A What If.
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Shin Seiki Evangelion is the creation and intellectual property of Anno Hideaki, Sadamoto Yoshiyuki, and GAINAX or Khara or whoever has the rights now.
All other characters and franchises mentioned in this story are the intellectual property of their respective trademark and copyright holders.
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We are not Angels.
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"Are you really sure you want to do this?" Rider asked. She was wearing a black sweater over jeans and sneakers, plus the set of tinted glasses Matou had forged for her in trade for her cooperation so long ago already. Or at least it felt that way. So she looked fairly normal and unremarkable for a tall bombshell with long purple hair.
If not for the fact that a sweltering summer was starting, and hence it made little sense to go around in a sweater. But Rider was a Servant, and she had difficulties feeling heat and humidity unless they were too extreme. Besides, Shinji would rather have her catching puzzled looks over leering looks.
Ikari Shinji drew a deep breath in. "Yes. Yes, of course. I owe Asuka this much. I've been in Mahora for like two weeks now, and I haven't even told her that I'm here..."
"You don't owe her anything," Rider said.
"She is my friend," Shinji said, looking at the picture in his hand. It had been sent to him through e-mail last night, when he finally had dared contacting Katsuragi-san.
The woman in the picture he'd printed had her hair shorter than Rider's but still reasonably long, a dark shade between black and purple. She was fairly curvaceous as well, instantly drawing Shinji's eyes to her figure. Wearing only jean shorts and a blue sleeveless top, she was leaning towards the camera and blinking an eye while making a 'V' sign with a hand.
"What kind of woman is this?" Rider asked, echoing Shinji's thoughts. "And why would your father hire her for anything?"
Shinji shrugged and fanned himself with the picture, both of them sitting on the bench by Mahora's main avenue, as the festive music of the Festival blared all around them. "I have no idea," he confessed. "She must be some kind of pencil pusher or another, that's all! Dad's job is fairly boring, just technical research for grand projects that will never come to be. It's not like-"
The sidewalk trembled and rumbled under them, then.
Shinji blinked, eyes now wide open. "What was that?"
The crowd surrounding them and transiting across the school grounds paused, also startled by the sudden incident. Earthquakes weren't ever unusual in Japan, but they had become actually less frequent after the cataclysm fifteen years ago. The back of Rider's neck crawled up in goosebumps, and she clenched her perfect white teeth. "Master. Be extremely careful," she said under her breath. "This sensation... it's something I hadn't experienced in over two thousand years..."
"Eh?" the black haired thin boy asked.
A second later, there were several shrieks from the crowd as a jet fighter zoomed by from the South, passing right over the Academy. There were a few cries of "Aerial Exhibit!" and then, shutting them up, the booming presence of a low-cruise aerial missile.
"HARMAGEDDON!" another voice shouted. The crowd began quickly huddling away together, off the streets and onto the sidewalks, chattering in confusion and a bit of fear.
Shinji was still staring at the sky, open mouthed, when he felt Rider grabbing him by an arm and pulling him up.
"Master, we've got to go!" the gorgeous woman urged him. "A Divine Spirit! This is the essence of a Divine Spirit... or close to it, at least!"
"Ah?" he looked at her tense face. "What are you talking about, Rider?"
"Your attention, please," asked a pleasant, if strained, female voice with an Osaka accent over the speakers lined along the streets. "This is Fujino Shizuru, President of the Mahora Student Council. We have been informed that a kaiju has just appeared in the bay, and it might be heading towards us as we speak. You are encouraged to head towards the designated emergency shelters in an orderly fashion, following our designated discipline enforcers..."
"HARMAGGEDON!" the voice from before repeated.
Chaos and panic, as they say, ensued. People began running in all directions while screaming, so nobody really noticed it when Rider scooped Shinji up in her arms and gave a single high leap with him, landing on the rooftop of a general store. From there, they overlooked the panicking masses.
"This is bad!" the boy gasped. "What, what is it? Some kind of Super-Servant?"
"Might be..." Rider said dubiously, scowling. "Master, it's definitely coming this way, we must flee! I cannot fight this thing..."
Then it came into sight, doubling around a distant mountain, and clearly gigantic even in the distance. It was a lumbering, titanic humanoid monster of black skin and long limbs, with a tiny white head grafted directly, and with no visible neck, on misshapen wide shoulders.
