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: Danny Phantom is the creation of Butch Hartman and Nickelodeon. 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.

Life Before NERV, Part One of Three: Strange New Home

Shinji couldn't believe what was happening.

"B-But, Daddy, w-what do you m-mean I'm not going with you?" the little boy sobbed.

"I mean I don't have the time for you any longer," Gendo replied firmly, his voice devoid of emotion. "Your uncle should be along shortly. He will take care of you from now on."

"B-But, I wanna stay with you!" Shinji exclaimed.

"That is not possible," Gendo replied. "Don't attempt to follow me."

With that, the man turned and walked away with long, quick strides that the young boy couldn't hope to duplicate. Shinji watched his father's back in disbelief. This couldn't be happening. It just couldn't. He had to be dreaming.

The boy pinched himself on the arm, hard. "Ow!"

I'm not dreaming, he thought, devastated.

Still sobbing softly, Shinji walked over to a small bench that was present inside the train station. He watched the train his father had boarded, telling himself that his father would change his mind and come back. He had to.

But he didn't. Shinji watched as the train took off, moving slowly at first, then gaining speed. In minutes, it had gone far enough away that Shinji couldn't see it any longer.

He pinched himself on the arm again. It hurt this time, too; he hadn't dreamed the train's departure, either.

A few people walking about the train station cast pitying looks at the crying child who sat alone on the hard bench, but most of them thought better of interfering. One woman went up to Shinji and asked him if he was lost. When Shinji told her he was waiting for his uncle to pick him up, however, she departed.

Time passed. The station gradually grew less crowded, until Shinji was one of the very few people still in it. The hours felt endless to the young child, and only seemed to grow longer as his stomach started to rumble with hunger. Still, there was no sign of his uncle.

As the sky started to grow orange with an impending sunset, a truly terrible thought struck little Shinji. What if his father felt he was such an unworthy child that he hadn't truly bothered to see to his care, and there was no uncle coming to pick him up? What if his daddy had left him in this place with nothing but a lie?

He didn't remember either his mother or his father ever mentioning that he had an uncle before…

No! Daddy wouldn't do that! Shinji thought.

Yet, that morning, he would have said with absolute certainty that his father would never leave him like this.

Just as the little boy was about to have the mother of all meltdowns, a booming voice from sounded across the train station.

"Shinji! Is that you, boy?"

Feeling relief sweep through him, Shinji turned to face this uncle person…and suddenly, it once again seemed very possible that he was dreaming up this whole crazy day.

His uncle was a giant of a man, easily over six feet in height, and to the little boy, he looked to be nearly as wide. Yet, a man of his size (and girth) was, while unusual, not exactly surreal. His clothing, however, was a different story. The man was wearing a one piece orange jump suit, along with black boots and black gloves. Around his large waist was what looked like some kind of utility belt.

"Y-You're my uncle?" Shinji stammered out.

"That's right!" the big man boomed. Shinji winced slightly, wondering if his uncle's voice had a lower setting. "I'm your Uncle Ichigo, and you're going to live with me from now on. By the way, sorry about being so late to pick you up. I was working in the lab, and, well, you know how it is." He added sheepishly.

Shinji didn't know what his uncle was talking about at all, but he just nodded.

"Great!" Ichigo exclaimed. "Well, come on, Shinji, let me show you your new home!"

"Um, Uncle, I was wondering if we could get something to eat," Shinji said hopefully.

"Good idea! I was just thinking that I could go for some fudge!" Ichigo exclaimed.

Shinji followed his uncle out of the station and into the parking lot outside. Ichigo led him to a large, white van with all manner of dishes and antennae sticking out of the roof. On the side were kanji that the young child couldn't read, all of which were surrounded by green flame designs.

The boy pinched himself again. It still hurt.

"What are you doing there, Shinji?" Ichigo asked.

"…nothing," Shinji lied as he climbed into the passenger seat of the van.

"Okay," Ichigo said, accepting this at once. "Say, Shinji, what do you think about ghosts?"

"Ghosts?"

Ichigo took Shinji to some greasy spoon restaurant, which he apparently frequented quite a bit, given that everyone who worked there knew him by name. They sat down to eat, and though the boy was famished from not having eaten since early that morning, Shinji nearly forgot about his appetite; he was so amazed at both the speed his uncle ate with and the amount he put away. It certainly wasn't difficult to figure out why Ichigo was as big as he was.

