Shikinami Asuka Langley

"Target one destroyed!"

"Target two destroyed!"

"Target three destroyed!"

"All targets confirmed eliminated. Mission complete!"

As the electronic reports rang out one after another, the simulation finally came to an end. A technician from the NERV Hamburg Branch, Germany, standing nearby nodded in satisfaction.

"Simulation complete. Very good, Shikinami. Your results were outstanding."

A girl in a red, skintight combat suit climbed out of the cockpit.

Though both were undergoing simulation training, the girl was clearly far more seasoned than Shinji Ikari, who had yet to get started-after all, she had already fought countless battles in the simulator.

She deftly took what a staff member handed her: a soft bamboo-fiber towel whose greatest advantage was its excellent absorbency.

Asuka Langley Shikinami was the designated pilot of a giant red humanoid machine, EVA Unit-02. At the Germany branch, she was known as the Second Child.

Asuka Langley Shikinami

The girl had grown up in the United States, but she was three-quarters German and one-quarter Japanese by ancestry. A child prodigy who had graduated from university at fourteen, she was fluent in Japanese, German, and English.

She spoke Japanese quite fluently, though she struggled to read and write kanji. Likewise, she had always been confident that she was the best EVA pilot, but today she discovered that she might not be quite as good as she had imagined.

The underground base carried on as usual, with loudspeakers reminding the staff not to overlook any procedures.

The Hamburg Branch's operations commander was a senior colonel of half-German ancestry. He watched the staff as he approached the girl.

"A synchronization rate holding steady at 333% on his first time piloting an EVA, a laser attack tactic no one has ever developed before, and a total of three minutes and thirty-three seconds from adapting to the machine to defeating Shamshel. That is the Third Child's combat performance..."

The bald senior colonel with the small mustache murmured to himself. His aide carried a laptop straight over to Asuka and set it on the long table in front of her.

"This is the information headquarters in Japan uploaded to the system. You might want to take a look. I have to say, it's truly astonishing."

"The Third Child!?"

Asuka, who had been drying her long, wet golden-brown hair, froze. Hearing that title, she stopped what she was doing and positioned the laptop in front of her.

Seeing the operations commander's aging face, as grave as a sculpture and so solemn it seemed capable of freezing the air around him, Asuka felt her heart tighten.

She realized that the senior colonel's amazement was no joke. No longer caring whether her hair was dry, she quickly began tapping at the keyboard.

Her fingers flew across the keys, producing a rapid series of clicks. Before long, densely packed rows of information flashed before her eyes...

The delight she had felt over her excellent training results instantly faded considerably, and her expression even began to darken.

Faced with the beautiful girl's silence beside him, the tall, burly, bald senior colonel was not bothered in the least. Instead, he looked rather pleased with himself and continued praising the boy with tireless enthusiasm.

"I have to admit, headquarters in Japan has found an outstanding young man."

In fact, he had come precisely to see that expression. His approach to training had always been that competition bred motivation; the empire of old had enjoyed its brief glory under pressure.

But this branch had no one who could compete with the girl.

The proud girl would never readily accept that someone else was better than her, and he was like a schoolteacher who always told his students, "You're the worst class I've ever taught."

The mischievous pleasure of it almost made him laugh, but he maintained the traditional German solemnity and decorum.

"He is currently acknowledged as the finest pilot. That dazzling combat record has every branch arguing themselves hoarse. It's hard to imagine that someone so capable is a newcomer who has never received any professional training. The boy is nothing short of a miracle!" the bald senior colonel exclaimed repeatedly.

"How good can a guy who doesn't even know how to fight possibly be? All he did was kill one Angel! I just haven't run into one yet!"

Asuka shot to her feet in a huff and slammed her palm against the table with a loud bang, shouting indignantly:

"I could win against an Angel too! I'm every bit as good as him!"

In response to Asuka's rebuttal and declaration of victory, the corners of the senior colonel's mouth lifted slightly, giving his aging face the hint of a smile. Then he replied at a leisurely pace:

"Then you'd better work hard. After all, he had absolutely no experience before fighting the Fourth Angel, and he only started his first training session today. He's bound to get better and better."

Asuka looked him straight in the eye. "Just wait until I grind that rookie under my heel!"

"I hear the Eligible at the Hamburg Branch is a very competitive girl," Ritsuko Akagi said, joining the conversation as she adjusted the console.

"So some foreign girl I've never heard of might already have her sights set on me?" Shinji Ikari settled into the cockpit.

"She has a name: Asuka Langley Shikinami," Misato Katsuragi said. "And she's a real beauty! But for now, focus on your training. No daydreaming."

Asuka? Hmm... Shinji Ikari tried hard to recall the name, but his mind was a complete blank.

She might be an important character, but Shinji Ikari could not remember her at all. After all, he had crossed over more than a decade ago, and before that, he had only watched a single short video.

The fact that Shinji Ikari could still remember his mission to become a god and that Gendo Ikari was a bastard was already an impressive feat of memory.

Just then, a crisp electronic voice sounded. "Simulation program activated."

A brief pause followed, then an exceptionally violent tremor struck, as though countless chunks of metal were colliding and crushing against one another.

The strange noise filled the cockpit. At some point, red lines resembling living organisms had emerged around Shinji Ikari's feet.

The lines divided the interior into a grid. Spreading rapidly like living creatures, they covered the cockpit in the blink of an eye.

The mysterious red lines began weaving together at incredible speed. In an instant, a brand-new city rose up-Tokyo-3 appeared before his eyes.

The view outside the cockpit underwent a complete transformation, becoming an extraordinarily lifelike virtual scene that was almost indistinguishable from the real world.

Directly in front of Shinji Ikari stood three virtual Angels modeled after Shamshel.

Perhaps because the brilliant minds in the technical department had such high hopes for Shinji Ikari, even after three virtual Angels had appeared, another three identical virtual Angels were generated.

There could be as many enemies as he wanted. That was the power of technology. Of course, for now, the power of technology only provided experience points, not kill rewards.