Here's the second part... of fifteen or so that have been completed, of
thirty or so total. The rest are posted at
http://members.tripod.com/~AvatarHR/pl.html, in case you don't want to
wait for me to post them to the list.
---
Misato knocked on the room�s door. Ryoga had been checked out, and the
doctors had cleared him; no brain injuries, no physical damage, ice pack
for that bruise on his neck. She still didn�t understand why they
weren�t both dead. That plate should have been more than enough� oh,
well. They�d figure it out later.

�Come in.� Ryoga�s voice, quiet, but not hurting. Good sign, that. She
opened the door and saw him sitting on the edge of his bed. He still
wore the same things she had seen him in earlier: headband, sleeveless
tunic, pants, rope belt. The neural interface modules were stuck into
his headband. He blinked at the light and smiled. �They say I�ll be
fine. What are you doing here, Katsuragi-san?�

Misato came in and shut the door. �Well, Hibiki-kun, I�m here to take
you home.� That was a really good idea, Ritsuko always had the best
ideas. If Ryoga tried to go home himself, no telling where he�d end up.
�You did a good job today, Hibiki-kun.� Well, he actually was thrown
around and knocked out, but you couldn�t just tell him that. Besides, at
least it had worked out. �Come on, let�s go.�

Ryoga bent over, started to tug his shoes on. �Go where? I haven�t been
home in months, but I do know it�s a pretty good ways from here. You
don�t need to worry about it. I�m used to wandering around.� Why was he
smiling? �Besides, there�s not anything special at home. I can sleep or
eat anywhere, doesn�t make any difference either way.�

Misato smiled to herself. Ritsuko didn�t have ALL the good ideas. �Yeah,
well, I�ve got a better idea. Just come on, I�ll show you.� She gestured
towards the door. He stood up, still smiling.

�Sure, it�s not like I had plans.�
---
Paradise Lost, chapter 2
Fan Fiction by Andy Kent
All characters copyright Rumiko Takahashi
Or Gainax, respectively.
---
Ryoga watched as Misato opened the door to her apartment. She threw that
long package into a corner of her entry and said, �We�re home!� Nice
apartment, really, although he knew he wouldn�t know a nice apartment
from a condo. It just felt comfortable. �Hey, Hibiki-kun, come on in.�

Ryoga set down his backpack as Misato headed for the kitchen. She was
humming something. Well, whatever she had needed, she could pick it up
and then they could get going to wherever they were going. Not that it
mattered, anyway. One place was as good as another� with a few notable
exceptions, of course.

He entered the kitchen to find Misato leaning back in a chair at the
table, drinking what looked suspiciously like a beer. Really drinking,
can-in-a-single-gulp drinking. �Ah, Misato, don�t you think that you
shouldn�t do that before driving?� He�d been hit by drunk drivers
before, and it gave him little consolation that their cars had been
damaged more than he had been. Not everybody was a martial artist, damn
it.

She looked up at him with a puzzled expression. �Driving? I�m home.�

�Yes, you�re home, but you wanted to take me somewhere, remember?�

�And here you are. Welcome home, Ryoga.�

Hey, since when had he been �Ryoga�? Waitaminit. �Welcome Home�? His
panic mode was clicking in� obviously somebody had said something that
he hadn�t heard right. He tried again. �This is your home, Misato.� Just
how many beers had she had in those five seconds? She didn�t LOOK too
drunk.

Misato smiled. �Yes, well, now it�s yours too. I thought you could stay
here for a while. Hey, put some dinner on, will you?�

Yes, she had definitely had too much to drink. Time to make an exit,
definitely. Maybe he could find Nerima by next week, talk with Ranma
about this. Yeah, that was it. Dr. Tofu could give him something for
these hallucinations he�d been having. Cologne could bang his head
against more rocks. He could try to beat Ranma senseless again. That
kind of thing made sense. Ryoga knew that his living in ONE place didn�t
make any sense at all. �Huh?� Obviously his mouth wasn�t working yet,
better start backing up to get some cover. �Whaaaa?� He needed to stall.
�What was that? Me stay here? What why?� Yes, very drunk. Her cheeks
were really red� very drunk indeed.

