Neon Exodus Evangelion, by Eyrie Productions Unlimited Options

[Dr. O]

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Neon Index Evangelion: no body fat for insulation, yo

"Awright, the very best mock on Project AFTER is finally back in busineOH FOR FUCK'S SAKE THIS SHIT AGAIN." - Al_Cone

"This is the worst thing this board has ever seen and this needs to be immortalized." - Waffleman

Season 1: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Annotations
Season 2: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Annotations
Intermission: 3:0 - The Big Show | Bonus Theater
Season 3: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Annotations
The Motion Picture: Apotheosis Now | Annotations (goes on for several pages; I hope you've cleared your schedule)

Side stories: All Those Stars | NXE 2035 | An Encounter at Shamrock House
Eyrie Productions forum roundup: 1 | 2: Sailor Moon's incredibly nuanced subtext | 3: "Where's Ritsuko from, Baton Rouge?"

Neon Antific Exodus (they're scattered around the posts some, so do a search): 1 | 2: Exodus Harder | 3: Leonardo DiCaprio | 4: Jumping the Shark | 5: Death and Redeath | Antipasto Now, by Al_Cone

Neon Exodus Evangelion (the other one) mini-mock: 1 | 2
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Yes, it's another Evangelion fanfic. This one is Neon Exodus Evangelion, the work of a group of badfic crossover writers known as Eyrie Productions Unlimited, or EPU. I changed the formatting some, as the original fic was a .txt file. No, I clearly have not learned my lesson from Garden of Eva, thank you very much.

Fic's in yellow, because I'm feeling like a rebel. Like DJ Croft.

/* Genesis "Land of Confusion" _Invisible Touch_ */

EYRIE PRODUCTIONS, UNLIMITED
presents

NEON EXODUS EVANGELION

I guess he has no idea why it was called Neon Genesis Evangelion, then. On the other hand, this does raise all kind of possibilities for sequel fics.

Personally, I can't wait for Neon Obadiah.

EXODUS 1:1 - ENEMY UNKNOWN


Inspired by NEON GENESIS EVANGELION created by Hideaki Anno, Gainax,
et al.

Most characters designed by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto
(except DJ, who looks like a young David Duchovny)

Haha no way.

Additional material and inspiration cadged from TOMB RAIDER by Core
Design, Ltd., X-COM: UFO DEFENSE and sequels from MPS Labs (whoever
owns them nowadays), and THE X-FILES created by Chris Carter

Oh man.

Best crossover ever, right here.

Written by Benjamin D. Hutchins

Aided and abetted by the Eyrie Productions, Unlimited crew
and special-guest-for-life Phil Moyer

Phil was later arrested for aiding and abetting the creation and dissemination of badfics. He is currently serving twenty years in a federal Supermax prison.

© 1997 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited

I was going to submit this to Baen for publication, but this copyright notice completely thwarted me. Damn you, Benjamin D. Hutchins! Now I have no choice but to respect the legal standing of your bastardization of Evangelion and every '90s sci-fi videogame ever!

"Well," said DJ to himself as he stood at the guard rail and looked down the hill on which the Worcester Airport was situated, "this is a happening city, I can tell from here."

This is going to be fun. I can tell from here.

Sprawled out in the valley below, the city of Worcester lay gray and squat in the afternoon sunlight, muted by an iron overcast that DJ's arriving flight had descended through no more than half an hour ago. There were no sounds of urban bustle coming up from the gray network of streets, no cars moving, no trains running... only the unnatural quiet of an abandoned city. Everyone had been evacuated to shelters; DJ's flight had just barely squeaked by, and now everybody in the airport had gone underground, too.

DJ Croft ain't got no time for no crowds. Let them proles hide from the big bad emergency. DJ Croft is above that shit.

BTW, Worchester is the author's hometown. Just sayin'.

Except DJ. He spent quite enough time underground while exploring ancient ruins with his mother, a renowned explorer-adventurer, and felt no need to do so while in the lap of civilization. So, when the passengers were hustled off the plane, he'd used some of the skills that had been honed by and served him so well on those countless adventures, and taken the first opportunity to slip away. Besides, he was supposed to be meeting someone.

I love this subtle character development. DJ Croft didn't grow up in the lap of luxury; he pried it from the mouth of a fucking lion and then used that fucker's jawbone to waste a whole damn herd of crocodiles. These aren't some wipmy Florida gators, man - I'm talkin' Nile crocs. Big, nasty bastards. But DJ Croft doesn't care. Because he's DJ Croft.

He reached into the front pocket of his shirt and pulled out the photo that had accompanied his acceptance letter. It was a snapshot, and depicted a remarkably attractive woman somewhere in her twenties, dark-haired and cheerful, grinning and waving next to a blue car of a sort DJ couldn't determine from what little of it was visible. And even so, he wasn't motorhead enough to be overly distracted from the woman, comfortably clad in t-shirt and cutoff jeans, by ruminations about what kind of car it was.

DJ Croft doesn't let cars distract him from ogling fine-ass chicks. He's gonna bang them all. Gonna be more fucking goin' on here than in a preschool run by Bleedman.

Across the top of the photo, in a felt-tip scrawl, were the words, "DEREK - I'LL PICK YOU UP AT THE AIRPORT," and a completely unintelligible signature that might have started with a K, and on the other hand, might not have. At the bottom, that same scrawl added, "PS - LOOK AT THIS."

It might've been a K, and this might be a fanfic in which Gendo Ikari is an alien demon. I don't know, man.

DJ wondered, not for the first time, if "look at these" might not be a little more appropriate; then he pocketed the photo and resumed surveying the city. From his vantage point, he could see no particular reason for the state of emergency; just a sleepy little podunk city, not unlike the one nearest the town he'd grown up in, back in England.

A sleepy little podunk happening city.

If such a statement was indeed accurate. After all, he hadn't spent all, or even most, of that time actually -in- England. Moreover, at 14, Derek J. Croft had a lot of growing yet to do, and he'd be the first to admit it. He was a bit short for his age, and not heavily built, though he was wiry, stronger and faster than he looked. From the time he could walk, he had joined his mother in her workouts as well as her adventures; he could crawl through spaces no bigger than an air duct, lift his own admittedly-modest body weight, and run, at a moderate pace, more or less all day.

Fit? He's not just fit. He's the next Mr. Olympia, and he knows it. "Modesty" is not in any dictionary of which DJ Croft is aware, unless it is preceded by "false." Knowing your own limitations is for people who didn't grow up in Aztec ruins.

He was also more alert than his usual expression indicated; the blue eyes he habitually kept half-hooded took in everything, and behind the indifferent expression which was the default for his darkly handsome face - the face his mother said looked so much like his father's - worked the processes of a mind wiser and quicker than its years. Alertness was a good quality to have in the tomb-raiding business, for many reasons. DJ had learned to trust his instincts when they identified a threat.

He's stronger, faster, and smarter than he looks. How are you going to stop him? Oh, you can't. Do you know why? I think you do.

Because he's DJ motherfucking Croft. That's not just casual profanity - it's what he does.

They were identifying one right now. He half-turned to see a long black car slide up to the curb behind him; the front doors opened and a pair of men in black suits and sunglasses got out. DJ was very familiar with this species of suit-wearer: Spookus americanus domesticus, the common G-man. One with salt-and-pepper hair, he'd be the senior. One with short-cropped ginger hair, the junior partner, stuck with driving the car. Even from here he could see their little earplug radios. Beautiful animal, the G-man, though DJ to himself. Lovely plumage.

Do you have a cool job? Do you carry around a gun and engage in international intrigue? Think you got a handle on espionage and protecting the free world? DJ Croft doesn't care. He'll shit all over you and your profession. His mighty sphincter muscles - both stronger and faster than they appear - will spray, no, bury you with a powerful stream of shit and contempt, but mostly shit. It'll be a BROWN THUNDER.

"Derek Croft?" Ginger-hair asked.

"DJ," DJ automatically corrected him.

"Come with us, please."

"Sorry, I'm meeting someone," DJ replied offhandedly, showing nothing but indifference for their intimidating dress and air of authority.

Nothing gets between DJ and his woman. Because the only one who understands him is his woman. And every woman is his woman.

"Mr. Croft," said Salt-and-Pepper. Extra suckup points for that, thought DJ, as the agent continued, "I'm afraid we have to insist. There's a state of emergency on right now; we have orders to escort you to Headquarters."

"Can't do, I'm afraid. Like I said, I'm meeting someone." DJ took out the picture and regarded it momentarily. "Someone I don't want to sod up my first encounter with," he added with a smile, tucking the photo back into his pocket.

How does it feel to get bested by a Brit? Yeah, I bet it stings, don't it, spookus americanus? This is one empire that knows how to strike back with style.

Ginger repressed a sigh that might have humanized him a bit had he let it escape. "We have orders - " he started to repeat.

"Sod your orders," said DJ.

Chim chimminy cheroo scone and crumpets, we shall fight on the lorries, in the boots, in the lifts, we shall never surrender, God save the Queen, white man's burden, sixes and sevens guvnah chimney sweep wanker dear Prince Albert!

"Mr. Croft, given your status as a minor - "

"And a subject of the British crown," added DJ.

And as a personal friend of the King of Great Britain and Ireland. Yeah, that's right, when he's not too busy looting archeological treasures, he's splitting pizza with the King in Buckingham Palace. And do you know who pays? I think you do.

" - and a subject of the British crown, yes," Salt-and-Pepper continued, "we really do not want to be put in a situation where we have to use force."

"Then don't," DJ told him with a shrug, leaning back against the guard rail. G-men don't know how to take it when you fail to be impressed with their authority. It always throws them off-balance.

DJ Croft knows the tricks of the trade and continues to not give a shit about you and your plebe concerns. You care about doing your job? You want things to go down neat and clean, get home safe and on time? Fuck you. Fuck you, asshole. You're in DJ's wheelhouse now. You do what he fuckin' says.

DJ knew all about G-men. His father had been one, in the years before Second Impact. DJ's mother had told him the story hundreds of times. They'd had one night together, coincidentally the night of Second Impact itself, and then he'd disappeared. Later, the government said he'd been killed with his partner in the Great San Andreas Earthquake, but DJ believed otherwise.

When it comes to the United States Government, DJ's father had told Lara Croft that night, trust no one. She had taken his advice to heart, and so had the son he'd never met.

Yeah, that's right. DJ Croft don't get rattled. He's the son of Lara Croft and Fox Mulder. And he's going to fix Asuka Langley-Soryu's many personality defects. With his penis. And then he'll give Rei a personality, just so he can fix it. Shinji? Ain't no time for Shinji in this fic. It's all DJ, all the time.

"We don't have TIME for this," growled Ginger. DJ had figured him for the one who would crack first. He ducked easily under the hand the G-man had meant to clamp on his shoulder, then slipped around the man's outside and faded back behind the corner of the black sedan.

"I'm not in your bloody country ten minutes and you're already manhandling me. The British consulate is definitely going to hear about this," DJ observed.

He then raised his pinkie, hoisted the Union Jack, and proceeded to pummel the recalcitrant colonials into submission with indignation, tea, and the mercantilist system. What kind of indignation? The British kind. What kind of British? The best kind. The DJ kind.

"Come -back- here, you little - "

"And now I'm to be subjected to foul language as well? Your mother must be very proud of you," DJ chided. He knew he was baiting the man, and that it probably wasn't a wise thing to do, but the hell of it was, sometimes, he just couldn't help it. Another trait his mother always said he got from his father, although DJ had seen her do it more than her fair share of times.

Nevertheless, Ginger was starting to look downright ticked off. DJ decided it was time to get moving.

/* Siobhan Lynch "Stayin' Alive" _Supercop_ */

DJ's bringing disco back. Not even the death of a genre can stop him from making it cool.

"Well, it's been fun, gentlemen," he said, dashing back to the airport terminal building. "Ta!" he called after him as he sprinted through the doors into the deserted baggage concourse.

TTFN!

That the airport was evacuated was both good and bad: good in that there were no crowds to get in the way and airport security officers to help the G-men, bad in that there were no crowds to hide in and airport security officers to misdirect into hindering the G-men. Still, one makes do. DJ hopped a Smarte Carte, using it as an impromptu skateboard to pick up some extra speed across the baggage area, then ditching it and banging through a fire door.

You know he's cool because he has a skateboard. He's so cool, he just bangs right through those fire doors. He bangs through them bitches like they was Evangelion characters.

This was more like it. The modest-sized airport was built, as DJ would find out most things in Worcester-3 are, into the side of a hill (actually, a sizable plateau, big enough for the runways), and below the hilltop terminal building was a two-level parking garage which had entrances and exits from the two-switchbacked access road running up the hillface from the city. Assuming the two G-men didn't have backup, they couldn't chase him and cover all the exits; it was only a matter of avoiding them in the garage, and a little bit of luck in picking the right exit, and he could elude them and get into the city proper.

What he was going to do then, he had no idea, but what the hell... it beat being dragged away to who knows where by the Men in Black.

Does he care that these guys might have been sent to pick him up and take him where he's supposed to go? No, because they're just agents of the government of the United States. Now, if they had a nice pair of titties, he might be more inclined to stop and listen. But they don't, so tough shit. For them.

Bursting out of the stairwell on the first garage level, DJ immediately ducked between two parked cars and crouchwalked

DJ Croft has mastered the ancient technique of the crouchwalk.

along between them, not letting his head show above the top lines of the cars if he could help it. Flattening himself against the cool concrete of the corner wall, he stole a look out into the mostly-empty garage. The coast looked clear on the far exit, and the sounds coming from the stairwell he had just exited meant at least one agent was not far from catching up to him.

Oh no I hope DJ makes it out. Otherwise he might have to...

Uh...

I don't know but those guys are wearing black suits. They must be bad guys.

Nothing for it, then. He took a couple of deep breaths, getting as much oxygen as possible into his blood, and then dashed flat-out for the exit. Behind him, the stairwell door banged open and the voice of Ginger bellowed, "STOP!" DJ prudently ignored that instruction and charged out of the garage at full speed, flashing past a startled Salt-and-Pepper and the black sedan before vaulting the guardrail and proceeding to sprint down the grassy hillside. The effort here was actually in not going -too- fast and tumbling out of control; if he did that he would fetch up painfully against the guard rail down below where the airport access road switched back and be an easy pickup. He stole a glance over his shoulder; neither G-man had decided to pursue him directly. Instead they were piling into their car and trying to beat him to the switchback.

DJ smiled. They weren't going to make it. He hopped the rail, pelted across the pavement, hopped the opposite rail and plunged down the hill again, hearing the screech of tires a good five seconds behind him. That was silly of them; there was one more switchback to go, and if they had kept the pedal down they might have beaten him to it.

The only person allowed to outsmart DJ Croft is none other than DJ Croft. But could DJ outsmart himself so much that he could not possibly outsmart himself?

Now there's a paradox.

It was about then that the other black car cut him off. DJ was going way too fast to stop, so he trusted the reflexes he'd honed in countless workouts and adventures at his mother's side and vaulted it, sliding across the hood and coming down in a neat tumble before continuing toward the guard rail.

One of the men in the second car was too fast for him, though; just as he jumped for the rail, a hand caught his collar and brought him up short. Fine, then, if they wanted to be that way about it. DJ whirled, his left hand tearing something from under his jacket, and the startled G-man who had DJ by the collar and his sidearm in his other hand covering the boy suddenly found himself looking down the barrel of another pistol - smaller, but no less deadly for that.

OK, so he got through airport security with a gun. Twice. Maybe his rectal lining is shielded against x-rays, I don't know.

They remained there, frozen, for several seconds, held at arm's length, locked in each other's sights - your classic John Woo standoff (cf. "The Killer").

You're killing me, man. This is the funniest thing.

Then the G-man found his voice: "Where the hell'd you get that, kid?"

"Brought it with me."

"Through security?"

"A guy's got to have some secrets."

Evangelion has, like, the AT Field.
DJ Croft don't care for that weak shit. He has the Plot Contrivance Field.

G-man and erstwhile mini-fugitive shared a quiet grin of mutual understanding.

The sound of another car pulling up broke the tableau. Looking past the man who still held down on him, DJ saw the new car. It was the blue one from the photo, and the woman getting out was the woman who belonged to it, though she was differently dressed; she had on a brown dress that might have been a uniform and a jacket that was at least part of one.

It might have been a uniform.
Or it might have been the third-person omniscient narration going on the fritz.

It's hard to tell sometimes.

"Well," said the woman, smiling. "Nobody told me you came with such interesting accessories. I'm Misato Katsuragi."

Oh hey an Evangelion character. I wonder how long it will take for her to be totally dominated by DJ Croft.

"Ah, is -that- your name," replied DJ, not looking away from the G-man. "I couldn't read your signature at all. DJ Croft. Mind telling me what the hell's going on here?"

"Hop in," said Misato, indicating her car. "I'll explain on the way. Let him go, Stanfield."

"On the way where?" asked DJ as the G-man released him, but kept him covered.

"I'll explain that on the way too."

DJ Croft got an acceptance letter telling him to go to... some place he doesn't know. Maybe it just said "America." Or, as the British call it, Yankeeland. Well, they use a few more u's in their spelling, but you get the idea.

DJ sighed. "I s'pose if I don't you'll have these fellows make me."

"No," said Misato cheerfully. "I'll make you myself."

DJ smiled. "You're making me feel at home already." Putting his gun away and sketching a salute to a somewhat amused-looking Stanfield, he walked over to the blue car, tossed his backpack into the back seat, and plopped down in the driver's seat before realizing his mistake and sliding over. "Sorry. Forgot it wouldn't be a proper
car."

Some people might be mildly embarrassed that they forgot which side of the car they should be sitting in. Or they might arrogantly assert that an entire country is wrong and their personal way of doing it is "proper."

DJ Croft is such a fucking jackass.

Um, I mean, he is so cool that the driving laws which some four-fifths of humanity follow are completely invalidated by his personal preferences. No, really. He gets a motorcycle later on, even though he doesn't have a license.

"What the hell's wrong with my car?" Misato demanded, irked.

"Nothing, nothing," DJ replied. "It's just I forgot you Americans drive on the other side."

"Oh." She seemed mollified by that, and took her place behind the wheel. "I just got it fixed."

"It's lovely," DJ said.

It is funny because he is also referring to her fine body. Probably. Remember, cars are a secondary concern to DJ whenever someone fuckable is nearby.

As they drove, Misato seemed lost in thought for a moment, then turned to DJ and asked, "Do you have your acceptance letter?"

At a loss as to just why she would want that, since it was obvious to him now that she didn't work for any school for gifted youth, DJ nevertheless retrieved the appropriate document and handed it over. Misato studied it, hmm'd thoughtfully, then stuck it into the pocket on the cover of a binder and handed the whole thing to DJ.

While driving.

NERV, said the cover, in large, not-particularly-friendly letters, and PERSONNEL HANDBOOK below.

"NERV!" DJ declared, turning the binder over in his hand. "Are you putting me on? NERV, the special military arm of SEELE? That NERV?"

"You've heard of SEELE?"

"'Course I've heard of SEELE," he said, in the kind of tone most teenage boys would say, "'Course I've heard of the Thrashing Gnoberts."

Yeah. Never mind that the named characters who know about it can be counted on one hand. Which is convenient, because most of this story was written with one hand.

"That's interesting, considering it's a secret organization."

It's so secret, Misato didn't even know it existed until she came across all that info Kaji had on it.

"Sure, as secret as Majestic 12," replied DJ. The reference went clear over Misato's head, but she decided not to question it. DJ leafed through the manual. "They made NERV public but thought they could keep its parent organization a secret? Idiots. Why'd you give me this?"

"You'll need it. You see, you'll be working for us."

"I will. Gee, and here I haven't even interviewed yet."

"Sure you have. Remember the tests you took last year?"

They were tests to determine his potential aptitude as an Evangelion pilot. Turns out that piloting ability is directly tied to being a smarmy asshole.

That's why Shinji was so bad at it and everyone expected Asuka to be the best pilot.

"I knew it!" DJ said, slapping the armrest built into his side's door. "The whole thing's a scam. But what the hell d'you need -me- for?" he asked, running a hand over his thick black thatch of hair. "I mean, granted, I -am- the world's most handsome and sophisticated fourteen-year-old boy, but what good is that to NERV?"



Misato suppressed a snicker. "You'll see," she replied.

"Oh, joy," replied DJ. "A surprise. I love surprises."

Almost as much as I love sarcasm. Hooray.

They topped the next hill, and the city spread itself out before them again; as it did, DJ noticed something that hadn't been there before.

A good fanfic.

"What the hell is that?!"

On the hills on the other side of the city, perhaps four or five miles distant, a group of combat aerodynes were being torn to bits by...

... well, to DJ, it looked most like Hedorah, the Smog Monster, from "Godzilla vs." same - a vaguely humanoid black shape two or three hundred feet high, with a definite form and yet strangely amorphous, gangly and entirely otherworldly.

This is how you introduce an otherworldly creature of immense power.

By comparing it to an obscure Godzilla villain.

"It's an Angel," Misato replied, all but standing on the car's accelerator.

"Well, bugger all," said DJ. "They're back. I knew they would be, sooner or later."

Oh man, now he knows about the Angels. This is going to be fantastic.

Misato would have liked to have asked DJ what the hell he meant by that, but she was too busy driving the car at ridiculous speeds into a tunnel.

DJ had seen a lot of surprising things already that day, but if he had to look back on it and pick the most surprising one, he figured the car coming out of that tunnel into an underground cavern the size of a small state was probably the biggest one, just edging out the sight of Hedorah the Smog Monster destroying a platoon of aerodynes.

I did not get that reference a couple paragraphs ago.

But now it is totally hilarious.

They were on a massively elevated freeway, soaring down from the lofty heights of the cavern ceiling toward a city sprawled along the shores of a massive lake almost a mile below. Above, the city of Worcester-3 hung suspended from the ceiling, looking absurdly inverted. DJ counted himself fortunate that he was not acrophobic.

Get this, guys.

According to TV Tropes, DJ's fears will, later on, result in some great character development that will make him all sympathetic and not a Mary Sue and stuff. I was going to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Then I read the fetish fuel stuff on Queen's Blade.

"This's a funny place for a Geo-Front," he observed.

"This is Worcester-3," replied Misato. "Our fortress against the Angels."

"Slick," replied DJ. They fell silent as Misato drove and DJ admired the view.

Ahahahahahakillmenow.

The NERV manual went completely unread as DJ marveled at everything around him. He didn't even care that Misato had gotten them both completely lost in the maze of escalators, elevators, corridors and passageways that made up the labyrinthian pyramidal building with the rather baroque name "Central Dogma"; he was much too busy being impressed with the architecture.

All those easy-to-draw white halls inside of NERV sure are impressive.

In one of the elevators, though, he was distracted from the architecture as they were joined by another woman. This one was about Misato's height and age, with shorter blonde hair and a small mole under one blue eye. Like Misato, she was a very attractive woman, though they accomplished that end in completely different ways. The new arrival (Dr. Ritsuko Akagi, according to the name tag clipped to her lab coat) had a rather more arctic sort of beauty, and dressed to match it. She had on dark stockings, a black leather miniskirt and a tight blue zip-up top with a ring on the throat-high zip tab that DJ found almost irresistibly enticing, topped off incongruously with a white lab coat.

If you are thinking "DJ is going to deep dick her."

Then congratulations, you have solved the mystery of Neon Exodus. You can hand in your secret decoder ring now.

Neither woman, it occurred to DJ, looked even vaguely Japanese, but if he had been the sort of person who worried about that kind of thing, he would have lost his mind long ago; so he ignored it.

This does raise the question of why the Japanese NERV staff are in Worchester, Maine.

...

Or why NERV has a base in fucking Maine.

She arrived in a somewhat disconcerting fashion; the elevator stopped, the doors opened, and there she was, standing right in front of them. She stepped inside expressionlessly, in the process pushing back a surprised and sheepish-looking Misato, who stammered, "Uh, hi, um, Ritsuko."

"Why are you wasting my time, Captain Katsuragi?" Ritsuko inquired coolly. "Don't you realize we're short of both time and manpower?"

"Sorry," replied Misato sheepishly. "I got lost again."

Ritsuko turned and regarded DJ dispassionately. "This is the boy?"

"Yes," replied Misato. "According to the Marduk Report, he's the Fifth Child."

I guess they skipped right over Shinji and Toji. Kaworu? Fuck him, he can be the Sixth.

DJ grinned. "DJ Croft. I really must compliment your Human Resources people sometime soon."

Ritsuko's look became quizzical for a moment; then she directed it at Misato, who shrugged.

lol this guy is so witty and funny and totally not a workplace sexual harassment suit waiting to happen

As they left the elevator and rode up another ridiculously long escalator, DJ tuned out the conversation between the two women (it was incomprehensible anyway, something about a test unit failing some kind of synchronization with some absurdly small success rate, sounded to DJ like they were talking about a faulty piece of network routing equipment or some such)

Don't worry, it's just Rei.

and admired the vastness and weirdness of the space around them. He followed them absently, looking into the manual's index for this or that, and only noticed that something was odd when a door closed behind them and abruptly shut off all the light. Startled, he looked up from the book, as though that would somehow help, and bumped into one of the women, although he would never be sure which one.

In retrospect, he would decide that it was more or less the high point of his day, right there.

I'm sure.

"Hey, what the - " DJ began, but then the overhead lights snapped on, and he skidded to a mental halt.

He was standing on a catwalk across a large, vault-ceilinged metal room, not unlike the service gantry across a submarine pen. The resemblance was heightened by the fact that the room was filled up to the catwalk level with a pinkish liquid. High on the far wall, near the ceiling, was a row of thick windows. But the thing in front of DJ, protruding above the surface of the liquid and bracketed by the catwalk, was no submarine conning tower.

Aww... I was hoping it was the Red October.

It took DJ a few moments to realize that what he was looking at were the head and shoulders of a gigantic robot - if his sense of scale was still intact, it might just be a rival in scale for the monster that he'd seen attacking the aerodynes earlier. It was covered in a dull purple armor plate, and the head had a curious horn-like construct on it, jutting high above DJ's head from between the slit-like yellow eyes that seemed, uncomfortably, to be watching him.

"What're -you- when you're at home?" he murmured.

"This is the Test Type model of the artificial lifeform Evangelion," said Ritsuko. "Unit 01."

"Well, that's all very nice, but what the hell's it mean?"

He knows about the secret conspiracy that rules the world in preparation for the destruction of humanity and forcible integration into a group consciousness via the apocalypse.

But a giant robot is completely beyond him.

lol

"It's Mankind's last line of defense against the Angels," said Misato.

"And you will pilot it," came a man's voice, distorted slightly as if by a loudspeaker. DJ looked up and saw a man, dark-haired and intense-eyed, staring down at him from the booth windows.

"Excuse me?" DJ inquired.

"I am Professor Gendou Ikari. I am the Director of NERV and Project Evangelion."

"How nice for you," replied DJ conversationally.

DJ was then shot for being an insufferable douchebag.

"Your mother is Lara Croft, the archaeologist," said Ikari. It was not a question.

As indicated by the lack of a question mark.

"I know who my mother is, thanks," said DJ.

"She disappeared three months ago while investigating a Mayan ruin in the Yucatan."

"Difficult to find Mayan ruins elsewhere, isn't it? Your point?"

He sure is being cavalier about his own mother's disappearance. Maybe he has some sort of asshole disorder. Like, not a problem with his asshole, mind you,

but a mental imbalance that makes him act like one.

I think I will call it the Smarm Alone Complex.

"Since then you have been a minor living alone, with neither supervision nor guidance. That has now changed. You will work for us."

"Will I indeed? Suppose I don't want to."

"But I don't WANNA save the world from giant monsters!"

I like how people say this is "Evangelion done right," but DJ whines even more than Shinji. But he says dumb '80s action movie one-liners, so I guess that

makes him a better character :V

"That is not an option," said Ikari flatly.

"There're always options."

"I gave the last person in your position options, and he disappointed me. I have decided to avoid this in future by no longer presenting a choice. You will pilot Unit 01; you will defeat the attacking Angel."

"Go to hell! You've got no right to do this, whoever the hell you are. I'm a British subject - I can't be pressed into service by an American agency, I'm pretty bloody sure that's an act of war!"

The Second War of 1812 was, ironically, fought over American impressment of British citizens.

Also, this guy smuggled a gun through airport security and then pulled it on an American government employee. But sure, go and act all indignant.

"NERV is above the law," Ikari replied coldly.

"Bollocks."

"Balls." said Lieutenant Michael Wo- Wait, wrong story.

"For God's sake, this is childish!" Ritsuko burst out, overcome with a wave of exasperation. "Stop arguing international law and get into the damned EVA."

Finally, a character with some damn sense. Let's watch her get shouted down by the Mary Sue.

"Childish?!" DJ rounded on her, thrusting a finger fiercely into her face. "Look here, my love, you people drag me halfway round the world on the pretense of giving me an advanced-study scholarship, you fly me into a WAR ZONE, you send a PRESS GANG to meet me at the airport, you plop me down in front of a giant bleeding ROBOT and ORDER me to risk my life to save you and then you have the GALL to call me CHILDISH because I happen to be a little OUTRAGED about the whole thing? Well, I've got news for you, Dr. Pullring - you and your spook brigade don't control the entire bleeding world. Now I want somebody to take me back to the airport RIGHT BLOODY NOW and maybe - just MAYBE - I won't give a full report to the British consulate about what you've just tried to do to me."

"Dr. Pullring."

Maybe this fic's title shouldn't be Neon Exodus. I think a more fitting title would be, I don't know...

Gunslinger Git.

Having expected neither such focused anger nor such eloquence from her small antagonist, Risuko had no particular reply to make; instead she stared into DJ's angry blue eyes for a moment, shocked into silence by the force of his indignation.

"Having expected neither such focused anger nor such eloquence... [Ritsuko was] shocked into silence by the force of his indignation."



The moment was broken by the sound of Dr. Ikari saying, "Fine. Captain Katsuragi, see that the boy gets back to his home after the operation is complete." He tabbed a control on the panel next to him. "Keller, wake up Rei."

"You're sending her?" Otto Keller replied, shocked.

Who is Otto and why did he replace Fuyutsuki?

"She isn't dead," said Ikari flatly.

Keller seemed to wrestle with his thoughts for a moment, then nodded, his shoulders slumping as if he'd just lost the battle. "Understood." His image winked out.

A moment later, there came the chime of another intercom channel opening, and Ikari announced without preamble, "Rei, the replacement is useless. You will do it instead."

"I understand," came a female voice, flat, emotionless, like a strange mirror of Ikari's own tones.

I remember this part from the first episode of Evangelion, and it isn't markedly better this time around.

DJ began to feel as if he had accidentally dropped through a wormhole in time and space and into an Ingmar Bergman movie. A few moments later, the feeling was intensified as a door at the far end of the catwalk opened and three men in medical greens wheeled in a gurney. On the gurney was a girl, DJ guessed more or less his own age, and looking rather the worse for wear. Her legs were swathed in bandages, one forearm wore a cast, and there was a loop of gauze around her head securing a pad over her right eye. An IV in her unencasted left arm dripped a clear solution from a bag held above her by a bracket on the side of the gurney. She had disheveled pale hair that actually looked rather blue under the lights of the bay, and her skin was ash-white, the palest DJ had ever seen.

It is funny how the author apparently wanted to improve Evangelion by removing the main character and making the story more optimistic.

Yet so many parts are basically quoted verbatim.

As she passed, she looked up at DJ with her good eye, and for just an instant, their gazes - his blue, wavering between residual anger and mounting bemusement, hers a deep red and unreadable - met. As that instant stretched glassy thin, DJ felt curiously calm and focused, as if the preternatural calm with which she was taking these events had seeped into him through the momentary eye contact. He felt an unspeakable kinship with her, an undefinable longing for more and deeper contact... as if here was someone he could happily tell all his secrets to, here was someone who could confide implicitly in him.

Then the moment shattered, time resumed its normal pace, the gurney was past and the feeling was swept away, and for a moment, DJ felt quite cheated. He turned, all blank of mind, and watched as the medtechs removed the IV and the girl struggled to a sitting position, beads of sweat breaking out on her forehead from the exertion or the pain. She breathed sharply through clenched teeth, her hands clenched into fists, one visible eye narrowed in obvious anguish.

She read ahead and saw who she's paired with.

DJ looked up to the booth, and the message in Ikari's expressionless eyes was clear: do what I want, or I'll send this girl to die in your place. For there was no doubt in DJ's mind that if she went out there in her current condition, she would not survive.

Before he had a chance to say or do anything about it, though, the chamber shook as if in an earthquake, and, as the medtechs scattered in panic, the gurney turned on its side, dumping its occupant to the steel catwalk with a single, sharp cry of pain. Unthinking, DJ sprinted toward her, not even noticing as a tangle of the girders across the vaulted ceiling broke free and tumbled down - directly toward him.

Go, girders, go! You can do it!

Misato caught her breath, watching helplessly as the girders fell. DJ was running out from under them, but he wouldn't clear them in time - and so intent was he on reaching Rei, he would never know what hit him.

So much for his finely tuned spider senses.

That's what she thought until, with a metallic tearing sound, the right hand of EVA-01 broke free of its restraints, rose out of the suspension liquid, and interposed itself. The girders bounced away with a crash, bashing against the booth window where Dr. Ikari stood unflinching and watched. Misato looked away, bothered slightly by the grin that creased the scientist's usually motionless visage - a grin with no humor or warmth, only an unholy kind of triumph.

Why. Why would Unit 01 save some random British twat.

It then dawned on her, and on Ritsuko, what had just happened, and they shared an incredulous glance that quickly melted into satisfaction.

DJ, oblivious to it all, skidded to a halt beside the stricken pilot, dropping to his knees and helping her as she struggled to sit up. The fall had reopened wounds; as he supported her back with one hand and her encasted arm with the other, he felt blood seeping sticky and hot through bandages and uniform. She lay against his arm and chest, good eye squeezed shut, taking short, gasping breaths through the haze of pain. Feeling as if he'd been stabbed through the heart with an icicle, DJ raised his right hand and contemplated it, smeared with crimson, for a moment; then he looked down at Rei's pale, drawn face and used his sleeve to wipe away some of the cold sweat standing on her brow, hoping she could at least draw some comfort from his presence and concern.

Yeah, OK, I watched the first episode of Evangelion. You can get to the part where he takes Unit 01 to the surface, displays an inexplicably high level of skill piloting it, and curbstomps the Angel. Just like every other fucking Evangelion fanfic.

Looking up at Ritsuko, he said, "All right, damn you, I'll do it."

"Right after I do you."


You know, thought DJ to himself, it's really rather relaxing in here. Except for that funny smell...

With little ceremony and less courtesy, he'd been stripped of his clothes and dressed in a bizarre one-piece garment with all the charm of a wetsuit and not quite as much comfort. It had odd fittings whose purpose he couldn't quite fathom, sensors in less than optimal locations, and was made of a strange material that contracted rather alarmingly when a control on the wrist was pressed, changing it from a rather floppy jumpsuit to an altogether embarrassing spectacle. Then he'd been stuffed into a large white cylinder that looked like nothing so much as a gigantic activated-charcoal cartridge for the world's biggest swimming-pool filter.

DJ in a plug suit. I... no. Just no.

So here he sat, sitting semi-upright in a nice padded seat in a space about the size of a telephone booth. The walls around him were covered in flexible display panels, providing a seamless display surface all the way around; at the moment they were offline and displaying a lovely, comforting Mandelbrot set as a result. The control panel before him was remarkably simple, consisting mainly of a pair of butterfly grips on gimbals and a couple of unlabeled buttons.

He figures out how to pilot a giant robot just by looking at it for five seconds. No wonder he thinks he deserves to drive, those quant improper American

laws be damned (oh, wait, that's not until later).

