There was a giant monster stomping through a city like it owned it. The military had thrown everything at it, including a dozen or so kitchen sinks, and there it was, undamaged, uncaring and going about what it had been doing before the attacks even started. Nothing seemed to be able to stop this behemoth.
And then it rose out of the ground. A machine of roughly equal size. Purple, powerful, progressing forward step by step as the monster watched in eager anticipation. Each step the machine made grew closer, closer… Then its legs buckled, and it tumbled to the ground with a terrible clatter that surely would have deafened anyone standing too close. If the pilot for that thing wasn’t insulated from such matters, they would’ve become even more useless than they already were. Still. That would’ve hurt like hell whatever happened.
The monster lumbered forward at a much quicker pace than the robot, then reached a hand down as if to help its fellow giant to its feet. In this particular instance, help was granted by hauling the robot above the ground and slamming what must amount to the bones of its own arms into the robot’s head before using same to send it flying a short distance away.
That’s how you can tell it really hated that robot. I mean, how often does any person just up and use their dislocate parts of their own skeleton just to use the bone to beat something’s brains out? Never. And if there’s video evidence to the contrary, please do not share it.
All seemed lost for the robot. The final line of defence humanity had from the monster. But then something strange happened as the monster went in for the finishing blow. It got up to its feet and dashed forward, almost crashing into the monster’s forcefield in the process. The robot reached its hands out as though attempting to tear between a paper wall, and the energies given off by the colliding force fields became terrifyingly visible. Almost like a glimpse into the afterlife. Before long the robot had torn through and began to pound its mighty fists against the monster’s head, blocking every incoming assault and retaliating with its own. Before long the monster appeared to have given up the fight, and leaped forward to wrap itself around the robot. Moments later there was a giant cross-shaped explosion… And for a long minute it seemed like the robot was dead before it began to march on back towards where it had initially risen from the ground. Tall. Proud. Unscathed. Unharmed. Confident.
The recording ended, and Asuka Langley Soryu adjusted the glasses on her forehead. She didn’t need them or anything like that. She just wore them because, hell, they made her look and feel smart. She stretched out and stood, then reached for the file on the table next to her. From within she pulled out a series of pictures. Various angles, showing pictures of the same person. A boy. More importantly, the pilot of Unit 01.
“Not bad,” she said, glancing over each in turn. Within a few seconds she had a full three-dimensional image of him in her mind. “Kinda cute in an innocent way. Now for the psychological report. Let’s see… Avoids confrontations whenever possible. His natural innocence appears to draw women of all ages towards him, and he appears to reluctantly allow them to have frequent sex.”
Asuka stopped there, and scratched her head in a rare moment of confusion. That… made absolutely no sense. At all. With a blink she drew upon her perfect recollection and had his face right in front of her, and she analysed it a bit more carefully this time. Hmm…
“It’s an act,” she said. “Gotta be an act of some sort. Ha! Even got me for a moment!” With a hearty chuckle, she scanned the paper once again and was amazed that the supposedly world-class psychiatrist employed to write this report could possibly miss something so obvious. The boy was a raging pervert of the highest calibre, and was simply seducing his way into a girl’s panties by feigning behaviour designed to appeal to them. Honestly, it was staring them in the face! How could they possibly fail to spot it? Well, never mind that for the time being, she should also probably be wondering how the supposedly high-tech security system designed with the deepest of deep pockets had been hacked by her in the time it took her to figure out a hundred quadratic equations. No, no, don’t be silly. Two hundred quadratic equations.
Asuka stood up and looked around her apartment. It was, of course, covered in surveillance devices… Which she’d reprogrammed to show her watching television. Did that one the first day she moved in here. If some old perverts wanted to watch her in her private time, they’d have to work a bit harder for it!
Speaking of perverts… This boy interested her. How had he managed to defeat that Angel when he’d barely been able to walk minutes before? His first time even inside a plug! Without a plugsuit! Mein Gott, were they trying to get him killed? No, no, more like they couldn’t find a suitable replacement in time and went with their best shot. A one-in-a-million chance is still better than a zero-in-a-million chance by an infinite margin. And it paid off. The Angel died. Or rather, it killed itself in a suicide attack when it knew it was about to die anyway. Except… How likely is it that this Shinji Ikari spontaneously figured out how to pilot that effectively in about thirty seconds when he’d been that clumsy beforehand? It didn’t add up. There was no way that could happen, or at least the odds were so much against that it might as well have been impossible. Asuka knew all about the possibility that he had simply undergone an adrenaline rush when he realised he was about to die, but that didn’t explain the precision or the control, only the brutality.
Questions needed answering. There was not enough data to determine the truth. So be it. She stalked over to a nearby full-length mirror and stared at her reflection. Okay. So. He has an achilles heel to take advantage of.
“So what’s it going to be?” she asked, placing her glasses on the desk next to the mirror. Asuka ruffled her red hair and drew in a sharp intake of breath. Then she blinked thrice in rapid succession, and shifted her body language in a way that was both subtle and profound. “Should I, like, play the part of the ditzy bimbo to make him lower his guard?” Asuka giggled quite uncharacteristically if convincingly. To add to the effect she wrung her hands in a very girlish manner that quite by coincidence happened to press her breasts together as well.
“No, no,” she sighed, dropping the act. “It might make them question my abilities as a pilot… Or raise too many questions about why I’m behaving like that with people who know me. Like Misato. Fine, fine! Let’s go a different way!” The glasses were retrieved from where they lay, and she slipped them on. In a second, her shoulders hunched and she tucked in her chin, peering at her reflection with a seemingly innocent expression while pushing her index fingers against one another. “Perhaps I - I should become a shy wallflower, drawn to his i-innocence and seduced without r-realising what sort of p-person he really was!”
Another sigh, and the glasses were returned to where they had been. “No, same damn problem! Anyone that knows anything about me knows I’m allergic to shy behaviour, and there’s no way I could keep that act up without raising suspicion! Let’s see. There has to be… Got it!”
Asuka coughed into her hand, and took several deep breaths with her eyes closed. Alright. This would work fine. Just draw upon it from deep within, rest those hands defiantly upon your hips, let the fiery passion into your eyes, and - “Hey idiot! Don’t get the wrong idea or anything! I didn’t dress like this because I like you or anything, I just thought it looked good! Got it!”
Oh yeah, that was the stuff. If there was anything she could use to twirl this new pilot right around her little finger, it would be the tsundere approach. Well. Not that she was particularly in any rush or anything. Unit 02 wasn’t ready yet. Wouldn’t be for a fair bit. She had plenty of time to figure out more about Shinji. Then she’d wrap him up right around her finger, and show them all who the real genius was!
Asuka flopped back onto her couch, did a little mental arithmetic to figure out where the surveillance was in its programming, then arranged everything just so to ensure no suspicious continuity errors arose when she turned it off. After all, leaving it like that the entire time was not entirely helpful to her. Just when she really wanted to get on with her own thing. In the meantime… Oh, in the meantime! She was going to have a good long think about this peculiar turn of events.
- Meanwhile, Shinji moves in with Misato and makes another move entirely.
- What does Asuka get up to when not being a devious genius in her own apartment?
- Gendo discusses the Angel situation with a certain shadowy group.
- Someone inadvertently orders Rei to get better, and she immediately does so. Turns out she’ll even obey orders that are impossible.
- Something else
Mmm, cute but quiet :)
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