Morning had made itself known, shining blinding rays of light into a tiny sliver of a gap between Shinji's curtains. Through the magic of physics and reflections, that minuscule beam of sunlight had bounced off the metallic parts on his music player, and had somehow found a path straight onto Shinji's closed eyelids. Grimacing in response to the assault on his eyes, he gingerly opened an eye, wondering why his arms felt so heavy.
Never in his entire life had he regretted waking up more than today.
On his left slept a familiar head of bright, dazzling orange. On his right, a cool, yet enticing head of blue. Asuka and Rei were both asleep in his bed, each reserving an arm for a pillow.
And as if that wasn't enough to give him the shock of a lifetime, the alarm clock close to his bed told him he had about thirty seconds before it was due to go off.
Thirty seconds before complete and utter, absolute hell would undoubtedly tear apart his existence like a hurricane, and make the Armageddon look like a cake walk.
Actually no, it was twenty seconds now. Twenty seconds before a portal to hell opened in his room.
Needless to say, he had started to sweat buckets. He could fill a decently sized swimming pool with his overdriven anxiety sweat. And all that did was serve to add to his panic, wondering if the two girls would be grossed out.
Ten seconds.
He still never got around to writing that will. And he had never really got started with his bucket list either. At this rate he would never write that perverted manga he had been planning on since way back.
To begin with, what were they doing in his room? Were their own rooms not good enough? Was his bed comfier than theirs? Why?
Five seconds.
"Oh god please no..."
Two seconds.
"God's not in his heaven, he's gone off somewhere and abandoned me. AGAIN."
One second.
"AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH..."
As he mentally screamed his way into denial, the inevitable dindindindin of his alarm clock began to beep, and he felt Asuka nudge on his arm.
"Shinji... Please, five more minutes, come on... Who the hell has their alarm on this early in the morning..."
"I agree Ikari. Your alarm is set ridiculously early."
An awkward silence descended upon the room, penetrated by the still beeping alarm clock.
"Rei."
"Yes, Asuka?"
"Why are you in Shinji's bed?"
"I believe for the same reasons you are also in his bed."
Another awkward silence. The alarm clock was still beeping. It was doing that thing alarm clocks do, speeding up the beeps, as well as upping its volume.
But all Shinji could hear was the sound of his own heartbeat, racing a marathon at a deafening pace. He was sure his own nervous system was trying to give itself a heart attack.
"Shinji."
"I swear, this is not my-..."
"Why did you let that harlot into your bed."
"...fault."
"I take offence at being called a 'harlot'. Wench."
"OH NO YOU DIDN'T!" Asuka leapt out of Shinji's bed, grabbing the screeching alarm clock, then proceeding to throw it as hard as she could towards Rei.
Lifting her arm faster than anyone could have seen, Rei's bracelet sparkled with a shimmering light. A shield, or something like a forcefield had bubbled around Shinji and herself. The alarm clock collided with the shield at high speed, exploding into a flurry of plastic shards and silicon chips. The poor thing had never stood a chance.
"THEY'RE GONNA KILL ME!" Shinji screamed as he barrelled out of his room, bright lights and explosions following in his wake. His doorframe blew up into a cloud of dust, smoke rushing down the hallways.
"YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED IN HERE!" Asuka bellowed as her bracelet morphed into a katana, of which the blade was on fire.
"And I suppose Ikari gave you permission to sneak into his bed?" Rei's response was met with a sharp blade to the throat, sparks flying off the bubble shield still around her. Summoning her own weapons, Rei had opted for a pair of gauntlets on her arms, equipped with a gun and live ammunition.
Asuka had thrown up her own shield, and the bullets were ricocheting around the apartment. Several of which buried themselves into the walls around Shinji, who had remembered just in time how to use his own bracelet, allowing him to generate his own shield. He looked just about ready to wet himself, cowering in fear on the floor as he stared at the war going on in the living room.
"THAT. IS. ENOUGH."
Another explosion rocked the apartment. A rarely seen, royally pissed Misato had jumped into the midst of the girl's fighting, pointing her own weapons at the two battling females. An eloquently designed flintlock pistol and a traditional wakizashi sword that was parrying Asuka's flaming katana, which itself was slowly beginning to fade out of view, along with Rei's gauntlets. Their bracelets had mysteriously decided to power off. Glimmering on Misato's arm was a purple bracelet, matching perfectly with her hair.
