2023-02-09: Catharsis
- Log: Catharsis
- Cast: Asuka Shikinami Langley, Shinji Ikari
- Where: Tokyo-3
- OOC - IC Date: February 9, 2023 (UC 0097)
- Summary: Asuka takes Shinji out (on a date).
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<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.
It all happened at lunch, one day near the end of the School Year. "Hey, Baka Shinji - meet me after school. We're going somewhere."
Ominous?
It probably didn't set off any alarm bells though until he got to the gate, and found Asuka there, with a severe and impatient look, wearing a red coat and checkered scarf along with her school uniform.
Shouldering a baseball bat. And between the straps of her school bag, which were criss crossed over it, was a /second/ baseball bat.
What was she planning for that she needed two baseball bats!? She doesn't play baseball! Was it to breaks his knees? Was she planning to break his knees so hard, that the bat would break as well and she needed a SECOND bat?
Whatever the case- "Took you long enough." - she cants her head and indicates for him to follow. Truly, he is now a dead man walking, off to his execution.
More evidence of this is she was taking him in the opposite side of town as where their home was, on a path to outside the city limits.
There's no small talk that she starts herself, Asuka doesn't do small talk. She just bears that same look on her face, as she heads to their destination.
It's assumed of course that the shovel is already at the destination. Where else would it be?
Eventually they come upon a bent and warped chain link fence, surrounding... an overfull junkyard, "We're here." She notes tersely.
With all those looming junk mountains, sure does look like a great place to hide a body.
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
For a brief moment in time, Asuka's request -- well, demand -- was only omnious in the normal sort of nervous, socially awkward teenage way. Shinji, naturally, agreed. What, he's going to say no to Asuka? About going somewhere? He just wishes he'd sounded more... confident about it, instead of a little squeaky and meek.
Then is very ominous, and Shinji could not have been squeaky enough.
He adjusts the strap of his bookbag on his shoulder, digging his fingers into it with a tense tug with both arms. That is a bat. And when Asuka holds a bat, Shinji does not think /sports/. He thinks concussions.
Oh! There's a second bat! The only logical conclusion is Asuka can dual wield.
"S-sorry," he stammers, not having intended to keep her waiting, but should he really be apologizing for being late to his death?! Shinji swallows the thick lump in his throat as he follows, blindly and without resistance. He could never outrun Asuka anyway.
Maybe he should text someone. Misato? He won't be home to make dinner. Maybe Kaworu, or Rei. He should thank Kaworu for everything. And Rei could have his SDAT. But in all the time Shinji spends considering and fretting... they arrive, silence between them for the walk. They're probably too far out for any good reception. It's too late.
He dies as he lived: too afraid to say anything.
"Asuka," Shinji finally ventures in a small voice. "Where is... 'here', exactly...?"
Like he doesn't know. This expanse of junk is a woefully fitting place to put the corpse of Shinji Ikari...
<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.
He would have died as he lived: too afraid to say anything. But then he finally ventures, a question.
And Asuka looks at him, "Isn't it obvious?" She asks, but doesn't clarify at first, perhaps leaving him to fumble around for the answer.
"It's an abandoned junkyard."
Oh good that explains absolutely nothing.
Asuka pulls out a glove from her bag, and puts it on, then walks up to the chain link motion, and then rips the chain links further off its moorings, pulling it up to give Shinji greater access.
It'd feel almost romantic, like one of those teen adventures of breaking and entering that you always see on TV, save for her freakish strength.
She really did just rip that metal up for him.
"After every Angel attack, there's always some folks that leave town. The owner hasn't been here since you killed the Fourth Angel, apparently, but people keep dumping."
Asuka eventually ducks under herself, then, perhaps shockingly, takes the bat out from how it's looped up in her bag straps and hands it over to Shinji. Oh see, so much better, she wants to give herself a handicap in the coming violence.
"It was my turn to take you out on a date."
THAT'S WHAT THIS IS?
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
Isn't it obvious? Well yes, it /is/ obvious, but Shinji has enough of a will to live to hope it isn't what it all looks like! Alone. With Asuka. At an abandoned junkyard and /two baseball bats./
Shinji doesn't even have two skulls to crack. This isn't fair at all.
...Maybe Asuka wants it to be fair? She's competitive. A bat for Shinji after all, to have a fighting chance. To make it interesting before he is executed for his crimes, of which there are far too many to choose from. That seems... honorable. Is Asuka honorable? Or would the concept make her complain of Japanese formality?