It occurred to DJ that his hands were stinging, as if he'd scalded himself slightly testing too-hot bathwater. He wished momentarily that there was some easy way to look at them - but the gloves on his hands were attached to the arms of the plug suit, so he would have to wait until he was done to investigate. He didn't remember hurting himself - he hoped fervently that he wasn't allergic to the material of the suit. That would quickly become very, very unpleasant...

"DJ, can you hear me?" came Ritsuko's voice from a small speaker on the instrument panel.

"Yes, I hear you," replied DJ, abandoning that train of thought.

"Are you ready?"

"For you," DJ said, not even attempting to hide the alarming crotch bulge characteristic of skintight suits and bad cosplay.

"As I'll ever be."

"Begin synchronization procedure. Power up Unit 01's neurosystems and flood the entry plug."

They're going to drown the fucker? Good.

The display panels changed from the Mandelbrot to a muted color-test pattern, then cycled through a few others before settling into a well-laid-out status display which, at the moment, was reporting absolutely nothing. DJ sat back and tried to clear his mind, no mean feat for one as active as his.

"No mean feat for [a mind] as active as his." Oh man.



I am going to run out of these images, and then what? I'll have to search for more. I hope you're happy, Ben Hutchins, you self-indulgent sack of crap.

He registered only brief consternation as the entry plug filled from the bottom up with a cool yellowish liquid; since they clearly didn't intend to drown him, he realized that it must be an oxygenation medium before Ritsuko informed him of same over the speaker. Belching out a great cloud of bubbles, he fought down a brief spurt of nausea.

"What fun," he muttered.

"Quit whining," Misato chided him. "You're a boy, aren't you?"

DJ rolled his eyes, but said nothing.

Up in the control booth, Ritsuko watched with satisfaction as the big board reported an orderly activation, nothing out of place, no strange voltage spikes or stray neural pulses screwing the whole delicate sequence up. In fact, as the nerve blocks connected one by one by one and the green of nominal status spread across the map, it was clear to her that the mind of DJ Croft and whatever passed for the mind of EVA-01 were meshing with almost preternatural compatibility.

Whatever passed for the mind of Unit 01.

Normally I'd question whether he should be insulting its intelligence, but then I remembered that it saved his life.

"Synchrotron is holding stable at 41.5%," reported the room's chief console tech, dark-eyed Maya Ibuki.

1: "Synchrotron." Heh.
2: I bet Maya will be the only minor character who isn't replaced by an author-created character
3: If what I remember from the first episode of Eva is correct, Rei had to struggle to get above a 9% sync ratio with Unit 01.
4: Doesn't an Eva only work if it has the soul of the pilot's mother, or something like that? So, um... does this mean Lara Croft... uh...

"41.5%," Ritsuko repeated. "Impressive for his first synchronization... especially considering which EVA he's using."

Yeah, you just said that. Enough self-congratulatory back-slapping, all right? And zip up your fly.

To DJ, this remarkable event passed more or less unnoticed, except for a peculiar elongation of his senses. His balance swam momentarily, then re-established itself; now he felt precariously tall and curiously braced up. Of course, he thought to himself; the EVA is locked into position by all the gantries and the like. What a fascinating sensation... I could get to like this.

If only the people running the program weren't such jerks...

If only the people writing this weren't such circlejerking nerds.

"You're synchronized. How does it feel?" asked Ritsuko.

"Can't describe it, really. Mostly, I feel... taller."

He then waggled his eyebrows.

"You didn't freak out when we flooded the entry plug," she observed. "That's a good sign."

"I've used Hi-Ox Liquid Environment diving suits."

"There's nothing NERV has that I haven't done better. Because I'm DJ fucking Croft, bitch."

"For what?"

"There's nothing better for exploring shipwrecks. Don't tell me you haven't read 'Into the Titanic'? It's got some of my best work."

DJ Croft is a gun-toting, tomb raiding, secret agent-thwarting archaeologist scuba diver published author giant robot pilot. And the most handsome and sophisticated fourteen-year-old in the world.

I get the feeling this list of credentials is only going to grow.

"Is there anything you haven't done?"

"You."

DJ paused, a slow grin spreading over his face; then he replied, "I'll let you have that one for free, but in time you'll learn not to ask me questions like that, Ritsuko my love."

Ritsuko reddened slightly, but decided not to dignify that obvious bait with an answer. Instead, she turned to Dr. Ikari, who stood at the back of the room, hands folded, observing the big board with the ghost of a smile on his face.

"Can we really do this?" she asked him.

He nodded. "If we don't, humanity has no future."

Just let the Angels fuckin' kill humanity.

Ritsuko returned his nod, looked pensive for a moment, then turned to Misato. "He's all yours, Captain Katsuragi."

Misato's smile melted away, replaced with a look of hard professionalism, as she said to the console crew, "Prepare EVA-01 for launch! We'll use Track 14."

Interlocks and more interlocks were released, catwalks were moved, the EVA chamber was drained, and EVA-01, still attached to its backing gantry, moved on a pair of magnetic tracks to one of the sockets in the far wall. Above it, a series of hatches opened, giving it a clear path to the surface almost a mile above.

"Exit path is clear. EVA-01 is ready for launch," Maya reported.

"Lord," DJ muttered, "please don't let me fuck up."

He's basically an author self-insert, so of course he won't. As far as this universe is concerned, he is God.

(and given that Lucifer - yes, that Lucifer - shows up later...)

"Say again, EVA-01?" came Maya's reply.

"Er, I said everything's A-OK here."

"That's what I thought, EVA-01. Stand by for launch." Was that a hint of a smile in Maya's voice?

You're the narrator. How about you tell us?

"Launch!" Misato ordered. Magnetic induction on the rails running up the wall catapulted EVA-01's gantry, and the Evangelion along with it, toward the surface.

To DJ, it felt exactly like the time he and his mother had to get to the top of a tall building without going inside; they'd accomplished it by severing an external elevator cable and letting the counterweight pull them to the top. He let out the same whoop he had on that occasion, too.

Before his skull was bashed into jelly by the top of the elevator shaft.

Twenty seconds later, with much klaxoning and flashing of red lights, a square hatch opened in the middle of a main street, and EVA-01 popped up with a shuddering crash, coming to an abrupt stop that hurled DJ against his seat harness and made him glad of the shock protection afforded by the liquid-filled cockpit. All around him, the display panels showed him a 270-degree wraparound view of what the EVA was seeing from its head-mounted eyes. He towered over the city; only a few of the nearby buildings were taller.

Yeah, I don't think some middle-of-nowhere Maine town nobody's ever fucking heard of is going to have really impressive architecture.

Ten blocks down the street, the black, white and red hunchbacked shape of the Angel swung toward the new arrival with obvious interest.

He just has to be the center of attention, doesn't he?

"Release final interlock!" Misato ordered; the bolts holding EVA-01 to the gantry snapped back, and the machine lurched forward a little, sagging slightly under its weight. DJ felt a momentary spike of balance-related panic, the sort a person feels when he tips back an unfamiliar swivel chair and thinks, wrongly, that he's about to fall over backward.

"OK, DJ," said Misato. "Concentrate on walking."

DJ did just that, and, with a trifle of hesitation, EVA-01 took one thunderous step forward, the impact of its enormous footfall shattering a nearby telephone kiosk.

The next time I want to read NXE, I will get the Evangelion manga and some pictures of David Duchovny and just use the pics to obscure Shinji. Same thing, really, only without the incessant fapping over how cool the self-insert is.

Instead it'll be the perfectly normal fapping over jailbait that permeates all Japanese media.

He took another step, but misjudged the size of the EVA's feet and caught one toe on the other ankle. His balance destroyed, DJ felt the machine toppling.

"Ahh, bugger!" he declared as it crashed face-first to the
ground.

Grand list of things DJ Croft has failed at:
- being a likable character tolerable human being
- piloting a giant robot with no prior training

"Get up!" Misato cried.

"A work in progress," DJ replied - but before he could make any significant progress toward that end, he felt the machine being unceremoniously hauled to its feet, then beyond, hoisted up into the air by the Angel.

"EVA-01's AT Field isn't deploying," Maya reported.

"Trace the fault," Ritsuko ordered.

"No fault found - it's just not unfolding!"

"What the - ?!"

Don't worry. He'll pull a victory out of his ass because he's... Well, you know the drill.

"AAARGH!" DJ calmly observed as the Angel seized EVA-01's head in one hand and its left forearm in the other, then started doing its best to pull one, the other, or both appendages off.

"DJ, relax," Ritsuko called. "That's not -your- arm! It's just feedback from the neural link."

DJ would have found that information a tremendous comfort had he in fact been able to hear it, but the fact was, he was in far too much pain - pain which spiked higher still when, with a splintering crack, the EVA's left forearm snapped, leaving the hand dangling limp and useless.

I can think of something else that's limp and useless.

As the Angel's energy lance began pounding on EVA-01's head, DJ's mind was in chaos, conflicting images of his own sound body and the EVA's battered frame refusing to coexist in his brain, his sense of identity collapsing entirely. He felt as if he wanted to scream, but something was holding his mouth closed.

Then the EVA's armor gave way, and the machine went crashing on its back into the wreckage of a building, sprawling insensate, a fluid that seemed very like blood pouring from the massive wound in the right side of its head, and DJ Croft's mind went totally blank.

"The Synchrotron's going crazy!" Maya cried, back in the booth. "The pulses are flowing backward... all the neural interlocks are coming apart! Unit 01's gone completely offline."

Hehehe... "synchrotron."

Having dispatched its foe, the Angel totally lost interest in Unit 01. Turning its back, it returned to blasting at the ground, trying to open a hole large enough to permit it to pass through and attack the Geo-Front below.

In the cool and dim cockpit of the fallen EVA, Derek Joshua Croft regained a tiny splinter of consciousness. His head and arm throbbed mercilessly, and the voice of Ritsuko demanding to know his status hammered meaninglessly at his ears. Nothing made sense, everything was chaos, who in God's name was he?

I could answer that in length.

"Carry on, my wayward son."

NO, YOU FUCKER! DON'T YOU DARE RUIN THAT SONG FOR ME! FUCKER!

DJ's eyes snapped open.

She wasn't here, she couldn't be, but for just an instant, he'd heard his mother's voice, telling him what she always told him when giving him permission to go off on some solo expedition or walkabout.

"I know who my mother is, thanks."

Yes.

And knowing her, I know who I am, too.

DJ smiled.

Thank you, Mum, wherever you are.

In the control room, the big board suddenly flooded with green, and the Synchrotron spiked up to seventy-four percent.

Thinking about his mother magically made him a better giant robot pilot.

This is so stupid.

/* Kenny Loggins "Danger Zone" _Top Gun_ */

I guess DJ is in the DANGAH ZONE!

Its one remaining eye glowing like a beacon, Evangelion Unit 01 hauled itself to its feet. The already-cracked armor over the lower part of its "face" cracked, then shattered, and it swung its jaw open and let out an unearthly howl; then it crouched until its knees nearly touched the ground and kicked off effortlessly.

The Third Angel half-turned, facelessly unable to register surprise, as EVA-01 crashed down on it from above, smashing it face-down to the ground, then sprang away, executed a tidy back somersault (its power cable streaming picturesquely around it, then settling well-behavedly behind) and touched down lightly a block or so away.

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah danger zone.

This post has been edited by Dr. O: Mar 31 2012, 12:09 PM

[Dr. O]

"OK," DJ understated cheerfully, "I think I've got motor control down. How do I access the weapons systems?"

"The EVA doesn't have any integral weapons," said Misato.

"No integral weapons? What silly sod designed -that-?"

Yes, DJ is apparently qualified (or thinks himself) to be a giant robot weapons disgner. Because there is literally nothing anyone can do that he cannot do

better.

Ignoring that outburst, Misato continued, "You have a Progressive Knife available in the left pauldron, and there are weapons caches throughout the city. See the building over to your left about five blocks, with the red light flashing on the roof? That's your nearest weapons block."

"It'll have to do, I suppose," replied DJ. The winglike structure jutting up from the EVA's left shoulder popped open, deploying a handle; reaching up with the unit's good hand, DJ grasped it and drew it out, revealing what looked for all the world like a Bowie knife suitable for transport by heavy rail. "Cute," he remarked as the cutting edge of the blade began vibrating, heating to a white glow.

This is atrocious.

I'm not saying that in response to anything in particular. It's more of a cumulative feeling, really.

The Angel had regained its feet, and as EVA-01 sprang forward for the attack, it manifested its Absolute Terror Field. DJ grunted as the EVA slammed into the wall of yellow energy, flinging him against the straps again. "What the hell?!" he demanded, sparing a snarl of consternation as the Progressive Knife bounced away and disappeared between a couple of buildings.

In the back of his mind came a whispery feeling, not a voice but just a certainty: I know how to handle this.

Well, I wish you'd get on with it then, was the wordless response.

I like how even the Evangelion's resident soul can't stand DJ.

The EVA raised its left arm, clenched the fist, and DJ felt the sympathetic relief as the damaged area fused back together, leaving it whole and undamaged.

"EVA-01's left forearm has been regenerated," Maya reported.

"IN-credible," Misato muttered.

It comes with being a Mary Sue.

Thrusting its fingers into the Angel's AT Field, EVA-01 looked for all the world like a man trying to force open a pair of recalcitrant elevator doors, as the machine and the boy within bent their collective will toward defeating the field that kept them from their quarry.

"EVA-01's AT Field has deployed!" called Maya with delight. "It's neutralizing the Angel's phase space."

This sounds like a cool scene. I really wish someone would turn it into an anime. :V

The yellow field disintegrated; with a wolfish grin, DJ drew EVA-01's left fist back and drove it into the Angel's "face".

The Angel reeled back a couple of steps, twitched back, and then unleashed a blast from the red gem on its chest, sending EVA-01 tumbling back several blocks.

"So that's the way it's gonna be, eh?" asked DJ as he got EVA-01 to its feet again. "All right then." He made the machine leap again, but this time, his target was not the Angel, but rather the building Misato had pointed out earlier.

I am so sick of these one-liners. It doesn't help that DJ - the only character making them, thankfully - is getting so many lines. Overexposure can make any character unlikable, and for one as annoying as DJ? Yeah.

Douchebag's getting more lines than a zebra slaughterhouse.

As he grounded the EVA next to it, the building slid open; within, nestled in sockets and looking for all the world like gigantic versions of regular hand weapons nestled in the foam of an expensive gun case, were a pair of cannons - on the EVA's scale, big handguns, slab-sided auto pistols that looked absurdly Glock-like given their huge size.

I hear giant robot-scale weapons look exactly like handguns for no reason.

And I'm pretty sure that blasting away at crocodiles is a violation of some kind of wildlife protection law.

DJ smiled. "You shouldn't have," he said, scooping them both up and leaping back to the main drag again.

As soon as he landed, the Angel tried to let him have it with that big beam blaster again, but this time DJ was ready for it; he jumped the EVA back, turning another back somersault in midair, and, as it straightened at the peak of its arc and started to fall, he dropped the sights onto the Angel and opened fire. It felt just like shooting a jungle croc with a pair of .45s, except amplified to EVA-scale like everything else, and for the first time, DJ Croft really started to feel in control of the situation.

"Damn," Misato observed, watching the big screen as EVA-01, almost seeming to hang in mid-air for a second before dropping to a crouching landing in the street, blazed away at the Angel, the shells from its handcannons tearing huge chunks out of the monster's blue-grey flesh. "This kid's a natural fighter."

"He's his mother's son," Ritsuko observed.

fapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfa
pfapfap

There, I have just summarized this entire fanfic. You are free to do something else now.

The handcannons ran dry just as the Angel, persevering in its dogged plodding, reached EVA-01; DJ dropped the spent weapons just in time to intercept the monster's grasping hands, seizing it by its wrists.

"Let's see how you like it, Sparky," he growled through gritted teeth, hauling its arms out to either side and pulling with all the EVA's considerable strength. Muscles bulged, twisted, tore under the Angel's black skin, and then, with fountains of bluish-grey goo, both arms tore off at the shoulder. DJ tossed them aside and drove EVA-01's fist into the Angel's chest again, sending the monster over on its back; then he pounced on it, pounding again and again at the gleaming red sphere embedded in the Angel's chest.

Sparky.

To his consternation, the thing lunged at him one more time, and this time, its shape changed. Liquid-like, the Angel's blackish flesh poured around EVA-01, solidifying around it. The red sphere began to glow, and DJ got the distinct impression that something very unpleasant was about to happen.

A second later, the Angel self-destructed, exploding in a towering mushroom-cloud blast that flattened most of the adjacent blocks.

As the smoke cleared, though, EVA-01 strode out, standing tall - scuffed, blackened and battered, but mainly unharmed. A cheer went up in the control room even as Misato was ordering a recovery crew to bring the unit in post-haste.

DANGAH ZONE!

DJ was feeling pretty proud of himself at the moment, and had just worked out a way to switch the view the main display was showing him to an outside camera so he could take stock of his EVA's condition. Right now he was looking at a close-up of its damaged head, trying to guess the extent of the damage.

Um... why would he be able to switch cameras?

As he looked, the cracks in the purple armor over its good eye widened, and then the whole left side and front of the EVA's "face" slid away, falling to the ground. Below was a much less ornate structure, a brownish-grey bullet-shaped affair that looked rather more like a proper humanoid head.

Well, said DJ to himself, they did say 'artificial lifeform'. I guess what I thought was its head was really just a helmet.

Can't let DJ not know anything.

A slit appeared in the flat brownish-greyness of the inner head, on the left side, and then, before DJ's wondering eyes, an eye - not a sensor head, but a real, honest-to-goodness eyeball - popped open, massive and green. Its pupil widened, then contracted, revealing as it did three smaller pupils spaced equidistantly around the central one. Through the still-synchronized link, DJ had the sudden incredible feeling that he was watching himself watch himself watch himself watch himself watch himself watch

"Check, please," he declared, and passed out.

How funny and not at all aggravating. Seriously, does every single thing he says have to drip "LOOK HOW MUCH COOLER I AM THAN SHINJI GUYS"?

In the control room, Ritsuko Akagi was saying much the same thing as she observed a readout indicating that, during the combat, DJ Croft and EVA-01 had, for a millisecond, hit a peak synchronization ratio of eighty-seven percent.

My memory is kind of vague, but didn't it take until like halfway through the series for any of the pilots to reach that?

For his part, Gendou Ikari merely smiled, and left the room.

Ensuring that Lara Croft didn't return from the Yucatan had been a very expensive endeavor, but it had just paid for itself with interest.

I hate this story, but at least the technical aspects of the writing are highly competent. And I do feel that it would be remiss of me not to mention the scant good points. So... yeah, that's about it.

/* The Marcels "Blue Moon" _Billboard Top Rock 'n Roll Hits: 1961_ */

I should write my own theme song for this. With blackjack and hookers.
In fact, forget the theme song.

NEXT EPISODE:

- The Fourth Child!
- Rei Ayanami speaks!
- Find out what DJ's favorite food is!
- A bath scene!

All this and more, in the next pulse-pounding episode of Neon Exodus Evangelion, due for release on 7/9/1997! Don't miss it!

Man, he is actually pretending this is some sort of legitimate TV production, with pointless previews and everything. At least there isn't going to be a "motion picture," right?

Right?

...

Fuck me.

[Moose]

DJ IS SO COOL, OH MY GOD, I WISH HE COULD COME TO LIFE SO I COULD FIND HIM AND BEAR HIS CHILDREN. HE IS GOD, WALKING AROUND ON EARTH! DAMN, HE IS FIIIINE!

I have never wanted to punch my monitor so much.

Good mock!

[Dr. O]

Thanks! I aim to please - just like DJ Croft!

Also, I will try to take a calmer, more analytical approach for this chapter. Instead of rampant profanity, you can expect an explanation of why this fanfic fails to craft sympathetic characters or an engaging story in addition to rampant profanity.

/* Genesis "Land of Confusion" _Invisible Touch_ */

First of all, it's just plain pretentious to give your fanfic a theme song. Now, I know that some of you are incredulous at the idea of something related to Evangelion being pretentious, but it's true.

Besides, I don't see how Genesis is appropriate. Certainly there are other songs more fitting of this series and its protagonist.

EYRIE PRODUCTIONS, UNLIMITED
presents

Just look at this. It's like the authors wanted nothing more than to write a screenplay, but couldn't think of anything beyond this one supposedly really cool character.

NEON EXODUS EVANGELION

EXODUS 1:2 - ACCLIMATIONS


Inspired by NEON GENESIS EVANGELION created by Hideaki Anno, Gainax,
et al.

"Inspired by" being code for "shamelessly ripped off from."

Most characters designed by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto
(except DJ, who looks like a young David Duchovny)

Most characters designed by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto.
(except DJ, who is the only one who matters)

Additional material and inspiration cadged from TOMB RAIDER by Core
Design, Ltd., X-COM: UFO DEFENSE and sequels from MPS Labs (whoever
owns them nowadays), and THE X-FILES created by Chris Carter

I'm sorry, but if you ever think of a crossover like that, you should just take a long, hard look at it and decide whether it's really worth writing.

Written by Benjamin D. Hutchins and Larry Mann

Aided and abetted by the Eyrie Productions, Unlimited crew
and special-guest-for-life Phil Moyer

© 1997 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited

For future reference, copyrighting your fanfic is also pretentious.

"Commander Ayliffe?"

The base commander looked up from the assortment of maps and charts displayed on the command center's monitors and turned to face his lieutenant, Michael Steffler, who had just entered the room through the sliding double doors. "Situation?"

"Word just came back from our contacts in Worcester-3," Steffler replied. "The Third Angel was neutralized by the Fifth Child last night."

I am never going to get used to seeing the phrase "Worcester-3."

"Fifth?" Ayliffe arched an eyebrow. "What about the Third?"

Yes, what did happen to Shinji?

"The Third is either unable or unwilling to participate in the project, more likely unwilling. Fortunately the Fifth was at hand, but it's unclear whether he will remain involved, and we have reports that he was injured and Unit 01 damaged in the combat, so either way they'll be out of action for a while."

So the premise of the fanfic (Shinji Ikari being replaced with DJ Croft) is "just because." That's kind of flimsy. It shows that not much thought went into the actual story part of the story, but rather that the authors were more concerned with "wouldn't it be cool if..."

You know, like "wouldn't if be cool if Lara Croft and agent Mulder got it on and had a kid?"

"And the other Children?" the commander asked, fairly sure of where this was leading.

"The First is still incapacitated, expected to be out of service for at least three more weeks; reports indicate she suffered further injuries during the fighting. The Second is still in final training in Germany. And again, the Fifth can't be considered reliable yet. NERV has requested the transfer of the Fourth Child to direct NERV authority immediately, if not sooner." He paused. "At the moment we're receiving negative commentary for not handing him over when first requested."

The Fourth Child? The one that didn't show up until... I don't know, two-thirds of the way through Evangelion? I wonder who he is.

"And I suppose they want the work on Unit 03 expedited as well?" the commander sighed.

Similarly, Unit 03 did not show up for the first fifteen, sixteen episodes of Evangelion. This just feels rushed because the authors are introducing a bunch of material that should be presented to the readers gradually. That way it doesn't get lost as background noise.

"They're requesting transfer of the EVA as soon as it's passed preliminary testing; final synchronization tests will be conducted on-site." Steffler shrugged. "They're a little annoyed with us, I'm afraid. We could have done the transfer when they originally asked, and then all this might have been avoided."

"I know, I know." Straightening up, Ayliffe turned to one of the officers manning the communications system. "Colburn, tell Engineering to expedite the prelim tests on EVA-03 and get it ready for transfer to Worcester-3 ASAP."

"Yes sir!" Colburn replied.

It would also help if the information were given through characters with whom the audience is familiar. These people weren't in Eva or (to my knowledge), Tomb Raider, X-Files, or X-COM. Since nobody knows or cares about these characters, there isn't much reason to pay attention to what they're saying.

"And the Fourth?" Steffler asked expectantly.

"We'll deal with that now," Ayliffe replied.


"Problem, Dr. Spiner?"

Ooh, Brent Spiner! I loved him in Star Trek Generations!

David Spiner looked up from a hushed discussion with his fellow scientists. He and Ayliffe had known each other for a long time, long enough that each could read the mood of the other with only a glance. Ayliffe could tell Spiner was bothered about something.

"Not sure exactly, Commander," Spiner replied. "We were conducting the synchronization exercise as planned, when the Fourth started complaining of body-wide pain. We aborted the test and we've been going over the data but so far there's nothing to indicate what might have caused the problem."

"Is he all right?" Steffler asked.

I know you're trying to make me concerned about the pilot, but I just can't be bothered. I probably couldn't even if I weren't aware that he is the blandest character in the fic (yes, more than Rei).

"He's awake, if that's what you mean, Lieutenant," the scientist answered. "The pain decreased but didn't go away after we cut the power; he says it's been slowly dropping off since then and should be gone soon."

"Can we talk to him?" Ayliffe inquired.

Spiner gestured toward the holding tank at the end of the testing chamber, indicating an affirmative. The two soldiers crossed the room and stood before the large cylindrical tank, regarding its occupant, the Fourth Child, through a large viewport. He was a tall, thin boy, with shoulder-length black hair. His actual age was fourteen, but he looked older, closer to eighteen.

No, the way it works is that they look seven but you say they're eighteen. Don't you know anything about anime logic?

At the moment his eyes were closed and he floated in the LCL breathing and antishock medium, seemingly asleep.

Ayliffe activated an intercom on the tank's side, picking up a hand microphone. "Jon."

Arbuckle?

The boy slowly opened his eyes, revealing them to be a deep emerald color, and his head turned toward the source of the sound waves, regarding the soldiers with an expressionless, almost blank, gaze.

Immediately making reference to the original character's eye color, particularly as a comparison to gemstones, is almost always a bad sign.

"Are you all right?"

"I am improving," Jon answered neutrally. If he was still in any pain, he did not show it at all. "My ratio is up 15 points from last test."

Look everyone, it's the male Rei Ayanami.

"That's good, Jon," the commander replied, then paused to organize his thoughts. Jon merely looked at him, still expressionless. "I have new orders for you."

"I'm ready to receive orders," Jon answered flatly, still without trace of emotion.

The commander paused again, regarding the boy thoughtfully for another moment. Then: "Jonathan Ellison, effective immediately you are being placed under the direct authority of NERV. You will be transferred to Worcester-3, and will be answerable only to NERV central command, as Fourth Child and pilot of EVA-03."

He's not already part of NERV? But what other organization would conceivably grow people in jars a- Oh.

Oh no.

"Yes sir."

"Your transport to Worcester-3 will depart at 0800 hours tomorrow. Have your personal effects packed and ready by that time. Unit-03 will be transported to Worcester-3 once preliminary testing has been completed. Per NERV's orders, final testing will take place in Worcester-3."

"Yes sir," Jon repeated. "I will be ready for transport at 0800 tomorrow."

"Good," Ayliffe nodded. "Good luck, and be careful."

"Good luck, you emotionless questionably-human guinea pig."

"Thank you sir," Jon answered, and his eyes closed again.

Ayliffe watched the boy quietly for a few moments longer before replacing the microphone on its hook. "Dave," he said at last, turning to Dr. Spiner, who had been standing nearby. "I need everything locked down and ready to go ASAP."

"No problem, sir," Spiner answered. "Though I want to go on record as being uncomfortable about sending the Fourth into the field at this time."

"Your concerns are noted," Ayliffe nodded. "Unfortunately it can't be helped; NERV's authority overrides all other orders."

"Your concerns are noted, and will be promptly ignored."

"Then he'll be as ready as he can be, sir," the scientist replied.

"Good. Get to it."

Although both Ayliffe and Spiner had no way of knowing, they were both thinking the same thought as they went to attend to their respective tasks:

Dear God, what have we become?

Forgettable minor characters?


Miles away, the Fifth Child, DJ Croft, returned to consciousness slowly, reluctantly, and with a measure of difficulty. When he peeled his eyelids (which felt as if some considerate soul had come along and glued sand to the insides) away from his eyes (which felt as if some other considerate soul had poured salt in them),

I wish I could take credit for that.

the first thing he saw was an intolerably bright blur. He flinched. This caused his brain, which had apparently shrunk to the size of a walnut, to carom wildly off the inside of his skull, through which someone had apparently pounded several dozen framing nails.

The lesser-known side-effects of Evangelion piloting include severe neural degeneration and overblown metaphors.

By squinting to the point where he was peering out at the world through a crosshatch of eyelashes, DJ reduced the intolerable brightness to a mere agonizing glare, and managed to identify its source as a rectangular ceiling fixture holding three fluorescent tubes. Then a merciful shadow blocked the light as an indeterminate shape leaned over him.

"DJ? Can you hear me?" came a deafening voice that was probably Misato's. "How do you feel?"

He's DJ Croft. Chances are he's either horny or smarmy, probably both.

"Like the ancient Aztecs have been using my head for a football," DJ replied, surprised that his voice came out in something other than a feeble croak. He sat up, gingerly, trying not to rattle his brain about too much in his nail-filled skull.

Really, there's a point where you should just drop a metaphor. It's like a football (American football, for you commie foreigners), only it's made out of badgers. And the badgers are radioactive.

"Drink this," came another voice, this one Ritsuko's, and someone pressed an item his brain took a moment to identify as a drinking glass into his hand. "It'll restore your electrolyte balance. You've been unconscious for almost twenty hours."

And so he did, tossing the foul-tasting beverage down in several great tidal gulps;
I'm surprised there wasn't a comparison to Thor drinking the ocean. Except DJ would do it better, naturally.

after a few moments of perilous nausea, he was startled to realize that, just like that, he did feel quite a lot better. He rubbed at his eyes, blinked, and discovered himself able to focus on things again, then turned to Ritsuko.

"Wha'happen?"

"An unexpected feedback error. We didn't expect you to be so deeply synchronized with EVA-01 that it would set up a neural feedback loop if you went to an external camera position, but it did. We've run a full set of scans, though, and there's no permanent harm. The shock knocked you out before your neural pathways could be permanently affected."

Haha, wow. DJ was so good at piloting that he had to fall unconscious, or his brain would have been melted by his own badassitude. At least that's how I chose to read that paragraph.

"How reassuring," DJ said dryly. "That's why I feel like somebody's unscrewed my head and taken out my brain?"

"More or less."

"Right. Memo to myself: don't use the external cameras." He plopped back down on the bed, looked painlessly up at the light fixture, and decided he was feeling fine. Well, hungry, but otherwise fine. His hands didn't hurt any more; looking at them, he saw that the palms and some of the fingers were lightly bandaged.

"How the hell'd I do that?" he wondered.

Forgot to use the lube, I see.

"We're... not sure," Ritsuko replied, looking briefly away. DJ didn't buy that, but he let it slide.

"Can I get up now?" he asked.

"Sure... as I said, your tests showed no problems. EVA-01 will be in repairs for a few days, so you'll have some time off to rest up. Misato will take care of your living arrangements. I believe you were having the things you wanted shipped, weren't you?"

Like his HAL-9000 supercomputer.

no, really

"That was when I thought I'd be at summer-camp-for-bookworms for two months. How long do you intend to keep me here?"

"You're free to leave at any time," said Ritsuko, her gaze level. "We won't keep you here against your will."

DJ sat up again, looked to the side, spotted his clothes folded neatly in the chair next to the bed. With a bit of surprise, he noticed that his Springfield Armory V10 pistol was there, too, still hanging in its shoulder harness and offset by a pair of spare magazines. Given the fuss Ritsuko had put up over it when he'd been fitted with the plug suit, he'd expected to have to go through all kinds of hassle to get it back.

We've all seen by now that DJ is a supremely responsible person who would never think of using his firearms but for self-defense. He's definitely not going to gun down another character in cold blood. That would just be silly. So you can see why NERV would just hand them over.

He got up and started dressing, unconcerned that he was not alone; you got over that kind of hang-up pretty quickly in the field. "I need some time to think," he observed as he belted on his jeans and shrugged into a slightly oversized oxford shirt. "Time and space. And my backpack, so I can have something to read."

"Something to read?"

"Have a Maxim? Failing that, I'll settle for Gigantic Asses Monthly."

"I think better when I'm reading."


Rei Ayanami, contrary to what anyone might have expected had they looked into her private infirmary room, was not bored. She would have been, had she known of the concept; but since she had never known the simple pleasures of a hobby, she had nothing to miss. And since missing that simple pleasure is what boredom is all about, she was not bored.

Rei may not be bored, but she sure seems boring.

She lay in her infirmary bed, swathed in bandages, an IV in her arm, and thought about the events of the previous day. Who was the blue-eyed stranger who had helped her? She had seen something in his eyes she could not identify when he knelt beside her, held her head and shoulders off the cold, hard floor, and wiped the sweat from her forehead. It wasn't unusual for Rei to see an emotion in someone else's eyes that she could not identify, but it was unusual for the phenomenon to matter to her; unusual enough that she was now pondering it, turning those few seconds of contact over in her mind, wondering at their significance.

And she is already obsessing over DJ. This... is not encouraging.

The door slid open, interrupting her thoughts; she looked to her left and saw the stranger entering the room, dressed in the same faded jeans, age-grey Dr. J's and blue-striped oxford shirt with the top two buttons missing he'd been wearing the day before, with a battered leather backpack slung by one strap over his left shoulder. With the battered brown jacket he'd been wearing the day before slung over the backpack, Rei could see a shoulder-holster harness like the one Colonel Keller wore, which struck her as odd for someone so young.

A shoulder holster? Can't he even pretend to obey the law? I don't imagine that Maine allows minors, let alone minors who aren't American citizens, to openly carry firearms that were illegally smuggled into the country.

The stranger smiled, a quiet smile that lit up his eyes, walked silently to the end of the bed, and tilted the hanging clipboard there toward his eyes.

"Rei Ayanami," he observed, his English accent putting an interesting slant on her last name. The smile again. "DJ Croft. I'm Number Five."

I'm just going to imagine that DJ sounds exactly like Electrical Beast. It's just about the only way I'll be able to remember he's British, since the only thing that separates him from the American/Japanese characters is that occasionally the narration will inform us that he is, in fact, English.

Rei nodded. One mystery explained, anyway. "Hello," she said softly.

DJ went to the chair in the corner and plopped into it, pulling the small stepstool over to use as an ottoman, and produced a tatty paperback from the backpack. This behavior struck Rei as odd - people who did not know her well, which was more or less everybody, tended to feel an irritating need to make conversation, as if silence were a bane to be thrust back at any cost. DJ, however, didn't seem to mind her silence at all; he merely read his book. Even so, Rei didn't feel as though he was ignoring her. It was very odd... but not unpleasant.

After almost an hour of silence, Rei's curiosity defeated her reticence, and she said, very tentatively, "Why are you here?"

DJ looked over the top of the book. "Sorry, am I bothering you?"

Yes.

Rei shook her head.

"I wanted somewhere quiet to have a think, but I didn't want to be alone," DJ explained. "I hope you don't think it's an imposition, but I thought perhaps you could use a bit of quiet company yourself. It must get lonely here."

"It must get lonely here," he said, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

Rei shrugged. She had never considered that possibility. After all, she had been alone all her life. Like boredom, she couldn't feel loneliness; she had no frame of reference, no way of knowing what was missing from her life.

His initial salvo having fallen on deaf ears, DJ followed with the most effective weapon in his ladykilling arsenal.

"So, come here often?"

If that didn't work, nothing would.

But if this was what company was like...

DJ returned to reading his book. He didn't mean it as a snub and she didn't take it as such. Already, they had that much of an understanding.

Rei Ayanami's pale, drawn face wore the slightest hint of a smile as she settled back against her pillow and went to sleep.

And he has already befriended Rei. Is there any character with whom he will not get along?

Well, aside from the ones who are clearly intended to be unsympathetic, I mean.


Misato Katsuragi sat in her office, glaring sourly at the information on her terminal screen; then, with an exasperated sigh, she scooped up her desk phone and called Ritsuko.

