The Artificial Research Laboratory was in chaos.
Alarms were blaring, scientists and security were running around wildly, areas of the complex were being locked down, it was utter pandemonium.
Gendo, Yui, and Kyoko sat in the command centre, fearing the worst. Yui looked over towards her husband, a rare look of fear etched into her expression.
"What do we do?" Her eyes looked lost. She felt her whole life coming apart at the seams. Her husband was in his traditional signature pose, as he usually was during times of crises like this. But even behind his tinted glasses, Yui could see that the man who could keep his composure in most situations was panicking. His response never came, his eyes fixated on the large monitor in front of him. Satsuki, Kaede and Aoi were sitting at their posts, barking orders.
"The MAGI are at a 32% intrusion level! Sever the network links with the outside!"
"The virus is… mutating!? Nothing we do is stopping it! Morphing the logic is having no effect!"
"Vice Director, what do we do!?"
Yui bit her lip. This was a bold move, even for SEELE. Everything they had been working on for years… All the research and data. All of it! Teetering on the knife's edge of being totally stolen away. Their contribution to not only the future of the children but to all of humanity was mere moments away from ending up in the hands of the fools that would rather see the world go to ruin.
This spectre had been haunting them for long enough. It was time to deal with the ghost in the machine.
Yui whipped out her phone, speed dialling a number in the swift action it took to get from phone to ear.
"Misato, bring the kids. I want them to do some ghostbusting."
---
"I love your mother, I really do… But her references are showing her age. And in doing so, it's making ME feel old!"
"I hate to break it to you Misato but the chicken that represents your life is no longer in it's Spring. If anything, I'd say the first leaves that drop in the Fall are a better representative than-… HEY!" Asuka's scathing remarks were rudely interrupted by Misato's swerving Alpine taking the inclines of the road as ramps.
"I've never seen the Fast and Furious movies but I'd stop Asuka, before we start to reenact them-… gurghhh!" The car landing back on its wheels managed to shock the air out of Shinji before he had a chance to delicately finish his sentence. His lunch was threatening to paint the car interior with bile and judging from the hue on Asuka's face shifting slowly to a greenish colour, she wasn't far behind.
"Anymore smartass comments and I'll show you my drifting skills next, Asuka." Misato grinned evilly. The ride back to the Artificial Research Lab was significantly quieter after that.
Rolling into the lab's underground car park, Misato had the kids up the command centre as quick as possible, give or take a few detours and consulting a technician for directions.
"You've been here how many times Misato!? God, I'm so embarrassed…"
"Yeah, thanks for all your help Asuka, you've been here before too!"
"All of once! Why on earth would the Ikari's make this place a labyrinth? How do they ever find their way around this place?"
Skidding into the command centre, all three of them panted, desperately trying to get some oxygen into their lungs. Yui grinned weakly at the dramatic entrance.
"Glad to see you eventually made it."
"No problem at all. But if I may make a request, can someone give me a map? Would be really useful to get these guys here as quickly as possible." Misato wheezed. Shinji spotted a familiar blunette standing behind his mother.
"Rei! When did you get here?"
"I had to do some testing, so I left school early…" Rei looked at him, almost pouting. "Did you even notice I had gone?"
"Well, I…" His words had magically chosen that moment to not appear out of thin air.
"It's not even the end of lunch break, you could've been in the bathroom! You were right there with us up until the bell rang at the end of last period. You've been here like… thirty minutes before we got here!" Asuka, still trying to catch her breath, came to his rescue. The two girls glared at each other.
"MAGI intrusion is at seventy percent! Vice Director, whatever you're planning, you better get them to it asap!" Satsuki bellowed from her workstation. Shinji and the others could now see that things were a lot more serious than they realised. All the technicians looked incredibly stressed, the large monitor was filled with warnings and errors. Shinji saw 'MAGI' and what looked like a slowly filling graph pulsing red splashed across the screen.
