A Jest of cruel Gods

[SLAMU]

A while back, I posted an idea in the Plot Bunnies thread about a time traveling Asuka. Because some of these scenes don't seem to want to leave me alone, I'm posting them here of critisim, although if some of you somehow manage to actually get some freakish amount of entertainment from these, don't let me stop you.

Naturally, any tips, hints, helpful suggestions, or innane blather would be appreciated.

This one's spoilered for language, a little bit length, and because I felt like it. I'm actually a little disappointed with the cursing in this section, as I typically pride myself in being a little more creative with my curses. That said, these are really the only ones that seemed to fit when I typed this out.

Spoiler: show

“Come on, Asuka, take this for the team at least-“

“No. There is no ‘team’ here. There is nothing less like a team imaginable than the complete cockup we have here. What we have are three fucked up teenagers given machined gods and told that the fate of humankind continued existance depends on them.” Asuka stopped, the other two pausing as she turned around to glare into Ikari’s eyes. “What we have is a damned robot that does exactly what is ordered of her and nothing else, a spineless whimp who’s only reccomendation towards the Evangelion program is who his” mother “father is,” Asuka turned and punched the wall next to where they were standing, blood trickling down her knuckles “and the real prize, a child soldier nutcase that has been trained for this one fucking thing, and they don’t trust her to do her god damned job.”

She looked at Ayanami. “Example one; if Commander Ikari gave you a gun and told you to kill yourself, how long would it take for you to pull the trigger?” Rei didn’t know how to answer that, and was saved the neccesity of reply when the German spoke up again. “You see? The only question is whether she’d go in through here,” she prodded Pilot Ikari’s temple “or here.” She placed her finger roughly on his lips. “My bet’s the mouth; she looks like someone with an oral fixation.”

Pain. Pain was good. Pain let her focus. “There won’t be any ‘team’ until that bitch gets some inititive and crawls away from that leash that your daddy keeps her on, you grow some damned balls and act like something greater than 60 kilos of wasted meat, and-“

The slap caught her offguard. “And what? You’re any better? Fine, so you know more about piloting than me, or even Rei. Get off your damned high horse. Fine, you’re better than me! Do you feel better? All I want is a normal fucking life! Go die in some battle, if that’s what you want. I want to live. Is that what makes me a coward?! Fine. I’m a coward, and I wish Father had never sent that damned telegram. I wish I never had to come here, and I wish I could just go home. I want to wake up in my bed and have this whole damn thing just be some nightmare.”

Asuka’s cheek stung. She didn’t touch it, but glared hate into the boy’s eyes. “That is the last time you touch me. Do it again, and I’ll put you in traction, little boy.” With that, she turned around and walked off.

Shinji watched her go before turning to Rei and in a softer voice said “I’m sorry. Here, let’s get you to home.”

Rei didn’t say anything, but followed him to her appartment block.

[Phht]

You misspelled 'initiative'.

Other than that, I can't really find anything wrong except I feel like I need more context in-story than just your comment about time-traveling Asuka before the scene so this makes more sense.

But, if nothing else, it really sums up how screwed up the canon Pilots were quite nicely.

[Magnificate]

Two questions:
1. Was Asuka slapped once or twice?
2. Is Commander Ikari in this scene or only the three pilots?

[Kirai]

Yeah, we need some perspective on where to put this, or at least something that promises to remove the confusion later on.

[SLAMU]

Anyway, something that's been pecking away at my head for a while now, and NGE fic; Asuka dies at the end of Evangelion. Because she kicked ass "dying gloriously in battle", valkeries come pick her up, bringing her to Valhalla, to train for Ragnarok. However, there is the slight problem of Third Impact. Nobody wants Third Impact, not the Asgard, not Joutenheim, not even Loki (who finds it a joke in poor taste). So, being dieties, and thus only have to give the occasional nod to causality, they decide to send a ringer back to fix things. They aren't worried about any of their mortal pawns getting a happy ending (and what kind of saga would it be if anyone was happy at the end of it, anyway?), but they do care about Third Impact not happening, because it threatens Ragnarok.
So they send Asuka back to when she's about 10 years old, living at the German branch of NERV. She tries to have a conversation with her younger self, but "Hi, I'm you and I come from the future" doesn't really go over too well, partially because she has a wonderful tendancy to try and impose her will on anyone she's talking to, and because she resists anyone trying to force her to do anything. So, that fails and Asuka the Elder is forced to take another course of action. Asuka the Younger, on the other hand, starts having nightmares every so often of Asuka the Elder's time in Valhalla, which is not nearly as pleasent a place as the propoganda paints it. She starts excelling at her weapons classes, picking up the art of killing things brutally and thuroughly as if it was more of a refresher course than initial training. However, in addition to her cannon insecurites (which are legion), she also picks up a nice unhealthy dose of PTSD and the concern that she isn't fit to be a human anymore (being trained as a weapon).
When she gets deployed, she is a far better warrior than NERV expected (and, at the higher levels, intended), but socially, she's doing worse. She isn't the centere of popularity that she was in cannon, but rather ostricized for her lack of people skills. At the same time, Asuka the Elder shows back up again, and is trying to control things from the background, but again, is failing at it.

