Hikari and Asuka, having ascertained that Toji and Shinji were nowhere on the school grounds, spent the better part of the hour wandering through Tokyo-3 together in search of their missing classmates, checking all the locations they could best figure would be the stooges' usual haunts.

They had searched the arcade first; Asuka delayed the search for several hours when she fell into the irresistible clutches of Goretron VII, hitting her friend up for quarters every time she lost a life.

Stopping to rest on a sidewalk bench, Hikari sighed. "It's no use, Asuka. They could be anywhere. I don't know where else we could look." She held her phone to her chest, considering another attempt to dial Toji or Shinji but not expecting an answer. Why don't they have their phones? She slumped in her seat. Maybe they don't want to be found.

"Well," Asuka muttered grudgingly, "there is one other place." She gave her friend an almost apologetic look, something quite rare for her. "But you're not going to like it."

Misato looked across the table at blond scientist. The woman looked familiar enough, but she didn't recall the head of Project E being so blurry, or there being three of her. To make matters worse, the table seemed to be melting.

"The Fourth has proven insufficie- are you even listening to me, Misato?" Ritsuko glared at her old friend, whose habitual work-related alcohol consumption seemed to have increased dramatically since her workload had increased.

"Of coursh I am. The forth flowth within all of uth, and all that.."

"Misato..."

Misato leaned forwards to rest her head upon her arms, shrieking and recoiling when one of them sprouted eyes and stared coldly back at her.

Ritsuko narrowed her eyes and sipped her coffee, ignoring her friend's outburst. "We have reason to suspect that the Fourth Child is developmentally disabled, in ways that would hinder his piloting ability. We're going to have to go with the second choice."

"Ishn't Asuka retarded too?" Misato asked. "She keepsh saying made up words like 'Guten Morgen,' but Rits, she's the best damn pilot we've got."

"Forget it." Sighing and recognizing that the Major had rendered herself incapable of decision-making for the time being, Ritsuko stood and went to arrange for Kensuke Aida's pickup.

Hikari's eyes widened in disbelief as she and Asuka turned a corner to see a building highlighted by pink and blue neon signs. "'Crazy Steve's Discount House of Adult Videos'?"

"I know, I know.." Asuka grumbled. "The idiot said the other idiot drags him here sometimes, hoping they'll find a nudie magazine on the sidewalk or something. It's retarded."

Hikari blanched, her knees buckling in shock at the depths of perversion and decadence that Asuka's words had opened up before her. "That's horrible!"

Asuka rolled her eyes. "What'd I tell you? Boys are perverts."

She watched with an arched eyebrow as Hikari's blush expanded to cover the entire surface area of her body. Even her eyebrows seemed somehow ruddier than usual.

"W-wha.. well we just.. we can't just go in there, Asuka!"

Asuka shrugged. "Don't worry, Hikari. Any pervert who comes near us'll be eating oatmeal through a straw for the rest of their lives."

"But-"

"No buts!" She grabbed Hikari's arm and began to pull her toward the entrance. "C'mon, where else would those two morons end up? We're going in there to find- eek!" Asuka found her other arm in a grasp much stronger than either hers or Hikari's. She jerked her head to the right and saw that she was in the grip of an man wearing a black trenchcoat and holding a switchblade in one hand. His thick glasses completed the degenerate appearance established by his wispy mustache, scruffy goatee and wild, unkempt hair.

"Get your hands off of me, you perverted scum!" barked Asuka, as Hikari screamed uncontrollably at no one in particular.

I told her! I knew we shouldn't be here! Now we're going to be killed, or raped, or, or, oh God! We're going to be locked in this guy's basement until he's used us all u-

Hikari's panicked thoughts came to a halt as she noticed that the man was already lying sprawled on the dirty pavement, his glasses broken. Asuka lowered her foot, having evidently given him a flying kick to the face.

"Wow! I didn't know you could do stuff like that!" said Hikari, forgetting for the moment that they had nearly become statistics.

"Oh, that's nothing," Asuka told her with a wink. "I've had all kinds of martial art-"

A series of sharp, rapid gunshots interrupted Asuka's braggadocio, and the man twitching on the ground became suddenly motionless. "Golly gee jiminy jeepers!" said Hikari, screaming obscenities in terror.

Asuka looked around at the adjacent rooftops; all of them were swarming with men in black suits holding various automatic weapons. As she returned her gaze to ground-level, she observed that a formally-attired man, heavy-set with dark sunglasses appeared in front of them, apparently having taken advantage of some loophole in the space-time continuum.

"What the hell was that all about?" she demanded testily as Hikari clung to her arm in fear. "I had the situation under control until you Section 2 goons got in the way."

