So… Yeah. Post Third Impact fanfic. How original of me. Nerv is back and they have to pilot again. Soooo very original of me. Well, I've had this idea in my head for so long that I can't stand it anymore. I'm writing this down now, before a repent.

Well, now some notes:

1- English is NOT my first language. So, misspelling or grammatical errors may occur. I'll try not to, though. If you detect any of them, please, inform me. Every error you point out will be one error less in the next updates.

2- Any feedback is welcome, even criticism. Constructive criticism will help me improve my writing for next chapters and future possible rewrites.

3- This is rated M. Mature content can and will appear. This includes but it's not limited to: coarse language, adult situations/references, gore, psychological problems, boobies.

Oh, yeah… And I don't own Evangelion. It's property of Gainax. For now.

1- THE BEGINNING, AGAIN

She liked her lips in anticipation, slowly. He was out there, behind some building, hiding like a little scared puppy. Not that she blamed him, of course. Everybody feared the great Asuka Langley Soryu, Lieutenant of the restored Nerv, Chief Pilot of the Eva squad, last member of the original Three Children and awesome person in general.

After some minutes, Asuka bit her lower lip in frustration. This was getting ridiculous. If that little shit wasn't going to get out, the she would go get him. Pushing the controls aggressively, Asuka made her Eva Unit-02 charge forward and knock down a building with a kick, readying her assault rifle. Finally, an enormous shadow appeared before her, the sinister silhouette of the fourteenth Angel, Zerulel, making itself clear. Asuka gritted her teeth. 'Got you'

With a war cry, Asuka pulled the trigger and Unit-02 started firing, raising a curtain of smoke where the monster was. When the dust dissipated, though, the girl could see the Angel hadn't even blinked. Biting her tongue to avoid a curse, she pulled her prog knife and sprinted towards the Angel.

At the same time, the foil-like arms of the monster started to unfold. Asuka twitched at the memory. Last time this asshole did that she got her arms chopped off. And then she got decapitated. She smirked.

"Not this time, sucker!" Asuka screamed, accelerating her Eva even more and tackling the surprised Angel to the ground.

Raising her weapon, Asuka tried to stab the blood-red core in the middle of the Angel's chest, but the monster activated its AT Field, stopping the blade from reaching the weak point. With a growl, Asuka forced the Eva to power-up its own field and, slowly but steadily, the weapon finally reached the core. With a roar, Asuka pushed the control even harder and knife finally stabbed the red sphere.

Instantly, the Angel started to shriek and struggle, but to no avail. The knife sunk itself and, after a few seconds, silence.

"Well done, Asuka" a voice from the comm. said "I guess you really were ready for the fourteenth"

Asuka grinned, a confident grimace in her face.

"Of course I was! I've been ready for years, you know" She resorted, as the building around her began to fade, as well as the Angel's body. Asuka smiled and let her head rest on the simulation plug seat, waiting for the LCL to drain.

Outside of the Virtual Reality Room, Misato Katsuragi sighed. Asuka's overconfidence would bring her trouble in the future, she was sure of it. But, then again, she was the only pilot with Angel battle experience from before the Third Impact. Rei became some kind of strange entity during that event (if you sailed far enough, you could still find that giant head of hers) and Shinji disappeared almost five years ago. Just after he end Asuka were brought to the German Branch he left, and nobody had heard of him again. He vanished just like he had lived: in silence and leaving a scarring mark in the people he met.

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Asuka inhaled deeply, getting rid of her plug suit. With a sigh she looked at the reflection the full body mirror in her locker gave her. She looked, turned to see her back and sighed again. It still shocked her. Skin. Just pretty, smooth skin. No scars, no marks, no anything. After what happened before Third Impact, she was sure she would have become some kind of circus freak.

