eared the page to hold his place. He didn't need it really, his memory for reading books was well- know, but the following conversation might take a while. Best to be sure. Setting the book aside, he turned to face Toji and folded his hands together, fingers splayed out and interweaved as he did so.

"Toji, you worry too much," before Toji could open his mouth to protest, Kensuke continued on. "If anything happened to Shinji...what would you do about it?"

Toji's mouth snapped open...then hung there, the boy's eyes glazing almost as he racked his mind for ideas as to what he could do to save the young Ikari. Kensuke let it last a minute or two and then pressed on.

"Maybe better to say...what could you do about it?" Toji's mouth snapped shut. "I'll tell you Toji...nothing. There is absolutely nothing beyond getting you into an Evangelion that could help Shinji if he really needed it."

"I'd never do that even if I could!" Toji snapped at Kensuke. "Remember Ken, I was in that entry plug as well as you during that..." he trailed off and fumed, remembering the horrible feelings he had experienced during Shinji's battle against the Fourth Angel. "You felt it...same as I Ken. And that was only a tenth of what Shinji has to deal with EVERY TIME!"

Kensuke was silent, he watched...waited.

"You know...he pulled me aside one day. That day when you were out at New Osaka...and he told me why he piloted the Eva."

Kensuke perked at this. It was a subject they had only touched upon once...when Shinji had wandered into his camp during those hectic days after the Fourth. The subject hadn't progressed far before it was stopped, but Kensuke was still dying to know what Shinji would say to the question.

"He told me...that the only reason he piloted was because if he didn't, they'd find somebody else to take his place. And then he told me that he knew for certain that the person they choose would die with the next Angel."

Kensuke nodded, "It is true though...sad as it is. Out of all three Evangelion pilots...Shinji has the most combat experience, and combat kills, under his belt."

Toji wasn't listening. He was staring back out across the sea of metal and glass. The sun was slowly sinking.

"He called it a Children's Crusade."

Kensuke jerked up a bit with that, "What?"

Toji sighed and leaned back against the railing that surrounded the viewpoint both teens were surrounded by, folding his arms across his chest and staring hard at the ground.

"That's what he said he was fighting in...a Children's Crusade against God," Kensuke almost backed away from the tall boy then. Toji had never looked this serious in his entire life. It was...unnerving. "He said that Ken...and I can't help but believe him. First Rei, then Shinji, and now Asuka."

Kensuke felt his spine go cold and found himself holding his breath. 'Toji...'

"Three children to bear the world on their shoulders," Toji shifted himself off of the railing and stared back across Tokyo-3. "Ken...once I read something from our history book in class. It was about the Crusades back during the first part of the last millennium...they said that the knights and soldiers brought along children with them. Destitutes, homeless, hungry...but they all went, because the Pope had ordered it."

Kensuke remained silent. He had seen Toji like this, a few times...but it was so rare that he still did not recognize his friend during the moments. Anyone from his class would have walked past Toji and never have an inkling as to who he was. A firm set of the jaw, steeled and unforgiving eyes. A look of determination...and fear.

"The knights lost Ken. They lost..." Toji paused, and continued on in as soft a tone as Kensuke had ever heard him utter. "If they lost against man...then can we win against God?"

For once, Kensuke found that he held no answers. No responses.

No comforting thoughts.

A gust of wind whipped along the viewing point. The sun slowly sank below the mountains.

The sky turned blood red.





'To once learn what he is thinking...just once! I would give a man all the money in the world that I could possibly receive over the rest of my lifetime.'

Hardly thoughts to placate Kouzo Fuyutski as he watched the impassive Gendo Ikari, Commander of the organization NERV, near everything but Lord of the Earth; watch the slowly dissipating sunlight fade across the length and breadth of the Geofront.

"So..." Gendo began slowly. "The Eleventh has come and gone."

Kouzo nodded, more for himself than for his master, "Yes...though the means in which we did so is disconcerting to me."

Gendo barely shifted in Kouzo's direction, but to one experienced with Ikari's ways knew that was a clear indicator that the man would hear more.

"We used our own technology against the Angel. We did not use the Evangelions at all in this encounter."

Gendo smirked at the glass, his reflection smirked along with him. As though the pair were in a great joke that only they heard the telling of, "And? Doctor Akagi is certain that her program eradicated the Angel to the last micron."

Kouzo scoffed at that small tidbit, "Yes, but nowhere in the scrolls does it say that the Angels will ever be defeated by the hands of man alone!"

"Interpretations."

"What if we did miss something?"

"We know how to defeat it if necessary."

"Adaptation?"

"Mankind has adapted as it has evolved throughout the millennia...why should we stop now?"

Kouzo fell silent and settled for a thinly veiled glare leveled at the small of Gendo's back. If he felt any indication as to the glare's presence, then he made no mention of it.

"Have the Pilots been removed from their conditions?"

Kouzo nodded for himself, "Yes. Your...son, had to be taken to the hospital for a check though."

"He survived though, so it does not affect us in the long run," Gendo calmly continued on from there, not a caring nuance in his tone at all. "I have received the first Section-2 reports about the patient. They are performing their duties admirably."

"You wish for me to congratulate them?" He had done it before, when Ikari had felt someone, somewhere had deserved something from their headmaster.

"No," Kouzo didn't waver. "I wish for you to withdraw them from their assignment and place them on other duties."

Kouzo felt his eyes widen and his mouth drop, "B-but why did you have him observed? What purpose did it serve to have him tailed, followed, and watched from sun up to sun down?"

Gendo turned from the window and stared the elder Kouzo down. He shut his mouth so quickly that he felt his teeth draw blood from the side of his cheek.

"It is mine to know which and when...And I do not have to tell you everything Professor."

They stood there for a moment, with Gendo staring down Kouzo with that implacable, unseen, but very much felt stare of his. Then Kouzo nodded in acquiesce, Gendo frowned slightly and turned back to his window.

The lake shimmered in the last rays of light.

Then all became dark.





"Chapter Eight: Intrigued"

Ryoji Kaji was intrigued.

Which meant one of two things usually. The first was that their was some beautiful woman that had the unfortunate, or fortunate in some eyes, grace to walk through his line of sight. The other, was something a little more sinister.

Kaji sipped on his water easily as he watched the person less than ten meters ahead of him stop and bend over to inspect a long and thick fish sitting in its casing of slimy ice. The Old Man poked and prodded the highly-priced food and then reached out with gnarled hands to flip it over, so as to inspect the other side. Kaji had been following this elderly citizen since eight that morning. He had waited across the street from the art museum where the Old Man lived and had been walking behind him all day.

'Why would Ikari have him watched?' he took another sip of the lukewarm water. He had bought it two hours earlier and had only progressed halfway through the bottle. 'What is so interesting about this man?'

That was the foremost of Kaji's thoughts about this mysterious old man, but undercutting that thin stream of delicate thinking...was the fact that early last night, all of the Section-2 agents had been pulled out and assigned elsewhere.

And that was bothering him.

'For Ikari to waste time on this man means that there is something important about him...either something that he knows, or can do, for that bastard,' Kaji rolled the white bottlecap between his fingers nervously, feeling the thin ridges bite into his skin. 'But what is it?'

Kaji didn't like being in the dark. He hated having someone know something important that he didn't know. That's why he was out there, in the heat, sweating like a hog in the butchers shop. He was out there because he didn't know something.

And he had to find out what.

The Old Man stood away from the fish and pointed to one next to it. The stall's owner nodded in agreeance and then the pair started to debate heatedly about the pricing versus the quality. Food was expensive these days. Finally, the two came to a median and the price was decided upon. Money and fish changed hands, and the Old Man walked back towards the sweating Kaji, holding a neatly wrapped fish in his arms.

Kaji turned his eyes to the side and pretended to be studiously examining a grouping of imported salmon from Alaska. So wrapped up in trying to look wrapped up, he never noticed the Old Man walk up beside him.

"You really need to change your shirt if you plan to follow me," came the gentle and deep voice. Kaji blinked for a moment, and found his throat go dry for a moment as he contemplated what lie to use.

'Assassin?' he thought briefly. "Pardon? I don't follow you."

Kaji nearly winced at that dim-witted response, 'Let your mouth talk for your brain and you always end up in trouble.'

The Old Man smiled and extended a hand to point at Kaji's light blue dress shirt, "You shirt has this coffee stain right here. It stands out in a crowd really well, you know. Plus, you're the only man in a suit with a pony tail in this market."