"Akagi," came the reply.

"Ritsuko, why does your department have DJ living alone in C Block?"

Plausible deniability for when NERV demolishes the building, chalking DJ up as "collateral damage?"

"He doesn't have family in the area - chances are, he doesn't have family at all any more. Haven't you read his file? His father was killed in the aftermath of Second Impact and his mother's been missing for months; his only living relatives are a paternal grandmother who doesn't know he exists and a maternal grandfather who disowned his mother years before he was born. What were we supposed to do with him?"

Misato hadn't consciously planned on saying anything remotely like what she was about to say, but before she realized that, it was out: "I'll take care of him."

"Uh, what?" Ritsuko replied.

You know, there is a good reason for not wanting multiple important people in the same area. If you put a pilot (later four) and a senior officer in the same apartment, that's just asking for trouble. Especially since the building is on the surface, rather than in a secure location inside NERV. If you're going to put all your eggs in one basket, then you better make damn well sure that the basket is as secure as possible, instead of just putting it in the path of giant monsters and hoping for the best.

And yes, I know this is intentionally following what happened in Evangelion. That doesn't excuse it, though.

In for a penny, Katsuragi, said Misato to herself. "I said I'll take care of him. My apartment is huge, much bigger than I need, I've got two empty bedrooms I'll never fill with stuff of my own. He can live with me. C'mon, Ritsuko, it's not like I'm gonna put the moves on him or anything."

I wouldn't be so certain.

"Of course not!" Dr. Akagi bellowed. "How could you even joke about such a thing? That's just like you, Misato!"

Misato held the phone at arm's length and glared at it. Ritsuko never -could- take a joke.


After an almost-exactly-two-hour nap, Rei Ayanami awoke to silence, save for the quiet whir of the room's air conditioning vent and the soft sound of a page turning every now and then. The room had been darkened by some nurse or another, but DJ had somehow managed to remain, his chair sitting now in a small, warm, yellowish pool of light cast by a small reading lamp affixed to the wall with a magnet. He had a different book now; too far for Rei to read the titles, but the cover was a different color. The last had been blackish-blue; this one was white.

OK, now DJ's getting kind of creepy.

"What are you reading?" she asked.

He lowered the book a little and looked over the spine at her again. "It's called 'The Ghost from the Grand Banks'," he replied. "By a chap name of Arthur C. Clarke - absolute bloody genius, greatest writer of the twentieth century."

You might think this is an in-character moment.

Then the 2001: A Space Odyssey homages show up. And then you realize that DJ is a mouthpiece for the authors.

Then it gets worse.

In what any familiar observer would have counted as an almost unprecedented spurt of volubility, Rei asked a second question: "What's it about?"

"Businessmen trying to raise the wreck of the Titanic."

And a third: "What's that?"

Rei doesn't know what the Titanic was? O...K... then.

DJ reached into his pack, retrieved the last book he'd been reading and tossed it onto the bed. Rei picked it up and looked at the cover.

A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, it said, BY WALTER LORD. The cover was a reproduction of an oil painting, depicting an old-fashioned ocean-going ship at night. All wasn't well with it, though; it wasn't sitting evenly in the water, and there were small boats with oars visible in the picture as well. Rei found this imagery quite confusing, but concluded that it would be explained within; so she turned to the first page and began reading.

And thus begin's this fanfic's inexplicable Titanic fixation. Seriously, there's an entire chapter devoted to DJ going back in time to prevent the disaster from happening.

In a way, this decision was to have unfortunate consequences for Rei. Having now experienced a leisure-time activity, she would soon acquire the ability to be bored.

There came a knock at the door, and then it opened a bit and Misato peeped around. "Hello?" she said quietly. "Oh, hi. I don't want to disturb you, but it's time for DJ to go."

DJ tucked his book into his pack, shut off the light, pulled it off the wall, folded it into a small oblong package, and slipped it into the pack as well. As he passed the bed, Rei tried to hand him back "A Night to Remember", but he smiled and pushed it back at her.

"Keep it," he said. "I'll take it back when you're finished reading it. If you want, I'll pop by tomorrow for a bit... I won't have much else to do 'til they finish putting my EVA back together."

"[M]y EVA."

MY Eva.

sigh...

Taken aback by both the offer and her reaction to it, Rei nodded. DJ smiled, nodded in return, and followed Misato out.

In a way, this decision was also to have unfortunate consequences for Rei. Having now experienced a bit of companionship, she would soon acquire the ability to be lonely, as well.


"What were you and Rei talking about?" Misato wondered as she and DJ navigated the corridors of NERV Headquarters.

"We weren't," DJ replied. "We were reading."

"Reading?"

"Reading."

What were they doing, again? I'm confused.

Misato decided she didn't really want to know. They walked in silence for some time, until finally, her curiosity got the better of her, and she asked,

"So?"

"So what?" DJ replied.

"So did you... decide?"

DJ: I decided to read.
Misato: To read?
DJ: To read.

DJ realized as she asked that he hadn't bothered to consider it. After his not-really-a-conversation with Rei Ayanami, there wasn't really a need.

He nodded. "I'll stay... for now."

He'll stay only as long as everyone bows to his will and allows him to show off and harass the female staff.

Misato grinned. "That's great. We really do need you."

"Uh-huh," DJ replied, unimpressed.

"I know," DJ replied, unimpressed.

"So... are you hungry?"

"I could eat," said DJ. "All I've had since the flight out was a hot dog in the commissary after waking up."

"Well, then, let's get something. We have to have a party!"

"What for?"

"To welcome home my new roommate, of course!"

"Your new roommate," said DJ skeptically, wondering why he was being involved in this matter at all.

I would say something about DJ not being given any consent in his housing arrangements, but somehow I get the feeling he won't mind. Righteous indignation at being forced to save mankind from extinction is one thing, but rooming with a hot chick? Yes, please.

"Didn't anyone tell you?"

"Tell me what? I've been in Rei's room all afternoon. Nobody's told me anything. It's been very restful."

"Oh, well, Ritsuko was going to stick you all alone in base housing, waaaay off in the boonies where there's still some living space, but I said, 'No way, Ritsuko, that's no way to treat the hero of the day,' so instead, you'll be living with me."

DJ smiled. "Will I."

"Your stuff's probably already been delivered. Isn't that great?"

DJ wasn't sure if it was great or not, actually, but who was he to blow against the wind?

I would say "something else is blowing right now," but I'm far too mature to stoop to that level.

Wait...

"Got any Indian restaurants in this town?" he asked. "I could murder a good curry."

"I know a pretty good place," Misato replied. "But we have to make a stop first."

"Where?"

"Someplace really cool."

The back seat of her car.


DJ stood looking up at the craggy stone edifice before him, reflecting that it looked like a small version of the kind of place he and his mother might explore, then turned his attention to the plaque on the ground in front of him.

"Bancroft Tower," he read.

Oh, I'm sure Lara Croft "explores" all sorts of towers. Isn't that how she ended up with DJ to begin with?

"This tower was built in 1900 to honor the memory of George Bancroft, 1800-1891. Born at the foot of this hill he rose to the posts of Secretary of the Navy, Founder of the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis Maryland, U.S. Minister to Great Britain and Germany. This memorial was built by his friend and admirer Stephen Salisbury III."

I will say one thing for setting a story in your hometown: you can describe local landmarks and scenery without having to do any research, which is pretty convenient. It also makes no sense if you're writing about an anime set in Japan, but this is a crossover, so you can't expect any sort of coherence.

If you don't believe me, you will when Babylon 5 shows up.

He looked back up at the tower again, then around at the rolling grass and craggy old trees of the wooded clearing in which it stood. To his back was a small parkway where Misato's car was currently parked; flanking the walkway that led to the tower itself were two stubby stone turrets.

DJ turned around and walked back to the parkway, where Misato was standing next to the small retaining wall that prevented people from accidentally driving straight off the top of Bancroft Hill at night.

"You're right," he told her, "this is pretty cool. I hate to tear us away... but I'm bloody starving, you know."

"Me me me me me me me," whined DJ, who is very British. Very British indeed.

"Won't be long now," said Misato, hopping up onto the wall and turning to face away from the tower, her legs hanging over. She patted a spot on the wall next to her. "C'mon up and watch with me."

"Watch what?" wondered DJ as he climbed up next to her. The top of Bancroft Hill gave a panoramic view of the city of Worcester, surface component of Geo-Front Worcester-3; it sprawled in all its sleepy glory in the valley below, flanked by hills and bathed in the golden gleam of the last few minutes of afternoon sunlight. DJ could still see the marks of his battle with the Third Angel the previous evening, but for the most part, the city looked as peaceful and dull as it had looked the previous afternoon about this time, when DJ had arrived in it.

"It's almost time," Misato said with a smile. DJ glanced at her, but she was watching the cityscape with rapt attention, so he turned back to it.

"This is a happening town. I can tell from here."

Just then, his ears caught the faint sound of warning klaxons drifting up from the city, and with much rumbling and clacking and other mechanical sounds, the sleepy low-elevation city began to sprout skyscrapers. As he watched the buildings grow, DJ realized that what he had taken for a hanging city on the ceiling of the Geo Front cavern was really the larger of Worcester's buildings, retracted below ground level for safety's sake.

"Very spiff," murmured DJ.

Die in a fire.

Misato put her hand on his shoulder. "This place is a fortress, designed to protect its inhabitants against the Angels," she told him with a serious smile. "This is our city. And - it's the city you saved last night."

DJ looked at her face, then at the gleaming golden spires of Worcester, now locked at their full extension and reaching proudly toward the sky, and decided coming here hadn't been such a waste after all.

[continued in next post]

This post has been edited by Dr. O: Mar 31 2011, 11:36 AM

[Dr. O]

Half an hour later, still hungry but with the smell of chicken Vindaloo heavy in his nostrils and promising him a change in that condition very shortly, DJ reflected that he was having a better day than the previous one. Had he possessed a clean shirt, it would have been nearly perfect - the dried blood on the corner of the right sleeve had stiffened and scratched his arm irritatingly every time he moved his hand.

It's all about you, isn't it.

He followed Misato to a fourth-floor apartment in a biggish apartment complex, new enough that the elevator still smelled of carpet glue, and stood waiting for Misato to get the door open. He was humming a song she didn't recognize (which was probably fortunate, since it was an old rock song entitled "Take Me Home Tonight").

Ladies and gentlemen, our hero.

"I just moved in here a bit ago myself," she explained, indicating the as-yet-unremoved pile of empty boxes alongside the door with one hand as she worked the locks and opened the door with the other.

"Here we are!" Misato declared cheerfully, leading the way through a small foyer, where they removed their shoes, and into an efficient little kitchen.

Or at least it would have been efficient, had every available horizontal surface except the table in the middle not been covered with stacks of empty black cans. DJ's already-decent opinion of Misato hitched up a couple of notches at the sight of these; any woman with enough sense to drink Guinness couldn't be too bad. The housekeeping wasn't even all that alarming to him; sure, it was a bit of a clutter, but there wasn't a heap of filth-encrusted dishes in the sink or anything.

The heap of filth-encrusted dishes was in the bathtub instead. It's much more efficient to clean them that way.

PS You may not have noticed, but this story takes every opportunity to describe the characters' flaws in detail. Well, except the self-inserts', obviously.

Misato continued on through the room and down the hall, DJ guessed to her room; he busied himself laying out the food on the table and hunting up some utensils in the drawers (an easy enough task, since none of them held anything except for the one with the flatware in it). While he was snooping, he had a look in the fridge; save for ice, some random junk food, and approximately a freighterload of canned Guinness pub draught, there was nothing in it.

Cold beer wasn't DJ's favorite thing in the world, but you take what you can find in an uncertain world,

Oh no, he has to drink cold beer, however will our hero endure these dire conditions.

so he took one out, popped it, let the charge of nitrogen bubble up through the beer and aerate it, and slurped the foam off the top, grimacing a little at the sharpness of the cold brew. Turning and leaning his back against the fridge, he surveyed the small kitchen, making mental plans to clean it up and put it into service (as the piles of nuke-food and take-out containers in and near the trash can indicated it wasn't, really, at this time). Hmm, that's odd...

"What's with this other icebox?" he called to Misato.

"Oh, don't worry about that," Misato called back as she hung up her dress and slipped gratefully into a pair of cutoffs that had reached that magical age where the denim was still strong, but softer than a car-wash chamois. "He's probably still sleeping."

"Sleeping?" wondered DJ, then shrugged and took another slug of his pilfered beer. So, she had something in the second fridge that slept. Everything else about this city was that weird, why not?

DJ Croft takes living creatures in the refrigerator in stride. Because he's DJ Croft, and he doesn't get rattled by nothing. Nerves of steel, man. Nerves of steel.

Misato emerged from the hallway, transformed by a pair of cutoff jeans, a tank top, and a ponytail elastic from a cool and competent military officer to a cheerful, casual woman, perhaps a little too old to be college-age. "So, ready to dig into the - " She stopped short, regarding DJ with an odd expression.

"What?" he replied, returning her stare blankly.

"What were you planning to do with that?" she demanded, pointing accusingly at the beer.

"Drink it and then take the lorry for a drive to the pub," DJ said with a stiff upper lip that would have made Queen Victoria proud.

DJ glanced down at the can, then returned his eyes to Misato, the confusion in them unabated. "I was planning to drink it," he replied slowly. "Man's not allowed to a beer in his own home after a hard day's work?"



"Not when that man is seven years from the legal drinking age!"

DJ looked infinitely confused for a moment; then the clouds cleared and he slapped his forehead with the heel of his free hand. "Bugger all! I knew there was a reason I didn't want to come to the States. Misato, keep in mind I'm from England, eh? I've been drinking best bitter at the local for years now."

Because everyone knows that the UK allows pre-teens to drink alcohol.

Misato wavered. "But... I'm supposed to be your guardian," she replied. "It's illegal."

"I'm not supposed to have a gun either, but you let me keep mine," DJ pointed out.

Slippery slope? DJ doesn't have time for a mere slope. He'll jump right the fuck off.

"That's different," Misato replied. "You're a NERV operative now, that makes you a kind of military personnel. We can make exceptions to the weapons laws."

"What about the vehicle laws?"

"What about them?"

"Back home I had a motorcycle."

That's right, folks. DJ is a gun-toting, motorcycle-riding beer connosieur. One can only assume he is also the world's most handsome and sophisticated gun-toting, motorcycle-riding beer connosieur.

"The -driving- age in England isn't discretionary!" Misato protested, as if indignant that he was changing the rules of the argument.

"I come from an unusual profession," DJ replied with a shrug. "Sometimes we make our own rules. Anyway, I want to get another one to get around with here - there are no bloody trains in this city and it's way too far to work to walk."

No, no matter what you say, looting archeological sites is not a profession.

Misato considered. "We might be able to swing that," she said after a moment, "but you're changing the subject."

"C'mon," replied DJ scornfully, taking another drink. "I can pilot a 300-foot robot against the Forces of Evil, but I can't have a beer? This -not- an incentive against me just pissing off back to Old Blighty. I've a much bigger house back there, y'know, a manservant I'm quite fond of, proper warm beer, and no job that involves... what did dear Ritsuko-of-the-Ripcord call it, neural feedback." He gave an exaggerated shiver. "What a bloody awful thought that is."

"And I want all the female NERV employees to wear playboy bunny outfits!" DJ demanded. "If they don't, then I'll just let mankind get exterminated! And I also want an Xbox!"

"You're threatening to leave the project and go back to England if I won't let you drink -beer-?"

Once again: our hero.

"No," replied DJ, "I'll drink it anyway, but if you won't accept that, things'll get awfully tense."

Privately, Misato was impressed. DJ was calm, centered, self-assured, all things Dr. Ikari's son Shinji had singularly failed to show during the brief time (perhaps an hour) he'd been in Worcester-3. He had a few conditions he wanted to live his life by; fine, Misato could relate to that, she demanded a few indulgences from life herself, and, like DJ, she felt she earned them.

Oh she is not giving in just like that.

She had to remind herself that this was no run-of-the-mill 14-year-old, yanked out of an idyllic summer between eighth and ninth grade, with a sheltered conception of how the world worked. This was a seasoned traveler and explorer, raised alone by a woman Misato had long admired for her legendary toughness and self-sufficiency, with very definite ideas of how he thought things should be.

This fanfic is hurting me in my brain.

The only reason he hadn't gone with his mother on her last fateful expedition was because he was bedridden at their country estate in England, recovering from a tropical fever contracted on the expedition before that. Without his mother present to drive him, he'd worked his way back to health and whipped himself back into shape. She wondered why he hadn't gone to the Yucatan in search of his mother himself. He certainly seemed to have both the wherewithal and the chutzpah for it.

Smiling, she nodded. "OK, fine. But only here, and not when you're on call."

Oh motherfucker.

DJ grinned. "Glad we got that worked out before the curry got cold... shall we?"

"Sure. Can you get me a beer while the subject's on your mind?"

"Your wish, my lady," he replied, retrieving and popping another, then handing it over before seating himself at the table.

No! What kind of person lets a teenager walk up to them and just say "I'm going to disobey the law," and lets them!? This is stupid!

Plopping down in the opposite chair, she leaned back and poured the contents of the can straight down. DJ watched, fascinated, as the muscles in her throat worked. His mother did that same thing, and the resemblance echoed powerfully in his mind (though frankly, in both women's cases, he thought it was really a frightful waste of the beer, since there wasn't much chance to savor it, and he had no idea how Misato could bear to do it with a -cold- liquid).

Oh dear, she doesn't drink the right way (AKA the DJ CROFT way).

Then she slammed the empty can down on the table and let out a contented howl. "WAAAAAAAAAA! YYYYYEAAAHHH! Life doesn't get any better than this."

Shrugging acquiescence, DJ chopsticked up a chunk of the curried chicken, then murmured his approval. "Not bad. Not Mildram's, mind, but acceptable."

Shut up. Just shut up, you jackass.

"I'm so glad you approve," replied Misato sardonically. "Who's Mildram?"

"Our manservant. I should phone him tomorrow when it's a reasonable hour back home... he's probably worried sick."

"Will he want to come here, do you think?"

"Oh, I should think not. He's about 2000 years old, been with the family since the Conquest. I understand going with Mum when Gran-dad disowned her was the only time in human memory he's done anything flash. No, he'll stay at home and keep Crofthenge from falling down while we're away, like he always does."

Crofthenge.

"'Crofthenge'?" Misato asked with amusement, forking up some of the curry herself.

"Don't blame me, I wasn't born when Mum named the place," said DJ.

Crofthenge.

Misato grinned. "Well, this is your home now," she said. "So relax and feel free to take advantage of everything here - except me!" she added with a cautionary finger.

DJ made a great show of looking around the room, then asked, "What else is there?"

CROFTHENGE.

Also wow this part is giving me some creepy vibes.

This earned him a poke in the shoulder with a fork and an exasperated, "Now you're just being mean."

"Sorry," he replied. "You realize when you say something like that, it's just an invitation for trouble... "

DJ would later justify his conduct on the basis that "she was asking for it."

"Get me another beer."

"Ma'am."

They finished the meal, tossed the debris in the trash, and then Misato suggested they work out a way to divide up the household chores.

"I know," she said. "We'll play paper-stone-scissors and whoever loses will have to do the chores for the day. We can mark up the calendar a month in advance that way."

DJ snorted. "Paper-stone-scissors? Please. I'll wrestle you for it," he added with a raised eyebrow.

You better watch out, Misato. He's both stronger and faster than he looks, and I'm sure he looks positively smashing in a leotard.

"Not tonight," Misato replied with a grin.

He snapped his fingers. "Darn. I guess we'll just have to go even-odd, then. You're the odd one, so you can do the chores on odd days, and I'll take the even days 'cause I'm so even-tempered."

Misato didn't know whether to glare at him or laugh, so she tried to do both, which failed spectacularly. That, she thought, was worth another beer.

"Isn't this nice?" she asked. "Two for dinner instead of eating all alone."

Look, fanfic, I watched the second episode of Evangelion. You don't need to recap it for me. We have Evangelion Rehashed for that.

DJ nodded. "I haven't done this since... " He trailed off and did not go on, but for just a moment, he looked immeasurably sad. The day would soon come when he would have to admit to himself that Lara Croft would not be coming back from the Yucatan this time.

"Well!" Misato said, forcing cheer back into her voice. "Why don't you have a bath and wash all those bad thoughts away?" With an admonishing finger raised, she went on instructively, "Bathing cleanses both body and soul."

You know what would cleanse my soul? A full frontal lobotomy, so I never have to think about this again.

"Right," DJ replied, yawning. "I'm too tired to bother unpacking my things tonight... d'you have an extra towel I can use?"

"Sure, they're in the cabinet under the sink in the bathroom."

"Thanks." DJ stood and shuffled into the bathroom, closing the sliding door behind him.

The bathroom was actually two rooms; the one directly off the kitchen had the sink, toilet, and mirror, and a door on the far wall led to the actual bath. Yawning again, DJ took off his shoulder holster and hung it on a towel hook, then stripped naked. Leaning against the sink, he contemplated his face in the mirror.

I could also do without this part.

He looked like his father; his mother had told him so a thousand thousand times, and he had a picture of the man which confirmed it. He had the same strong jaw and sensitive eyes, the same thick black hair that was straight and well-behaved except for the little shock at the front left corner that would never do anything but look windblown. Looking down at himself, he saw a boy still fairly short and fairly thin, but wiry and tough, well-conditioned from a life of adventure.

"You are one good-lookin' man," he muttered to his reflection,

Little-known fact: DJ is, like every other living creature, DJsexual.

grinned the grin that his mother said was heartbreaking (probably because it was his father's too - DJ had another photo, a snapshot rather than a portrait, that showed him with the same grin), and then went and shoved open the sliding door to the bath proper.

And almost ran smack into a large black-and-white bird with a metal collar on, who appeared to be carrying a towel.

"WAUGH!" said DJ.

Also, DJ is, in fact, an Ork.

"WAUGH!" said the bird, which DJ now realized was a biggish member of the penguin family, maybe two feet tall, with bristly, bright-red eyebrow-like bits over bright green eyes that looked unnervingly intelligent for those of a bird.

Regaining his composure, DJ regarded the bird, who had also recovered his calm, for a moment, then decided this was worth reporting and returned to the kitchen door.

"Say, Misato," he said as he pushed open the door. "Did you know there's a penguin in your bath?"

"And Morgan Freeman won't stop following it around narrating everything it does. It's really freaking me out."

As he said this, the penguin in question waddled past him into the kitchen and made his way to the other refrigerator.

"Oh, he's one of those new hot-springs penguins," said Misato cheerily, as if that explained what the bird was doing in her bath. "His name is Pen-Pen. He's your other roommate."

The bird pushed a control on the front of the spare fridge with a claw; a sliding panel opened, releasing some cool steam, and, with a sideways hello-like glance at DJ, Pen-Pen sauntered into his cool room for the night.

"Isn't science wonderful," said DJ, who had not known there were genetic engineers spending their time doing things as apparently random as hot-springs penguins.

They can make the world's dullest giant robot pilot. I think penguins represent a step forward for genetic engineering, all things considered.

"Mm," replied Misato, taking another drink of beer. Gesturing significantly, she said offhandedly, "Shouldn't you cover that up?"

DJ glanced in the direction of her gesture, then back up to her eyes, and shrugged, grinning his father's grin. "Sorry, are you having trouble controlling yourself?" he inquired.

I'm sure that DJ is intended to be charming in an impish sort of way.

Either that, or the authors are fantastically skilled at writing assholes.

He slammed the sliding door shut just barely in time to deflect the hurtling jar of toothpicks which would otherwise have struck his forehead, and, chuckling, went to have a bath.

Misato, cheeks aflame, glared at the bathroom door for a moment; then her anger sputtered and died, and she chuckled, tossing back another drink.

I suppose I'm not being as nice as I ought to, she said to herself. On the other hand, he's probably made up his mind about me already.


"Not a bad sort of woman," DJ observed to himself as he soaked in the tub. "And what looks! Kind of woman who'd make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window."

"Not that she's worth of me," DJ said.

He was too tired to engage in any lengthy, meaningful reflection on the day's events; instead, he allowed his mind to drift, entertaining himself with thoughts of all the nice-looking women he'd met in the thirty-odd hours he'd been with this NERV outfit. Misato; the blonde scientist, Ritsuko Akagi; that one console operator, what was her name, Maya, who he suspected had understood his muttered historical reference just before EVA-01's launch; Rei Ayanami.

Yes, indeed. Rei Ayanami.

Red eyes, blue hair, and no wasted words.

That's one way of putting it.

He looked forward to having another lack of conversation with her tomorrow.


He was too tired to consider unpacking any of his things or setting up his computer, so as much as he burned to update his journal, it would have to wait until the following day. He took only the time to root through his duffel for his favorite blanket and set up his lucky crystal skull on the desk in his new bedroom; then crawled into bed and plummeted immediately into a deep and satisfying sleep studded with mildly erotic dreams of Misato, Ritsuko, Maya, Rei, and, of course, the most beautiful woman he'd ever known, Lara Croft.

Confirmed: DJ has wet dreams about his mother.

I would call that unfortunate implications, except I'm pretty sure it's just more of DJ being DJ.


Misato, taking her turn in the tub after DJ, was on the phone.

"I don't know, Ritsuko, I'm just a little scared. I'm way out of my depth, I don't know anything about kids."

Then why did you sign on to take care of the world's most pig-headed and assholish fourteen-year-old?

"You took this as part of your responsibilities to NERV," Ritsuko replied, tapping on her desktop with a pen. Misato was always undertaking projects she had no clue how to accomplish and then calling Ritsuko in a panic; it would have infuriated Ritsuko had Misato not tended to make rousing successes of these jobs anyway, after a few calming words from her old college roommate.

"I know, I just... " Misato slumped her shoulders. "I was thinking of him as an asset I wanted to keep a closer eye on. After tonight I don't think I'll ever be able to look at him that way again, and I feel guilty about having done it."

If you are going to try to humanize your main character, you might want to start by making the readers not hate him.

"After tonight? What happened?" asked Ritsuko, a trifle of an edge in her voice.

If Misato had been able to throw something at Ritsuko, she would have. "Nothing like what you're thinking, Dr. Judgmental," she snapped. "But he's so... he's so -alive-. And sharp. I don't know if I've got the mind to keep up with him, he's so sharp."

"Hey guys! Look how cool our original character is! Look at how much the other characters love him and praise his unsurpassed wit! Isn't he just awesome?"

fapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfa
pfapfap

"He likes you, that much is obvious," Ritsuko told her oldroommate. "I don't think he'll give you any trouble. If he does, well, throw him out."

"Thanks, you're a big help," Misato growled, slamming down the phone.

She sighed and slumped back in the tub, slouching down so that her knees came up out of the water and prickled with the sudden coolness of the air. She's still thinking of him as a tool, said Misato to herself. Ah, well. She'll learn her lesson soon enough. I get the distinct feeling Derek J. Croft is nobody's tool... and nobody's fool, either.

I don't know. He seems like a tool to me.

On her way to bed, she wanted to tell DJ she was proud of the job he had done protecting the city the day before, but he was already sound asleep, so she let him keep at it.

She would be slightly troubled the next day to remember that she had dreamed of the boy.

This may be worse than DJ dreaming about Lara Croft, albeit for entirely different reasons.


In the Central Dogma infirmary, Rei Ayanami was having a last visitor of the evening herself. She looked up from her book as Dr. Ikari entered.

"Good evening, Rei. How are you?"

"Much improved, Professor," replied Rei with something approaching cheerfulness. "I should be able to return to work ahead of schedule at this rate."

Professor? Is this some completely different Ikari who we never met in the show?

"Excellent." Ikari pushed his glasses up, then noticed the book and cocked his head inquisitively. "Rei," he asked, "where did you get that?"

Rei looked down at the book, which lay closed in her lap with a finger holding her place. "DJ lent it to me."

"He was here?"

Rei nodded. "For most of the afternoon."

"What was he doing?"

"Reading."

"Reading?"

I think we have established that they were reading.

"Yes."

"Odd." Ikari scratched his bearded chin. "Did he speak to you?"

"Only to introduce himself."

"Hrmph." Ikari was sure he didn't like the idea of the Croft boy's attitude influencing Rei. The project had to have at least -one- stable EVA pilot, after all.

I like this guy. So far that makes a grand total of two characters with good judgment.

I get the feeling we won't run into very many more.

"Is something wrong?" asked Rei.

"No, nothing to worry about," he replied. "What is your opinion of him?"

Rei looked confused. "Should I have one?"

"Everyone has opinions."

"Well, I... " Rei stopped and searched her thoughts, trying to find a name to put on what she felt if she considered it. "I guess I like him," she finally said.

"Wrong answer," Ikari said, and then shot her. Best to start over from scratch with a new Rei clone.

Ikari frowned thoughtfully. If Croft were allowed to erode Rei's detachment, she might lose her efficiency, something he hated the mere thought of. On the other hand, if he told her to stay away from him, although she would obey, if she had started developing some attachment to him, it might damage her efficiency to separate them. Damn the boy! Rei's morale had never been an issue Gendou Ikari had to consider before. Perhaps it hadn't been worth the effort and expense of getting him here after all... but no, Rei could not have defeated the Third Angel in her condition, Ikari knew that.

Which is why they drafted Shinji in the show. But whatever.

"Is... is that wrong?" asked Rei tentatively.

"Hm? Oh, no, I'm sorry, Rei. I was thinking of something else. No, I don't mind if you like Croft. Maybe... maybe you need a friend your own age."

I have a hard time believing this is Gendo.

She looked faintly relieved, and nodded. "If you say so."

"Just don't let him influence your efficiency."

Was that a trace of reproach in her eye as she said, "I would never do that," or just Ikari's imagination? There was certainly nothing of it in her voice.

I am starting to get a bad feeling about the direction her characterization is headed.

"It's time for you to sleep," he said. "You need to rest if you're to recover."

Obediently, Rei marked her place and put the book on her nightstand.

"Good night, Rei."

"Good night, Dr. Ikari."

Ikari switched off the light on his way out, but Rei remained awake for several minutes, contemplating the dark quietude of the room and wondering about the undercurrent in the conversation with Ikari she was certain she'd missed.

When she slept, it was her first night's sleep in the infirmary without dreams of the accident that had put her there.

Wasn't there a throwaway line in Evangelion about how Rei doesn't dream?

Am I really going to have to rewatch the series just to point out where this fanfic gets things wrong? Because I'm worried that I may actually be pedantic enough to do that. Then again, NXE is wrong on plenty of counts unrelated to Eva. Just you wait until the nuclear energy and Titanic chapters, in which we learn (respectively) that all nuclear power plants are giant bombs and that the best way to prevent a ship from sinking is to ram an iceberg at full speed.


Three thousand miles away, on his last night at X-COM Alcatraz, Jonathan Ellison dreamed of nothing at all.

/* The Marcels "Blue Moon" _Billboard Top Rock 'n Roll Hits: 1961_ */

NEXT EPISODE:

- Meet DJ's computer!
- Meet Ritsuko's computer!
- The Fourth Child and his EVA arrive in Worcester-3!
- Attack of the Giant Squid Thing!

All this, plus DJ sweet-talking Maya, in the next stunningly exciting episode of Neon Exodus Evangelion, coming to http://www.eyrie.net/ on 7/16/97 (and your local news server some indeterminate-but-hopefully-short time after that)! Be here for "Catch of the Day"!

Well... I guess it could be worse. Probably.

This post has been edited by Dr. O: Apr 1 2011, 06:34 PM

[Moose]

I couldn't really pay attention to anything you wrote, because I was too busy thinking about how cool and badass DJ is. Sorry! I assume it was really good, though.

DJ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! <3 <3 <3

[Dr. O]

You love DJ? What a coincidence - I love DJ! We should make this a joint mock so that we can express our adoration for him together.

[oneluckyduck]

Pfft, I want to impede your progress be in on this! We might, like need a new badge Moose! 11!!!!!! 1 iqeone!!@21~!!!
Oh, and the mock was good, O.
[i had to re-read it a couple of times, I was so overwelmed by DJ's EPICAWESOMENESS that it was hard to see through it.]

[Moose]

The chapters are lengthy as hell, it would take forever for me to get around to mocking it. I will just lust from afar. OH DJ, WHY CAN YOU NOT BE REAL!?

[oneluckyduck]

MORN AND WEEEEEEP! DULL BUT DRAMATIC MUUUUUUSIC!!!!!!11!!

[Dr. O]

Did someone mention DJ Croft? Because I can't get enough of DJ! DJ-sama! ^___________^

/* Genesis "Land of Confusion" _Invisible Touch_ */

Don't stop! Believin'! Hold on to that fe~eling!

Wait... wrong band... Sorry.

EYRIE PRODUCTIONS, UNLIMITED
presents

NEON EXODUS EVANGELION

EXODUS 1:3 - CATCH OF THE DAY


Inspired by NEON GENESIS EVANGELION created by Hideaki Anno, Gainax,
et al.

Most characters created by Hideaki Anno and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto
except

Except the cool ones.

DJ Croft created by Benjamin D. Hutchins
and
Jon Ellison created by Larry Mann

I'm not sure why someone would want to take credit for Jon, especially since his name's proximity's to DJ's makes him look even lamer. It's like how sunspots appear dark; no matter how cool someone is, they will always pale in comparison to the blinding glory of DJ CROFT.

Additional material and inspiration cadged from TOMB RAIDER by Core
Design, Ltd., X-COM: UFO DEFENSE and sequels from MPS Labs (whoever
owns them nowadays), THE X-FILES created by Chris Carter, and
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY by Arthur C. Clarke

Don't forget System Shock, Marathon, the Bible, obscure Atari games, or Titanic.

I wish I were making this up.

Written by Benjamin D. Hutchins and Larry Mann

Aided and abetted by the Eyrie Productions, Unlimited crew
and special-guest-for-life Phil Moyer

I hear he's getting released early for good behavior.

© 1997 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited


In the large, modern apartment block at 22 Lee Street in Worcester-3, very near the campus of the Worcester-3 Polytechnic Institute, a young man named DJ Croft was engaged in the most timeless of rituals. He was undertaking a job almost unchanged in principle and practice since the first days that humanity's antecedents started growing crops and gathering food rather than constantly hunting on foot (a decision that brought with it the complex and incomprehensible concepts of real-estate escrow and transcontinental bulk shipping):

Unpacking his stuff.

Oh boy I'm so excited I wonder what stuff DJ is going to unpack.

The room he'd been given in Apartment 3-D was fairly large, though not as large as his room back at Crofthenge, his mother's estate in Northamptonshire. He'd awakened that morning around 7 to find the ceiling unfamiliar, the walls bare, the furniture unembellished and spartan; entirely not to his liking. So he'd dug up his toiletries, gone to install them in the bathroom, and brushed his teeth while he was there, then found a clean t-shirt and a pair of good knee-length shorts in his luggage. Thus dressed, he could set about unpacking the rest of his things.

This is so action-packed I can't stand it. Oh boy, this is so much better than Evangelion!

He had only packed for a two-month excursion to a special-interests school for "youth with talents in the areas of English literature and world history" - summer camp for bookworms, he liked to think of it as - and as such, was woefully underequipped with books. Why, the stock he'd brought with him only filled half of the room's one large bookshelf - he would have to find out about his pay scale, perhaps draw an advance, and find a bookstore to descend on very soon. And install more bookshelves along the room's mostly bare walls.

And now we can add interior decorator to the long list of DJ's talents. Is there no end to his ability to improve the world around himself? No. There isn't.