She frowned. To be honest with herself, her memories from before and during Instrumentality were pretty blurry; she was unable to differ between her dreams and reality. As were everyone. In fact, nobody was sure of what happened. She remembered seeing a lot of things. Things of her life and of other's ones. And she was sure everybody did so. Most of them were impossible to discern, while others were still pretty fresh in her mind. The pain, the soiling. The death. Asuka sighed for a third time. When she came to her senses after all that mess, she found herself being strangled by Shinji, like in that scene during Instrumentality. She caressed him, she still didn't know why and then he started crying like the stupid wimp he is. She was disgusted: at him, at herself, at the world and at the giant head of Wondergirl. She then went to sleep, a nice, dreamless sleep.

When she woke up, she was in a bed in the hospital of the German Branch of Nerv, new HQ. There, they informed her that they had picked her up from Japan with a young boy. When she asked where the boy went, they shrugged and gave them a note with a single word in Japanese: "Sorry". Nothing else. No "goodbye", no "see you", no "I hope you recover well". Nothing. She hated him for that. Sure, maybe she hadn't been the best company in the whole world but, what the hell? At first, she tried to look for him. Not much, mind you. Just to give him a piece of her mind, nothing else. But as the UN helicopters brought more people from the LCL sea in Japan, most of them Nerv staff, she began to have more work. Evas were too great of a resource to let them go. And the people able to pilot them were few.

She, Toji Suzuhara and an American girl called Mari Illostrious Makinami. Her old friend Hikari and that idiot Kensuke were in trial, while the people at Nerv decided if they were suitable pilots or not. Asuka doubted they had enough Eva units for everybody, though. They even had to rescue her old Unit-02 and repair it. She even had heard the higher-ups had some kind of ambitious plan to get Unit-01 down from space. A waste of money and resources, she thought. The only person capable of piloting that monster was nowhere to be found.

Asuka yawned and stretched, giving her reflection an approving smile. She was beautiful, she really was. Not a week would pass without some idiot asking her out for dinner or a movie. She rejected them all, of course. They were too weak, too stupid for her. And none of them would have been able to put up with her raging personality. Not like Shinji. She shook her head to get that thought out. Scheiss.

Mumbling a song, she headed for the shower, her head drifting between thoughts.

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Misato frowned at the papers a German Nerv operator had just handed her.

"Is this true?" she asked in English.

"Yes" the man answered with a thick accent "We have… Ah… made contact with the… Euh… Unit. We think that in less that two weeks we will have… Eh… Recovered it, Sir… Madam"

Misato cursed in Japanese between her teeth. She had hoped that they would have never been able to recover Unit-01. Now that this little hope had failed her, she knew the next step she had to take. Not that she had to like it. Not at all.

"Hyuga" Misato said, looking at her subordinate. The only one she still had at her orders "Call the guys from Internal Affairs"

Hyuga just stared at her a few seconds and then nodded, leaving the room. With a sigh, Major Misato Katsuragi let herself fall at her designated chair. Time to; once again, blackmail or brainwash some emotionally scarred boy into piloting a monster he hated with all his soul, for the sake of people he didn't even knew or cared about, and destroying some more his already unstable sanity. Just perfect.

Well, she thought with little hope. That'd be if they were able to find him in the first place.

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When Asuka exited the changing room, putting her A-10 nerve clips on her still wet hair, she was greeted by three hollow faces and a curious one.

"What?" she asked. Toji, Kensuke and Hikari exchanged looks, doubtful. Mari, nonetheless, stepped forward.

"Haven't you heard, Liutenant?" she asked "We just received a report saying the space exploration team had made contact with an old frozen Eva unit. They say that in less than two weeks they'll have recovered Unit-01"

Asuka tried that her racing heartbeat didn't affect her face.

"So?" she asked, as indifferently as she could "Maybe you don't know, but Unit-01 is a bit special. It will accept only one pilot. And none of us is that pilot"

"That's the thing" Hikari said in a faint voice. Asuka looked at her, while Toji and Kensuke stared at the opposite direction. Don't say it, Asuka thought. Don't you say it. Don't you dare say it after five years. Don't you dare.

"Internal Affairs is already looking for him. Not some half-assed search, like the first one" Toji intervened "A world-wide search. They'll find him, this time. He's coming back"

Asuke just cursed in all the languages she knew. Which were quite some.