"Wait, is this…?"
"SEELE." His father grunted his overly large desk. His eyes were fixated on the screen. Shinji had never seen him look so serious.
"Mom, what's going on?"
"You heard your father. SEELE have decided to play a game with us. And if we lose, it threatens the future as we know it." Shinji noticed his mother was also struggling not to scowl at the monitors above them. Things were much worse than he thought.
"In order to combat and resolve the situation, we need you three to help us." Yui suddenly had a tablet in her hand, rapidly scrolling through the data. "Your bracelets will be key, but unfortunately, we can't just wave them and hope this situation will go away. So, in order to use them effectively, we're going to be sending you into the MAGI itself in order to defeat the virus."
There was a long silence at the end of her explanation. Asuka and Shinji looked at each other for a moment before returning their gaze to the lead scientist of the Artificial Research Laboratory.
"…wut?"
"I think she means we're going into a virtual reality… Right Auntie?" Rei's voice piped up in the distance, standing next to Gendo's desk.
"Well done Rei, that's right."
"Wait, VR? Like with those headsets? Ooh, I've always wanted to play Beatsaber…"
"No Asuka. It's not going to need a headset. But I suppose it wouldn't be too far off to call the experience a game…" Yui lifted her eyes from the tablet and glanced up at them.
"Misato, can you take them to the VR room? I've sent a map to your phone. Yes, yes, I know, you're welcome. Actually…" Yui suddenly looked thoughtful. "Get them into their plug suits first. I feel like they're going to need them."
Ignoring Misato's cheer of finally getting hold of a way to navigate the maze that made up the facility, Asuka and Shinji looked at each other again in confusion.
"What's a plug suit?"
---
"You have got to be kidding me…"
"They're a bit…"
Both Shinji and Asuka were holding the answer to the question that had bugged them all the way from the command centre. Misato hadn't said a word. Instead, she had been content to irritate them with giggles. Rei hadn't said anything either, but both Shinji and Asuka noticed the wild blush that had threatened to consume her face.
Now they knew the reason for it. A bright red suit made from what felt not too far from latex was dangling from Asuka's outstretched hand. Holding it as though it was made from the excrement of animals, Asuka looked at Misato, aghast.
"Please tell me this is some sort of sick joke."
"Unfortunately not Asuka. Some of the experiments here require a suit that has a bunch of cutting-edge technology in them. I don't know how they work exactly, but trust me, they're important."
"But… WHY!?" Asuka raged out the last syllable. "It looks, and there's no other word for it, kinky! And not in a good way!"
Misato let out a hearty laugh. "I can't totally disagree with you there. If you have a problem with the design, you'll need to take it up with the guys that run this place."
"Rei, you not going to put yours on?" The blunette was looking very anxious, her blush not having yet dissipated yet.
"For the purpose of the experiments, I never questioned it before but…" She looked nervously at Shinji. "But… I share Soryu's sentiment. Wearing it in front of Shinji is going to be… difficult."
"Oh for the love of…" Misato walked towards the girls, suddenly grabbed them both by the waist and plopped them both on each shoulder.
"MISATO, WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?"
"Miss Katsuragi, please, this is embarrassing!"
"If we wait until you guys are ready to do this, SEELE will kill us all. Oh, and Shinji?" Misato nodded towards the men's changing room. "When you do put on the suit, make sure you press the button on your left wrist. That'll match the form of the suit to your measurements. I know it looks a bit oversized now, but it'll fit, trust me."
With that, the three girls disappeared, the sounds of indignation getting quieter. Shinji sighed and looked at the blue and white suit in his hand. There was no avoiding it. He wandered over to the door of the men's changing room, but not before he heard an embarrassed scream come from the ladies.
"I MIGHT AS WELL BE NAKED!" He heard Asuka rage. That didn't bode well for his own suit. Stripping off his clothes, he debated about wearing his underwear. His initial instinct was yes but maybe it might cause problems?
