Neon Genesis Evangelion IF: Zeruel's Question, and My Answer... - Asuka arrives in Japan, the day the walls of the heart break down.

The air in the Geofront was filled with the same artificial chill as always today. Pipes running across the ceiling, polished metal floors, and the constant echo of alarms reverberating through it all. The NERV headquarters hangar was as quiet as a massive gravestone, yet there was a tension in the air—the feeling of something about to happen. Ikari Shinji stood in a corner of it. His black hair still had a slight bedhead as usual, and his deep brown eyes wandered restlessly across the floor. The shoulders of the fourteen-year-old boy were still a bit narrow. He wasn't wearing the pilot suit from yesterday—just a single white shirt. He had been brought here from Misato's apartment, practically pulled along by her hand. (*...Why am I here?*) At the edge of Shinji's vision, the colors of emotions flickered and swayed. Ever since he had fused with Zeruel, he could see them. The maintenance crew's anxiety was a murky yellow, the technicians' curiosity a pale blue-green. They passed through walls, floors, and people's bodies alike, flowing directly into Shinji's mind. (*As I thought... everyone sees me as...*) He was always at the center of their gazes. The boy who fused with an Angel. A sample. Something disgusting. Those colors pressed into him painfully. That was when it happened. The hangar's massive shutter began to open slowly. A low grinding sound. Light from outside streamed in as a pure white band across the floor. The air trembled slightly. "I'm baaack! Japan, it's been a while!" That voice rang out far too brightly for the silent space. What emerged from the light was a girl. Her light brown hair was tied up in two tails, the ends flicking outward. Her blue eyes sparkled as if embedded with fragments of stars. She stood with her chest proudly out, one hand on her hip. In the cold gray of the hangar, she alone seemed to carry the summer sun on her back. Souryuu Asuka Langley. The Second Child, who had just arrived in Tokyo-3 moments ago from the German branch, along with Evangelion Unit-02. "So, you're that idiot Shinji I've heard about?" Asuka spotted Shinji and walked straight toward him. Around her swirled a dazzling golden emotion called confidence. It was so intense that Shinji instinctively narrowed his eyes. "Eh... ah, I'm..." "I'm Souryuu Asuka Langley! Pilot of Eva Unit-02! Nice to meet you!" Asuka thrust her index finger at him. The gold around her flared even brighter for a moment. It looked like stage lighting, drawing the attention of every maintenance worker in the area. Shinji gave a small bow. "...Ikari Shinji..." That was the moment. Asuka's golden emotion suddenly began to cloud, like paint dropped into water. From beneath the sparkling color of confidence, another color began to seep out. A dark, murky color, close to red. Rejection. And from even deeper, a thicker, darker color of fear swirled. (*What... is this color?*) Shinji felt his throat tighten. Asuka stared intently at his face. "Hmm. So you really did fuse with an Angel?" Her tone had lost all the brightness from moments before. "...Well, I'd heard the rumors, but you've got quite the face. So, with those eyes, you can see people's hearts?" Shinji bit his lip hard. "...Feelings, as colors..." "Oh, really." Asuka cut him off. The color of her emotions grew murkier still. "So, what did you see in me just now? You can see it, right? What color my heart is!" Shinji couldn't answer. He had seen it. The color of her emotions, as clearly as if he could touch it. Rejection, hatred, and... deeper still, a dark, cold blue, almost black. It gaped open at the center of her heart like a bottomless swamp. It wasn't simple disgust. It was the fear of facing the weakness inside herself that she refused to acknowledge. "Hey, don't just stand there silent—say something!" Asuka's voice echoed through the hangar. The maintenance workers' hands stopped all at once. Their gazes stabbed into the two of them. "It's disgusting! Being stared at by those freakish eyes that fused with an Angel! Do you get it? It's the same as being stripped naked in front of everyone here! You're a monster!" Monster. That word carved deep into Shinji's chest. (*...I know. I know better than anyone how disgusting this is.*) But Shinji couldn't look away. Asuka's emotional colors were shaking so violently that he felt like he could hear a small voice crying out from deep within them. "...I'm sorry..." Shinji squeezed out just those words. Asuka laughed through her nose. "If you're going to apologize, why don't you just throw those eyes away? ...Forget it. Being around you is going to make me crazy too." With that, Asuka spun on her heel. Her twin tails swayed wildly, like the tail of an angry cat. The hangar air froze completely. The maintenance workers awkwardly averted their eyes, and the technicians resumed their work as if they had seen nothing. Shinji was left alone, standing there. (*...A monster, huh.*) The air around him grew heavy and sank. --- Not long after, Shinji found himself in a waiting room at NERV headquarters. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all a bleak beige. In the center sat an impersonal table and a few folding chairs. There were no windows, and only the low hum of the air conditioning filled the silence. Misato stood beside Shinji. Her long black hair was neatly tied back today, and in her large brown eyes there was fatigue—and more than that, a strong light of determination. "Shinji-kun, are you okay after what happened back there?" Misato gently placed a hand on Shinji's shoulder. "...Yes. I'm fine..." Shinji answered with his head down. (*I'm not fine. I'm not fine at all.*) Asuka's words from earlier kept repeating in his head. Monster. Disgusting. Along with those words, the color of her emotions flashed back. "...Asuka just arrived from the German branch, and she's wound up about a lot of things. That girl is actually quite sensitive, you know." Misato spoke as if to comfort him. But Shinji could see the color of Misato's emotions too. In her heart, alongside worry for Asuka, a complicated, sediment-like color had settled. (*Misato-san understands too. That Asuka wasn't just saying those things to be mean.