Okay.

I've written stuff before, and posted it, but for some reason I'm actually
more nervous this time than I was the last. Go figure.

This is really a very 'spur of the moment' thing, quite unplanned, so, if
you can find it in your heart, please be merciful. My computer doesn't have
a spellchecker, so there are probably a few errors in there.

Also:

I recently switched accounts, and my prereader list was lost in the mess.
Could everyone who agreed to help with my Bubblegum 'fic please contact me?
The next part is almost ready. (A week! Tops!)<knocks wood>

Be well.
Nathan Baxter


 * * * * * * * *

 * * * * * * * *

"What happened?" Rei stood alone on what appeared to be the athletic field
from her school.

"Sychronization."

Rei turned towards the voice, seeing a young man in a boy's school uniform
sitting against one of the school's walls.

"What?"

His face was odd, eyes disturbingly wide set, nose too small and too flat,
lips thin and mouth very wide, with skin a shade of grey that could almost
be white contrasting against dark brown hair. "You sychronized with Eva. You
seperated from the world. All this," he waved a hand, "Is just in your
mind."

"Including you?"

"No," he smiled, "I'm my own person."

"Who are you, then?"

His smile became a grin. "Eva."

"Impossible."

"Believe what you like."

There was silence for serveral minutes.

"What do you want?"

She looked confused, then: "I do not want."

He stood and moved towards her. "Liar. Everyone wants something."

"I do not want." He was tall, she hadn't been able to tell when he was
sitting, but he was head and shoulders taller than her, but thin, guant,
skeletal.

"You come here, to Nerv, you participate in this, why?"

"Because it is desired of me."

He pounced on that statement. "Why should you do what is desired of you?"

She did not answer.

"Because they would punish you if you did not? If you do it for that reason
then you must wish to avoid punishment, that is a want, isn't it?"

"...it pleases them..." she whispered.

"Ah! You do it because you WANT to please them!" He was grinning.

"...yes..."

He bowed. "There you go. That's one for the list."

Confusion. "What list?"

He gave her a puzzeled look. "Why the list of things you want, silly."

"This is a waste of time. I need to get back." She turned to leave.

He spoke from behind her, quickly, before she could move. "Would you like to
feel? To know all that other people know?"

She turned back, looking at him intensely. "I cannot feel."

He was serious, now, all joking gone. "This will help you understand how to.
Want is the source of all emotion. Different wants, different emotions. If
you want, then you can learn to feel. And all living things want."

"...How can I get back."

"Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and open them. You will be in the real
world."

She was dubious, but it could do no harm.

Closed eyes.

In...

====================================

...and out.

Opened eyes looked at the interior of Unit 00's entry plug.

"Very good Rei, twenty five percent on the first try." Ritsuko's voice was
warm.

Rei Ayanami smiled a small, quiet smile.


 * * * * * * * *


This time, they were in her apartment.

Eva... looked slightly disgusted. "THIS is where you LIVE?!"

"Yes."

"WHAT A DUMP!!! What kind of ASSHOLE puts a human being in this kind of
mousehole? I've seen better BARNS!!" The blood which had rushed to his face
produced a mottled pattern of light and dark that went right to his
hairline.

"Why are you angry?"

"Why?..." He was amazed that anyone could ask such a question. "Because this
place isn't even suitible for livestock. Because you're not livestock.
Because you deserve better than livestock. Because you deserve better than
_THIS_!!!" He waved his arms to indicate the entire room.

"...You are angry on my behalf?" Surprise.

"What better reason to be angry?"

She didn't know how to answer that, so she didn't. Instead, "You should not
speak of Commander Ikari in such a fashion."

"Is he responsible for this?"

"He assigned me these quarters."

"Then I haven't even gotten started, because only a filthy, disgusting,
heartless worm of a man would put--"

"DO NOT SPEAK LIKE THAT!!!!"

At this point, Eva's brain ran through an interesting process, with little
neural post-it notes flying from one side of his mind to the other. [Is she
angry?] {Red face, clenched hands, breathing hard, Yep, I'd say so.} (What
do we do now?) {Apologize?} [Run?] %Take it like a man?% &Idiots. We shock
her out of it, of course.& "Congradulations!!!"

Rei stopped advancing with intent to murder, but her eyebrows were doing a
little hummingbird twich. "What?"

"You wanted to understand emotion, correct?"

"Yes."

"That's impossible. However, just now you came as close as any human ever
does, which is to say, you felt it. Emotion, that is. Specifically, anger,
or fury rather. You wanted to take my heart from my chest, stake my flayed
body out in the Sahara, pour boiling oil over my-- Well, you get the idea."

"...Yes."

He smirked. "You get the idea or you wanted to kill me?" He shook his head.
"Scratch that, it's irrelevant." He changed the subject, "Why do you have
problems with emotions?"

"I do not understand them."

"Neither do most people, but they feel anyway."

"I am not like most people."

His eyes lit up. "Why not? What makes you different from them?"

"I am a shell, a husk created to run through a set of motions that cannot be
filled by a true person."

He stepped back, his face taking on an almost lecherous smile as his eyes
ran up and down her figure, slender, verging on thin, not topheavy but not
flat either... "Funny. You look normal enough from where I'm standing."

"I am a tool, made in a human's image, just as you were."

It was as though his humor and good nature had been but a tree's bark, which
had been stripped away to reveal the deeply saddened wood underneath. "I
wasn't always like this, you know." Bark grows back quickly. "You are no
different from them physically, and whatever theologists might say, it is
the vessel which guides the soul."

"...How long have we been here?"

He blinked. "Objectively? Only a few seconds. Time passes more quickly in
dreams."

"Will this effect my performance?"

Shrug. "Depends. If you approach piloting in the same way that you have
been, then no, there will be no change. If you gain a liking, a motivation,
an enthusiasm for it, then your sync ratios will go up. If you decide you
despise, hate, fear piloting, your ratios would decline."

"...I see. This is the reason for Ikari-kun's high sync ratios?"

"That, and his connection to Unit 01."

"Connection?"

"Yui Ikari was Unit 01's first pilot. During the first activation, the sync
ration ran out of control and she was absorbed, mind and soul." He looked
sad for a moment. "Over time, her mind assimilated with the Unit. The
difference between the two created a sort of... Distortion. There isn't much
left of her anymore, just instincts, really."

She looked almost thoughtful. "Commander Ikari will be very dissapointed."

"I weep for the tragedy of it."

His voice had given no emotional cues, but she looked at him sharply. "You
lack respect."

He grinned, "Of course I do," then averted his eyes. "You should probably
leave, before they grow worried."

"Indeed."

Eyes closed, and in...

====================================

 * * * * * * *

==============================================
You die, they die, eeevvvvrrrryyybody dies.
Good, bad, _I'm_ the guy with the gun!
Kill them all. Let God sort it out.
==============================================
If a woodchuck chucks wood, what does an Arbyfish do?
Relax, I'm just having fun.
HI FISH!
==============================================