Kaji blinked once again, feeling his internal balance shake and roll. A quick glance around showed that what the man had said was, indeed, true. Most of the people in the market were wearing nondescript clothing. Jeans, t-shirts, hats...nothing like his forty-thousand yen suit. And a look down proved the man's second statement correct as well. He had a huge coffee stain on his shirt.

Kaji frowned at the brown stain, as if by will alone he could force it to disappear. 'Damn cleaners...'

"Well, if you insist on following me around all day...perhaps you would agree to joining me for dinner?" the Old Man said in a gentle tone, as if he were talking to a child. Kaji looked from his shirt to the Old Man's face; then to the fish that he was holding in his arms. The fish was large enough to feed three people.

"You were planning this all day?" Kaji asked slowly, feeling stupid.

The Old Man smiled, "Perhaps I was. Come now...it's getting late, and I'm getting hungry."





Asuka walked across the hallway and up to Shinji's door. Without even thinking anything, she felt her face flush and burn with the hot currents of her blood. She brushed aside any hint of hesitation as she rapped her knuckles on the thin woodframe.

"Shinji?" her melodious voice sang out through the quiet of the apartment. A soft fhwhump answered her. 'Must have fallen out of the bed...again.'

"Asuka?" came Shinji's confused reply.

"Don't forget, we've got to go down to Headquarters today," she said to the blank door. She wasn't going to open it. No. Maybe...maybe another day.

"Yeah," the boy yawned. "Sure...today...Headquarters...right."

Asuka made an unpleasant sound and cocked her hips to the side, her hands perching on them in a decidedly haughty manner. Her right eyebrow furrowed down as her left arched up in amusement. "Did you hear me Shinji?"

"Yeah...Headquarters...gotcha," the last word trailing off as he spoke it. A soft whoosh of air was all Asuka heard after that. Somehow, it infuriated her more than if he had insulted her directly.

'Why that-' she flung the door open and stepped inside, intending to give the young Shinji Ikari a tongue lashing that he would never forget. 'I'll show him for not paying att-'

Her last thought cut abruptly short as her feet entangled in something soft and clingy. Her legs continued forward though, even as her feet remained stolidly in place. Head over feet she fell, landing with a quiet grunt and whummpfh of air as it was blasted out of her lungs.

"Asuka!" a moment and Shinji was awake and at her side, helping her sit up. "Are you alright?"

She wasn't alright, at least for the second. Her breath came raggedly and painfully as her body attempted to inhale more than her lungs would hold.

'Of course I'm not alright you idiot...' her mind furiously ranted. 'And if you had paid attention to what I was telling you this would have never happened!'

"Asuka?" Shinji was dreading the response, he had already seen the wrath this German girl could deal out. Mostly to his friends, once or twice to Misato, and on the unlucky occasion...to himself. It wasn't very pretty.

Asuka looked up, her tongue on the edge of letting fly some very disparaging comments about the boy's intelligence, origin, and father; all at the same time. But she bit it all back, and forced herself to swallow.

'His eyes...'

Asuka abruptly became aware of her current predicament, and roughly shrugged out of Shinji's arms to sit up on her own. Thin spots of warmth bled off into the cold air as she sat apart from the boy.

"I'm fine...we're going in an hour," Asuka wrinkled her nose and ran an appraising eye over Shinji's dress and appearance. "Take a shower."

Shinji felt his jaw open, then felt it close. Asuka stood and forcibly calmed herself enough to walk, out of his room.

'She was blushing..?'





It was nearing six in the afternoon as Kaji sat in the museum.

The warm smells of cooking fish stew wafted into the small dining room from the nearby kitchen as he sat there, he felt his mouth water in anticipation of a scrumptious repast. He hadn't eaten since breakfast after all.

Soon the Old Man came in, his hands covered in bright blue hot mitts. With little butterflies crisscrossing along the tops. With those padded hands, he carried a steaming pot of worn cast iron. Little eddies of steam and taste wafted from the open top, bringing with them the smell that had drifted in from the kitchen for an hour. It smelled delicious.

"Well," the Old Man said, setting the pot down on a wafer-thin ceramic tile in the center of his modest wood table. "Here it is." He chafed his hands together, then as an afterthought, stripped the blue hot mitts with their swirling butterflies off and placed them aside.

Kaji reached across and pulled the two solitary bowls towards him and reached for the ladle. "So, you mind me asking a question of you?" he asked, dishing out two generous proportions of the stew as he did so.

"No," came the answer, along with a sharp shake of the head. "I don't mind at all."

Kaji smiled and the Old Man smiled back, "Well, it's not everyday that a museum curator gets the dubious honor of being watched by NERV's finest-"

"You mean those five men with black suits and sunglasses?" the Old Man interrupted.

Kaji stopped for a moment, his spoon halfway to its intended destination, "Yeah. Big, hulking brutes with no neck and too much arm?"

The warm smile he received was confirmation enough, but the question was answered anyway. "Yes, that fits the general description of them. They've been watching me since I returned from the hospital...except today."

Kaji sipped gingerly on the piping hot stew, and winced, 'Too much salt.'

The Old Man nodded, "Sorry about that. I tend to oversalt everything...hard to tell when you get as old as I am." He stopped there and fingered the cuff of his long sleeved collared shirt. Kaji couldn't see what his fingers were doing, but they seemed to brush up against something along his wrist. "...As old..."

Suddenly the elder of the pair jerked up, his head gently snapping straight as though he had been caught asleep by his English teacher at school. His eyes, which for the briefest of seconds had been glazed over, suddenly sharpened and focused.

"Forgive me...I, ah..."

Kaji nodded quickly, more to get past the awkward silence than anything else. He took a small sip of his stew, and finding it cooled enough for his pallet, began to work on it in earnest. In a short time he was finished with the bowl, and helping himself to a second.

"So...tell me something. Why, would Gendo Ikari, the commander of NERV...want to have his Section-2 units tail you?" Kaji poised with an innocent voice. It sounded much like oil sliding on ice with his charming voice thrown into the mix.

The Old Man stared at him from the corner of his eye for a long stretch of time before he answered, "Gendo...Ikari...I wouldn't know. I don't know anybody of that name...except..."

Kaji stiffened, "Except...who?"

The Old Man pursed his lips and rubbed a hand across his wrinkled prune face, "Shinji Ikari. That's...probably why."

Kaji slowly lifted his spoon free of the tan, salty liquid, "You know Shinji?"

"Yes," he nodded. "Though I haven't been seeing him of late. What with my injury...I should have met him a few days ago. But he didn't show up." He slid his half-empty bowl of stew away from his place and reached into his pocket, "I think that he still believes that I'm in the hospital. Can't understand why he wouldn't be here otherwise."

Kaji watched patiently as the Old Man fished out a weathered and well- teethed pipe and a small packet of tobacco. He set the packet on the table and stuck the pipe firmly between his teeth, clenching them tight along old lines of his jaw. "Now where did those matches get off to?"

Kaji cleared his throat, "Yes...maybe that is it."

No, it doesn't add up.

The elder stood away from the table and shambled back into the kitchen. Small sounds of shifting pots and pans drifted in from that seperated room, then there came the sound of several small twigs being shaken about a box. The Old Man returned with a box of matches in his palm and a smile on his face.

"Ah, there we are," he said contentedly as he moved himself over to his seat. As he sat though, something changed in his expression. Pain flickered across his weathered features, across his gray-crowned brow. He sat heavily and grunted around his pipe, his fingers clutching along his right breast.

"You alright? Should I call-"

Kaji was cut off by a sharp wave, "No! I'm fine...just, fine. It's just that damn rib again...oh, God! I'll be fine in a moment."

Kaji sat back into the chair and released a breath that he was holding, 'I hope your right old man...'

After a moment he did indeed look better. Not too much better mind you, but...better.

After a moment he struck a match and placed it into the bowl of his pipe.

The Old Man softly cursed as he realized there was not tobacco in the bowl.

He had forgotten it...again.

The air conditioning cut on.





Rei opened her eyes and stared at the far white wall.

"It smells like Ikari."

Asuka made a smart remark.





"Chapter Nine: Sick"

Asuka coughed.

It wasn't a normal cough either, more like a hacking cough that emanated from the dark pit of her chest that worked its way out through her throat with a burning path of pain following it. She had been coughing like this all night, and well into the morning. That wasn't the only thing troubling her either, no. To put your hand against her skin you would know of her second ailment. Throughout the said night, and morning, she was of a fluctuating temperature. At one hour hotter than the dry heat of Tokyo-3, in the next colder than the air-conditioning at full blow.