�Hey! Ryoga-kun! Earth to Ryoga-kun!� That was Misato. �I�m just going
to lend you a spare room. Hey!� Nope, still not making sense. �What�s
gotten into you? We can�t just let you wander off.� That REALLY didn�t
make sense. Everybody let him wander off. �What happens when you�re not
around when the next Angel comes?� Hey, that made some sense. �So I�ve
got to keep track of you somehow. OK?�

Ryoga�s mind settled back into his normal state. �OH! Oh. Oh, OK. That�s
all right, I don�t mind.� He still didn�t get it, but at least it
wouldn�t kill him to borrow some floor space. It was dark out there,
after all. �Dinner? Where?�

�Drinks in the fridge, food in the pantry. You can cook, right?� Come to
think of it, she wasn�t drunk at all. No slurring of speech, and she
looked lucid. �Pots under the stove.�

By some minor miracle, he found the pantry on the first try. Inside, he
found piles of instant ramen, television dinners, and microwavable
meals. He picked out the ramen on top and started the water boiling.
Pressed the open button on the fridge. �Huh?� The fridge racks held row
after row of cold beer. Great for a party, but he wasn�t a drinker.
�Where�s the soda?�

�Bottom row, under the beer.�

Ryoga was grumbling a bit before he finished. �Which bottom row? They�re
all beer.� He couldn�t find his way around the kitchen either. Still, he
managed to whip up the ramen. �Let�s eat.� By this time, Misato had
grabbed another beer.

�Ah, instant ramen is pretty good, right Ryoga?�

Well, it wasn�t bad. �Yes.� In fact, he�d rather be eating Akane�s
cooking. Even though it hit like a fist in the stomach, it was really
nourishing� well no. He was really glad he wasn�t eating Akane�s
cooking, even though he missed her. He�d learned to make do with what he
found, but that was a bit much. Maybe he�d teach her to cook one day.

�Ryoga, what are you thinking about?�

Sputter. �N, n, nothing. Just eating over here.�

Misato looked sincerely worried. �Well, sorry, everything here is
instant.� She was on another beer. �Probably not what you�re used to.�

Actually, it was much tastier than what he was used to. If he had to eat
one more root, ever, it would be two too many. �Don�t worry. First rule
of the road is to never turn down free food.� He lived by those rules of
the road; hell, he wasn�t ever off the road.

�Rule of the road?�

This was painful to remember. �Yeah, Dad taught them to me when I was
little, before he ran off. He gets lost easy, you know that?� Misato
nodded. �Well, it must be genetic. Really early on, I started getting
lost too, and he told me everything he had ever learned about getting
lost.� There wasn�t much to it, come to think of it. Good thing, he had
only been six. �Never turn down free food. Carry a change of clothes.
Any roof is better than the best bush at night. Don�t take shortcuts.
Ask everybody for directions. Hitchhike if possible. When you�re stuck
somewhere, be nice to the landlord. Stay away from his daughters.� Not
like that had ever been a problem for Ryoga. �Carry bandages, ointment,
and three bandanas.�

She was laughing a little. �Three bandanas?� Of course, three bandanas.
One for the top, one for the face, one for a bandage. He had maybe two
dozen, himself. �Where does Gendo keep three bandanas?� Now she was
really laughing. �And ointment and bandages?�

Come to think of it, he hadn�t used his ointment in a while. After all
he�d been through, the bushes just couldn�t seem to scratch him anymore.
�Yeah, well, it works. Did he really just wander off? We always thought
he had left Mom for another woman.�

�No way. Gendo wouldn�t go for a woman if he was being paid.�

�Hey, I�m here. Don�t talk about him like that.�

�That�s not what I meant. He�s just cold, really cold. No emotions.
Except for Rei, maybe.�

�Rei?� That name jigged something in Ryoga�s memory. �Who�s Rei?�

�She�s the other Evangelion pilot. Blue hair, remember?�

He remembered. �What the hell happened to her? I�ve never seen anyone
torn up that badly and live.�

�There was an� accident two weeks ago. Synchronization test. We had been
trying for six months to get her to synchronize with Eva. It finally
worked, but the Eva went crazy. She ejected inside the hangar. Almost
died. Gendo was really, really upset.�

Gah. That had to be painful. �Eva can go berserk?�

�Hey, where were you earlier? How do you think you won that fight?�

�I don�t know, it sort of went fuzzy for a while. You mean I went
berserk too?�

�Do you normally put your fist through concrete walls, Ryoga?�

Sweatdrop time. �Well, to put it bluntly, yes.�

Misato�s eyes bugged out. Maybe it was the beer, six so far. �What?�

�Well, whenever I get mad, I punch a wall out. Sometimes I do it by
accident. I hope you�re insured.� Not just for that, but he didn�t say
that. God, how did Nabiki pay insurance on the Tendo dojo? Must cost a
fortune. �It�s kind of hard to explain.�

�We�ve got all night.�

�You asked for it. The Ryoga Hibiki life story, volume one.�

�Here, have a beer first.�

�Thanks.� Ryoga had had beer before. Sometimes people thought they were
being funny, giving beer to the lost kid. Sometimes it was all there was
to drink. He�d never been drunk, though. Beer just didn�t work on his
system, it seemed. �Here goes. Early childhood is a fog. It was me, Mom,
Dad. They always said that the only thing they could ever find was each
other. Once I started school, we didn�t see each other much. Dad could
always find me, though. Then he left, and one day Mom was gone too. She
was around, somebody was dusting the place anyway, but we never bumped
into each other.

�I never could make friends in school. Absent too much, you see. Then, I
met this kid in middle school. Real jerk, but hey, it�s what I had,
right? I got tired of him stealing my lunch and challenged him to a
fight. That�s another thing Dad taught me, a little martial arts.
Anyway, I got lost on the way to the fight, and the kid took off. Turns
out his father took him to train in China. I went after him. I was that
kind of guy, you know?

�I spent two years in China, sometimes just missing them, sometimes in
the mountains or desert for weeks. It wasn�t bad; I learned some
Chinese, learned to cook, learned some kenpo. Then, I finally caught up
with them, at a place called Jusenkyo.� Whoa, whoa! Don�t tell her
everything. She�d probably eat me! �Something really bad happened there.
I followed the guy back to Japan, turned out it had happened to his dad
and him too, but different. He was engaged to this girl, and they really
didn�t like each other, and she�s really nice, so� well, I�ve been a few
places since, but I can always get back to Nerima eventually. Crazy
place, the dojo.� Misato was grinning again. �And then you pulled up and
stuck me in a robot.�

�Well, well. What�s her name, Ryoga?�

Eep. �Oh, no you don�t. You�ve got to go next.� It just might work.

Her smile disappeared. �Well, all right.� Hey! It worked. �Most of my
childhood was normal. My dad was a real prick, though. Quiet type, no
affection, kind of like your dad.�

�No, he was really nice until he took off.�

�Well, you know what I mean. Then, he took me off to look at some things
in Antarctica. Research and things. Well, that was fifteen years ago.
You know what happened there.�

Everybody knew that. �Second Impact. Yeah, meteor hit. Pretty nasty.
How�d you make it?�

�Wrong, Ryoga. That�s what we tell people. The Angels made the Second
Impact happen. I saw it myself. It killed my father, everybody. That�s
why I�m here.�

The Angels could do THAT? Cool. �That�s why we�re fighting them, then.�

�Yes, it is.�

�Well, then what?�

�The end of the world, if we lose.�

�No, I mean then what happened? That was fifteen years ago.�

�Oh! Well, after that, I kind of went into a shell. Grandparents had
arranged a marriage, all of that, but the guy ran off with the kid after
a couple of years. I decided to start over, go to college. That�s when I
joined up with NERV. After that, it�s all work, until now.�

Ryoga yawned. All of this story swapping was tiring. �Well, that�s
normal, at least.�

She was looking at him again. �Normal? That�s weird. What do you mean,
normal?�

�Well, you�re not a Chinese Amazon warrior or anything. You didn�t take
up okonomiyaki cooking as a martial art. You don�t poison people�s food.
Your fianc�e isn�t a transsexual. You don�t have a demon in a
tiger-striped bikini hanging around you.�

�I�ve got purple hair.�

�Yeah, right. It�s black hair with dye.� Beer can impact. �Well, your
roots are showing.� Another impact. �It�s okay, really. The only
purple-hair girl I know is a real�� Hey! That one was still full.
�what�s the word? Um. Er.� Oh, damn, that one�s OPEN. �Sorry sorry
sorry! I didn�t mean it!�

Misato drank the beer. �Jeez. Don�t you know not to talk about things
like that to a woman?�

Another sweatdrop. �Well, no. I haven�t had a chance to meet many
women.� Come to think of it, that was really stupid. He shouldn�t have
said something like that. If she�d been just a bit angrier, he�d be
covered with cold beer and she�d have a pig roast. �Sorry, it does
really look nice.�

�Well, I forgive you. Just don�t tell anybody.� Smiling again, thank
God. �It�s easy to see in a crowd. Kind of a command thing. It�s in the
NERV manual.�

This could be a problem. �Do I have to?�

�Are you kidding? That headband is like a traffic sign. Anyway, where
did you get all of those weird ideas? Life isn�t like that.�

�Yours isn�t, maybe. Well, maybe it is, now. Hell, I�m here.�

�That�s enough for the night. Hit the showers, kid. First door on the
left. Need help finding it?�

�Thank you, no.�

---
Ritsuko was still going over papers in her office. Nothing made any
sense. Yes, it was all well and good that Ryoga had won the battle, but
exactly what had made the Eva go berserk like that? And why wasn�t it
damaged?

Start from the top. The pilot, Ryoga Hibiki, unknown physical abilities.

(Misato said that he got hit by that armor plate.)

No evidence of pain reactions.

(Didn�t even notice the tests. Didn�t even notice the cattle prod she
had sneaked in under her lab coat.)

But he knew what pain was.

(That was him screaming in the entry plug; she had the recordings, he
was saying �it hurts, it hurts� there and there.)

The Eva could hurt him. It put its signal into his mind.

What if it worked both ways? Unit 01�s mind and Ryoga�s body? Could it
have become like him?

That was impossible, though. That was just a neural signal. It couldn�t
stop an Angel.

(His body couldn�t have stopped that plate. But she had seen the
handprint!)

AND he wasn�t fourteen. Obviously all that crap Gendo had been going on
about was just that. Original sin, huh?

Who was Ryoga Hibiki?

---
�Damn, but we�re really going to have to work on this scenario,
Futuyuski.� Gendo was still pissed. Everything was going to plan, but it
turns out that his son is a loud-mouth, not a mentally disturbed recluse
like they told him. His reactions were totally different. Good thing,
though, Misato was important to the plan and he had saved her life. How
the hell HAD he saved her life? No matter, just life paying him back a
little. Clean living, maybe.

�We�ve got time, Gendo. This just might work, you know.�

Gendo smiled, thin, really just a twitch of the corner of his mouth, but
he was happily pissed. �So it might.� Maybe this whole thing would be
for the better anyhow� �Is Rei all right?�

�Yes, she wasn�t injured. More injured. She�ll recover soon, the doctors
say.�

�Good.� And it was, really. �Where�s Ryoga?�

�Misato found him a place to stay.�

�That�s not an answer, Futuyuski.�

�Well, ah. It�s her place.�

Snort. �Just like her. Tell her to keep a good eye on him; we need him
here until Rei is recovered. Don�t let him out of sight for a minute,
got that?�

�Don�t teach your grandmother to suck eggs, Gendo.�

�Shut up, Futuyuski. I�m not in the mood. I�ll be at the hospital.�

�Yes you are in the mood, you�re smiling. Hey! Gendo! Turn around,
that�s not the elevator. Gendo get back here! Gendo!�

---
Misato sat and thought, nursing another beer. Ryoga seemed fairly
normal, for all the strange stuff he�d been through. Whatever happened
at that Jusenkyo place, it must have been horrible, he flinched when
thinking about it. She wouldn�t ask him about it, just like she wouldn�t
answer him if he asked her about her son. God, but he must be Ryoga�s
age by now. How was he doing? How was her no-good ex-husband doing, for
that matter? The bald fruit. She couldn�t recall what she�d ever seen in
that guy. Not like�

A scream issued from the bathroom. Moments later, Ryoga came tearing
around the corner, wearing nothing but his bandana (huh?) and yelling
like the place was on fire. �P, p, p, p� penguin?�

Just after, Pen-pen came ambling in from the hallway and settled himself
in his freezer.

Misato grinned again. �Guess I should have warned you, that�s my pet.
He�s a warm-water penguin. Pen-pen, by name.�

Ryoga was still panting. Come to think of it, that shirt really didn�t
do him justice; he was muscled really heavily. Must be more to wandering
around than walking, it seemed. He still hadn�t noticed his lack of
attire. �Penguin? Warm water penguin. OH! All right, OK, warm water.� He
seemed REALLY relieved at that.