While Shinji debates this, Asuka rips a fence open, and Shinji jumps, spine turned unnaturally rigid and straight.
It might be almost romantic if Shinji wasn't imagining she could do that to his ribcage. The way to a man's heart indeed.
Shaken from nerves, Shinji, for whatever reason -- the reason is that it's Asuka, and she's stronger and faster and still has all that bright red hair and all her... Asukaness he's drawn to like a moth to its fiery death -- continues to lurk after her. Instinct makes his eyes wander for the dangers of the area around. Common sense tells him Asuka is the most dangerous thing here.
She hands him a bat, and Shinji blankly takes it. Yep. Fighting chance after all. If Shinji could ever qualify for that.
But he underestimated exactly how dangerous she really, truly was.
"A /date?!/" Shinji echoes louder than he means, then slams his hands over his mouth because he knows this was the wrong. Thing. To say! It would be easier to die! He's not prepared for this at all!
Slowly, Shinji claws his hand away from his mouth, looking to the bat in his hand, to the bat in /her/ hand, and then finally up at Asuka's face like it's ever been something he could read in the entire time he's known her.
"Wh-What kind of date is this supposed to be...?!"
<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.
Shinji is indeed wise to think that Asuka might just want a fair, or at least MORE fair fight, but no the situation is far worse, for it is a date.
And when Shinji exclaims that, she gives him a dark look at first-! Like 'What are you, stupid?' for not understanding, even as Shinji silences himself.
Irritated, she lowers the bat and taps it against the ground a few times, but doesn't actually say anything at first, just clucking her tongue, "Tck."
Then, he asks...
And a single blue eye looks at him out of the corner of her vision, "Simple. You always have trouble speaking up, because you're scared of what'll happen if you do. About the only thing you can be angry at are Angels most of the time right? So you're always so tense. It's kinda annoying that you don't get many opportunities to let it out safely."
Asuka rotates the bat before pointing it out there. "So I figure, we smash things. Just, to let you vent. Blow off some steam. How's that sound?"
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
Shinji is teetering on the edge of not being sure if he's stupid or if Asuka is. Cursed, dangerous thoughts. No, no Asuka is smart. And good at things. But this? A data??! Is Asuka okay?
... All right, trick question, and he should know that better than anyone.
But he does wait for an answer, which pierces him straight through wow thanks Asuka okay fine Shinji is the stupid one. Sorry to the universe for ever daring to think otherwise for half a second.
It's such a terribly piercing appraisal that his face goes petulant, gaze askew to one side as his fingers grip around the bat a little tighter just to convince himself he's holding it in a totally manly way. Ugh. Nope. Palms started sweating the moment Asuka said 'date'...
That petulance eases as Asuka keeps talking. Shinji musters up the courage again to look back, still all nerves and hesitation. "I -- I guess," he manages. Guess nothing. Asuka's right. She's not even the first person to suggest Shinji might need to go feral on a bunch of inanimate objects.
Shinji looks at the bat. He tries to imagine swinging it. There's something scary about that, too. Maybe Asuka's /really/ right.
"... What if I break something important?"
Shinji, it's a junkyard!
<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.
Is Asuka okay?
What are you, stupid?
Shinji's face goes petulant, and maybe he's somewhere near manly? Oh nope, palms sweating, that's definitely minus a few manliness points.
He agrees, in the most faint, guarded kind of agreement as possible, "Guess nothing. You're pent up. You could use this."
Asuka says with the kind of certainty that only Asuka can muster, with that confidence from a worldview that once believed she was correct about everything and everyone else was just an idiot.
Shinji asks what happens if he breaks something important. And Asuka just stares at him for a moment, "Then they can file a complaint to the absentee owner for his lack of security."
Wait, did she just tell a joke? Was that a joke? It's so dang hard to tell when Asuka tells jokes.
Either way she just gestures for him with a cant of her head. "Come on, let's get to wrecking some things."
Asuka lets her bag drag along the ground like in one of those Japanese gangster films as she turns the corner around a pile of junk, to a decades old frame of a car.
Hefting it up, into a sudden rotation, she takes a step forward, then swings at the hips with all of her might, bringing it to bear against a spider webbed wind shield.
The bat carves a small crater in the center of the wind shield, but the rest of it holds together pretty well, made of sterner stuff then windows.
