Disclaimer: Neon Genesis Evangelion is the creation of Anno and Gainax. I don't own it, make no claims to it, and am making no profit from the fan fiction. No infringement of copyright is intended. In other words, please don't sue.

Disclaimer: I do not own DC Comics or anything associated with it, and I am making no profit from this fan fiction. No infringement of copyright is intended. In other words, please don't sue.

Prologue: Secret Origin

Krypton was dying.

For years, the proud people of this ancient world had refused to acknowledge that the end was coming and had buried their heads in the sand as the cataclysm approached. They had believed that the cradle of their civilization could never perish. It was the only place they could live without running the risk of polluting their glorious culture with foreign influences, so it had to be eternal.

They had all scoffed at Jor-El's predictions that Krypton was going to explode.

Only now, as the planet began to tear itself apart, did they finally acknowledge the horrible truth: Jor-El had never been some crazed alarmist; he had been right all along. If only they had seen it, they might have escaped to the stars.

As it was, only one child of Krypton could hope to escape this cataclysm, and that was Kal-El, the infant son of the only Kryptonian with the foresight to construct a space ship capable of interstellar flight. So, as deep fissures began to form all over the surface of the planet, allowing the molten mantle to spew forth, Jor-El frantically prepared this rocket for take off.

"It's possible for you to go with him, Lara," Jor-El spoke, not pausing in his work for a moment. "Even though I designed this ship to carry only one—"

"No," his wife said, quiet but firm. She gazed down at the infant boy she held in her arms. "I couldn't bear to risk his life by going along, and I won't leave you here to die alone."

"Thank you," Jor-El said softly, quietly relieved that he wouldn't have to face the end by himself. "The ship is ready."

Lara nodded, and with tears glistening in her eyes, carefully placed her only child within the cockpit. Jor-El sealed it, and then he and his wife stepped back as it launched, quickly escaping Krypton's gravity well and soaring off into the infinite blackness of space.

"Good-bye, my son," Lara whispered.

Jor-El gripped his wife's hand. "We will die, but our son will live."

Many Jor-El's in many realities would speak these words, or words like them, mere moments before the planet Krypton perished forever. In most of these realities, the prophecy made by the current patriarch of the House of El would prove true, and his son would arrive safe and sound on the planet Earth.

Unfortunately, this was not one of those realities. Jor-El had made the tiniest error when he had calculated the flight plan, and as a result, his son's ship would not take him to the Midwestern region of the United States, as Jor-El had intended. Instead, the ship would crash land in Germany's Black Forest, and the impact would kill the young life within.

One of the Earths that most needed a hero would have to do without Superman, but the legacy of Krypton wasn't dead quite yet.

"Terminated?" Hamilton gasped, as if he didn't quite comprehend the meaning of the word.

Hanna Huber, the chief administrator of Germany's only branch of STAR Laboratories, gave Hamilton a sympathetic look. "That's right, Emil," she said. "It's been decided that further research of the Visitor should be terminated."

"But why?" Hamilton asked, clearly bewildered as he began to pace restlessly about the room.

Hanna shook her head slightly; she had known he wouldn't take this well. Hamilton had accepted a transfer from one of the STAR Lab facilities in the US to work on studying the Visitor, and since then, the man had thoroughly romanticized the infant alien boy who hadn't survived his interstellar trek. Hell, the man was borderline obsessed with the Visitor.

"Money," Hanna answered, spreading her hands helplessly. "It's always money. GEHRIN gets all the UN grants these days, and the individual governments don't give out much anymore. In a few years, STAR will probably be a shadow of what it once was. You know that."

Hamilton nodded, absently tugging on his neat beard as he did so. It was obvious to Hanna, who knew him as well as anyone, that he was still reeling.

"But why has the study of the Visitor been cut?" he asked. "It should be the last thing to go!"

"Because, it shows no prospects of producing any kind of profitable results in the short term," Hanna answered.

Hamilton gave her an appalled look. Hanna scowled and snapped, "I'm not defending it! That's just the way it is. I have no ability to override the board, you know."

