The Long Hiatus is over, we're back from the grave for Halloween and ready
to party...or at least to unleash this chapter!



	      -*-

	     John Biles & Rod M. Present
	         A Neon Genesis Evangelion Elseworlds


	       Children of an Elder God

	     Part 21

	          The Fifth Reich

	       -*-

	Asuka woke to the hum of the Scimitar's engines.  They were well
on their way to Germany, but they wouldn't get there until the morning.
Unfortunately, she couldn't sleep; she felt restless.

	For a while, she tried to read in her room, but she was too
restless for that, either.  Finally, she decided to go wake up Shinji and
make him share her insomnia.

	She walked down the hallway, and his door swung open at her first
knock.  Peeking inside, she saw him asleep on his back, headphones still
on his head.  Laughing very gently, she stepped inside, only to hear him
mumble, "Yes, Rei, I liked the lunch you brought me."

	Her good mood punctured like a balloon, and now she scowled at
him.  How can he dream of a little...a little freaky monster rapist like
that?  Doesn't he care what she did to me?  How she...

	Remembered terror came over her, and she closed her eyes, rocking
back and forth on her feet, until she managed to drive away the fear.  She
stepped back, and shut the door, deciding she'd bother Shinji later.
Starting back to her room, she was surprised to see Misato coming down the
hall, wrapped in a blue bathrobe.  "Couldn't sleep?" Asuka asked.

	Misato blinked in surprise, then nodded.  "Yeah."

	"Want to, umm...come play cards or something for a while?" Asuka
asked.  She didn't want to be alone.

	Misato frowned, started to say something, fell silent, then
nodded.  "Sure."

	Asuka wondered if Misato had actually been on her way to see
someone in particular.  Hikari thought Misato was getting sweet on Makoto;
Asuka thought if that was the case, she'd be all over him already.

	As they went into her room, Misato asked softly, "So what did
Shinji have to say?"

	Asuka dug through one of her suitcases for cards.  "He was too
busy dreaming about that little bitch Rei to talk."

	Misato winced and plopped down on Asuka's bed.  "I can see why
that would bug you."

	"Why can't he see what a horrible monster she is?" Asuka demanded.

	Misato decided that the middle of the night was not a good time to
try to explain Ritsuko's belief that Rei had been overwhelmed by the urges
and hormones unleashed by their absorption of the Violator's power.  "It's
hard to believe bad things about someone you like," she said.  "What game
are we playing?"

	Asuka yawned a little as she got out the deck.  "Nothing too
hard."

	"Okay," Misato said.  "Lemme shuffle."

	Asuka passed her the cards.  "Baka Shinji," she muttered.

	Misato began clumsily shuffling the cards.  "So, what exactly is
going on with you and Shinji, hmm?"

	Asuka blushed a little.  "We...uh...we sort of...well, we did
kiss, but we didn't...go further, and he is sort of cute when he's not
being a doormat, and he...umm...dammit, he still likes Rei!"  She slammed
her fist down on the bed.  "What does he see in that creepy little
monster?"

	"Are you sure he likes her like that?" Misato asked.  "And what
game?"

	"Ummm...Old Maid," Asuka said.  Misato frowned.  "That wasn't a
crack at you.  It's a game."

	"I know, I know, I just..."  She sighed.  "Sometimes I feel like
I'm getting old."

	"Twenty-eight isn't that old."

	"I know, I know.  I just..."  She fell silent and dealt out the
cards, then examined her hand.  "So, you don't know exactly how things are
with you and Shinji."

	Asuka sighed.  "That's about it."  She scratched her head.  "Which
one of us goes first?"

	"Not sure.  Actually, I think we need more than 2 people, don't
we?"

	Asuka sighed and put down the cards.  "I think so."  She yawned.
"Okay, maybe I am ready for bed again."

	Misato got up.  "Alright.  Anyway, you ought to talk to Shinji and
find out where you two stand."

	"But..."  She stared at the cards.  "What if he..."

	"There's always other men.  It's hard to believe at your age, but
you will survive."  Misato went to the door.  "And if you wait for Shinji
to approach you..."

	"I'll be an old maid," Asuka said.  "Good night."

	"Good night, Asuka."

	Misato then headed off where she'd originally been going.  The
impulse that had first driven her out of bed had faded, however, and she
began slowing down with every step, scared of being rejected again, and
wondering why she was even doing this.  She turned to go back, and the
loneliness that had driven her out of bed in the first place sent her
starting off down the hallway to Makoto's room again.

	She reached the door, then stood silently for a minute, mustering
her courage.  Then she knocked gently.  There was no answer.  She knocked
several times.  Still no answer.  She tried the doorknob, but it was
locked.  She tried knocking one more time, but still no answer came.
Finally, her courage failed her, and she headed back towards her room.

	As she did so, she noticed Rei's door hanging open. She poked her
head in and saw Rei was gone, her bed unslept in.  She frowned with worry
for a moment, then decided to not be paranoid.  She was too tired to be
paranoid.  If we can't trust her to be out of her bedroom at night, we
shouldn't be having her here at all, Misato thought.

	She prayed her trust would not be proven misguided.

	Far below, in the hold, her trust was indeed being proven correct.
Rei lay curled up among a spray of manga she'd dug out of someone's bags,
fast asleep, having completed her research for the night.


	       -*-

	The next morning, at breakfast, the pilots were eating together.
Touji asked Anna, "So what's this base like, anyway?"

	Anna looked up from her crossword puzzle she'd been working on.
She put the book of puzzles aside.  "It's a lot like the one in Japan,
except that...well, okay, it's not much like it.  It's a big above ground
complex, surrounded by a fence and the Black Forest.  The Rhine flows by
one side of it.  There's a town about two miles away you can drive to for
shopping and stuff.  Most of the staff lives there, although Asuka and I
both lived on base."

	"What's the town's name?" Hikari asked.  "Will anyone speak
Japanese?"

	"Shwartzburg," Anna replied.  "And no, probably almost no one
will.  I hope you've been studying English or German.  Although Frau
Himmelfarb knows Japanese, and a few others at the base do."

	"Do they have a school on the base?" Shinji asked.

	"Yes, but since only Asuka and I speak German, I suppose that
Makoto-san will be continuing to teach us. Or maybe Dr. Himmelfarb if she
has time."  Anna asked Asuka, "Or maybe Hans?"

	"Hans' Japanese isn't very good, although I guess he may have
improved," Asuka replied.  "I did better than he did in learning it."

	"Who taught you, anyway?" Shinji asked.

	"I learned it while I was working on my university degree.  Which
hopefully everyone here will REMEMBER, so I don't have to sit around and
take classes I've already had like I did in Japan," Asuka said.

	"Do they have a basketball court?" Touji asked.

	"Yes, and a soccer field too," Anna replied.  "Are you any good at
basketball?"

	Touji grinned.  "Am I good?  Tell her, Shinji."

	"He's good."

	Anna said to Hikari, "Once we get settled in, I'll take you
shopping in Shwartzburg.  There's some very nice shops."

	"Thanks," Hikari said.  "You'll come, won't you, Asuka?"

	"Sure," Asuka said.

	"Shopping. Bleah," Touji said.

	"Your loss," Anna said to Touji.  "I'll guess you'll miss the
municipal basketball courts, and the restaurants, and the movie theatre,
and..."

	"Hmm, maybe a short trip wouldn't be too bad, eh, Shinji?"

	"Well, I'd like to see the town," he said.  "And since neither of
us speaks German..."

	"Perfect," Anna said, smiling.  "It'll be a lot of fun."


	       -*-

 	The view of the ocean was always a scary thing, or so Ritsuko
always believed. She also believed in confronting her fears, which was why
she gazed out at the ocean from one of the outdoor gantries of the
Scimitar's side.

 	She heard the ocean waves calling her, tempting her to dive in and
accept her heritage. It was a frightening sight.

 	"Sempai?"

 	Maya emerged from a nearby hatch, the wind blowing her short brown
hair about randomly around her waifish face. It was a comforting sight.

 	"Hello, Maya. Here to take in the scenery too?"

 	She nodded. "I was wondering where you were, too. I thought you
didn't like the ocean, though."

 	"I don't."

 	"Then... why?"

 	"It's a good thing to sometimes face your fears and try not to
feel intimidated." She gave Maya a small smile.

 	"Oh. I see." She stood next to Ritsuko and leaned on the railing.
"The sea is kind of like life, if you think about it."

 	"Ever-changing, right?"

 	Maya nodded. "Kind of like all the changes we're going through
now, really. I mean, NERV is going to be in Germany. That just seems so
strange to me."

 	Ritsuko leaned against the wall, crossing her arms. "We never
thought the Geofront would fall, confident in the strength of our weapons
and our will. Didn't quite work out."

 	"I'm going to miss Tokyo-3."

 	"Me too, Maya."

  	Maya fretted. "It'll feel really strange knowing you aren't head
of the research division anymore."

 	Ritsuko looked thoughtful for a moment before replying.  "Well...
to be fair, Frau Himmelfarb does have years more experience than me. I've
met the woman before, she seemed to be nice enough and certainly more than
competent."

 	"Oh, well that's good."

 	"On the other hand, I'm used to being in charge and a part of me
can't help but feel this is a punishment of some sort for our failure in
Tokyo-3."

 	Maya looked at Ritsuko, unsure of what to say, while Ritsuko just
gave another small smile. "Of course," continued Ritsuko, "This could just
be me being paranoid."

 	"I'm sure it is, sempai. I mean, what happened to Tokyo-3 wasn't
your fault."

 	Ritsuko did not reply.

 	The younger girl closed her eyes and listened to the ocean waves
for a moment, while the elder lit up a cigarette.

 	"Sempai?"

 	"Hmm?"

 	"The pilots, the children, what's happening to them?"

 	"Evolution, Maya, evolution."

 	"I... it doesn't seem right."

 	Ritsuko took a long drag from her cigarette, then blew slowly into
the wind. "Bit by bit, they're becoming something more than human, they're
becoming gods. The trick, however, is to make sure they don't lose their
humanity."

	"How do we do that?" Maya asked.

	"We have to treat them as much as if they're normal as possible.
We can't let ourselves become afraid of them, for they will sense that.
Power corrupts, but we have to help them fight the corruption.  I don't
know how, but we have to find a way."

	Maya nodded.  "We'll find a way."

	"I hope so.  For if they turn on us, we cannot hope to stand
against them."

	       -*-

	It was not Gendo's day.  "The Council has concluded that your
handling of the recent Angel attacks has not been satisfactory," the
Bermudan delegate said.

	Your entire nation is not very satisfactory either, Gendo thought
petulantly.

	"We are hereby suspending you while a full investigation is
conducted.  You will provide all necessary assistance to the investigatory
committee.  Commander Fuyutsuki will assume the overall direction of NERV
while this investigation continues.  Do you understand?"

	Gendo repressed the urge to pretend he'd forgotten English and
said, "I regret that this is necessary."

	"Not as much as we do.  We've let NERV run loose without proper
supervision for far too long."

	Gendo resolved to facilitate the investigation as much as he
could.  The sooner they were gone, the better.  There were things which
needed doing which could not be done with a bunch of moronic bureaucrats
underfoot.  "I welcome the chance to clear my name.  What exactly am I
being accused of?"

	"To be blunt, NERV cannot afford to take another beating like the
last few.  We don't have infinite money.  The public is outraged."

	"And I'm the sacrificial victim?"

	"If it turns out to be your fault."

	Gendo began making plans to ensure it would not turn out that way.

	       -*-

	Makoto leaned on the rail of the observation deck, staring off
across the ocean.  They'd reach Germany in a few hours, but right now,
except for a cargo ship passing under them, there was little sign humanity
or land or anything but open sea existed.  A strong breeze blew, making it
a very pleasant morning.

	He got out the letter again and read it.  Akane had told him that
she hoped to be able to come to Germany soon.  But that he shouldn't pass
up another shot at Misato like he had at the hotel if he got one.  He
wondered again how Akane's mind worked.  When she was present, she
certainly didn't seem to want him looking at anyone else.  But then she'd
keep urging him to go after Misato when she wasn't there.

	But he couldn't bring himself to do that.  He'd never exactly been
a playboy, and while he'd had a few girlfriends in the past, he'd never
had one like Akane.  His mind told him taking her advice would be a bad
idea, but if Misato wanted him and she didn't mind...

	He was startled out of his reverie, dropping the letter, which
fluttered off towards the ocean below, when Misato put a hand on his
shoulder.  "Beautiful morning," she said, smiling.

	"I'm surprised you're up," he replied.

	She stuck out her tongue at him.  "What, I can't get up early if I
want to?"

	He laughed.  "Just surprised."

	"Actually, I got up early because I'm in charge while Commander
Ikari and Commander Fuyutsuki are gone.  And while I doubt anything is
going to happen...well, you never can tell."

	He nodded.  "That's true."

	She leaned against the railing.  "It's such a beautiful day; it's
hard to believe we're in the middle of a war."

	"I know, I know."  He moved over to give her room, but she slid
over close to him.  "You had breakfast yet?"

	"Not yet," she said.  "I was hoping I could see Europe; I've never
been there."

	"A little jumpy?" he asked.

	She nodded.  "My German is feeble, and I know most of the people
at the base won't speak Japanese.  And I can struggle through English,
but...I just have this bad feeling some crucial order will go astray
because no one will understand it."

	He patted her shoulder.  "Oh, we'll be fine.  The Children all
know Japanese.  I'm surprised how well Asuka and Anna can speak it, in
fact."

	She leaned against him.  "We've been lucky that way."  Slowly, her
left arm moved around to wrap around his back.

	He stiffened, trying to decide what to do.  While he debated with
himself, his right arm moved around her back without any direct orders.
She smiled, and said, "I tried coming to your room last night."

	His eyes widened.  "Well, I must have slept through it.  I sleep
pretty soundly."

	"I know I shouldn't do this," she said.  "You have Akane, and
technically, you're my subordinate, but I just...I need someone."  She was
afraid to look into his eyes.

	"Yes, we shouldn't," he said.  "But I know how lonely it can get.
And..."  He wondered if Akane really meant what she said, or if she had
been teasing him.  With her, you could never be sure. "You're very
pretty," he said.  That was pathetic sounding, he thought.  I have to
decide, take the chance or...

	"Hi!" Maya said.

	They both started and turned around.  Ritsuko and Maya had come up
onto the observation deck; they were holding hands, and Ritsuko was
smiling a soft, gentle smile that surprised Misato greatly.  She'd never
seen Ritsuko smile quite like that.