Asuka clucks her tongue, "Tck. Windshields just aren't satisfying." With the butt of her bat, she smashes in the passenger side's front window, raining down glass all over the ripped up upholstery inside.
"Come on! Give it a go! No one's going to miss a wrecked car!"
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
Pent up. Tense. Never speaking up. Scared. Shinji sighs.
The joke flies right over Shinji's head. "Oh. Yeah. I guess that makes sense..." He really /is/ tense, if this all begins to sound like a reasonable explanation.
He won't be getting in trouble, anyway. Maybe? There's not a lot of getting out of this, anyway. Asuka's determined, and she's already inviting the destruction. Along with her, Shinji drops his own bag, but more unceremoniously in a sack-of-rocks kind of way because he lacks the grace of any kind of film, gangster or otherwise.
Shinji watches in a quiet awe -- the fearful kind of awe -- as Asuka brutally greets a windshield. He winces, slowly opening his reflexively closed eyes to see the increases damages.
"... Okay. Okay." Shinji takes in a deep breath, readying the bat in both hands. He's not much for baseball, instincts having him heft the bat up more like the blade of a sword. What would usually follow from such a stance is a fluid, precise motion. A flourish, following the natural motion of the blade as an extention of the user. Something Shinji really doesn't think a lot about: it's just how a sword is meant to be used to kill Angels.
The bat is meant to be an extention of something else. Of a feeling. All the ones Shinji doesn't say, can't say, doesn't know how to say.
His keeps his eyes pinched shut and yells like his house were being robbed, banging the bat in a most ungraceful, clumsy swing against the car frame with barely a dent against the hood. The thud of it rattles through his bones, and his eyes pop with the surprise and shock of it all. The small burst of adrenaline pulses in his veins.
Experimentally, he hefts back for a second swing. He shouts again, raw and aching, swinging hard enough to shatter out a headlight and smash in part of the bumper. The startled look is back, but there's the smallest quirk upward to his lips before he glances up to Asuka expectantly.
<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.
Asuka just stares at him for a moment as the joke flies over his head, but after a time her gaze just tips up. She's not good at jokes, it makes sense that he didn't get it. Maybe noone would get it.
Humor is... so new.
Either way, she's gesturing at the wind shield, and Shinji yells, and thuds the hood. Maybe it's a small dent but - "Nice! Hit it harder! Really let it out!"
... hearing him yell was, nice? He so rarely yells outside of a fight. Then he swings again, and the headlight and the bumper suffer with that shout.
Asuka's bat taps down on the ground, raising a small plume of dust, "Good! Show it who's boss! You kill Angels! You're not gonna let an inanimate object beat you!"
This time, she brings the bat up again, and traces it across the top of the car, until she gets to the trunk, and sees a few empty beer bottles in a row. Probably from a teen party.
Hefting the bat again, she takes a practice swing which starts short of the row, then swings away, disintegrating about six bottles worth, save a jagged bottom, raining glass shards behind it.
"Heh. Maybe Misato threw a party out here for her and Ritsuko." Asuka comments, because there sure are a lot of beer bottles. "She seems like the type."
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
The encouragement is clear in Shinji's head, yet suddenly so far away at the same time. Like he's somewhere else entirely, but Asuka's voice is also there, somehow. Why shouldn't it be? It's better than all the other voices in Shinji's head. The ones that say he's a coward, that he's stupid, that he's entirely useless and his friends don't even need him and should he even get to call them his friends at all when all of Shinji is this ugly tar pit of sticky, awful emotions that threaten to stain everything up and make them /worse?!/
Yeah, show it who's boss! Shinji /does/ kill Angels, it's the one thing he is good for! And there could be other things if! All the noise! Would just! Shut! Up! It's starting to feel dangerous, like everything's rushing up and threatening outward. But that's why it's a bat and not running his mouth.
The mouth, right now, is for shouting.
Music drowns it out. It turns out, so does the clamoring of a bat against steel and fiberclass. And swinging one around means even his body doesn't have time to nag with how jittery or heavy he feels. Smash, crash, bang...!
Shinji pauses to catch his breath. He watches Asuka discover a new cache of destructibles.
And utterly obliterate them in one clean stroke.
It takes a few moments to realize Asuka's spoken, and for the words to filter in. Shinji threatens to smile.