In layman's terms...Asuka was sick.

'God...'

"Asuka?" Misato called through the closed door. "You okay in there?"

The reply was muddled a bit, but clearly heard, "No...I feel like crap."

Misato nodded, she had heard Asuka's hacking throat all night and somewhat into the morning. "Alright, well...stay in bed and I'll bring you a glass of juice and some pain-killers okay?"

A groan was her answer. Misato nodded stately and with long strides covered the distance from Asuka's small room to the equally small kitchen. The smell of cooking soup and bubbling rice wafted nicely to her nose as she loped into the brightly-lit room.

"Hey Shinji," Misato called to the boy beside the assorted pots and pans from which those wonderful smells emanated.

Shinji made a questioning noise, hearing the unspoken request in Misato's voice.

"Asuka's sick, so could you do me a favor and stay to watch her today?" It wouldn't be too hard for the boy to do. There wasn't any school today, and as far as she knew: Shinji had no plans for the day.

"Sure. I wasn't planning on going out anyway," came his soft-spoken reply.

Misato beamed, "Thanks! Oh, would you be a dear and get her some orange juice and some Advil?"

Shinji stared into the cooking pot of rice for a moment, then, as if he was returning back to the real world, jerked up suddenly and gave Misato a short nod of his head. Misato watched him stir the pot for a moment, wondering what he was thinking about.

'Kids these days...'





T-tchump

T-tchump

T-tchump

"What news from the Second Branch in America?" Gendo asked, staring out of the tram's window. Out over the expansive Geofront. Bright sunlight, reflected from the true sky above, lit the chamber with brilliant glows of yellow and gold. Kouzo watched his commander for a moment more, with his folded hands, gloved in white velvet; perched ever so forcefully over his motionless knees.

"They are preparing Unit 04 for its final check this month...they should be ready for the S-2 experiment a week after that."

Gendo nodded, the golden light refracting wildly off of his darkly-tinted glasses. "And Unit 03?" Kouzo cleared his throat and barely shifted his slowly numbing legs.

"The Unit is in its final preparations as we speak. It should be ready for direct transportation to us by the same time as Unit 04 is undergoing the S- 2 testing." It should have been finished weeks ago. It should have already been here.

"The technicians have finally found their gremlins?" Gendo calmly asked as the view slowly drifted by the car's solitary window.

Kouzo smirked at that comment, 'Gremlins...prophetic delays is more their name.' He chose to answer all the same. "Yes, they finally have," he stressed finally, though Ikari seemed not to hear it. "Unit 03 would have been here already you know, had these...gremlins...not suddenly reared."

Gendo smiled coldly, a smile that made Kouzo shift ever so slightly again. Pins and needles flared across his backside. "It is the way of the Thirteenth, Fuyutski. 'It will come by clouds of contempt and will infiltrate the trenches of the enemy. Only to turn one against the other by means of its will.'"

Kouzo frowned at the quoting, "I know the lines as well as you Ikari. But still...I can hardly believe that all of these sudden delays would crop up, just to keep the Evangelion there until some vague prophecy could be fulfilled."

Do you?

"Believe or not Fuyutski. But we will never make use of that Evangelion. One way or another, it will fall to them," the voice was still colder than ice...but there was an unusual ferocity to the words now.

Something...something was driving him to the edge.

'But what?' Kouzo wondered.

T-tchump

T-tchump

T-tchump

"W hat do you have planned for the Twelfth?" he finally asked.

"Of shadow dark, and reflection white, shall the Twelfth Messenger come. And he shalt swallow whole one of his enemies, as Jonah was swallowed in the Whale. The enemy wilt lay in the belly for a time of the sun and moon, only to emerge once more."

Kouzo felt the frown on his lips deepen, "Again with the quotes. It tells us little...that we will lose one of the Evangelions to the creature seems all but inevitable..."

"Yes," Gendo muttered darkly. "But which one?"

"More importantly," Kouzo grunted. "Can we defeat it?"

The two sat there for a time, both absently hearing the soft t-tchumps sounding against the tram's wheels as it rolled along the tall, long track that ran from the high ceiling, or ground? above to the pyramid below.

"The scrolls grantee nothing for us. They just say who will come should the ones before fail," Gendo finally broke the silence.

Kouzo knew that as well. But...

'It hardly makes it reassuring to hear it.'





Asuka was curled tightly against herself as she sat upright in her warm bed. She had been there for nearly all of the day, only stepping out of its seductively warm covers to relieve herself of certain natural functions that the body forced itself through. She sat there, in her warm wrappings, and stared contempetativly at the door.

Shinji had been at that door, some scant hours before. He had waited there, softly knocking until Asuka had managed to regain enough of her senses to roll apart from her tangled bed sheets so that she might answer him in turn. He had come there twice already in the day, both times with steaming plates of soft food; both of which she had partaken of with speed, unwilling to remain apart from her warm den for more than a few minutes.

He had stayed throughout her meals, gently picking up the empty plates as soon as she had finished them, then softly exiting while she rolled back into her haze of fevered dreams and half-remembered nightmares. Coming out of either only long enough to realize its falsity and roll back into another, or for the second meal that Shinji brought with his gentle rapping of knuckles.

"I hate being sick."

Shinji paused at the door, stopping at its half-opened lintel with his hands filled to the shoulders with clean-smelling garments and apparel. He frowned for a moment and set the fresh clothing aside in the hallway before poking his head into the darkened interior of Asuka's room.

"Asuka?" he asked quietly. "You should be sleeping...are you hungry? Thirsty?"

For both questions he received a slight shake of her auburn head, she forced herself not to move it much. It hurt her head to move anything much. Shinji felt his frown deepen and curl.

"You feeling better?"

Asuka sighed with that question and let herself fall back against the pillows, "A little..."

Shinji watched her lay there for a time, watched the soft and steady rise of her chest in the silence that followed her last, hesitant sentence. Then he turned to go, leaving the girl to her peace.

"Shinji?" Asuka called before he passed totally out of her sight. The boy returned, his arms filled once more to the shoulder with fresh clothes and articles of clothing.

"Yes?"

"...Thanks."

Shinji smiled at the girl, a bright spark flashing in the deep oceans of his eyes as he turned down the hall. "It was the least I could do Asuka." And then he was past, leaving only the soft whisk, whisk, whisking of his pants while he departed to finish the chore still left undone.

Asuka smiled at the door and then at the ceiling.

'...He's almost cute when he does that...'





The room was dim in some places, and pitch dark in others.

The occupant liked it that way, or at least that is what he convinced himself to believe. Likes and dislikes were things supposed to be beyond him and his realm of comprehending. He wasn't there to like or dislike a thing anyway. He wasn't supposed to care about what his body and mind felt about having a certain thing this way or that would feel like.

He wasn't meant to.

Slowly, he lifted a slim, pale finger in that dim light, and very precisely brushed aside several strands of likewise-pale hair away from his eyes. He moved them because they blocked what he was trying to see, what he was trying to read, what he was trying to comprehend.

"In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."

The words themselves meant nothing to those who knew not what they referred too; but to one who had attempted that logical exercise of comprehension, to one who had applied that exercise to the story of which that line belonged to, they spoke of a great deal.

Of unspoken, unknown, unfelt, unheard, unseen terror that belonged to the horrible place of man known as nightmare. Of a dark place with many lines of unreality and unexistance traveling through its fouled streets and houses. Of a dark...Thing, a Thing that would rend a man's soul just as easily as it would rend a man's body.

The occupant of this dark, dim room read this story about a dark, dim world. A world that did not exist, and yet...a world that did exist. A two-fold world in a two-fold place, where both dream and reality was bent and warped into existing and being a void. A page turned. Another. Again. Again.

Then, the dim room seemed to grow dimmer; if a thing as such would be possible, and the room's occupant looked above his collected sheaf of neat, thumb-worn papers to stare at that dimming section of darkness. For a long period of time, both darkness and man seemed to stare deep into one another. And for the briefest of moments, the darkness and the man seemed to...connect, with one another. As though they could both speak and were having a discussion amongst themselves about as casual a topic as the weather.

Yet, neither lip or sound moved in that room.

Then, the darkness faded into dim light, and a shadow passed across the room. The occupant bent his head back to his collected sheaf of thumb-worn papers and began the story over again.