	"Oh, are we interrupting you two?" Maya asked, as it sank into her
brain that the two of them had been cuddled up to each other somewhat.

	"No, no, come on over," Misato said, her nerve failing her.
"Enjoy the morning with us."

	They came over to the railing, and the four of them stared off
across the water in silence for a little while, then Ritsuko said, "I'm
surprised you're up, Misato."

	She fumed.  "It's not like I NEVER get up early."

	"I roomed with you for years, and I can't think of once I didn't
have to kick you out of bed in the morning to go to class," Ritsuko said,
laughing.  "I even had to use that frog once."

	Misato shuddered.  "If you EVER do that again..."

	"I quiver in terror before your vengeance," Ritsuko said,
obviously not quivering at all.

	"How are you today, Makoto?" Maya asked.

	"I'm fine," he replied.  "Hoping I can get by with my limited
English, since hardly anyone in Germany will speak Japanese."

	"Oh, you'll be fine," Maya said.  "German's easy to learn."

	"Or at least the Germans are usually pretty patient with
foreigners," Ritsuko says.  "I've been to a few conferences in Germany."

	"And I worry a little about those neo-Nazi lunatics," Makoto said.

	Misato laughed.  "What are they going to do, bleed on us?  We're
safe from any nutcases like that."

	"True," he said.

	A thought struck Misato.  "I'm going to Germany, and I can't have
any BEER!  AAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!"

	As they watched Misato rant, Maya was very grateful no news
cameras were watching.

	       -*-


	Shinji was practicing his violin when there was a knock on the
door. He said, "Come in."

	Asuka came in hesitantly, looking around the room before coming in
all the way.  Then she said, "Are you busy?"

	"Hmm?  No, not really," he said, putting his violin aside.

	She sat down on the bed, facing him as he sat in a chair next to
the small table he had put his sheet music and violin on.  "Shinji..."
She stared at his sheet music. "What were you playing?"

	"A Bach partita," Shinji replied.  "So what are you up to?"

	"I..uh...ahaha..."  Asuka tried to pull herself together.  "Wanna
kiss?" she finally blurted out.

	Shinji turned red.  "I..uh...okay."

	For just a moment, as she got up to go over to him, memories of
her encounter with Rei came to mind, and she felt a surge of absolute
terror.  She choked them off.  I'm not a monster like Rei, she thought.  I
like guys, and I don't force myself on people.  And this will be NOTHING
like that.

	Before she could change her mind, she surged forward, sitting down
in his lap and kissing him fervently.  At first, he just sort of sat there
in shock, but soon, he brought his arms up and embraced her.  See, this is
what I like, she told herself.  A nice boy, not a freakish monster like
Rei.

	After a while, she broke off the kisses and just leaned against
him.  "You're nice and warm," she said.

	"I...umm...I try," he said nervously.

	She laughed.  "Do you like me, Shinji?" she asked softly.

	"Umm, when you say like...do you mean like or like?"

	"What do you mean?"

	He said, "I like you very much, Asuka."  Very, very slowly, he
brought his head around and gave her a swift peck on the lips, then his
head retreated like a turtle into its shell.  "Maybe I...I..."

	Sighing softly, she said, "That's good enough for now.  I thought
I loved Kaji, but now, I don't know if I even really ever knew him.  Part
of me wants..."  Part of her wanted things that made the rest of her cry
out in horror and try to pretend she couldn't imagine them.  Part of her
wanted things that didn't horrify her, but were just close enough to the
first part to scare her about what might happen to her if she tried them.
And part of her just wanted to be held.  It won for now.

	"I don't think we're old enough," Shinji said, though part of him
hoped she'd ignore his protests.

	She nodded.  "I don't want to rush things.  Well, I do, but..."
She kissed his cheek.  "Plus, with my luck of late, Hikari or Anna would
walk in on us."

	"Or Rei," Shinji said.

	Asuka darkened.  "Shinji, she raped me.  How can you still...not
hate her?"

	"You know what it was like," he said softly.  "I had to lock
myself in the bathroom and..."  He couldn't quite bring himself to say it.
"Do things to keep any kind of control of myself."  He felt dirty just
thinking about it.  "We took the power of..."  His face scrunched up.
"Something horrible.  Couldn't you feel it?"

	"Not at all," she lied.  She didn't want to admit how she'd been
feeling, to imagine that if things had been a little different, she might
have done something just as awful.

	He frowned.  "Asuka, you're lying."

	"I'm not lying!" she protested vehemently.

	Things would likely have turned into a major fight at that point,
if Rei hadn't come in the door and kneeled down in front of them.  "I'm
sorry," she said.

	Shinji mumbled, "Were you waiting there the whole time?"

	Asuka glared at her.  "Sorry?  SORRY?  Sorry doesn't cut it for
what you did to me!!!!"

	"I know," Rei said.  She pulled out a small manga book and
consulted it.  "Now you can never be married," she quoted.

	"..."  Shinji stared at Rei, wondering if Rei was trying to be
funny or something.  He didn't think this was a good time for humor.

	For a moment, Asuka was sufficiently confused to not say anything,
but then she got up out of Shinji's lap.  "Married?  What does marriage
have to do with this?  You...you raped me, you little monster!"

	Rei knocked her head on the ground three times, then moved back
into a kneeling position.  She consulted the manga again.  "I do not
deserve to live," she said.  She tilted her head back, staring up at the
ceiling.  "I submit myself to your..."  She turned and consulted the book
another time, then resumed her position with head tilted back.
"judgement."

	Asuka just stared at her.  "You what?"

	"I could not control myself, and I hurt you.  I never wanted to
hurt you," Rei said, after consulting the manga again and a little page
flipping.  "I deserve punishment.  Punish me."

	"I'll show you punishment!" Asuka shouted, and began whaling away
on Rei, who simply knelt there without flinching or showing any sign of
pain as Asuka kicked her and beat her with her fists.

	At first, Shinji just stood there, too scared of Asuka's rage to
try to do anything, but after a while of watching Rei just sit there and
take it, he couldn't stand it any more.  "Asuka, stop," he said.

	"Filthylittlebeastgoingtoshowyouhowyoumademefeel!" Asuka was
shrieking as she unloaded on Rei.  Tiny flames were beginning to form
along her arms and legs and feet and fists.  Rei's clothing began to show
scorch marks.

	"Asuka, that's enough," Shinji said a little more firmly.

	There was the sound of running feet in the hallway now, but Asuka
kept on striking Rei, who now fell down onto her hands and knees.  "I hate
you, I hate you, I hate you!" Asuka was screaming.

	What finally moved Shinji to intervene was when Rei finally began
to cry.  It was mostly the sort of heaving that often goes along with
crying, but a tiny rivulet of water began to flow from Rei's right eye.
Shinji had had enough.  "Asuka, STOP."  He grabbed her fists, wincing as
his skin got burnt before his own power put out the flames there.

	He stared into her eyes, and repeated himself even as she
continued to kick Rei.  "Asuka, that's ENOUGH."

	Asuka froze up for a moment, then looked down at Rei, who was
trying to stop crying.  For a moment, she felt a pang of guilt.  Rei
hadn't fought back at all.  Maybe she really was sorry.  Maybe she had
lost control.  Like I just did, Asuka thought.  She hadn't wanted to stop
until Rei was dead.

	Then she shoved the thought away.  She couldn't really be sorry,
Asuka thought.  People who do things like what she did don't ever feel
sorrow.  She's just a little monster.  She is.

	As Asuka's anger ebbed, she began to cry.  Shinji wrapped his arms
around her and tried to comfort her (and tried to make sure she couldn't
start attacking Rei again).

	Rei looked up at Shinji, and he looked down at her sorrowfully,
trying to think of something to say.

	Then Misato burst in the door.  "What is going..."  She looked at
the three of them.

	Rei said, "I deserve to be punished."

	Shinji said, "You couldn't help yourself."

	"I hurt Asuka," Rei said softly.  "I was bad."

	"You ought to DIE!" Asuka shrieked, then began crying some more.

	Misato sighed, and helped Rei up.  "Come with me," she said.  She
turned to Shinji and Asuka.  "I'll talk to you two later."  Then she
dragged Rei off.

	Asuka said, "Why is everyone on her side?"

	"I don't want to have sides," Shinji said. "She couldn't help
herself.  She wanted to make amends, and you tried to kill her."

	"I hate her," Asuka said fiercely.  "As long as she's alive, she
might try to do that to me again!"

	He sighed, and stroked her hair clumsily.  "It could have been any
of us, Asuka."

	"Never!  I could never do something like that!"  Her fists
clenched.  "I'm not a monster!"

	"If she's a monster, then we all are.  We're all becoming more
like her every time we fight," Shinji replied.

	She leaned against him.  "We are not.  We're human!  Human!"

	Shinji thought about the burns she'd given him, which had already
healed, and wasn't so sure.

	       -*-


	"Rei, it would be best if you avoided Asuka for a while longer,"
Misato said as she ushered Rei into her room.  "We know you couldn't help
yourself, but...well, you can understand why she finds that hard to
believe, don't you?" Misato asked almost pleadingly.

	"I hurt her," Rei said, sitting down in a chair.  "I must
apologize."

	Misato sat down on her bed.  "It's good that you want to.  But
she's not ready for an apology."

	"When?" Rei asked.

	"When will she be ready, you mean?" Misato asked.

	"Yes."

	"I don't know," Misato said.  "It could be weeks or months.  Just
try not to get in her face if you can help it."  She flopped back onto her
bed, then reminded herself she was trying to project something vaguely
resembling authority and sat back up.  "Shinji will know when she's
ready."

	"I thought it would work," Rei said sadly.

	"Apologizing, you mean?" Misato asked.

	"Like in the books," Rei said.

	The fact that Rei was holding some manga finally sank into
Misato's head.  I didn't think she read silly romance comics, Misato
thought.  "Comics aren't always the best guide to life," Misato said.

	"What is?" Rei asked.

	Set myself up for that, Misato thought.  "Well, people sometimes
talk to priests or psychologists when they have a problem.  Or a good
friend."

	Rei nodded.

	"So, if I have a problem, I can talk about it with Ritsuko or
Makoto."

	"Is he your mate now?" Rei asked.

	Misato blinked.  "Mate...you mean, you're asking if Makoto is my
boyfriend?"

	"Yes."

	"..."

	They stared at each other silently for a few minutes, then Misato
said, "No, he's not my boyfriend."

	"You look at him..."  Rei fumbled for words.  "As you did with
Kaji."

	Misato flinched, and mumbled, "He has a girlfriend.  I shouldn't
butt in."  She stared at the floor.

	"I understand," Rei said, staring down at the book she held.

	Misato looked over at her.  "Yeah, I guess you might."

	Rei rose.  "Anything else?"

	Misato shook her head.  "No.  Just...good luck, Rei."

	"Thank you."  And then Rei left, leaving Misato alone in her room.

	Misato now took the chance to flop back on her bed.  Please don't
let this all blow up, she said to something silently, not sure what she
was talking to, whether she was praying to God or gods or just talking to
herself.  This could turn so awful.  Please don't let it.  Please let this
be a new beginning for all of us.



	       -*-

	Shinji was rather surprised when Fuyutsuki called everyone to the
Bridge.  He'd thought Fuyutsuki and his father were going to meet them in
Germany.  He shuffled into the bridge with Asuka as Fuyutsuki was saying,
"Where is Shi...ahh, there you are.  Alright, everyone is here."

	Fuyutsuki paused, looking a little embarrassed.  "By order of the
Security Council, I am now Acting Head of NERV.  Commander Ikari has been
suspended while an investigation of the events and battles that took place
at NERV-Japan is conducted.  An investigatory committee will be showing up
within the next few days, so please cooperate with them.  We'll be
arriving at NERV-Germany by this evening.  Living arrangements have been
made; I will be giving everyone their new duties once I've had a chance to
further consult with the staff there.  That is all."

	Shinji looked around and realized his father wasn't there.  "Where
is Fa...Commander Ikari?"

	Fuyutsuki says, "I believe he's in his office, Shinji."

	Asuka muttered, "It's about time that bastard gets what he
deserves."

	Shinji turned and left.  It wasn't like his father to run off and
hide.  There was more to this than met the eye, he was sure of it.

	       -*-

	Shinji knocked on the door he thought was his father's office on
the helicarrier.  His suspicion was confirmed when Gendo said, "Come in."

	He came in nervously, seeing his father seated behind the small
desk on the other side of the cramped little office. Books were piled
everywhere, with Latin and Greek titles.  He cleared some off the chair
for guests and sat down.  "I heard you were suspended, Father."

	"And?" Gendo asked.  His face was blank, his voice a little colder
than usual.

	"I'm sorry.  It wasn't your fault.  We all did our best, but the
Angels were just so destructive..."  He sighed.  "But they'll figure that
out, won't they?"

	For a minute or so, Gendo just sat there quietly, then said, "I
think they've already decided what they're going to find out.  They want a
scapegoat."

	"But that's not fair!  We won!  We beat the Angels.  I can't think
of how we could have done things any better!"  There was some heat in
Shinji's voice.  "I mean...was there anything we could have done better?"

	"Not without knowledge we didn't have," Gendo replied.  "Not the
Angel fighting, anyway."  The chill had faded from his voice.  "I'm
surprised you care."

	"You're my father," Shinji said.  "And what they're doing to you
isn't fair."

	Gendo reached up and took off his glasses and began to polish
them.  "Thank you, Shinji.  You've been a very good pilot and done very
well."

	Shinji blushed a little.  He rarely got praise from his father.
"Thank you."

	"I understand you had to restrain Asuka from trying to kill Rei."

	"She wouldn't have really killed her."  Shinji hoped.  "But she
just...she can't understand Rei couldn't help herself."  He paused.
"Right?"

	"I believe so," Gendo replied.  "Rei isn't acting like someone who
did something like that deliberately.  But at the same time, we have to
wonder if she might lose control again."

	"She won't." Shinji said. "That was an unusual situation."

	"I wish I could afford your optimism," Gendo said.  "But we need
her, and I do not believe any of us except you, the Children, could
restrain her now.  She's too powerful."

	"Father, sometimes I feel like...it's like...all this power, and I
get these thoughts, and..." Shinji cringed to think about some of them.
"I'm scared, Father."

	"So am I," Gendo replied.  "We need you, Shinji.  You've got to
hold on to your humanity.  They can't take it from you, but if you're not
careful, you can end up giving it away by inches."  He put his glasses
down on the table.  Shinji could see his eyes looked much softer without
them.  "It won't be much longer, Shinji.  There's only a few of them
left."

