At the foot of the apartment building, Ayanami Rei intercepted the Katsuragi posse and the two goddesses. "I would like a ride to the Geofront," she said calmly. "It would be the quickest way to get there from here."

"Rei, there's not enough room for you and the rest of us in my car..."

Urd interrupted Misato. "We'll take my car. I parked it right across the street."

"What, by the ambulance?" Shinji asked. There didn't seem to be any other vehicles nearby.

"No, it's the 'ecnalubma', right here." Urd charged across the street gesturing everyone else to follow her. "'Ecnalubma', see? It says it right on the hood." "She drives an ambulance?" Asuka said incredulously. "How did she get ahold of an ambulance?"

Misato wasn't paying attention. "We'll put it back later. Come on, you two!" Skuld was already aboard, demonstrating to Shinji how the defibulator worked.

"Major," Rei said in what passed for her voice as a shout, "who are these two new women? Are they NERV employees? Should they be allowed inside restricted areas of the Geofront?"

Misato pulled Rei up into the back end of the ambulance then took her position riding shotgun. "Actually, they're both goddesses. You know the rules, Rei, only civilians have to go to the shelters. NERV regulations don't say anything about higher spiritual beings. Buckle up!"

"Oh," said Rei. Skimming through her memories of the NERV rules and regulations, she couldn't think of where goddesses fit in, so assumed that her superior's knowledge in that field was more exhaustive than her own. Besides, they were already driving off, and it did seem impolite to call for a fruitbasket upset in the power structure of their gathering while the ambulance was in motion.

The impending crisis had meant returning to a routine borne of more than a dozen Angel attacks, and clinging to his routine gave Ikari Gendou the strength he needed to overcome his anxieties. He sat behind his desk, silent and imposing, while the other members of the Control Room staff were in action.

"Evangelions are ready and standing by!"

"What is the speed of the target?"

"Target is outside of the city limits, moving north-northwest at a speed of 15 kilometers per hour. Estimated time of arrival is 20 hours 17 minutes."

"Civilian evacuation to shelters is 97% complete, estimated time to full evacuation between 7 and 8 minutes."

"46% of city buildings withdrawn into Geofront, 22% presently withdrawing, the remainder will withdraw when civilian evacuation is complete."

"JSSDF forces are moving to intercept..."

Hyuga fell silent as an ambulance materialized just behind him in a bright flash of light. A moment later, the driver's door was thrown open and a woman unknown to him staggered out. "Sorry, folks. We'd've been here a minute earlier but none of us thought about taking a shortcut."

She fell silent as she looked around her at the control room. Major Katsuragi, struggling into her uniform's jacket, took up the explanation. "Reporting for duty, Commander," she said with a smart salute. "All three Children are present and accounted for. Transportation has been provided by Urd, one of two goddesses who've been good enough to grace us with her presence; the other one being Skuld, who you know met Shinji-kun earlier today. I thought it would be best if we had them on our side for this battle, you know, since they are goddesses and all. Have you any objections?"

Ikari said nothing. His routine had gone out the window, and his little red choo-choo had done jumped the track.

Fortunately, Misato had been expecting a taciturn response from her commanding officer. "Seeing none, OK, you three go get your plug suits on and get to the Evas on the double. You guys go back to whatever point you were at when we came in...Urd! Skuld!" She presented the two goddesses to a blond woman with a beauty mark by her left eye and a confused expression on the rest of her face. "This is Dr. Akagi Ritsuko, senior NERV scientist. Ritsuko, could you please bring these two ladies up to speed on what's going on?"

Ritsuko put an unsteady hand on her friend and co-worker's shoulder. "Misato...if I'm not mistaken, you just popped out of an ambulance that wasn't in the middle of the floor a minute ago, correct?"

"Basically."

"And you're saying that the reason that this ambulance just showed up is because of these two young women, who are actually goddesses."

"Spot on." Misato summed up the social call she had received that afternoon in a few brief sentences. Having established context to some degree of satisfaction, Ritsuko was finally able to size up the two newest members of the bridge team. Both of them certainly looked foreign, but divine? Their hair possessed an unearthly sheen and body. On their faces were what looked for all the world like bottu. Their clothes were supernaturally clean.

"All right." Ritsuko crossed her arms across her chest. "If you're real goddesses, tell me--what's the secret to life?"

"Hang loose, and eat right," they said in unison. A moment later, they added, "And call home every once in a while."