The room was rectangular, about eight feet by sixteen. One of the narrow ends was dominated by a picture window that looked out onto the corner of Park Avenue and Institute Road, the two major roads forming the arms of the right triangle whose hypotenuse was Lee Street; the other had a wide counter set into it, with a set of pigeonholes built into the wall behind, serving as an integral desk. One of the long side walls was bare; the other had a closet, the bookshelf and a dresser unit built in, as well as, in the end of the room opposite the window, the door leading to the rest of the apartment. The head of the bed was toward the windows, against the univent that provided heating for the room.

Such vivid descriptions! I feel like I'm there!

Having put away his clothes, hung his Union Jack on the blank wall, shelved his books and piled the empty boxes in the hall, and stuck the "Madman Omar's House of Iniquity" sign on his door, DJ was now in the process of setting up his most prized antique - his computer, a monolithic black slab of late-twentieth-century electronic genius that still hadn't been equaled in the modern personal-computer marketplace (at least by DJ's standards). It stood edge-on, tower-style, four and a half feet high, two feet deep and six inches wide, on the tabletop; a thick cable connected it to the power supply in the wall. Hunting under the table, DJ found an RJ45 Ethernet tap; he didn't know if it was live, but connected a cable to it anyway, plugging it into the Ethernet adapter on the back of the tower.

I was on the fence about this fanfic until I read the dimensions of DJ's computer. This is truly the greatest work of fanfiction - no, of literature - upon which I have ever laid eyes.

Then he set up the monitor, a heavy seventeen-inch old-fashioned color CRT display with the tube set off-center so that there was a wide strip of bezel on the operator's right side of the screen, and cabled on the input devices and printer. This left him with one box of parts remaining, a box filled with the small black cubes of peripheral I/O units; he would run the cables for those after scouting out the best places around the apartment to put them.

Now, it was time to check the machine itself. Crossing his fingers, DJ switched on the monitor, then flicked the main power switch on the back of the computer.

Oh man he's turning on his computer I wonder what's going to happen next.

The cooling fan spooled up with a quiet whir; the screen glowed, as did the round red lens mounted in the bezel. Block letters appeared on the screen:

HAL 14000 BIOS VER 1.1 4/5/98

Yep. You read that right.

POST
8192 MB RAM... OK
DISPLAY... HAL 17I PLUS
MASTER IOSYS... OK
PERIPHERAL IO... NONE
4096 GB CRMEM... OK

LOADING HALOS 4.2...

As the final message appeared on the screen, a small speaker mounted below the "eye" on the monitor bezel barked forth a short song in two voices, forty-five or so seconds of rising and falling electronic good cheer in F major.

/* J.S. Bach (Wendy Carlos perf.) "Two-Part Invention in F Major"
_Switched-On Bach_ */

No "Also Sprach Zarathustra"? I am so disappoint.

As it played, the door opened and Misato wandered in, hair disheveled and eyes still heavy with sleep, wrapped up in a bedsheet that trailed behind her. "Whazzat?" she asked, pointing at the cheerfully emoting machine.

Does DJ care about waking up his new legal guardian? No. Because he has the world's coolest computer. This is a man who has his priorities straight. Straight like Chris-chan.

"Wait for it," replied DJ with a smile, holding up his hand. The song finished, the acknowledgement "OK" appeared after the loading message, and then the screen blanked. For a long moment, there was silence.

Then, in a wonderfully mellow, gently modulated male human voice, the computer spoke.

Why did he even take his computer to what he thought was a summer reading camp?

"Good morning," it said. "I am a HAL 14000 series computer, production number 1H00714. I first became operational at the HAL plant in Urbana, Illinois, on August 14, 1999. The time is now eight forty-five A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, Tuesday, July 14, 2015. I detect no operational faults in any of my systems." A pause. "Hello, DJ. Have we arrived?"

Why should DJ have to go to the effort of looking in the lower-right portion of the screen to know the time? That's for the peons.

"8:45?!" Misato cried. "Is that thing right?!"

DJ raised his left hand, turned his palm up and checked his wristwatch. "Yup."

I bet he has one of those 007 watches with a laser in it. Why? Because he's DJ Croft. Also because you can never have too many crossovers shoehorned into your self-insertion Evangelion fixfic.

"Oh my GOD I'm LATE!!" Misato declared, scrambling back to her own room.

"Who was that, DJ?" Hal inquired, mild curiosity in his ever-mellow voice.

"It's a long story," replied DJ. "Let me get a drink and I'll bring you up to date."

He's already drinking in the morning? He's going to need a liver transplant by the time he's in college.

Although given how accomplished he is, I bet he already has a PhD. In asskicking, if the first chapter is anything to go on, with a doctorate in witty one-liners.


Receiving final clearance for its landing, the nondescript white Learjet dropped out of the holding pattern over Worcester-3 and began its final approach to the airport. The landing was executed perfectly, and the small aircraft taxied up to the terminal without incident and powered down.

The ground crew immediately got to work securing the plane, as the forward door unsealed and folded outward, forming an accommodation ramp. A moment later the passengers began to emerge: several casually-dressed men and women, one teenage boy, similarly dressed, and a few more men in suits. They all wore sunglasses, but other than that small detail a casual observer would find nothing unusual about them.

This story is no longer about DJ. I have lost interest.

The group made their way into the terminal and then dispersed, the boy waving to the others and wishing them well during their shore leave. The suits each headed in different directions, casually perusing the displays in the gift stores, skimming through newspapers, and generally doing their best to conceal the fact that they were watching the boy like hawks.

The boy, for his part, took in all the sights around him as he strolled through the airport concourse, heading toward the exit. He kept his pace slow, playing the part of an interested traveller taking in a new environment. In due course he had reached the outer doorway. The doors parted, and he stepped out into the temperate air of Worcester-3.

Wait a second. What happened to the first two Worcesters?

Almost as soon as he'd done this, he noticed the black sedan parked not far away. Its sole occupant, a tall gray-haired man, got out and waved. The boy hefted his duffel bag on his shoulder and closed the distance in fairly short order, recognizing the man almost immediately.

"Hello Jon," Otto Keller said when he arrived, a hint of a smile on his face.

"Colonel," Jonathan Ellison nodded in reply. "It's been a while, sir."

They belonged to the same "original characters who displaced canon cast members" club.

"Indeed. I wish the circumstances were a little better," Keller sighed, opening the trunk so Jon could stow his duffel.

"Can't be helped, sir," Jon answered once that business had been taken care of and he had planted himself in the passenger's seat of the car.

Notice how nobody ever sits in this universe. They plop, they plant themselves, but they sure as fuck don't sit.


The trip to the Geo-Front happened mostly in silence. Neither Jon nor Otto offered much in the line of small talk, and once Otto had given Jon his copy of the Personnel Manual Jon was either paging through it or taking in some aspect of the Worcester-3 scenery. The manual got less attention once they had passed through the entry tunnel and reached the Geo-Front, as Jon gazed through the windows at the seemingly endless sprawl of the underground complex. And once they were on foot, moving through the maze of elevators and walkways within Central Dogma, Jon didn't even bother with the manual, fully occupied as he was with studying the route they were taking and determining which passages led where.

"Need a map," he remarked.

Maps? Does NERV look like it's made of money? Well, aside from the giant robots and the entire city dedicated to supporting their operation, I mean.

"I'll see if I can find one for you," Keller replied. He led the way through the tangle of corridors to a massive black door; there, he knocked, and the door slid open to reveal a massive, mostly empty office. At the far end was a large window with an unadorned black datadesk before it; on the floor and ceiling were massive, beautifully rendered diagrams of the Kabbalistic Sephiroth, the Tree of Life.

Let us call attention to the pointless religious symbols. That will cause them to make sense somehow.

Jon understood the significance, if not the artistic appeal, of the diagram, and paid it little mind, instead turning his attention to the man and woman seated and standing behind the desk, respectively, as he and Keller approached it.

"Professor Gendou Ikari, Project Leader," Keller said, gesturing to the man and woman. "And Dr. Ritsuko Akagi, primary science and medical officer for the project."

Why is Gendo a professor? I don't remember that from the show. I think his #2 guy might have been, but he got mysteriously written out. Unless Gendo killed him and assumed his powers. You know, like MegaMan.

This needs to be a MegaMan crossover. DJ would fit right in with Axl.

"Doctor, Professor," Jon nodded to each in turn.

"Welcome to NERV, Jon," Dr. Akagi replied, with a hint of a smile. "We've heard quite a bit about you from Colonel Keller. You are, of course, expected to live up to your reputation."

He has a reputation? Wouldn't that imply that he has some sort of personality? Or that he's done anything other than float in a vat at X-COM?

"Of course, Doctor," Jon replied evenly.

"Ordinarily," Ikari said. "Your orientation would be conducted by your commanding officer, Captain Katsuragi. But as it happens she is unavailable at the moment, so we will outline your overall responsibilities at this time."

Jon nodded.

Ikari stared directly into his eyes as he began. "You are now under the exclusive authority of NERV, and you will be answerable only to that authority, and no other."

"Yes sir," Jon answered neutrally, matching Ikari's gaze.

"You are expected to follow all orders given to you at all times, and will avoid acting without direct authorization."

"Understood, sir."

I get the feeling that if Jon took a turing test, he'd fail.

"Have you familiarized yourself with the Personnel Manual?" Ritsuko inquired.

"In progress, ma'am. I should be sufficiently acquainted with NERV regulations in 48 hours."

"Excellent," Ikari smiled slightly. "Those are your basic obligations. Until the arrival of EVA-03 next Thursday, you will be placed on reserve status. This should provide ample time to familiarize yourself with the regulations as well as the layout of the Geo-Front. Your commanding officer will be returning within a few hours. The orientation will continue then under her direction."

"Yes sir. A question, if I may?"

"No," Gendo said, and promptly shot him. "Can we just make the next clone mute? I mean, we're already close enough. Just go all the way with it."

"Go on."

"Why is EVA-03's arrival lagging so far behind my own?"

"There's only one aircraft in the world capable of airlifting an Evangelion - NERV's custom-built Antonov AN-411 transport," Keller answered. "Regulations require it to remain on station in Worcester-3 in case one of the operational EVAs requires an airlift in an emergency situation."

Jon nodded his understanding as Ikari went on, "For that reason, EVA-03 has been shipped from X-COM Alcatraz to the Port of Pleasanton, and is now on its way to Worcester-3 by fast rail. It's expected to arrive Thursday morning."

Oh, come on, everyone knows that fast rail doesn't exist in America.

Ritsuko picked up where Ikari had left off. "Your first official reporting will be at 0900 tomorrow; we will be conducting a synchronization test for the entire squad at that time. Until then, you are free to do as you wish." She removed a plastic ID card from the clipboard she carried and handed it to Jon. "This is your identification passcard; it will admit you to all areas of the Geo-Front you are cleared for access to."

Jon accepted the card, briefly examining both sides before pocketing it. "Another question: when will my living arrangements be taken care of?"

"Already done," Keller remarked. "Captain Katsuragi will handle the particulars."

Misato then handed him a cardboard box and a chamber pot.

"Right," Jon nodded. "In that case, I will be ready for duty at 0900 hours tomorrow."

"Excellent," Ikari replied. "Carry on, then, and welcome to NERV."

"Thank you, sir," Jon replied.


"He's everything we could have hoped for," Ritsuko said after Jon had departed, obviously impressed. "And then some."

No, Ritsuko! You're already having an affair with Gendo! You don't want to end up on Maury, do you?

"Yes indeed," Ikari agreed, with that smug smile. "Your people have done well, Keller."

"Respectfully, sir, they're not 'my people'. I haven't been an X-COM officer in over five years; most of the personnel there now, I've never actually met."

You may think that X-COM was added just because, with no attention paid to the games' setting.

If so, you clearly haven't gotten to the part where Eva Unit 01 grows UFO parts. Or where it's revealed that Kaji is an alien serial rapist.

"Of course," replied Ikari dryly.

I wasn't going to post this yet, since it's only the first half of the chapter, but then I realized that people need their DJ fix. And if you ever feel the need, you can read the story straight from the source here.

This post has been edited by Dr. O: Apr 2 2011, 01:29 PM

[Dr. O]

Here's the rest of the chapter.

Having established that the business of actually getting settled in was not going to go any farther until he could find his CO, Jon had set about trying to track her down. The only other option was to find someplace to sit and read the Personnel manual, something he expected he would not be able to focus on until the accommodations issue was dealt with.

His path was now taking him through the primary infirmary of Central Dogma. He recalled some vague, peripheral conversation about a member of the team being injured, and now his instincts were telling him to check this area out; perhaps she would be there, checking in on her injured subordinate.

But what about DJ? I want to know how that book shelves thing is going.

His instincts had never been wrong yet, so when they told him to stop at an open doorway he took their advice and did so. He found himself looking into a room occupied by two people, one a patient, the other apparently a visitor. The visitor was a short, wiry fellow, about his age, with dark hair, an unexpected shoulder holster and half-closed eyes which seemed solidly focused on the book he was reading.

Some Mary Sues have a particularly piercing or entrancing gaze. DJ just looks stoned all the time.

Perhaps he was a guard? The patient, in contrast, was a pale young girl -- again, about his age -- with short silvery-blue hair; she too was focused intently on a book she held in her hands. Only now did Jon notice the small stack of books next the chair where the visitor sat.

Looking at them, Jon abruptly felt an odd sense of kinship, and realized he might well be in the presence of two of his fellow Children. That would explain the youth of the "guard". And if that were the case, then perhaps they might know where Captain Katsuragi was. That conclusion drawn, he rapped gently on the doorframe to get their attention. "Pardon me, have you seen--"

-"the plot?" DJ interrupted suavely. "It'll show up any moment."

That was when the girl actually looked up from her reading and turned to face him. Her unbandaged ruby eye met Jon's own emerald ones, and Jon's voice trailed off as the sense of kinship became far more evident. The girl, for her part, was heard to inhale ever so slightly sharper as she stared back at him, seeing something in his eyes just as he saw something within hers, sensing a rapport, connection... familiarity...

<I know who you are.>

"You're the First(Fourth)," they abruptly stereoed.

Is Jon psychic?

Unnoticed by either of them, DJ Croft arched an eyebrow, wondering who this new fellow was and, more immediately, what was going on here. The moment passed as they both seemed to realize they'd spoken and broke eye contact, looking a bit embarrassed. It was fairly easy to see in the newbie, whose face had reddened a little. For one moment, nowhere near as long, Rei's cheeks also took on a pinker hue, and then it was gone again. This only served to make DJ even more curious.

You can tell Rei's an anime because she blushes at the slightest provocation.

"Uh, yes," said Jon, still a little flustered. "I'm Jon Ellison."

"Rei Ayanami," replied Rei.

DJ glanced around to see if, perhaps, the rest of the room, and himself, had gone to black and white, leaving Rei and Jon the only things in color. As this didn't seem to be the case, he cleared his throat preparatory to introducing himself as well.

Come on, DJ, you should know that you require no introduction.

This made Jon and Rei start in unison and turn to face him with wide, startled, slightly guilty eyes, as if they had just been surprised by an adult while doing something naughty.

"Sorry," said DJ. "Would you two like to be alone?"

Don't be jealous, DJ. You have to throw a bone to the other self-insert, and it might as well be Rei. They were made for each other!

no, really

This elicited an unprecedented reaction, as, for just a moment, Rei Ayanami blushed dramatically, the flush of blood almost glowing through her colorless skin. Then she recovered enough composure to reply, "No... you can stay if you want."

DJ grinned, which made the fading blush return momentarily to Rei's cheeks, then turned his attention to the still-flustered-looking newcomer. "DJ Croft," he said. "The Fifth. 'Scuse me if I don't shake," he added, holding up a bandaged hand. Before coming to see Rei he'd had them redressed; they'd only mildly blistered and the blisters had all gone down, but he was still absolutely mystified how he'd burned them in the first place, and Ritsuko still wanted him to keep them covered for another day.

"How did that happen?" inquired Jon.

Maybe he burned his hands trying to cook. You know, since Americans insist on using the wrong temperature scale.

"I'd like to know that myself," replied DJ with a rueful grin. "Burnt myself on something, but I've no idea what." DJ returned to his book.

Jon stood next to the bed, feeling rather awkward; finally, finding no really polite way to ask his next question, he just came out with it. "Excuse me, but... why are you here?"

That's actually a really deep question. I had no idea Jon was into philosophy.

DJ looked up. "Well, mate," he said without rancor, "until you showed up, it was the quietest room in the cave." He smiled and went back to reading.

Oh. He meant, like, "why are you in this room" specifically, not in a more cosmic sense.

Jon looked at the spine of the book DJ was reading, and discovered that it was entitled "The Titanic Conspiracy: Cover-Ups and Mysteries of the World's Most Famous Sea Disaster".

Mossad put the iceberg there! It was part of the global Zionist conspiracy! Titanic was an inside job!

How completely bizarre. He glanced at the book Rei held; it was entitled "The Ghost from the Grand Banks". Jon sensed a trend forming. Feeling a distinct lack of anything else to do, he picked up the book that sat on Rei's bedstand ("A Night to Remember", according to the cover), sat down in the room's other chair, and began reading.


Ritsuko Akagi was poring over some of the miles of sensor-log printouts that DJ's session with EVA-01 had generated, trying to come to grips with the incredible sync performance the two had achieved after EVA-01's head damage, when she was distracted by a soft ping from the computer console next to her desk. She knew the sound well;

The coffee was done.

it was the computer's equivalent of a throat-clearing, announcing that the machine was about to say something to which Ritsuko ought pay attention.

DJ Croft would have recognized the computer in an instant had he possessed any reason to enter Ritsuko's office. It was a black, desk-sized rostrum with an integral console similar to the monitor/keyboard combination of DJ's own HAL 14000, set against the wall; beside it there was a doorway indicating that the room beyond was a Class 1 clean area in which vacuum suits must be worn at all times.

Why would you have a vacuum chamber adjacent to your office? Actually, I probably shouldn't question the practicality of anything in NERV. I bet they just stuck it in the budget between the giant escalators and the 50,000 gallons of purple paint.

The machine had started out as a second-generation Heuristically-programmed ALgorithmic computer, almost identical to the original HAL 9000 model developed (with much inspiration from "2001: A Space Odyssey", Arthur C. Clarke's 1968 Journal of the International Society of Electrical Engineers monograph on the possible applications of AI in space exploration), by a group of enthusiastic graduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the early 1990s.

That had been a long time ago, though. Since its construction in 1994, SAL 9000 production number 1A00004 had passed through a number of different hands and undergone a number of different modifications, most of them custom and irreproducible, at the hands of various operators. By now, there was little left of the original computer save the much-embellished hardware and the underpinnings, the core layer, of the still-revolutionary self-aware HALOS operating system. The computer even had a different name now, it had come so far from being a base-model SAL 9000: it was called the Special Heuristically Operational Data Accumulation Network computer, in honor of its incredibly complex neuromimetic intelligence systems.

That's... not particularly relevant, but thank you anyway.

"Dr. Akagi," said the computer, in a calm, quietly modulated female voice - the distaff version of DJ's own computer's voice.

"I can't let you do that, Ritsuko."

"What is it, SHODAN?" inquired Ritsuko. She did not find it at all unnerving that the computer spoke in the voice of her late mother; all HAL and SAL computers with the HALOS switch for female behavior emulation did. Dr. Naoko Akagi had been one of the two great luminaries of neural-network research at UIUC who had made the HAL 9000 possible and helped found the HAL Corporation; the other, Dr. Sivasubramanian Chandrasegarampillai,

Or "Bob" for short.

had been a shy and retiring fellow, so his voice did not grace the male-emulation HALs. That was just as well, since Dr. Chandra's Indian accent had been nearly impenetrable.

"I think you will be interested in this," said SHODAN. The monitor screen next to the computer's main 'eye' changed from blankness to a slightly fisheyed view of Rei Ayanami's infirmary room, seen from a security camera high in one of the corners. In one corner sat DJ Croft, slouching in an overstuffed chair with his back against one arm and his legs hanging over the other, reading a large paperback book. Rei herself was sitting up in bed and also reading. And, in the straight-backed chair on the other side of the bed, by the door, the newly-arrived Fourth Child was -also- reading.

Fascinating.

"What's so interesting about this?" asked Ritsuko.

"Three fourteen-year-old children, unsupervised, reading quietly. My reference material on juvenile development would seem to indicate that this is most unusual behavior."

"Behavioral prediction models suggested that they would be going at it like rabbits. Or is this a human mating ritual?"

"These are most unusual children, SHODAN," said Ritsuko.

"That is true. However, if you keep watching, I believe you will see the other reason I find this behavior notable."

Ritsuko watched. They went on reading, never speaking, never looking at each other. She was about to ask SHODAN what was so notable about this, when Rei and Jon simultaneously turned a page in their respective books.

A few minutes later, they did it again.

Astounding.

And again. Off in the corner, DJ kept reading at his own pace, but every time Rei and Jon turned a page, they did so in perfect unison - never looking at each other, never aware that they were doing it at all.

"I apologize, SHODAN," said Ritsuko. "This -is- interesting. Are you recording?"

Few people know that Ritsuko has a synchronized page-turning fetish.

"Of course."

"Please forward a copy of the relevant portion to Dr. Ikari and request his comments."

"Which one of y'all damn motherfuckers fowarded me this shit."

"Done."

Ritsuko kept watching, lost in thought, for several minutes before turning back to the printouts she'd been studying.

Most interesting indeed.

DJ gets guns, booze, and a motorcycle.

Jon can read.

I think it's pretty obvious who got the short straw when it came to self-insert powers.


Not long thereafter, Misato turned up looking for DJ; she received a cordial greeting from Jon and a polite request for more information regarding his status, which brought a smile from her.

"You'll be our next-door neighbor," she said cheerily. "Anybody hungry?"

"Always," DJ replied, replacing the stack of books in his pack and putting "The Titanic Conspiracy" on the stand next to Rei's bed. "If you finish 'Ghost' tonight, you can start on that next... if you're not sick of the subject by now," he added.

Rei shook her head. "It's very interesting."

"DJ's intersts are my interests," Rei said to herself in a robotic monotone that DJ would have found off-putting were he not so absorbed in utterly dominating the other characters.

"Over a century later, the great ship still casts her spell," said DJ with a smiling nod. "Mind you, most of the stuff in this book is junk," he added, tapping "Conspiracy" on the cover, "but it's a fun read. Later on, if you want, I'll show you some -real- conspiracy evidence."

"The truth is out there."

Rei nodded. "Thank you."

"Get well soon," said DJ, grinning. "They tell me I'll have to do some actual work tomorrow, but I'll stop by when I can."

Rei looked as if she wanted to smile, but hadn't quite figured out how to do so. She searched her mind for an appropriate reply for a moment, finally settling on a quiet,
"No."

"I... I'd like that."

DJ placed a gentle hand briefly on her shoulder, then followed Misato into the hall. Jon lingered for a moment, giving Rei a searching look she returned. The weird mental twinge he'd felt when they first made eye contact had passed and did not return, but he still felt as if there was something he was missing.

"It was nice meeting you," he finally said.

She nodded. "And you."

He turned to go, then stopped and looked back. "I'll see you tomorrow?" he said, his tone making it a question.

As indicated by the question mark.

Rei's reply was a simple, "I'll be here."

Not that she has any choice.


After a huge Chinese dinner at a downtown restaurant named Ping's Garden ("Good job I didn't step on this place - I almost did," DJ observed, noting the enormous footprint in the parking lot), Misato and DJ showed Jon to his apartment.

Some people would fight because they realize the necessity of it, but not DJ Croft. He only saves whichever locations are useful to him.

Maybe NERV should consider relocating to a gun shop and installing a brewery. It would be the most secure location in the world.

Jon had thought initially that being Captain Katsuragi's "next door neighbor" meant that he would simply be located in the same apartment building as Misato. But as it turned out this was a literal description, for his apartment keycard led him to the flat right next to Misato's. That made him next door neighbors with almost the entire rest of the squad as well, since DJ was under Misato's roof.

That must be a pretty unique definition of "squad" he's using.

Not unlike the quarters back at the old base, except this time he was in the company of more people his own age. This would be different; he had yet to determine if it would be interesting.

He politely declined his neighbors' offer to spend some time in their apartment, watch some TV, unwind, whatever; he was tired and still felt rather awkward about the whole situation, and wanted nothing more than to sleep.

You can be honest with us, Jon. We all know the real reason is that you want to avoid DJ.

The apartment was, though Jon did not yet know that, a mirror image of 3-D next door: smallish kitchen, handily large bath with separate lavatory, three nicely sized bedrooms and a living room with a fold-a-couch and a TV/multicomm unit built into the wall. It felt cavernous after living in barracks for much of his life; Jon briefly considered asking Rei if she'd be interested in rooming here, then decided it would probably be wise to get some sleep before going any farther with that concept. He barely knew her, after all.

Hopefully, though, he could change that before too long.

He unslung his duffel and let it drop at the foot of the bed, resolving to unpack it when he was a little more alert, likely after a nice hot shower tomorrow morning. That having been decided, he stripped down to his undershorts and unceremoniously collapsed on the bed.

And got impaled on a loose spring. The end!

This was finally it, he mused to himself as he stared up at the featureless ceiling. He was a part of NERV, under their command. The preparation and training he'd been in for most of his life would now be put to the test. Soon he, and Unit 03, would be facing the Angels.

Into the lion's den, he thought quietly, before losing consciousness.

Hey, look, a Biblical reference!


Except for a lack of any new arrivals, an annoying battery of morning tests, and the continued presence of taciturn Jon, the following week was more of the same. The next Thursday morning, however, found DJ down in the EVA bay containing the newly-repaired Unit 01. He stood on the catwalk at the machine's chest level, more or less face to face with it; the purple-painted armor had been replaced, hiding from view the brownish-gray organic head he'd seen beneath. He regarded it without fear. It had protected him well and obeyed his commands without hesitation, and even standing outside it without an interface headset on, he could feel a quiet vibe of well-being and benevolence coming from it.

It was a benevolent abomination to man and God.

That feeling would have struck him as weird, had he not encountered it before; but where the unfamiliar can be frightening, the familiar is merely familiar.

Deep.

The entry-plug suit he was wearing felt considerably better, too. Ritsuko claimed that was because it had been made specially for him, whereas the other had been made for a previous test pilot who was no longer with the program ("It's not important," she'd said when he asked who, a sure sign that it was important, but he wasn't cleared to know it). There were a lot of things about this place that stank higher than a chunk of gorgonzola on a hot summer afternoon; the only one of DJ's qualities that had the power to make him stay now was his curiosity.

Well, and perhaps his sense of loyalty, though he could hardly call Rei Ayanami or Misato Katsuragi a friend yet, could he?

DJ sighed and walked off the catwalk.

But is he too sexy for his shirt?

He was due up above for an operations test with the newly-repaired unit; he'd been down on the catwalk engaging in that time-honored test pilot tradition, the walkaround, and though EVA-01 had no tires to kick, he felt he'd accomplished that mostly-symbolic goal.

As he went, though, the bay lights flickered in that way that meant the motors for the massive main doors were engaging, and sure enough, a moment later they opened - to admit a gantry platform with another Evangelion on it.

DJ knew that EVA-01 was the test type, the second unit built after the prototype as an endurance test article, only placed on operational combat status out of necessity. The gleaming black-and-red EVA being moved into position in the next revetment over, proudly displaying "03" on its pauldrons, had to be a production model - it was sleeker, less complex, slightly shorter. Like EVA-01, it had two eyes, and a jawlike construct jutting out in front, though its head was slightly sleeker and without the distinctive (and apparently purposeless) "horn" on the front of 01's.

Yes, DJ, let us know some more about your giant robot designing credentials.

DJ let out a low whistle, not only at the appearance of the unit, but also at one of its markings. It had been very thoroughly cleaned upon arrival, before being placed in the EVA bay, but on its narrow chest, a distinctive yellow roundel overlaid with a bright red X could still clearly be seen. To most people, the symbol would have been meaningless - perhaps a production mark or function-test proofing mark - but to DJ Croft, it was very telling, indeed. He'd just seen his first conclusive proof that X-COM not only still existed, but was working hand in glove with NERV - which meant that both organizations had to be controlled by SEELE.

How does DJ know about all this? He just does. Because he's DJ Croft and, like a gay version of that woman from Grenadier, he pulls everything he needs out of his ass.

Very interesting indeed... but he had things to do right now, and so he filed the thought away for later consideration.


At three that afternoon, he was finally released. A shower to get the LCL out of his hair, a quick runover with a comb, and a change of clothes, and he made his rather weary way to the control room.

He was tired because, once his synchronization with the repaired EVA was reconfirmed (at sixty-seven percent, not bad for an idle unit), they'd launched him into a testing ground outside the city; he'd spent the rest of the day doing gunnery and hand-to-hand drills against various and sundry automated decoys. As he'd expected, he'd done best with the handcannons and scored only a lackluster effectiveness rating with the Progressive Knife. He was tired and hungry, but had a few miles to go before he could sleep.

Wait, wait, wait. They actually built an Evangelion-scale firing range? Wouldn't it be easier to do some kind of simulation? I mean, what happens if there's a stray round? Any weapon suitable for use with an Eva would be a big fuck-off artillery piece. You don't just deal with those with a backstop like with a normal firing range.

Greetings went up from various and sundry console engineers as he entered the control room; already, he'd become popular with them. He didn't complain at the long hours or the lack of a lunch break, which they liked since they shared those inconveniences, and had an amusing way of looking at the situation which had broken up the room several times at his more pointed comments.

"Hey, DJ," called Maya Ibuki as he came around the end of her console. "Good session today. You need to work on your Prog Knife technique, though."

You take that back! DJ's technique is perfect!

Uh... I mean, um...

Shit.

"Thanks, I know," he replied. "Listen, Maya... you've got connections in the Equipment Section, don't you?"

"A few," Maya admitted. "Why?"

"Well, there are a couple of modifications I was thinking of."

"Ohhh, no," said Maya, flipping a page in the ops manual on her console and running quickly down the checklist printed there. "Modifications have to go through the Office of the Project Director."

"Ikari? That'll take weeks, if he doesn't get his knickers in a knot about equipment standardization and refuse altogether. It's such a -simple- thing, Maya... I'd do it m'self if I could." He gave her a sad look.

"No, DJ," she replied, clearly irresolute. "I could get in a lot of trouble."

This is the guy who convinced his own guardian to let him break multiple US laws. There's really no way Maya is going to win this argument.

"Ah, c'mon, Maya my love," said DJ with that heartbreaking grin he'd inherited from his father. "You know they can't do anything bad to you, you're irreplaceable."

Maya struggled to keep a smile from surfacing on her face as she said, "I bet you call all women 'my love'."

"No," DJ replied honestly, "only the ones I love.

Are you sure Fox Mulder is his father and not James Bond? Because that would explain a lot.

Listen, Maya, I'll beg if you want. I really, really need your help."

She tried to give him a long, hard look, but didn't pull it off very well. "All right, what do you want?" she asked after a few seconds.

DJ smiled. "Maya, you're the best. Look here - we both know I'm lousy with the Prog Knife, right, and it's not a very useful weapon anyway, is it? Now there's no reason why we can't launch EVA-01 with a weapon I'm better with - say a couple of hand cannons - right?"

DJ is not only a master of mecha design, but of mecha equipment and tactics as well.

"It can't hold anything in its hands reliably with the power off," Maya pointed out.

"Doesn't have to," DJ replied. He picked up the note pad next to her operations manual, clicked a pen and started sketching.

Oh wow he's already actually designing stuff. I thought it would take at least another five chapters before he started to redesign the Evas in his own image.


Jon Ellison was unaccustomed to leisure time. At X-COM Alcatraz there was always something he had to be doing: weapons training, hand-to-hand combat training, technology training, studying the Unknown Enemy from the Hidden War of 1999, studying the events surrounding Second Impact... there was always something official to be doing or studying.

Now, though, he had nothing at all to do. He'd memorized the personnel manual. EVA-03 had arrived, but was still being secured and checked to make certain it had suffered no adverse consequences from its cross-country move. Until it was deemed ready and tests were scheduled, Jon had, effectively, nothing to do.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: the most exciting man in the world.

So he was sitting in the same chair he'd occupied yesterday afternoon, in Rei Ayanami's infirmary room, reading. He'd finished "The Titanic Conspiracy" that morning and was now partway into "Into the Titanic", Lara Croft's book about her expedition to the wreck, with photos by DJ himself. Rei hadn't been here the whole day - some of the time she'd been out for tests, checkups, treatments. The staff either knew or didn't care who Jon was, though; he was allowed to remain, unmolested, the whole time. Other than cordial greetings at the meetings and partings, they'd exchanged not a word, which seemed to suit them both.

Lara Croft wrote a book. With photography done by DJ.

...

...

...

The door slid open; Jon glanced up, expecting to see a group of green-coated medtechs here to take the now-napping Rei off for another set of tests, but instead, he saw DJ Croft, in shorts, T-shirt, sandals and shoulder holster, his hands unbandaged. He looked tired, but cheerful, and carried a festive, colorful bunch of flowers in a glass vase which he set carefully on Rei's bedside table, taking pains not to make any noise.

Then he turned and offered Jon a gesture kind of like a salute, raising two fingers of his left hand to touch the brim of the hat he wasn't wearing, before going to his corner chair and seating himself as before, shoulders against the inside of one arm and knees hanging over the other, facing the bed.

I was kind of hoping there'd be some sort of Angel attack this chapter, instead of... well, this.

This time, though, he opened up his backpack, fixed his light to the wall, and then, instead of getting out a book, he drew a pad of paper from his pack, propping it against his knees. Then he flipped open a flat plastic case, selected a pencil from within it, and began plying it against the paper. For half an hour or so, DJ focused intently on the paper and what he was doing to it with the pencil, glancing up now and again but mostly keeping his eyes trained on the surface before him. Periodically he would run the pencil's tip into a portable electric sharpener for a second or so, to keep the point on.

I know that Evangelion is generally poorly-regarded here at Project AFTER, so I'd like to leave an open question to the board: would Evangelion have been better or worse if the first few episodes had been about Shinji's drinking preferences, luggage, and pencil sharpening habits?

Jon kept reading, but glanced up every now and then, usually at moments when the scratching of pencil on paper paused for a moment; DJ never noticed or never cared that he was being watched. At length, he slowed, then stopped altogether; with a long look at Rei and another at the paper, he nodded as if satisfied, folded the cover of the sketchpad shut, and put it and the pencil set back in his pack, then fished out a new book.

Jon was on the point of asking if DJ would show him what he'd just drawn, but just as he drew the breath to ask, a curious and unwelcome sensation invaded his thoughts: a strange, creeping, alien feeling of dread. In that moment, Jon understood what some of the old-timers at X-COM Alcatraz had meant when they talked about feeling like someone had just walked over their grave.

DJ heard him suck in a sharp breath and looked up to see the taller boy's face go pale, almost as pale as Rei's. Rei herself stirred, then awoke, her good eye sliding open and focusing on Jon.

"Something wrong?"

"Yeah. Who let one rip?"

Jon searched for some way of articulating the feeling, and then it hit him what it had to mean.

"There's another Angel coming," he said.

About time.

Under many, perhaps most, circumstances, DJ would have scoffed, but the look on Jon's face was so serious and full of alarm that DJ's instincts told him to believe. DJ always trusted his instincts.

"Well, c'mon, then," he said, dropping the book into his backpack and standing.

"Where?" asked Jon.

"To the control room, of course. Sorry, love," he added to Rei as he passed the bed. "We'll be back."

She said nothing, only nodded gravely, as Jon, his eyes troubled, nodded to her and followed.

It's easy to see why he's so bothered; Jon was clearly hoping that DJ would refer to him, not Rei, as "love."


"What's the trouble, you two?" asked Ritsuko as DJ and Jon entered the control room.

"By the pricking of Jon's thumbs," said DJ, nodding toward the other boy, "something wicked this way comes."

"What?"

Yeah, what she said.