"I know," Hamilton said. "Still, the Visitor is an extraterrestrial life form! And if what my research shows is correct, had he lived, he could have been humanity's greatest champion…"

"Or he could have become the evil overlord of Earth," Hanna countered. "A lot of people are rather leery of aliens these days, what with all the rumors about the real cause of Second Impact, or that thing that landed in China."

Hamilton waved this off. "That's nothing but gossip. Just because someone who works for GEHRIN now says something, doesn't mean it's true."

"Perhaps not, but you can understand how people would cling to beliefs that aliens are responsible for such a catastrophe," Hanna responded, rather scathingly. "Something in our nature makes tragedy easier to cope with if we believe it wasn't completely random."

Hamilton sometimes appeared to be very high up in the ivory tower to her, so much so that he barely seemed to grasp the magnitude of Second Impact, which wasn't exactly in the distant past.

The bespectacled American didn't respond, and Hanna soon softened. "Look, I did manage to secure enough funding to have the Visitor put in stasis, and everything pertaining to the project stored. It's possible that we'll find more funding from somewhere and will be able to resume the project."

Hamilton just nodded, knowing all too well how unlikely that was. And even if STAR did get new funding and recommenced the study of the Visitor, it was possible that it might not be within Hamilton's lifetime.

Hamilton kept busy over the next few weeks, assigned to other duties at STAR. However, the Visitor was never far from his mind.

Even he had to admit he had no real notion of why he'd begun to imagine that the Visitor would have been one of Earth's greatest heroes had he survived his arrival on the planet. The idea had just thoroughly gripped his imagination as the analysis of the being's genetic code began to reveal the powers the boy would have enjoyed if he'd lived.

That vision had only grown stronger after Second Impact had rocked the world, and humanity had so desperately needed a hero. Hamilton had no real idea of how studying the Visitor would give the world that hero, but that had never diminished his zeal in the slightest.

This latest command from the board to all but scrap the project made him feel as though humanity was throwing away a massive, and perhaps very necessary, opportunity.

So, this was the brooding state of mind he was in when she arrived.

"Morning, Olga," Hamilton greeted the front desk lady at STAR Labs as he absently nursed a cup of coffee.

It was a day very much like any other, and he wasn't expecting anything out of the ordinary to occur.

"Morgen, Dr. Hamilton," Olga greeted. "You have a patient in room one. She requested you specifically."

Hamilton arched an eyebrow at this. This particular branch of STAR Labs was, in addition to being a genetic research facility, also a fertility clinic. It was a duty that had been more or less thrust upon them by the German government after Second Impact, in an effort to help get the population back up. Not that the board had minded; they had already had most of the necessary equipment and expertise available, and it was a way of bringing in much needed revenue.

However, he knew of no patients of his who should be coming in at the moment, and he couldn't think of anyone else but a previous patient who would ask for him by name.

"Very good, thank you," he said to Olga as he gave a mental shrug and headed for exam room one.

He plucked the patient folder out of the plastic container that had been attached to the door of the exam room, then opened the door and walked in.

"Guten Morgen, Emil."

Hamilton jumped slightly at the unexpected sound of that familiar voice, then he broke out into a broad grin. "Kyoko!" he exclaimed.

The two exchanged a brief hug, which Hamilton tried not to enjoy too much. She had been his co-worker once, before GEHRIN had lured her away from STAR with promises of a higher salary, grander projects to work on, and an important position on her new research team. Hamilton had to admit to having harbored an infatuation with the striking and brilliant red headed woman. Had he been a decade or two younger, and she single, he doubtless would have pursued her. Indeed, if not for the twenty year age gap between them, he might have pursued her despite her being married, if only because he secretly disliked her husband Richard very strongly.

"It's been far too long, Emil," Kyoko said once they had separated.

"Yes, it really has been," Hamilton agreed. "You don't know how often I find myself wishing you'd never left STAR."

Kyoko's smile wavered somewhat. "You should join GEHRIN. I know they've made you offers, Emil. A man of your intelligence…"

He waved the suggestion off. "I'm afraid circumstances have me quite tied to STAR," he said, thinking of the Visitor. "So, to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?"