�Ryoga, shouldn�t you put something on?�

Misato had never known somebody could turn beet red that quickly. He
left even more quickly than he had arrived, still yelling. �Hey! Take
those neural units out of your hair first!� Idiot.

---
Ryoga was just about to fall asleep in his room. He had taken the time
to unpack. Clothes in the closet. Extra shoes on the floor. Umbrella in
the corner. Teapot and thermos on the shelf. Akane had given him that
thermos, never knowing (thank God) what a godsend it was. It wasn�t a
hand-knitted muffler, though. He was on his futon.

Misato knocked on the door. �Hey, Ryoga?�

�Yeah?�

�How come we�re not dead?�

She was pretty sloshed by now, he guessed. Man, but she could put them
away! Out-drink Happosai, maybe. That thought didn�t make him any more
comfortable. �I killed the Angel. You know more about that than me.�

�No, I mean the ceiling thing.�

Oh, that. �I told you I studied some martial arts. Remember that guy I
know? He�s got another girlfriend or two on the side, besides the
fianc�e, and one of them has this really nosy grandmother. She wanted
her granddaughter to get him, and I� I kind of like� well, you get the
idea. Anyway, she taught me how to break rocks and things, but it wasn�t
for the rock breaking, it just was to make me tough. Really tough. That
kind of thing doesn�t hurt me now. Come to think of it, not much hurts
anymore.�

�Except your heart, right?�

That struck way too close to home. �And piloting the Eva. That hurt like
hell, I think. How come?�

�I�ll ask Ritsuko, she knows everything. I just wanted to say thanks.
For both times.�

�Good night, Misato.� If she was going to call him Ryoga, well, then
he�d call her Misato. Besides, she had laughed at him earlier! He had
almost gotten into water with a penguin!! Thank goodness it�s a warm
water penguin, that might save his butt later.

�See you in the morning, Ryoga.�

---
Misato�s world blurred into focus. Mornings were hell. Always have been.
No reason for the things to exist at all. At least you could sleep
through the things.

�Good morning, Misato.� Erk! It was� Ryoga! Yes, Ryoga, and he was up,
and was that cooking? And it was ten or eleven AM, too. Look at the
clock, Misato. Seven fifteen. God, I�ve taken up living with a morning
person. The Angels could just come in and blow the world to hell; she�d
seen and done everything.

She shrugged her way out of bed and regretted it immediately. Too much
beer last night. It�s always too much, but what the hell, right?
Mornings aren�t worth saving anyway. Somehow she got dressed (sort of)
and tidied (sort of) and staggered her way into the kitchen for
breakfast.

---
Ryoga saw Misato stagger into the kitchen. Well, of course she was hung
over, she was drunk last night. It�s just natural, after all. She headed
straight for the fridge, her slippers scuffing the floor tiles, and
pulled out a beer. This early? He�d stick with toast, himself. Good
thing even Misato kept bread around.

She slammed half the beer and let out a whoop. �Ah, that�s it! Much
better. Now I can face the day.� With that she attacked the toast Ryoga
had prepared for himself. He was kind of used to this kind of thing too,
come to think of it. (Remember, don�t eat next to Genma, right?) He put
on another two slices of toast and sat down.

�Hair of the dog, Misato?�

�I don�t get it.�

He hadn�t expected her to. �Odd English saying. I picked it up in
Hawaii.� There were benefits of getting lost.

�Always wanted to go there.�

�Yeah, but hell swimming home.�

�You�re up early.�

Huh? He�d slept in maybe two hours later than he had planned. He had
even been feeling guilty about it. �This isn�t early,� he said around
his toast. �Six is early. Gives you time to move around before the
traffic sets in. So, what�re you doing today, Misato?�

�You, Ryoga-kun, get to enroll in school.�

Now that was not an option. �I don�t have to go to school. Even Miss
Hinako quit bugging me about it after a while.�

�Hinako?�

�Do you really want to know?� Now there was a true pain. Good thing
Ranma had to put up with her instead of him. Justice, really.