Shaking his head and realizing that they never got any instruction about it, he decided to keep his boxers on. For emotional support if nothing else.
It was a lot baggier than he had expected. Pulling the strangely rubbery material over his shoulders, it felt more like a clownish fat suit than something used for cutting-edge science. He did notice some bits on the suit that looked like they might be sensors, including the bright red jewel looking object on his chest. The suit also came with what looked like sensors to put in his hair, almost like the hair accessories Asuka liked to wear.
After sorting them out and making sure the suit was on as best as possible, he looked at his left wrist.
"Is this it… WOAH!" A sound like air being sucked up a vacuum suddenly hissed all around his body. The suit rapidly compressed around him, clinging to his skin all over. It wasn't uncomfortable, but the material felt odd to him. He'd never worn anything like this before.
It really was as skintight as Asuka's cry earlier had made it out to be. Suddenly getting an uncomfortable thought, he looked down at his gentleman's area, aware that any kind of thoughts that would set that off would be visible from a mile away. Grimacing at the reality, he promised himself to only think clean thoughts when he saw Asuka and Rei.
It was hopeless. It had been approximately a nanosecond before he covered his groin in the presence of his two suited comrades. Rei was wearing a pure white suit that accented absolutely everything and Asuka was very much the same but in a completely red outfit. At least in their school uniforms, you couldn't tell immediately but in the plug suits, Asuka clearly had a size advantage in the breasts department. Rei had a rump that put her back in the competition easily, but they both also had a significant feature around their groin areas that reminded Shinji very much of the toes of an animal that you would usually find crossing deserts.
"Yeah, yeah, get it out of your system." Asuka grimaced, well aware that Shinji had been trying his best not to look like he was looking. "We can see your leaning tower of Pisa attempting to wave hello, we're not blind either."
"Wait, what? What tower?" Rei squinted at Shinji, scanning him over until she reached the lower half. "Oh… Ohhhh…"
It was time to get the party back to the command centre.
"Oh my, they look even better than I thought they would!" Yui Ikari beamed at seeing the three suited-up teenagers return.
"With all due respect Vice Director, it feels a bit… revealing…" Asuka nervously glanced all over herself. She'd been fighting the urge to clobber Shinji the whole way back but decided not to out of pity. The poor guy basically waddled back whilst trying his best to cover the silhouette of his unmentionables. All the blood in his body seemed to have gone to his face thankfully, so she left his punishment to mother nature to dole out.
"I understand it's not the most fashionable thing in the world, but it does really help us out with the science side of things." Yui smiled weakly. "Also, you can just call me Ikari y'know. Or even just Yui. Or even Auntie, like Rei does! It feels weird hearing Vice Director from you guys…" Something resembling the shadow of a pout flickered across the lead scientist's face.
"Yui come on. You're running the show here, it's not a surprise she has no idea how to refer to you." A familiar voice echoed from one of the workstations across the command centre. Asuka's eyes immediately lit up, woes about her suit completely forgotten.
"Mama!" Asuka ran over to her mother, grabbing her in a big hug. It was a surprise to see the blonde scientist out of her lab. Shinji couldn't remember the last time he had actually seen Kyoko Soryu. He'd been convinced that she had become a permanent sort of hermit down there, texting colleagues for food deliveries and forgetting to have regular showers. But the woman that greeted them looked as fit as a fiddle and perfectly hygienic, if a little sleepy.
"Sorry it's been a while, my little Asuka! These guys keep me pretty busy!"
"I hate to interrupt this touching reunion but…" The burly voice of a troubled Gendo Ikari boomed from his desk, before-
"MAGI Intrusion at eighty-five percent! Guys, do something!" The tech team seemed to be at their wits end keeping the intrusion at bay. Kyoko returned to her terminal, apologizing to her daughter.
"I'm sorry Asuka but I need to help them. Let Auntie Yui fill in the rest!"