If she hadn't been in her regular vest top and short shorts, Shinji would have felt that she looked incredibly cool right then.
"W-what happened?" Asuka looked surprised as she checked her bracelet. A holographic message had appeared above it.
Administrator lockout.
"Your bracelets are not toys! You both could have easily killed someone!" Misato stood up, glaring at the two girls as she lowered her weapons. It was really weird to see her acting responsible, and for once looking genuinely angry. It was almost scary.
"Wait, why do you have one?" Asuka looked at the similar bracelet Misato now wore on her left arm. Smiling, Misato held it out proudly.
"Yui gave me one. She needed to make sure that you guys wouldn't mess around and abuse your newfound 'powers', so she made me one with administrative technology so that I can remotely shut down your bracelets if things ever get out of hand." Glancing around the remains of what she once called her home, Misato sighed.
"I'd say this pretty much sums up what she was talking about."
The girls and Shinji together worked on repairing the damage that had been caused. Together with the bracelets, after Misato had re-enabled them, it wasn't a difficult job. Soon enough the apartment looked spotless. It was as though there had never been a fight at all, save for the trauma Shinji and the majority of their neighbours probably received.
"So with that out of the way, I think its time to lay down some house rules with these gadgets." Misato was sat in a chair, a summoned Yebisu cracked open in her hand.
"No violence in the house. At all. Yui has given me strict orders that the bracelets cannot be used for settling disputes of any kind with force."
Misato downed another gulp of her beer before continuing.
"You all wield powers that most would attribute to a deity. You're basically three out-of-control gods at the moment. Think about that for a second, and I hope you'll realise how dangerous this power actually is."
Asuka, Rei and Shinji all nodded together, all feeling a little ashamed of what had occurred.
"The only other rule would be to not abuse the powers in a way that would break the law. Can't have you three becoming phantom thieves with your crazy powers." She laughed as Asuka smirked in response.
"Says the one who's drinking magically summoned beer without paying a dime."
"Hey, there's exceptions to every rule, right?"
"I'll bet there is." Asuka muttered under her breath. Sitting next to her, Shinji grimaced. That meant more trouble waited for them in the future.
---
Pots and pans could be heard crashing about in the kitchen. He distinctly heard the sound of a plate crashing to the ground violently.
"Jesus Rei! You're so damn clumsy!"
"I honestly do believe that was your fault Asuka."
"I might not be able to use my bracelet, but don't make me slap you with a spatula!"
More arguing followed as Shinji prayed that his precious tools would survive the siege. He knew the bracelets could fix just about any damage, but he also believed that the two girls he lived with could easily defy logic and cause an apocalypse. Reaching for his music player, he jammed the two earphones in and played some Pachelbel. It was the only way he was going to be able to relax amongst the destruction.
For whatever reason possessed them, the girls had decided they wanted to make Shinji breakfast this morning. He had debated endlessly with them why this was not a good idea, and the pair of them had not given him any wiggle room to come up with a decent argument. In the end, not only was he confused as to why he was having breakfast made for him, he was also worried about whether or not he would survive eating the results.
After an agonising twenty minute wait, he heard a knock on the door, and a somewhat worryingly out of breath Asuka. Her hair was a tousled mess and she looked hot and sweaty.
"We... are... done. Come, eat... now."
Glancing over at the clock, Shinji decided against telling her it was way past midday. Breakfast time was well and truly over by now, but he really didn't fancy anymore concussions this week.
Gingerly stepping out of his room, he wandered over to where the smell of food was coming from, mentally noting that it at least smelled edible. Making it to the kitchen, which sported several charred scars over the walls, he spotted a plate of omelette, with a generous serving of sausages and bacon on the side. Most of all, it actually looked really good.
"She wrestled with the eggs, I handled the meat." Asuka collapsed on the sofa, next to an equally exhausted looking Rei.
Smiling at the two beaten girls, Shinji sat down at the table.
"Thanks for the food!" With caution thrown to the wind, he picked up his first mouthful and dug in. After about five minutes of furious eating later, Shinji put down his plate, and reminisced.
He was surprised he was still alive, and more importantly...
"That was probably the best breakfast I have ever had in my entire life." The two girls smiled after hearing the compliment.
"It had better have been. Dear god, cooking is way harder than anything I've ever done in my life!"