Upon leaving the restaurant, they climbed back into the bizarre van, and Ichigo drove into a small town. It was probably the most normal thing Shinji had seen all day.

Or at least, it was, until the van turned a corner and Ichigo's home came into view. The place had probably been an ordinary home at one time, but there was nothing normal about it now. The roof of the house was as crowded with dishes, antennae, and other hardware as the roof of the van, and there was a glowing green neon sign outside. These strange accessories seemed to be the only thing about the house that was in good repair. The once white paint had been turned a light gray by time and dirt, and it was peeling in places. The lawn had been taken over by weeds, and there were various pieces of equipment Shinji couldn't even try to identify strew across it. The windows were so dirty that they were barely transparent any longer.

It didn't look like any place where Shinji would want to live.

"Home sweet home!" Ichigo exclaimed, getting of the van.

Shinji also exited the vehicle and followed his uncle inside, carefully weaving about to avoid the rubbish in the yard. The door creaked as Ichigo opened it.

"Well, this is it," the big man said as he flicked on a light switch, causing a naked light bulb on the ceiling to illuminate the main room. "This is where you'll be staying from now on."

The inside of the place was as shabby as the outside. Dust covered everything except the endless gizmos in various stages of assembly which Ichigo had indiscriminately strew everywhere. The puke green carpet looked like it had never seen the business end of a vacuum cleaner. The walls were nearly covered with posters that showed badly drawn ghosts, most of which had bull's-eyes painted over them, but even they couldn't conceal all the holes that someone or something had punched into the drywall.

The place seemed more than bizarre to the little boy; it felt downright alien. He looked up at his uncle, an expression of disbelief on his young face.

"Great, isn't it?" Ichigo said, cheerfully oblivious to his new ward's distress. "Come on, let me show you your room!"

The big man headed for a nearby staircase, with the little boy following behind reluctantly. "I cleaned out one of my storage rooms for you to live in," Ichigo said proudly.

They reached the top of the stairs, and Ichigo opened the door to the room that was to be Shinji's. The boy walked inside and looked about, something that took nearly no time at all, given how little there was to see. The room consisted of four walls, which were dirty but mercifully without any holes, and a window. A small futon had been placed in the middle of the floor. Other than that, the place was empty.

"Well…this is it," Ichigo said, sounding just a tad awkward for the first time since Shinji had met him. "Any questions?"

A thousand thousand replies sprang immediately to Shinji's mind. Indeed, it felt as though he had nothing but questions. He wanted to know why his father didn't want him anymore. He wanted to know if he'd really have to live in this strange, awful place from now on. He wanted to know why his mother had died inside of some big mecha. He wanted to know why the world had decided to stop playing by the rules since that terrible day.

"Are you my father's brother or my mother's brother?" he blurted out instead.

It wasn't exactly the most important question he had, but it was something that had been bugging him since he'd met this man. Neither of his parents had ever mentioned him before, and this uncle person didn't look much like either one of them.

Ichigo threw his head back and laughed. Shinji winced slightly as the loud noise hurt his ears.

"I'm your mother's older brother," Ichigo said.

"You don't seem very sad, then," Shinji said. "It hasn't been a long time since she…" he trailed off, not wanting to say it.

Ichigo sobered. "Listen, Shinji, Yui and me, we never had a whole to do with each other once we were both adults. Your mother felt that I was a quack scientist and kept her distance from me. She didn't want to be associated with what I do."

"What do you do?" Shinji asked.

"Hunt ghosts!" Ichigo exclaimed, all enthusiasm and energy once more. "I build equipment to detect, combat, and trap ectoplasm-based entities!"

"My mother said ghosts aren't real," Shinji said.

"She would," Ichigo grumbled, shaking a beefy fist at no one in particular before turning back to the little boy. "Listen, Shinji, ghosts are real, and someday, I'm going to prove it to the entire world! Then they'll take me seriously!"

Shinji swallowed. He'd been just fine with believing that ghosts were only pretend.

"So, anything else you wanted to ask me?" Ichigo said.

"Um, if you and Mother didn't get along, why are you taking me in now?" Shinji asked.

Ichigo shrugged. "There was no one else," he answered, it never even occurring to him that he should perhaps lie a little.

"Oh…" said Shinji, his thin shoulders slumping.