"She's right." Yui Ikari once again took up the reins of the operation. "Misato, take them to the VR room. I'll be in communication when you get there. And guys…" She looked at the three kids, worry clouding her face. "Please, be careful in there."
The VR room looked very familiar. To Shinji and Asuka, it was the room where they first discovered what exactly it was that Shinji's parents were experimenting with. The bare room with nothing inside but white walls was back.
"However, this room is not the same. It's been extensively tuned and refitted with mechanisms that can extend its length and width, as well as provide safety. Unfortunately, Misato can't join you in there until she gets her own plug suit-"
"I'M GETTING A PLUG SUIT TOO!?" Shinji and Asuka both mentally agreed that their guardian and teacher sounded way too excited with that bit of information.
"…-so she will be monitoring you both via a smaller control center over there. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to give you all a briefing so we're going to be explaining things to you on the fly. We'll be launching the experiment in ten seconds. Brace yourselves!"
On his left, Rei looked nervous. Suddenly she yelped in surprise. Shinji had gently started to hold her hand.
"It's going to be alright Rei."
She had participated in a fair few experiments at the lab, helping Auntie and Uncle. But this one felt a lot more overwhelming. The future of the lab was at stake and she didn't want to mess up. She squeezed Shinji's hand gently in return, thankful for the reassurance.
"Yeah. It'll be okay… I think."
Shinji suddenly felt his other hand being clasped. Turning his head, he saw Asuka looking straight ahead at one of the blank walls.
"You better not forget about me Shinji. It's not just Rei you need to look after." She was trying not to show anything, but her face was slightly tinged red. Smiling, he squeezed her hand too.
"Yeah. I don't want to let anything happen to you either."
"Good! Then let's go kick this thing's ass and go home!"
"T-MINUS 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, START!"
The world around them erupted into a kaleidoscopic abstract flurry of colours. The three teenagers awed at the world around them, looking as though they had dived headfirst into a radiant galaxy. Shinji was immediately reminded of a school trip to the planetarium a long time ago. However, what they were seeing now was making that experience pale in comparison. It wasn't long before the lightshow around them ended and they were suddenly greeted with the sight of-
"Wait, is this our classroom?"
---
"I brought them, Vice Director." The voice of a man who looked to be in his early 30s appeared in the command centre.
"Ah, Kaji! It's good to see you again!" Yui Ikari glanced over at him, noting the ponytail that forever irked her was still present. Behind the smiling man were two girls. Crimson, with her ever present scowl was glaring at Yui. The scientist could understand why the Asuka lookalike usually had an angry disposition but it always felt like she done something to the irritated teenager personally.
Standing at a comfortable distance away from the angry redhead, Rei II had also joined them, with a curious expression. To her, especially with the large gaps in her memory, this must feel like the first time standing in a facility like this, Yui reasoned to herself.
"I just hope it isn't going to bring back any unpleasant memories, especially at a time like this." She thought to herself.
"So why are we here... And what the hell are they wearing!?" Crimson had spotted the monitoring window on the huge display in front of everyone. On it, she could clearly see Shinji, Asuka and Rei in their plug suits.
Yui suddenly realised why the girl looked ready to boil water with her face. Crimson's eyes raged with the fire of a supernova. On the day that Shinji had brought Crimson home, alongside the amnesiac Rei and the creepy ghost, they had all been wearing similar suits. Asuka's suit was an almost perfect recreation of the one that Crimson had worn from her own world. And it was no coincidence either.
Yui and the rest of the scientists had analysed the suits from the mysterious other world and had realised that they did indeed contain useful functions, such as life support and various other sensors that gave real-time monitoring abilities to many of the body's functions. They had been deemed useful and became an integral part of the experiments.
In the beginning, Yui hadn't been overly ecstatic using them. Using technology from a world that sought to basically destroy itself wasn't chiming with her moral compass. But the logic in her scientifically geared brain won out in the end. After all, any tool could be used for good, not just evil.