'So arrives the Twelfth...black in shadow and of the darkest color of night...the numbers narrow...'

That sole thought passed across the occupants fleeting collaborations of thought, and was swiftly crushed by the swift ruthlessness of long practice. Once again, he took up the sheafs of paper and started his sole game of logic, twisting and bending his mind in the rigors of concentration as he sought to grasp that elusive goal: comprehension.

Slowly, he reached out to grasp the edge of that sheaf of thumb-worn pages, and fingered out the top-most page of them all, turning it over so as to begin the one beneath it.

A dull ring with seven eyes gleamed in the dim dark.

"That is not dead which can eternal lie,

And with strange aeons even death may die."





"Chapter Ten: A Kiss"

Asuka, was bored.

She had been bored for quite some time now. Ever since she had left Hikari and her friends back at the fair. It wasn't that Hikari was boring...but that date she had been with... Not Hikari's date, but her own date. That grad student.

He had been decent looking at first. Tall, for a Japanese, with deep-toned skin and close-cropped, dark brown hair that looked somewhat dry, if clean. He was lean, muscled just enough for it to be noticeable...but not enough for it to make him look like a gym addict. On the whole he was a rather handsome person, with a thin, square jaw and low cheeks that led to a curved nose and two small flat lips. Two startlingly green eyes had peered out from underneath his eyebrows, and they spoke of intelligence and wit.

But speaking and possessing were two different things apparently, because he had been as dull, if not duller, than one certain Shinji Ikari she knew was sitting alone back at her home.

'Home...maybe I should go home?' Asuka thought, running her hands down the long skirt of her green dress. 'At least it will be interesting back there...TV, magazines, Shinji...'

Her thoughts trailed off as that last word sounded throughout the caverns of her mind. She frowned as she considered the qualities of spending time alone with Shinji at home. Sure he was nice...and polite, kind, courteous, and non-offensive most of the time. Well...perhaps all of the time.

"I wonder...what he's doing?"

Misato wasn't going to be home anytime soon. She was off at another wedding for yet another NERV crony. Some low-tech nobody who somehow knew Misato through her rank and position. Why she even went to those weddings, Asuka could only guess.

'...Kaji. That's why.'

The sinking sun shone orange behind her as she turned up a street and ran.

She was heading for home.





Shinji set aside the book he had been perusing through and looked across the living room and into the brightly lit kitchen. Slowly, he stood up from his position of several hours and walked across to enter the kitchen. Pins and needles hemmed and chafed as his backside and thighs, pricking and stabbing deep into his muscles as he cautiously walked into the light of the kitchen.

Shinji moved through the kitchen easily, knowing exactly where to turn his hips, plant his feet, shift from one side to the next, avoiding the dining table and its chairs with the belied ease of many months practice. With swift shuffles of his feet, Shinji suddenly found himself standing in the room beyond the kitchen, staring hard at the large panes of glass that covered one side of the room partially.

The sun shone red through that smeared and dirtied glass.

"So bright..."

The refrigerator hummed and rumbled as it flared to life, the internal motors and fans whirring with power and purpose as it cooled the air inside its four walls of white. Pen Pen shifted as he sat there, flapping crossly as the sudden gust of frigid air ruffled him enough to wake from the slow, shallow sleep he had been drifting through.

Shinji stood there in the room for a moment longer, before turning and nearly jogging for his room.

'Quiet...too, quiet.'

There was that too, the thing that had first made him put his book down and stand from his comfortable place of rest. It was quiet in the apartment. For the first time in a long time, it was quiet. Shinji felt unnerved by the lack of sound, the lack of talking voices, the lack of people...

He felt it, and was suddenly afraid.

Reaching his room, he quickly moved to the closet and reached past all of the hanging shirts and folded pants, each the same color as the rest and the same color as what he wore, and groped through the dark corners until he felt his fingers brush across a hollow sounding case.

'Found it,' Shinji thought as his hand clamped down hard on the case. With a grunt and a heave, he lifted the case from the dark corner of its abode, and pulled it out into the light of his room. The sun shone red across the floor as its light spilled through the window.

The two metallic catches made a thick chwummp as they sprang open, and in that silence they seemed to echo loudly throughout the apartment. Shinji hurriedly threw the case open and then paused, as if to savor the moment. Or to gather his wits about him.

Gently, he wrapped his fingers across and under the smooth, polished wood of his cello. He hadn't played it in some time...he hadn't needed it to drive back the silence recently. Not to drive back the silence. Pen Pen shifted once again as the soft melody of a cello drifted through the thick walls of his room. The bird almost felt like opening the door and giving the small boy a piece of his mind...but stopped just as his claw was about to extend for the door's button.

He had heard this song before...but where before? Where?

Deja vu.

Pen Pen's flipper remained above the button for a small moment of time, the bird debating and wondering if he should interrupt that low sound of music that was drifting through the apartment. Then, the flipper dropped away...leaving the door, and music, untouched.

Where?





Asuka stooped heavily in the silvery confines of the complexes elevator. Her reflection reflected dimly in the scratched and tarnished walls of the well-used elevator, heaving up and down, in and out with her own true self. Her breathing sounded raspy and uncontrolled in the small confines the elevator formed. She had been running for quite some miles, both uphill and down.

'I wonder what Shinij's doing?' was all she could think as she forced her lungs to slow and her heartbeat to calm.

Ding.

The elevator doors opened out into the darkened and shadowed complex. Rows of doors greeted her as she left the silvery confines and entered into the airy open of the complexes middle. Her steps minced and rang out with the familiar click, click, click of the traditional heels that one wore with a dress such as hers. And in short order she found herself standing before her home.

A sharp click sounded, and the door slid aside with a hum and a whir.

The sound of deep, thrumming music greeted her.

"...I'm home," she called softly, not wanting Shinji to hear her enter.





The air conditioning was humming loudly in the background, humming and sputtering as it circulated the cool air of the museum in ever expanding circles and squares. The Old Man felt these cool breezes, but thought very little of them. He took it for granted that the air inside his small realm, his small world of paintings and sculpture, would be cooler than the air outside of the glass doors.

His thoughts were elsewhere.

He stood in a small gallery, one out of many that filled the stocky, square marble museum from tip to stern, top to bottom. It was a small gallery of art, filled with paintings and sketches done by men who had no real training, no specific schooling in one genre of art or another. No, this section was filled with the paintings of amateurs.

The Old Man licked his lips, which were suddenly dry and cracked with thirst, as he stared at those pictures. As he stared at their meanings. Red, orange, yellow, green, red, brown, blue, red.

Red.

Red.

Again, the red...that color, that color of death. Red, red, red.

Darkness.

Noise.

Light.

The flash of a muzzle, the hiss of a bullet, the snap of twigs in its passing. The sickening thud and piercing cry of those hit. That ever- present spray of red liquid from the wound, stealing life even as it flew through the sodden and damp air of the forest.

The hum of the air conditioning cut through it all, and the Old Man found himself laying on the cold, hard wooden floors of that small gallery. A slight tickling traveled across his cheek. A hand was raised, and it came away wet.

He was crying.





Asuka stared bleakly at the white rush of water as it flew from the sink.

She had been staring at it for.a long time. How long? Too long. She had no idea how long she had been staring at the water as it rushed through the sink. She was aware of this.as she was also aware of two other things.

One of which being that she had just kissed Shinji Ikari. Kissed.as in on the lips. And then a bit deeper as well. She had kissed HIM. She had kissed him, and she had enjoyed kissing him.

His soft, warm presence. The light touches of his hands as their fingertips accidentally brushed over her arms as she held his nose tightly shut. The soft, light breaths that had tickled her skin so much that she was forced to hold the nose closed.

She had enjoyed it.

Asuka wrapped her arms around her body and shivered. Not from revulsion, but rather.something else. Yes, that second thing she was remembering about this moment. This kiss she had shared with Shinji Ikari.

She had done it before.

'When? When have I done this before? When have I kissed him and held his nose shut?' her mind yielded no answers, only the relative silence of the running sink. Asuka reached out with a hand and hurriedly swiveled the handle to a side. The water slowed, trickled, dripped, then stopped completely. Asuka heard the door slide open.

"Hey Shinji," a muffled voice. Kaji? "Could you help me with Misato here?"

She was drunk again. 'How did I know that?' Asuka felt her eyes go wide with fear, and anticipation. Shuffling scrapes, 'Misato being dragged to her room.' A door sliding, a weak thump as the Major from NERV was heavily dropped to her bedding.