"I can't explain how, exactly," said Jon, reflecting ruefully that the statement was true in more ways than he'd prefer, "but I'm sure there's another Angel coming. It'll be here... " Jon searched the images floating through his mind and found them ever easier to interpret. "... within an hour, two at the outside."

"If this is some kind of a silly prank - " Ritsuko began, leveling her glare not at Jon, but at DJ, who, she felt certain, was the instigator.

"It's no prank," Jon replied firmly. "I don't know how I know, but I know."

So of course he'll be right.

Misato looked from Ritsuko to Jon to DJ, considering. If DJ had put Jon up to this, she didn't think he would have been able to keep so straight a face, and Jon didn't seem the type to go along with a silly, possibly dangerous, prank, especially not one proposed by someone he barely knew. Besides, Jon was too serious and DJ too experienced with them to joke about something as dire as an Angel attack. She hadn't known either of them very long, but her instincts told her to believe, and like DJ, Misato trusted her instincts.

Does everyone in this story have mysterious instincts that are always right?

"Sound general alarm," she ordered. "Commence civilian evacuation, notify the relevant agencies, then retract the city. DJ, you'd better suit up; we may need to launch EVA-01."

Ritsuko glanced over at Misato, thinking to protest, but Misato shot her the hard, sharp look that she knew so well. The glare that could only come from the eyes of a dead-serious Misato Katsuragi had warned Ritsuko off many times before.

"Nobody told me I'd have to be doing this every week," DJ grumbled as he left the room, not bothering to point out that, in fact, nobody had told him he'd have to be doing it at all.


"Air attack is proving about as effective as we'd expected," reported console tech John Trussell.

Who?

Misato could see that from the information displayed on the big tactical screen, but nodded acknowledgement anyway; though the Angel was still too far out for visual contact, it had been on radar for twenty minutes now and was definitely making a beeline for Worcester-3. And, as the board was showing, it was making mincemeat of the squadron of NERV-attached Raiden interceptors that she'd sent after it.

"Hostile is reaching the first defensive screen," Truss reported. "As anticipated, it's ignoring artillery fire."

Did... did they replace one of the console techs with an original character? Why?

Maya turned in her seat. "The National Guard is on line three. General Webster is demanding that we launch an Evangelion immediately."

"Officious jerk," Misato muttered. "I'd've sent it anyway. Activate EVA-01 and prepare it for an interception launch."


"Here we go again," DJ muttered to himself as the display panels glowed to life around him, and he felt the gantry platform moving him into position below one of the launch chutes.

"EVA-01," Maya's voice announced, "confirm readiness for launch?"

"Hit me," DJ replied.

Oh, I couldn't possibly...

"Launch EVA-01!" Misato ordered, and DJ was on his way. This time, he didn't pop up right in the middle of the street; instead the gantry popped up inside one of Worcester-3's numerous fake buildings, whose front then accordioned open, revealing the violet war machine within.

I'm sorry, but I find it hard to take an action scene seriously when the word "accordioned" and "violet" are used in the same sentence.

As the final interlock popped free, DJ started it forward. This time there was no fumbling; EVA-01 took smooth, casual steps forward, its power cable trailing behind it. After clearing the launch building, DJ took a good look at his opponent.

The new Angel was considerably weirder-looking than the previous one: it wasn't even vaguely humanoid, instead resembling nothing so much as a flying giant squid, save that it only had two tentacles, one on either side of its pointed, tubular shape. Further, as he looked more closely, DJ could see that the tentacles were not made of the same reddish, fleshy-looking material as the rest of the creature, but rather, apparently, of glowing pink energy. As he took it in, the monster noticed him, and lashed a tentacle toward him.

Would a tentacle monster joke be in poor taste?

Instinctively, DJ dodged back and to the side instead of forward or straight sideways; to do so would have put his unit's power cable in harm's way. The tentacle lashed through the space where EVA-01 had just been, slicing the top off the building.

"Christ!" remarked DJ to himself.

"DJ, to your right," Misato called. "I'm opening a weapons block for you."

"Thank you," DJ replied, making for the building with the flashing red light. It opened to reveal an EVA-scale assault rifle, looking for all the world like a giant Heckler & Koch G11; DJ pulled it free and faded back, opening fire on the Angel as it wrecked the weapons block in his wake.

I still don't get why the Eva weapons have to be giant replicas of real guns, especially since huge guns in real life look just as cool.

The exploding 120mm shells fired by the EVA assault rifle were extremely effective projectiles;

Also, 120mm is not particularly large. That's the size of an M1 Abrams main cannon, so it would actually be just as effective and a lot cheaper for NERV to just get several tanks. If you're going to give unnecessary details about weapons, you should at least make sure they're correct.

unfortunately, they also tended to generate a lot of smoke, which gave them the annoying habit of hiding the target after a burst of more than four or five rounds. DJ, conscious of this, kept his rate of fire low, barking out three-round bursts as he played dodge-and-slash with the flying, squidlike beast. It could float over the buildings faster than DJ could dodge EVA-01 in and out of them, and DJ knew if he leapt he'd be swatted out of the air by those energy whips before he could say "Bob's your uncle;" so he was trying for the best possible position.

This game of cat and mouse went on for a few seconds, until finally DJ stopped, turned EVA-01's back to a building, and waited. A moment later, the Angel emerged from a side street and gave him a clear shot. With a grin, he squeezed the trigger.

There came only a single shot as the weapon jammed.

This is what happens when you base your weapons designs on what looks cool instead of what works.

"Hell!" DJ declared, flinging EVA-01 sideways as the whips lashed out; in the smoke-settling aftermath, DJ held onto the controls as EVA-01 tumbled to the ground, then rolled it onto its back and looked with a sense of sick dread upon the severed power cable, flopping like a live thing in the street before the ruined building. Immediately the cockpit lights went red, and off to one side a status display became a clock, starting at 05:00.00 and immediately beginning to count down. Those numbers represented how long EVA-01 could remain operational on internal battery power.

No working ranged weapon, no external power, no backup? It's official, thought DJ, I'm in big trouble.

Looks like that Croft boy is in a heap o' trouble again.

It was at that moment that the situation worsened. One of the Angel's whips lashed out and wrapped around EVA-01's ankle, and, with incredible strength, whipped the whole massive machine up into the air before flinging it away with such force that it crashed on its back into the grassy side of Airport Hill, almost a mile away.

You might say it was a... grassy knoll.

yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

"I don't want to seem unmanly or anything here," DJ announced as he struggled to get the EVA back on its feet, "but: HELP!!"


"Damn it!" Jon snapped, watching as, on the main monitor, EVA-01 slammed into the hillside. "Captain, he needs help."

"Thank you, Jon, but I'd noticed that," Misato replied dryly. "DJ, fall back to Point A-24, there's a blockhouse there with a secondary umbilical."

"Fine, if I could get Unit 01 to bloody stand up!" DJ's voice crackled from the speakers. "It's responding slowly, erratically - like it's stunned or something."

"Maya?"

"No system faults found," Maya reported. "AT Field is still deployed, synchronization is holding at seventy-one percent. Motor signals are getting scrambled somewhere in EVA-01's own neurosystems, not DJ's."

No fault can lie with DJ! None, I say!

"It -is- stunned," Ritsuko observed. "Fascinating."

"Fascinating?! It's going to get DJ killed!" Misato barked.

"Will it recover in time?" asked Jon in a flat, businesslike tone.

"No way of telling," Maya replied.

On the screen, DJ got EVA-01's arms up in time to hold off the Angel's attack, seizing its tentacles in EVA-01's hands and holding them clear.

It can grab the tentacles of doom, but it can't stand up.

OK then.

"He's fending off the Angel," Misato mused, "but the way it's got him pinned there, even if he could get up, he can't make it to the secondary power source in time. The best we can hope for now is a withdrawal." Raising her voice so it would carry on the high-gain, she ordered, "DJ, you don't have time to make it to the power source now. Pull back to Entry Six and we'll bring you in."

"I can't!" DJ replied, an edge of desperation seeping into his voice. "If I let go of this thing to get up it'll rip my bloody head off!"

"I'll back him up," said Jon.

"No way," Ritsuko protested. "Your EVA hasn't been fully cleared and we've run no on-site tests. You're not ready for combat."

"Besides, we're almost free of DJ!" Ritsuko added.

"Whether I'm ready or not doesn't make a difference right now, Doctor," Jon replied evenly. Turning to Misato, he added, "Captain, EVA-03 and I will take our chances. Let me back him up."

Misato looked at the image of EVA-01, still on its back and
struggling, smoke pouring from the armor on its hands where it held
the still-charged tentacles of the Angel, and deliberated for a
microsecond. Then she turned to Jon, nodded, and said, "Go."

Jon was out the door in an instant, not staying to hear Dr. Akagi's protests.

Because we've established that Jon is incredibly rash and willing to break orders. Right?

"You're overstepping your authority, Captain Katsuragi," Ritsuko glared. "Jon has had no acclimation time and his EVA remains largely untested. It's unfair and unsafe to throw him into a combat situation like this."

"You and Ikari all but hammerlocked DJ and threw him into EVA-01 the other day, Ritsuko, with less training and testing than Jon's had by far. It's a little late in the day to be getting up on that high horse now. Or is Jon's life somehow more important to you than DJ's?"

How did you guess?

Ritsuko fumed, but did not reply.


Well, this is it, Jon, said Jon to himself. You're about to hit the big time.

"EVA-03, launch!"

WHAM. It was just like the simulator, except for the G forces, and they weren't as bothersome as they could have been, thanks to the LCL. Jon always felt more comfortable surrounded by LCL than air - he wondered if it was the sensation of enclosure, or the suspension of weight.

Or it could be that it reminds him of his favorite beverage: Tang! It's a kick in a can giant robot!

Then there was no more time for wondering, as the ground level zipped past and, with an end-of-rails crash, EVA-03 was on the surface.

Jon had an advantage DJ hadn't had in his first combat, in that he'd piloted the EVA before, in training courses. He didn't have trouble with the final interlock dismount or the first few steps off the platform. He felt strangely out of sorts, though, with a building pressure behind his eyes that signaled the onset of a potentially blockbusting headache; something in EVA-03's neurosystems was still out of adjustment and he was feeling the effects.

"Sync is a little off, Control," he reported (unnecessarily, since the Synchrotron readings for EVA-03 on Maya's console were reporting it in much greater detail). "Going to need some aspirin after we're done here."

I don't care what you say, "synchrotron" will never stop being funny.

He couldn't shoot at the Angel with his sync this far off, not without risking hitting EVA-01. That being the case, he deployed the Progressive Knife, which in the production models was a less elaborate affair with a retractable straight blade rather than the elaborate solid-Bowie-type construct of the Test Type, and charged the Angel from the side, knocking it away from EVA-01.

Releasing the tentacles, DJ rolled gratefully out of the EVA-01-shaped crater and got the machine unsteadily to its feet. He hated to leave Jon here like this, but if he didn't get some power into his EVA soon, he was going to be no good to anyone; so he faded back to the entrance Jon had just come out of and backed EVA-01 into the gantry.

When danger reared its ugly head
Croft bravely turned his tail and fled

Jon had no time to check on EVA-01's progress, occupied as he was with ramming his Prog Knife into the Angel's red "eye", sending a shower of sparks cascading in all directions. The pressure in his head was becoming more intense, not yet painful, although it would get there before too long. The neurosystem problem must have been worse than he originally thought.

"I've got him, Control, but not for long," he grated, driving the knife deeper.

"Roger, EVA-03. Hold on. EVA-01 is being fitted with a new umbilical and rearmed as we speak."

Come on, at least pretend to let the guy do more than play second fiddle to DJ.

"Roger that, Control." At that point the Angel struck at him with its glowing tentacles. Jon whipped EVA-03's left arm around to intercept one; unfortunately the right hand, being occupied with the Prog Knife, was unable to prevent the other tentacle from wrapping solidly around EVA-03's neck. To Jon, it felt as if someone had just wrapped a live high-voltage cable around his own neck and begun strangling him with it. Naturally, he screamed rather loudly.

Naturally.

Also, notice how Jon screams, while in a similar situation in the first chapter, DJ "calmly observe[s]."

For the first time in his admittedly short career as an EVA pilot, DJ wished the delivery system went faster; but it was fast enough. He popped up behind the Angel and EVA-03, took in the situation, and knew what he had to do.

In EVA-01's singed hands were a pair of the handcannons he'd done so well with in the first battle; now he raised them, let the fluid grace of the EVA flow into him, and fired off a double volley.

This is exactly like Tomb Raider, only somehow less dignified.

The Angel whirled to face him, purplish ichor spraying from the stump where its left tentacle had been attached, unwinding the right from EVA-03's left arm. EVA-03 stumbled back a step, raising its freed left hand to grasp at its throat in a doubly sympathetic reaction - the EVA responding to the pilot's response to the EVA's own damage.

DJ cursed as the Angel wrapped its remaining tentacle around EVA-01's left wrist, yanking that side's weapon out of line; then he abandoned the cannon and swung into the attack, wrapped the tentacle twice more around the EVA's forearm and grabbing it up in the EVA's left hand, hauling back on it and towing the Angel closer by its own weapon.

"That's all for you, mate," he growled, shoving the muzzle of the right-hand cannon into the wound Jon had made with his Prog Knife. Once, twice, three times, he fired into the wound; the Angel twisted, bucked, writhed, and then fell limply to the ground.

Not bad, though personally I would have gone with "who wants calamari?" I give the one-liner a C+, and the battle a B overall.

"You OK, Jon?" DJ asked, moving his EVA to the other's side.

"Yes, I think so," Jon replied, coughing.

"Great work, you two. Get 'em back downstairs before something -else- happens," Misato called.

DJ grinned, twirling the right-hand cannon around EVA-01's index finger. "Aye aye, Cap'n," he replied.

/* The Marcels "Blue Moon" _Billboard Top Rock 'n Roll Hits: 1961_ */

NEXT EPISODE:

- SEE the ups and downs of budding friendships!
- WITNESS DJ's taste in interior decoration!
- EXPERIENCE what put Rei in the infirmary!

All this, plus Rei on a motorcycle, in the next heartwarming episode
of Neon Exodus Evangelion, coming to http://www.eyrie.net/ on 7/23/97
(and your local news server sometime after that)! Be here in seven
for "Connections"!

I wouldn't miss it for the world.

edit: I just wanted to thank Moose and oneluckyduck for the encouraging comments. As long as I know someone is reading and enjoying this mock, I'll keep at it, even if the chapters are hellishly long.

This post has been edited by Dr. O: Apr 2 2011, 04:10 PM

[Moose]

I like how when DJ says something obvious, no one says a word. However, when Jon does the same thing? They're all like "OMFG, WE KNOW, DUMBASS!"

Because DJ is so cool, obviously. And British, in case anyone forgot. And Jon's just a stupid American whose only purpose is to make DJ look cooler. If that's possible.

[Dr. O]

In this chapter, DJ almost gets some. And that's... just about it, actually.

/* Genesis "Land of Confusion" _Invisible Touch_ */

Come on, I could only think of about ten other songs that would fit this fanfic DJ better.

EYRIE PRODUCTIONS, UNLIMITED
presents

NEON EXODUS EVANGELION

EXODUS 1:4 - CONNECTIONS


Inspired by NEON GENESIS EVANGELION created by Hideaki Anno, Gainax,
et al.

Most characters created by Hideaki Anno and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto
except

I do like how "most characters" excludes Lara Croft, DJ, Jon, John Truss, Otto Keller, the X-COM guys, and about every character who will be introduced for the entire rest of the story.

DJ Croft created by Benjamin D. Hutchins
and
Jon Ellison created by Larry Mann

But of course, none of them matter except DJ. And maybe Jon, but the narrative will have to inform me how cool and awesome he is before I can make up my mind.

Additional material and inspiration cadged from TOMB RAIDER by Core
Design, Ltd., X-COM: UFO DEFENSE and sequels from MPS Labs (whoever
owns them nowadays), THE X-FILES created by Chris Carter, and
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY by Arthur C. Clarke

Written by Benjamin D. Hutchins and Larry Mann

It's good to see Larry Man found work after Veggie Tales.

Aided and abetted by the Eyrie Productions, Unlimited crew
and special-guest-for-life Phil Moyer

Special thanks to Chris Siebenmann for inspiring Lake Oppenheimer

© 1997 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited



Jon Ellison was still feeling a little wobbly. The pain in his arm had gone away at length, but his head still felt like someone had been using it as a punching bag recently. Fighting in EVA-03 without proper sync had been rather like wearing a monocle when both eyes really needed correction: not very pleasant. Fortunately, as Dr. Akagi had told him, there was no damage to his person other than a righteous headache, and it was expected that he would be able to get up and walk out of the infirmary before the day was out.

EVA-03 had been less fortunate, suffering heavy damage to one arm and numerous dents in its armor. It would be offline for a few days at least while the repairs were effected. This was not that great, but at least it guaranteed that the next time he got into that cockpit he -would- be synchronized.

What's this plot stuff? Why isn't DJ unpacking? That's what the readers really want to see!

Becoming aware of another presence nearby, Jon turned his head toward the doorway and, out of sheer reflex from years of military training, sat up straighter as Dr. Ikari entered the room. (This caused his head to complain a little louder, but he studiously ignored that; it was time to accept responsibility for what had happened.) "Hello sir."

"Unit-03 will be in repairs for the next three days," Dr. Ikari said without preamble.

What do you have against the Constitution, Gendo? Is there something we need to know?

"Yes sir," Jon said quietly, his eyes angling downward. "Our synchronization was more unstable than I expected."

"Indeed. SHODAN provided a comprehensive report on the mission." Ikari regarded the boy thoughtfully for a moment. "Nevertheless, despite the problems with the synchronization, you fought admirably. I'm very pleased with your performance today and I have no doubt that once you're properly synchronized with EVA-03 you will do very well."

I do have to commend him for maintaining his composure while talking about SHODAN, though. Maybe next he'll thoughtfully comment on NERV's attempts to install a Tiberium reactor in Unit 01. Then the Zerg show up.

"... Thank you, sir," Jon answered, not knowing what else to say.

"There's something else I wish to discuss with you, Jon," Ikari continued. He went over to the door and keyed it shut, blocking out all noise from the hallway.

"Yes sir?" Jon asked.

Ikari pulled a chair over to Jon's bed and sat down in it, putting him at eye level with the boy. The cold, businesslike edge seemed to fade from his demeanor, replaced by something more friendly-seeming. He actually seemed to smile a little. It made Jon feel... suspicious.

Run, Jon! Run for your life!

"Do you like Rei, Jon?" he asked.

"Uh?" Jon asked, a bit taken aback.

"What I mean to say is - well, Dr. Akagi suggested earlier today that it might be good for both of you if Rei were to leave her current lodgings and move into your apartment."

Pfft, Gendo playing matchmaker for teenagers... Must contain... snerk... laughter...

"Er, well, it *would* be more efficient, sir, to have the entire squad together," Jon replied, reddening a bit and worried that his enthusiasm might be misinterpreted. (God knew that had already happened enough.)

"It would certainly be more efficient to put us all in a single unprotected place where we can easily be killed by an unanticipated Angel attack, sir."

"That's true," Ikari nodded. "And that's why I agree with the idea."

Jon blinked. "Sir?"

"I wasn't sure about it at first, but what she suggested, and you just echoed, is perfectly true: having the entire squad in one place would improve efficiency, both on an organizational and personal level. Besides, you and Rei are very much alike, Jon; I think you would make excellent roommates."

"How... how does Rei, um, feel about this?"

Gendo looked at Jon quizzically. "Rei has feelings?"

"You can ask her yourself, though I'm sure she'll agree it would be more efficient for everyone. Besides," Ikari added, his expression softening even more, "she needs a friend like you, Jon. Someone who can understand."

By which he means "someone who also grew up in a test tube." Obviously.

"Er, well... whatever I can do to help, sir," Jon replied, no longer entirely sure if he were having this conversation. Sure, this was pleasant news and all, but yet...

Come on, Jon, don't look a gift jailbait in the mouth.

"Good. Very good. Pending Rei's approval, the living arrangements will be changed." The hard edge had crept back into his voice as he got up from the chair. "At this point, we're going to need all the stability and efficiency we can get. I want you to keep an eye out for trouble, and report anything which you think might impair the team's efficiency. Understood?"

"Understood clearly, sir."

"Good," Ikari nodded, turning toward the door. "Get your rest; you'll need it." And then he was gone.

Ninja... vanish!

Jon watched the open doorway for a few moments, listening to the faint sounds of activity in the corridor beyond, then leaned back into the pillows and stared up at the featureless ceiling.

This was pleasant news. He hoped Rei would agree.

So why did he feel that something was fundamentally wrong somewhere?

I don't want to hold the sex chapter over everyone's head, since it's still about ten chapters away, but... yeah, something is definitely going to be wrong.


Gendou Ikari grumbled silently as he made his way through Central Dogma. If only those idiots in X-COM had not held back on delivery of Jon and EVA-03 things would have been so much easier; practically all of the current complications in the plan might have been completely avoided. Unfortunately, what was done was done, and it would have to be worked around and patched.

Pairing Jon and Rei together would help moderate the influence of the Croft boy; with any luck their natural synchrony would eliminate any future troubles before they could begin.

Gendo doesn't like DJ? He must be a bad guy!

Nothing was going to interfere with the plan. Not if he had anything to say about it.

He brushed past DJ Croft without a word, and Croft did not acknowledge him either, come to that. Both were too intent on their respective missions.

These are the voyages of DJ Croft. His mission: to explore strange new beers, to seek out new women and new laws to break, to Sue where no Sue has Sued before.

DJ's mission was just in front of him; sliding the door open, he entered Jon's room. Jon looked up, expecting perhaps to see Ikari again, returned to mention something he'd forgotten, but instead, he saw DJ, back in his street clothes, smiling as always, and bearing the copy of "Into the Titanic" Jon had abandoned in Rei's room before the alert.

You know, I probably have a narrow set of interests, but I don't force them on other people with the single-minded determination that DJ does.

"You probably don't feel like reading just yet," said DJ softly, "but they finally turned Rei out, so I had to get everything out of the room. You haven't seen my copy of 'A Night to Remember', have you?"

Jon blinked. Where -had- he left that book when he'd finished with it? Was it at home? He searched his memory, but could find no information.

At his teammate's blank look, DJ waved a hand dismissively.

You can practically taste the smug.

"Don't worry about it," he said. "Worst comes to worst, I'll just get another copy. Anyway, you'll want to finish this once your head quits hurting, I'd imagine. Sorry there aren't any flowers, but I only give those to pretty girls."

Jon attempted a smile; DJ grinned. "Just saw Ikari cruising down the corridor in full sail," he reported. "Looked ticked off about something - probably seeing me. He doesn't like me too much, probably upset that I haven't the courtesy to be intimidated by him."

"He doesn't like being disrespected," Jon said, a hint of reproach in his voice.

If I controlled the international agency with its own fortress city and army of giant robots, I'd probably feel the same way.

DJ snorted. "He might try earning my respect, then," he replied. "Anyway, don't let's dwell on that. I've arranged for your release from this sad place - and if you're feeling up to it, I want to buy you dinner, seeing as you pulled my tail out of the fire and all."

"You repaid me just a few minutes after," Jon replied. "There's no need - "

"Well, then, just humor me. Or consider it a celebration of our victory and the fact that Rei's been released. I found a Southwestern place in town called Cactus Pete's that I simply -must- try, and since I hate eating alone, I'm determined to drag you all along with me."

How courteous of him.

"You've invited Rei?"

"And Misato - well, somebody's got to drive - and Maya and Truss, and Ritsuko, although I don't think she's coming. Bashful around me, she is," said DJ soberly. "I think she's afraid of her feelings for me."

You might think that's a joke, but remember: DJ has well-honed instincts that never fail. Instincts he acquired while looting ancient ruins and slaughtering crocodiles.

Jon suppressed a laugh; it would make his head hurt again. Besides, he didn't want to anger DJ, and didn't know him well enough yet to be certain he was joking. Instead, he swung his feet over the side of the bed, stood up, determined that doing so did not make his head explode, then nodded.

"I guess I'll feel better after something to eat," he acquiesced.

"That's the spirit," replied DJ. "Nothing in this world a good meal can't cure."

I want to see DJ get together with some homeopathy practitioners. They could revolutionize the field of medicine.


"Well, that was a depressing spectacle," DJ grumped, keying open the door to Apartment 3-D.

"Grumped."

You mean like I'm doing at this story?

"Oh, I don't know," said Misato following him in. "I thought the food was good."

"The conversation didn't leave me panting for the sequel, though."

"Give us all time to get to know each other," said Jon. "That will help." He paused, taking in the sight of the can-encrusted kitchen for the first time. "... Was there a frat party here recently?"

Just Misato, but close enough.

"No," replied DJ, "I just haven't had the chance to clean the place up yet. Should have done tonight, but I was under the mistaken impression that I had better plans."

"Oh, c'mon, DJ, it's not that bad," Misato said, leading Jon into the living room.

"Yes, I thought it was fun," said Jon, looking dubiously at the cluttered state of the living room. "Do you, uh, need any help cleaning this place up?"

Preferably from the EPA.

"Misato," DJ called from shoulders-deep in the fridge, "do we have the day off tomorrow, or was that just a figment of my imagination?"

"We're off until Monday unless there's an emergency call," she called back. DJ emerged, a can of Guinness in each hand and a Pepsi balanced atop one of them; he handed the soft drink off to Jon, one of the beers to Misato, and then plopped into the brown armchair with a grateful sigh.

Plop!

"In that case, you're welcome to help, Jon," said DJ, popping the Guinness and letting it foam. "I'm going to spend my day off mucking this place out."

Phase 1 involves hoisting the Union Jack and singing God Save the Queen.

Jon moved a pile of magazines out of the way and sat down at the end of one of the two couches, then opened his own drink. He glanced curiously at the black can in DJ's hand, then decided that if Misato didn't have a problem with it, why should he?

"Sure," Jon replied. "I could use something to pass the time."

"Glad to hear it. Cheers," said DJ, raising his beer in salute. Then, as Jon watched in bemusement, he and Misato both tossed back a heavy slug of their respective drinks, lowered their cans with twin gasps of in-taken breath, and let out a double whoop of joy.

Misato sure has gotten callous about the underage drinking thing.

Maybe they're building up to a very special episode where DJ smokes weed.

... and I thought Sgt. Kay was loud, though Jon to himself.

He was distracted from this line of thought by the sound, behind him, of the refrigerator being opened and closed, and the distinctive pop-hiss of another can of Guinness pub draught being opened. As he looked up, Jon was treated to another strange sight: a large penguin with a metal collar and finger-like claws at the ends of its wings. In one 'hand', it held a beer.

"Pen-Pen!" Misato said in a harsh tone.

"Waugh?" replied the penguin, turning his head to look inquisitively at her.

"How many of those have you had today?"

The penguin held up three claws at the end of the other wing.

It's funny because it's going to die of alcohol poisoning.

"That's all?" Misato demanded.

"Waugh," replied the penguin, nodding.

"OK then," said Misato cheerily, settling back on the couch.

"Waugh," repeated Pen-Pen, taking up his station next to the end of the sofa.

"See, I don't understand why certain lab-coat-wearing persons who shall remain nameless can't see their way clear to have a little fun with us," DJ complained. "We're happening people! We've got a penguin who can -count-, for God's sake, how cool is that?"

DJ is the world's most cool and happening penguin-owning fourteen-year-old boy.

"Maybe all she likes is her job," Jon speculated.

"Ahhh," Misato said, waving that argument away. "I've known Ritsuko for a long time, she's always been too damn tense. What she really needs is a good - well... never mind."

It's funny because she gets raped.

...

Wait, what?

"She has but to ask," replied DJ, gesturing expansively.

How selfless of him.

Jon wondered how he ought to interpret that; Misato, besieged by the mental image of her old friend and her saucy young roommate in the clinch, cracked up laughing.

Well, that's one way of dealing with trauma.

Noting the bemused expression on his colleague's face, DJ smiled benignly. "Crude and obnoxious, aren't we?" he said. "I suppose one of us ought to grow up one of these days, but..." He shrugged. "What's the point of it?"

Jon had by now come to the conclusion that this whole arrangement would, indeed, be very interesting.

"Humans are so... interesting."

"Anyway, we're mostly harmless," DJ went on.

"I'm sure you are," replied Jon. He tried out a grin; it didn't hurt, so he left it there.


The next morning, DJ rose early, took his time brushing his teeth and dressing, and was just popping up the first of the (formerly) frozen breakfast waffles when Misato shambled into the kitchen, yawning cavernously.

Not only is DJ accomplished in the world of international intrigue and super robot fighting, but he is also the waffle king.

"Morning," she murmured.

"Morning," he replied. "Sit down before you fall down."

Misato plunked down in a chair at the table and yawned again. "I hate mornings."

"So why are you up?" asked DJ as he stacked four more waffles in the on-deck circle by the toaster. "It's our day off, you could have slept in."

"Your fault," Misato replied.

"Um?"

"I smelled food."

"Oh. Sorry. I'll go out for breakfast on off mornings from now on."

"I know this great fish and chips place. They also serve a bloody smashing kidney pie."

Misato waved his apology away; the gesture turned into the kind of hand-wave that wants something about halfway through, so DJ got her a beer and braced for the First-Gulp Scream.

"YYEEEAAAHH!! WOOOOOO! THAT's the way to start the day. What's the matter, aren't you going to join me?"

"Last one to get cirrhosis is a rotten egg!"

"I try not to indulge before lunch-time," replied DJ. "Besides, I've some things to do today."

"Oh, that reminds me," said Misato, hunting around in the pockets of her jacket, which hung on the chair she was sitting in. "Here." She held out two plastic cards. DJ took them and examined the top one: it was a plastic passcard with a photo of him grinning his 'rakish' grin (so that's why they took that picture), emblazoned with a bar code, his name and address, and "NERV" in large black letters across the top.

I don't see how an ID is necessary for the most accomplished and exciting person in the world.

"That's your permanent passcard," Misato explained. "I checked with Special Section - it'll also serve as your ID, driver's license and weapons pass, even though you're underage. You can't buy age-restricted substances with it, though, so I'll still have to buy the beer," she added with a grin.

"Bah," DJ replied, flipping the cards in his hand and examining the other.

It was the same as the first, except that instead of his photo, name and address, it had Rei Ayanami's; she gazed out of the picture with a blank look that said, "I'm so -very- thrilled to be here. Really."

Oh, sarcasm. That's original.

"Hullo, what's this? Why did you give me Rei's passcard?"

"It's her new one, it was issued yesterday with yours and I forgot to give them to either of you. If you're going out, would you run it by her apartment?"

Wait a minute... This sounds like that one scene from Evangelion...

"Oh. Sure, I'll do that." The waffles popped up; DJ buttered them, shuffled them onto a plate, and plunked them down in front of Misato, following them shortly with a bottle of syrup.

"Mmm, thank you!" Misato declared, digging in with gusto as her roommate put the on-deck waffles into the toaster for himself. "So what are you up to this morning?" she asked around a mouthful of waffle.

"Well," said DJ, eyeing his pass speculatively, "if this thing really gives me the authority, I guess I'll go and buy a motorcycle."

Oh good, we're back to DJ being totally radical.

Who wants to bet he gets a Harley?

"What kind?" asked Misato curiously.

"The kind that's small enough my feet will reach the ground," DJ replied. "It's not easy only coming up to a meter and a half."


It was a warm day, but not massively hot, so DJ was not particularly uncomfortable, even though he was dressed in his heavy boots and jeans, and had his leather jacket slung over his pack. It was too warm by far to -wear- the jacket while walking, but if his quest panned out he was going to need it.

He fingered the hard-edged cards in his pocket as he sloped down the street, humming along with the song in his headphones.

/* Genesis "Anything She Does" _Invisible Touch_ */

What is with all the Genesis? Is it because of Neon Genesis? But this is Neon Exodus, so... yeah...

After a lengthy tour of the Gold Star Boulevard strip of auto dealerships and the like, DJ found what he was looking for at a little hole-in-the-wall bike shop called "Joe's Performance Center", beyond the Greendale Mall on West Boylston. Though the shop was small, kind of cluttered-looking and with only a small selection, DJ knew enough about cycles to know that what selection there was boasted a fine range of machines, and the scruffy, bearded, balding fellow in the leather vest and chaps who ran the place (Joe, he supposed) was a jovial and knowledgeable fellow.

"Lookin' for a ride, are ya, son?" he asked, sizing DJ up with a critical eye. "You look a little young for it."

I think I'll have to add that to my list of "lines that are infinitely better when taken out of context."

"So I've been told," replied DJ, handing Joe his passcard. "They tell me this'll open the way, so to speak."

Joe examined the card for a moment, then swiped it through the mag reader on the side of the register; it beeped, and a moment later the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles file on Derek J. Croft appeared on the display screen off to the other side. DJ leaned over to look, having never encountered such a thing before; it had the same grainy photo of him that was on the card, and listed him as a Class C/M operator (Special Dispensation) - authorized to operate passenger vehicles and motorcycles.

"Well, I'll be damned," said Joe, regarding the card with new respect before handing it back to its owner. "Hell of a job benefit."

Has DJ even taken driver's ed? Does he know how to drive? Because if not, he should be a smear on the freeway inside of ten minutes.

Um, if he were anyone but DJ Croft, I mean. After all, this is the guy who instantly mastered robot piloting and murderized a skyscraper-sized monster, so I guess biking is old hat for him.

DJ grinned. "Only reason I took the job," he replied. "Got anything that'll work for someone my size? Back across the Pond I had a Triumph Defender; a little tall for me, but I got used to it."

He already had a bike? In Britain?

Excuse me, Eyrie Unlimited, but the UK is not some libertarian paradise where children are free to drink and drive to their heart's content.

"Don't get much call for English bikes," said Joe, "but... " He looked DJ over again with a more appraising glance, then grinned. "I got somethin' I think'll suit." He led the way to the end of the row of cycles. "Hop up here and see what you think," he said.

It was a nice bike, there was no questioning that; like a dwarf cruiser hog, with smooth V-patterned tires, lots of gleaming chrome pipes and such, classic lines and a V-twin piston engine rather than the gas-turbine electric direct-drive system which had come into fashion around 2010. Its steering system was similarly retro, a direct-steering bar-and-forks assembly rather than the liquid-balanced, computer-controlled ride-by-wire system of the most modern racers.

All this machinery description is giving me Armageddon??? flashbacks.

DJ swung a leg over it and settled easily into the saddle, his feet easily reaching the ground without making him feel as if he were crouching over a toy bicycle. The handlebars were at a comfortable distance and angle, and he noticed that the footpegs were actually large running boards, big enough for his feet to rest entirely upon. They were forward a bit for extra comfort at highway cruise, like any proper hog ought to have.

"This here's a Corley Twin Atlas," said Joe, patting the tank. "It's the 2014 model; I got it on a special-order for somebody, but he backed out. I already lowered the suspension and the bars 'cause he was a pretty short guy himself. How's it feel?"

How convenient.

"Not bad. What can you tell me about it?"

"Well, it's just what you see, nothing real fancy," the mechanic replied. "500 cc liquid-cooled piston engine, five-speed mechanical transmission, oil-balanced shaft drive. Disc brakes, electric or kick start - Corley's the last bike in the world with a backup kick starter. She'll do a hundred and forty on a straight with a light rider, but I'm required by law to tell ya I don't recommend testin' that claim," he added with a wink.

DJ considered for a moment, then pulled out his wallet. "I do hope you take MasterCard," he said.

How does he have a MasterCard?

Oh, right, because he's DJ.


