Shinji and Asuka

Chapter 17: Revelations

Author's Notes: Chapter 16 was so short because it was only half the day, here is the second half.

If you haven't figured out who Aria is yet, you will in this chapter.

A note to say this is the rewritten chapter 17 (First rewrite – very similar but I added some extra dialogue at the end).

Important Note: If you're reading this, you're reading the up to date version of the story. If you didn't see this note last chapter, you were unlucky enough to have started reading this just before I updated all the chapters. It is recommended you re-read the previous chapters as some details of the story would have changed as well as the formatting, which will cause some confusion in further reading.

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Chapter 17: Revelations

"An angel attack now?" Asuka said out loud.

The redhead got up quickly and moved to her door. She wrenched open her door and ran into the dining room to find Shinji sitting at the dining table. Asuka noticed his eyes were red and there were remnants of dry tears on his face; had he been crying? Shrugging it off, the girl quickly moved over to the sullen boy.

"Come on you dope, an angel's attacking! We gotta go now!" she shouted at him.

"Asuka..." Shinji started, trying to say something.

"Snap out of it! Look you're temporarily forgiven, so get up already!" she ordered.

Shinji just drooped down on his chair more. Rolling her eyes at his behaviour, Asuka went around to the back of his chair and lifted him up by the shoulders. Finally, the boy complied and got out of the chair. The girl grabbed his hand, the uninjured one this time, and pulled him along. She opened the door and ran down the stairs, not bothering to close the door behind her. As they exited their apartment, a red sports car pulled up at the curb. The car honked at them erratically and a purple haired woman put her head out the window.

"Come on you guys, get in already!" Misato shouted.

The two eva pilots got into the back of the car and Misato slammed the accelerator. The car shot down the street and Asuka turned to look at the male eva pilot. He had a gloomy expression on his face and it looked like he was brooding. She flicked him on the head, startling him a bit as he looked at her with a confused expression.

"Now's not the time to be depressed third child" she said in response to his face. Though truthfully, it was hurting her to see him sad.

"What do you know..." he replied bitterly.

"And here I thought I had rubbed off on you, where's your perseverance? Look Shinji, just forget about what I said at the moment alright?" she consoled.

Misato saw Asuka's actions in the rear-view mirror, but decided to lay off her teasing at the time being.

"Alright Asuka" he said nodding, his mood improving slightly.

The two sat in comfortable silence the rest of the way to NERV. Upon arriving at NERV, Misato drove the car into the car elevator as the two eva pilots got off. The two teens ran down the corridor to the elevator. Shinji remembered the last two times he had run to the elevator. Both times he had been chasing after Asuka and received a door in the face, but this time they would go together. After entering the elevator, Asuka pressed the floor number for the eva cages and the elevator began its descent.

As they were going down, the elevator rocked from a nearby shockwave. The shockwave caused Shinji to fall into Asuka, who caught him in her arms. The two stayed in their accidental embrace, neither of them willing to break it. God knows they both needed some emotional support.