	"Father, do you know what the Angels are?"

	"They are alien, not native to our Earth, beings whose precise
origins are irrelevant.  They possess vast power, and do not think like we
do.  But the cosmic powers which they tap ebb and flow over time, so they
fell into slumber when those cycles turned against them, and they were
stranded here. Now they are awakening, and if they are not destroyed, they
will crush us the way we crush annoying ants.  Some foolish men have
called them gods, but they are simply very powerful mortals.  They can
bleed.  And they can die.  And humanity will never be free until they are.
One of them is, in part, humanity's ancestor, and thus we can learn to use
those powers.  But the price is heavy."

	Shinji thought about all he'd seen.  "Yes, it is, Father."

	"Sometimes I wish I'd never learned of all this.  But then, I
would never have met Yui, and you would not exist.  I know I have not been
a very good father, but I have had other, higher duties.  You understand,
don't you?"

	"No," Shinji said.  "And yes.  I know about duties, but..."

	Gendo sighed.  "Well, now I will have more...more free time.
Perhaps we can do something together once we get to Germany."

	"I'd like that," Shinji said softly.  He looked around.  "What are
all these books?"

	"Over the millennia, many people have studied the Angels as they
slept, and many fools have worshipped them.  While most of their deranged
rantings are either wrong or irrelevant, there is much to be gleaned from
them by careful study."

	Shinji picked up a book and flipped through it, wincing at the
etchings within.  "Ugh."

	"Exactly."  He paused.  "So, um, how are you and Asuka doing?"

	"We...umm...I'm not sure what the word is.  But we like kissing."

	Gendo smiled.  "It is very nice.  Please, try and help her control
herself."

	"I will," Shinji said.

	"Take her somewhere nice once we get to Germany.  There's many
nice restaurants there in the town we'll be near."

	"Okay," Shinji said.  "Is German food any good?"

	"It's very different from ours, but some of it is good.  But you
can't get any decent beer."

	They made small talk for a while, and eventually, Shinji left.

	Gendo stared after him, smiling a little.  Good luck, son, he
thought.  Your mother would be proud of you if she could see you now.

	       -*-


	Hikari sat in her room, trying to read a book, but she couldn't
focus.  The words sat on the pages and taunted her and her brain wandered.
She had a room to herself; it was a cramped little thing, but really not
much smaller than her room back home.

	Home.

	The thought of home brought back to her everything she'd lost.
She tossed the book aside and curled up on the bed trying not to cry.  Her
parents were dead.  Eight out of the thirty kids in her class were dead.
She didn't know how many, but a lot of her friends' parents had died as
well.

	Her resistance failed, and the tears began to flow.  Her mind
filled with memories of happy times with her family, times which would
never come again with them.  They were gone, killed as just an accidental
byproduct of the invasion of Tokyo-3 in the madness of Adam's escape.

	Then she remembered what Touji had said when she asked him if he
hoped she could be a pilot. 'Well... if they let you in as a pilot, we'll
see a lot more of each other, an'that I'd like.  But... but when you're a
pilot, it ain't exactly the safest job in the world.  I'd worry about you,
y'know.'  She'd been perfectly safe, while her father...

	Part of her wished she'd been there, been able to try to do
something.  But the rest of her was glad she hadn't, because if she'd
actually seen her father going berserk...she didn't want to remember him
like that.  He was a kind and gentle man, not a killer.

	The tears came faster now, and she didn't hear the knock at the
door, or the door sliding open.

	"Hikari?  You okay?" Touji asked, then saw her.  "Guess not," he
said, coming over and sitting down by her.

	She tried to sit up and leaned over on him, just crying
incoherently.  He made soothing noises and tried to figure out what to
say.

	Finally, she managed to choke out, "How did you know..."

	"I had this bad feeling, and then I got so distracted by it, that
Shinji was whipping my ass at Tokyo-3 Street Battle, and THAT I knew was a
sign something had to be majorly wrong," Touji said.

	Hikari would have laughed if she could through the tears.
Instead, she just kind of choked up, then said, "Maybe...I mean...I guess,
I've heard, that when people...you know...they can feel things about each
other."

	Touji froze up for just a second.  "Yeah, that's gotta be it," he
said.  "Can't think of nothing else it could be."  Some kind of thing from
the Angels, he suspected, though he didn't say anything.  She didn't need
to hear that right now.  "I bet Shinji and Asuka have the same thing."

	He could feel her start to relax.  "You think so?"

	"Hey, I can't see what Shinji sees in the Kraut, but he's pretty
damn taken with her," Touji said.  "So I'm sure they probably can."

	She tried to wipe her eyes.  "I miss my family so much," she said
softly.

	"What a shitty ass way to go," Touji said, shaking his head.  "I
got damn lucky nothing happened to Dad or Sis."

	"Well, nothing worse than had already happened to your sister,"
Hikari said, sighing.

	"Hmm." Touji said.

	"Hmm?" Hikari asked.

	"I'm suddenly wondering whether with all these funky powers, me or
Shinji might be able to do something to help her get better quicker,"
Touji said.  "I mean, our Evas heal like crazy and stuff, so if there's
some way to, like, project it into someone else."

	Hikari felt a surge of nervousness.  "It seems dangerous to
experiment with that, though."

	Touji sighed.  "I know.  I just feel like there ought to be
something I can do besides scaring animals with it and killing monsters."

	"Poor Toonces," Hikari said, sighing.  "I hope he'll be okay with
the Takahashis."

	"I'm sure they'll take good care of him," Touji said.  And it
means I don't have to put up with him.  "You wanna take a walk or
something?"

	"Yes," she said, getting up.  "Let's take a walk."


	       -*-

	"So what exactly DID happen in that final battle?" Commander Weiss
asked.  "The reports we've had weren't very clear on that."

	Fuyutsuki leaned against the balcony and sighed, looking out on
the Black Forest.  "A long captive Angel escaped.  The battle against it
finished the base off."

	Weiss nodded.  "Did you get any useful data before it escaped?"

	"Yes. However, we'd been using it to manufacture LCL, so we may
have problems now."

	"..."

	"Technically, this is restricted data still, but I believe you
should know."

	"I knew it had been developed from things found in Antarctica, but
I didn't think...was it the creature's blood?"

	"It involves compounds difficult for us to synthesize with our
current knowledge," Fuyutsuki replied.  "Dr. Akagi will be working on
making that breakthrough while she is here."

	"Ahh, yes, your bringing over of the senior staff does pose some
command problems," Weiss replied.

	"Well, that's one thing for us to sort out.  Major Katsuragi is
the head of overall NERV tactical, so Lessard would be reporting to her.
It's a little trickier with Dr. Himmelfarb and Dr. Akagi and some of our
other staff."

	Weiss straightened up.  "Well, let's go look at our rosters and
work everything out."

	Fuyutsuki nodded.  "A good idea."

	       -*-

	"So, the cafeteria is over here," Anna said, pointing to the big
round building surrounded by flagpoles.

	Touji blinked.  "What are all the flagpoles for?"

	"All the countries who are represented on the staff get their flag
put up here," Anna replied.

	"Around the cafeteria?" Hikari asked.

	"Well, they also have flags along the entrance drive, but..."
Anna shrugged.  "I didn't build the base."

	Asuka said, "Now, the gymnasium and combat practice rooms are in
this building over here."  She started walking towards a great grey cube
of a building, very ugly and sombre looking.

	"Big sister!" a young, ash blond boy shouted in German, rocketing
out of the door of another building near the cafeteria.  "You're back!"
He was carrying a black cat who clearly wasn't enjoying being carried at
full tilt.

	Asuka sighed.  "Hello, Oscar," she said in German.

	Anna smiled at him.  "Hello, Oscar," she said in German.

	Oscar put his cat down and hugged Anna.  "Did all of Japan really
blow up and sink into the sea?"  His cat plopped down on the ground and
stared up at her companions.

	"No, just the part I was visiting," she replied.

	"This is Anna's freaky little cat-loving brother," Asuka explained
to the other pilots in Japanese.  "He's a complete mental case, so try not
to kill him even though you'll want to."

	"Asuka!" Oscar shouted.  "You came back to me!"  Charge.  Glomp.
Crash.  Asuka went down under the impact of the charging thirteen year
old.  "When are we getting married?"

	Shinji stared in surprise.  Touji began to laugh his head off.
Hikari giggled a little.  Anna just shook her head, smiling, and started
trying to peel Oscar off Asuka, who looked like she wanted to die.  "Now,
Pieter, you're embarrassing Asuka in front of her friends."

	Hikari went over and picked up the cat, petting him.  "What a cute
cat," she said.  The cat purred, enjoying the attention.

	"Nice boyfriend you got there," Touji said, laughing more.

	"HE IS NOT MY BOYFRIEND!  I'D MARRY AN ANGEL FIRST!" Asuka shouted
in Japanese.

	Anna finally got Oscar up and restrained somewhat. "Didn't Mama
tell you we were coming?"

	"I thought she made it up to make me feel better," he said.  "I've
been really lonely with you and Asuka gone."

	"Well, we're back at least for a while," Anna said.

	Touji said, "Damn, I wish I knew enough German to egg the kid on."

	Shinji said, "Probably a good thing you don't."

	Oscar asked, "Are they the other pilots?"

	Anna nodded.  "That's Touji, who thinks he's cool.  And that's
Shinji, who is Asuka's boyfriend, and that's Hikari, who is Touji's
girlfriend."

	Asuka laughed very loudly, pointing at Touji.

	"What, what?" Touji asked. "Anna, why is she laughing?"

	Anna giggled a little.  "Nothing."

	"Do you speak English?" Oscar asked the pilots in English.

	"My English is bad," Touji said.

	"A little," Hikari replied.

	"Better than German," Shinji said.

	"Is it fun piloting giant robots?" Oscar asked.

	"What does 'piloting' mean?" Hikari asked.

	"It probably means something like 'using' or 'driving', I think,"
Shinji said in Japanese.  Then in English, he said, "It's fun, but scary."

	"Will I get to be a pilot when I'm your age?"

	"I hope not," Asuka muttered in German.  "You'd take your damn cat
with you."

	"Hey, don't be mean to my kitty!" Oscar said. "Even if you are my
future wife, I won't forgive you!"

	Anna giggled.  "Such a cute couple."

	"I'm going to kill you later," Asuka said, and turned to Shinji.
"C'mon, I have to show you the gymnasium!"  She grabbed his hand and
started to drag him off.

	Oscar ran after them.  "Where are we going, Asuka?"  The cat lept
out of Hikari's hands and ran after them as well.

	Anna said, "Come on, I'll show you around some more of the base
while my brother gets this out of his system."

	Touji said, "Is he going to be doing this to her every day?"

	"Probably," Anna said, sighing.

	"Cool," Touji said.  "I can use the laughs."

	Hikari sighed.  "Don't wish ill on people, Touji."

	"C'mon, don't tell me you didn't laugh."

	Hikari giggled a little.  "The look on her face..."

	Anna laughed too.  "I know. My brother has just had the biggest
crush on her forever.  He wanted to go to Japan with her."

	"I'm surprised he hasn't been trying to learn Japanese, then,"
Hikari said.

	"Oh, he has, but he's only been trying for less than a year, and
he's been speaking English since he was five.  Mother raised both of us to
be bilingual.  And when they determined I might be a pilot, I started
studying Japanese so that I'd be ready if I was called to NERV-Japan."

	"You and Asuka both speak Japanese very well," Hikari said.

	"Thank you," Anna said.  "My whole family has a knack for
languages.  Which I guess is part of why I like crossword puzzles."

	"So, where to next?" Hikari asked.

	"Hmm, let's go see where the Eva units get parked..."


	       -*-

	Ingrid Lessard was a tall, muscular woman, close to a foot taller
than Misato, with short blonde hair and brown eyes.  Head of NERV-Germany
security, she looked capable of defending the base all by herself against
all comers.  Misato thought she almost looked able to just beat down any
incoming Angels with her bare hands.  "The biggest problem is likely to be
the Black Goat cultists.  They meet a little further south in the woods.
We keep finding their sacrifice sites, but we haven't caught them yet."

	Ingrid and Misato were meeting in one of the briefing rooms, with
a staff translator, Michael Grussenwald, on hand, as while they both spoke
a little English, neither spoke enough to successfully carry on the
conversation they needed to have.

	"Do they have any paranormal support?" Misato asked.

	"Walking Trees, possibly some class four paranormals," Ingrid
replied.

	"Once we get the monitoring equipment properly installed here,
we'll have to see if we can pick them up with Polaris during its next
sweep over Germany," Misato said.  "I understand there's a bit of a
neo-nazi problem around here."

	"Ever since Second Impact, the freaks have been coming out of the
woodwork," Ingrid said.  "And the presence of so many international
personnel has led them to try to stage a few protests, throw rotten fruit,
and generally be a pain.  But they don't have the resources to cause any
serious problem.  But if they're stupid enough to try, we'll mow them
down."

	"The perimeter defenses are pretty impressive."

	"Well, given that many of these 'Angels' have their own cults, it
seemed wise to be careful, just in case any of these cults somehow got
hold of enough armaments to try storming the base.  Now, if they had
actual air power, we'd be in trouble, but it's generally impossible for
terrorists to get hold of that kind of fire power.  And we wouldn't last
long against the Federal Army, but if the Republic turns on us, we could
never hold this base anyway."

	Misato blinked.  "I'm surprised you've even thought of the
possibility."

	"I love my country, and I very strongly doubt that Germany will
try anything, but thinking such things is, unfortunately, part of my job.
Right wing freaks feed on the sort of problems the whole world's had since
Second Impact, and..."  She sighed.  "But I could ramble about politics
all day.  Will we be importing any of your security personnel from
NERV-Japan?"

	Misato said, "One squad which came with us on the Scimitar.  The
standing security forces here are as good as the ones we had in Japan, and
better suited for operations here, since very few of our operatives in
Japan spoke German.  I gave all the survivors leave time, except for the
ones who came to guard the Scimitar."

	Ingrid laughed a little.  "The idea of modern forces cruising
around in a giant blimp just seems silly to me.  No offense meant."

	"I do sometimes wonder what Commander Ikari was thinking, but it's
worked well for us so far."

	"Maybe whoever built it was the lowest bidder."

	Misato blinked, then laughed loudly.  "Could be."

	Ingrid got up.  "Let me show you around, and I'll give you all the
paperwork you'll need once we finish our tour."

	Misato made a face.  "Sure you can't keep it for yourself?"

	"Yes."

	"Damn!" Misato said in English, then grinned a little.  "That's
the right word, right?"