But she had completely forgot about what it might do to the mental stability of the teenagers from the destroyed world. Judging from Crimson's expression, it was about to rain blood-
"ARE YOU JOKING!? PLUG SUITS!? WHAT, ARE YOU GUYS HIDING A GODFORSAKEN ANGEL IN THE FUCKING BASEMENT TOO?"
"No! We just need them to- "
"TO WHAT!? No, don't even say it! I've heard this schtick before! Giant, soul-powered robots, fighting messengers of God but actually… no! Vessels, to initiate a world-ending apocalypse, all to resurrect a dead wife and stick it to some Illuminati dickheads and turn all of humanity into some giant Haunted-Mansion style blob in the sky where EVERYONE gets to see all of your secrets and memories. The fucking janitor in that world from my old school has memories of me getting off to the translucent baka and god forbid I can't bloody look him in the eye in this one! Everyone's dead, the sea's blood red, Ayanami's fucking face just chilling in it, grinning at the fucking moon, not to mention being the size of one. And you know what…" The temperature of the room was Arctic. No one dared breath as Crimson slowly but purposefully walked up to Gendo Ikari.
"It was All. Your. Fault."
No one knew what kind of expression lay behind the orange-tinted spectacles of the Commander. His signature pose suggested a sense of stoicism, but under the façade, Yui knew that Gendo Ikari, the leader of the Artificial Research Laboratory, the man who braved facing off against the likes of SEELE, was absolutely freaking out.
"I do believe this is the first time we've met, Miss…"
"Crimson! I may share the same name as the other, but I am not the same Asuka! I am one that YOU DESTROYED! Along with an entire planet!" A long silence followed. Everyone bar a few scientists had been completely distracted by the drama unfolding in front of them. It wasn't everyday you saw the Commander being absolutely bullied by a teenager.
"Miss… Crimson. I do not know what it was like in the world you came from, I cannot possibly even begin to fathom the darkness that swallowed up the planet. We do not intend to keep secrets from you, or Rei, about what it is we do here. But I ask you to understand. We are not NERV. We don't have weapons here of any kind. There are no… Angels, to fight. The only thing that stands in our way of providing a future for the generations ahead, is SEELE. A name that I am aware you are familiar with. What we do here is research, and experiment, in order to progress humanity. Not to conglomerate it in a false sense of paradise. We defend ourselves against SEELE, not with weapons but with science. We use the tools that we develop with good intentions, including what you see the children wearing. It is not an indication that we have malicious intentions." Gendo sighed, pushing up his glasses.
"I realise that it will be nearly impossible for you to accept any of this. Anything I say about it is words echoed from a man that resembles the chaos from where you came from. So all I can do it show you the actions we take here with full transparency and…" Almost everyone in the room silently gasped in surprise. Gendo Ikari, the man with an image to maintain, had just taken off his glasses. Standing on his feet, he gave his full attention to Crimson. And bowed.
"Apologize, for the trauma you have been through. Miss Soryu-… no. Miss Crimson, I am sorry for what you have been through. And I can assure you, we are going to do anything we can to stop evil from taking root in this world and prevent another apocalypse in this one."
There was another long silence.
"I am not going to help. If that's the reason you brought me here, you can think again."
"We will not force you to do anything."
"Fine then. I'm going home."
"Asuka!" It was her mother's voice. A voice she had not heard in a very, very long time. She knew an incarnation of her mother existed here, but out of fear, Crimson had not sought her out. Her memories were painful enough.
She found herself unable to move. Frozen to the spot. She wanted to run away. To hide at the ends of the earth. She was afraid. Afraid of her memories. Afraid of that voice. Afraid of herself.
"Asuka…" Dr Kyoko Soryu took a tentative step forward. She could see the girl referring to herself as Crimson shaking all over. Another step forward. Kyoko wanted to reach out, to console the girl trapped in the throes of her own mentality, after all of the suffering. But Kyoko could see that any sudden moves would cause Crimson to flee. She'd done enough running. She needed to heal.