Nobody noticed Ikari Gendou's forehead going *klonk* onto the desk in front of him.

"I guess that works," Ritsuko concluded. "Very well. Let me explain what's going on. You see that big thing on the monitor overhead?"

"No," Urd replied.

"That thing," Misato said, pointing at the large object visible on the screen.

Urd stared for a second, then said excitedly, "Oh, that thing? You mean Wes Craven's cross between a TeleTubby and a hand towel dispenser?"

"That's it, onee-sama!" replied Skuld.

"OK, well," Urd went on, "what's that big ugly red thing in the corner?"

"HEY, WATCH IT!" snarled Asuka. "If you weren't a goddess I'd KICK you for that!"

"That's Asuka on the Heads-Up Display," Misato said. "Children, are you in your Evas?"

"Yes," Rei said flatly.

"We're all ready to go fight the Angel," Shinji said with less moroseness in his voice than usual. "We're just waiting for you to give the launch command."

"Wait a minute here." Urd jerked Misato and Ritsuko together for a tete-a- tete. "You're telling me you're going to send those poor children out to fight Tinky-Winky's big biker brother out there? ALONE? That's INSANE!"

From behind her Shinji spoke. "Urd, don't worry about it. The only way we know how to defeat Angels is with the Evangelions, and the only ones who can pilot the Evangelions are the three of us. I wish there was some other way, but there isn't."

Skuld's jaw went slack. Bright white light poured down from the heavens onto her body. Her hair floated into the air, and the edges of her robes fluttered with spirit wind. Almost beyond what the human ear could manage, everyone in the control room thought they could hear choirs singing praises in tongues unspoken by the human voice. Then the light faded and the wind died down. Skuld's head naturally fell back to a neutral position. Her big brown eyes opened gently, and they were rimmed with concern.

"Aw, man," she moaned, "I got another 407 error."

"ANOTHER one?" shrieked Shinji. He paused, then he lunged forward. "Skuld! YOUR HAMMER!"

"Your what?" Ritsuko asked.

"My..." Skuld absently reached for the weapon she was still wearing across her back. Her eyes bulged. "Of course! This is the 'extenuating circumstances' that I was sent down here for! I'll take care of this, be right back, everybody!"

She was gone in a puff of smoke and a flash of light. A moment later, Zeruel--who had come dangerously close to Tokyo-3 during the conversation-- stopped in his tracks. From out of nowhere a large mallet's head smacked him between the "shoulders", causing him to drop out of the sky and begin hopping around on his stubby legs.

"External microphone," Ritsuko ordered. Maya tapped in some instructions to her terminal, and a moment later Skuld's voice came in over the control room's speakers.

"...don't care WHO appeared WHEN at WHAT Pole, you are in some BIG BIG TROUBLE, young man! You're supposed to be the messenger between humanity's meditations on the strength of divine force in reality and that force itself, and NOT a bully! You should be ashamed."

"Meep," said Zeruel.

"Don't say 'meep' to me, it's not going to get you on my good side at this point. Now, I want you to march right back to Heaven this instant and write 'I will not call humanity Lillin, I will not pick on those smaller than me, I will not tempt people into eating me and then tattle on them, and I will not sin against my Creator' 50 gazillion times in letters of fire nine miles high across the Pearly Gates. And then I'm guessing Soy Que Soy is going to want a word or two with you Himself."

"Meep."

"Skuld-chan?" Shinji said. "Are all the Angels such gits?"

"Yeah," murmured Asuka.

In the ensuing confusion about what constituted "falling" and what didn't, Ikari Gendou slipped out. Fuyutsuki Kouzou watched his departure, and followed behind him. The pair walked quickly and severely to Ikari's office. Fuyutsuki entered to see Ikari opening something in his desk with a key. He followed with a thumbprint and retinal scan. A door opened in the desk. Ikari extracted a book and carefully closed the door.

He set the book open on his desktop, tore out the first page, placed it in his mouth and began to chew it methodically.

"What is that?" Fuyutsuki asked.

"It's the Dead Sea Scrolls," Ikari replied, talking around his mouthful.

"What are you doing with them?"

"I'm eating them."

"How do they taste?"

"Awful. They need some wasabi something fierce."

"I'll fetch us some. Save me a chapter."

"But, of course."

"It can be done, Commander."

"You're certain?"