"Well, I'm sure you're tired," Ichigo said. "So I'll let you get some shuteye."

With that, the big man switched off the lights in the room and then quickly exiting, shutting the door behind him as he left.

Shinji felt his way around the room until he located his new futon, then got down on it and wrapped the blanket around himself. The four-year-old didn't know what scared him more: his new home and his new life, or the new knowledge that ghosts really did exist.

Six Years Later…

"Uncle!" Shinji called as he descended the stairs that led to the house's basement laboratory. "Uncle, are you down here?"

Shinji was answered by the sound of a small explosion. In just about any other house, this would have been ample reason to panic. The ten-year-old just sighed and continued walking down the stairs.

"Problems with the prototype again, Uncle?" Shinji asked.

Ichigo Ikari was laying on his back on the hard basement floor, a thin coating of dark soot on his face and the front of his ever-present orange jumpsuit. Near him was the apparent source of the explosion, a large, octagonal device.

"Shinji?" Ichigo asked. "What are you doing here?"

"I still live here, Uncle," Shinji deadpanned.

Most people would have thought that Ichigo was merely disoriented by the small blast he'd just subjected himself to, but Shinji knew better. Barely a week passed that his uncle didn't express surprise at least once upon finding that his nephew lived at him.

"Oh," Ichigo said. "Well, anyway, I was just about to get the Ghost Portal working, all right, but the ecto-filter must still need work."

"Uh-huh," Shinji replied, his tone dripping skepticism that Ichigo completely failed to pick up on. "Anyway, Uncle, I'm going to buy groceries, but I need some money."

"Hmm? Oh, sure," Ichigo replied, patting down his jumpsuit's pockets until he found the one that held his wallet. "Don't forget to buy ham," he told Shinji as he handed the boy some money.

Shinji resisted the urge to sigh in a long-suffering sort of way. His uncle always told him not to forget to buy ham, even though he never did.

"I won't, Uncle," Shinji said, accepting the bills Ichigo held out.

Once he had the money in his hot little hand, Shinji quickly turned and rushed back up the stairs before his uncle could start rambling to him about his so-called Ghost Portal.

Once out of the basement, Shinji passed through the first floor, which was still as much of a dirty wreck as it had been the day he'd moved in. Shinji had attempted to clean the place in the past, but trying to keep Ichigo Ikari's home clean was like building a sandcastle in the face of the approaching tide. The man was just such a force for messiness that Shinji had long ago learned to content himself with keeping his own small room tidy.

Reaching the front door, Shinji slipped out of the house and quickly picked his way across the cluttered lawn before making it to the sidewalk and leaving Wonderland.

Not that the place Shinji thought of as "the real world" was so great, but at least the rest of Shinjuku-2 was normal, sane even.

As he traversed the few blocks to the store, the boy silently thought about the odd form his life had taken since he'd been sent to live with his uncle. The man's obsession with ghosts had never wavered in the slightest in all the time Shinji had known his Uncle Ichigo, much to Shinji's displeasure.

He had also learned a few things in the time since he'd first arrived, such as the fact that there was more to the schism that had existed between his uncle and his mother than Ichigo had first told him. As it had turned out, Yui and Ichigo's father had been a wealthy man. When he'd passed on, both his children had discovered that his will left his entire estate to the eldest, and only, son. His mother had requested that Ichigo split the inherence with her anyway, since her relationship with their father had been quite good, and she couldn't believe that he'd truly wished to have Ichigo be the sole heir. In all likelihood, the man had just never gotten around to updating his will after Yui's birth. However, Ichigo had refused, saying he needed all the money for his research into the paranormal.

Shinji arrived at the grocery store at this point, and he put his less than pleasant musing about his uncle from his mind. He quickly navigated the aisles, picking up the items he wanted, as well as Uncle Ichigo's precious ham. Shinji had started doing the grocery shopping and most of the cooking years ago, as Ichigo rarely purchased anything besides pork products, chocolate, and ice cream. The man also couldn't cook much of anything besides bacon.

I shouldn't be thinking ill of Uncle like this, Shinji chided himself. He took me in when no one else would.

Shaking his head to clear all these thoughts, Shinji proceeded with his shopping trip, and was soon leaving the store with a bag of groceries. He'd gotten everything he wanted, and was actually in a rather cheerful mood as he left the store. There was even a little bounce in his step.

