Disclaimer: I do not own 'Neon Genesis Evangelion,' nor do I own 'Vandread.' They are the sole properties of Gainax Studios and Gonzo respectively.

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VANEVA

By Northridge

Chapter 4

SITUATIONS

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Within the fortified confines of NERV headquarters in Tokyo-3, there is a certain room that two EVA pilots call home. The room itself is nothing special, barely large enough to house its owners and their meager belongings. A bunk bed adorned a wall, while a small desk was decked in a corner. Two guns in holsters are hanging on the chair. The only things on the desk are a few bottles of liquor and a small picture frame of several young fourteen-year olds and a purple-haired woman. In the closet, there are only NERV uniforms, a cello case, and a few sets of blue and white plugsuits.

There are also several articles of clothing lying about on the floor.

At the moment Shinji Ikari and Rei Ayanami are sharing a quiet moment alone in bed. While N2 bombs are being used and people killed around the world, these atrocities don't exist in this room. Only the peaceful quiet that two warm bodies can bring is present at the moment.

"We're going to need a bigger room." The other person just laid there in the other's arms.

"I'll talk to the requisitions department and see what I can do."

Just then, a cell phone on the floor next to the bed began an incessant beeping. A minute passed before a slender pale-white hand reached for the phone and flipped it open to activate it. A voice on the other end read out instructions. Rei listened carefully to the orders and then closed the phone to place it on the ground.

Silence, and then the person spoke up.

"Shinji."

"Hmm?"

"You have a mission in thirty minutes."

"Just a little longer, Rei," Shinji whispered as he started kissing her neck.

"You have to get ready."

"It can wait." He began to slowly move his hand over her thigh under the sheets as he continued his ministrations on her neck.

Rei Ayanami decided to just accept Shinji's words. This isn't the first time Shinji begged for more time together before either of them went out on missions. She cuddled up a little closer in Shinji's arms and he held her tighter.

"You also need to stop drinking."

"That can also wait."

o o o

"I've detected a distress signal."

BC looked up from her station on the bridge of the Nirvana. "Type?" She asked the controller.

"It's not from the Earth's fleet. Please wait. I've determined it. Its pattern is from the colonial era."

BC rolled her eyes. "Another one," She turned towards Magno for directions, "What should we do captain?"

The captain didn't hesitate in her response, "It smells fishy, but we can't just leave them, right?" Magno turned towards the view-screen and called her chief engineer, "Parfet!"

The view-screen flicked on to reveal the eccentric pig-tailed girl.

"Yes?" she responded.

"How's the Paksis doing?"

"Staying alive...somehow."

"Carry on."

"Roger!"

Magno flicked a few buttons to call on another person. "Young man!"

Bart looked up from eating his food pills on the view-screen. "Hmm?"

"Break's over."

Bart gave a tired look to the captain but followed her orders nonetheless.

"Ay Ay. I'll be right over." The view-screen blinked out.

"Now, what will come out of this?" the captain stated in wonder.

o o o

The two Dread pilots were in the shooting room, a spherical place with two platforms for the women to stand on while photon targets moved around the area. Barnette was fully concentrated on her marksmanship, while Jura was sitting down on the other platform in contemplation, not caring for any target practice. Barnette misfired when Jura made her want known out loud. "I want to have a baby."

"What! A baby!" Barnette exclaimed in surprise at Jura's statement.

Jura smiled at her shooting partner. "Yeah."

Barnette was still overcomed with shock. Her thoughts turned to one thing. "And...and you want me to be the ohma?" She was referring to the Mejere coupling of two women, an ohma and a fahma, to produce a child.

"Not at all," Jura shook her head, "Think about what it would be like to have a baby with a guy!"

Barnette, having lived in a women-only society all her live became even more shocked by this statement.

Jura stood up and looked at the ceiling, lost in her own thoughts, but speaking them out loud. "Think about going back to Mejere with that news! The first woman to make a baby with a male's seed! I'll become Mejere's new heroine!"

Barnette could only look at Jura with continued shock on her face. "That sounds like something you would say, Jura," her eyes turned grim, "so this 'seed,' where would you get it?"

Jura gave Barnette her cutest smile. "Can you find out?"

Then the ship's alarms went off.

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"Sub-commander, I've got the coordinates of that distress signal" one of the bridge's controllers stated.

BC shouted out the orders to the crew. "Prepare to commence the salvage operation. Meia, you and your Dread team guard the deli ship while it completes the mission. We don't know when the enemy will show up, so keep your eyes open."

"Roger," Meia confirmed over the comm.

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"Mrs. Gascogne...ma'am...I want you to understand that I will give my best in this job...and I appreciate that this ship has rescued me...and I mean no disrespect when I say this...but...DO I REALLY HAVE TO WEAR THIS DRESS!"

Instead of the colony-era black long-sleeved undershirt with grey vestment and baggy pants that Shinji wore before, he was now wearing a pink maid's uniform and was doing his best to keep the skirt covering his crotch region while standing.

"Don't sweat it kid. Hibiki had to go through the same thing. Besides, you look pretty cute in that thing," Gascogne said from the helm of the deli ship. The soap-bar shaped ship was currently making its way towards the source of the distress signal while being flanked by a squadron of Dreads and Hibiki's vanguard on top.

"And why am I coming along on this thing?" Shinji added.

"Because kid, you need a crash course in the life of a stagehand. What better place is there to do it except in the field?"

As the flight group descended upon the distress signal, Gascogne spotted a spear-shaped pod. "There's some pretty heavy damage there," she noted.