After the meal, there were plans to go out for the day. It was then Rei decided that she could show everyone another useful feature with the bracelets. Everybody was sat in front of Rei, Misato included, as she began her mini-lesson.
"We can use the bracelets to quickly and easily change clothes. The bracelet can store up to one hundred and eight different types of clothes that we can assign a name and category to. For example-...!"
"WAITWAITWAIT, stop!" Asuka quickly covered Shinji's eyes as the blue-headed girl began to activate her bracelet. "You're not going to change in front of him are you!? He'll see everything!"
"To begin with, if its Ikari, I wouldn't mind in the slightest..."
"HEY!" Asuka's eyes widened as she tried leaping for Rei, stopped only by Shinji holding her back.
"But the bracelet covers for that, by applying a veil of light over the body. The exchange of clothes happens near-instantaneously, so we are effectively censored." Ignoring Shinji's muttered remarks of how badly that sucked, Misato suddenly piped up.
"So it's something like a magical girl transformation like you see in those old anime's?"
"I... think so?" Rei didn't sound entirely sure of herself. "I haven't really seen a lot of anime, if any at all if I'm being honest." Ignoring her, Asuka jumped up, excited to try out the new feature.
"This is going to save me so much time getting ready in the morning! Does it do your hair as well?" At Rei's nod, she practically squealed with joy.
"I swear I've dreamt of this day my entire life!" She lifted her bracelet arm up so that it pointed to the sky, attempting a cool pose she had seen in the anime's.
"I should probably mention that..." Ignoring Rei once again, Asuka happily chanted for the set of clothes she wore the most often.
"School uniform!"
"...that you need to be wearing the clothes and set them to the bracelet before doing it for the first time... the transformation will fail otherwise and..." Rei faltered off, sounding genuinely worried. She was not alone, the sentiment was felt by everybody in the room. Especially for Shinji who had been sat right in front of what was now a full-frontal birthday suit version of his childhood friend.
Asuka was in complete and utter shock.
Regaining his senses was by no means an easy feat, Shinji had wanted to burn the image in front of him into his retinas for a little while longer, but every single instinctual fibre in his being was telling him to run, and run as far as he possibly could.
But just as he was getting out of his chair and backing away towards the door, he heard the scariest voice in the world come out of Asuka's shaking mouth.
"Come here Shinji."
"I think it's far safer if I stay over here to be perfectly honest." Asuka looked up at him with an unrivalled rage in her eyes as she leapt the distance between Shinji and herself.
"STAND STILL! I need to beat this memory out of you!"
It took almost two hours to calm the raging German girl down.
---
"So what do we do now, Gendo?"
The bespectacled man sat at his desk, his orange-tinted glasses reflecting the monitor on his desk, head resting on top of his interlocked fingers. He wore a grim expression, which reflected on the tone of his voice as he spoke.
"We don't have many other options, do we?"
"You're being overly dramatic about all this."
"Overly dramatic!? This is SEELE we're talking about Yui! I'd say I'm being a little under-dramatic if anything!" Yui rolled her eyes as she glanced over his shoulder at the monitor.
"Misato will keep an eye on the kids, and she has her own bracelet now, so she'll be alright."
"What if they send the JSSDF into the school? Three kids and one teacher cannot protect an entire school, no matter what crazy powers we think they might have."
"You know, its normally me doing all the worrying. What's got you so spooked Gendo?"
His eyes turned to the desk, his face hidden in shadows and dark thoughts. Memories of a past life were coming back to haunt him. Memories of when he should have spent less time worried about his work and more time worried about how to be a father.
"I just... I don't want to lose him. I don't want to lose any of them..."
His sincerity and sudden sombre mood had Yui stunned. Where did this come from all of a sudden? Gendo wasn't normally one for revealing his troubles. Snaking her arms around his shoulders, she leant her head on top of his and smiled.
"They'll be fine. I promise you now, we've worked too hard to let anything happen to them. Not to mention, they're all incredibly smart kids for their age. And Misato is far more intelligent then she lets those around her think."
Her warm words brought a huge amount of comfort to him. A rarely seen smile flickered from underneath his hands that concealed his mouth. It was just what he had needed to hear.
---
The following morning, things were considerably peaceful, considering the mayhem that had occurred on the last day of the weekend. Walking along the road, Asuka felt the urge to skip, and almost gave in to her desires. But her pride wouldn't let her live with herself if the two knuckleheads behind her caught wind of what she was doing.