"What the hell is that thing?!" Shinji screamed. Below them, more cries and yells abounded while festival goers scattered around, running into every direction.
"NO! NO! I SWEAR I THOUGHT SHE WAS EIGHTEEN!"
"I DIDN'T KNOW SHE WAS MY SISTER!"
"I'm too young to die!"
"My son! Has anyone seen my son!?"
Then another cruise missile hit it, squarely across the torso, connecting directly with a huge explosion but barely pushing it back.
There were more screams.
"MOM! TAKE MY HAND!"
"TH-THAT'S NOT GOJIRA!"
"Get out of my fucking way, you-!"
Rider grunted and began running away with Shinji in her arms. She was about to leap from rooftop to another when the ground trembled again, throwing her off balance, and she dropped to the street. She spun in mid-air to land on her feet like the proverbial cat, shielding Shinji with her body.
Then they saw a bright blue Renault Alpine A310- thank you, Wikipedia!- speeding madly towards them, and screeching to a mad, sudden halt in front of them, and one of its doors opened, and out peeked the head of the beautiful woman from the picture, smiling at the boy.
"Hey, hello, Shinji!" she chirped out cheerfully. "Come on, jump in! We gotta run for it before Big Boy arrives here!"
"Katsuragi-san...?" Shinji craned his neck forward. "Is that you?" He asked mainly because she was wearing a red jacket and skirt with a black shirt buttoned to the neck, and no cleavage shown. He mainly was familiar with her cleavage, since he really hadn't looked at the rest of the picture that well.
"Who else could I be?" Katsuragi Misato said, opening the back door and ushering them in. "You must be Shinji's tutor! Weird that Commander Ikari never mentioned you, but he's like that!"
Since he wasn't Emo enough to wish to die right yet, Shinji quickly jumped into the backseat, with Rider following him in and closing the door behind herself. "What's going on here?!" he asked. "Is this the end of the world?!"
"Well, maybe," the driver admitted, shrugging. "Get ready," she said.
"Uh, for what?" Shinji blinked, then saw the small memo pinned on next to the car's steering wheel. 'From Yukari-chan to Misato-chan, please drive more carefully, you scare even me!' He sweatdropped. "Oh, I get it…"
"TURBINES TO SPEED!" Misato yelled with a sudden maniacal high pitch, and sank a foot on the accelerator… "MISATOMOBILE, GO, GO, GO!"
"I, I think we just ran someone!" Shinji gasped in horror.
"No, we didn't!" Misato said as the car speeded away from the colossus, and Rider clung on for dear life. "The streets are clear by now!"
"I'm pretty sure you just ran a man over!" Shinji insisted.
"That's Itoshiki-sensei!" Misato said, briefly looking through the back mirror. "He'll be fine!"
"Give me the wheel!" Rider shouted.
"What? No!" Misato shouted back. "This is my car and I don't even know you!"
"I have A+ ranked Riding, and you will have us killed!"
"The hell are you talking about?!" the other female said as the world became a blur of velocity around them. Shinji began feeling upset in the stomach. "You don't even know where I'm taking us!"
"You're taking us to Hades, that's where!" Rider protested.
"You mean like Hell?" Misato smiled, wildly turning around a corner and crashing through a mercifully just abandoned stand of souvenirs. "Well, if you want, I can just drop you here so you deal with the Angel instead!"
Shinji blinked, and then looked back towards the giant monster. "That thing... it's an Angel?"
"It's a long story, I- oh, shit!" Misato cursed. The creature had just swatted aside one of the missiles shot at it with its slashing right claw, and the charge had rocketed down towards Mahora, becoming a fireball even before hitting a building, right in the way the car was taking. Misato struggled to get off course, and at the last moment, the vehicle managed to swerve out of the way of the falling debris.
A gas leak- real this once, not just a mage excuse- exploded before them and turned the car around, making it spin and tumble around a few times. Rider once again protected Shinji with her body, saving him from the worst of the impact, while Misato's seatbelt saved her life. Finally, the car stopped on all four wheels by a small group of gasping and shocked onlookers, and Misato shook some dust off her face, heaving a deep sigh.
She managed a weak smile and looked at Rider. "On second thought, you know what, I'll give you the wheel and tell you where to take us. That fine with you?"
"... I guess," Rider stared at her coldly, while a petrified Shinji twitched in her embrace.