	Ingrid laughed, and they set out.

	       -*-

	Anna looked over her shoulder.  She couldn't see it, but she knew
it was there.  I should have stayed home, she thought.  But the light had
drawn her, drawn her out of her bed, and across the ruined city.  She
couldn't remember why it was ruined.  Perhaps it was the creature.

	Now it was after her, and she couldn't remember the way back.
Clad in pajamas and slippers, she couldn't even understand how she'd
gotten so far, following the shimmering light in the high tower, before.
Clouds covered the sky, and the night was so dark she could hardly see at
all.

	Something moved behind her, and she turned to look, while still
running, and slammed into a light pole.  Picking herself up off the
ground, she saw a shadow move across the street behind her, but looking up
to see what cast it, there was nothing, nothing at all.  Or maybe
something so dark that it couldn't be seen against the clouds.

	So she turned down a side street, and tried to read the signs to
figure out how to get home, but they were all written in runes made from
long wedges, carved into the blue, faintly glimmering metal of the signs,
and she wished she'd studied that language, whatever it was, in school.
Struggling to remember how to get back to home, to safety, she turned at
another intersection, fleeing down a street lined with cars.

	Something glimmered on a rooftop, a reddish gleam, three red
pinpoints near each other.  But when she turned to look, it was gone.  A
shadow, long and winged, moved across the street ahead of her, so she
turned and ducked down an alleyway, listening desperately, but only her
own breathing and the gentlest of breezes could be heard.  A shutter on a
window nearby creaked gently in spurts.

	She climbed a nearby fire escape ladder; despite the risk, she
needed an elevated view to see which way home was.  But when she reached
the roof, there was only the ruined, abandoned, devastated city spreading
out around her to the horizon, an infinite wasteland of steel and brick
and glass.

	And then there were wingbeats above her, and the horrible
three-lobed red eye of her pursuer shone in the sky, and Anna ran for the
edge of the roof.  It circled, and cut her off from the fire escape,
forcing her back to the edge, coming ever closer with each circling.

	There was nothing to do, nothing to do but jump.  So she leapt and
to her amazement, wings sprouted from her back, and she flew, fast and
hard, crossing dozens of blocks in minutes, leaving her foe far behind
her.  Yet, she could not see the way home anywhere, nor the chapel from
which the horrid beast had sprung when she foolishly followed the call of
the shining gem she had glimpsed from her bedroom window.

	Emerging onto another street, she ducked under an awning, and
studied the rooftops across the street.  There was nothing up there but a
series of squat boxes that could have been anything, as long as that
anything was grey.  Looking up the street, to her surprise and relief, she
could see the streetlights were on, so risking the open space, she took
off as fast as she could, for she felt in her heart that her foe, her
hunter, could not bear the light.

	Finally, she reached the amber glow of the street lamps, and
slumped against a great glass pain of a shut down butcher shop.  For a few
minutes, she slid down the wall to sit, wedged between wall and sidewalk,
breathing hard.

	Time passed, and her nerves and her breathing calmed, so she stood
up, and turned to try to get a look at herself in the window.  But her
reflection was a winged beast with a three-lobed eye that glowed red, a
great maw with yellowed fangs, and a long tail that ended with a stinger,
the very creature from which she fled.

	Anna screamed, and the glass shattered, and the lights went out,
and then she heard the sound of wing beats closing in.  She crumpled,
until strong arms grasped her, and the world shook to pieces, and then she
was in her bedroom, with Asuka standing over her.

	"It was just a nightmare," Asuka said.

	Anna shivered.  "I was...it was...oh God, it was awful!"

	Asuka sat down next to her, hugging her tightly.  "I know.  I
know," she said.

	"The only way to escape it, was to become it..."  She shuddered.
"And home was gone, and I was all alone and..."

	"I'm here, and I won't abandon you," Asuka replied.  "It was just
a bad dream.  There's been a lot of those lately."

	Anna gradually relaxed.  "Now I'm afraid to go back to sleep."

	"Didn't Frau Himmelfarb teach you about controlling your dreams?"

	"I've never been very good at it," Anna replied.

	"Well, you'd better work on it," Asuka said.  "But I'll stay with
you tonight and see what I can do."

	"Thank you," Anna replied.

	"You always stayed with me when I had my nightmares when I was
little," Asuka replied.  "I'll go get some stuff and bring it in so I can
sleep on your floor."

	Anna frowned.  "I wouldn't want to make you..."

	"It's no trouble," Asuka said.  "Be back in a little while."

	I wish I could be as strong as you, Anna thought.  And that I
wasn't so scared by all of this.  But I'll do my best for you.

	       -*-

 	In the darkness of her room, Hikari stared at the
ceiling.

 	It wasn't her ceiling, but some alien ceiling, manufactured in
Germany. Her ceiling was under a pile of rubble now. It probably was the
rubble.

 	It wasn't like this was her first night away from the place she'd
thought of as home, but it hadn't really sunk in to her yet that this
ceiling was supposed to be her ceiling now.

 	It still hadn't settled on her, Germany being her home now. That
sounded so very.... strange.

 	She idly wondered if Bratwurst was as good as Asuka it was.

 	She had begun to wonder exactly what Bratwurst was when she felt
it, a chilling disturbance in the air, the sense of another presence.

 	Two red eyes flickered brightly in the darkness, staring at her.
Hikari trembled and tried to back away from those eyes, until she heard
the voice.

 	"Hikari."

 	The voice made her nearly jump, but then she realized who it was.

 	"R-Rei?"

 	"Yes."

 	"W-What are you doing here?"

 	"I need help."

 	Hikari paused, surprised that Rei had said such a thing, though
still very much scared of the girl. Slowly, she reached for the bedside
lamp and turned it on. The illumination found Rei sitting on Hikari's desk
chair across the room, her expression unreadable as always.

 	"Help.... with what?" asked Hikari.

 	"How do you apologize for raping someone?"

 	Hikari stared at Rei. She really wasn't quite sure how to answer
that one. "Um... well..."

 	"Do you know?" asked Rei.

 	"I.... ah..." She really didn't, though Hikari tried to think of
some sort of answer. Within the short time she had to reply, however, she
could think of no answers. "I'm sorry, no, I don't," she finally admitted.

 	Rei seemed to frown slightly. She looked out from Hikari's window,
seemingly lost in thought.

 	"I forgot to say earlier," said Hikari, "But thanks. For saving me
when Tokyo-3 fell."

 	Rei paused. "I do not hear that often," she said quietly.

 	"Hear what?"

 	"Thank you."

 	"Oh."

 	Rei stood up, looking around the room. "I will leave now. Good
night." She walked over to Hikari's bedside before Hikari could ask why,
then turned off the bedside lamp.

 	"Um.... Rei?"

 	Hikari turned on the lamp again, but Rei seemed to be gone.

 	"How does she do that?" Hikari muttered. She shook her head, then
turned out the lights and crawled back under her covers.

 	And then she suddenly scrabled out of bed and turned on the lights
again, staring at her bed. For some odd reason Touji was there now,
wearing nothing but boxer shorts, snoring loudly.

 	Acting on instinct, she grabbed a pillow and started beating him
to death with it.

 	"Zzzwha-huh-eeeh? Ow! Ow! Ow!"

 	"Touji you pervert! How dare you!"

 	"Hikari? Ow! Ow! Ow! Dammit, sto- OW!"

 	"Using your powers to get in bed with me! How dare you!"

 	Touji sat upright. "What the heck??? Why am I in your place?!"

 	There was a knock at Hikari's dormitory door. A loud booming deep
voice shouted, "Frau Hikari, are you okay?! What is happening in there?"

 	Touji's eyes widened. "Is that-"

 	Hikari nodded quickly. "Frau Himmelfarb's my neighbor."

 	"Shit!"

 	Acting upon male instinct, he charged to the window and opened it.

 	"Touji, wai-"

 	And he leaped out. Before she could warn him that they were on the
third floor.

 	"OOW!"

          -*-

	The next morning, Hikari decided to talk to Anna about Rei's
visit.  She knew Anna had known Asuka for a long time, and she hoped Anna
might have some insight on what to do about Rei and Asuka.  She also
decided she wanted to talk to Commander Misato and find out what exactly
had happened that night.  She'd heard Asuka's side of it, but it was hard
for her to imagine Rei actually doing something like that, creepy as she
could be sometimes.

	"Hey, Anna, are you busy?" she asked.

	"Well, we have class in a little bit, but no, I'm not busy," Anna
said.  "Come on in."

	Hikari looked around, half expecting someone to appear from
nowhere, but they were alone.  She came in and closed the door.  "Do you
know...I mean, I'm trying to find out what exactly happened with Asuka and
Rei."

	"I don't know," Anna said.  "I got the vague idea that there was
some sort of problem with one of the Angels you beat, and it sort of
overwhelmed Rei, but..."  She frowned.  "She's so strange, maybe she just
decided to do it one day."

	"I feel like they're hiding things from us," Hikari said.

	"Oh, I'm sure they are," Anna said, sitting on her bed and
brushing her hair.  "There's some very terrible things out there.  We'd
probably break if we knew about all of them."  She shivered slightly, and
Hikari wondered what she had seen.  "I think Asuka has every right to be
angry, but it does seem like Rei didn't mean to do it.  But I don't know.
It's just so...This is all just so weird."

	Hikari nodded.  "Yes."

	Anna got up.  "We'd better go to class."

	"Such as it is."

	"Well, Fraulein Helga tries her best."

	"That's true," Hikari said.  "Let's go."

	       -*-

	Science class was going better than history had.  Part of this was
that they were starting to get the hang of dealing with Asuka translating
for their teacher, Fraulein Helga, one of the junior members of the
research branch.  The other was that Fraulein Helga knew far more about
science and was far more enthusiastic about it than she was about history.

	Fraulein Helga was a tall skinny blonde, with long hair tied back
in a braid, and silver-rimmed glasses.  Touji thought she wasn't half bad
looking, if a little on the nerdy side.  He'd noticed that Asuka always
seemed to say whatever Helga said with half the words, and he wondered if
this meant Asuka was just making stuff up or if German was really that
much more wordy.

	At the moment, she was lecturing about the human digestive system.
"So, humans can't eat grass because we lack the proper enzymes to break it
down.  Indeed, if humans do eventually travel to other worlds, we will
probably have to bring our own animals and plants with us, in order to be
able to eat, as the ecosystems of other worlds would probably not contain
life built on the same principles as the creatures and plants we eat
here," Asuka translated.

	Hikari raised her hand.  Fraulein Helga pointed to her.  "Yes,
Fraulein Hikari?" Asuka translated.

	"If that's the case, how can the Angels survive on Earth, since
they couldn't eat food native to here due to their alien origins?" Hikari
asked.

	Fraulein Helga smiled.  "That's a very good question," Asuka
translated.  "The Angels may possess adaptive capabilities unseen in Earth
life forms."  As she translated, Asuka glared balefully at Rei.    "They
also seem to be able to tap into energy flows we don't understand fully to
sustain themselves; we have yet to observe any of the major ones feeding
in a way we comprehend."

	Rei very carefully stared at her notes she was taking instead of
looking at Asuka, but every so often, she would look over wistfully at
Shinji, who would try to look reassuring.

	"That would sort of discourage wars of conquest by alien races,
since they couldn't actually eat the food of worlds they took over,
right?" Anna asked.

	Helga nodded again.  Asuka translated, "Yes. They also might find
the atmosphere inhospitable.  We and the animals we live with are
dependent on a particular mixture of gases in the atmosphere.  But there's
little reason why other worlds would necessary have the precise mix we
need.  On the other hand, the Angels often seem unaffected by such
things."  Asuka glanced over at Rei again, who focused her gaze on
Fraulein Helga instead.

	"I just have to wonder if there's any friendly aliens out there,"
Hikari said.

	"We met some.  Well, dream aliens.  Sort of."  Touji paused.
"Long confusing story."

	"The Kingdom of Joy," Asuka said softly.  "I expect there's some
friendly ones too, but probably most aliens have no way to get off their
homeworld."

	Fraulein Helga began scribbling numbers on the board.  "Some
scientists like to throw lots of numbers around to estimate how many
intelligent alien life forms might exist, but the problem is that we don't
know how likely it is for life to arise independently.  Especially now
that we know much of Earth's life seems to have been the result of
tampering by the aliens found in Antarctica," Asuka translated.

	Shinji asked, "You know about that, Fraulein Helga?  I got the
impression it was a large secret."

	"It's more widely known in the research wing," Asuka replied for
her translator.  "Because some of them have worked on some of the aliens
who seemed to have brought Adam to Earth."

	"I wonder if we could eat alien food now," Touji speculated.
"Given we've gained all these powers and shit from the Angels."

	"Yes," Rei said.

	Everyone turned and looked at her.

	She glanced over at Asuka, and hesitated, then said, "We take from
what we slay.  We become a..."  She paused and tried to find the word.

	"An alloy?" Hikari asked.

	"Yes.  Part human, part Angel."

	"A freak," Asuka mumbled dourly, and glared more at Rei.

	"We're not freaks," Shinji said.  "Just different."  There was a
note of desperation in his voice.  "We're still human."

	"I just...I hope we stay human," Asuka said.  "But I fear we
won't."

	"It's the only way to stop the Angels," Anna said nervously.  "We
have to take the risk."

	"I know, dammit," Asuka said.  "But it doesn't mean I like it."

	"Do not be afraid," Rei said softly.  "Our pack leader is very
cunning.  We will not lose."

	"I'm not scared!" Asuka snapped at Rei.

	Fraulein Helga rapped her pointer on the chalkboard.  "If we can
get back to the lesson..."

	Asuka turned and said apologetically to her in German, "I'm sorry,
we got...I'm sorry."

	"I know this must be boring for you, Asuka, but please be
patient."

	"I will," Asuka said.  "Again, I'm sorry.  I'm just...this whole
business of Angel fighting is starting to bother me."

	"I understand," Fraulein Helga said.  "But we move on."

	Asuka nodded.  "Let's get going, then."


	       -*-


	Misato felt very tense.  She was having to relay her commands
through a translator, and she kept worrying that he would get something
wrong.  I should have studied English harder, she thought.  And German,
too.  Father wouldn't be having these problems.

	//"Team 3 reporting in.  There's corpses everywhere,"// Team 3's
leader reported in German.  The shaky camera image showed two dozen bodies
scattered across the clearing.

	The staff translator put this into Japanese for Misato.

	"Team 2, what are you seeing?" Ingrid asked in German.

	"Team 1, anyone around the vehicles?" Misato asked in Japanese.