"Hey, Ikari!"

Shinji grimaced as he came to a stop and turned, seeing another boy that was significantly larger than him approaching.

"Hello, Yuuto," Shinji replied, trying to keep his voice as level and polite as possible.

"Whatcha got there, Ikari?" Yuuto asked.

"J-Just groceries," Shinji said, hating himself for the tremble that got into his voice.

"Really? You're sure it's not something for one of your freak uncle's crazy gadgets?" Yuuto demanded.

"No! It's just food," Shinji said.

A malicious gleam appeared in Yuuto's eyes. "I think I better check."

Quicker than Shinji could react, Yuuto snatched the bag out of the smaller boy's hands and began to riffle through it. He removed a carton of eggs and pretended to inspect it closely. "Hmm, these look okay," he decided.

Then Yuuto carelessly tossed the carton over his shoulder. It flew open as it fell to the ground, and all twelve eggs shattered as they hit the pavement.

"Hey!" Shinji shouted. "Stop that!"

He tried to snatch the bag of groceries back, but Yuuto easily reached out and shoved him hard before Shinji could touch it. The smaller boy was knocked to the ground, landing painfully on his rear.

"Hmm, this looks safe, too," Yuuto said, tossing a container of miso to the ground. It broke open, spilling the brown paste on the ground.

"Stop!" Shinji yelled and made another attempt to save his food, but Yuuto was easily able to fend him off again.

In minutes, the bully had "inspected" and then spilled the contents of a container of tofu, several packages of strawberry pocky (Shinji's favorite snack), a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, and several packets of spices all over the sidewalk. Only Uncle Ichigo's stupid ham survived the abuse.

"Well, congratulations, Ikari," Yuuto said once he was done, handing the now empty bag back to Shinji. "No weird ghost gizmos in there! Not that it would make a difference, anyway. Your Uncle's just an old kook."

"Thank you for checking," Shinji replied through gritted teeth, "thank you so much."

"You're welcome, Ikari!" Yuuto replied cheerfully, then hopped on a bike Shinji hadn't noticed until now and sped off.

Shinji just stood there and watched him ride away. He was sorely tempted to pursue the jerk, maybe even try and poke a stick between the spokes of his bike's tires, but experience had taught him that retaliating was not a good idea. One of his teachers at school had once told him that bullies were actually very afraid of their victims fighting back. Shinji had tested that theory with Yuuto once when the bully had been especially insufferable, actually punching him while in the grip of pure rage. He vividly remembered how Yuuto's eyes had lit up like a neon sign, which had made Shinji realize that he'd just made a very big mistake. He had received two black eyes, a busted lip, and a score of bruises for that, and because there had been witnesses willing to say that Shinji had been the first to take a swing, he had been the only one punished.

Sighing, Shinji picked up the ham and tried to walk off, but he was quickly stopped.

"You there, boy!"

Shinji turned to see a policeman approaching. He, like most authority figures Shinji was familiar with, had the worst timing humanly possible.

"Yes, sir?" Shinji asked.

"Did that mess come from your bag?" the cop asked, gesturing toward all the spilled food.

"Yes, sir."

"And you weren't just going to leave it there, were you?" the cop asked.

Shinji didn't even try to protest this injustice. He just sighed, kneeled down, and began to clean up the ruined food.

By the time Shinji returned home, he was in an understandably terrible mood.

How does Yuuto always just manage to avoid getting into trouble? He wondered as he trudged inside.

The only silver lining that Shinji could detect was that his uncle probably wouldn't remember he'd already given his nephew grocery money that day, so getting enough cash to replace the lost food shouldn't pose much of a problem.

"Uncle!" Shinji called as he stepped inside. "Uncle!"

There was no answer. Frowning, Shinji made his way into the kitchen, and found a note attached to the refrigerator with a magnet. Ichigo had left it right at the top of fridge's door, as he always did on the few occasions when he left a note for his nephew, so Shinji had to stand on a chair to get at the piece of paper. Once he had it in hand, he quickly read it.

Shinji, went to the next town to pick up supplies for my inventions. Be back soon. P.S. Could you tighten up the loose screws on the inside of the Ghost Portal for me? Thanks.

"Wonderful," Shinji grumbled, crumpling the note up and throwing it away.