As the deli ship positioned its robotic arms to grapple the pod, Gascogne noted something on the radar. "What timing...Meia!" she shouted over the comm, "Enemy cubes 10 o'clock and 4 o'clock of the Nirvana!"

"Confirmed," Meia said over the comm, as the Dread Squadron moved into a protective formation surrounding the deli ship and the pod.

"Meia!" BC's voice barked on the comm, "Those cube ships are coming from the Earth flag ship fleet, the Nirvana's shields can't be activated. Do not engage the enemy unless necessary. As soon as your group returns, we're outta here."

"Roger! Dreads, let's move out," Meia ordered to the rest of the squadron.

What Shinji saw through the view-screen of the deli ship was a space battle with strange red block ships with arms and legs. To Shinji, these objects moved with surprising agility that rivaled the mobility of the Dreads he had seen so far.

The situation became a game of keep away between the two forces. As soon as the cube ships took the pod, the Nirvana's forces worked just as hard to get it back. Shinji almost forget he was wearing a dress.

What was even stranger for Shinji was seeing that yellow humanoid robot 'combining' with one of the Dreads.

'Is that a crab?' thought Shinji. The 'crab' produced a barrier that the enemy could not penetrate. 'An AT field?' was all the EVA pilot could guess at.

But then a red beam of light struck the red crab ship, and the vanguard and Dread separated from each other. Shinji saw that the yellow robot regrouped with a blue Dread to combine into a larger blue robot with a horn on its head.

'What?' Shinji thought back to his own horned EVA.

While the new robot retrieved the pod, the red light descended upon it. Redness covered its right hand. The light came from another ship which grappled the blue robot. Suddenly, Shinji was overcomed with a sick feeling. He clutched his head in pain. 'Where have I felt this before?' Shinji thought in bewilderment as he passed out on the deck of the deli ship.

o o o

"He's waking up."

Shinji opened his eyes to see the captain and doctor by the side of the bed he is in. He saw that there were crewmembers surrounding a pod much like his own.

Shinji noticed that Dread pilot named Meia looking at him for a second before averting her gaze toward the pod. 'So much like Rei...'

He sat up in bed only to realize a few seconds later that he was still wearing the pink maid outfit.

"Ah!" Shinji gasped before quickly covering his body with the blanket.

"No need to be modest young man. You are quite decent," Magno said with a smile.

"Sorry captain...but I don't think I will ever get use to wearing a dress," Shinji said with a blush.

The captain just chuckled. "Well Duero here checked you out and it seems that you're fine. Any idea why you fainted?"

Shinji shook his head. "I don't know."

"Have you ever passed out before Shinji" Duero asked.

"Only a few times...but it's been seven hundred years since one happened. But what happened during the mission? Is everyone okay?"

Magno responded. "Hibiki and Dita did their usual thing and everything turned out okay. We're about to open the pod as soon as Parfet figures it out."

"Just get some rest for now. We'll take care of things tomorrow," Duero told him.

"Sure," was all Shinji said before lying back down on the bed. The last thing Shinji heard before passing into sleep was an ecstatic shout of "Lord Prince!" from over where the crowd was surrounding the pod.

o o o

The ruins of SydneyAustralia are a testament to the destructive power of a three-hundred foot tidal wave. Five hours earlier, SEELE submarines laid twenty-five N2 bombs along the coast of the city. NERV's 3rd fleet stationed in the harbor didn't suspect a thing, as the crew inside the ships were throttled around like coins in a jar. Those few souls were fortunate, as death was immediate; however, those millions along the coast were not so lucky, as a gigantic wall of water rushed over them like a blanket falling on a bed. People ran away from the towering wave in futility. Skyscrapers were snapped in half by the raging waters as easily as breaking twigs. This was SEELE's payback for the damage done to its oil reserves and fleet stationed in the Middle East

Right now, five million bodies are scattered throughout the remains, and along the coast, of what use to be SydneyAustralia. A city that rose from the ashes of 2nd Impact is now reduced back to dust.

At the moment, nine SEELE-operated Akula-class submarines are speeding their way back to their base. The captains abroad these vessels are congratulating their crews for a successful mission that wiped out NERV's 3rd fleet; no mention of five million lives.

But as the crew celebrated, there was no way for them to detect the gigantic V-22 Wing in the sky above the waters. The sonar stations were left unattended as sounds were detected from a large object making contact with the water above the fleet of unwary submarines.

It is aboard one particular submarine that a progressive knife suddenly penetrated through the ceiling, pinning the captain, as he was sipping a flask of brandy, to the deck before slicing him in half. The progressive knife continued its downward descent through several decks before crushing the cook's head in a pot of boiling water on the ship's stove.

EVA Unit-01 quickly withdrew its progressive knife, allowing seawater to pour into the submarine. The captain and cook were fortunate, as death was immediate; however, the rest of the crew were not so luck, as water quickly filled the entire submarine before anyone could seal a single hatch. The submarine became a metal tomb sinking to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Many of the five million people in Sydney would have thought this similarity as poetic justice, but Shinji Ikari was thinking nothing of the sort as he willed his Evangelion's turbine engines towards the next submarine and extracted another progressive knife from the EVA's shoulder binding. His thoughts weren't focused on those five million people, but rather on a blue-haired woman waiting in his bed. All Shinji cares about on this mission is getting back to his little own world, where there is no war, N2 bombs, or father...but only the comforts of a woman he would call 'wife' someday.

'We definitely need a bigger room,' Shinji thought as he had the progressive knives cut into the bridge of another submarine while torpedoes darted toward his EVA.

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To Be Continued...

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Author's Note: This marks the end of the rewrite of the first 4 chapters. Chapter 5 will be up soon.