	//"There's a very, very charred corpse over here, and some charred
trees.  I'd think maybe a flamethrower was used,"// the Team 2 leader
reported.  The camera zoomed in on the burnt body.  //"If it hadn't been
raining the last few days, the whole forest would probably have gone
up."//

	//"The vehicles are shot to hell.  And someone stole the batteries
and the radios.  It's a clumsy, but effective job of disabling them."//
Seven vehicles, from trucks to vans to compacts were parked by the road,
shot to pieces with shattered glass and metal everywhere.

	"Looks like someone got to them before we did," Ingrid said.

	"But who?  Do you think maybe the German army did it?" Misato
asked.

	"I don't think they'd have left such a big mess lying around.  And
our commandoes wouldn't be so sloppy.  I hope, anyway."

	"Then who?" Misato asked.

	"I don't know.  Too much high powered weaponry to be fellow
cultists, I'd think, but I can't think of anyone else who could handle
paranormal-reinforced cultists."

	"Any signs of who killed them?" Misato asked.

	//"There's some places with blood but no corpses.  I think they
evaced their own dead,"// Team leader 2 said.

	The search turned up lots of bullets, and evidence of the use of
grenades, but no insignia or corpses from the attackers.

	"Well, if they're attacking the cultists, they're probably on our
side," Makoto said.

	"I hope so, but it's my job to be paranoid," Ingrid replied.

	"Time to start trying to trace arms sales," Misato said.  "Ingrid,
mop this up; I'm going to make some calls."

	"Yes, sir."


	       -*-

	"It's time for shopping!" Asuka said.

	"And other things too," Anna said more quietly.

	"Come on, Touji," Hikari said, grabbing Touji by the shoulder.

	"Hey, we're watching soccer.  This is an important match!"  He
tried to avoid being dragged away from the TV.

	"You can't even understand what they're saying," Hikari replied.

	"I'll go get Rei," Shinji said.

	Anna winced slightly.

	Asuka said, "No Rei.  I do NOT want to deal with her."

	Shinji sighed.  "Okay, okay."

	"C'mon, Shinji, are you gonna just knuckle under to this?" Touji
asked Shinji.

	"Yes," Shinji said.

	"Damnation.  You can't just give in to every demand people make on
you!"

	"Well, he isn't giving in to your demand," Asuka said, sticking
out her tongue at Touji.

	"Well, if you really would rather watch TV than spend time with
me," Hikari said, stormclouds gathering.

	Anna said, "There is a very nice basketball court in town."

	"Okay, lemme get my basketball, and I'll be ready to go," Touji
said.  He headed off with Hikari trailing after him.

	"You don't mind, do you Shinji?"  Asuka asked.

	"Actually, I think watching sports is about as boring as shopping,
so they're the same to me," Shinji replied.

	"Now remember, if Oscar finds us, we're on our way to get blood
tests," Asuka said.  "He hates needles."

	"If Oscar asks, I won't know what he's saying," Shinji replied.

	"That works too."  She took Shinji's hand and smiled.  "I promise
we'll have fun."

	"I'd suggest we see a movie, but Touji and I wouldn't understand
any of it."

	"We could translate for you," Asuka said.

	"Oh yes, I'm sure the other patrons would love hearing teenagers
chattering in Japanese over the movie," Anna replied.

	Asuka frowned.  "But it's such a nice theatre."

	"Well, we'll see.  Maybe we can talk Frau Himmelfarb into
arranging some movies to be shown on the base again, like last summer."

	"Some movies worth watching," Asuka replied.

	Touji returned with his basketball, dribbling as he walked.
"Let's go."

	"Okay, I'll call Mama and let her know we're ready to go, so she
can drive us into town," Anna said.

	"This is going to be a lot of fun!" Asuka announced
enthusiastically.


	       -*-

	After several hours, and one nice meal, Touji was about to snap.
He was hauling around a big pile of stuff that Hikari had bought, and all
the stores had been full of utter, total garbage, in his opinion.  Except
for the hat he'd picked up, which he thought looked pretty good.  He'd
browbeat Shinji into buying one too.

	They rounded a corner and came to a park.  There was a very nice
set of hoops, and a fair number of kids their age busy playing.  Touji
grinned.  "Oh yeah, time to show them how this game is played."

	Hikari sat down on a bench with Asuka.  "Our turn to be bored."

	"Your turn," Asuka said. "I'm gonna go kick Touji's ass."

	"I'll stay here with you," Anna said to Hikari.

	"I..."  Shinji began.

	"Come on, Shinji, we've got to kick some German butt!"  He dragged
Shinji along.

	Pretty soon, despite the language problems, Touji was having a
good time.  Some of them, to his surprise, were better than him, though
most weren't.  Some black haired kid stole the ball from him, and passed
it to Asuka.  She leaped right over him, and stuffed the ball into the
hoop, then bounced off the backboard and landed somewhat clumsily.

	Shinji ran over to her, but she got up and brushed herself off.
"I'm fine," she said to him in Japanese.

	"How'd you do that?" one of the kids asked in amazement.

	"I'm the pilot of EVA-02.  And I'm just good," Asuka said,
grinning.

	The kids suddenly took another look at the new folk and eyes
widened.  "The EVA pilots!  It's them!"

	They were mobbed by the kids, who all wanted autographs, babbling
excitedly in German.

	Hikari frowned.  "No one's mobbing us."

	"We're new," Anna said.  "And they'd probably just trample
everything we bought."

	More kids began to pour into the park, and some of them came over
to Anna and Hikari as well.  "Autograph!" one of them demanded.

	Hikari laughed and signed the outthrust notepad, as did Anna.
"Okay, that's better."

	More and more people began to stream in, some of them older now.

	At the far fringe of the park, someone quietly clicked off a set
of pictures, then set off to make a report.


	       -*-

	Later that night, Anna and Asuka were wandering around the base
together.  Shinji was off practicing Violin, Hikari had gone to bed early,
and Touji was off practicing free throws.  As they passed the cafeteria,
Asuka asked, "Do you still have the flag?"

	Anna laughed.  "Of the Grand Duchy of Fenwick?  I still can't
believe you talked me into sewing that up."

	"I wanted to see how long it would take anyone to notice if we ran
it up one of the flagpoles," Asuka said, laughing.  "A month.  They didn't
even NOTICE."

	"After a while, you don't even notice.  You could probably steal
the Germany flag and no one would notice."

	Asuka's eyes lit up.  "Oooh."

	"No, no, no."  Anna said, hands on her hips.  "I've had enough
spankings for a lifetime."

	"Aww."

	They walked along in silence for a while, then Anna asked, "So is
Shinji formally your boyfriend now?"

	"Well, umm...sort of...I mean, we haven't exactly used the words,
but basically yes."

	"He's very sweet," Anna said.

	"He's not at all the sort of guy I thought I'd end up with, but it
just...it feels so natural, you know.  And chasing after guys like Kaji
got me nowhere."  She sighed, feeling depression come crashing down on her
as she thought about how he died.  "I didn't even get to really mourn for
him before..."  Her fists clenched.  "The little bitch did what she did."

	Anna put a hand on her shoulder.  "He seemed very nice."

	"Oh, Kaji was very cool, but he was also very much not interested,
and I was just too stupid to see until it was too late."  She kicked a
rock and it flew off into a wall.  "Stupid Commander Ikari survived that
thing, why did it have to kill Kaji?"

	Anna watched nervously as little flames began to form around
Asuka's fists.  "You're on fire again," she said softly.

	Asuka sighed.  "I hate this.  Having to control every little
emotion for fear I'm going to suddenly be the human torch."

	Anna suddenly wondered what Asuka without any self-control would
be like.  "Is that going to happen to me too?"

	"Something like it," Asuka said.  She could feel herself getting
more depressed by the second.  "Little bits of the monsters will stick to
you.  You'll remember things you never did, hear things in strange alien
tongues in your dreams, remember places you've never been to.  And then
you'll start gaining powers.  That make you a freak."  Her voice was
bleak.  "If those kids had really understood what we are, they'd have torn
us apart.  They should have."

	Rocking back and forth on her feet a little nervously, Anna said,
"You're not a freak or a monster.  You're my best friend, and even... even
if you grow another head or something, I will always care about you."

	Asuka stepped over and hugged Anna, beginning to cry.  "You should
run far, far away from me, before I turn into something awful like Rei."

	"I know you'd never hurt me, Asuka," she says.  "And you're not
going to become a monster."

	They stood there in silence for a while, just holding each other
as Asuka sobbed.  Finally, Asuka said, "Oh, Anna, I've missed you so much,
the whole time I was gone from here.  Hikari's a good friend, one of the
best I've ever had, but you just...you know me."

	"And you know me," Anna said softly.  "Better than anyone else.
Friends forever, right?"

	Asuka laughed softly.  "I remember when we decided we wanted to be
blood sisters, and then we both panicked at the sight of our own blood and
ran around screaming until Frau Himmelfarb found us."  She sighed again.
"I wish I could still scream at the sight of blood.  I've seen too much of
it."

	Anna thought for a moment, then began to dig in her purse.  "I
have a pocket knife, I think.  We could swear right now."

	Asuka rubbed the tears out of her eyes. "You want to?"

	Anna nodded.  "Yes, I do."

	"Thank you," Asuka said, then started crying again.

	Anna found the pocket knife.  "We both cut our palms a little and
then rub them together, right?"

	"Something like that," Asuka said.

	Opening up the main blade, Anna stared at it nervously, then said,
"I'll go first."  Very carefully, she cut her hand, just a little.  Blood
slowly oozed from the wound.

	Taking the knife with trembling hands, Asuka paused, closed her
eyes, and focused herself.  Then she cut her palm. It didn't hurt as much
as she thought it would.  The blood began to ooze out.  Then it began to
ooze together into a small red sphere.

	She and Anna both stared in shock as the blood formed into an egg
shape.  The egg hatched, and a tiny little bird of flame erupted out of
it, then circled Asuka's head and flew off.

	They both watched it go in a mixture of wonder and horror, then
looked down at Asuka's palm, where the blood was now flowing slowly like
normal blood.  Gulping, Anna took Asuka's hand with hers, and said, "Now
we...umm, I don't remember the oath any more."

	An oath came to Asuka's mind, and she spoke it. "Blood to blood,
flesh to flesh, we mingle our blood which is life, that our lives may be
one, and we may be of one flesh and one blood, united as new kin."

	Anna repeated after Asuka, not understanding a single syllable of
it, but assuming it was latin or something, though the gutteral nature of
the tongue didn't really sound much like latin.  She could feel her hand
tingling, and a warmth spreading up her arm.  "That was neat.  What
language was that?"

	Asuka paused, and stared at Anna's face, then at the ground.  "I
don't know.  Another memory that isn't mine."

	"Well, it seemed kind of cool to me," Anna said reassuringly.  She
got out some tissues from her purse and bandaids.  "We'd better clean
our..."  She stumbled a bit.  She felt warm and woozy.

	"Anna!"  Asuka stepped forward and caught her as she wobbled.
"What's wrong?"

	"Feel kind of...weird..." Anna said.  "Just need to clean
my...hand.."  She dabbed fumblingly at her hand, wiping away the blood,
then tried to apply a bandaid, as Asuka kept her from falling down.  "My
head hurts."

	Asuka suddenly wondered if the knife was infected or something.
But she felt fine.  She helped Anna sit down, then said, "Maybe I'd better
get Akagi-san."

	"Don't need a doctor.  I just..."  She looked rather pale to
Asuka.  "Well, my shoulderblades are kind of itching."

	"Fuck," Asuka said.  "Whatever you do, don't think about sprouting
wings!"

	"Uhh..."

	No, damnation, telling her that just makes it more likely she WILL
think about it, Asuka thought.  She took another look.  Anna's hair was
starting to look sort of green.  Asuka rubbed her eyes.  "Is it just me,
or does your hair..."

	"My hair..."  Anna took a lock of hair in her hands.  "Oh, it
looks sort of green."  She blinked.  "Oooh, hazy vision."

	"Triple dammit!  I'll go find Akagi-san.  Stay right here, okay?"

	"Why don't we just teleport there?  We are the Children of the Key
and the Gate..."  Anna began to ramble.

	 "I'd teleport to her if I knew how, but I don't!  I just..."  She
picked up Anna.  "I'd better not leave you alone."

	"Ooh, I can see the angles!"

	Asuka ran as fast as she could, not really thinking about where
she was going, except the vague expectation of finding Akagi.


	       -*-

	By the time Asuka and Ritsuko got Anna to the lab, Anna had lapsed
into slumber.  Ritsuko started getting the equipment she would need back
out.  "What exactly did you two do?"

	Asuka said softly, "We tried to swear a blood oath.  In Aklo."

	"You mingled blood and spoke an oath in a pre-human tongue?"
Ritsuko frowned at Asuka.

	"Umm...yes."  Asuka felt like an idiot, which she hated.

	"Sit over there and be very quiet while I work," Ritsuko said.

	"Yes, ma'am," Asuka said, then sat down to stew in her own guilt
for a while.

	Once Ritsuko was done, she said, "Well, you haven't done anything
fatal, thankfully.  I think the effects have stabilized, and since she's a
pilot, she survived it."

	"..."

	"As it is, she'll probably have a little higher synchro rating,
green hair, and an even paler complexion, but nothing worse."

	Asuka gave a great sigh of relief.

	"If she was normal, she'd probably be dying right now, but she
seems to have gained enough...whatever exactly you absorb from the Angels
to survive this."

	Very, very faintly, Asuka asked, "I could have killed her?"

	"Possibly.  Things were starting to not look good when you first
brought her in here, but she began to rally by then."  Ritsuko said, "But
there's no way you could have known this would happen.  And I never
thought of the possibility that you'd try something like this."

	"Is she...so she..."

	"She's going to be fine, but I was about to have to call in more
help if things had kept up.  I believe you've absorbed enough...power, for
lack of a better word, that now your blood has power in and of itself."
She got a syringe.  "I'd like to take a blood sample from you."

	"Okay."

	Ritsuko took the sample, then examined it under the microscope.
The remainder of the blood began forming into different creatures in the
test tube it sat in, then dissolved back into blood.  Asuka watched them,
fascinated in a horrible sort of way, like watching a twelve car pileup in
progress.

	"I'd say this is a side-effect of your absorption of Adam's power.
Your EVA absorbed most of the power, but you have enough that now your
blood tries to create new life forms once set free."

	"..."

	"Fortunately, Anna was able to resist and assimilate your blood
after a little mutation."  Ritsuko came over to Asuka.  "Whatever
possessed you two to do this, anyway?"