"...Better here than in the apartment?" He's not disagreeing. Hesitantly, he glances up at Asuka. "I... think I like your version better."
<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.
Perhaps it's interesting even in the contrast, because Asuka once called Shinji all those things, berated him constantly, hated him, wished he could leave...
... more fool she, when suddenly she wants him to stay more than just about anyone. Right now however, her voice is one of approval, how rare! How shocking!
Shinji shouts, and shouts, and shouts and-
Honestly, Asuka is more and more glad that they did this, seeing him pound the thing, smashing, pounding it over the battlecries of his anger.
"Less to clean up at least. We don't have to clean up out here, noone does..."
And then Asuka takes her biggest gamble yet. Because she fishes something out of her bag, and a piece of tape.
Shinji might hear her dragging some objects, stacking them, then the clink of glass as she stacks bottles and...
"Hey, Baka Shinji. Made something for you."
What he sees is a roughly six foot tall pile of destructible objects of all kinds, dilapidated wooden furniture, a TV, some boards, various glass bottles of stacked up and...
... a picture of Gendo Ikari's face, taped on the stack of bottles at the top, it looks like a magazine cutout. With that same stupid look as always, hidden behind nearly opaque glasses.
"Come on. He has to piss you off right?" She goads lightly, "If you can't ever sock him one for real, then this is a substitute. It's not the real Commander - not your real Dad."
She continues, as if trying to sell him to it, "But you can smash the shit out of it, even if you can't him."
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
Maybe that's why it works. One voice said it, and now says something else. Could the others? Is that the wrong place to look? /Is/ there really a wrong place to look? When it comes to the battlefield of emotions, Shinji doesn't know what the correct anything is. He barely knows how to articulate his own feelings.
But right now, things feel better.
His body is shaking a bit like the way it does after an Angel battle, but he feels better. His throat threatens to be sore, but still better. The world isn't coming down around him. Just an old car and some junk.
Shinji scans the junkyard, then, in a fit of impulse, takes his bat to a pile of old aluminum cans. They makes a satisfying, crunchy sort of crush. Asuka calls to him and he jerks his head back around. Not feeling in trouble, exactly, but his body on high alert from the activity.
"Huh?"
He stares up at the offering Asuka's put together, staring from the ground up, and visibly flinches back at the face she's put on it. He laughs a quiet, nervous sound, fingers digging around the bat. "That's not... I... don't..." Shinji's face twists, pained, and then darkens. "...Maybe one swing."
It's obvious, isn't it? The way Shinji feels. Chasing after his father, desperate for a word of approval he's never, ever going to get. Commanding them to risk their lives every day. Won't even have a conversation --
Shinji's jaw tenses, teeth grit against each other. He looks up at what's not Gendo Ikari, but represents Gendo Ikari, and has a bat that isn't his emotions, but represents those emotions. He steps forward, glaring it down. This time, when he yells, it's nearly an inhuman sound that threatens to ruin his throat. Baseball bat collides with magazine face, caving in the bottles, and it's only the first strike of various many, Shinji swinging, flailing, wailing on the pile. Crunched in. Smashed out. Beaten. Battered. Six feet rapidly becomes a pounded pile against the dirt, breaths coming out choked and stilted and --
In sobs. Shinji's bat clatters to the ground with the rest of his mess, leaving his hand to cover his face as his shoulders shake.
<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.
She can tell Shinji's nervous, that he'd need to be sold to it, he sounds uncertain. Then however, she can at least see the transition... 'Maybe one swing'
She nods in approval. It IS obvious.
Even Asuka who has never had parents in her entire life, can understand his resentment. And indeed SHE feels resentment for him. Perhaps it was Shinji who started her resentment towards the idea that normal people ought to be fighting battles...
... and that carried on to Ouka and Seolla...
... it's just Shinji has nowhere to go, and it's Gendo Ikari's fault for all facets of this. Asuka may not take a swing at him herself, but she can understand Shinji needing to.
Then he tenses, and he starts swinging, and yelling, and pulverizing the thing to pieces, and Asuka stands there, impassively.
She watches her trash monument to the trash man be destroyed completely and utterly, until Shinji can swing no more, and just sobs - covering his face as his shoulders shake.
Asuka, isn't sure what to do here. When it's the girl in programs having this kind of crying fit the guy usually gives her a hug and comforts her.
What does she do when it's the guy??? How does that work?