For a man who had been stuffing his face with processed wood pulp less than a half hour beforehand, Ikari Gendou had come back down to Earth awfully quickly. Shinji was in shock. He couldn't believe that the difference between sanity and dementia in his father's mind revolved around his mother, a woman he could barely remember. This was the stuff of legends, of epic poems--men who were so devoted to women that they forsook everything else in the world to be with them. Shinji never would have imagined that his father was that kind of a man.

But Skuld had pulled the elder Ikari back from the brink of insanity with the revelation that Ikari Yui's soul could be restored from the Evangelion. It was possible, with the genetic information that Rei and Shinji carried, to rebuild her body and "download" her soul from the machine into that body. Skuld stood confidently on the catwalk in front of the mighty Evangelion, flanked on one side by Shinji and the Commander, on the other by Rei and Ritsuko. Waiting in the wings were Misato and Urd.

"What we're going to do," Skuld said, "is we're going to flood the Entry Plug with the building blocks necessary to rebuild a human's body: protein, starch, that kind of stuff. Ritsuko-hakusei, what you're going to do is suspend chains of Yui's reconstructed DNA in the Entry Plug solution. Then we'll set up a feedback loop within the Evangelion itself--basically, getting the soul that's saved on its hardware to synchronize with itself. Charging the Evangelion with static electricity should ionize the solution and set off a catalytic reaction that will get the body to build itself. The only trick, then, will be making sure that she comes out human-sized. Everyone understand?"

"Yes," they replied, in chorus.

"Great. Major Katsuragi, we'll need you to get bulk quantities of some supplies from the cafeteria. Ordinary sugar. For protein we'll use poultry ova. Some table salt. For starch we'll use flour, finely ground, or sifted. And maybe some vegetable protein, like extract of vanilla."

Misato looked down the list. "Waitaminit--this sounds like an Angel Food Cake recipe."

Skuld giggled at the idea. "That's just coincidence, Major. Oh, on your way out, tell the bridge staff to preheat the Evangelion to 200 degrees to set off the reaction. Commander, we'll need some custom-made hardware to extract the body when it's done. I'm envisioning a large cutting utensil with two prongs. One is curved with a sharp point to cut into the exoskeleton, one is more hook- shaped to hold onto the exterior body as we're doing the cutting."

Ikari nodded. "Something like a humongous can opener."

"That's coincidence, too. Ritsuko-hakusei, you'd better take Shinji and Rei down to the medical bay to splice their DNA together. Basically, bounce their codes off of each other to figure the original sequence. Urd...did Bell-neechan ever show up?"

Urd shook her head as she stepped aside to let the other members of the group past. "She should be around here somewhere, but I haven't seen her."

Skuld scrunched her face up in a frown. "It's not like her to miss out on a party."

"No."

"Yes!" said something in the melon patch that wasn't a melon. "Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!"

Urd followed her sister's gaze up the Evangelion's face. She didn't like this "artificial human" thingie--it gave her the heebie-jeebies. Having a goddess with the heebie-jeebies isn't nearly as bad as having a goddess with a cold; but for several weeks afterwards people noticed that the Northern Lights were unusually green, and a new species of phytoplankton evolved off the coast of Papua New Guinea. "So when are we going to head home?" she asked. "I'm not in any hurry, but usually you're the worrywart."

Skuld was very quiet. She sat down on the catwalk and had a good long think before she replied, "Nee-chan, it might be a long time."

"What do you mean?"

"It's like this." Trying to work off some of her nervous energy, Skuld took out her mallet and began swinging it around. "When I showed up here, I gave Shinji-kun a wish. He wished that there was someone he could love in an easy, carefree way. I got a 407 error...apparently, I was that person. So Shinji still had his wish. Then, you saw, he wished that there was some other way to defeat the Angels, and once again, it was me. So Shinji still has an unused wish.

"Now as soon as he uses it, I can go. But the thing is, if I go, then he'll have received his wish three times. In a few minutes, he'll have his mother, who he'll learn to love. As soon as she's back, his father will pull the plug on the Evangelion project, and I'll get rid of Adam and Lillith. Then, Shinji still gets his wish, because there is some other way to defeat the dweebs--I mean, Angels."

She set her hammer down and leaned back with a sigh. "So if I leave, then the 407 error becomes invalid, and Shinji's one wish retroactively becomes true twice more, one wish, three fulfillments, and...I guess reality unzippers itself and I'm in trouble with the Big Kahuna. Or, I could stay around and not get in trouble. There you are."