Thoughts? My main problem with this is the combat scenes. I have yet to write a combat scene that I like.

Asuka was only slapped once, but before she had punched a concrete wall hard enough to do some damage. It’s just the three pilots walking home. This will likely take place sometime around Isfrael (and Isfrael), maybe a little later.

Spoiler: show

Asuka fumed. The convoy transporting Unit 02 to Japan left at the end of the week, and she knew that they weren’t ready yet. Oh, they had ships. They had the largest collection of tonnage assembled since Second Impact. There were so many ships that there wasn’t a single European port that could handle them all, so they were launching from all across northern Europe. The problem was the composition of forces.

The convoy was comprised of mostly military vessels, with the occasional tanker and freighters added in as needed. The problem with that, though, was that conventional weapons had been proven entirely ineffective against an Angel’s AT field, so no number of battleships would slow one down, and any pirate’s fleet would avoid a fleet a third the size of what was being sent. It was almost like the fleet was made purposely outsized for bragging rights; a sort of “my fleet’s bigger than yours”

An oversized battlegroup she could have lived with, as while it was unnecessary, it wasn’t detracting from mission performance. What was really bothering her, though, was what the fleet wasn’t guarding against; the sea. Davy Jones had claimed more lives than any naval engagement in history, and there wasn’t anything on the manifest that could salvage a multi-ton Evangelion if it fell into the briny deep. Although any but the most extreme depths would fail to destroy the truly crucial components of Unit 02, to lose it in transit would potentially not only leave the Fortress City with reinforcement for months, but would require millions of manhours of repair time in an EVA repair bay, in addition to the immense physical resources needed to repair it. Keeping selvedge vessels onhand would cut down weeks of salvege time, first transit time pulling them from wherever in the world they were at the moment, then weeks of time spend pinpointing where in the vast ocean Mankind’s greatest warmachine would be hiding, then days actually dredging it up.

When Asuka mentioned this to Admiral Klein, she was politely told to leave such matters to experienced seamen and focus on her duties. While the words “little girls should be seen and not heard” were not actually said, the admiral’s sentiments could be understood quite clearly. Bringing the matter up with her superiors in NERV was similarly unhelpful. Dr. Gregor Irmov, a macroscale robotics specialist, felt that such matters were to be handled by the military, and that NERV should concern itself more with the theoretical aspects of the new technologies and let the real world applications be dealt with by lesser beings.

Asuka had considered something such as grandstanding with Unit 02, refusing to board the Delight of Seville, but rejected the idea due to ineffectiveness. At most, she’d buy herself a day before they forced her to go along. That didn’t me she’d have to like it.

--

Asuka sat at a computer terminal in one of the NERV Berlin outbuildings. She sent off her emails and walked out. That should save some lives.

Hopefully, she can do this right this time around.

--

Misato checked her mailbox every morning when she came to work, right after a short break by the coffee machine and stopping by Ritsko’s office. When she skimmed through it this morning, nestled between an interdepartmental memo from Sup-director Fuyutski and a status update on the repairs to Unit 00’s endoskeleton was a message with attachments.

To whom it may concern…

Curious, the Chief Operations Director opened the message. A few minutes later, she was writing emails of her own.

--

Kaji answered his cellphone. There were only a few people who knew this number.

“Hello?” Misato Katsuragi was not one of them. Well this was interesting.

“This is Chief Inspector Ryogi.”

“NERV Chief Operations Director Katsuragi here. I was told to call this number in relation to something that has come to my attention.”

[SLAMU]

Yay for the joys of double posting!

Anyway, this scene needs some setting up for it to be anything than just a random fight scene; Asuka the Younger isn't the social butterfly that she is in canon, but rather the creepy gaijin that it's best not to get too close to. After a while of less than tactful interactions with other members of the student body, some of her peers decide that they had best teach her a lesson.

Spoiler: show

“Alright, bitch. We’ve tried playing nice, now we’re gonna get ugly.” Asuka turned her head just enough to see the four senior students blocking one end of the alleyway. The leader was the captain of the Kendo club, and she thought that she recognized the captain of the school dojo and the self-described “toughest punk in Tokyo-3”. The fourth member she only vaguely recalled seeing around school. The fact that the Kendo-punk and the wannabe Yakuza were carrying a bokken and a length of chain were noted.