*) "...I see." Shinji nodded slightly. At that moment, the waiting room door burst open. "...What are you two whispering about?" It was Asuka. She glared at Shinji and Misato in turn. "Asuka, perfect timing. I wanted you to have a proper talk with Shinji-kun—" "There's nothing to talk about! I didn't come here for you—I just had something to confirm with this idiot Shinji!" Asuka marched into the room and stood directly in front of Shinji. "Hey, earlier—you saw inside my heart, didn't you?" Shinji's heart skipped a beat. "You saw it, didn't you! Something about me, without permission! Tell me right now, clearly, what it was!" Asuka's emotional colors blazed like fire. The red of anger. But at its root, the purple of humiliation and the black of fear at being seen through were tightly entwined. Shinji felt his heart pounding like a war drum. (*There's no way I can say it. Something that deep inside her...*) "...I..." "I said tell me clearly! You—you idiot Shinji!" Asuka's voice slammed through the room. Misato tried to step between them. "Asuka, calm down. Blaming Shinji-kun won't—" "Shut up! This has nothing to do with you! This is between me and him!" Asuka cut off even Misato's words. And then she glared at Shinji head-on once more. "Come on, say it. What did you see in me?" At that moment, something inside Shinji snapped. He didn't even know why he said what he did. It was just that the color of Asuka's emotions was so painfully vivid, and the voice crying for help from deep within her made his body react on its own. "...Aren't you just lonely?" The words slipped out of his mouth. "Aren't you just wanting someone to need you...? That's what I saw." For an instant, time froze in that room. Asuka's emotional colors burst into pure white. Not anger, not hatred. Just white—a blank space, as if everything had been erased. And in the next moment, that white was dyed a dark, bloody red unlike anything he had ever seen. "...You..." Asuka's voice trembled. Both her hands were shaking minutely. "Who do you think you are...! What could you possibly understand about me...! Someone like you—what could you know about me!" Her emotional colors raged like a stormy sea, no longer anything but a beast's roar. Within it, Shinji saw it. The color of memories from her childhood. A little girl clinging to the warmth of her mother's hand. And the moment that hand pulled away. *I'm a child nobody wants.* *Nobody needs me.* That despair swirled at the center of her heart, black and deep as the ocean floor. "Don't mess with me... don't you dare...! Someone like you—an Angel monster—could never understand my feelings...!" Asuka stomped hard on the floor. "Fine then! If you're going to talk like that, then try stopping me with that power of yours!" With that shout, Asuka turned her back on Shinji and fled from the room. --- A tense alarm rang through NERV headquarters. *"Unit-02, unauthorized activation! Unit-02, unauthorized activation! Pilot: Souryuu Asuka Langley!"* The atmosphere in the command center changed instantly. On the monitor map, a massive red shadow moving in the hangar was displayed as a thick line. "...That idiot! What is she doing!?" Misato's face twisted at the image of Unit-02 on the main screen. Her emotional colors flickered violently with anger and urgency. "It's still under maintenance! Is she seriously planning to run a mock battle? She's calling Shinji-kun out!?" That was exactly right. Asuka had activated Eva Unit-02 on pure emotion. The internal battery wasn't full. The umbilical cable wasn't even connected yet. Even so, she didn't stop. "Idiot Shinji! Get out here already! I'm going to smash that weird eye power of yours to pieces!" Unit-02's red armor reflected the hangar lights, gleaming ominously. --- Shinji was running. Chasing desperately after Misato, whose heels echoed down the cold corridor. "Misato-san, what should I do..." "There's no 'what should I do'! We stop her! You, in Unit-01! NERV can't officially approve this, but if we leave her alone, she'll destroy herself along with Unit-02!" Misato answered without looking back. "But... this happened because I saw into Asuka's heart. If I go out there, it'll only get worse...!" "This is no time to say that!? If you don't go, that girl is definitely done for! So go out there and face her head-on! Use those eyes of yours to really see her heart one more time!" Shinji saw the color of strong will flickering from Misato's back. She believed in him. (*This time, I won't look away. I'll face this power of mine properly.*) Shinji clenched his jaw. --- LCL filled the cockpit of Eva Unit-01. That unique sensation of his body sinking into the lukewarm liquid, his lungs filling with it. Shinji placed his hands on the console. *"Sync ratio: 48%. Rising."* The mechanical voice sounded in his ears. The outside scenery appeared hazily through the A.T. Field. Unit-02 was in front of him. It stood in a corner of the hangar, having knocked over a maintenance crane. Its stance was like a wild beast stalking its prey. "So you came, idiot Shinji! Now I can finally crush those twisted eyes of yours!" Asuka's voice burst through the radio into Shinji's ears. Her sync ratio was fluctuating wildly. Her emotions were on the verge of losing control. *"Katsuragi-san, please stop this! Unit-02's psychological contamination rate is reaching dangerous levels! At this rate, Asuka's mind will—"* The scream of the operator behind them squeezed Shinji's heart even tighter. "Asuka! Stop! You'll break like I did!" "Shut up! What could you possibly understand about me!? Huh!? I don't want to be l

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Episode 4

Name: Neon Genesis Evangelion IF: Zeruel's Question, and My Answer...
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