"Is Asuka around?" Kaji asked quietly, or maybe it was the walls.

'He's asking about me?' she beamed, her face flushing with blood.

"She's in the bathroom.I don't think she's feeling well today," Shinji lied to the elder man. 'Shinji you idiot!' Asuka screamed to herself, clenching her fingers tightly together.

"Ah, good." she could almost envision Kaji grinning at the shorter Shinji. "She's usually jumping all over my by now, must be that kind of night. Thank God."

Her hands went slack over the sink, and her eyes fell to the white porcelain. 'Kaji.'

Footsteps, "Well, take care of Misato alright Shinji? Hopefully she'll have some sense left to her in the morning." The door slid open and shut. Kaji was gone.

Slowly, Asuka lifted her eyes to the mirror above the sink. And stared deep into herself.

A knock sounded on the door.

"Asuka..?"

Once again, her eyes fell to the sink.to where her hands lay. Or, more precisely, what they lay beside. A toothbrush and a cup filled to the brim with water greeted her eyes.

'I.was going to use these, but I haven't?'

"Asuka?" Shinji asked again.

He was beginning to worry now, and soon he would have asked again. If she didn't answer his last call.the he was just going to go in there. And try to live through her fit of rage as best he could if she was still awake.

Shinji raised his knuckles for a final knock. The door slid aside.

Asuka stared back at him with wide eyes. Eyes filled with...no, no they couldn't have that in them. No. Impossible. She was Asuka Langley Sohryu, she was the Great Second Child. She couldn't be afraid of anything.

Her ice eyes blinked.

"...Shinji."

He waited for her to continue...and then found himself being forced aside as she muscled her way past him.

"Asuka! Wait!" came is squawked shout, his arms cartwheeling and flailing around; trying to regain his balance as she rushed to her room.

In his room, Pen Pen only stared at the mirror across the way from his bed. This was not how it was supposed to go. Something else should have happened...and it hadn't.

What did this mean?

The confused bird puzzled hard over his conundrum. His startling enigma that vexed the mind and wracked the soul for its reasons and depths.

He never saw the small, boyish face smile at him from the dark depths of the mirror.

Most people never would.





Night had fallen on Tokyo-3. And for now, all was right in the world.

A lone figure trudged up the last hillock that separated him from the glaring night light of that massive fortress of mankind. He walked up there and paused, to take in the sight of it all.

Gazing at the folly of Babylon's Descendants.

"And the sinful build a massive tower, seeking to reach the Lord God himself with its heights. And the Lord our God destroyed this tower of Babel, and set apart all of man with tongues. He broke them.and broke the tower."

A breeze rippled the cooling night air. Whipping around the long, black coat that the man wore. It never disturbed the man, or the small, black case at his side. It did stir one thing about him though; and in the dim glare of that night beacon: Tokyo-3, it flashed brightly.

The man smiled darkly and lifted a wide-brimmed, rather flat hat to his head.

"If their purpose is of human origin, then they shalt fail," he intoned, lifting his feet and moving down the hill. Towards the city once more. "But if it be from God.Then you shalt never defeat them."

The small breeze died off into the night.





"Chapter Eleven: Emotions"

On April 23, 1945; the Russian Army attempted to advance over a bridge leading into Berlin. They were met by 5000 Hitler Youths barely older than thirteen. The Russians were held back for five days...only 500 children were alive at the end...

...Most chose suicide.

Attempting to understand others is quite possibly an exercise in futility.

Though, in truth, it may be easier to understand another human being than it is to understand one's own depths. Perhaps that is why men and women are so different. So that one never truly knows the other to their darkest depths, and like wise in reverse, yet also never fully understands who they are in turn.

Is that why we seek the companionship of others?

Is that why we feel lonely in the dark of the night?

Shinji closed the book and leaned his head back against the pillow. It had barely been more than a few hours since Asuka had cloistered herself in that small hole of a room...yet, for all the world it felt to him like the passing of an eternity.

'Her lips...' his thinking was on her of course. How could it not be? About what he felt, or what he supposed he felt. Shinji really couldn't be certain about what his mind discerned from his body during that moment. That long moment...that kiss.

He felt warm. And he felt the warmth of another. Such a good feeling...now, that feeling was gone. And with it went the feeling of warmth and goodness. He felt....hollow perhaps? Or maybe lacking. 'To taste the essence of Woman and to draw back again is like drinking oneself full of water only to spit it back out...you never feel quite the same after.' Who had said that? Kaji. Or maybe someone else. It certainly sounded like something Kaji would tell him.

"Ryoji...Kaji..." he rarely saw the individualistic, rugged man anymore. Tonight had been the first time since...since his memories.

Shinji shifted over onto his side and furiously pounded the SDAT's earpieces into his own. A finger jammed hard against the button, sounding sharply with a tinny click and a whir of rotors. Music floated into the silence of his mind. Drowning out the memories.

Sinking them back into darkness.

Shinji shivered as he sat there, listening to the gentle music play. He wasn't cold, no...but at the same moment, he was. He was missing a small bit of warmth. That small parcel that always kept him feeling complete.

'...Or did I lose it at all?' Shinji thought, staring at the far wall. Cicadas hummed no answers for him. 'Perhaps...perhaps I never had it before...'

A small grating of skin on smooth fabric sounded as Shinji turned once again, back towards his door. He stared at it, no, past it. Through it. He stared towards where Asuka would lay, where she would sleep and dream and never worry about such things as he was.

"...Asuka."





Sleep was a hard thing to loose willingly.

Asuka did though. She stared endlessly at the shadowed and darkened ceiling of her room. Piles of things, clothes and magazines really, cluttered nearly every corner of her room. There was hardly a space for the floor to be seen through, apart from the solitary line leading to the door from her bed.

But she wasn't thinking on her clothes, her magazines, her collected nick- nacks.

Something else held her mind.

She felt it wrench painfully at her soul; tearing and ripping it slowly, shredding away all sense of self-possession and self-sense that she contained. Asuka frowned as she squirmed uneasily across the thin sheets of her bed. She had believed that her body had grown accustomed to this. She had!

And now this.

It was hard for her to touch someone that she had...had...feelings for. It was hard for her because every moment that person was away from her, she felt that tearing of her soul. That slow, subtle poisoning that wrenched her innards in knots from the overbearing loneliness.

The loneliness. That was the worst of it all, she supposed.

That singular feeling of missing something else, or rather more to the point: someone else. She knew the feeling well by now, and had long ago greeted it as a friend rather than her enemy. She had embraced it totally, surrendering to that sensation as totally as a human being could. At the time, it was all she could do...at the time.

Asuka had become so accustomed to it, so familiar with it that it seemed to disappear after a time. Oh, she had felt her friend surface once or twice. At the leaving of friends or distant family...but she had always quelled it before her friend could rise further. She had never let it influence her again.

So there she sat, staring up at her dark ceiling, squirming uncomfortably from one side to the other as she attempted to find a measure of comfort within herself. Curling up, she grasped her shins tightly and shivered in the warm eternal-summer's air.

"Shinji...you idiot."





Gendo Ikari never let himself wince as he shaved.

He had to shave occasionally, once or twice above his lip, perhaps shave the entire beard off thrice a month...just to keep it in proportion. He never left his office on those few days. His beard grew fast, and by mid- afternoon would have covered most of his face with a thick covering of short stubble.

No, having to shave his beard wasn't what kept him in that stark office.

It was the image he maintained.

The entirety of NERV was cowed totally and unanimously by his hard, iron- steel exterior. They would be the ones to flinch and cower when his eyes happened to brush across them. They would be the ones who knew their place. Not him! Never again!

A small widening of Gendo's eye was all the reaction he made as the razor's edge cut deep into the newly-cleared skin of his lip. A thin stream of red poured across the shined silver of the metal.

The impassive man quirked his lips once, then swirled the razor in the water held by the cool porcelain of his sink. In his bathroom. It would amuse many of the NERV staff to learn that Gendo had a bathroom, or so Fuyutski had assumed aloud. Why it would amuse them so? Gendo hadn't a care for it.

They were there for his use, not for his reasoning.

The water was pink near the end. Swirling down the waiting mouth of the silver drain that patiently waited. A gurgling sounded through the pipes as the last few droplets flew down that silver mouth, and then all was silent. The silver mouth awaited more, its dark cavern ravenous and waiting.