	"She wanted...She wanted to show me she'd always be my friend.
Even if I...oh God, I could have turned HER into some kind of monster."
Asuka began to cry, crumpling in on herself.  "We might have had to...to
kill her."

	Ritsuko stood and watched her uncomfortably, not sure what to do.
Finally, very slowly and hesitantly, she went over and embraced Asuka,
patting her on the back, feeling rather strange as she did so.  "But you
didn't."

	"We're all going to become monsters," Asuka said, staring at her
hands.  There wasn't even any redness where she'd cut herself earlier, not
a scratch or a mark.

	"Not if I can help it," Ritsuko said.  "But crying about it won't
help."

	"You'd cry too if you were going to become some horrible, twisted
thing!"

	"I did my crying for that long ago," Ritsuko said softly.  "You
see, my mother was a monster."

	Asuka stiffened. "What?"

	"I've only ever told one other person, but..."  She sighed, let go
of Asuka, and got a chair, which she pulled over to Asuka.  "You see..."
She sighed.  "This is going to sound silly at first, but bear with me."

	Confused, Asuka nodded.

	"My mother was the result of breeding between a race of...well,
you could call them merpeople, and humans.  These merpeople serve a being
they call 'Cthulhu', who is imprisoned under the sea.  Some cults of
idiots on the land have, in the past, made pacts with these merfolk,
called 'Deep Ones' by some.  My grandfather on mother's side was one of
those.  When humans and Deep Ones breed, the result is a hybrid, who is
human at first, but eventually changes into a Deep One, and goes to live
with them."  Ritsuko felt her hands clenching into fists, and made herself
open them up.

	"My grandfather and grandmother were killed by some sort of
cultist hunters, but they found my mother, the baby, and didn't realize
she wasn't human.  So they put her in an orphanage.  She eventually grew
up to be a brilliant scientist, but over time, her heritage began to
assert itself.  I was about your age when she came..."  Ritsuko clenched
her hands again.  "To embrace the coming changes.  She reveled in it.  And
she wanted me to revel in it too.  I could hardly understand what was
happening to her, but I hated it.  With all my heart and soul.  And when
she told me I would do the same as her one day, I decided I would never,
ever be like my mother."

	Asuka stared in shock.  "How did she keep anyone in NERV from
finding out?"

	"Oh, they found out. But she was too valuable to them to get rid
of, until the changes couldn't be hidden any longer.  And then she left.
She tried to take me with her, but I got away.  And I determined I would
find some way...to keep from turning into something like her."  She made
herself unclench her hands again; this time, her nails had almost drawn
her own blood.  "I studied biochemistry, and when Commander Ikari offered
me a job at NERV, I jumped at the chance.  He knew...about my problem, and
told me he would see what could be done to help."

	"Did you...find a cure?" Asuka asked.

	"I found a way to stabilize my condition for a time.  But I spent
all my time terrified that anyone would find out.  That they would think I
was a freak, a monster. That they would want to take me off and experiment
on me.  And I couldn't find a cure.  I still haven't, just some ways to
stave off the effects, and reverse them somewhat.  I'm beginning to fear
that I'll never be entirely free of it.  The sea...I hate the sea because
it calls to the monster inside me, trying to make it be born."

	"You're not a monster," Asuka said firmly.  "You're a good
person."

	"I wish I could believe in good.  Maya does.  She's so...  She's
like a child.  I want hope, and I don't know where to find it.  So I go on
living, because I won't surrender.  Ever.  If my condition becomes
irreversible, I'll kill myself before I become a monster."  She took a
deep breath.  "But I used to think...that because of what I was, I
couldn't be a real person.  I couldn't have friends.  That everyone would
hate me if they knew the truth about what I am."

	"I don't hate you," Asuka said.  "You've helped us out a lot, and
you're Misato's best friend, and Maya's best friend too.  And you've
helped save humanity from being destroyed.  You ought to be proud of
yourself."

	"And you should too," Ritsuko replied.  "I don't know what will
happen to you, but you're not a monster yet, and you won't become one if I
can do anything to stop it.  I know what it's like to feel strange urges,
but you can fight them.  I know you're very strong-willed, Asuka, and you
can do this."

	"Does Misato know about..." Asuka began.

	"No.  Telling her about my relationship with Maya was as much as
she could handle."

	"Your...oh."  Asuka blushed.

	"Hadn't noticed?"

	"Well, I, uh..ahahaha."  Asuka laughed nervously.  "Right.  I'm
sorry, I shouldn't laugh."

	"Anyway, the important thing, is to never give up.  Don't
surrender to the darkness.  If it devours us, at least we can spit in its
eye as we die."

	"And go to be with God afterwards," Asuka said.  She hoped God
would still want her.  I should go pray, she thought.

	"I don't believe in God.  No benevolent creator could sit back and
let things get this screwed up without doing something about it," Ritsuko
said.  "I wish I could believe my soul will survive, but I don't see any
evidence for it existing.  There's just this life, and if there's going to
be any justice, we'll have to make it happen ourselves."  She shook her
head.  "But I think we both have better things to do than to debate
theology."

	"Is Anna going to wake up soon?" Asuka asked.

	Ritsuko frowned a litle, got up, and shook Anna gently.  Anna
opened her eyes.  "Akagi-san?  Where am I?"

	"You're in my lab.  Do you feel good enough to sit up?"

	Anna sat up.  "Hi, Asuka."

	"Hi," Asuka said, then ran over to her.  "Are you okay? I'm
really, really sorry!"

	"I'm fine," Anna said.  "A little hungry."

	Asuka gave a great sigh of relief.  "I didn't realize this would
happen."

	"What would happen?"

	Ritsuko explained everything to Anna, who replied, "I wish we'd
known that."

	Sighing, Ritsuko said, "I didn't think about the possibility, as
I'm not used to people deciding to swear blood oaths, which I thought went
out with the Dark Ages.  You two go get some food.  I'm going to run a few
more tests on my blood samples."

	"Okay," Anna said.  "Let's go eat."

	They left, leaving Ritsuko to begin working on a last few tests,
and to try to decide whether the other Children would try something like
this.


	       -*-

	Looking at his room, Shinji felt a bit of deja vu. It seemed like
only yesterday that he'd moved in with Misato back at Tokyo-3. Now here he
was, once again, unpacking boxes in Misato's apartment. Only now he had a
really nice view of the forest from his room, and the doors weren't
sliding ones.

 	It didn't entirely feel like home, but knowing he was still
sharing living quarters with Misato and Asuka was a comfort. Familiar
faces, just a new setting.

 	He took a deep breath, then began working on sorting out the
boxes, unpacking his life once again. Quite a few items were dusty, given
they were sitting in rubble when recovered, and he found himself cleaning
off items as much as he was unpacking them. Unfortunately, after some time
the air in the room got fairly dusty.

 	He opened the window and leaned out, taking in the germanic air.
Even that reminded him of how different things were now. Gone were the
sounds of city life, the slight taint of car fumes mixed with steel,
concrete, the ocean breeze and its humidity. In the air now was a heavier
air, scented of forest and clay, the wind over the Rhine giving the air
its damp tinge.

 	He heard the sound of soles shifting in concrete and looked more
directly below his window, met by the gaze of two very familiar red eyes.
He'd become accustomed to her mysterious appearances by now, though a
small part of him still felt uneasy about it.

 	"Um, hi," said he.

 	She merely looked at him for a moment. He wondered if she was, in
fact, going to just stare at him oddly all day when she finally asked,
"Can we talk?"

"Okay. Come on up."

 	He turned to leave and meet her at the front door, but as he did
she was already in his room, sitting on the floor in the corner. Her legs
were folded up to her chest, arms wrapped around them, her chin resting on
her knees and looking melancholy. He stepped back a moment, surprised,
then berated himself. Knowing what she was, he should not be surprised at
these things.

 	Had Shinji ever read Springtime Cherry Blossoms manga volume 14,
page 43, panel two, he'd have recognized her pose.

 	She blinked in a very feminine and melancholy way, her gaze aimed
at nowhere in particular. "I do not know how."

 	"How?" he asked. "How to..."

 	"Apologize. To Langley."

 	Shinji's eyes widened. He took a deep breath and sat down on his
bed. "Oh. Well... to be honest, I don't really know."

 	Rei's slight frown increased a small notch.

 	"Well, I mean, it's, um, kind of unusual," continued Shinji
awkwardly. "This situation, I mean."

 	Rei merely nodded.

 	Scratching his head, Shinji said, "Well, for now, I think it'd be
better just to avoid her for a while. She needs some time."

 	Again, she nodded, then seemed to pause to think on what to do
next. Much to Shinji's confusion, she pulled out from her jacket pocket a
manga book and flipped through it.

 	"What's that?" he asked.

 	"Springtime Cherry Blossoms."

 	His eyes widened slightly. "They made a manga out of it too?"

 	She nodded. "It is very insightful." Rei then closed the book,
tucked it away, and stood up. "I am feeling a little tired," she
announced. "May I stay here a little while?"

 	Shinji hesitated for a moment, then nodded. "Asuka is out catching
up with her friends, so she'll be out for most of the day. But if she
comes back, try to avoid her."

 	Rei came over to Shinji and sat besides him on the bed. For a
moment he blushed, realizing they were alone in the apartment and now both
on his bed. She seemed to hesitate, sitting next to him, looking into his
eyes, as he looked into hers. He could feel himself blushing already, and
noticed she was as well.

 	And then she flopped down onto the bed and seemed to fall asleep
immediately.

 	Deciding now was a time to step out and watch TV before he did
something stupid and perverted, Shinji left. He wasn't quite sure exactly
what he could watch, but was hopeful there was something out there. He
needed to start learning German anyway.

 	-*-

 	Makoto stumbled down the hallway, the large box in his arms nearly
obscuring his view. "Maya?"

 	"To the left," said she, a few steps ahead of him and carrying two
large bags in her arms. "Thanks for helping me move my stuff, I really
appreciate it."

 	"Hey, it's no problem," he replied. "Besides, you'd do the same
for me if I asked, right?"

 	He heard no reply.

 	"Riiiight?"

 	"Hold on, I'm still thinking."

 	"Hey!"

 	She laughed. "Just joking, just joking. Of course I would! Okay,
here we go, hold on." They entered the apartment and Makoto quickly put
the box down.

 	"Here's fine, right?"

 	"Mm-hm."

 	They both looked around.

 	"Not bad," said Maya.

 	"A little bigger than the apartment I had in Japan anyway,"
replied Makoto.

 	Maya nodded. "Same here. I would've had sempai to help me instead,
but she had meetings she couldn't avoid," she said, frowning at that last
part. "C'mon, let's get the rest."

 	"So, um, how are things going, anyway?" he asked, as they walked
back through the corridors to the car with her belongings, hoping he
didn't sound too awkward.

 	She blushed slightly and shrugged. "Going well enough. How about
you?"

 	He sighed. "Kinda complicated, actually."

 	She elbowed him. "You womanizer, you."

 	"I-it's not like I WANT to have a harem of girls, you know!" he
said meekly. "It's just.... I don't know... I didn't expect to ever get
anywhere with Misato, and then Akane comes into my life, and just when
that seems to be going great, Misato starts showing some interest and...
aaargh." He sighed. "I don't know, what would you do?"

 	"Me?"

 	"Yeah, you. What if you were seeing someone already, but then Dr.
Akagi started showing strong interest in you?"

 	Maya hmmed a moment. "Tough question. It'd depend on the person I
was seeing, of course. And what situation sempai was coming from."

 	"What do you mean by that?" he asked.

 	"Well, let's look at our primary example, Misato. Her previous
boyfriend was just recently killed and she's feeling all sorts of things
because of that. She's hurt, lonely, confused." She frowned again. "I hate
to say it, but you're probably her rebound guy."

 	He sighed and hung his head. "I don't wanna be rebound guy."

 	"You shouldn't be. If this was a normal situation, it'd be a
little harder to say what you should do. But right now, Misato's still
hurting, and she needs friendly support more than anything else.
Meanwhile, Akane's been good to you all the way."

 	"Except that she keeps on telling me to go for Misato," said
Makoto. "That's kinda strange, don't you think?"

 	"She might be afraid of commmitment," countered Maya. "Also, think
about this. You said she's following you here to Germany, right?"

 	He nodded.

 	"Think about it, she's moving across the world to be with you. She
could've just moved to another part of Japan, or maybe one of the closer
countries, but instead she's coming here, to be with you. That shows a
serious amount of like, I think. Probably love, even."

 	It was Makoto's turn to blush now. "You really think so?"

 	"I won't say it's a 100% lock, but it's pretty close. Stick with
Akane, and try to be a friend for Misato. Oh, and get that box on the left
next."

 		-*-

 	Eyes closed, sprawled on Shinji's bed, Rei felt that something
wasn't quite going right here.

 	The way it went in the mangas, the girl goes to sleep and the boy,
tempted by the sight of her, tries to kiss her as she lays there.

 	Instead, she could still hear Shinji watching TV outside.

 	She decided to wait a little longer.

 	Yes, that was a good idea.

 		-*-

	The scream woke up Asuka, yanking her right out of the Dreamlands
and into the waking world in an instant.  She sprang up off the futon she
was on, hoping Anna hadn't woken anyone else but her up; she was sleeping
in Anna's room again.

	Anna was staring blankly at the ceiling, her mouth wide open in
fear.  For just a moment, her forehead and eyes seemed to be glowing red,
but then it faded.  Anna's eyes focused and she said softly, "Did I wake
you up?"

	"Yeah.  More nightmares?"

	"More nightmares," Anna said, her voice sounding remarkably calm
to Asuka.  "I'm sorry I woke you up."

	"We really ought to see Doctor Himmelfarb about this."

	"No, I'll be fine," Anna replied.  "It's just dreams."

	"There's some strange things in dreams," Asuka said.  "Are you
sure you're alright?"

	"I'm fine," Anna said.

	She's not fine, Asuka thought.  "Alright.  Let's go to sleep,
then."

	"Goodnight, Asuka," Anna said.

	"Goodnight, Anna."

	She could hear Anna quickly move into the deep breathing of sleep,
but Asuka lay awake a while fretting, before sleep finally took her.


	       -*-


	The vans pulled up to the front gate.  "You sure this is going to
work?" one of the drivers said to the man next to him.

	Thunder rumbled distantly; clouds covered the sky, making the
night very dark except for the lights which lit the long road through the
forest up to the front gates of NERV-Germany.

	"We'd already be dead if our inside men hadn't succeeded," the man
replied.