�Nah. Look, you never finished the ninth grade. Law says you�ve got to
go until you finish the ninth grade.�

�Hey! I�m seventeen! Do you know how stupid I�m going to look with all
of those kids?� As if he didn�t end up looking stupid with people his
own age. For bad ideas, this one was the worst.�

Misato actually frowned. �Look, Ryoga-kun, I�m not negotiating with you.
You�re going to school. You�ll even be in Ayanami�s class. Get her
homework will you? She�s not going to be in for a while.�

This wasn�t working well. �Hey, I don�t have to be in for a while
either, then. Special permission for robot pilots, right?�

�No, special permission for children with sucking chest wounds.�

That perked him up. �Well, we could try that too.�

�Look, it�s in the Eva manual. Pilots have to have an education.
Besides, what�re you going to do anyway? You don�t have plans.�

�Damn! All right, but it�s going to be all your fault, you know. I hope
the school is insured.� Ryoga, you�ve got to learn to argue with women,
gets you into trouble every time, oh the hell with it. �Let me pack my
bag.�

�If you even THINK of running off, I�ll sic your father on you.�

�Don�t joke about things like that.�

---
Well, Ryoga, look at the mess you�ve gotten yourself into now! At least
he had managed to stand up to wearing a uniform (helped greatly by the
fact that they didn�t come in his size.) But now he was at the door of
classroom 2-B, in some middle school whose name he never caught, and the
class was looking at him like he was an alien.

He hurried in, dumped his pack at an empty desk, and sat down. There was
a computer on his desk. Good! Surprisingly enough, he could work a
computer fairly well. It made for a good excuse to ignore everybody.

It couldn�t, however, keep him from hearing them talk.

�Who do you suppose that is?�

�New student, has to be.�

�Look at him! He�s HUGE! No way he�s in this class.�

�Maybe he was held back a few years.�

�Something else, maybe.� That one from a kid a couple rows back, wearing
glasses. He had that crazed look in his eyes, the little-warning-bells
look.

�I WAS SICK FOR A LONG TIME GOT IT!� Ryoga couldn�t stand listening to
people gossip about him. That quieted everybody down for a second, and
then they all changed the subject.

�So what happened yesterday?�

�Some kind of attack, probably. How�s your sister, Touji?�

�Touji� was a tall kid, wearing a black jacket over his uniform.
Non-conformist type. �She�s in the hospital. It�s pretty bad.�

�But the radio said nobody got hurt!�

The kid with the glasses shrugged. �No way. You saw that building on the
way here. Anything that can do that, it�s got to hurt some people.
Probably some died too.� Ryoga didn�t want to think about that one too
hard.

�Stand! Bow!�

During the lesson (something about the Second Impact, and how it was a
lot harder fifteen years ago, and didn�t Misato tell him that it was all
a cover story?), Ryoga got an earful of conversation from those two
guys, a couple of rows behind him.

�So, Kensuke, who do you think he is?�

�Obviously new. Transfer student, but he doesn�t have any school stuff
in that bag of his.�

�So?�

�Robot pilot, Touji. Jeez, you�re really so hopeless.� Eep!

�Not! No chance. Not a pilot. What the heck are you thinking, Kensuke?�

�Has to be. New student, the day after the attack? With everybody else
leaving? And Ayanami�s still absent too.�

�Coincidence. Besides, if that was true, what�s he doing here?�

�Maybe he�s really fourteen. Superhuman Newtype pilot. Massive physical
development. Specially regimented training programs.�

�Quit frothing at the mouth, Kensuke. That�s not proof.�

�Than what about those metal things in his headband? What are those,
huh? They have to be some kind of neural induction feedback device, to
read the pilot�s brainwaves.� Oh damn! He had left them in there. �Sure
isn�t a fashion accessory, though.� Well, thanks a lot, Kensuke.

Ryoga looked back down at his computer. He found the �Personal Mailbox�
class option and checked it out, figuring he�d have to reconfigure
everything before it worked. To his surprise, there were a few messages
waiting already. All from classmates. All with subject heading, �Are you
the pilot?� or something equally dumb. He typed in a �Yes� blanket
return mail to save time.

The class server started to whine under the mass of electronic traffic.
Ryoga watched in horror as his box logged sixty messages from a class of
twenty-five students in two minutes. Nobody was listening to the teacher
anymore; not that he cared one way or another.

=How did they pick you?

�Darned if I know.� Have to keep the language clean, Misato said. Not
good to screw that up early on. After all, he was living at her place.

=What was it like?