Gendo stared at the reflection his mirror sent back to him. He studied it with cold eyes, as if he were indeed sizing up an opponent which he would have to fight against one day. The reflection stared back with a gaze made colder by the glass itself.

A twitch along the bridge of his nose.

His hand snaked out, precisely rapping the light switch. He had been there many times. And this light switch had seen use more than once.

Soft, green light flared. Illuminating a wall that extended for many hundreds of footsteps. Each green light encircling a small square which was a thick case of glass. Thousands of squares, thousands of lights. Inside, the ancient pages browned slowly.

They cared not who read them.

"And he shalt come by an ally's hand. And with him shalt come death, vengeance, and holy justice. And his enemies shalt bow before him and serve him with their own hands, bound to service as long as the throne is empty..."

Gendo's soft murmuring died quickly.

A dark day prophesied.





Rei calmly made her way through the deserted NERV corridor.

It was like all of the other corridors she had come through, and many more lay ahead of her before she reached her point of arrival. Her shoes made a squeaking scrape across the smoothly-polished floors of that corridor. But, for all of that noise...she might have been a ghost easing her way through the halls of her haunting.

She was her for reason of course, she had never departed from her home without having a specific reason for that departure. Today, she had a duty...to discharge once again. It was the same duty that she had discharged the last time she had been required, as it would be the same duty until the day she would be needed for another.

Her last duty. The last.

But that was not now, and she had to focus herself if she were to be adequately prepared for the discharging of her duty. A cool wind grazed her cheek...not wind in reality though. Falsely generated by the Geofront's two thousand ton generators, yet...it was cool.

The door appeared. It was one door, appearing much like any other door in the Headquarters building. Somewhat different perhaps in that the gears sounded slightly less-worn than some of the others, but in most aspects: it was just another simple door. It could lead to Commander Ikari's office, or it could lead to the broom closet.

Something felt different about this door though. As though behind it lay secrets and meanings that no one else in the world would even begin to grasp or comprehend. With smooth, graceful steps, Rei moved to the door and through it. Stepping forward just as the door slid aside fast enough to admit her.

"-Damn him and that stupid ki-" Asuka stopped fuming to herself just in time to observe Rei standing by the door, with her usual expressionless mask of porcelain white. "What are you looking at Wondergirl!?"

Rei narrowed her eyes, she hadn't been called that by the Second Child in several weeks. And was beginning to believe that the other girl had finally forgotten about it and moved on.

'A child,' was the most she allowed her thoughts to travel as she turned away from the auburn haired girl. She had her duty to discharge, and speaking to one in a temper such as hers would only lengthen the time until she could discharge it.

'My bond calls...and I go.'

Her locker swung open with its familiar grind.





In the growing light of the day, there are many shadows.

From man, from nature, from simple things both large and small. There are shadows.

None to large, none to small. Everything just as it was ordained and planned for.

The darkness crept from these shadows, the shadows along the long slopes of a mountain. Spreading itself along and among the trees and the grass and the leaves. Among rock and insect and animal. It spread.

He had come.

In the slowly waking city below that mountain, a lone man in deep black looked out from underneath the brim of his large, flat, black hat...and smiled.

"And the fourth Angel blew his trumped, and a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light was darkened: a third of the day was kept from shining, and likewise the night." A bright flash of silver caught the light of the rising sun, the radiance of which caused many a passer-by to avert their eyes.

"Lo...he comes. As by the prophecy."

The mountain darkened.





Special thanks to Random1377 and his own original NGE story "Broken Children". He was kind enough to allow me to use one of his ideas from said story for this one. You can find "Broken Children" on the Asukaholics Anonymous forum page. Thank you Random.

"Chapter Twelve: Prelude of Darkness"

Dedicated to SxStrngSamurai13, DarkThought, Alexei Servanov, Zero, Autophage, Dennisud, and Tchernobyl. You guys have always told me what you thought about my writing and I appreciate that. I owe to you all of my stories, and all of the ones yet to come. Domo.

The silence had always been the best part of it.

Sitting in the entry plug in pure, sweet silence. No distractions, no talking, no cars, no building, no noise. No noise. Shinji always liked hearing silence. It always helped him focus himself. He never quite knew why, and never quite dared to try and find out. He just accepted the silence, and let it rush over him.

He was, for a brief eternity, in bliss.

A small sigh escaped his lips. Bubbling up to the tall sides of his entry plug and dissipating the higher it went.

'So quiet.'





"B-type harmonics test, all green," the level and even voice of Maya Ibuki slightly echoed in the large room. It was a rather large room for what its intended purpose was. Large enough to fit half of an entry plug into; maybe even a whole one, if it were chopped evenly and set side-by-side that is. There were only two control panels in this room, though why there weren't more nobody ever knew. The whole room shone lightly with a distinct bluish cast to it. The sheen on the metal walls still sharp with the newness of disuse.

For it had never really been used before, until now. Fifteen years of existence, and only now were the fruits of several thousand's labors coming to bear. Such was the way of things with NERV. Where it would take a needle, they would use a sword.

It served the purpose.

"Projected adjustment values have been cleared," Makoto Hyuuga called out next, his eyes rapidly scanning his console for any vital detail or alert. Always watching that one was. He next turned his eyes to Misato, standing close-by to Maya and staring out the large, re-enforced window panes at the three long cylinders sitting in a veritable ocean of red coolant.

A hard woman.

"You're looking pretty worn to the bone, Major Katsuragi," Makoto said, his voice echoing like Maya's. Misato only smiled. Makoto had a deep interest in her, but the woman wouldn't see it until he walked up and bluntly told it to her face.

"There's reasons why I'm worn, private ones-" she said impishly.

Ritsuko snapped out of her revery of paperwork long enough to make a short comment, if biting. "Kaji?"

"Oh shut your face!" Misato delivered back, with three times as necessary volume than required. Ritsuko smiled slyly at Misato's turning back, 'Yes.I hit that one squarely.'

It wasn't too much of a secret that Misato had taken up with Ryoji Kaji once again. Not if you knew where to look and who to ask. The pair were being discreet about it though, which was a far cry from how they acted back during Ritsuko's college days.

'Back then they were as likely to strip down and go at it during class, without a care in the world those two.'

She never did find out why they split up before. If it was one thing Misato could do, it was hold a secret close. Ritsuko turned away from Misato's imperiously arched back, and resumed her intricate scribbling on her latest form. NERV and its forms. If it wasn't done in triplicate, they didn't want it done at all.

But they served their purpose.

'The Angel should attack soon.and Gendo has seen fit to take a leave of absence to handle some, "affairs" of his,' Ritsuko felt a snarl curl her full lips downwards. 'That bastard. Always off when the important things are about to come about.'

"Hey Ritsu, you okay? You're lookin' kinda angry."

Ritsuko jerked her head away from the forms, the top sheet had an inkblot the size of a dime and was growing bigger by the moment. 'Damn,' she shouted in her mind. "Yeah, I'm fine.just a runny pen that's all."

She followed suit her words by dropping the pen and the forms into a wastebasket. She could always get another set to fill out. And she always had another pen.

"Okay," Misato said, clearly disbelieving whatever she was told.

'A dangerous thing in that,' Ritsuko thought as she removed a pen from her lab coat. 'Gendo says that I should keep an eye on her.that she could hamper His plans. Well.I'm keeping an eye on her, but not for you, you rat bastard.'

"How's the Third Child doing?" Misato quietly asked Maya. Though the way this room reflected sound, the whisper wasn't so quiet as it was meant to be. Maya glanced up and started to speak, but decided to let the data speak for itself. "Whoooah," was her comment for the information, a series of numbers really. But they represented something deeper than just a measure of aptitude.

They represented the hope of mankind. "I'll bet he's really going to be pleased with this!" there was that impish grin of hers. Wolfish really.

'A dangerous woman, a hard woman.and intelligent.' Ritsuko felt her eyes tighten and her lids narrow as she peered at the red-jacketed, purple haired Major.

Misato reached across Maya and typed in two simple commands: one was an override, and the other was a comm key.

In quick succession, a black screen with the words TRANSMISSION BLOCKED appeared and then faded; to be replaced by the still and serene visage of the fourteen-year-old who resided in a metal tube.

"Hey Shinji!" Misato cheerfully quirked.

Slowly, as if unsure that his eyes still worked properly, Shinji opened his eyes and stared bleakly out at his guardian.

"You're number one!" Misato happily said to him. He didn't react right away, but instead: looked blankly at Misato as though she had just spoke a phrase of Asuka's German to him. He remained like that for a moment, then another, until finally he spoke.