"Oh," Kyoko began, suddenly looking rather bashful, "well, you see, Richard and I want to start a family. We've been trying since before the Impact."

Hamilton nodded. "You're very brave," he commented softly.

Certainly he would never want to bring a child into the world as it was now, not that he really had the option, anyway, lacking a woman who would be willing to bear his offspring.

"Thank you," Kyoko said. "But, well, when nothing happened, we went to get tested. It turns out he's completely sterile."

"I see," Hamilton said, ruthlessly suppressing the malicious little smirk that threatened to appear on his face at this knowledge. "So, I take it that you're looking to become pregnant via a sperm donor?"

Kyoko nodded. "Yes," she said. "I've already gotten through all the red tape and everything at another facility. I came here to get the actual procedure done."

Hamilton nodded and opened Kyoko's folder. His eyebrows went up as he read what was inside. "Not very picky, were you?" he commented before he was able to stop himself.

In his experience, most women who tried to become pregnant with donor sperm very carefully selected their child's father. The system mandated confidentiality for the donors, of course, but the clinic kept a log of the physical traits of each donor, which would-be mothers often poured over endlessly before selecting one.

Kyoko, on the other hand, had simply stated that she wanted the donor to be free of any genetic ailments (pretty much a given with any woman using this service), and that the donor should have at least a moderate resemblance to her husband.

Kyoko smiled nervously. "I didn't want to waste time by being overly picky. Really, I don't put much stock in those ten word descriptions of the men. I just need the child to be able to pass for Richard's own offspring," she said. "He's a little leery of doing it this way."

Hamilton narrowed his eyes slightly. In the past, that statement would have enabled him to throw all kinds of roadblocks into Kyoko's path, something he wouldn't have considered a bad idea. In the post-Second Impact world, though, getting the population up was key, and many laws had been changed to reflect that.

It's probably just my own emotions clouding my judgment, he thought.

"All right," he said. "Let's begin, then. Hopefully by the time we're done, Kyoko, you'll be an expecting mother."

Not much later, Hamilton found himself heading for the cold storage room where the lab kept all of its donor sperm. He really had no intention of doing anything other than randomly selecting sperm which met Kyoko's very broad specifications.

So perhaps it was simply fate that he just happened to pass the room where all the material relating to the Visitor was stored.

Hamilton walked right past it at first, then found himself stopping short as the inevitable idea occurred to him. He possessed the equipment and the skills necessary to use the Visitor's genetic material to fertilize a human egg cell. For all the crucial differences between the Visitor's genetic makeup and human DNA, the two species were shockingly similar, and it would take very little technological interference to make the creation of a hybrid possible.

Really, it was only because the full extent of the powers the Visitor could have had was still largely a mystery that Hamilton had never petitioned to be allowed to clone him or create his offspring, knowing he'd never get the green light until that was fully discovered.

Surely, he mused, any child raised by Kyoko would grow to be a good person, someone who would use any powers he or she developed for good.

But, no, it wouldn't be right to do such a thing to her, Hamilton thought, but did not walk away.

On the other hand, he thought, the Visitor did technically match the description Kyoko had given him—if only because she had probably assumed that it went without saying that the father should be human. And really, the child would be blessed with abilities no ordinary human could ever hope to have. Wouldn't any would-be mother want her child to be gifted?

Hamilton hesitated for a long moment, then he opened the door to the Visitor's storeroom and went inside.

Fifteen Years Later…

As it had been so many times before in Earth's history, the ocean had become a battlefield. However, this was no normal struggle of man versus man on the high seas. No, this time, it was mankind fighting against a monster bent on eradicating them.

And humanity's final trump, Evangelion, was caught between said monster's teeth as it swam about beneath the waves.

Humanity wasn't about to give up yet, however. They were, as the Children of Adam were discovering, a very stubborn bunch.

At the moment, Misato was just finishing her explanation of her latest crazy plan to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, almost literally this time. Neither of the two EVA pilots within the cramped entry plug had really absorbed the whole thing, but fortunately, all that was really required of them was that they get the Angel's mouth open.