�My first time, I don�t really remember much.�

=What�s it called?

�Eva, Unit 01, stuff like that.�

=What�s it armed with?

�Huh?�

=You know, its weapons. (This one was from an Aida Kensuke. Figures.)

�Hey, that�s a good idea! They�ve got to have weapons for that thing
somewhere.�

=YOU MEAN THERE�S NOT ANY WEAPONS!!??

�First time, remember? Didn�t have time to teach me anything.�

---
Ryoga left the classroom. What now? If he tried to get home, he�d get
lost, of course, but he didn�t much want to hang around here forever
either.

Something brushed the back of his head, and he turned around. He saw
Kensuke, said, �Hey! What�s wrong with our teacher? Is he just stupid?�

�Yeah, well, I think so. You�re really the pilot?�

�Well, yeah.� Something else tapped him on the back of the head. He
brushed his hair back.

�You know, Touji�s really pissed at you. His little sister got hurt
yesterday.�

�Really? How?�

�Some Eva pilot stepped his robot into an emergency shelter.�

A piece of broken wood flew by Ryoga�s head, in concert with another one
of those taps. He turned completely around to see Touji standing with
the rest of the board and a stunned expression. �Hey, Touji.�

Touji lifted the board in a threatening fashion. �Look, Ryoga, I know
you�re the new guy, but I�ve got to beat the hell out of you anyway.
Hey!! Quit laughing at me! What�s so funny?�

That was hilarious. Here�s this guy, not a bit of battle aura, no
training, doesn�t even stand right, could break him in half without
really trying, and� heheheheee. He couldn�t stop laughing.

�Oh yeah? Take this!� Touji smashed the rest of the board into splinters
on Ryoga�s forehead. It didn�t even sting.

�If that�s how you like it�� And Ryoga smacked Touji once, in the
shoulder so it wouldn�t hit anything vital, not really hard. It was
still enough to send Touji flying, hard enough to make him bounce twice.
�Sorry about your sister. I really don�t know what I�m doing out there.�

Touji staggered to his feet. �You don�t know what you�re doing out
there?�

�There�s not any echo caves around here.� Probably. He�d been to all of
the best ones. Saying �Curse You Ranma!� really loud into one of those
could really lift the spirits a bit.

�Well, I can�t beat you up then.�

Ryoga didn�t really feel like fighting. It was pretty obvious that Touji
wasn�t any competition either. �Tell you what. You guys take me home,
and I�ll forget the whole thing.�

Kensuke popped up in his face. �Not likely. You�ve got to tell us all
about the Eva robot.�

�That�s fair.� Didn�t Misato say something about �classified�? Not
important. Besides, these guys were just kids.

�And why you carry around that umbrella.�

They weren�t getting that out of him, of course.

---
Kensuke and Touji were walking away from Ryoga�s place.

�Wow! Can you believe it? She�s a knockout!�

�How the hell does a moron like that rate a woman like that?�

�He�s got the robot. He�s got her. I�m so envious.�

�You�d prefer the robot, Kensuke. Don�t lie.�

�Then I won�t. Robots are cool.�

�There you go then. You can have the robot. I�ll just take her.�

�No way sir. Wager they�re a package deal, anyway.�

�Huh?�

�She�s a Captain. Bars on the jacket. Didn�t you see them?�

�Wasn�t where I was looking, Kensuke.�

�Do your thinking with your brain, Touji.�

---
�Yes! Sasuke, behold! Here I hold the most puissant of techniques!�

�Enough to crush that fool Saotome, Master?�

�Yes, easily enough. But too much power at too high cost doth make no
meet bargain. I dare not use this technique. There is no merit in
victory if it cannot allow me to enjoy the bounty of Akane and the
pigtailed girl afterwards.�

Sasuke mutters, �Learned something from the phoenix encounter, huh,
Master. Will wonders never cease.�

�What was that Sasuke?�

�Just wondering about your crease, Master. It�s been a while since your
best robe was pressed.�

Looking from a nearby shadow, a dark face split into a grin as the two
left the garden. �Power, brother dear? If it is truly enough to beat
darling Ranma, it will be more than enough to beat that awful woman with
the pigtail. And then Ranma will be mine alone! OH HOH HOH HOH HOH!�

---
End of part two

I'll post parts 3 and 4 tomorrow... feel free to comment, of course.