Urd sat down and put her arm around her little sister's shoulders, giving them an affectionate squeeze. It was a moment of unlikely tenderness for her. "Skuld-chan, why are you such a trouble magnet anyway?"

"Aw, nee-chan...you're not sad, are you?"

"Are you?"

Skuld shook her head fiercely. "Huh-uh! Shinji-kun's great. We have so much in common. If this works out and his mother comes back, I can't wait to see what he'll be like with a normal family."

"Then here's hoping for the best for you, sweetheart." Urd gave Skuld a big smooch on the cheek and another comforting pat on the shoulder. The two sisters sat back and looked up at the Evangelion. "I dunno. This isn't too bad a reality. Three or four dimensions. A few dozen naturally occurring elements. A nice simple relationship between matter and energy."

"Yeah! After all, what more do you really need for a good time?"

It had been an exhausting night for everyone, but it was almost through. It was a few minutes before dawn in the control room. On the monitor was Eva- 01, at rest in its holding tank; silent, perchance dreaming. Its Entry Plug, attached to the Evangelion by 70 meters of assorted cables and parts scrounged from a tabletop video game, hung in free space, flanked by two Van de Graaf electrical belts.

"Begin the recovery operation."

The words that the Commander said had more vitality behind them than had any words he had spoken ever to most of the people in the room.

"Beginning recovery operation," Akagi responded smartly. "We are reducing the core temperature of the Evangelion to normal human body temperature and decreasing LCL pressure to 3000 millibars. No true life signs at this point. Commence electrical charging of the Entry Plug."

"Static electricity belts in place, ma'am," said Aoba, "and activating." The belts whirred to life, conducting charged particles onto the surface.

"We have now acquired a measurable charge on the Energy Plug," Aoba continued after a brief pause. "What are your orders?"

Ritsuko silently made a prayer for their success and safety. "Prepare to initiate feedback sequence," she said aloud. "On my command, throw the switch to short across the Evangelion's primary data link with the Entry Plug. Maya, monitor the passive sensors in the Entry Plug. Our goal is to have 55 kilograms of solid matter present...and let's all hope that Mother Nature knows what she's doing.

"On my mark, ready...

"NOW!"

Aoba closed his eyes and pressed the switch on the box that had recently been duct-taped to his computer console. There was a crackle of electricity from the Evangelion tank, but no outward signs of disaster.

From his console, Hyuga said, "No internal response from the Evangelion..."

"Something's happening!" Ibuki shouted excitedly. "We have a single material object, 5 grams and growing at a very fast rate. 15,45, 90..."

Ikari and Akagi were behind her in a moment. "It's working," the Commander breathed. "It's really working..." He half turned away from the monitor and said, "Thank you, Skuld-sama. I think you've done it."

"You're welcome, Commander," she replied with a smug tone.

"We're up to a kilogram," Maya broke in. "Ma'am, I'm concerned with how fast this body is growing. Are the Magi going to be able to stop in time?"

"It's faster than the estimated rate," Akagi admitted, "but remember, growth is going to start slowing down after about 40 kilograms of mass. There's only a limited amount of raw materials in the plug to use...as those are used up, new growth will be restricted."

In less than a minute, the body in the cockpit had reached an acceptable mass. The Entry Plug was grounded and depressurized, then moved away from its secure location to a more accessible part of the cage. Using Skuld's Big Fuckin' Can Opener, a NERV medical crew set to work on opening the damaged plug. The bridge team, the Children and the three goddesses arrived just as they put the body onto a stretcher.

Ikari Yui had returned in angelic beauty. Her face and head were round like the moon, pulled by her sharp chin into a countenance born to be smiling. Her shoulders were broad and strong; the arms below them already had a feminine but not effeminate muscle tone; the hands at their termini were exquisite, with long thin fingers and healthy nails. The epipubic mound, the telltale sign of the womb within her, rose gently from between her hips to a waist slender without being thin. Above the waist were two breasts, small and pouting, with dust-colored nipples off of center. Below it, her thighs framed her womanhood; strange but for the circumstances, her nudity seemed innocent, not immodest. Her ten toes were gently curved one against the other, and at their bases joined a well-formed foot, elegant to admire yet strong enough to support her body.

Ikari Yui did not simply wake; she rose to the world. No sooner had the medics started crowd control than she was sitting upright, scanning faces unknown and half-forgotten with her eyes of black.

"Gendou!" she cried.