One of the few things Ichigo was very good at was keeping his money well concealed. Even after having lived with him for so long, Shinji had no idea where his uncle kept any, aside from the bank and his wallet. And since "back soon" meant "maybe I'll be home by the time you go to bed" in Ichigo-speak, Shinji knew he had a choice of ham or cold cereal for dinner.

Shinji had grown powerfully sick of ham, and pork in general, a long time ago.

"What else can go wrong today?" he wondered aloud.

Then, realizing what he'd just done, he looked about warily. He breathed a sigh of relief when a bolt of lightning didn't tear through the wall and strike him.

"Guess I'd better head downstairs and get to work on Uncle's stupid Ghost Portal," Shinji said, taking a considerable amount of vindictive pleasure from calling the thing stupid in his uncle's home.

Then he again looked about, half expecting the man to be standing right behind him. He wasn't, but Shinji closed his mouth and scurried down into the basement anyway.

Once there, he was able to quickly locate a screwdriver, since the basement workshop was the only place in the house that Ichigo bothered to keep even remotely neat and orderly. Then he quickly donned a small white and black jumpsuit; Uncle Ichigo was adamant that such attire be worn whenever working with his ghost-related instruments. Shinji had no idea why this was, but he'd learned it was easier to simply not question that sort of thing.

Properly garbed and with tool in hand, Shinji stepped inside the "Ghost Portal" and soon located a number of screws that had been inserted into the holes they were meant for but had not been tightened at all. Apparently, his uncle had had some flash of inspiration before he'd done the job and had rushed out.

Whatever, Shinji thought, and began the chore.

It wasn't exactly a difficult task, but there were a lot of screws there. Also, as the portal was effectively a big, metal box that was missing one wall, it quickly grew hot and stuffy inside the thing. Shinji could soon feel sweat running down his skinny frame beneath his clothes.

His ire began to rise along with the temperature in the large device. The whole giant gizmo was ridiculous, anyway. A portal to the world of ghosts? It was like something out a cartoon, he thought, and a silly cartoon at that. His uncle's whole obsession with ghosts was just plain silly, but its consequences for Shinji weren't at all funny.

That silly obsession was the reason his guardian could never spare more than a moment's worth of time and attention for him.

That silly obsession was the reason he was picked on so much at school. Even the teachers made fun of him and his uncle when they thought he wasn't listening.

And who knew what might have been different if Ichigo hadn't taken all of the inheritance to fund his silly obsession, rather than sharing it with his sister? It could have changed the whole life of Shinji's mother, including the incident that killed her.

Shinji might still be happy if it wasn't for Ichigo's obsession. He might still have a family that was whole.

Suddenly bursting with anger, the boy took out his frustrations upon the very thing that currently embodied his uncle's obsession: the portal.

He kicked the inside of it with all his might, not caring in the least about the pain that shot up his leg as a result, the small act of rebellion feeling more satisfying than anything Shinji had ever done before.

He was actually thinking about doing it again when the machinery inside the device began to hum.

Uh-oh, was all Shinji had time to think before it happened.

White light exploded from the back of the portal, washing over Shinji's small form. The boy threw back his head and screamed, feeling needles of pain stabbing him all throughout his body, both on the outside and the inside.

And though he couldn't see it, Shinji was changed. Changed at a very basic level—the molecular level to be precise—as ectoplasm bonded itself to his DNA, the very thing that made him what he was.

Then the flare of light and energy ended, leaving Shinji laying on the floor inside the portal, a thin trail of pale smoke rising from his form.

For several moments, Shinji just lay there, not quite daring to get up. He felt fairly certain that something was wrong with him, and he was in no hurry to figure out what. His whole body was tingling, and he felt weird in a way he couldn't put into words.

Eventually finding the will to get up and confront whatever had just happened, Shinji shakily rose to his feet. As he did so, he noticed the strangest thing: the colors of his jumpsuit had been inverted; the formerly black gloves, boots, collar, and belt had turned white, while the rest of the material, which had once been white, was now black.

"Weird," he said.

Since there was no mirror in the basement workshop, Shinji went staggering up the stairs and then toward the bathroom, feeling a bit dizzy and a little sick. He hesitated outside the bathroom door for a minute, feeling very reluctant to see what the odd occurrence had done to him, especially after seeing what it had done to his clothing.