"We'll do the best we can," Shinji Ikari said, even as Asuka Langley Soryu rained punches down on his back for committing the crime of piloting her Unit Two without her express consent.

"Get off me, you pervert!" the Second Child snapped, as he was practically in her lap, thanks largely to the entry plug's cramped confines.

"But we have to free ourselves, or we're done for!" Shinji protested.

Asuka growled slightly, but couldn't deny that he was right. She leaned forward, grabbing hold of the control yokes and pressing herself against the Third Child in the process.

"Don't go getting any ideas," she warned.

"Works for me," he grunted back.

The two Children pulled at the control yokes as they put all their will to the task of making the EVA open the Sixth Angel's great jaws.

Open, open, open…

Unit Two was pulled toward the surface as its umbilical cable was retracted by the Over the Rainbow, the Sixth Angel being dragged along with it. Two old but still powerful battleships began to sink, preparing for their final assault.

The Angel's jaws remained shut all the while.

Shinji and Asuka redoubled their efforts as their demise drew nearer with each passing second, and unconsciously pulled harder on the control yokes as they did so.

Open, open, open, OPEN!

At the last possible moment, Unit Two's four eyes lit up with a blazing white light, and the crimson Evangelion went into motion, forcing the terrible maw of the Sixth Angel open.

Seconds later, the two sinking battleships rammed themselves down the Angel's throat, and their mighty forward guns roared in anger one final time, sending their ordnance directly into the Angel's core. The fish like monster's body bulged grotesquely as a result of this assault, and finally it could withstand no more and exploded, sending a gigantic column of water soaring upwards, along with Unit Two.

The red Evangelion soared through the air, its arms and legs flailing about wildly, until either the skill of its pilot or some stroke of incredible luck caused it to land right on the deck of the super carrier Over the Rainbow, where it slumped down, quickly deactivating.

Within the entry plug, the two Children were completely silent for several seconds. Then…

"Mein Gott!" Asuka exclaimed. "What the hell?!"

An outside observer could be forgiven for thinking that the cause of the Second Child's exclamation was the intense and just plain crazy battle that had marked her entry into the war against the Angels.

Said outside observer would be mistaken, however, as the cause of the Second Child's shock and distress wasn't the battle at all, but the control yokes that she still held in her hands.

Both of them had been ripped completely out of the command interface and were now connected to nothing.

Author's Notes: Eva fans will note that I basically mixed Asuka's manga origins with her anime origins, which I hope nobody minds. I actually think it works quite well on a number of levels. For one, it would offer a sort of explanation for why Asuka's father was the second worst dad on in NGE after Gendo. If he secretly never really felt like she was his child, the way he apparently let NERV do what they wish with her and neglected her makes a bit more sense.

Also, a number of DC heroes are aliens, which presents a problem, since none of the ladies of Eva were aliens, obviously. I could just say that some kind of exposure to the Angels or something caused them to develop powers like those of the DC hero I want them to be, regardless if that hero has powers as a result of being an alien or not, but I'd prefer to do that as little as possible. Besides, doing it this way leaves certain doors open to me that would be closed otherwise.

A couple of things I feel I should also note here. One is that I'm a big fan of the DC Animated Universe, so you'll probably be seeing that influencing some of these stories quite a bit. One instance of that is Hamilton; I preferred the portrayal of him in Superman the Animated Series (to be referred to from here on out as STAS), where he served as Superman's tech support. I have no plans for him to be Ruin or anything, so don't hold your breath waiting for his heel turn. And yes, before anyone asks, I know what he did in Justice League Unlimited.

That said, I intend to cherry pick like crazy from all aspects of the Superman mythos. As the character's been around for about 70 years, there's a lot to chose from, and I'll grab any idea I like and feel I can use to good effect.

Oh, and Orion, I know, no mystery about which superhero the girl's becoming again, but I figured that the second people saw "Jor-El" and "Krypton" it would be obvious, and I liked this the way it was. With other ladies will be less obvious about what powers they're getting.