	"Or maybe they want to lure us in and kill us."

	"Don't be paranoid."

	The gates slid open, and the vehicles began to drive in.

	"See, I told you," the passenger said.

	"I still don't trust this."

	"We must take risks, or there can be no Fifth Reich.  Boldness,
that is the key!  Don't be a coward."

	"I'm not a coward!  I just..."

	A man shouted from the back, "You're just scared."

	The driver clenched his hands on the steering wheel.  "Yes, I am!
Only stupid people aren't scared when going into something like this."

	"Now, now, just everyone relax.  Save your hate for the damnable
foreigners who have tainted our country," the front-seat passenger said.
"Just a few more minutes, and this facility will be OURS."

	       -*-

	Misato woke to the sound of someone fumbling with keys outside her
door.  Her paranoia kicked in, and she grabbed her pistol off the
nightstand and rolled off her bed into the space between it and the rear
wall.

	The door opened very slowly; she lay on the floor, watching it
open through the space under her bed.  She saw three sets of feet in the
doorway.  The men spoke to each other in German; she listened and tried to
guess what they meant.  Whoever they were, they weren't in uniform, but
part of her mind was worrying that she might be about to blow away some
misinformed visitor or something.

	She managed to recognize the name, and then her brain registered
that they had somehow gotten keys to her room.  Which meant they either
were NERV personnel out of uniform or someone in the base was giving out
keys to her room.  She could hear more men in the hallway, roaming about.
She peeked around one end of the bed, hoping to get a good look at them.

	Two of the men were blond, short, skinny, and clean-shaven, while
the third was a huge, muscular man with dark hair and a thick beard.  All
three were armed with rifles.  The two blondes wore jeans and t-shirts
denoting something in German which Misato couldn't understand, though the
soccer ball logos let her guess they were sport fans.  Third one, on the
other hand, wore what looked to her like a world war two era military
uniform, complete with a swastika armband.

	Dammit, she thought.  I can probably take two of them, but with
not much space to run, the third one might nail me, and then I still have
to deal with the ones in the hallways.

	Listening, she could hear one of them approaching the bed.
Alright.  If I nail him, then I can probably nail the other two, she
thought.  They don't look very professional.  That still leaves the ones
in the hallway, but I'll have to improvise.  Though if I'm lucky, he won't
look closely, and they'll assume I went for a walk or something.  Shit,
the Children!  They must be here to kill them or kidnap them or something.
Dammit!

	One of the blondes said something in German as he approached the
bed.  She wondered idly what he was demanding.  He poked the sheets with
his rifle, then leaned forward enough to see her.  She popped up and put a
bullet through his brain, sending him tumbling.  Then, as she dived back
down, she fired off five more shots.  Three connected, sending the second
blonde tumbling to the ground with two chest wounds which would soon prove
fatal, and knocking the black haired man against the wall, clutching his
arm.

	Her mind finally cleared enough from her grogginess to hit the
panic button on her cellular phone.  She hit her speed dial for
Fuyutsuki's phone.  Then a hail of bullets raked the wall above her as
more men poured in and opened up.

	Fuyutsuki picked up.  "Commander, what's going on?" he mumbled.

	"We've got intruders!"

	A man said something in German at her, his voice somehow coming
from under her bed.

	She looked and saw he had belly-crawled into the room while his
friends fired over the bed to keep her pinned down, and now he was aiming
at her under the bed with his rifle.  Fuck, fuck, fuck, she thought.  "And
they just got me," she concluded, then dropped her pistol.


	       -*-

	Asuka awoke to the sound of gunfire.  What the hell is going on?,
she asked herself.  "Anna, wake up," she whispered, rising and shaking
Anna.

	Anna rubbed her eyes.  "What?"

	"Some monster must have broken in," Asuka said.  "You stay here
and call Misato.  I'll see what's going on."

	Anna nodded and fumbled around trying to find her cellular phone
as Asuka stuck her head in the hall.

	There were a bunch of men, most of them in dark, but casual
clothing, the rest in what looked like old German military uniforms, many
of them clustered around Commander Misato's room.  The rest were moving
down the hallway towards the Children's rooms.  She could see some of them
had swastika armbands.  One of them leveled a rifle at Asuka.  "Surrender
now, or I'll shoot!" he said.

	Flames erupted around her, obscuring her from sight.  But the man
could hear her voice booming down the hallway.  "You're the one who is
going to surrender, you ignorant worm!  It's idiots like you who give our
country a bad name!"  She pointed her arm down the hallway at them.  "Drop
your guns, or I'll kill you all."  They were filth, hardly any better than
the monsters NERV fought.  Part of her wanted to burn them no matter what
they did, to watch the flesh melt from their bones and listen to them
scream as they died.  But she held that instinct back.  They were men, if
scum, and perhaps they could be made to repent.  They deserved a chance.

	The man gulped and backed up nervously.  Then a group of men
hauled Misato out of her room with a gun to her head.  One of them said,
"Surrender, or we'll kill her."

	Asuka cursed.  Dammit, I can't kill them fast enough to stop them
shooting her.  But I can't just...shit.  In Japanese, she asked,
"Commander Misato, what should I do?"

	"We can't let them have you," Misato replied.  "I don't want to
die, but NERV and the world..."  She shuddered.  "Need you more than they
need me."

	By now, Touji was sticking his head out into the hallway as well.
"What the hell is going on?" he demanded.  "Shit," he said as he saw the
men.

	Asuka hesitated.  She couldn't let them kill Misato.  Misato had
always treated her well, and she liked Misato too much to let her die.  If
it had been Rei, well, then, no guilt if they shot Rei, but not Misato.
How the hell did these guys get in, anyway?  I have to stop them, she
thought.

 	But if she tried to fight...dammit, she thought.  I hate this.
Well, I can always kill them later, she thought.  They must want us alive,
or they would have just mowed me down as soon as they came out.
"Alright," she said.  "We surrender," she said in German.  For now, she
thought.  But sooner or later, she would get a shot at freeing Misato, and
then they would pay.

	       -*-

	"Are the security squads ready?" Fuyutsuki asked Ingrid.

	"Ready to go," she replied, then frowned.  "But if we strike, I
doubt we'll be able to get Commander Katsuragi out alive."

	Gendo started to say something, then fell silent.  Being
suspended, he was there simply to observe.

	Fuyutsuki replied, "Keep them ready.  I would prefer not to lose
her unless it is absolutely necessary."

	Weiss asked, "Any luck getting our computers back under control?"

	"Working on it," Ritsuko replied.  "If we'd had time to repair and
install the MAGI, this would never have happened."

	"But we didn't," Fuyutsuki said.  "Do they have enough control to
try to launch the EVA units?"

	"I don't think so," Otto, one of the computer technicians,
replied.  "They've shut down all the automated security systems and
greatly hampered our monitoring capacities, but the EVA control programs
were designed to be operated from the bridges, not from other sites which
lack all the related equipment."

	"Our security forces secured the auxiliary bridge," Ingrid said.
"So, unless they use their hostages as leverage, which I assume we won't
let them, then we can prevent a launch."

	Fuyutsuki frowned.  "We cannot afford to lose the Children."

	"The Children could crush these idiots," Gendo finally said.  "But
they won't do anything as long as Katsuragi is in danger."

	"Perhaps we could rig the auxiliary bridge to be floodable with
tear gas and knockout gasses, then let them have it," Maya suggested.

	"They have gas masks.  NERV issue gas masks, thanks to whoever the
hell let them in," Ingrid replied.  "I'm going to have to root through our
ranks after this is over."

	"Some heads will definitely be rolling," Fuyutsuki replied.  He
hoped his own would not be one of them.  The Security Council was not
going to be happy.


	       -*-

	Misato sat tensely, tied to a chair, and tried to figure out what
exactly the Neo-Nazis were hoping to accomplish.  They'd gotten into the
security facility and locked the Children into holding cells.  She was now
being watched by a group of the Neo-Nazis in the front room of the prison
wing, who seemed to be waiting for some sort of orders.

	If they're not here to kill us all, maybe they are out to steal
the EVA units?, Misato speculated.  But what would they do with them?  Or
are they hoping to somehow pilot them themselves?  Maybe they want to use
hostages to force the Children to pilot for them.  That made sense, though
it was a stupid plan, as she knew Fuyutsuki and Gendo would kill any
hostages if they had to, in order to prevent the Children being
blackmailed to use the EVA units for neo-nazis.  On the other hand, if
Fuyutsuki and Gendo did that, the Children might well turn on them as
well.  This is going to be ugly, Misato thought.

	She frowned.  If they were good enough to get in here, even with a
traitor's help, then how could they have been crazy enough to think they
could get away with this?  Unless, perhaps, this was a test by some other
group to see how good their security was, using the neo-nazis as pawns.
It seemed clear now that this group had likely been involved in smashing
the cult they'd found that had been attacked.  Perhaps the neo-nazi aspect
was just a front for a cult itself.  Or their leader might be a very
clever tactician who lacked long term vision.

	No way to find out now, she thought.  I wonder if they've secured
one of the bridges?  They may well be trying to use us as leverage to get
control of one.  She glanced around at the six guards they'd left to watch
her.  No way to overpower them all, she thought.  Especially not with one
of them still holding a gun to my head.

	I can't even try to sow doubts in their mind because they don't
understand Japanese, she thought.  She hated feeling helpless.

	She sat there for what seemed like hours, until a thought came to
her.  Rei could possess people who had spoken her name.  Maybe I can get
her attention by saying it over and over, and let her possess me.  Then
she can use her powers to take these idiots out.  The thought of being
possessed made Misato shudder, but it was at least, something which
offered a way out of this.

	She began to mumble Rei's name over and over.  For several
minutes, nothing happened.  Finally, the guard with the gun to her head
said something she couldn't understand, but which she guessed from his
tone of voice meant something to the effect of 'stop saying Rei over and
over and over'.

	A few seconds later, he turned and shot another of the men in the
head.  As the victim tumbled to the ground, the other guards jumped in
shock and then he began shooting at them, not displaying a lot of skill.
At this short range, he didn't need much skill.  Neither did they, and
pretty soon, he was bleeding from multiple bullet wounds, and so were
three of the four men shooting at him.  The last man turned angrily to
Misato, shouting at her in German and waving his gun about.

	He didn't see the blue haired blur which now zoomed out of one of
the corners of the room behind him, but he did feel it as hands caught his
wrists and shattered them, then pulled away his gun and knocked him to the
ground.  Ice formed over his mouth, preventing him screaming.

	Some of the wounded men tried to sit up and shoot at her, but she
darted quickly from body to body, slaying one with claws across the
throat, driving a foot through the chest wounds of another, until they all
stopped moving.  The one who had not been shot lay very still and tried to
feign death.

	Then Rei took several of the guns and handed them to Misato.  She
looked down at the still living one.  "Do you want him?" Rei asked.

	"He might be a useful prisoner once we get Asuka so we can
understand him.  Let's get everyone out of their cells."

	Rei nodded, then headed off to liberate the others.

	       -*-

	Fuyutsuki picked up his phone.  "This is Commander Fuyutsuki," he
said.

	"This is Commander Katsuragi," Misato said.  "Rei rescued me and
we have liberated the other Children.  Do you want us to make for the
bridge?  Do we have any idea what these people are after, exactly?"

	"I believe they were hoping to use hostages to compel the Children
to pilot for them to create the Fifth Reich.  I would dismiss them as
complete lunatics, except that they clearly had inside help."  Fuyutsuki
frowned.  Perhaps this was part of some elaborate game of SEELE's, he
thought.  Or perhaps the Crawling Chaos had arranged this as part of some
elaborate game.  Someone may be trying to discredit me as Gendo was
discredited, so that they can get themselves or their own puppet in charge
of NERV.

	"I know. Ingrid and I will have to call in Internal Security to
help us find and purge the traitors," Misato said.  "Should we make for
the bridge?"

	"Yes," he said.  "If you encounter any opposition, take them alive
if you can, as we need answers, but don't hesitate to kill if you cannot."

	"Understood," she replied.  "We should be there in ten to fifteen
minutes if we meet no opposition."

	"We'll be expecting you," he replied.

	       -*-

	Touji watched Misato, Asuka, Rei, and Shinji cut loose on an
unfortunate group of neo-nazis who had tried to stop them on their way to
the bridge.  Misato, along with Anna, Hikari, and Touji, had taken cover
around a corner, but she was leaning around it, firing away at the men,
hitting with deadly accuracy.

 	Asuka was laughing as she threw bolts of flame at the men shooting
at her.  Bullets fired at her bounced off the shield of fire she'd called
up in front of herself.  Where they struck, the rippling effect he'd come
to associate with an AT-field flared up.

 	Rei darted from man to man.  Some she froze, others she sliced
open with fingers turned into claws.  She moved too quickly to be shot.

 	Touji barely recognized Shinji as he strode through the fight.
With one hand, he struck men down with flames, his other arm had turned
into some sort of inky black snake which he shoved up men's noses and down
their throats, sometimes ripping off their faces, and other times simply
asphyxiating them.  Bullets fired at him bounced off him or passed through
him harmlessly.  It was one of the most terrifying things Touji had ever
seen.  When he dared to stick his head out and look.

	I ought to be out there kicking butt, he thought.  Except it was
human butts getting kicked, and the gore made him sick and he hadn't hit
the point they had where their powers came to them so easily.  The
butchering didn't seem to bother them at all, and it scared him to think
of his buddy Shinji, wimpy little Shinji, killing people, even evil
fuckers like these neo-nazis, so easily.  What's happening to us?, he
asked the universe.  I don't want to kill people, he thought.

	Anna was taking potshots with a gun taken off one of the guys Rei
had killed earlier, but she wasn't very accurate.  Hikari stayed back,
trying to pull Touji back away from the corner.  "You'll get yourself
killed," she whispered.  "Let them handle it."

	"I can't just do nothin'," he said, though he knew he couldn't do
much, and for once, was glad for it.  "Damn, Kensuke'd be making Return to
Castle Wolfenstein jokes right now."

	"It isn't funny," Hikari said softly, sounding both scared and
worried.

	"Yeah, it ain't.  I'd have to slap him one," Touji said.

	Rei pulled off a man's face, and Touji winced.  Do not piss Rei
off, he reminded himself.

	"Get back," Misato said.  "You're just exposing yourself to fire,
Touji.  Anna, I appreciate your desire to help, but you should probably
take cover as well."

	Touji got back.  "I'm only gettin' back, 'cause you told me to,"
he said firmly.  "I ain't scared or nothing."