DJ left the Corley parked in the small lot next to the apartment building that stood at 2501 Wilmont Street, hung his helmet on the handlebar, checked that the spare was secure on the side, and hoped that this wasn't the kind of neighborhood where people stole things they had no conceivable use for just to take them. What kind of fence value did a motorcycle helmet have, anyway? He made his way to the front of the grey, nondescript, in fact quite ugly block of flats and up to the fourth floor, trying to ignore the repetitive hammering noise of a pile driver in a nearby construction area. The stairwell stank of things he preferred not to think about, and he wondered, not for the first time since arriving in the general area, whose brilliant idea it had been to quarter a fourteen-year-old girl alone here.

Doesn't he know? NERV has an entire department devoted to negligent child housing arrangements.

The door to Apartment 4C was as nondescript and ugly as the rest of the building. DJ thumbed the doorbell-speaker buzzer next to the door a couple of times, to no avail; he wasn't entirely sure the unit was working, since he heard nothing through the door. Giving that up, he tried knocking; when the produced no reply, he tried the knob. The door opened without protest, dragging a bit on a pile of mail that had built up, delivered but uncollected, behind the mail slot.

There was a part of DJ Croft that was a born snoop. How could he have enjoyed, no, reveled in a life of poking around old tombs and relics and monuments if that were not so? The chance of airing some eons-dead pharaoh's dirty laundry, so to speak, was as alluring as the payoff and every bit as much fun as the trip itself, as far as he was concerned. This place was somehow more daunting than the Lost Tomb of Qualopec, though, he mused as he edged his way into a gloomy foyer/mini-kitchen. Judging from the amount of dust on the fixtures, the kitchen facilities hadn't been used in about as long as Qualopec's tomb fittings, either.

How can he use so many words to describe something so boring? Did he watch the parts of Eva where Shinji visited Rei's apartment? It's a big gray square.

"Rei?" he called, but got no answer. "Are you here?" Nothing. He made his way down a short corridor into what he, being English, automatically thought of as a bed-sit - a combination living room and bedroom. Although it didn't have much of a bed, just a bare mattress and pillow with some rather distressing splotches he didn't take long to identify as fairly fresh blood, and it didn't look as if anybody actually lived in it. There were no posters, no books, no decorations of any kind - just a battered, armless desk chair, a small refrigerator, and a dresser. No computer, no TV, not even a small radio. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with lumpy, discolored linen - discarded bandages.

DJ wondered if the power was even connected; behind him, the mini-fridge's compressor hummed to life, answering that question for him and making him jump involuntarily. This was the creepiest dwelling he could ever remember having been in; like many of the places he and his mother had explored, it gave him the sensation that he was the first living human to tread its floors in centuries.

Through the connecting door on the far well, DJ heard a shower turn off; until the sound stopped, he hadn't realized he was hearing it. Well, now he knew where Rei was, anyway.

Now all he has to do is lie in wait.

He caught sight of a pair of spectacles sitting folded atop the dresser; picking them up, he turned them curiously over in his hands. Surely they were too big to be Rei's - and they were damaged, the metal frames warped as if by heat, one lens cracked by the pressure of the deformed metal around it. He held them up to the light, but did not put them on, and confirmed that the prescription was fairly weak.

See, all he has to do is pretend to be fixated on something else so that it will seem less suspicious when he is in the right place at the right time to see Rei naked.

The door opened behind him. Turning, he opened his mouth to say something, but was caught up short by the sight that awaited him.

Rei Ayanami stood in the doorway from the bathroom, a towel draped her shoulders; other than that, she wore nothing else. Her injuries had, at least externally, healed entirely - her arm out of its cast, her pale skin smooth, unbroken and unbruised. She was whole, ghostly-white and, at least to DJ's eyes, absolutely perfect.

"Ah... " said DJ smoothly.

Her red eyes flicked to the spectacles DJ still held in his right hand, then narrowed ever so slightly, and she strode purposefully across the room toward him, the towel falling away unnoticed.

Just as planned.

"If this is a bad time - " DJ began; then she reached him, snatching away the glasses. He tried to take a step back from the sudden, unexpected fierceness in her eyes, but before he made it a half-step he ran into the dresser; thus unbalanced, he had to do a quickstep to try to keep from crashing backward with the item of furniture, in the process making quite a mess. This was brought up short by Rei's proximity - he couldn't complete the step without treading on her bare feet with his boots - and, completely overbalanced now, he toppled forward, letting out in vain an inarticulate and too-late warning cry.

With a crash, they both fell to the floor, Rei on her back and DJ atop her; he managed to come down on his knees, one knee between hers, and with those and his outstretched right hand, which brushed her left side and solidly struck the floor, kept most of his weight off her.

Notice how he loses his tomb raider super acrobatic Angel-killing skills and becomes completely clumsy when there are women to be groped.

For a very long moment, they remained frozen there, DJ wide-eyed and terrified that he'd hurt her, Rei gazing expressionlessly up at him - apparently unconcerned. His horror at the accident faded as he looked down at her, replaced by that strange feeling of mixed perception and longing he'd felt at their first meeting, and as it had then, the moment stretched.

And broke as she said softly, "Please get off me."

Someone rejecting DJ Croft? HOW CAN THIS BE!?

It was only then that DJ glanced further down and noticed that, while his right hand had cleared her and was supporting most of his upper body's weight on the floor, his left had come neatly down upon her right breast and now cupped it gently.

Hoping she didn't think he'd taken such a liberty on purpose (and half-hating the necessity of removing that hand, since it fitted its current perch quite well), DJ rolled away to his right, falling on his side and then rolling to his back beside her on the floor.

"I'm terribly sorry," he said, looking sidelong at her. "I really didn't mean for that to happen."

It happens to everyone sometimes.

Rei did not reply; she got up, went to the dresser, selected appropriate underwear (white cotton, part of DJ's mind noted, very practical), and began to dress. She didn't seem offended; in fact, she didn't seem to care at all that he'd barged into her apartment, knocked her down and had a bit of a grope for himself in the process. Nor did she seem to care that he remained, watching her dress and trying to word apologies. DJ interpreted this to mean that she was so very angry with him about it all that she couldn't find an expression for it.

Not until she had finished dressing, in skirt, blouse, vest, black socks (as opposed to stockings) and flat shoes, did Rei acknowledge DJ's presence again, this time by standing over him, looking down and saying,

Yeah, DJ, just stand there and watch her dress. That'll ingratiate you to her.

"What?"

DJ sat up, reached into his shirt pocket, removed her passcard and held it up between his fingers. "Your new passcard. Misato asked me to give it to you."

She took it without a word, nodded slightly, and, without another word or a backward glance, left the apartment, DJ's last plaintive, "Look, I'm really sorry - !" trailing ineffectually behind her.

Unfortunately, even his British innate mastery of politeness was not enough to sway her.

For reasons he could not quite explain to himself later on, DJ found this turn of events unutterably depressing, so he curled up on the floor of her apartment and had himself a bit of a cry.

Where the hell are you, Mum?

Why is he angsting? Doesn't he know who he is?

[Dr. O]

He got home at almost exactly noon, furious with himself and blue at the same time, to find Misato and Jon had started cleaning the apartment without him.

"We thought maybe you'd gotten held up, or gone to lunch with Rei or something, so we figured we'd surprise you and get started without you," Misato explained. "Did you give her the card?"

I'd say he gave her more than just the card.

"Yes," DJ replied, declining to elaborate.

"And?" Misato went on, picking up a couch cushion, fluffing it up and deciding it wasn't -too- dusty.

"And what?" DJ replied, brow furrowing as he arranged the magazines on the coffee table into some semblance of a stack.

"And how'd it go?" Misato asked.

"Bloody awful, if you must know," replied DJ.

"I didn't even get to third base. This is worse than when the Jerries sank HMS Ark Royal," DJ said Britishly.

"What? What happened?" asked Jon.

DJ told them, finishing with, "... and then she just left. Wouldn't even listen to my apology, not that I really blame her. Christ, what a mess! I haven't been so bloody clumsy in years. I only hope I didn't hurt her, although she didn't seem hurt - only bloody furious," he added with a wry chuckle.

"I don't think I've ever seen Rei furious," Misato mused.

Misato's been working for NERV for, what, two weeks? Why would she know Rei all that well?

"She didn't really show it," DJ said, "but the way she just dressed and left... well, what else could she be, really? She obviously wasn't entertained by the whole fiasco." He sighed gustily. "So, bang goes whatever friendship I might have had with -her-, at least for a while. Anyway, let's get this place clean and do some grocery shopping; it's about time we had some real food around here for a change."

As they set to cleaning the kitchen spaces, Jon worked with only half his mind, the other half lost in thought.

They say you only use one-tenth your brain.

Jon Ellison uses half, and he still isn't as good as DJ.

Rei, angry? He admittedly didn't know her well - or at least hadn't known her long - but that didn't seem right to him. He would have to ask her about it.


"Have you seen," asked DJ over dinner that night, "the apartment they've got her living in?"

"Huh?" replied Misato, busily working away at a wedge of the floridly overstuffed lasagna DJ had baked to 'christen' the apartment's never-before-used oven.

It's actually a scone, but DJ didn't have the heart to correct her when she complimented the lasagna.

"Rei," said DJ. "She's living in a dreadful heap of a place over on Wilmont, in the construction zone. Bloody pile driver banging away at all hours of the day and night, I shouldn't wonder, not the kind of place I'd want to live on my own. And the apartment itself is horrible, I've raided nicer tombs than that dump. She's no computer, no TV, no books... no life, far as I can tell. 'S awful. What kind of a person can live that way?"

Not everyone can be as exciting as you, DJ, and that's just something you'll have to learn to accept.

Misato shrugged. "Not everybody's a bon vivant like you, DJ."

Yeah, what she said.

"Maybe not, sure," DJ replied, "but most people at least have a hobby or two, a friend, a guardian, someone to make sure they live better than -that-. There's... there's not a shred of -joy- in that place, or in her. I felt like the life was being sucked out of me just visiting. If I lived there and didn't liven the place up I'd go bloody mad."

"She won't be there much longer," Jon said. "Dr. Ikari told me yesterday that, if she agrees, he wants to move her in next door, with me."

"Well, that's something, anyway," DJ conceded. "I'd thought to offer her the spare room here, but after today, I doubt she'd want to live with me. She might not even care to be next door." He sighed and forked up another mouthful of lasagna.

Someone doesn't want to live with DJ? Impossible!

"I doubt she's really as angry as you think," Jon replied. "Rei strikes me as very temperate. Even if she was angry then, she'll certainly realize that it was all an accident."

"I hope so, I really do," said DJ. He looked up at Jon suddenly, his eyes bright. "What do you say you and I, we'll -be- the sort of friend I mentioned?"

"I'm not sure I understand."

"Friends with benefits," DJ said slowly.

"Well, look, Rei either doesn't know or doesn't care how to live better than she does. If you'd seen her apartment you'd know what I mean. I think it's up to her friends to help her enjoy life more - problem is, up until now she apparently hasn't had any. I think with a little effort we could do that for her, don't you?"

Jon smiled, comprehension dawning in his eyes. "Yes... yes, I think so," he replied.

"Right, then - tomorrow, we'll have to go over -your- apartment and do a little decorating."

"Decorating?"

DJ: Decorating.
Jon: Decorating?
DJ: Decorating.
Jon: I'm not sure I understand. What is this "decorating" of which you speak?
DJ: It's decorating.
Jon: Decorating?

"Too right, the place looks like a bloody military barracks right now. Hardly a warm and welcoming home like this," he added, gesturing at the newly-tidied hominess of his and Misato's apartment. "It needs some human touches, something to give it a little identity."

Jon regarded DJ dubiously.

"So... decorating, then?" he asked.

DJ Croft sighed in a way that only an Englishman can. It was going to be a long day.

"You don't have the faintest idea what I'm talking about, do you?" DJ inquired.

Jon shook his head. "Not really, no."

"Well, trust me. I have good taste, and we won't do anything overblown, all right? It'll be good, you'll see. As we haven't much time, though, I'll rely on your help - and yours, too, Misato."

Misato looked up from her dinner. "Mine?" she tried to ask, but was too busy eating.

DJ nodded. "Even with my special-dispensation license, my credit rating, my worldwide fame and my smashing good looks, I don't think anybody in his right mind is going to rent me a truck."

"A truck?" Misato and Jon stereoed.

With Gendo unexpectedly filling in as a subwoofer.

"'Course!" DJ replied. "How else can we bring the furniture home?"

MONDAY

Well, hello there, unexpected time shift!

Silently, Rei watched the soothing test patterns of EVA-00's viewscreens as the initial loading sequences were run. The faint hum of power resonated faintly through the LCL as the external cables supplied the EVA with power, starting with the head and working downward. The M-Sets froze, then pulsed and shifted, becoming EVA-00's view of the outside world, and Rei felt her perceptions shifting outward, feeling herself becoming taller, braced up, feeling the beginnings of synchrony...

But what did the synchrotron say?

Feeling the faintest hint of fear...


"Main power supply connected. All activation systems to power."

"Operational voltage at critical point. System nominal."

"Initiate first link!"

Rei settled back in the seat, letting a few stray air bubbles escape from her lungs as she let her perceptions flow outward, feeling the EVA beginning to awaken around her. The circuits and synapses within the head were the first to receive power, and the viewscreens dissolved from their Mandelbrot test patterns into the view of the featureless white walls of the testing room, broken only by the large klaster windows at the opposite end.

"Confirm power to cerebral systems," Maya's voice came over the comm system. "Ready to initiate second link, Rei."

This is boring because it is about Rei and not DJ. Can we get back to DJ cooking and cleaning, please?

"Affirmative," Rei answered quietly, beginning to actively seek out synchrony. Faintly she could sense the EVA around her, beginning to merge with her awareness as it gained its own form of consciousness.

"Synapses active, pulses transmitting normally."

"Initial contact: no problems. Second link confirmed."

"Empower and synchronize."

Silly Rei, empowerment is for real people!

The power supply encompassed more and more of the EVA, the panels on its arms and then its legs coming alive to indicate proper energy feed. Rei began to feel taller, braced up. She let herself sink deeper into the harmony of neural feeds, seeking the needed union with the EVA's artificial consciousness. One mind, one body.

"Nerve links stable to 2550 and climbing. Approaching borderline. Ready to initiate third link."

There it was. Waiting for her to reach out to it, merge with it, command it. She reached out...

"Ready for third link in 5... 4... 3..."

And suddenly her head was on fire.

"That wasn't hair spray at all," Rei realized too late. "It was lighter fluid!"

In a split second everything became an incomprehensible blur as a howling wave of feedback screamed into her mind. Through the haze of pain he felt herself -- no, she tried to reason, it was the EVA, it was the EVA -- struggling violently against the thick restraints holding her in place.

Then her tortured shoulders broke free of their shackles and she clutched at her head -- no, no this was wrong, this was wrong, it wasn't her in control, it wasn't her, it wasn't her IT WASN'T HER.

It wasn't?

The external power was cut then. The link split into two howling threads, part of her mind contorted by terrifying panic and helpless, the other consumed by unreasoning rage and in full control, unhesitatingly switching to the batteries and lashing out at the people who had taken away her power source, her lifeblood. Peripherally she heard the klaster of the control room cracking, shattering. Every thought, every instinct, in that part of the fast-disintegrating collective of their consciousness raised its voice in a single unified chorus, a silent scream of hideous intent:

<<GENDOU IKARI MUST DIE.>>

Right away DJ Croft flew in from London
On a red eye midnight flight
He held Rei's hand and they worked out a plan
And it didn't take long to decide
Gendo had to die!

<NO NO STOP STOP STOP!!> she screamed.

<<LEAVE ME!!>>

In the next second everything went dark, and the EVA vanished from her awareness as if a switch had been thrown. Suddenly there was an intense, wrenching vertigo which was punctuated by a bone-jarring collision, throwing her violently around in her seat. There was a sickening CRUNCH and then her body felt like it was on fire as well. Then another shattering crash, and a third, amplifying the agony as more bones fractured. Her scream was drowned out by the roar of what, in the tiny corner of her mind that remained coherent, she knew to be the ejection charges on the entry plug.

Then the boosters died away, and she was in zero-gravity for two nauseating, eternal seconds.

And then her entire world exploded.

I told them this would happen if they activated the Large Hadron Collider, but did they listen? Nooooooooo.


"Begin connection."

There was no more time for memory, only the here and now. Today, she would try it again.

"Operational voltage nominal, initial neurofeeds nominal. Ready for second connection."

The displays came to life, and Rei looked up at the observation windows of the control room, long since repaired, as if the disaster had never happened. Dr. Ikari stood there, flanked by Dr. Akagi and Colonel Keller, watching intently. Maya and John and the rest of the techs were all at their stations. It was all the same.

"That last experiment didn't go so well."
"Then we do it again!" Gendo said.

"Second connection nominal, pilot is connecting to EVA-00. Impulses and synapses engaging. Nerve links stable at 1500 and rising."

No. Not all the same. Two of the faces were different, new. DJ and Jon were there, watching. DJ in his street clothes, leaning close to the klaster windows and watching intently. Jon in his black and red plug suit -- he would be conducting his own synchronization test shortly -- even closer to the windows and watching even more intently. She could almost feel his eyes seeking her out behind EVA-00's single optic (although the entry plug was not actually within the machine's head), willing her to be well, to do well...

"2500... approaching borderline in 5... 4... 3... 2..."

<We are with you.>

What?

"1... borderline clear! Unit 00 is active and operating normally! All interlinks successful!"

Rei studied her own console readouts, and quietly felt the presence of the EVA about her. Yes. All was as it should be.

<Thank you.>

What just happened?

"Roger," she said in her usual quiet voice. "I'll begin the interlocking test without a break."


She was toweling the shower water out of her hair after rinsing away the LCL when Jon came into the locker room, trailing his own dripping trail of the yellow liquid, which had the most disturbing tendency to turn into slime when exposed to air for more than a few seconds. He saw her, pulled up short, and seemed about to leave, embarrassed by the similarity of the situation to the one DJ had reported ending so disastrously a few days before.

"Jon," she said softly in greeting, finished toweling off, and, going to her locker, began to get dressed.

I will give EPU this: they do not shy away from including naked chicks in their fanfics. This chapter has more nudity than a French beach. Am I complaining? Of course not. I'm just waiting until DJ organizes a NERV-wide mud wrestling tournament.

"You did well today," said Jon, who decided that, if she wasn't bothered by his presence, he might as well stay and talk for a moment.

"Thank you," said Rei, and he knew it wasn't just the compliment she was thanking him for. She continued dressing, buttoning her blouse, as he stood there, trying to think of a way to approach the next subject.

"Something else?" asked Rei, glancing over her shoulder, as she ran a brush through her short, thick blue-silver hair.

"Um... yes," said Jon. "It's DJ."

"Yes?"

"He thinks you're angry with him," Jon reported. "It's... it's causing him some distress."

Because if someone, somewhere, doesn't like DJ, it's the end of the world.

"I'm not," replied Rei simply, putting the brush away.

"Tell him," said Jon as simply.

She looked at him, a long, hard, searching look, then nodded. "I will."

I give you Rei, the human doormat.

Then she picked up the bag which contained her every Earthly possession, nodded again to the boy who was going to be her housemate, and left him to his thoughts.

He had quite a few as he found the wrist control, decompressed his plug suit, and set about working his way out of it.

I bet he did.


DJ was in the commissary, negotiating with the beverage dispenser for a Pepsi, when Rei found him. He glanced up to see her watching him, and looked unsure whether he should smile or just leave. "Uh... hullo," he said, his voice reflecting that uncertainty.

Americans say "hello."
DJ says "hullo."

Guess which way is superior.

Rei nodded.

"Er... buy you a drink?"

She shook her head.

"Suit yourself," DJ replied, collecting his own and taking it to a nearby table. Rei followed him; as he sat down, she went to the other side.

"May I sit?" she asked.

"Please," replied DJ, gesturing.

She did so, regarding him steadily and calmly for several minutes, and then, apparently having found nothing troublesome in her brief 'scan', said without preamble,

But did she plop into the chair? Or maybe she planted herself. But she definitely didn't do something as pedestrian as merely sit.

"I'm not angry."

"You were at the time," DJ observed, but she shook her head.

"No; never."

"Why didn't you let me apologize, then?"

She shrugged. "It didn't seem important."

"Well, when I commit a stunning balls-up like that, I tend to feel a need to apologize, so when next I do something like that, do me a favor and let me say I'm sorry before you leave, all right?"

DJ doesn't just apologize - he demands that you allow him to, and God help you if you refuse.

She nodded. "All right," she replied, with the faintest hint of a smile.

"I really didn't mean for any of it to happen."

"I know."

They said nothing as DJ drank his soda; then he raised a hand and had a look at his watch. "Well... 'bout time I was heading home, I'd say." He pressed a button on the watch face, and a tiny red lens next to the digital display glowed. "Hal, are you there?"

"Of course, DJ," replied the calm voice of his computer.

Oh man, now he has a spy watch. Is everything about him unbelievably cool?

"D'you know if Misato's left here yet?"

"Yes, she has," Hal replied. "She and Jon are already here, and, may I add, anxiously awaiting your culinary skills."

Bless you, Jon, thought DJ to himself. He turned to Rei. "Can I offer you a lift? I understand today's your moving day."

Rei considered it for a moment, then got to her feet and nodded.

I once read an Evangelion fanfic about an Eva/dragon hybrid (long story) who took Rei on motorcycle rides.

But he still wasn't as cool as DJ.


"D'you have anything you need to pick up?" DJ asked as he handed her his extra helmet and helped her get situated behind him.

I don't know if motorcyclists typically take two helmets everywhere. Maybe this is just DJ being ultra-prepared. I mean, he does strike me as the sort of guy who'd carry condoms in his wallet at all times, "just in case." Because that's just how he rolls.

"No," she replied. "I have everything with me."

"Oh. Have you ridden before?"

"No."



"It's pretty simple if you're not driving. Keep your feet on the pegs and hang on, and don't be alarmed when we lean - that's how motorcycles turn corners. OK?"

She nodded. Flicking the key on, he kicked the V-twin into grumbling life, and - quite enjoying the way Rei nestled against his back and put her arms around his waist - DJ guided the Corley out of the garage and up onto the S490.

Back in the garage, unnoticed, Gendou Ikari sat at the wheel of his car, eyes narrowed behind his tinted eyeglasses.

Then, face a study in impassivity, he started the car and drove away in the other direction.

Well... that was an aside, all right.

As they reached the surface, DJ tried to gauge his passenger's mood. Some people didn't like riding pillion on a motorcycle - it frightened them, made them freeze and wish for nothing more than the ride's end. Rei's grip on his waist was firm, but not a death-grip, so he didn't think that was the case with her, but he still wanted to be sure she was enjoying the trip.

I'm having a really hard time believing this was unintentional.

"All right?" he called over his shoulder.

"Fine," came Rei's reply.

Reassured that he'd received as positive a response as he was likely to get, DJ turned onto I-290 and headed west. If Rei -was- enjoying the ride, he might as well prolong the experience, for both of them.



He hadn't been to this part of town, so the sights, though mostly drab, were new for him (and for her, too, though he didn't know it) as they roared through the western districts. As they hit the bend before the Worcester-Auburn line, DJ noticed something off to the right that made him pull over to the side of the near-deserted highway, put down the kickstand and just look.

"Well, I'll be damned," he murmured. "A round lake."

For someone so knowledgeable and well-traveled, DJ sure is amazed by a geographical feature that can be found just about anywhere.

And so it was - a perfectly circular lake, in the middle of what looked like it had once been a warehouse district, a few hundred yards to the southwest of the freeway.

"That's Lake Oppenheimer," Rei said. "Didn't you know about it?"

"No," DJ replied. "Perfectly round... that's amazing."

"Not really," Rei said. "It's a bomb crater."

"Bloody big bomb," DJ observed. "That lake looks to be most of a kilometer across."

"Oh, I forgot, you Yanks don't use a proper measuring system."

Then DJ died horribly in a crash because he had been driving against traffic the entire time. The end.

"Just before you arrived, before NERV was fully activated, the Army tried to stop the Third Angel with a small N2-type atomic device," said Rei. "It was in the after-action report."

"Oh. I never read those things."

"You should."

DJ nodded. "I'll start." He twisted in the seat so he could look at her, though all he could see of her face through the window in her helmet was her red eyes. "Are you enjoying the ride?"

She considered that for a moment, then nodded tentatively. "Yes," she replied; then, a little stronger, "Yes, I am."

DJ smiled. "Good."

"Giggity."

Flicking the kickstand back up, DJ pulled back onto the Interstate.


"Sorry we're late, all," DJ announced as he and Rei entered the apartment a half-hour or so later. "To make up for it, we'll have to have something especially delicious tonight." Turning and surveying Rei for a moment, he added, "Hm. I shall have to brush up on my vegetarian recipes now you're here."

What? How does he know that? Was he just randomly asking about her lifestyle and eating habits during the drive? Or maybe he figured it out through divination, which is presumably how he knows about Seele and the Angels.

"Sorry," said Rei.

"Oh, don't apologize," said DJ. "Never apologize for what you are. Eh, Jon?"

As far as advice goes, that's about as deep as "be yourself."

"Huh? Oh... yes. Right."


Over the weekend, Jon, DJ and Misato had, under DJ's guidance, done quite a bit toward making Apartment 3-F (3-E being across the hall) less of a barracks environment and more of a home. They'd painted the walls a relaxing shade of blue, cleaned the kitchen, installed some nice accessories (including HAL "eyes" in all the rooms of both apartments, and a secondary HAL console with monitor in each kitchen),

Why? Is HAL going to be watching them in the bathroom? Does Misato know about this?

and hung a few pictures (DJ was especially proud of the big print of the bow wreck of the Titanic, which was one of his very favorite photos he'd taken on his mother's 2013 expedition). They'd also come up with some very comfy and fairly decent-looking brown leather living-room furniture, and a nice glass coffee table.

The crowning glory, as far as DJ was concerned, was Rei's bedroom itself, and he almost seemed to swell with pride as he opened the door and introduced her to it.

It was quite nice - done in a slightly softer shade of blue than the rest of the apartment, with snow-white accents that made the whole room seem bigger. The light was provided not by the glaring fluorescent ceiling fixture, but from a tall halogen torchiere lamp that cast its glow against the white ceiling, where it reflected down to softly bathe the whole room. One wall was a window that had a view of the pleasant residential neighborhood to the north, built on the side of Bancroft Hill. A bookshelf covered the wall to the right of the door; it was mostly empty for now, but DJ had added a few volumes from his own collection, hoping they would prove a useful seed.

INTENSE ROOM DESCRIPTION ACTION.

The room was dominated, though, by the bed their expedition had been tremendously fortunate to find at one of the numerous antique and old-furniture stores they'd hit - a massive king-size four-poster affair, made of brass, with old-fashioned spring underlay and a real feather mattress, whose owner had apparently possessed no clue of its true worth. DJ had spent the better part of Sunday afternoon cursing and barking his knuckles putting the thing together, and Sunday evening emplacing and arranging the elaborate and beautiful ice-blue-and-white sheets, counterpane, coverlet, what Jon's eyeball estimate made to be about a dozen pillows, and - the crowning touch in DJ's eyes - canopy.

They gave Rei a needlessly large, elaborate antique bed, complete with canopy.

I would call him a tryhard, but this is just another day in the life of DJ Croft, master of everything.

Rei said nothing; she was overwhelmed by feelings she did not understand and feared she would not be able to control if she acknowledged them. It would be ungrateful not to say -something-, though; so she turned to DJ and Jon, her eyes moist and luminous, and tried in vain to think of something for several minutes.

Then she cast her eyes down and said softly, "I'm sorry. I... I don't know how to act or feel in a situation like this."

"I mean, you just barged in and are now dominating every aspect of my life. What the fuck, man? Just leave me alone."

Oh, wait, I forgot. Rei is completely enamored with DJ, for... some... reason.

Jon wanted to say something comforting, but DJ beat him to it; putting a gentle hand on her shoulder, he said, "'Sall right, love. If you want to learn, we're here to teach you - eh, Jon?"

"Yes," Jon agreed without hesitation. "Absolutely." Although, he reflected wryly, I don't know too much about it myself. Then he glanced at DJ and added to himself, I suspect he knows enough to teach both of us, though.

DJ glanced down at his healed right hand and smiled, then held it out. "Friends?"

Rei shrugged. "It's an OK show."

"I... " Rei gave him a searching look, then glanced away again. "I've never... "

"You have two, now," said DJ, reaching to his side with his left, grabbing Jon's wrist, and placing the surprised boy's right hand alongside his own.

Tentatively, as if she were afraid they would burn her, Rei extended her own right hand; presently, they all met in the middle, in a sort of clumsy approximation of a basketball team's "go" shake.

"I... I don't know what to do," Rei repeated.

This is like one of those harem shows with the obligatory subservient monotone girl who doesn't know anything and has to be taught by the male lead.

Not that I'd know anything about that.

DJ grinned. "Try smiling."

So she did. It was a tiny smile by most standards - the shifting of a few inconsequential muscles, the slightest of upcurve at the corners of her mouth, the tiniest of wrinkling at the corners of her eyes - but it -went- to her eyes and it subtly transformed her face, making her even more beautiful to both Jon and DJ.

And it felt good, too.

You know, it took Shinji saving her life to get Rei to smile. But here, it's just like "oh, you gave me a bed," and she's extraordinarily grateful for some reason. I don't know, maybe DJ was just trying to drop a massive hint by giving her a bed that was way too large for one person, and Rei is just kind of slow like that.

"Friends," the three said together. It was a promise; one that, though they could not know it, would be powerfully tested in the months to come.

Hey there, foreshadowing. How's it going?

/* The Marcels "Blue Moon" _Billboard Rock 'n Roll Hits: 1961_ */

So don't don't don't
Let it be love love love
Don't let it be love love love
I'm much better with wham!
Bam!
Thank you ma'am!

(See? Song selection is that easy.)

NEXT EPISODE:

A race against time as the next Angel attacks NERV
Headquarters directly.

Rei, like a ghost in the moonlight.

Melancholy in the night.

The Melancholy of DJ Croft?

EVA-01 earns a nickname.

There must be a real short list of nicknames that would work for a giant purple cyborg cloned from a dead god.

Sacrifice, friendship, and a cryptic promise.

In seven days:

NEON EXODUS EVANGELION
EXODUS 1:5 - GUARDIAN ANGEL
07/30/97

I can't wait.

This post has been edited by Dr. O: Apr 6 2011, 06:16 PM

[oneluckyduck]

DJ nodded. "Even with my special-dispensation license, my credit rating, my worldwide fame and my smashing good looks, I don't think anybody in his right mind is going to rent me a truck."

Does...does it really say that?

Right away DJ Croft flew in from London
On a red eye midnight flight
He held Rei's hand and they worked out a plan
And it didn't take long to decide
Gendo had to die!

I love you. Everything, from this on, is perfect.

[Dr. O]

I'm afraid it really does say that, ducky (is it OK if I call you that?). I was so stunned by the line that I couldn't think of any way to make fun of it. Because really, what could I have possibly added?

And I'm glad you're enjoying it.

/* Genesis "Land of Confusion" _Invisible Touch_ */

EYRIE PRODUCTIONS, UNLIMITED
presents

NEON EXODUS EVANGELION

EXODUS 1:5 - GUARDIAN ANGEL


Inspired by NEON GENESIS EVANGELION created by Hideaki Anno, Gainax,
et al.

"Inspiration" is not the same as "taking the setting, background, and half the characters." STALKER was inspired by Roadside Picnic. This was not inspired by Evangelion; it's just Eva with a new paint job. Just an FYI.

Most characters created by Hideaki Anno and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto
except

DJ Croft created by Benjamin D. Hutchins
and
Jon Ellison created by Larry Mann

Additional material and inspiration cadged from TOMB RAIDER by Core
Design, Ltd., X-COM: UFO DEFENSE and sequels from MPS Labs (whoever
owns them nowadays), THE X-FILES created by Chris Carter, and
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY by Arthur C. Clarke

I wonder if I'm ever going to run out of disclaimer jokes.

Ah well, I can always recycle them. These chapters are long enough that it's not like anyone will notice.

Written by Benjamin D. Hutchins and Larry Mann

Aided and abetted by the Eyrie Productions, Unlimited crew
and special-guest-for-life Phil Moyer

Run for it, Phil! Escape while you still have your dignity!

© 1997 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited


The streets of Worcester-3 were deserted by design, the residents of the city tucked away in their shelters as the taller buildings retracted to more defensible positions. That didn't bother DJ Croft, though; as he hunched lower over the handlebars of his motorcycle and opened the throttle a little further, he enjoyed the luxury of completely empty streets.

Running over pedestrians tended to scuff the paint job.

He wasn't on call; Jon Ellison was at the top of the rotation today. Nevertheless, as soon as the alert had sounded, DJ had headed not for the nearest shelter but rather for Park Avenue, his NERV ID getting him through the roadblock at the corner of Park and Institute before the cops piled into the shelters with everybody else.

Where would those useless authority figures be without DJ to pick up the slack?

Now, with the city effectively to himself, he popped a brief wheelie as he tore up the Interstate 190 entrance ramp on Gold Star Boulevard, around the 190-to-290 bypass, and immediately onto the ramp for S490. As he did so, a reading laser on the side of the road painted the bar code embossed on the metal plate riveted to his cycle's front fender, checked it against a database and determined that the vehicle was authorized to enter that highway. A half-mile ahead, barricades retracted, and DJ was allowed to enter the S490 tunnel. Rather than emerging on the other side of a hill or river, he came out underground, in the great cavern of the Worcester-3 Geo-Front.

The first Worcester sank into a swamp.

The second Worcester burned down, fell over, and then sank into a swamp.

But the third Worcester stayed up.

For the past three or four weeks, he'd made this ride at least once a weekday, excepting days off rota like today, and most of the time he took this part at a fairly leisurely pace - not only because the speed limit here was a sensible 55 miles per hour, and the penalty for overrunning the side of the road (which would, admittedly, involved punching through or going over a Jersey barricade) was falling the mile or so to the cavern floor, but because the view was magnificent and he liked to soak it in. Some drivers couldn't handle the S490 freeway - the height and vista gave them vertigo, paralyzed them with fear. DJ was afraid of relatively few things, and thankfully, height wasn't one of them.

DJ's only fear was that he would become too awesome.

Today, he hunched low over the handlebars, pulled in his knees, and got as far out of the wind as he could, wringing all the speed he could get from the Twin Atlas's blaring V-twin. He would never know exactly how fast he'd been going, since he kept his eyes glued to the road at all times, but the guy he'd bought the bike from had once told him it would do 140 on a straight with a small rider.

He throttled back and eased off as he came around the great, sweeping curve to near-ground-level, then hopped the off-ramp for Central Dogma, zoomed into the parking garage and slipped neatly into the space beside Misato's blue Z. By the time the special passcard elevator had carried him to Level 1 and he'd reached the Control Room, Jon was almost ready for launch.

"They just keep getting weirder, don't they?" Misato asked, gesturing to the main viewer. On it, the newest Angel could be seen floating above the streets of Worcester-3: a massive crystalline octahedron, floating on its vertical axis, gleaming blue and almost completely featureless save for a black equatorial band. It looked to be around the same height as an average EVA, and was floating half that height off the ground.

Oh hey, it's the D8 of doom.

"Synchronization complete and stable," Maya Ibuki reported.

"EVA-03 ready for launch," Jon's voice reported calmly over the speakers.

"Go!" Misato called, and Jon was hurled toward the surface.

As he popped out of the street, already raising EVA-03's autorifle, the Angel seemed to pulse, its equatorial band glowing red.

And Jon's getting pwned in 3... 2...

"Look out!" Misato called. Jon tried to make EVA-03 dodge to the side, but was rewarded only with a shuddering crash and an absolute failure of the unit to go anywhere.

"Control, I'm locked down!" he cried.

1...

The Angel's equatorial band blazed, and a white-hot beam of energy lanced out, burning through an intervening building and slamming into the chest of the black EVA. In the entry plug, Jon howled in recursive agony as the heat flashed through the EVA's structure and the LCL, which had a rather low specific heat in its oxygenated state, began to boil.