However, there was no way around it; Shinji pushed the door open, strode inside, looked at his reflection…and gasped at what he saw. His normally dark hair had become snow white, and his skin was also paler than it should be. His eyes were the most disturbing of all; normally blue, they had changed to an electric green and glowed with an eerie light.

"What's happened to me?" he asked his reflection.

His reflection answered by abruptly vanishing. Shinji let out a yelp of fright, then released another as he looked down at himself and saw nothing. Before he could even attempt to compose himself, he suddenly felt the terrifying sensation of falling, even though he was standing upon a piece of floor that was supposed to be entirely solid. He screamed as he went downwards, his invisible form falling straight through the floor.

"Ooph!" the air rushed out of Shinji's lungs as he crashed down onto the floor of the basement, mercifully not going any further down.

Then his body became visible again. Before Shinji could react to this, two rings of white suddenly came into being around his waist. One went up his form and the other down, and where they passed, he changed back to normal. The jumpsuit just plain disappeared, leaving him in his regular clothes.

He held his hands up before his face, examining them closely. The skin that covered them was the right shade, not pale like his face had been mere minutes ago.

On some level, Shinji knew he should have been freaking out, but he felt strangely calm. Maybe it was just because his brain was overloaded, or perhaps part of him just saw whatever was happening as simply being the culimination of all the weirdness he'd seen and experienced since moving into Uncle Ichigo's home. Whatever the reason, he wasn't currently feeling more than a moderate sense of annoyance at what had just happened.

"Well," he said, looking at his once again normal features, "I guess this is an improvement. Maybe if I'm lucky, it's over..."

It soon became clear that whatever had happened to Shinji hadn't ended. As the day went on and he went about his business, parts of him kept randomly becoming invisible, intangible, or both. Whenever this happened, he would frantically will the wayward piece of him to go back to normal, and it would do so, but that seemed to be the limit of his control.

After the third time this happened, Shinji's bizarre sense of calm shattered, and he decided he wanted Uncle Ichigo to return so he could tell him what had happened and hopefully be restored to normal right now.

Shinji even tried calling Uncle Ichigo on his cell phone, only to discover that the man had left the thing on the kitchen counter, as usual. There was nothing for him to do except wait until Uncle Ichigo returned home, regardless of how anxious he was.

Whenever his uncle left the town in search of supplies, Shinji usually didn't bother waiting up for the man to return. This time he tried it, but being a ten-year-old boy, he fell asleep some time around midnight.

When morning came the next day, Shinji bound downstairs to find Ichigo frying bacon in an iron skillet.

"Hey, there, Shinji!" Ichigo greeted him cheerfully. "How are ya this morning?"

"Um, well, Uncle Ichigo, there's something I need to talk to you about," Shinji began nervously.

"Really? What?"

"The Ghost Portal—" Shinji began.

"Ah, yes, the portal," Ichigo interrupted. "You did a fine job on it last night, my boy. And with the parts I picked up from Osaka-3 yesterday, I'm sure I'll have it operational soon!"

"That's very nice, Uncle, but—"

"And do you know what I'm going to do once I get it working?" Ichigo asked.

"Uncle, please, just listen to—"

"I'm going to catch me a ghost! That's what I'm going to do!" Ichigo proclaimed. "Then, I'll rip it open to see what makes it tick! And armed with that knowledge, I'll be able to come up with endless methods of destroying ghosts, but not before making the evil things suffer excruciating pain first!"

Shinji went pale.

"So, what did you want to talk about, Shinji?" Ichigo asked.

Shinji swallowed. "Uh, I just wanted to say that the Ghost Portal is…really cool, Uncle."

"I know!" Ichigo exclaimed.

Author's Notes: Well, I'm finally taking stab at the type of Eva fanfic where Shinji is raised by someone else (sort of), in this case, a Japanese Jack Fenton, who, unlike the actual Jack, doesn't care about his family much. Now I just need to write a Peggy-Sue fic and a post-Third Impact fic and I'll have all the popular Eva fic ideas covered!

Seriously, though, I found the idea for this on one my infrequent trips through the forums, and it just got into my head and wouldn't go away. As I was having a little bit of writer's block with the SOE2 series, I figured I'd write this. Speaking of the SOE2 series, don't expect anything like regular updates on this until that's at least mostly finished. All three parts of the extended prologue are already written, and I'll edit them and put them up soon, but after that it'll probably be a while until more chapters come.

As always, thanks to all my readers and reviewers.