The man adjusted his glasses, unamused. "That man you just encountered was a serial rapist. One of the most notorious in the area, in fact. Hideaki's made a business of abducting and molesting young girls like yourselves. He sells them into prostitution once he's had his 'fun' with them; most of them are never heard from again. We've been after him for years."

Hikari hid behind Asuka, trying not to look too closely at the man's mangled body. "W-well he's..he's d..dead now, right?"

The man nodded stoically. "You two are lucky to have made it out alright. What were you doing in such a dangerous part of the city?"

"Trying to find where Shi- the Third Child and his jock friend ran off to," Asuka told him. "The moron was scared of his dad and now we can't find either of them anywhere." This city is full of such creeps... he'd better not have gotten in any trouble.

Looking at the girls seriously, the agent cleared his throat. "We've been tracking the pilots all day. They're perfectly safe. Sometimes it's necessary to let them run free for a while, get some stress out of them." He removed his glasses. "Let's get you two back to school, shall we?"

Pilots? Asuka thought. Was that plural? Oh God, he couldn't mean..

Toji swung his right leg idly from side to side as he lay on the raft, looking up at the sky. Shinji was sitting next to him in a fetal position, imagining the horrible medical experiments Dr. Akagi would perform on him after they were caught.

"Ain't nothin' like raftin' on the ol' river," said Toji, chewing his straw. "Iss' been preserv'd by the city sanification fellers real good; y'can tell on account'a you's can see all the way down thar to Tambuckt-tu at th' bottom."

Shinji blinked and looked down at the river. It looked muddy enough to walk across, and a dead, four-eyed fish was drifting by on its side.

"Toji, I'm pretty sure this is where Nerv dumps their hazardous waste," he sighed, idly wondering why he had even bothered opening his mouth as he met Toji's uncomprehending stare.

"I don' reckon none' 'bout such a tomfooled idea," the jock told him, crossing his arms. "Y'think this'un's easy to fool, but I gotta good head on me. That's 'ut my paps telled me when I got dropped." He raised his arms, making some strange gestures that Shinji assumed he had intended to somehow represent the concept of "father". "'Dis boy a fighter,' he say, 'dis boy ain't do no monkey-rootin' in he hibiscus, he mo' den dat. He know a thing.'" Toji raised an eyebrow, smirking proudly.

Shinji did not attempt to interpret this.

"Wa-hey, look ova' there!" Toji jumped up excitedly, nearly falling off the raft as he stumbled to his feet, pointing at what appeared to be an abandoned shack amongst the trees, covered in overgrowth.

Shinji looked over at the vine-plagued wooden structure uncertainly, wondering what exactly Toji found so enthralling. He determined firstly that he would probably find out soon, and secondly that it would most likely negatively impact the quality of his life.

Toji turned around to face Shinji, leaning over him with his eyes wide. "Y'see that ol' shed? C'mon, lessee if the'se any bodies been left off in it."

Shinji winced, mentally checking off the "yes" box next to each of his predictions as Toji pulled the raft ashore. Toji's unwitting companion was not looking forward to the next leg of their impromptu adventure. How did I let myself get into this again?

"Oh man oh man oh man!" shrieked the recently-designated fourth child Kensuke Aida as Ritsuko disgustedly tossed his new plugsuit at him. "This is the greatest day of my life!"

Ritsuko already hoped by this point that Aida would become the first human to have mental contact with an Angel, so that she would be able to vivisect him.

"I won't let you down!" Aida proudly announced, addressing everyone on the bridge as he stumbled into his plugsuit one leg at a time. He had thrown off his clothes in his eagerness to put on the suit, much to the horror of the onlooking control crew. "I'll kill all the Angels with my bare hands if I have to!"

Misato tried desperately to retain her balance and ignore the Norwegian squid caressing Aida with its mucous-encrusting tendrils.

Ritsuko sighed. "Well, before you get into the Eva, there's a series of injections you'll need first," she improvised. There was no such protocol, but she figured she probably had some relatively harmless syringes lying around her office. Just something to wipe that stupid grin off his face.

Aida had dropped to his knees and was kissing the floor. "I can't believe I'm touching the inside of Nerv HQ! I'm so happy!" he cried, choking back tears.

Hikari and Asuka sat in the back of a black limousine as the man in dark sunglasses drove them along the winding, deserted back road to Nerv. Hikari was listening idly to Asuka grumble about idiots, perverts, and perverted idiots when the car ran over what sounded like a rather heavy object, leading the driver to hastily hit the brakes.

The driver swore under his breath, opened his door, and turned back towards the girls. "Wait here," he growled. "I'm checking the tire."

As soon as he had turned his back on them, Asuka grabbed Hikari's left arm and grinned conspiratorially at her. "Hey," she whispered loudly, "Now's our chance! Let's go find those idiots."

Hikari hesitated. "But..."