"I see."

A frown crossed Misato's face, and she half-opened her mouth before the link closed again. Jerking back, she blinked twice before screwing her face up into something approaching indignation, crossing her arms beneath her ample breasts as she did so.

"Kids these days, no respect for anything. No pride either." Misato paused, as if debating a concept over in her head. Ritsuko almost smiled as she noticed Misato's eyes flicker over to where the Second Child's entry plug lay. "Then again, some have too much pride."

Ritsuko continued to smile as she filled out the next form on her clipboard. And after a moment, she began to hum to herself.





Shinji stared at the far, metal wall. Bathed in a kaleidoscope of colors and patterns, the wall made him queasy to look at for a long time. For now though, he didn't care. He didn't care that the colors made him feel sick, he didn't care that the thick and vile taste of the LCL coated his tongue from stem to stern. He didn't care that he had to pilot a weapon of death and destruction.

He was lead pilot.

'Now all I have to do is stop the Angels.and all will be well.'

The silence returned around him, and his eyes drifted shut. The test was still on-going.

"All will be well."





Asuka snarled as she punched the metal locker.

Her face was screwed up in what one could only imagine as furious rage tinged with more jealousy than pure jade itself. She was jealous. Why shouldn't she be? After all, Shinji was top pilot now, and he had more kills than she could even hope of coming close to, not to mention the fact that Misato all but doted on him- Asuka turned away from the burnished gray metal and folded her arms under her breasts. Anger was still on her face, but it was lessening. Fading.replaced instead with a mask of cold speculation. A slight tick erupted on her lips, jerking their corners upwards sharply and then back down with as quick a motion. She didn't notice.

Her thoughts lay on another, more delicate subject. The center of this subject erupted her body with a swirl of emotions and thoughts that whirled through her soul and heart like a typhoon bent by Hell itself. The merest thought of this subject was enough to spark that cataclysm.

"Shinji," her voice was soft. Barely reaching the other side of the room. 'Why am I thinking of him? Why do I always feel like this when I think of him now? Why?'

Staring at the far row of lockers found her no answers, so Asuka turned about and sat down on the bench. It was still a bit rough in places, not having been worn down by the use of others. It was strange really, to have a bench of wood in a sea of metal. It could have easily been metal as well, or even some thickly padded cushioned bench. But it was wood.

Her fingers rubbed across the surface, lightly dipping along the straight and flat surface as though it were an ocean and her fingers were seagulls winging in the surf. She stopped after a moment, her arm outstretched and her fingers splayed wide with her eyes locked on the mahogany hidden behind them.

'Shinji..?' Asuka's eyes widened, and nearly popped as she stared through her fingers in horror. There was a baby behind them, wrapped in a small bundle. She could just barely see his face through the wriggling arms that waved to someone beyond her vision. A small cropping of hair, a dark shade of brown, covered his over-large head. Neatly framing two ocean blue eyes.

'Shinji?'

Wham!

Asuka jumped and flung her head to the side, from whence the noise had come. Her locker door stood shut. Turning back to her hand, she found herself staring blankly at the wooden bench beneath her splayed fingers.

Nothing was there.

Muttering to herself, Asuka lowered her hand and opened her locker again. She hastily dressed herself and wrenched free her bag. She was feeling a bit uneasy sitting alone in this room, yet she chided herself at the same moment for being such a coward. She hurriedly pushed the thin door to, and glanced around into the corners of the room. Half expecting to find a wrapped baby in any one of them. Asuka shook her head and grunted with exasperation.

'It's just a room for God's sake! Nothing here at all.'

She left shortly all the same. And never noticed when her locker door swung open again, the small mirror that hung inside of it reflecting back the smiling image of a ten-year old boy. The boy blinked, and the reflection blinked.

Then, he was gone. And the locker shut tight.

Asuka mumbled to herself all the way home.





It was late when Shinji walked into the apartment that he had come to call home. He had stayed out later than he meant to, riding from bus to bus, never staying on one for more than a few stops before he hopped off and caught another. Shinji was feeling bushed, but he didn't mind; he didn't mind at all.

He was smiling.

'I can do it.I can keep them safe.'

"What the hell are you so happy about?"

Shinji started at Asuka's bitter venom, and half-turned to face her as she stood by the kitchen door. She looked more than a little tired herself, with a wrinkled shirt and her usual tight-fitting shorts that she constantly teased him about. It wasn't that Asuka was not attractive, it was just that he felt uncomfortable about the whole affair.

'It was bad enough when I just had Misato to deal with.but her?' he let his smile fade and slowly pushed off his shoes. "I thought you would be asleep by now Asuka."

"Hmmp. With you running about all night? Somebody has to make sure you don't end up on a milk carton Shinji Ikari," he winced a bit at that. She had never put that much bile in his name before. "And since Misato is too much of a drunk to do that, it falls on me to keep our number one pilot safe and secure."

'So that's what it is.' It was all a bunch of crock really, Asuka knew full well that his father had several Section-2 agents following them around at all times. But that wasn't why she had stayed up tonight, waiting for him. "Asuka."

"What?" she snapped; her voice was still low, but she could erupt at any moment and start shouting and screaming in anger at him. It had happened before. "What do you have to say to me Shinji Ikari? You want to rub it into my face that you've got the number one slot!"

Why are you doing this?

"N-no!" That was the first time he had stuttered in years. What the hell was happening to him? "Why would I want to do that to you Asuka?"

Suddenly, Asuka stopped. Her mouth was open, biting words were set and readied on the tip of her tongue. She could have him broken and battered before him if she really wanted to. She knew exactly how to do it too. And that frightened her.

'Why do I know that? How?' Asuka's eyes tightened and then widened with something very close to fear. Shinji took a step back.

"Asuka?"

She didn't answer. Her sight was no longer on him.it was on a patch of darkness above the door. Where a little doll with ribboned-red hair swung by a rope. Button eyes stared deep into her. A small crriick of the hemp rope sounded plainly enough for her. As if she were on the rope herself.

Not the doll.

"...Asuka...Asuka!"

Her eyes slammed shut, and she grabbed for the first thing. Her arms closed around Shinji. For a long moment in time, there was no sound coming from the Katsuragi Apartment. For a long time, the pair stood there in the foyer; one with her arms clenching the other close, and he with his arms and hands flung out wide. As if unsure what he should do with them, or if he should do anything with them at all. Shinji stared hard at the auburn red waterfall that hid Asuka's face.

'She's trembling?'

Asuka was never afraid of anything.and here she was trembling. 'Why? Why is she afraid?'

Much were the same thoughts of Asuka, though she knew them to be a lie even as they were spoken in the caverns of her mind. She knew why she was afraid. Her nostrils flared as they caught the scent of death.

A horrible stench.

'It's not real! It's not there!'

"Asuka?"

She should respond, the boy sounded worried. 'Worried about me? That's rich!'

Is it?

"Asuka? Are you...okay?" Shinji delicately put to his housemate.

She slid away from him, "I'm fine." The typhoon raged across her soul, and she felt it rip and tear apart. Scattered into a thousand pieces and more. Asuka felt cold, and lonely. "I...just, remembered something. And I...ah! I'm jumping at ghosts for Christsake."

Shinji watched her concernedly as she rubbed a palm across her brow. She looked very tired. "Maybe you should go to bed Asuka."

The girls face pinched and began to snarl up, her mind reading a pre-made speech about him giving her order; only to let it drop as she realized that he had never told her to do anything ever before tonight. 'Where are these words coming from?!' she frantically shouted into the dark depths of her mind.

From yourself.

"Yeah...I think I will."

Shinji smiled at her departing back, cautiously watching and following her just in case she had another moment like before. Asuka reached her room and darted inside, nearly. At the last moment she turned back and gazed appreciatively at him. Then she smiled and said in a honey sweet tone, "Thanks Shinji."

Asuka dipped back into her room. Sliding the door shut as she went. Shinji stood there a moment longer, staring down at her door.

His smile returned, "She said thanks.What a day."

Soon he was in his own bed. Thinking of the day behind, and the day ahead.

He was full of hope.

'I can protect them all now...I can!'

Shinji fell asleep, a smile on his lips.





In the morning light, everything looked fresh and crisp.

The trees, the grass, little insects buzzing about the few parks here and there.

And then there was the Angel.