She'd have to move to a country on the other side of the world, after carefully hiding the bodies.
Still, she couldn't help herself but hum as she walked on the familiar path to school. Something that Rei had found it difficult to ignore for the past twenty minutes.
"You seem to be in an altogether cheerful mood this morning Asuka."
"You'll be too, after school tomorrow."
Shinji had promised both of them a date. Well, promised was a little subjective, but after cooking for him yesterday and after the vanishing clothes incident, they had both got a date out of the deal. Separately of course, but today was the day he'd be going out with Asuka. The following day would be Rei's turn.
He'd had to resort to petitioning the bank of Mom and Dad in lieu of funds for the operation, but she didn't care about that right now. Her head was full of thoughts on what exactly they were going to do with their afternoon together. And how to make Shinji as bankrupt as possible before it was Rei's turn.
Sitting on her chair in the classroom, she couldn't help but grin. Her leg was bouncing up and down wildly under her chair, something that her friend, Hikari, had picked up on almost instantly sitting in front of her.
"I've never seen you smiling so much Asuka. Are you feeling okay? Do you want me to take you to the nurses office?"
"Ha ha ha, shut up Hikari. I'm always in a fabulous mood and I take offence that you'd imply that I was ever a moody c-..."
"Nobody's going that far Asuka!" Hikari hastily stopped the chattering redhead, before letting out a giggle.
"But really... What's got you in such a good mood? I bet its to do with Shinji."
Asuka hadn't planned on how to cover it up if the topic had ever come up in class. As a result, the panic caused her to suddenly elbow her pencil case, sending it pinwheeling off her desk, its contents flying everywhere.
"Haha, I guess that answers my question." Hikari chuckled as she helped the flustered girl pick up the pieces.
"Does that mean it's a date? Are you going on a date with Shinji!?"
"Why don't you say it a little louder!? I don't think the entire class heard you!" Asuka hissed as she tried to keep the bubble-mouthed class president silent.
Instead of being quiet, Hikari made a strange squeaking noise, only fueling Asuka's rapidly spreading blush. She had to do something fast to stop the news spreading. Luckily, Misato chose that exact moment to wander through the door, looking strangely scared.
"Hey teach, I like the bracelet!"
Her new purple accessory shimmered in the light of the sun as she put her stuff on the desk.
"Thank you Toji, be sure you say the nice things to Hikari too when you have the chance."
Both students immediately went redder than the sun, with Toji stumbling over his words as he tried to make excuses, with Kensuke laughing at him.
"Miss, you can't-!" Hikari stopped her planned tirade when she felt Asuka poke her from behind.
"I'd say that's a pretty generous serving of karma, don't you think?" Grinning at her friend, Asuka laughed as she watched Hikari's face flash through about twenty different expressions, ranging from indignant to embarrassed.
After the brief distraction, Misato's face went back to serious business, glancing specifically at both Shinji and Asuka with a worried glance. Feeling caught off-guard, both of them wondered what had their teacher so spooked. She even had her own all-powerful bracelet now, what could she possibly be so scared of?
"First things first ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to introduce a transfer student."
"Another one!?" Toji cheered from the back of the class. "Please let it be another cutie, and god please don't let her anywhere near Shinji."
Shinji nodded violently in agreement. He didn't need any more crazy girls in his life. Asuka had also nodded crazily, her thoughts in almost perfect-sync with her romantic interest.
"Please treat her with respect and Hikari?"
"Yes teacher?"
"Make sure Toji doesn't end up molesting her." Hikari's eyes lit up with a raging fire, accented with a terrifying grin.
"You can count on me!" Nodding in approval, Misato ignored Toji's protests of innocence and turned her gaze towards the door.
"Okay, you may come in!"
The door gently slid open. After what felt like an eternity, a creamy white shoe entered through the threshold, and once again, Shinji Ikari felt like his world had ended in a heartbeat.
"Hello everyone, it's a pleasure to meet you! I'm a little bit nervous but I hope we can all get along!"
A cerulean-blue pair of eyes had found their mark, centering onto Shinji's dark grey ones. He felt terror, unaware that he had never been this scared in his life. The lips under those eyes curled into a sweet smile. She brushed a strand of her darkened crimson hair out of face.
"Especially with you, Shinji Ikari."