"Everything is all right now. Everything is going to be okay."
"You. You're…" Crimson felt her throat locking up. She hated it. She wanted to scream. To shout. To let this imposter know her place. She wasn't her real mom. But…
She couldn't bring herself to do it. Why? It was just words… Right? She couldn't even face looking at the scientist right now. A tsunami of hot, angry tears was threatening to flow and destroy her where she stood. So, she remained there, frozen in place, not sure of what to do.
Did Shinji ever feel like this?
Kyoko made it around to stand in front of the stricken girl. Worry was etched over the blonde scientist's face as she searched for the light of hope in the trauma taking over Crimson's mind. The girl's breathing was increasing in pace. She looked ready to crumble into dust at the merest touch of a light wind.
Stretching out her arms, Kyoko was about to embrace the girl, not knowing what else to do to soothe her pain. But before she could-
"You… told me… to die."
Once again, the room froze. All eyes were on the two in the middle of the command centre. Most of the people there had only heard fragments of Crimson's story. Only Yui, Gendo, Kyoko and the other children knew what Crimson was talking about.
"I…" Kyoko was lost for words. She heard what happened. The Shinji and Asuka from her world had relayed as much information that they had managed to glean from Crimson. But it still wasn't really enough to explain the sheer magnitude of what she had gone through.
"The Contact… Experiment…" Crimson could barely breath. Trickles of tears started to flow down her face. But she had long since given up trying to stop them. What did it matter anyway?
"The day I lost you, was the day I was told I was going to be an Evangelion pilot. I was proud, I couldn't wait to tell you. But truthfully, I had lost you long before that. The woman I knew as Kyoko Soryu, my mother, died the day she decided to sell her soul to those abominable creations. The only thing that was left was a husk of a women, driven mad, convinced that a stupid doll was her daughter, not the living, breathing child that begged her to get better every day. And in the end, not only did you kill yourself… But you tried to take me with you."
"That was it. From that point on, I couldn't be a normal child anymore. I had to be there for myself, because no one would. The only thing anyone ever cared about me for was piloting an Eva. Everyone except… him. And I even managed to destroy that shred of happiness too."
"Maybe… If I had been nicer to him… The world might not have ended. Maybe I could've helped him to actually save the world. Maybe part of the reason that world is now an actual hell, is because I let it happen…"
"Maybe if… If I had a mother, who was there for me, the whole way… I would've turned out better. But you… You left me. All alone. In a world full of despair and destruction. Why!? WHY!?" Tears had become sobs. Every negative emotion was coming out, aimed squarely at the woman who stood in front of her. She wanted to scream to the ends of the earth. She wanted to shout until she lost her voice. She wanted to cry until she couldn't anymore. She wanted… What she really wanted…
Arms wrapped around her. Tightly. Warm. An embrace, for the first time she could remember in forever.
"No… No… I don't…!" Crimson tried to beat away, to break free of the embrace. She wanted it so badly, but she was so angry. So sad. Miserable. She had no strength to break away. So all she could do was stand there, and sob into the chest of Kyoko Soryu. Her mother.
"I'm so sorry… I'm so sorry… Asuka." Kyoko had managed to hold back her own sobs just as well as Crimson had. Both women had let their knees collapse onto the ground, still embracing each other.
Yui Ikari looked on at them both, a paralytic agony dancing around her heart. What Crimson had gone through was exactly what they were trying to avoid. She didn't want anyone else to go through what Crimson had to suffer through. She would make sure of it.
As if to temper her determination, alarms began ringing throughout the command centre.
"MAGI intrusion at ninety percent, we have to hurry!"
"Guys, we could really use your help right about now!" Shinji's voice blared through the monitor's. Everyone looked up to see the progress of his mission with the other Asuka and Rei. Things were not looking good.