The force of her shout, the vehemence--even as the one word reverberated around the Cyclopean cage--startled all but one person in the room. Only Commander Ikari seemed unsurprised by the force of spirit she had summoned within her. For his own part, he had enough physical strength to push past the startled medics and embrace his lost wife with a wordless sob of joy.

Ikari Yui lifted her arms, put her hands on his shoulders, and shoved him away.

"Listen to me, Gendou," she said severely, "I think you owe me more than just an explanation."

He gaped at her, open-mouthed with shock and horror.

"It's not just a coincidence," she growled at him. "Two days before the first trial run I heard from one of the techs that there was a ghost living under the Geofront. So I went down to Terminal Dogma. And, to my very great surprise, there was a door down there that I couldn't get access to. Do you know what I did, Gendou?"

All within earshot were silent, their success forgotten.

"I knocked on it. I knocked on it, and someone let me in. A little girl who looked very, very much like me. I asked her who she was. She said her name was Ayanami Rei, and she said she was a clone. I believed her, after I had her show me an entire room full of little girls all exactly like her. You stole me, Gendou. You stole my blood, somehow, and you cloned me into a doll that you could use for your experimentation.

"And for the first time since we got married, I decided that of all those little things you told me not to concern myself with for my safety, some of those things were important after all. So I talked with my old professor. And do you know what he told me? He told me that you needed someone you could control for this mysterious 'Complementation Project' I'd heard about before."

She had taken her first steps off of the stretcher. Naked, bald and trembling with fragility and fury, she was Nemesis incarnate. "I never thought Kouzou-sensei would turn on me. I knew he didn't have your passion about your work...but I never thought he was afraid of you. I was wrong. I was completely wrong." Yui would have had her face pressed up against Gendou's if he had had the strength to raise his eyes up from the floor. She spoke more loudly and more sharply as she continued, "So, you had him betray me. You had to know everything about everyone. Even that wasn't good enough for you. The one night, THE ONE NIGHT when it was so important to you that I have a good night's rest, the night before the damned activation, you chose to confront me! Confront me! God! DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID TO ME IN THAT ROOM, ROKUBUNGI GENDOU? DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW IT HURT--?"

"KAA-SAN!" Shinji screamed.

The Wagnerian drama was shattered. Yui snapped her head around to stare at the boy. His eyes were his father's eyes...but weaker, watery. He was trembling with emotion, like herself. He too clenched his fists when he was nervous. For the first time since her rebirth, she became aware of her nudity.

She dropped down to her knees in front of him and gently put a hand on his tear-stained cheek. There were only a few seconds before she too would be crying, she knew. "Shinji--chan?" she asked, barely more than a whisper.

"It's me, kaa-san," he replied. He found courage to meet her eyes.

A white lab coat was placed across Yui's shoulders like angel's wings. She absently slipped it on as she spoke. "Shinji...you're the only one I can trust. Tell me, what's happened?"

Did the Earth stop turning at that moment? Or did the sun stop moving across the sky?

"Tou-san," the boy said softly, "left me at his brother's house. But oji-san couldn't take care of me. So I...I kind of got shuttled around before I moved in with one of my teachers. He took care of me."

"Your teacher?" she gasped. "Shinji, when was this?"

"About...ten years ago."

Ikari Yui cried. She pulled her boy tightly into her arms, and he cried alongside her. They cried in anger at the state of their world and in mourning for lost opportunities. Half-hidden, there was a part of them that cried for joy too, for hope, for a future they didn't know or understand but that might come true and bring them everything they ever hoped for, once they could stand on their feet.

"So that's the story," Skuld said in a voice seeped with sadness and disgust. "Rei was originally supposed to be the intermediary between all the units and their pilots. Then Ikari-san realized Ikari-okusan was too much of a risk. So he set up this test she just mentioned for her soul to be absorbed by the Evangelion. But--and I'm going to go out on a limb here--but after it worked, he realized what he'd lost. He's been working ever since to please his bosses, and also to get Ikari-okusan back."

"Yui."

He hadn't moved, but his magnanimity had sublimated into thin air. Gendou looked like a tired man in his late fifties who had been spending too much time at his job, a working man like any other. The look on his face, despite the beard and the glasses, was more like his son's than anyone had ever seen it.

"Yui...I...I never even thought to wish you luck."

Ikari Yui nodded and stood. The look of Nemesis had returned. She pulled the flaps of her coat together like a kimono and drew Shinji protectively to her side.

"Now," she snapped, "would be an excellent time to do so."