	"You should be," Misato said as she put a bullet through a man's
shoulder, disabling his arm.  "Damn, that was supposed to nail him in the
jaw."

	The last of the men fell as Asuka melted his gun onto his hand,
arm, and chest, then mocked him as he fell.

	Silence settled onto the hallway.  Misato stepped out.  "Very good
job," she said.  "We'd better move on."  She looked at the bodies.  "How
many of these people did they manage to round up for this, anyway?"

	Hikari tried not to gag at the stench of the hallway and the
copious amounts of blood, or to slip in the puddles.  She held on tightly
to Touji's arm.  He strode along, trying to act casual.  Anna knelt down
and stripped one of the dead men of his ammo box and took the clip from
his rifle to reload hers.  Hikari winced at the sight of that.  "Are you
okay?" she asked Asuka.

	"Miserable worms, they can't even put up a good fight," Asuka
said.

	Hikari stared at her, and then Asuka shuddered, and the fire in
her eyes went out.

	Asuka looked around herself, then turned slightly green.  "Ugh,
I'm going to be sick," she announced, and stumbled past the bodies, then
knealt and threw up.

	Shinji was looking pretty green himself as he looked around at the
dead men.  "Did we...do that?" he asked in shock.

	Rei nodded.  "Yes."

	Misato sighed.  "I'm sorry this had to happen.  No one your age
should have to kill another human being."

	Asuka tried to say something, but was too busy finishing vomiting.

	"Have you ever had to kill people before?" Hikari asked nervously.

	"Yes," Misato said.  "But I was out of college and into NERV
before that ever happened.  Not fourteen and fifteen."  She looked around
sadly.  "Well, it would have been good to take more prisoners, but...well,
sometimes it is kill or be killed."  She felt cold and miserable, having
to say this to a bunch of barely teenagers.  "And I don't want to die if I
don't have to."

	Asuka forced herself up as Shinji came over to her.  She clutched
his hand like a lifeline and said, "I feel like shit.  God, we killed all
these people..."  She began to cry.

	"We may have to kill more," Misato said.  "Although from all the
gunfire I hear in the distance, it sounds like NERV security is likely
going to mop up all the rest."

	One such security man stuck his head around the corner.  He said
something in German.  Asuka was too busy crying to translate, so Anna did
for him.  "Commander, he says the corridor is secured the rest of the
way."

	"Good.  Tell him to have his men escort us back to the Bridge."

	Anna did so, and they were soon on their way with Shinji
half-carrying Asuka and the rest of them walking along very quietly and
sombrely.

	       -*-

	"It's all over," Fuyutsuki said to Misato and the Children.  "We
should hopefully get some answers from these idiots by the morning.  No
one leaves the base until we find out who betrayed us."

	Misato nodded.  "Once I get enough sleep to think straight,
Commander Lessard and I will begin the investigation.  Though I'm going to
call Internal Security before I go back to sleep."

	Asuka mumbled, "I don't think I'm going to be able to sleep."

	"I will debrief you all in the morning," Fuyutsuki said.  "As I am
exhausted and I am sure you are too.  All of you, go get as much sleep as
you need.  I will cancel your lessons tomorrow, as I expect none of you
would be able to focus."

	The Children would have cheered if they had any cheer.  Instead,
Touji simply said, "Thanks."

	Fuyutsuki yawned.  "Makoto, I'm afraid you get to stay up with me
and help run the final search, just to make sure we've flushed them all
out.

	He sighed, but nodded. "Yes, sir."

	"Are you sure you don't want me to..." Misato began.

	"Go sleep," Fuyutsuki said.  "You will need your wits about you
tomorrow when you begin your investigation."

	She nodded.  "Yes, sir."

	"Now, go to bed, all of you."

	       -*-


	Hikari walked down the hallway very slowly and nervously, jumping
at every noise.  Touji said, "Don't worry, Hikari.  It's all over now."

	She wrinkled her nose.  "I can still smell the blood.  All that
killing."  She shuddered.

	"The bastards got what they deserved," Touji said.  They did, he
told himself.

	Asuka mumbled, "Not like that."

	"They were weak, they got what they deserved," Shinji heard Anna
say.

	He looked back at her.  "Being weak doesn't mean they deserved to
die."

	She blinked.  "I'm sorry, what?"

	I'm so tired I'm imagining things, he thought.  "Sorry, nothing."
He tried to shove away the guilt he was feeling over it, and being glad it
was all a bloody blur in his mind.

	They reached their rooms and split up.  He noticed Touji and
Hikari both went into Touji's room, while Anna and Asuka went to Anna's
room together.  Shinji turned to enter his own, and noticed Rei was
standing expectantly by him.

	"I need to be alone," he said softly.  He didn't really want to be
alone, but Asuka had gone with Anna, and he was afraid of what Asuka would
say if she found out about this.

	She looked disappointed, but nodded and turned away and started
off down the hallway.

	He sighed and went into his own room, then pulled the covers over
himself and stared at the ceiling until finally, exhaustion knocked him
back out.

	       -*-

	Misato tried to sleep, but it wouldn't come.  Her nerves were
still jangling from the rush of battle, and the faces of the dead were
floating around at the corners of her mind.  She hated killing people.
She'd done it before, and would do it again, but she didn't like it, and
it was still rare enough she wasn't used to it.  And nothing in her past
experience had quite prepared her for the way the Children had chewed
through the neo-nazis as if they had just been hapless clothing dummies
instead of men.

	She heard her door open and looked and saw Rei.  "Can't sleep
either?" she asked Rei.

	"Hikari is not well," Rei said.

	Misato sat up groggily.  "She's sick?  Have you called Ritsuko?"

	"The battle," Rei said.  "She is disturbed."

	"Oh, you mean she got shook up by the fighting."

	Rei nodded.

	"I can't blame her.  I'll talk to her about it tomorrow.  When I
can think straight," Misato said.  She rubbed her forehead.

	"Are you well?" Rei asked.

	"Yes, I am," Misato said.  "Just tired, and wishing I knew how
these bastards got in."

	"You fought well," Rei said.  "You would make a good Child."

	"Thank you," Misato said.  "You all fought very well."
Disturbingly well, she thought.  All those deaths...  She shuddered.
"Children your age shouldn't have to see or do that."

	"We are the Children.  It is our nature," Rei said.  "We hunt and
kill."

	"There is more to you than just that," Misato said.

	Rei nodded.  "That is just the easy part."

	Misato wasn't sure if that was reassuring or not.  She yawned.
"We'd best go to sleep."

	Rei turned and left quietly.

	Misato flopped down on her bed and prayed for sleep to come.

	       -*-

	"Well, we found the traitors," Ingrid said.  "Though it may only
be some of them.  The security tapes made it pretty clear who let them in.
Unfortunately, two of them got shot by NERV security during the
firefights, and it looks like Commander Misato probably killed the third
one during that fight the Children got in."

	"Probably?" Fuyutsuki asked.  He, Ingrid, Misato, and Weiss were
all together in one of the briefing rooms later the next day.

	"The ballistics reports makes it clear that the third one got shot
with the kind of rifles they were using, and I was armed with one.
There's some chance that Anna, who also tried shooting with their guns may
have scored the kill, but her shooting was pretty wild," Misato said.

	Weiss nodded.  "Though there may be others who didn't expose
themselves."

	"We will run more security checks on everyone and try to keep an
eye out for anything suspicious," Ingrid said.  "But these three all had
clean records.  This leaves me wondering if this is all part of some spy
game or something, as it's hard for me to believe any of these three are
neo-nazis.  We screened our security forces very thoroughly to avoid
anyone with possible conflicts of loyalty."

	She passed over copies of the three men's folders to Fuyutsuki and
Weiss, who quickly scanned them.

	"Well, we will have to triple-check everyone," Fuyutsuki said.

	"We'll continue our investigation," Misato said.

	"Good, good," Fuyutsuki said, rising.  "I think we've covered
everything we can for now, then."

	He dismissed them, then headed back to his office.  Gendo was
waiting there.  "It's a pity the prophesies typically don't include this
sort of thing," Gendo said.

	"The Stars may command the Great Old Ones and the Outer Gods, but
except for those touched by their power, they can't control the actions of
men," Fuyutsuki replied.  "They sing our foes awake, but it is up to us to
choose how we react to them.  I fear this is some sort of probe from SEELE
to test our strength; they may be suspecting what we are planning.  Or
possibly some intelligence agency is behind this.  I agree with Commander
Lessard that the men who betrayed us are unlikely to have been neo-nazis.
Which means that something else is up."

	"The fact that we have six Children when the prophesies indicate
five bothers me," Gendo said.

	"Yes," Fuyutsuki said.  "Either one will die or one will betray
us."

	"Perhaps Rei will snap and have to be killed," Gendo speculated.

	"A dangerous possibility.  The same may apply to Langley,"
Fuyutsuki says.  "They may well have a fight to the death before all is
done."

	Gendo nodded.  "We will have to prevent that if we can."

	"IF we can."

	"They have grown stronger without their EVAs than we ever
anticipated.  This is going to be very dangerous," Gendo said.

	"I know.  But all we can do is to keep dancing as fast as we can,
and hope that it is enough and that our plan is still viable.  And if it
is not, we will have to find another way."

	"If there is one."

	"If we fail, at least we will have done what we could to prevent
our world becoming like so many others.  We have no choice but to continue
steering into the storm and making of it what we can."

	"We will triumph or perish," Gendo said, then got up.  "I probably
should go and continue working on staving off my own destruction now."

	"I will protect you as best I am able, but there is only so much I
can do," Fuyutsuki said.

	"I know," Gendo said.  "Just do the best you can, old friend."

	"I will," Fuyutuski said.  "Good luck."

	"Thank you."

	Gendo exited, leaving Fuyutsuki to his thoughts.

	       -*-

	Asuka soared through the night on wings of flame.  She wasn't
supposed to leave the base, but she needed to be alone for a while to
think, so she flew on down to the shores of the Rhine as the sky gradually
lightened.  Dawn was coming.  The shadows drew in a little closer as she
dispelled her wings.

	The rock she always liked to sit on was there; it wasn't much of a
view, as there was nothing but tangled forest on the other side of the
river.  There had been the remains of a town there once, when she was
little, but NERV had bought up the mostly abandoned land, and let the
forest grow over the remains, part of creating an uninhabited security
zone around the base, possible only because so many people had died after
Second Impact.

	There were names carved in the rock; she wondered again who Hans
and Olga had been, or whether the Baum children had ever come back.  She
traced them with her hand, as she always did, then sat down on the rock,
picking up the small rocks which littered the narrow strip of 'beach', and
began skipping them across the water.

	The night was cold, but she couldn't feel it.  She couldn't feel
anything; she felt numb.  The faces of the dead floated before her, burned
into her mind by the flames with which she had killed them.  Slaying them
had felt wonderful, even though they were so weak she didn't get any
meaningful benefit from them.  I've killed people, she thought.  Other
human beings.  And I liked it.

	She began to cry, her emotions finally breaking out.  Her
teardrops fell to the ground, and became tiny little people, the people
she remembered killing.  They fled her presence.

	My own tears are scared of me, she thought, crying harder.  What
am I becoming?  What kind of horror am I?  I'm a murderer.  I ought to
die, Asuka thought.

	The stars above seemed cold and hard, pinpricks of light in an
uncaring dark sky.  The only sounds was the lapping of the Rhine against
its banks and the sound of her own sobbing.

	And then there was a beating of wings, and she spun warily to
stare up at the sky.  For a moment, she thought it was an angel, but then
she saw it was only Shinji, settling down to the earth beside her.  He
stepped forward and silently embraced her, and she began to sob onto his
shoulder.

	"Shinji, Shinji, Shinji," Asuka mumbled.  "What's happening to us?
How could we do that?  It was horrible."

	"I know," he said softly.  "I know."  He held her with one arm,
while his other hand came up and began to stroke her hair.  "I can see
them, Asuka.  I can see their faces."

	"Me too," she said through her tears.

	For a while, they held each other, while Asuka cried.  Shinji
began to cry as well now, and the night echoed with their sorrow.

	Finally, their tears stopped, and they sat down on the rock
together, watching the Rhine flow by, holding hands and listening to the
sounds of the night.  After a long silence, Asuka asked, "How did you know
I was here?"

	For a moment, Shinji was silent, and then he reached down and
gently tapped the ground.  A tiny spider ran out of the grass and crawled
up onto his hand, which he raised up close to Asuka's face.  "He told me,"
Shinji said softly.  "He knew I would want to know."

	"You can..." Asuka began to ask.

	"Yes," Shinji said softly.  "Snakes too."  He tapped the ground
again, and a little grass snake slithered out of the grass, and crawled up
his arm.  It crawled up his arm, then over to where he held Asuka's hand.
Asuka stared at it as it crawled over to her arm, and tied itself round
her wrist like a bracelet.  She reached down with her other hand and
stroked it gently.

	"It's kind of scary, sometimes," Shinji said.  "But also kind of
neat."  He concentrated for several minutes, and then several spiders
crawled out of the grass and up the nearby tree.  They began to spin a
web, faster and faster.  It glistened in the moonlight, slowly taking
shape.  Asuka could make out the heart first, and then his name spelled
out in clumsy kanji, while her name appeared in equally clumsy roman
letters.

	"That's very sweet," Asuka said, smiling a little.

	"Thank you," Shinji replied, blushing just a bit.

	"Except it's 'Langley' not 'Langely', Shinji-kun," Asuka said,
pointing.

	Shinji sighed.  "I'm sorry."

	"It's the thought that counts," Asuka said, then leaned over and
kissed him on the cheek.  "Thank you for coming out here, Shinji.  I feel
better now."

	"Me too.  I...we did what we had to do," Shinji said.  "I feel
terrible about it, but we really didn't have a choice.  They had...they
had to be stopped, right?"

	"Right," Asuka said.  "We didn't have a choice.  Really.  They
invaded our base and wanted to use us to fight for their madness instead
of against the Angels.  And they had...they had Katsuragi-san."

	Shinji's hands clenched into fists for a moment.  "I don't know
what I would have done if they'd hurt her."

	"Or killed her," Asuka said.  "I would have destroyed them."  Her
voice was fierce, then it flagged.  "Well, destroyed them more."  She
sighed.  "We probably ought to go back to bed."

	Shinji nodded.  They stood, and formed wings, and rose into the
sky as the sun began to peek through the trees on the eastern shore of the
Rhine.  Soon, there was nothing left to show they had been there but a
heart-shaped web glimmering in the sunlight, and a few burnt plants, and a
faint trail of smoke that blew off across the Rhine.







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