By the way, you might like to know that marcoasalazarm at deviantart has been mixing Eva girls with comic book characters for a long time now. Go check his page out if you want to see Asuka doing the Supergirl thing. There are also pictures of some of the ladies from the original SOE series.

Anyway, I have again rambled too much. So just let me say thanks as always to my readers and reviewers.

Omake

Rejected Heroes (part one)

"Hello all," spoke a stocky, bespectacled young man sitting at a desk with a computer upon it. "Mike313 breaching the fourth wall here. I hope you don't mind the brief self-insert too much.

"Now, I suspect a few of you are asking 'Why the hell did you make Asuka Kryptonian? Superman stands for truth, justice, and the American way! We can't expect that from the Red Devil!'"

The author then paused. "Of course, since none of our ladies are actually American citizens, none of them can really be expected to fight for the American way, but that's neither here nor there," he mused with a dismissive wave. "Anyway, I can assure I do have reasons for choosing as I did for Asuka, but I can't tell you most of them because that might well spoil parts of the story."

The author leaned back in his chair. "However, something I can share with you, dear readers, is why I didn't make Asuka one of several other heroes I considered for this story," he said. "And here to help me with the explanation is Asuka herself."

The Second Child tromped into the room, a scowl on her face. "I don't see why I have to help you with this," she grumbled, crossing her arms.

"Because I reserved the right to write this story a long time ago so you'd have an author who actually likes you doing your second Superwomen of Eva story?" Mike responded dryly. "You owe me, Soryu."

"You eventually decided to write pretty much the whole damn series," she protested.

"Yeah, but I called dibs on yours a long time before that," the author pointed out.

"Fine," Asuka huffed, "let's just get this over with."

"Great, let's begin!" Mike said, then turned back to the readers. "One of the supers I considered for this was the Spectre, DC comic's own spirit of vengeance."

A man with chalk white skin and a green, hooded cloak suddenly appeared in the room, much to the Second Child's surprise. "Mein Gott!"

The man then rounded on Asuka and actually plunged into her torso, vanishing. Asuka screamed, and suddenly her skin went just as white as his had been and the green cloak appeared on her.

"What the hell?!" Asuka exclaimed. "I make Ayanami look tan!"

The author cheerfully ignored her. "The Spectre appealed to me for Asuka's story for a number of reasons. First, I like the duality of having Asuka be the spirit of vengeance in both SOE-verses, and the Spectre is more than different enough from the Ghost Rider that I wouldn't feel I was being unoriginal. The origin would be easy enough; I basically would just have had to kill Asuka—"

"WHAT?!"

"And then have had Spectre join with her soul," the author continued. "Piece of cake from my standpoint. Plus, Asuka effectively being a ghost would have the added bonus of giving me ample opportunity to screw with canon. With Asuka dead, Unit Two would need a new pilot, after all."

"The hell it would!" Asuka snapped.

"And as an added bonus, one of the Specter's weaknesses is the Spear of Destiny, which is really just the Lance of Longinus by another name. I could make use of that fact somehow, I'm sure," the author continued.

"What? The Lance is bigger than an Eva. Trying to kill someone human sized with it would be about as effective as trying to kill a fly with a hand grenade," Asuka pointed out, sweat dropping.

"But there were problems, too," the writer went on. "First and most importantly, I'm not actually all that familiar with the Spectre. Most of my exposure to him was when he was paired with Hal Jordan, and that wasn't exactly situation normal for the Spectre."

Asuka's sweat drop grew larger. "Yeah, that's a pretty big problem."

"Then there's the fact that I couldn't think of a way to bring Asuka back to life at the end. Also, Asuka as the Spectre would have Shinji romancing with a ghost, which is just so damn cliché. So, I ultimately decided to can this idea."

The Spectre suddenly emerged from Asuka's form and flew off, quickly disappearing. The Second Child breathed a sigh of relief as she realized she was back to normal. "Thank Gott."

"Now, the next rejected idea…"

"No, damn it!" Asuka shrieked.

To be continued in rejected heroes, part two…