The man in black watched that humming ball of white and black float high above his own head. His eyes peering out from underneath his midnight covering with a fire that bordered on the light of madness, and the flames of Hell. Shrieks and screams sounded from the nearby pedestrians and squeals of rubber from the few cars that roared through the streets of Tokyo-3.

The klaxons began to sound.

"Attention! Attention! All civilians please report to the nearest emergency shelter immediately! This is no drill, I repeat: This is no drill!"

A grin split the man's face, and his fingers toyed with the shining silver hanging on his breastbone. "Yes! Let them face the judgments of God! And may the sinners find redemption only through penance and sufferance!"

The man crossed himself, his fingers tracing a long line from the top of his crown to the center of his chest, with a smaller line coming across just a little higher than the end of his vertical line. Then the man laughed, and pivoted smartly on his heels. Marching quickly to where a flood of men, women, and children crowded. Now was his chance. The man laughed again as he imagined the pleasure his Masters would have when they learned of his first success. Oh, yes. He could almost taste it. It was delicious.

His thick tongue rolled across his lips, cracked and parched with forced obedience as they were.

"Delicious."

The fires of his eyes blazed.

Overhead, the Angel drifted past.

Below, the Geofront boiled like an anthill.

And on a building not far from the Angel itself, the Old Man was waiting. He didn't know how or why he knew that today would be a day to go out. He just knew. It felt...weird.

"Today...today I will capture the Eleventh," his voice was all but lost in the winds that whipped over the rooftop. 'I just hope Shinji will make it through alright.'

The Old Man winced as a gust of wind forced him against the railing. He had healed nicely in the hospital, but it still hurt if he moved wrong. And being rammed into a pole was definitely a wrong move. The striped Angel floated close-by, never stopping for an instant. Always moving.

'What is it waiting for?'





Shinji moved his hundred meter tall Eva stealthily through the streets. It was a fair accomplishment really, to be able to move such a giant machine through such a narrow environment with the ease that he did. Asuka was doing it better than him though. Or, to put it in her words: "You may be number one, but having more experience helps too."

He flexed his hand in the LCL, the slimy liquid offering a small resistance to his knuckle grinding grasp. He wanted to do something, he felt like he needed to do something.

'-Protect them, I have to protect them.'

The Eva's were slowly moving into their positions. Slowly being that key word. It seemed as though whole eons passed while he waited for Asuka and Rei to move into their positions. He never moved his eyes far from the Angel that hovered barely five hundred meters away from him, nor did he move it much from the small holographic map of Tokyo-3 that floated nearly beside the image of the Angel from the Eva's eyes.

"Asuka, Ayanami, are you in position?" Shinji whispered. He didn't have to whisper, but he felt like it anyway. A surge of emotion rushed through him. 'I can do this-"

"Not yet." Rei, her voice already a whisper.

"You know that an Eva can't move that fast," Asuka, her voice was strained by something. She looked tense in her holovid. Shinji didn't think that she got much sleep last night.

'Can't worry about that now. If need be, I can protect her too.'

He dimly felt his hand start flexing again, and he faintly felt the Eva flex its hand on the pistol in its grip as well. Tighten, relax, tighten, relax.

"Are you in position?" he asked again. Neither responded. From the map, Rei was still a few plugs away from her position, and Asuka was hung up on a building nearly opposite his own position. In the direction of the Angel.

"...I'll do it myself then," he felt that surge of emotion again. This time, he recognized it. For the first time in perhaps all of his life, and most certainly since he had come to Tokyo-3...he felt brave.

"YEAARGH!" he shouted, whipping around the building with his weapon leading the way. Three shots, each shattering the glass windows of the building he leaned up against as well as the next two close by, ripped through the slowly warming morning air.

He could see them glow with heat as they roared towards the Angel.

It disappeared.

"WHAT THE-"





Explosions.

No, gunshots.

The man in black smiled and ran a hand over the shining silver. It had begun; soon, he would begin too. Perhaps even now.

"Brothers!" he shouted out, instantly silencing the myriad conversations that had sparked from the cloistered men and women that had gathered in that particular shelter. "Sisters! Praise be to God! Praise be to him that I am here to tell you what is necessary to save your souls!"

Some turned away, others laughed at him quietly. A few watched him with open interest. That was all he needed.

"Once again, your city has come under the shadow of an Angel. And once again, your vaunted Evangelions have been dispatched by that unholy creation of Satan, NERV!"

That brought a few heads around.

"Yes! I say they are Satan's whore! Why else should mankind pit itself against the Messengers of God! Why should we of the race of men fight against our Lord's holy creations? Why do we fight the Angels unless it be for the profit of the Devil and all his outcast Ilk!"

Some looked apprehensive, others: riled.

"We fight them because they attacked first!" a burly man shouted out from near the center. Several, perhaps all of the shelter responded with affirmations, though some were a little unenthusiastic.

"Brothers! Sisters! When did they strike first?" the man in black shook his head sympathetically, his wide brimmed hat swiveling slowly in place firmly on top of his head. "When! You say the First Angel attacked your city, when indeed it was the aircraft of NERV who struck the first blow!"

Several people looked stunned by that announcement. Of course they would, NERV propaganda was very efficient at controlling what the population saw and heard and read. Now was the key time.

"My Brothers and Sisters, you all are in a city of unholiness! You have all been led astray by the evil devices of that satanic whore's mouth, and now you are paying the price of this sin with the blood of your families and friends!"

Several nodded at that statement, for many had died during the Angel attacks. They all knew it to be true. Not even NERV could cover the fact that some fathers, mothers, daughters, and sons never came home.

"You are all living in sin here my children! All of you! And do not deny what the Lord himself already knows. Proclaim your sins! Proclaim that Satan's whore lead you astray from the righteous path of God. Fall to your knees and beg his forgiveness for listening to the vile lies of the corrupted Morningstar!"

The man fell to his knees and clasped his hands before him, as if in prayer. And continued to beseech the rest of the shelter until every single man, woman, and child were on their knees praying.

"Ask his forgiveness!" he cried out. "ASK AND YE SHALT RECEIVE!"

The lights flickered.

Then they went out.

"ASK!" he shouted once again, screaming at the top of his lungs as the darkness washed across the room.

Chaos erupted.





Shinji fired his last round into the oily darkness that was a quagmire beneath him. He still sunk down, slipping and sliding down into that darkness easily. The bullets made no more affect on it than to make it splash up and ripple. Like a rock thrown into a pond.

"MISATO!" Shinji screamed into his comm, panic engulfing his mind. He faintly heard Misato order Rei to fire, and for Asuka to charge forward ant try to help him. But he didn't pay much mind to it. The darkness was up to the Eva's waist.

He was still going down.

"MISATO!" Shinji shouted again. Static crackled across his lines. Pure terror, unadulterated fear, and icy panic froze his body and numbed his mind. The building next to him boomed and cracked as the massive hands of the Eva pounded against it.

'There!' Shinji shouted to himself, trying to maintain some sensible grip on sanity and reality. Trying to hold back the full force of the panic that was now wracking his body. Shinji imposed his will on the Eva, harder to do now because of the fear, and directed it to climb the building.

One entire floor erupted as the giant, purple hand crashed through. Then another to accommodate the second hand. Shinji was sweating cold beads of salt as he flexed the muscles of his Eva, pulling him slowly but surely out of the inky-black darkness below him.

Through the Eva's senses, it felt as though he had fallen into a vat of syrup. A large, black vat of syrup. He pulled the first hand out and placed it through the building again higher up.

'I'm going to make it, I'm going to make it, I'm going to make it, I'm going to MAKE IT!'

Then, he felt a jerk, a tug, and then nothing.

He was falling.





Asuka rounded the last corner of the building, her mouth screaming curses and insults for the poor boy she was sent to rescue; while her mind tuned out the incessant stream of commands that flowed from the purple-haired Misato. She rounded the last corner.

And stopped.

Eva Unit-01 was crawling up the side of a building, hands forced through the thick steel skin and tempered glass windows so as to serve as a handhold, half out of the black ink that covered the road and the roads beyond it.

Then, the ink boiled.

Thousands of strands shot out of that darkness and latched themselves onto the Eva. Asuka never saw when they pulled.

But then Shinji was falling into the darkness. Screaming once more before he fell totally in.

"MISATO-"

Static.

"ASUKA! THE SHADOW!"

Asuka jumped, screaming out as she climbed slowly to safety.

She felt her soul catch fire and burn. Slowly.

"Shinji..."

The city was sinking around her.