Like Father Like Son . . .

"Are the pilots ready?" The Commander asked as he lay amerced in the orange tinted glow from the LCL tank.

"Yes, the Captain was sent to retrieve them." The Sub-Commander replied shifting uncomfortably, he had never liked this place, though the person it stood to recover had become almost like a little sister to him. He had once respected and called the man now standing before him his friend as well.

The Commander turned to face his subordinate. "And the equipping of the Units?"

"Going as schedules, both will be ready for combat in no less than one hundred and sixty hours, acquiring the positron rifles was difficult . . . but the UN gave in once we told them what they're for."

The Commander smirked slightly, "I suppose they would after the incident fifteen years ago." He said coldly remembering that time all too well himself.

The sub commander shifted uncomfortably, "Do you really think we have a right to do this?" He asked, adjusting his glasses nervously.

"They would agree with me if they knew, but I don't think they are ready to know everything about . . . her."

"You seem to think you know an awful lot about them for someone who abandoned his own children." The Sub Commander growled.

The Commander fixed him with an icy gaze. "I did not just abandon them, I left them in the guardianship of a person I trust very deeply." He said.

The Sub Commander shook his head as he turned to leave the room. "Its not just that . . . The Shinji Ikari I knew would never have come to this."

Shinji did not turn as the door shut, instead starring at the LCL tank that held the fruit of his work, now all he had to do was retrieve her soul from SEELE, he would have her back if it was with the last breath he took. His hand brushed softly against the glass of the tank, a single being existed within, existed but did not live, he would never do what his father had done he wasn't trying to regain what he had lost from challenging God like his father had . . . He . . . just . . . wanted his wife back.

A pale hand pressed itself against the glass on the inner wall of the tank as Rei-IV smiled sadly at him, its white dress drifted in the currents of the tank like ephemeral wings. Rei-IV . . . He would not know it by anything else until it was his Rei once again. 'Please come back to me . . . don't make all I have worked for be in vain.'