“Wait, now you’re going to get ugly? What have you been doing up until now, warm-ups?” She didn’t sound as if she was worried about being cornered in a dark ally by four militant, armed, and threatening young men in the least. Provoking them, under any circumstances, would have been considered a less than intelligent move. She didn’t care. She was sick and tired of everything. Sick of being in this shithole country, sick of these moronic people, sick of being forced to sit in on classes that she had completed years ago, sick of the wait for a new monster to show up, sick of having to get permission to kill things that threatened the existence of the human race, sick of these peons thinking themselves her equal, and she was finally going to get a chance to vent. They thought that they were the predators here. It was funny, almost. Like a flock of sheep threatening to hurt a she-wolf.

The kendo captain smirked at her defiance. “Ah, the wit of the great Asuka Langly-Sohryuu. That’s the best you can come up with? Well, you’ll be screaming something else in a few minutes.” A dark chuckle ran through the group. They were smart. They had chosen to corner her at a time and place where no one would hear her, no one would look for her, and she wouldn’t get away. They had even brought some tools to keep her from being a nuisance. Rokko shrugged off the backpack with the ‘accessories’ in it, as Hyono started to swagger forward. “Alright, this is going to feel so good. Play nice, or we’ll have to get rough. You can start by stripping.”

Asuka rolled her eyes. So unoriginal. It was like these goons had planned everything under the influence of the shitty local beer and hentai manga. She glanced over where she stood, spotting a length of rebar lying on the ground. Since the city was being rebuilt so often, it was hardly surprising that bits of scrap were left lying about. After all, why bother to keep things too tidy? Keep it off the main thoroughfares, but leave it out. We’re going to have to rebuild anyway, next time those damn robots decide to waltz through. Ah, this piece was a tad long, but she compensated by choking up on the grip a bit, and even better, it had been sheered off, so it had a nice pointy tip. Taking a stance, she declared “I am Asuka Langly-Sohryuu, Leviathan’s Bane and Twinslayer. I have voyaged through the heart of a volcano, have strode among the works of Man as a goddess, and seen and done things that your frail minds would break to contemplate. This is your only warning. Depart, and lest I ever see your faces again, I will break you.”

Kendo-punk wanted to try his luck first. It was stupid of them to try and engage me here. She thought. The alleyway prevents them from surrounding me, so they can only engage me from the front. It’s a dead end, so they can’t get around behind me. In this sort of terrain, the advantage goes to the superior combatant. Asuka was, by any reasonable definition, superior.

Kendo-punk advanced, tried to strike at her head. A lazy block, sidestep, and parry at the wrist. That would have hurt if she had done that with a training weapon. As it was, bone was showing, and he almost lost his grip on the Bokken. Shifting to his left hand, he tried to use t he blade to keep her improvised sword immobilized while he ran up to grapple with her. She waited for a half second, then reversed her grip on the rebar, jamming the handle into the underside of his jaw, then stomped on his foot, crushing his metatarsals. He went down, screaming and clutching himself. The blood in his mouth made it come out as a sort of high-pitched gurgle.

Yakuza-wannabe was next, already swinging his length of chain. Idiot. They do that in the movies to make it look threatening. She already knew what was going to happen. He was going to throw one end of the chain at her and try to wrap it around something. Then he was going to try and pull and try to unbalance her. She made the first move, backward, deeper into the ally. When he followed, she attacked as he was stepping over kendo-punk. One strike, and she broke his collarbone. Second strike, and she punctured his femur with the sharp end of the rebar. Fuck. It was lodged in too deep for her to retrieve it. The karate man was up next, and the one she didn’t recognize was fumbling with the backpack he had dropped not thirty seconds before. That can’t be good. She made a running jump over her two downed opponents, simply trying to get around them. She wasn’t stupid enough to try some Jet Li move on this guy. His first move was to punch her. She grabbed his wrist, rotated on her front heel, palmstrike to the nose, turn again and push and now his arm was out of socket. She dropped him, then stomped on his knee, shattering it. By the time that she was done with him, the last would-be rapist had pulled out a handgun. Colt .45 revolver, 5th and 6th chambers empty, 2nd and 3rd full. So somewhere between three and four shots. Before he could bring it to bear, she tackled him. A pressure point on his right hand got him to scream, but he refused to drop the gun. No matter, with his grip weakened, she pried it away from him. Kicking him in the groin as she stood, she pointed it at him, both hands on the pistol, like her instructors had trained her.

“Alright, you had your chance. Now it’s my turn. What else do you have in that bag?” She stepped away from him. Not because she was scared, but because she was the one with the gun now, and there wasn’t any reason to be near. “Empty it out. No tricks.”

After he emptied it out, she was disgusted. Sex toys. Figures. “Take the handcuffs and cuff yourself to those pipes over there. No, facing outward. I want to see your face.” As he did so, she started looking through the pockets of the Yakuza-wannabe, before finding what she was looking for in his back pocket. She advanced on him with the switchblade.

There was no one to hear his screams. They had chosen this place rather well, apparently.

Oh, and Section 2 got this on camera, by the way.