"Rather low specific heat."

It is basically blood plasma. Think about that for a second.

"The interlock is jammed!" console tech John Trussell reported, frantically punching buttons. "Some kind of magnetic lock failure."

"Retrieve him!" Misato ordered. Maya slammed her hand down on the emergency retrieval control, and as abruptly as it had come, the EVA vanished beneath the streets.

"Life signs are strong and stable, he's in no danger," Truss reported, looking over the med scanners. "He's unconscious, though. Probably a good thing."

Can't have someone who isn't DJ doing anything important.

"Get him to the infirmary as soon as EVA-03 is locked down. Engineering Section, I'll want a repair estimate on the EVA as soon as possible. Tactical, keep me posted on what that Angel's doing. DJ... you'd better suit up, I don't think Jon or EVA-03 will be up to dealing with this one after this."

DJ nodded and headed to the locker room.

I would just like to point out that Shinji got hit harder than Jon, but still managed to get back on the job and kill the Angel.

Jon was grown. In a vat of LCL. FOR FIGHTING ANGELS. And so far he's doing much worse than Shinji!


"Unit-03 recovered!" Maya reported as EVA-03 came to a stop and the gates closed.

"Eject the plug!" Ritsuko snapped. "LCL emergency exhaust! Hurry!"

The back panels of EVA-03 opened and the entry plug popped out of its housing. Immediately, four jets of burning hot LCL spouted from emergency exhaust ports on the plug's upper quarter and the main hatch slid open, sending a huge gout of steam into the air. An autoloader quickly moved into position, extracting the seat from the plug's interior and transporting it over to the catwalk, where a medical team waited with a gurney. With all speed they unstrapped the unconscious Jon and loaded him onto it.

Misato hurried over to check on his condition. His exposed skin was scalded, and blood oozed from his nose and mouth; Misato tried not to think about what the boiling LCL might have done to Jon's innards.

Kentucky Fried Jon!

As the medtech whisked the unconscious pilot away, they passed DJ as he came out onto the catwalk, adjusting the throat tab of his black-and-green plug suit.

"He looks bloody awful," DJ remarked, tabbing the wrist control and wincing slightly as the plug suit contracted around him.

Misato nodded. "We can't launch you; it'll be expecting another EVA. You wouldn't be able to get off the platform before it nailed you, too, even if the release didn't jam. Go on standby."

Nodding, DJ turned and left the bay. He was a little irritated at being all dressed up with noplace to go, but he could see Misato's point, and he didn't relish being boiled alive any more than Jon had.

After all, that would mar his stunning good looks.


Supremely unconcerned with the drama playing out below the surface, the Angel continued to cruise inexorably forward, until it had reached the center of the city. It then deployed a large, pointed probe - which looked rather like an oversized drill bit - from its nadir vertex. The glowing tip of the probe descended to ground level and, without preamble, bored into the ground, tearing up anything in its path.

And so began the Angel's attempt to fuck NERV into submission.


"What do we have so far?" asked Misato after an hour of probing and feinting attacks against the Angel.

"Anything that comes within one kilometer is immediately attacked and destroyed," Truss reported. "It will respond to any attacks regardless of range; the Type-12 positron rifle we deployed fired one shot from two and a half klicks out and then was obliterated."

The longest-range weapon they have, an energy cannon that had to be mounted on a rail car in the show, and its range is... 2.5 kilometers. Which is almost exactly the same distance as the longest recorded sniper kill.

No wonder NERV is so fucking bad at fighting the Angels.

"AT Field?"

And naturally, Misato has no clue what the big-ass forcefield the Angel is using is supposed to be, even though another Angel used one in the first chapter.

"It's the most powerful one we've encountered so far. You can see the phase space being affected." To demonstrate, he played back video footage from their earlier attempt to knock down the Angel with the Type-12 positron rifle, a weapon similar in nature to the one the Angel itself wielded. The T12 fired its beam, which spanged off a dark hexagonal distortion in the air.

"Both offense and defense are almost perfect," Misato sighed. "The thing is like a floating fortress. Close combat with EVAs is out of the question, then. What's the status of the enemy probe?"

Well, that's one thing to call it.

"It's reached the first defense barrier. We estimate that it will break through all 22 and reach the Geo-Front about six minutes after midnight tonight."

"But our computers can't even figure out how long it takes to copy a large file, so I'd take that with a grain of salt."

"Ten hours... what's the status of the EVA-03?"

"EVA-03's chestplates and defensive armor were completely melted. Fortunately the control center wasn't damaged. The unit can be repaired within three hours; unfortunately Jon will not be combat ready for at least another 24."

"00 and 01?"

"01 is fully prepared for combat. 00 is operational but there are still feedback errors, so reliability is questionable, both of the unit and the pilot. Rei's never faced combat before; we don't know how she'll react."

"Re's no DJ Croft; we don't know how she'll react."

Notice how the effectiveness of every pilot and Evangelion except DJ and Unit 01 is called into question?

"Hm... I think I have a plan."


Gendou Ikari gazed emotionlessly and expressionlessly at his Operations Director, fingers steepled before him, for several minutes before reiterating the gist of her just-proposed plan, to make sure he'd heard it right.

"You're going to set up the world's largest projection screen and play Freddy Got Fingered on a loop until it loses the will to live?"

"Long-range fire from outside the target's defensive perimeter?"

"At the moment it's the best possible strategy," Misato replied, nodding.

"What did the Magi say?"

"Two for approval, one for approval with conditions. Chance of success is 8.7%. SHODAN concurs with their analysis but gives us 11.73%."

I had no idea SHODAN was an optimist.

"Not much."

"But better than nothing."

Yeah. That leaves, what, an average 89.8% probability that they'll fail and DJ will die? With odds like that, you'd have to be insane not to try.

"No reason to reject this plan. Proceed with it."

"Yes sir."


"Maya, what've we got for long-range weaponry that might make a dent in that thing?" asked Misato as she returned to the Control Room.

Why is she asking Maya? Does this look like a woman who is well-acquainted with weaponry?



Maya turned in her seat and reported, "Nothing in-house. The positron rifle we've been developing for the EVAs isn't ready for prime time yet, and since it's based on a Type 12, I doubt it's got the striking power at range that we'll need. Nothing else even comes close."

"What about the rail-transportable particle beam cannon the Army's working on over at Fort Devens?" asked DJ from the depths of the current issue of Popular Mechanics.

Slowly, everyone in the room stopped what they were doing and turned to stare at him.

"What?" he asked innocently.

I think they're undergoing a crisis of confidence after finding out that their entire job can be done better by a kid and an issue of Popular Mechanics.


Meanwhile, in the infirmary, Jon floated unconscious in a Model 33 automatic life-support unit. The last word in automated medical systems, the Kohler Model 33 suspends its patient in a bath of High-Oxygen Liquid Environment, the same stuff used for deep-ocean armored diving suits. The Hi-Ox is medicated per patient requirements, and every aspect of the patient's life signs and biochemistry are automatically monitored, adjusted, and compensated for according to the baselines established in the patient's file, if there is one, or by the mean human baseline if that is not the case. (In Jon's case, being a NERV operative, he had a quite extensive baseline file in the system already.)

Presently, the circulating Hi-Ox was drained away, drawn by gentle suction pumps out of the patient's lungs and replaced with slightly overoxygenated air.

Jon came to a few moments later, as the top of the unit popped open with a gentle hiss and a team of orderlys came to move him to a regular bed. Ritsuko Akagi hovered nearby; as the orderlies gently put Jon into the nearby bed and made him as comfortable as possible, he thought back to the events that had led him to be here.

"Embarrassing," he observed, wincing as the effort of speaking grated on his dry throat.

Don't sweat it, Jon. Anyone would look massively inadequate compared to DJ CROFT!

"Don't worry about it; there was no permanent damage to either of you," Ritsuko replied. "There was a wiring fault in the gantry system that caused the release mechanism to fail - there was nothing you could have done about it. Breathe regularly, try not to talk much. We force-grew you a few new layers of epidermis, so your skin will be tender for a bit, but your lungs are undamaged. You should be fine in another 24 hours."

Jon nodded and settled back against the pillows as she left him to himself. He felt no pain; the residual effects of the various chemicals circulating with the Hi-Ox still kept him from feeling the tenderness of his new skin.

Translation: they gave him a morphine drip. It's goooooood stuff.

He sighed. A fine EVA pilot he was turning out to be.


It was a rare pleasure for DJ to watch Misato in full officious swing, her NERV plumage in full display as she brandished executive orders, pushed Army officers about and generally had the time of her life throwing NERV's weight around. The Army technicians were more than happy to help them out with the conversion of their experimental particle cannon prototype to an EVA-operable weapon; they just liked to play with their big toys, never mind the official
circumstances, and they had tremendous respect for the EVA techs, whose toys were widely acknowledged to be the grandest of all.

And he has big balls, and she has big balls
But we have the biggest
Balls of them all!

The brass above them, on the other hand, was furious at this upstart agency's gall, just showing up on their doorstep, so to speak, and demanding a weapon they weren't even supposed to know was under development. What right did they think they had to do something like that, they wanted to know? These questions were answered with a polite but pointed recommendation that they read the NERV Charter a bit more carefully next time, and by late afternoon, the Project EVA tech types were bundling up their shiny new EVA weapon and preparing it for air transport to Mount Wachusett, designated jumping-off point for what had been codenamed by SHODAN, in one of those quirky moments that made some people wonder about the computer's long-term reliability, "Operation Gabriel's Horn".

And now they're trying to outdo Evangelion when it comes to pointless Biblical references. Oh well, at least it can't get any worse.


Meanwhile, back in the infirmary, Jon had been floating between periods of unconsciouness and wakefulness, and was at a gray point between the two when he heard the room door slide open, followed by the sound of a wheeled cart and footsteps. Turning toward the source of the sound, he opened his eyes and tried to focus.

"Rei..." he said when he determined who it was, the sight helping to bring him up to a more wakeful state. He spoke quietly, still mindful of Dr. Akagi's advice to avoid talking too much or too loudly. He properly noticed the cart, as well as the food tray atop it.

Rei took on a second job as a maid to help pay for Unit 00's maintenance.

"Dinner," Rei said simply, noting his look. "I also came to tell you the schedule of Operation Gabriel's Horn. I... thought you might like to know."

Jon nodded silently as Rei pulled her ever-present little red notebook from her pocket,

Haha what? "Ever-present" little notebook? What the hell, man? What, were the authors watching Blues Clues, then Evangelion came on and they didn't know where one show ends and the other begins?

flipped it open to a central page, and began reading, mechanically: "1730 hours, DJ Croft and Rei Ayanami report to the cage. 1800 hours, power up EVA-00 and EVA-01. 1805 hours, launch, proceed to staging base and wait for further orders. The operation starts at midnight."

Jon sat up slowly, groggy but conscious of the fact that he had no clothing on. "I hope it goes well," he said, keeping himself covered with the sheets. "Sorry I can't be of help."

"We will do our best," Rei replied.

Rei will do her best to be a meat shield, and DJ will do his best to be a glory hog.

"Haven't made a good impression," Jon sighed, resting his chin on his knees.

"Hm?" Rei asked, cocking her head to one side.

"Two combats, damaged both times. Not a good track record. All that simulator time... you'd think things would go better."

Sorry Jon, but not even all the experience in the world can save you from playing second banana to DJ CROFT.

"Some circumstances are beyond control," Rei replied evenly. "And damage is expected regardless."

Jon said nothing.

"You're alive," Rei continued.

"... Yes."

For a certain value of "alive."

"EVA-03 is functional."

"... Yes."

"That is all that matters."

Jon's pause was longer, but he answered the same way, because he knew that she was right. "...... Yes."

I think the pause is because Jon was just then figuring out that Rei told him off.

"I have to go now," Rei said. "They're waiting for me."

"Mm," Jon nodded, pulling the cart closer so he could reach the food tray more easily. Seeing that he had the situation under control, Rei turned to leave. She was halfway through the door when he called out to her. "Rei?"

"Mm?"

"Be careful."

Rei was silent for several moments. "... Farewell," she finally said quietly. And then she was gone, the door closed.

Jon watched the closed door in silence for some time, pondering her parting word.

Fifteen minutes later, Jon realized that Rei had said goodbye.

[Dr. O]

DJ yawned and looked at his watch: it was 23:30, half an hour to "the operation", as Misato kept calling it. Well past his bedtime. He'd never really had a hard-and-fast bedtime imposed; though Lara Croft could not be described as a particularly lenient parent, she had never been one to impose arbitrary restrictions, preferring to let DJ learn for himself why some things were important.

In other words, she was a negligent parent who allowed her kid to become a spoiled, self-important brat who resents any form of authority, no matter how just.

In this way, DJ had come to his own conclusion that the necessity of rising early made it best to get to bed at a reasonable hour of the evening. It was a rare night that he wasn't in bed by ten.

Because children are well-known for imposing reasonable limits upon themselves without external prompting. They practically raise themselves!

Below him, on the mountainside, the techs were scrambling to finish the last of the connections, linking the giant sniper rifle they'd made of the Army's particle cannon mechanism to the vast banks of transformers and other electrical substation-type equipment they'd emplaced here. The scope of the electrical feed they were providing for this operation boggled the mind: in order to power the rifle DJ would use to attack the Angel, NERV would have to black out a sizeable chunk of one of the most densely populated areas on Earth, from upstate New York across the whole of Massachusetts, as far south as Washington, DC, and as far west as Buffalo, New York. The only areas that would have externally-provided power in that zone for the duration of Operation Gabriel's Horn would be the massive pumping stations that kept the walled city of New York from being inundated by the swollen Atlantic Ocean, for if they failed, seventeen million people would drown.

They built a wall around New York?

Look, we can't even get the New Orleans levies to work. I'm no engineer, but that doesn't seem like it would be a good idea. Especially since they would have had, I don't know, three hours' lead time before Second Impact flooded the whole eastern seaboard.

It was a sobering thought.

He went outside the tent he'd been napping in and stood on the metal scaffold that some thoughtful soul had erected between the two inactive Evangelions, sitting with knees drawn up and arms crossed over them in the gloom like giants lost in contemplation of the city below. Klieg lights swept here and there, checking the transformers, illuminating the gleaming shape of the diamond-like Angel which still hung unconcerned over the darkened city. In the distance, he could see the gleaming surface of Lake Oppenheimer.

DJ heard footsteps beside him; glancing over, he saw Rei, changed like himself back to street clothes for the wait.

Rei's wardrobe:
plug suit
school uniform
???

He nodded a greeting; silently, she returned it. Both stood and watched the city for some time, until Misato and Ritsuko came up behind them.

"It's time," Misato said. "You should get ready."

"DJ," Ritsuko said, "you'll be the gunner for this operation, since your sync ratio with EVA-01 is higher. Rei, you'll stand by with the blast shield and cover him if the Angel returns fire."

DJ resisted the urge to point out that this had been explained to them at least forty times by now; instead he merely nodded and headed back to the tent.

"I'm only to protect EVA-01?" Rei said - not in a tone that carried any resentment or surprise, but merely as if she wanted to be absolutely sure she understood.

"That's correct," Ritsuko replied.

"I understand," said Rei. She proceeded into the other side of the divided tent.

DJ sat on the bunk and unlaced his boots, watching Rei's silhouette where the light on the other side of the tent threw it against the fabric divider as she undressed. He was feeling uncharacteristically serious, heavily weighed upon, rather maudlin, really - his eyes were sad, rather than mischievous or lecherous, as he watched her slim shadow against the lighted nylon, shrugging out of her bra, bending to slip off her underpants.

He's ogling her in a sad, maudlin way, so it's all right.

Because DJ understands that sometimes you have to fuck her gently.

He sighed, removed his own clothes, and climbed into his plug suit, still watching Rei's silhouette as she did the same. Inactive, her suit hung in baggy folds, making her shadow look like that of someone wearing a radiation suit with the helmet off.

Not for the first time in the past few months, but probably for the most keenly-felt, DJ wished for his mother; but all he got was the sound of the evening wind blowing against the tent, and he began to realize that he might very well never see her again.

The realization washed over him like a wave coming up a beach, and he flinched as if struck, his knees buckling and dropping him onto the camp bed as his eyes filled with long-held-off, hot tears.

It just isn't a Mary Sue fic without random angsting.

Why in God's name am I here, he wondered, and not looking for my mother?

I thought we had already established that he was in it for the beer and motorcycle.

"What's wrong?" came Rei's voice through the wall, and he realized with a start that he must have said part of it out loud. "Why are you crying?" Rei continued.

DJ wiped at his eyes and coughed. "I... I just realized. I might never see my Mum again... "

"You won't die," said Rei softly. DJ looked up and saw her silhouette suddenly shrink and smooth out into the familiar slender curves that were so unmistakably Rei.

DJ's one weakness is that, as long as there is at least one girl over 13 in his field of vision, he has to look at her.

"I'll protect you," Rei continued, and then she left the tent.

As he pressurized his own plug suit, DJ realized that Rei was right: he wasn't worried that his mother wouldn't come back. He was worried that he wouldn't be there to welcome her when she did.

He shook his head, ran his fingers through his thick dark hair, and left the tent as well.

Rei was standing on the catwalk, silhouetted again but this time by the full moon, which hung blue-white in the sky. Bathed in moonlight that washed every remaining trace of color out of her already near-white skin and silvery-blue hair, she looked more like a beautiful ghost than ever, and DJ shivered momentarily, though the night was warm.

She glanced back as she heard him approach, but said nothing; they stood on the walkway for a moment and looked up together at the moon.

Given the number of crossovers so far, I'm honestly amazed it isn't the Majora's Mask moon.

"Hey, Rei... " he said softly.

"Yes?" she replied.

"Why do you do this?"

"Pilot EVA-00?"

"Yes."

She considered for a moment, then replied, "It's where I belong."

"Er?" said DJ.

"You know, like how you have to control every aspect of everyone else's life," Rei explained. "That's where you think you belong."

Then DJ cockslapped her, but it was OK because he was sad and maudlin, not mischievous and lecherous.

"I belong to the EVA project," she repeated, though the rewording did nothing to clarify the situation to DJ.

"Something to do with an obligation?" DJ hazarded, trying to get a handle on what she meant. "To Dr. Ikari?"

"To all people," Rei replied, and DJ thought he understood.

Nodding, he put a hand on her forearm and said, "You're very strong, Rei."

She shrugged. "I have nothing else."

She had been pumping iron recently, and was glad DJ noticed.

Looking slightly wounded, DJ protested quietly, "That's not true."

"It's time," Rei said, forestalling any further discussion. "We have to go." She walked toward the hatch on the side of EVA-00's extended entry plug, then paused before climbing in, half-turning.

"Goodbye, DJ," she said, and then she entered the entry plug, dogging the hatch behind her.

How do you dog a hatch? Is it like plopping into a chair? Or grumping?

As he entered EVA-01's rather more modern entry plug (which had a sliding hatch directly over the seat rather than EVA-00's rather X-1-like side hatch), DJ felt as if someone had opened a window and let a chill draft into his soul; as if he'd just been privy to a prophecy that one of them wasn't going to make it through the night. The thought frightened him, not least since Rei had already assured him that -he- was not going to die.

EVA-01 powered up and synchronized smoothly, and as it took up a prone sniper's position at the giant rifle, DJ watched EVA-00 assume a crouching position a hundred yards or so forward, a bit down the slope of the hill, and ready the makeshift blast shield Equipment Section had cobbled together. DJ noticed with an ironic, wry smile that the black, winged shape bore a distinct resemblance to a decommissioned National Aero-Space Plane hull.

How is that ironic?

"DJ, are you receiving?" Ritsuko's voice sounded in the plug.

"Loud and clear, Ritsuko, my love," DJ replied.

"Remember that, thanks to the Earth's magnetic field and rotation, to say nothing of atmospheric forces, the beam from your particle cannon won't go in a straight line. The computers will compensate for most of that, but you have to keep it in mind. That's why it will take several seconds for the rifle's fire-control system to compute a firing solution - and that's why you're the gunner: your higher sync ratio should give us the best chance of obtaining the
extreme precision we need."

Yeah, she already said that. Stop kowtowing to DJ and move on with the plot. You fucking idiot.

"So the fact that I've handled a rifle's nothing to do with it? Ah, well. I suppose it was too much to ask that I be allowed to think I have some actual useful skills," replied DJ wryly.

SHE JUST SAID THAT HE HAS A HIGHER SYNC RATIO. Is that not enough of a compliment for him? What a needy douchebag.

"Just do what the manual says and don't try anything fancy," Ritsuko warned him. "You can't compute the trajectory needed for a clean hit - the fire-control computer can. All we need you to do is pull the trigger. Rei?"

"Yes," Rei's voice quietly replied.

"If the Angel returns fire, cover Unit 01 long enough for DJ to get to cover, then retreat along the escape path loaded in Unit 00's navigation system. Our best guess is that the blast shield is only good for twelve seconds or so of sustained fire, based on the damage the Angel did to Unit 03 earlier."

It would be the best thing if the Angel only fired low-powered shots, and instantly vaporized Unit 01 when the operation began. There's really no other reason for it to arbitrarily stop attacking things past a certain distance.

But since this fanfic is about slavishly copying Neon Genesis Evangelion and then using it as a prop for DJ's magnificence, allowing the Angels to do anything creative or unanticipated is out of the question.

"Understood."

/* Christopher Franke "The Geometry of Shadows, Part 1" (index times
0:00 - 3:18) _Babylon 5_ */

If you need to tell people to listen to music, complete with specific times in the piece, then maybe you're doing a bad job of setting a mood.

DJ watched the operational counter tick down, and when it hit zero, Misato's voice rang out: "Commence the operation! DJ, we're about to hand you all the electrical power in the northeastern US - I'm counting on you to make this shot."

This would be so much better if the authors had taken the piss out of the original show and called it something ridiculous like Operation Super Normandy Great American Victory and had Misato read Eisenhower's "great crusade" speech. At least it would be a change from the dull, tepid attempts at humor that have plagued the fic.

I mean, it's basically an Americanized version of Evangelion. Just run with the premise.

"No pressure," DJ replied, shaking out his hands and taking a couple of breaths. Granted, his breathing was hardly going to disturb EVA-01's hold on the rifle, but it was important to him to do it right, and that meant handling it the same as if he were making a long shot with his own rifle at the range back in the woods behind Crofthenge.

"This is Evangelion Unit 01 - Lucifer," DJ announced calmly. "Ready to proceed."

What.

"'Lucifer'?" Ritsuko inquired.

"Unless I miss my guess, we're about to bring our friend over there some very serious light," said DJ.

Despite the tension of the situation, Maya Ibuki smiled and jotted down a quick note before returning to her close watch over EVA-01's status indicators.

"Inform DJ that he is a pretentious git."

All around the mountain, all over the Northeast, the lights went out. In DJ's room back in the apartment, Hal switched to battery backups and automatically went to low-power mode, ready to effect a total shutdown, if the power didn't come back on before his six-hour battery life was exhausted.

The Angel seemed to notice that something was happening; it didn't move, but the energy circulating in its equatorial trench seemed to pulse for a moment, then visibly slowed in its orbit.

On DJ's scope, the changes were obvious, as the two red lines moved closer and closer to crossing, seeming to go ever slower as it became more apparent to him that his target knew it was under attack. He closed his ears to the sounds of the control-van crew interpreting their readings on the Angel, because what they were learning from that, he could see plainly in front of him; it was getting ready to shoot him.

It's all about DJ.

The lines crossed. DJ pulled the trigger. With a crash so loud DJ's brain interpreted it only as a high-pitched squeal, the particle cannon hurled the entire last ten seconds' electrical output of the northeastern United States at the Angel. It formed the source of the brightest light ever generated by Man, a bolt of artificial lightning whose temperature was nearly three times that of the surface of the Sun.

At the very same moment, the Angel produced a comparable bolt of its own. The two pulses of energy darted out along opposite halves of the same trajectory, and just before they met in the middle, they twisted, curving around each other as the electromagnetic forces of like-charge repulsion built up exponentially with every millimeter of closing range. Tearing free from the interference patterns, they rushed forth again, their trajectories altered - the Angel's shot
blowing a sizeable chunk out of the side of Mount Wachusett, DJ's flying right over the city and disappearing in the distance.

By pure chance, it touched ground somewhere in Branchland Court, Charlottesville, Virginia. For this, DJ was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal.

"Shit," DJ muttered, watching the red "TOO HOT" indicator. The instant it went out, he jacked the bolt on the rifle, popping the smoldering, blown fuse out of the chamber and replacing it with a fresh one, and the charging cycle began again.

"DJ, look out, it's recharging faster than - !" Misato's warning cry began, but before she could complete it, the Angel had fired again.

Unit 00 surged to its feet, bracing up the shield, instants before the beam slammed into it; still visible above the shield from DJ's higher elevation, the target was almost lost in the glare from the thrown-off energy. As EVA-00 struggled to hold the melting shield upright, DJ saw the beam rifle's charging light flick off. He gritted his teeth, eyes narrowed, staring at the slowly converging X-lines and willing them to go faster. Instead, the targeting computer bogged down as the magnetic interference of the sustained firestorm going on in the foreground forced it into a constantly recalculating loop.
Then, overwhelmed with the unforeseen computational demands, it crashed, and the targeting lines vanished as the scope went dark.

"Windows Explorer has crashed."

"Unit 01, abort, abort, abort!" Misato cried. "The fire control computer's crashed, you won't be able to make a second shot!"

Meanwhile in the command center, the techs were frantically trying to reboot in safe mode.

"Rei, get out of there!" DJ cried, bringing EVA-01 to its feet, the rifle coming away from its mounts and trailing the still-attached power cable. "The computer can't work out the shot, it's over, we've lost!"

Rei did not reply; EVA-00 remained still. DJ screamed for her to answer him as the shield warped, buckled, and disintegrated, leaving EVA-00 directly exposed to the hellish fire of the Angel's particle beam.

All thoughts in DJ's brain ceased with the knowledge that, if he did not do something ->RIGHT NOW<- Rei Ayanami was going to die. Without thinking, without operating the manual controls, without doing anything but doing it, he brought EVA-01 fully upright, snapped the rifle up to its shoulder, patched the sensor suite atop the rifle back into the Evangelion's own sensor system, and took manual aim.

Ritsuko's cry that it couldn't possibly work was drowned in the pounding of his pulse in his ears. As the moment stretched long and thin, he murmured, "Wake up! Time to die," and fired.

Now you're not even trying. I mean, you're shooting a laser-spamming Angel with a laser beam of your own. Did "lights out" or "resistance is useless" not occur to you? That's just sad. I'm assigning you to remedial action hero classes, Mr. Croft.

The beam lanced out, streaked over EVA-00, and plunged straight through the heart of the floating Angel, blowing a great chunk out of the diamond's back side and bringing the whole thing crashing unceremoniously down into Institute Park.

Where it was hailed as a visionary new art piece.

As the brightness of the Angel's beam snapped off like a blown light bulb, EVA-00, its orange armor sagging and smoking, stumbled, then crashed face-first to the ground. DJ dropped the particle beam rifle and skidded EVA-01 down the side of the mountain on the soles of its feet, knelt it at the fallen prototype's side, latched onto the armor plate over the entry plug, tore it off, and extracted the plug manually. Then he shut his EVA down, ejected his own entry plug, and climbed forth, hacking and heaving the LCL out of his lungs into the night air as he stumbled toward the smoking Unit 00 plug, which lay across the palm of EVA-01's outstretched right hand on the ground before him.

"Rei!" he called, though she couldn't possibly hear him with the power off and the hatch closed. He cursed copiously as he wrenched at the heat-expanded dogging handles on the prototype entry plug's hatch, not noticing as the palms of his plug suit gloves burned away and his flesh sizzled against the hot metal;

"Bollocks sodding wanker arse! I'm very British indeed!"

then, with a squealing, tearing cry, the hatch gave way and popped free, drenching him anew with an outpouring of LCL, which some part of his mind noted was alarmingly hot, though not scalding. He hurled the hatch aside without a thought for the layers of his skin he was leaving on the handles and climbed through the opening into the plug, his mind's eye filled with nightmarish images of what he might find.

Rei was slumped in her seat, her eyes closed, but she looked unharmed; as DJ splashed through the remaining LCL to her side on his knees, put a hand on her shoulder and called her name, she stirred, opened her eyes and looked at him.

"Are you all right?" he asked hoarsely.

She nodded, and DJ broke down, his eyes filling with tears as he wrapped his arms around her and hugged her close.

He was afraid that she might die before returning his Titanic books.

"Why are you crying?" she asked softly, offering no resistance to his embrace. "Do your hands hurt so much?"

"What?" He sat back a little and looked at his hands, noticing for the first time that they were a mixture of black and angry red, burned to the second degree at least. Even now that he saw the extent of the injuries, though, he felt no pain; only an overwhelming sense of relief. The battle was over and they were both still alive. The strange sense of prophecy he'd felt had been cheated.

"No," he whispered, "I hardly feel them... I just... I was so afraid of what I might find when I got that hatch open... "

Stop fucking saying "I," you dumb fucking asshole. I don't know how, but he actually made saving someone else's life seem like a selfish act.

Rei took his hands gently in her own, surveying the burned and blistered flesh of his palms. Then she did something he would never have expected her to do: slowly, deliberately, almost ceremonially, she kissed them gently, one after the other. It was a gesture devoid of passion or romance - more like a benediction - and it renewed the strange sense of awe DJ tended to feel around her.

"This is the second time I've hurt you," she murmured, a tear escaping from one of her own eyes. "I'm sorry."

"It's all right, it's all right," DJ replied, the full significance of what she'd said eluding him in his relief as he enfolded her in his embrace again. "You need never apologize to me, Rei, never. And please... don't say you've nothing else. Not as long as you've me and Jon." He chuckled weakly through the still-flowing tears and added wryly, "And don't say goodbye any more, it makes me so bloody maudlin."

She placed her hands behind his shoulders and softly replied only, "Yes."

Ugh. I know I sound like some kind of fanboy nerd right now, but this scene worked so much better in Eva. If you're going to make a fix fic, at least fix the stuff that was broken about the original instead of... whatever the hell this is.


From Jon's vantage point, such as it was, the operation was little more than a blackout, followed by loud weapons fire and explosions, and then the sound of cheering as the Angel had been knocked out. The power came back not long after, but the unidentifiable sense of dread which had been gnawing in him did not leave, nor did the word Rei had spoken on her way out.

["... Farewell."]

Did she believe she was going to die? The thought had lodged in his brain and played havoc with his guts, only becoming further entrenched by his attempts at denial.

She was saying goodbye. Duh.

Keeping one ear open, he heard fragments of conversations as people rushed back and forth outside his room. They never lingered in the area long enough for him to get whole sentences, but the fragments he got started to slip into a pattern that filled him with dread.

"... shield buckled... "

"... melted clean through... "

"... completely reconstructed... "

"... second-degree, maybe third... "

"... total loss... "

"... told her to abort, but... "

"... suicidal... "

"... lucky we didn't lose both of them... "

Gee, I wonder how long it will take to clear up this misconception.

Jon turned away from the door and went to the window on the opposite side, as far from the corridor sounds as possible. He didn't want to hear any more, he couldn't bear it. His mouth was dry, and he could feel his heart pounding. Could it be? Had Rei been killed as she seemed to foresee? He struggled not to believe, but only made himself wilder.

Look.

Jon.

She is a fourteen-year-old anime girl.

She is not the fucking oracle of Delphi.

He was looking out at the night-darkened Geo-Front cavern, easily visible with the lights in the room off. He'd almost worked himself up to a proper panic, when the door slid open, startling him. He was initially reluctant to turn around as the anxiety tore at him. What would he find when he turned around?

Well, only one way to find out: slowly he turned to look.

And palpable relief flooded him as he saw her lovely face.

"Rei," he whispered, slumping visibly as the nervous tension that had wound him to a fever pitch drained away. "You're all right."

She nodded. "Thanks to DJ."

Naturally.

At his quizzical look, she explained how DJ and EVA-01 had pulled the entry plug from her disabled unit before conducted heat from Unit 00's slagged armor could heat the LCL to dangerous levels and break down its oxygen-carrying capabilities - how he'd very probably saved her life.

Except that the plugs can be ejected remotely. What DJ did was unnecessary because there was no danger. In fact, it was downright counteproductive, because he damaged the one part of Unit 00 that hadn't already been melted.

... derp?

Jon's reply was simple: "Thank God for DJ, then." As his compatriot had an hour or so before, Jon gathered Rei into a hug, whispering over her shoulder, "When you told me 'farewell'... and then I heard that Unit 00 had been so badly damaged... I was afraid you'd been killed. You seemed convinced that you would be, when you left. It scared me."

"Embarrassing," she said quietly. Whether she was talking about the way the battle had gone, or about the nature of her parting words, he didn't know, and frankly didn't care.

Everything about this mess is embarrassing.

"You're alive," he replied softly.

"... Yes," she answered.

"That's all that matters," he continued, and hugged her more firmly, not even noticing the tenderness of his new-grown outer layer of skin anymore.

"...... Yes," she repeated, smiling ever so slightly.

Stop using so many ellipses. I feel like I'm in Evangelion-R.

DJ was right; she did have something else.

The door opened again; Jon looked up to see DJ, back in street clothes and with his hands bandaged more heavily than last time.

Maybe he should bite the bullet and invest in prosthetics.

"Oh, sorry," he whispered.

"No, come in," Jon said, beckoning. DJ entered, closing the door behind him, and went to join them, somewhat startled when Rei and Jon reached out together and drew him into their embrace as well.

"Thank you," Jon whispered to DJ, who hadn't the faintest what he was on about, but nodded and replied "You're welcome," anyway.

DJ is used to people spontaneously thanking him for nothing in particular. After all, he's done so many amazing things that he just can't keep track.

As the three separated, DJ placed his pack on Jon's bed, opened it, and fumbled about inside with his rather clumsy bandaged hands, eventually coming out with a scroll-like roll of paper. "Here, Rei... Hal and I made this for you, but I didn't have a chance to give it to you before all the excitement started."

Rei took the paper silently, and, followed by Jon and DJ, went to the head of the bed so she could switch on the reading lamp there and look at it. Slowly, carefully, she untied the ribbon that held it in its roll and spread it out flat on the bedside table, like an old-fashioned map.

It was a sheet of heavy, plasticene material, not really paper at all (the sort of durable, color-holding material that softback books had been covered in for the last twenty years or so), about twenty inches by ten.

I really needed to know that.

Printed on it was a picture of Rei, but not as she had ever appeared. She lay on a stone bier (its sides covered with hieroglyphs), dressed in elaborate and beautiful court robes, her bejeweled hands folded funereally over her chest, her face perfectly composed at rest, eyes closed. On her head was a golden pharaonic headdress, complete with the blue lapis stripes. Only two things dispelled the initial impression that this was a picture of a dead ruler laid in state: the pillow under her regal head and the ever-so-slight hint of color in her cheeks.

REI AYANAMI, said the caption in a stilted, hieroglyph-like font. QUEEN OF THE NILE.

lolwut

"The setting was Hal's idea," said DJ as Rei turned the picture up to look at the papers attached underneath it with a paper clip. One was a sheet torn from a sketchbook with a fairly good pencil sketch of a sleeping Rei, from the same perspective as the finished image - it must have been done in the infirmary, she decided, noting the obvious outline of an infirmary gown. The other was a printout explaining the meaning of the hieroglyphic writing on the bier in the finished image.

"It... it's beautiful," Jon murmured. "You say you and Hal made this?"

DJ nodded. "Sometimes when I can't manage to get a camera into someplace Mum and I are exploring, I'll take a sketch pad instead. Then when I come out, I'll scan the sketches into Hal and let him color, shape and render them to make them look more realistic. Sometimes he embellishes - he's quite creative for a computer. Making fanciful images like this on the side is kind of a hobby of ours."