"Rules are made for the ignorant masses, not the elite like us," said Asuka, her lips curled smugly. "Besides, we can't leave stupid Shinji on his own or he'll...put his hand in a toaster or something."

Hikari frowned skeptically at her. "Does he really do that?"

Asuka nodded, a knowing smirk on her face as she pulled Hikari out through the car door. She opened her mouth to protest, but Asuka, still retaining her grip on Hikari's arm, began to sprint across the pavement. Hikari felt herself lulled into submission, the backs of Asuka's A-10 clips exerting a strangely hypnotic influence on her.

By the time Hikari regained her ability for rational thought, they had already gone several blocks. Asuka came to an abrupt halt, the two girls panting for breath. Hikari glanced around nervously.

"Asuka, are you sure you know where we're going?" she asked timidly.

Her friend waved her hand impatiently. "Of course I know where we are! I'm a college graduate, remember? That's North over there," she said, pointing.

Hikari frowned. "I don't think the sun sets in the North, Asuka." The sky was already becoming orange and pink, elongated shadows slowly creeping their way over the street.

Asuka flinched slightly at that, then regained her confidence and folded her arms impatiently. "I was pointing to European North. You backwards Japanese wouldn't understand."

Hikari remained silent, a little awed by Asuka's worldliness. She was suddenly struck by the shabbiness of her surroundings; garbage covered the sidewalk, the apartments were little more than clapboard shacks, and a band of ragged homeless men stood a few feet away between a flaming trash can and a gigantic pile of scrap metal. She wondered how Asuka managed to so consistently end up getting lost in such ruinous domains.

Hikari frowned, noticing that one of the homeless men seemed vaguely familiar. "Hey, Asuka," she whispered, her hand over her mouth, "Isn't that...Mark Zuckerberg? I think I read about him in Pre-Second-Impact History. I think he was part of Christopher Columbus' expedition to Antarctica," she said, accurately recalling her textbook's mangled account of early world history.

"Oh, him?" Asuka replied animatedly, attracting the unwanted attention of the man and several of his companions. "He went bankrupt when the telepathic social networking sites like Facermerge took off," said Asuka, eager to display her superior knowledge.

Asuka glanced over at the group of homeless men, her eyes suddenly lighting up as she met the gaze of a man with a ragged ski cap and five o'clock shadow. "Hey! I know you!" she exclaimed with a grin, running over to him as if asking a celebrity for an autograph. "You're that idiot Shiro Tokita!"

The man scowled at the two girls, adjusting his dirty ski cap. "You're an Eva pilot, aren't ya? You're the second one Nerv's sent over here to bust my kneecaps."

"Jeez, I was just trying to be friendly!" Asuka said, pouting indignantly.

"Friendly my ass!" Tokita shouted, leaning in towards her. "I know you creeps sabotaged my project somehow, and I'm goin' to find out and clear my name with the investors, just you wait! It's yer fault I'm out on the streets, livin' in Jet Alone!" Tokita's snarling face was perilously close to Asuka's by this point.

"Living in-" Asuka looked up over Tokita's imposing figure and saw the heap of scrap metal as if for the first time; the rusted mass was in fact a vaguely humanoid shape in a seated position, its gangly, over-sized arms hugging its knees and its head slumping sullenly between them.

Asuka cheerfully turned to her bewildered friend. "C'mon, Hikari! Let's see if this piece of junk still works!"

"Whaaa?"

"See ya 'round!" Asuka waved to Tokita as though expecting this to be the end of their meeting, pulling Hikari across the vacant lot towards the dirt-encrusted mech-turned-mobile-home as Hikari and Tokita both shouted after in her in bafflement.

Asuka swung herself onto a black stepladder on the robots back and began to deftly climb towards an entry hatch, grunting cheerfully. Tokita and Hikari clumsily followed her up the stepladder, Tokita angrily shouting his doubts about the relative chastity of Asuka's mother. Ignoring him, Asuka unscrewed the five-foot hatch and let the door fall to the ground, the metal projectile narrowly missing Tokita's head on the way down. She swung herself acrobatically into the control room, glancing enthusiastically around. Tokita and Hikari stumbled in after her.

Gasping for breath, Tokita watched in horror as Asuka eagerly studied the intimidating array of control panels. "G-girls, this is a highly sophisticated piece of machinery!" he shouted.

"Yeah, yeah," Asuka said, rolling her eyes and pushing a few buttons apparently at random as Hikari watched with interest.

Thinking quickly of an excuse in the vain hope that it would put an end to the girl's curiosity, the engineer warned, "It's not equipped for use without networking into the command center! You can't make it move by itself!"

"Pfft, that's easy!" Unfazed, Asuka instructed her unwitting companions, "Tokita, you get out and push to give us a start. Hikari, that green button over there is probably the gas."