I like how HAL did basically everything, but DJ still takes credit. Even when discussing art of another person, done by a computer, DJ finds a way to make himself the center of the conversation.

Rei carefully rolled the image and accompanying notes back up and tied the ribbon around them again; then she turned and said softly,

"Thank you, DJ."

DJ smiled. "It's the least I could've done for my guardian angel."

And we have title.

She blushed; it would be some time before he knew the full reason. In response, he merely smiled, touching his forehead like a salute.

"I have to go," said Rei after a few quiet moments. "Dr. Ikari wants to speak to me about today's action."

He wants her to explain why she didn't step away and let DJ get fried.

"I'll see you tomorrow," Jon said. "Dr. Akagi wants to keep me here for the rest of the night - such as it is - for observation, but she'll let me go home tomorrow."

Rei nodded and went to the door.

"Say, Rei," said DJ as she reached it.

She turned, hand on the doorknob.

"Yes?" she replied softly.

"Why'd you stand your ground when the shield broke up? Did you hear Misato telling you to cut out?"

"I heard," Rei replied. "But if I had let the beam pass, it would have hit the charging transformers for the particle beam rifle. The rifle was charged. It would have exploded. You would have been killed."

So? He's DJ Croft, he'll rise again in three days.

"You would have sacrificed your life for mine?"

"If necessary."

"Why?"

Rei fixed him with an even gaze from her deep red eyes, one he couldn't read at all, though it seemed to stare right past his own eyes, straight to the place in the back of his head where his feelings lived, and play a brief toccata on them.

"Because you belong to me," she said unequivocally; then she turned and left the room, leaving two astounded young men staring after her.

At length, DJ turned mystified eyes to Jon and said, "Did -you- understand that?"

Jon shook his head. "If I figure it out... I'll let you know."

it is a mystery

/* The Mavericks "Blue Moon" _Apollo 13_ */

NEXT EPISODE:

A familiar face welcomed with joy.

Yay!

A familiar face met with dismay.

Oh no!

An auspicious first impression.
And the most violent sea battle since Jutland.

Guadalcanal? Midway? The Philippine Sea? They pale in comparison to the glory of His Majesty's Royal Navy at Jutland!

(For those who aren't very historically inclined: Jutland was a naval slugging match between Germany and Britain in WWI. It accomplished nothing and was actually pretty embarrassing for the British. But it was the last big fight between battleships, which is why I think it was mentioned here.)

Join us in seven days for:

NEON EXODUS EVANGELION
EXODUS 1:6 - ENTER THE DRAGON
08/06/97

"Wonderful girl! Either I'm going to kill her, or I'm beginning tolike her."

That's our DJ!

I was going to include a relatively in-depth review of NXE here, since we are now halfway through Season 1. But this fanfic is just so... I'll do it later.

This post has been edited by Dr. O: Apr 6 2011, 06:15 PM

[Moose]

Oh that DJ. What a charmer.

I was like, at the edge of my seat, wondering if he would live or not. And when he got those burns on his hands? WOULD HE BE OKAY?

But then I remembered it was DJ, and he can do anything, so I relaxed and enjoyed the rest of his utter, British magnificence.

[Dr. O]

You know what? I'm doing the review now. I've seen enough of this shit (I've actually read up to the third "season," as well as some choice bits beyond that) to articulate why it is so mind-blowingly bad.

DJ Croft.

It isn't even so much that DJ is a Mary Sue, with all the hypercompetence that implies. He would merely be annoying if that were the case. Instead, every other character is reduced to an infantile state of helplessness in order to facilitate DJ's role as the savior, the person who is always reliable and prevents anything bad from happening ever. The plot is written so as to make one character look good, which leads to every pilot but DJ being irrelevant and incompetent despite being infinitely more qualified, the NERV staff having no idea how their own equipment works, and all the mysteries like Seele already being a known factor. There is no legitimate challenge to the character the author is pulling for. Neon Exodus is a bit like Armageddon??? in that way. They are not stories per se, but rather a series of events that serve to highlight how worthy and infallible and just plain cool DJ Croft and the military-industrial complex, respectively, are. Or, to use a word straight out of DJ's vocabulary, wank.

Now, it may be unfair to judge a story without taking into account what the author was trying to accomplish. However, I have no intention of being fair with this story, since one of the authors, Ben Hutchins, has been known to lie to save his own ass from criticism. What do I mean by this? Well, after a number of people complained about DJ, Hutchins backpedaled and claimed that DJ is a parody of Mary Sues. I can only assume that he was using "parody" in the same sense as CWC does when talking about Sonichu. Later chapters play the melodrama so straight, and DJ is portrayed so overwhelmingly positively (for example, one character he doesn't like turns out to be a rapist, and another person who earns DJ's ire turns out to be a literal demon), that it is patently obvious that people were intended to take this fanfic, and DJ along with it, completely seriously. Some people just think the idea was to improve Evangelion. Or, as TV Tropes once described it, Neon Exodus is "Eva done right." Except that it isn't, because everything about Eva except a few names has been jettisoned. You can't even say the characters are still there, because the characterization is so far off the mark that they might as well be original characters who coincidentally share the name and appearance of their Eva counterparts. And the story itself is a clusterfuck that descends even further into insanity than the source material (now think about that for a second).

Look, I don't even think Eva fans would dispute that the show could be improved. Even Anno seems to think so, or he wouldn't have decided to work on Rebuild (and before anyone jumps in and says "but Dr. O, he just wants more money," I'd like to point out that Anno is a lazy ass, and he could make more money than he ever needs off the Eva merchandising empire without raising a finger, so there). But this? This putrid pile of Mary Sue worship? "Eva done right?" Don't fucking kid me. If you want Eva done right, watch Bokurano.

Neon Exodus Evangelion sucks. And what's sad is that it is possibly the best Evangelion fanfic out there, since at least the technical aspects of the writing are competently executed. But all that makes it is the fanfic equivalent of Transformers 2: it looks good, but the content is atrocious.

/* Genesis "Land of Confusion" _Invisible Touch_ */

And I have had it with the Phil Collins!

EYRIE PRODUCTIONS, UNLIMITED
presents

NEON EXODUS EVANGELION

EXODUS 1:6 - ENTER THE DRAGON

What now, is DJ going to beat up Bruce Lee?

Inspired by NEON GENESIS EVANGELION created by Hideaki Anno, Gainax,
et al.

Most characters created by Hideaki Anno and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto
except

The cool new ones.

DJ Croft created by Benjamin D. Hutchins
Jon Ellison created by Larry Mann
and
Lara Croft created by Toby Gard

Additional material and inspiration cadged from TOMB RAIDER by Core
Design, Ltd., X-COM: UFO DEFENSE and sequels from MPS Labs (whoever
owns them nowadays), THE X-FILES created by Chris Carter, and
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY by Arthur C. Clarke

Written by Benjamin D. Hutchins and Larry Mann

At least it's currently only a five-series crossover written by two authors.

Yeah, the second season is going to be painful.

Aided and abetted by the Eyrie Productions, Unlimited crew
and special-guest-for-life Phil Moyer

© 1997 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited


The Dos Lobos Cantina, a mile or two outside the bad part of Teotihuacan, Mexico, has seen a lot of strange things in the sixty-odd years it's been where it is.

As opposed to all that time it spent in a different location.

Brawls, shootouts, robberies, drug deals gone south, any number of violent occurances. It is a place where anybody who is averse to violence shouldn't go, women doubly so, for almost any woman entering the Dos Lobos will probably have to resort to violence herself to get out again. That the place has the only working telephone between the back of beyond and Teotihuacan proper is of no consequence to the people who live in the area and know better; they go to town if they need to make a call.

The person entering the cantina at this particular moment in time knew all that, but thought it of little importance compared to the events of the last few months; she couldn't have cared less that all eyes were upon her the moment she stepped through the door.

To be fair, all eyes had good reason to be upon her. She was easily the most interesting-looking item in the place. She was tall, lean and buxom, smeared with unidentifiable dirt and grime, wearing a mud-encrusted, tight, sleeveless top that might once have been white and tattered, filthy safari shorts, plus a pair of boots so befouled with dried mud and road dust that the laces could no longer be discerned. Her hair was tied back in a braid, and so dirty its color could not be determined. The small round sunglasses she wore were spattered with mud which, lacking anything with which to clean it off, she had to suffer to remain there for the time being. But even bedraggled and filthy, she was stunningly beautiful, and carried herself with an almost breathtaking athletic grace.

Oh, hey, it's Lara Croft.

...

Wait, what?

On her back, slung from the straps of the small leather backpack she wore, was a folding-stock pump shotgun; at her hips, swaying gently as she walked, was a matched pair of automatic pistols. She spared none of the numerous goggle-eyed patrons a second (or even first, come to that) look as she strode to the bar and slapped down a handful of assorted change.

>Beer,< she said to the barman in Spanish, >and I need to use your telephone.<

When the brackets didn't work, she switched to the old standby of speaking English loudly and slowly.

The patrons of the Dos Lobos Cantina were a rough bunch, but they studiously kept their hands and comments to themselves the whole time the woman remained, drinking her piss-warm Chago without wincing,

Is this warm beer thing just something that runs in the Croft family? I don't get it.

carrying on a lengthy and increasingly animated conversation in English with someone on the place's antique phone, and sauntering out with the same almost-insouciant hip-rolling walk. Between the look on her beautiful face, the steel in the tone of her voice, and the easy way she carried those guns, even the most lecherous and stupid of them had realized that here was a woman there was no percentage in messing with. None of them said a word the whole time she was there; none of them even discussed her after she was gone, for fear she would somehow hear and come back to punish them.

Yeah, we get it, you like Lara Croft. I already assumed as much when you decided to make her the mother of DJ Croft, the only human powerful enough to make God look lame.

As she walked toward Teotihuacan and what passed for civilization in post-Second-Impact Central America, the woman was almost disappointed that nobody had tried to start anything. After spending four and a half months out of touch with civilization, three weeks trapped in a Mayan temple and the rest lost and living rough in the jungle, she was almost spoiling for a fight.

On the other hand, it was just as well; she wanted to save all her anger for the scumbag who trapped her in the temple and left her for dead, with a healthy side helping left over for the American government fools who'd all but kidnapped her son.

They were going to learn the hard way, all of them, that nobody screws around with Lara Croft. Nobody.

What, is she going to storm NERV and overthrow Gendo?


DJ Croft had, over the years, developed a number of ways for coping with air travel, which was one of his least favorite ways of getting around. His favorite, and the one he was using now, was simply to sleep through it - no mean feat aboard a cargo helicopter which only carried passengers as an afterthought, but then, DJ was fond of saying, if you can sleep in the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid, you can sleep anywhere.

But there's nothing left in the Great Pyramid. Why would you go tomb raiding there? Well, I mean, other than so DJ could say he slept in the Great Pyramid. But I guess bragging is its own reward for him.

In the sling seat next to him, Misato Katsuragi tried to get comfortable, paging through a book she'd picked up at random from Ritsuko's desk. Amazingly, considering it was a non-work-related book picked up from Ritsuko's space, it wasn't about cats; it was entitled "A Night to Remember", and was a somewhat fictionalized but mostly factual account of the sinking of the steamship Titanic, just over a hundred years before. There wasn't a single cat mentioned anywhere in it, as far as she could tell.

Ritsuko's characterization is:
scientist
stuck-up bitch
doesn't like DJ
likes cats

That's it, as far as I can tell.

She had just gotten to the bit where Second Officer Lightoller gets rousted out of bed by one of the other officers when the pilot informed her they'd arrived at the task force and would be landing, so she stuck the book back in her carryall and nudged DJ awake.

"Hm? Wha? Are we there?" he asked, sitting up and yawning.

"Yes, we are," Misato replied. "Try to contain your enthusiasm, OK?"

"Sorry, love... I just don't get on terribly well with aircraft, is all." DJ looked out the side window at the gleaming blue expanse of ocean below, spotting a couple of the destroyers belonging to the outer defense ring of the Kriegsmarine carrier battle group they were meeting. "Was this trip really necessary? They'd have been in New Providence in another day."

New Providence? As in, they rebuilt the capital of Rhode Island?

How many other cities did they build on top of the ruins of other cities? And why do they just tack "new" or a number onto the old name? You know, when an existing city gets wrecked and re-settled, they generally keep the same name. Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima... Wait, why am I nitpicking this?

"I suppose not," Misato replied, "but you didn't have to come along, remember?"

"And let you take Jon instead, and leave me alone with that predatory bottle blonde? Perish the thought. Without you round to fend her off she'd never leave me be. The woman's crazy about me."

Oh, right. Because I'd rather think about city names than DJ Croft, whose brilliant wit shines brighter than all the stars in the heavens.

Misato laughed and yanked the fedora DJ wore down over his eyes. "Let that head of your swell any more and you won't be able to wear this," she warned him.

"Hey, get off," he replied, straightening the hat indignantly. "D'you have any idea how hard it is to find a proper hat in Worcester-3?"

"I ought to, you've described your travails in enough detail."

It was true, DJ had spent quite a bit of time and effort tracking down the hat, and the black suit, wingtips and belted trench coat that went along with it. Why he wanted to dress like a spy for his trip to rendezvous with the German Navy convoy bringing Evangelion Unit 02 and its pilot over from Europe was beyond Misato, but, as with most of his little eccentricities, she accepted it with fond good grace. She'd become aware, over the past week or so, that he'd become an integral part of her homelife these days.

Now that's just sad.

They were, it seemed, natural roommates, and she had become quite fond of the boy. Not as enamored of him, perhaps, as Maya Ibuki, with whose connivance he could get away with almost anything in Equipment Section - but quite fond, nonetheless. She found herself, at this moment, possessed of a most untoward desire to take off his hat and ruffle his hair, but restrained it, not wanting to provoke his inevitable indignant response.

DJ had little use for warships, except the sunken ones that made for an interesting archeological challenge.

You know, a lot of warships sank with hundreds of people on board. The USS Arizona is a memorial because it's basically a giant graveyard, but for DJ it represents nothing more than a way to test his abilities.

His interest in the kinds of ships that still floated was largely confined to passenger liners, which had seen an unexpected resurgence of popularity in the post-Second Impact years, plying the swollen oceans in numbers not seen since the advent of cheap air travel. DJ liked traveling by liner a great deal more than by air; it didn't make his ears pop, it
wasn't noisy, and the vehicles involved were a lot more interesting, plus the trips were longer and gave him more time to think, read, and anticipate his destination.

Nevertheless, he was impressed with the sheer size and complexity of the German nuclear supercarrier Deutschland, if not with the originality of its name.

It's funny because Deutschland means Germany.

I could rant about how there are a number of eminently good reasons Germany has never built any aircraft carriers, let alone a nuclear supercarrier (even the Royal Navy isn't using those anymore), but why bother?

[Edit: As Al pointed out on page 3, I botched this. The British are currently building two new nuclear carriers, which are going to replace the Illustrious. Which, oddly enough, is the namesake of an Eva character. But I digress.

I left the mistake in because I didn't feel right removing it after I was called out.]

Most of the carrier's planes were grouped forward, and flight operations were suspended for the time being; the NERV cargo chopper touched down without incident, and as a group of colorfully-vested German seamen made it secure, Misato and DJ disembarked and went to meet the captain.

Admiral Franz Keller, the grizzled veteran commander of the carrier Deutschland and her battlegroup, received them with Teutonic politeness, if not overwhelming enthusiasm; then, casting a dubious eye on the cargo helicopter, he asked,

Oh hey, the incompetent American admiral from Evangelion was replaced by an incompetent German admiral.

This fanfic is so original.

"Am I to understand that your use of a cargo helicopter means you have brought the emergency power connector?"

"That's correct," Misato replied. She offered a manila envelope. "Here are the specifications and diagrams your engineer will need in order to install it."

Admiral Keller pulled the sheaf of paper out of the envelope and regarded it dubiously.

"Why does it say 'I want you inside me, DJ'? And is this a drawing of-"

"Ah... those are the wrong papers," Misato said quietly.

"Very well," replied Keller, taking the envelope. "I must confess, I can foresee no eventuality which would lead me to approve the use of the machine, but I suppose we may as well be prepared for any eventuality."

"That's the spirit," said Misato with a grin.

"Your young friend seems to have wandered off," Keller observed with a severe expression that was belied by the twinkle in his eyes. "I'll have you know I'll tolerate no juvenile chicanery on my ship. If he causes trouble, he'll find himself serving a four-year compulsory tour of service in the Kriegsmarine!"

And I'm sure he'd spend every second of it complaining about the injustice and loudly proclaiming his intention to go to the British consulate.

"Don't worry, Admiral," Misato replied. "DJ should be able to keep himself out of trouble."

Wow. I wish I were that good at lying.


Back in Worcester-3, the EVA practice range was getting quite a workout. With DJ gone, EVA-00 and EVA-03 were being tested in simultaneous training, to determine the suitability of their pilots as a combat pair. Ikari had posted the duty rosters that morning, and to no one's surprised, he had paired Ellison with Ayanami and Croft with Langley; now it was time to see if the first of those pairs would actually work as a combat team.

Given his apparent propensity for matchmaking, maybe NERV was the wrong career choice for Gendo. Maybe he should be taking care of captive pandas instead.

As the two Evangelions - EVA-00 repaired and in its new blue-and-white battle livery, EVA-03 shiny and new-looking in its black and red - moved through the city, decoys and targets popped up at random, testing the pilots' reaction times, target judgment, alertness and firing accuracy.

"Target, two nine zero," Rei reported quietly.

"Targeting," Jon responded in the same tone, even as both EVA-03 and EVA-00 swung their autorifles and knocked the target down with twin three-round bursts.

"Amazing," Ritsuko Akagi observed in the control room.

It's still not as exciting as the synchronized reading.

The word Maya Ibuki would have used would probably have been "disturbing", but she nodded agreement nevertheless.


At the moment, DJ was not technically in trouble, but he was kind of put out; a gust of wind had gone and blown his hat off, and he was now pursuing it across the flight deck, hoping that he'd capture it before it blew overboard.

I can sympathize. Do you have any idea how long it takes to properly smarm up a wardrobe? That stuff is hard to replace.

His hope that somebody would intercept it before it arrived was fulfilled, sort of, in that a smallish, sandal-shod foot came down on the brim and held it firmly to the deck. DJ, intent on the deck as he followed it, tried to stop abruptly so as not to run into the owner of the foot, but between the slightly wet deck and the smooth soles of his new and unfamiliar dress shoes, he slipped and fell to the deck, cursing and mentally noting that it seemed to be his month for doing clumsy things.

Looking up at his hat's sort-of rescuer, he found himself looking up at a pair of nice legs - a little thin, but long, with good ankles, strong calves and sleek thighs - and yellow panties, probably silk. The rest of the person was obscured by a yellow skirt that was blowing in the wind.

If the roles were reversed, I'm sure DJ would be wearing a pair of briefs with the Union Jack on them, a la Autin Powers.

Taking all this in stride, DJ said cheerily to the legs, "Hullo, legs! Mind stepping off my hat?"

Behold - the consummate gentleman.

The foot moved; he recovered his hat and stood up, at which point he was slapped in the face by an angry-looking girl about his age. The rest of her matched her legs pretty well; she was slim and well-built, a couple of inches taller than DJ, just starting to fill out and doing a pretty nice job of it. The yellow one-piece sundress she wore hung nicely, and she had good skin, too. Her pert face was set in a glare of indignation, wide blue eyes almost crackling with annoyance, as the wind blew her long auburn hair about in a most fetching manner.

Haha wow. This prose is more purple than a pimp's wardrobe.

"What was that for?" DJ inquired pleasantly, resisting the urge to touch his stinging face.

"That was the viewing fee," the girl replied haughtily, a trace of a German accent coloring her otherwise American-sounding English. "Quite a bargain, wouldn't you say?"

DJ considered this for a moment, then nodded. "Not a bad deal at that! Hit me again, I want to have another look."

Just kill him, Asuka. It'll save everyone a lot of trouble.

She blinked at him, caught totally off-guard; then her face darkened with anger, and for a moment, he thought she actually -would- slap him again - at which point, he would not be held responsible for his actions. Then the anger cleared as she spotted something behind DJ, and she waved, smiling.

Notice how a character who was introduced as quick-thinking is completely taken aback by DJ. I guess the canon characters have to follow the script, and are completely nonplussed when DJ doesn't. Because, you know.

It wouldn't be NXE without DJ Croft showing up everything and everyone around him.

"Hey! You've grown a lot since I last saw you," said Misato cheerfully as she walked across the deck toward the children.

"Yup!" the girl replied. "And not just taller; my figure's starting to fill out, too," she continued, striking a pose.

"I was just commenting on that," DJ observed.

Do you ever meet someone and think "they can't be for real"? That's how I feel right now.

"Oh, you've already met?" Misato asked.

The girl's face fell. "Don't tell me -this- is the Fifth Child."

Misato nodded. "Uh-huh! DJ Croft, meet the Second Child, Asuka Soryu-Langley."

Amazingly, Asuka will be one of the most sympathetic characters. Well, at least until she falls into the tried-and-true Mary Sue fic role of damsel in distress and designated romantic interest. But that won't be for a while.

"Charmed," said DJ, tipping his hat.

Asuka looked DJ over with narrowed eyes, then shrugged. "Hmph! He doesn't look so great to me."

"If you want, I can slap you and then let you have a look at the rest of the package," DJ offered politely.

I'm starting to think someone other than Fox Mulder is DJ's father...

"No THANK you," Asuka replied, turning away. "Hey, Misato, have you seen Mr. Kaji?"

Now it was Misato's face's turn to fall. "He's -here-?" she replied, her tone indicating that this was far-from-welcome news.

"Uh-huh!" Asuka replied, nodding happily, oblivious to Misato's dismay. "He came with us from Germany. I think he's got some stuff for the Director."

Is Gendo a professor or a director or doctor? Either way, this version of him is a lot more accomplished than in Eva...

"Wonderful... " Misato observed weakly, the wan smile on her face belying the word.

"Oh, there he is!" Asuka said, spotting someone off by the carrier's island. "RYOOOJIIII!! OVER HERE!" she cried, waving.

DJ turned to see a tallish Japanese guy about Misato's age, with long black hair tied back in a ponytail, a couple of days' growth that he probably thought made him look all retrocool like Don Johnson in those old 'Miami Vice' reruns, and civvies with a spotted tie, break away from a group of sailors and saunter over. An unlit cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth, since smoking wasn't allowed on the carrier. DJ took an instantaneous dislike to him.

Some stories have morally ambiguous characters.

But this is NXE, in which the rules of the universe and the opinions of DJ Croft are one and the same. If he doesn't like Kaji, then of course he must be evil.

Misato did not turn around to see him approach, and visibly stiffened as he slid up beside her, slipped a hand around her waist in an almost proprietorial way, and said, "Hey, babe; long time no see," in a deep, oh-so-smooth voice.

DJ felt his instinctive dislike crystallizing.

Of course he does; Kaji is competition, and DJ can't stand for anyone else making passes at his bitches.

"Uh... hi, Kaji," Misato replied, gently removing his hand.

"I'm sorry, sir, I don't believe we've met," said DJ, sharpening up his English accent as much as possible and being almost overly polite.

You better watch out, Kaji. No living creature has been known to survive a full-strength barrage from DJ's Absolute Smarm Field.

"Oh, sorry," said the man, sticking out a hand. "Ryoji Kaji."

"DJ Croft," DJ replied, shaking it. He had a firm grip, but DJ still didn't trust him.

"You're the Fifth Child, then?" Kaji asked.

"I could tell you," DJ replied, "but then I'd have to kill you."

The best part is, he's saying that completely unironically.

Kaji laughed, which annoyed DJ slightly, since he hadn't really meant it as a joke.

Wow. I didn't even see that line when I typed that last bit.

"Hey, those guys tell me that there's some rain coming," he went on, angling a thumb back at the group of sailors he'd just been taking to. "What do you say we head down to the wardroom and get something to eat?"

As he put his hand back on Misato's waist and squired her toward the island, she glanced back at DJ with an expression he found very easy to interpret: This is not happening. Get me out of here...

DJ sympathized, even if he didn't have the complete story, and promised himself to help her out at the first available opportunity.

Why should he bother acquainting himself with the facts when he has already made a judgment based on his own personal instincts - which, as we have already been informed, are infallible? Besides, DJ's moral compass is perfect, largely because it always points back to himself. If someone is not properly deferential to DJ, then clearly they are evil.


In Ritsuko Akagi's office, she and Gendou Ikari watched the annotated playbacks of Jon and Rei's weapons tests, noting the spikes in their sync curves as they moved and fired together.

"Their synchrony is impressive," Ikari observed. "It's almost as if they're synchronized with each other's neural patterns as much as those of their EVAs."

"Almost as if it's some kind of... plot device."

"Mm," Ritsuko replied, nodding, not taking her eyes off the screen. "It could be a great asset."

"Correction," said SHODAN pleasantly from the sensor unit on her console. "Under most combat conditions, it is a liability."

How lame do you have to be to get told off by your computer?

Ritsuko scowled at the sensor unit. "Explain."

"Observe their performance," SHODAN replied. Ritsuko and Ikari turned their attention back to the screen and watched.

Time and again, a target would pop up; time and again, one would identify it, then both would shoot it. The course was being run with the expectation that there would be two independently-operating EVAs on it; as such, the targets were coming too fast for Rei and Jon to deal with them in this fashion. After several minutes of this, SHODAN continued,

"When Jon and Rei are working together their synchrony is unmatched. However, as you can see, they tend to target the same hostile at once, move in the same direction, and so forth. Both are taking the role of point."

Um... it's actually a great idea to double-team opponents with perfect precision and ruthlessness. Remember, the Angels almost always appeared as single, giant targets.

"So we'll tell one of them to be point and the other to drop back to marksman," said Ritsuko.

"That was done. Every time, their synchrony dropped off. Prevented from exploiting it, they unconsciously abandon it and act almost totally independently - they cease to be any meaningful sort of team."

"Meaning they can't fight?" Ikari asked.

"I did not say that," SHODAN replied. "However, if they fight together, I calculate a 94% probability that they will be too predictable to effectively oppose an Angel. The Angels learn as they fight, and it will not take any Angel long to reach the same conclusion I have reached and exploit the weaknesses of their cooperative style."

That is why you let them fight how they want. If they are allowed to coordinate their actions, then they will be able to deal with an Angel quickly and efficiently. If you kill the Angels before they adapt, then it isn't a problem, is it?

"How do you propose we deal with this?" inquired Ikari.

"Simply put: to obtain peak performance from both pilots, they need to both perform the same task. I have put this issue to the Magi; they unanimously recommend each of them serve as marksman to one of the other pilots. A three-to-zero Magi consensus makes the optimal pairings thus: point Croft, mark Ayanami; point Langley, mark Ellison."

"I'm not sure I like that arrangement."

"Your personal feelings are not relevant," said SHODAN mildly. "This arrangement is the most efficient one."

I think it's more efficient to let the pilots use their weird mental link to the fullest, but what do I know?

"Well, we'll just have to test this theory," Ikari replied, accepting the computer's rebuke as truth.

"As always, there is no substitute for empirical testing," SHODAN concurred.


For DJ, the opportunity he was looking for wasn't long coming.

They sat at a table in the wardroom - DJ, Asuka, Kaji and Misato - drinking coffee and trying not to seem too awkward. Finally Kaji leaned back in his chair and said conversationally,

"So, Misato - you have a boyfriend?"

"That's none of your damn business, Kaji," she snapped, refusing even to look at him.

That means "no."

Kaji smiled the kind of smile a man gets when he feels his question's been answered, then turned to DJ, who sat next to him. "So. I understand you're living with Katsuragi here, kid?"

"Yeah, that's right," DJ replied, having a sip of his tea and trying not to grimace. German sailors, he noted to himself, are not the world's most talented brewers of tea.

Unlike the English, of whom DJ is one. Did you know that his piss tastes like Earl Grey?

"So tell me," Kaji said with a grin, "is she still an animal in bed?"

I like how 90% of the lines from these scenes on the ship are recycled verbatim, but Kaji's dialog is changed to make him look bad. Author favoritism? What's that?

Asuka turned sheet-white and gasped, freezing in a look of total disbelief. Misato did likewise, then slowly turned brick red before slamming her fists down on the table, coming halfway out of her chair and shouting,

"Just what the hell are you implying?!"

Ignoring her, Kaji continued to DJ, "Has she changed since I last saw her, Mr. Croft?"

DJ shrugged, the picture of nonchalance, and sipped his tea again. "I don't know, do I?" he replied. "I don't know when you last saw her, to say nothing of what sort of animal you mean. She doesn't bark like a seal and balance a ball on her nose, if that's what you mean."

hurr durr

Misato's glare changed to shock and then mild amusement as Ryoji's grin disintegrated into utter consternation. He'd been hoping to fluster the kid as much as Misato, after all; instead he'd got that completely incomprehensible answer. Then she burst out laughing, and kept it up until Ryoji had, with mumbled statements about vague duties calling, beaten an ignominious retreat. Asuka followed him, closing the door behind her.

What just happened?

Then she let out a deep and heartfelt sigh and slumped, face in hands, elbows on table.

"I'm in Hell," she mumbled.

No. That would be me.

"There, there, my love," said DJ, patting her head. "I'll protect you from nasty old Mr. Kaji."

"Fine start you've made," she replied.

"Got him to leave, didn't I?" said DJ.


"So," said Kaji to Asuka as they stood by the rail on one of the island's upper levels. "What did you think of the Fifth Child?"

"I think he's an idiot," Asuka replied flatly.

Right here. Best. Character.

"Mm," Kaji replied. "And yet his synchronization ratio withUnit 01 in his first combat reached point-eight-seven to one."

Asuka's eyes widened. "Impossible."

Wait wait wait. So DJ is some super amazing pilot, but Asuka is completely ignorant of his exploits because... um... plot?

Gotta knock those Eva characters down so DJ looks even cooler in comparison.

"Read the reports," Kaji replied, shrugging. "The kid's a natural-born fighter. Synced with EVA-01 - the Nine-Zero System - and took out the Third Angel in his very first outing at the controls. No training, no sim time, no preparation."

We get it. DJ is awesome. You can SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT now. I have been trying to keep my head but all this circlejerking is the elephant in the room. A giant drunk motocycle-riding British elephant that loves beating the shit out of Eva characters in order to make itself look good and oh crap this metaphor has spiraled completely out of control.

"Hmph," Asuka said, her momentary awe flickering and dying. "He's still an idiot."


A bit later, as Misato and DJ rode an inordinately long-seeming escalator back toward deck level, DJ observed, "I get the impression you and Slicko have, er, met before."

Misato scowled, her eyebrows threatening to meet. "He went to college with Ritsuko and me," she replied. "And he hasn't changed at all, the big jerk."

"-Are- you still an animal in bed?"

Remind me again how DJ is better than Kaji.

"Don't -you- start with me now!" Misato snapped.

"Sorry," DJ replied. "Makes me curious, is all. The last thing I need is for you to meet some bloke you decide you like, bring him home and keep me awake all bloody night," he added with his father's grin.

It's all about DJ. DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ DJ.



Misato's annoyance, as it generally did in the face of that grin, melted, and she managed a wan grin of her own. "I wouldn't know, kid," she replied wistfully. "It's been too damn long since I met anybody special."

"Well, at least you haven't lowered your standards," said DJ.

"Hey! Mr. Fifth Child!" a voice called from the top of the escalator. DJ looked up; standing at the ever-approaching top was Asuka Langley, glaring down at him almost defiantly.

"Yeah?" DJ replied.

"Come with me," Asuka said. "I want to show you something."

I'm sure that'll get his attention.

Stepping off the top of the escalator, DJ protested, "A bit ago you didn't want me looking at -anything-."

Behind him, he heard Misato stifle a laugh as Asuka growled, "Don't make me hurt you."


They caught a launch to one of the other ships in the fleet, a large freighter, whereon Asuka lifted up the corner of the massive tarp lashed over the big open hatch to the forward hold and gestured expansively.

"There!" she said. "What do you think of -that-?"

DJ looked. "Nice color," he said. "Bit flashy, but who am I to talk? Some genius painted mine purple and green on me."

Look, DJ, not everything can be graced by your flawless expertise. Just humor us poor mortals, who are not gifted with your ability to excel in absolutely everything. All right? Oh, and while you're at it, go eat a bag of dicks.

Missing the reference entirely and not caring a bit, Asuka replied, "The color's not the only difference." She climbed down a ladder into the hold, beckoning DJ to join her, and they stood on a pontoon catwalk that floated in the suspension fluid next to the Evangelion which lay face-down in said liquid, the highest points of its back and spinal ridge protruding from the surface.

"See, your EVA and Ayanami's are early models built as part of the development process - 01 is the test type and 00 the prototype. Neither one was really intended for combat. But this is Unit 02, the production model. This one was built with combat in mind, and incorporates all the lessons learned from the -mistakes- in 00 and 01. This is the world's first -real- Evangelion!"

Yay.

"I hate to burst your bubble here," DJ pointed out, "but Unit 03 has been operational for several weeks."

"Sure, and both times it's been shot up and rescued. I hear it didn't even sync right with its pilot the first time out, which means either he did something wrong, or it did. I'm not very impressed with Ellison's record."

I can unironically say that I love how the worst Eva character somehow ended up as the voice of reason here.

"He's been dealt some bad hands," DJ replied. "The first time he had sync problems because he had lousy prep time, and the second, the gantry failed to release his unit. Made him a sitting duck. Hardly his fault."

"Oh, and I suppose it was just -luck- that you synchronized with EVA-01 in your very first time in an entry plug, and went on to beat the Third Angel?"

No. It was because DJ is a god among men, who descended to the world of imperfect humanity upon ten thousand gossamer wings of gold spun into patterns beautiful beyond human understanding, so that he might allow us feeble wretches to know the joy of his presence.

"More or less," said DJ, nodding. "Almost got my bloody head handed to me before I got everything sorted, you should watch the tapes of the first five minutes of the battle if you want a good idea how not to fight an Angel."

"They're impressed with your skills because the other two Worcester-3 pilots are worse than you, not because you're good," Asuka insisted. "I've read your record, you know. I scored twenty points higher than you on the intelligence tests alone - once I get there I'm going to show NERV some -real- piloting."

she doesn't. no-one is allowed to threaten DJ's supremacy

"Good," DJ replied. "Then I can piss off back to England and let you save the bloody world."

Asuka would have retorted, but just then, the ship shook. "What the - ?!" she said, realizing even as she voiced the question what the answer was.

"Undersea shock wave of some kind," DJ observed, heading back up the ladder to deck level and heading for the forward rail. Asuka was right on his heels, and they arrived at the rail to see... well, -something- attacking the ships in the outer perimeter of the battle group. As they watched, a destroyer was struck from below by something speeding just below water level; its keel split in two, the ship broke in half and foundered almost instantly. The next one in line suffered the same fate. It reminded DJ of the descriptions given in Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" of the Nautilus's attacks on surface ships.

Oh hey, a reference to something better than this.

"Either a deranged genius with a nuclear submarine is attacking the fleet," he observed, "or that's an Angel."

"An Angel?!" Asuka echoed. "A real one?"

No, a fake one. What do you think?

"I think so," DJ replied. He pushed back his sleeve and flicked his watch's comm function on, raising not Hal, but the other HALcomm watch in the area - the one he'd given to Misato.

"What are you doing?" Asuka demanded.

"Calling Misato," DJ replied.

He gave Misato a super special awesome HAL spy watch.

Fuck my life.

"I'm sure she's aware of the situation," said Asuka, "and there's no time for that. Come with me."

Shrugging, DJ shut off the watch and followed her toward a stairwell. "Whatever you say... "


This post has been edited by Dr. O: Apr 26 2011, 09:38 AM