Eventually, awkwardly, she sheds her red coat and before Shinji knows it, he has another coat laying atop his shoulders, while Asuka stands there with her arms crossed.
It's not exactly comfort like one might need, but it is a sort of... comfort in a way isn't it?
"Looks like you needed that almost... too much." Asuka just points out, before saying even more awkwardly, "You did... good."
What else can she possibly say? She doesn't know how to comfort someone when crying. She's not even sure she knows how to cry herself.
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
All the voices that might tell Shinji he's a stupid, weak idiot for doing this have been beaten down for today. Emotions overwhelm and overflow, and... release. In violence and in tears. Shinji doesn't want Asuka to see him like this, but it's too late to stop it now. He drags a breath in and lets it out in an audible huff, and, for once in his life... lets it happen.
The touch of her coat against his shoulders makes Shinji go still. He turns to stare back at Asuka, tears stopped.
Then the praise startles Shinji into a weak laugh. That's what his father should have said. Never once said at all. It's surreal. At least she isn't making fun of him. There are so many things he could say about what just happened.
Asuka has given him the gift of not having to.
"Thanks." It's a feeble response, but it's the most genuine he has. He did need that. "...Have you ever...?" Shinji gestures to the remains of garbage dad.
Is there anyone's face Asuka needed to put on a pile of junk and crush to sea level? Who abandoned her?
She didn't deserve it. ... So maybe Shinji didn't, either.
<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.
Shinji starts his weak laugh, and Asuka is perhaps startled that worked. She looks away, feeling her cheeks redden a touch, but it's easily mistakable for the February chill.
After all she's not wearing her jacket anymore.
All the same even if she doesn't feel happy, she doesn't feel more than mild embarrassment, and for once that's not... bad?
"Have I ever...?" She asks in confusion, then... she remembers. Oh. He doesn't know.
"Nah. Never had parents." She confides that much at least, that much, about her past. She doesn't consider that thing in her Eva to be a parent.
She's just a thing made in the image of her child.
"There were a lot of people whose faces I smashed in at the AEU. You know. Guys who decided they had to beat up the 'Coordinator' for showing them up."
Right now, with the ZAFT war, with GENESIS so heavily in the news it feels almost topical.
"I came back from it, put them in traction, and that was that - until the next batch took their shot. I don't even remember any of their faces."
Asuka meanders forward, before she swings her bat like a golf club, suddenly launching a piece of wooden debris so high it clears a junk mountain with that stroke.
"I don't need a face to get mad at really. I'm just, mad." She remembers that he said she could get as mad at him as she wants when it came to Bujack, she gestures his way, "And your face makes me less mad than usual, I guess, now." She allows.
Asuka then turns to him, and the bat is kept at a low angle, it's not aggressive in the stance, even if she remains intimidating, "Hey, Baka Shinji." She starts, before tearing her eyes away, looking off at another trash mountain, "Am I what you want?"
That's a weird pivot, but, blame Kaworu. He encouraged her to ask.
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
No parents at all. Shinji thinks that means something other than it does. It's still abandonment, even if you don't have faces to put on it. And a baby could absolutely never have deserved it. Shinji can be down about a lot of things, but he's not about to give leeway on that, even if Asuka doesn't seem bothered.
"Oh," Shinji says blankly. "Real faces." Some life comes back into him with that thought, but there's a funny lack of fear in it today. He looks down, his smile sheepish. "...They sound like they weren't worth remembering."
That stuff is all above Shinji's head, except for the part where it seems unfair and awful to be mean to someone just because of how they were born. Nobody chose to be born. He certainly didn't.
He jerks his head back up, watching the wood fly. It's impressive. Should Shinji be admiring feats of violence strength right now? There's a crushed garbage dad, so 'should' is taking a break today.
Shinji had meant it then, that Asuka could be mad at him. Because being mad does seem so... critically Asuka. It's not that he wants her to be. But more than whatever he feels about it, he wants her to be... /her/. Even if that means being mad. It's still a relief she'd rather not cave his face in though.
Or execute him. This was not an execution after all.
/Am I what you want?/
No, wait, /there/ it is.
Shinji sputters, his face turning red from neck to ears to scalp. "Wh - wh - what...?!" She can't just go at that out of nowhere! (She can. That's how it works, typically.) "You -- want --" His fingers reflexively squeeze around the edges of Asuka's coat, pulling it tighter over his shoulders and NOPE, do not! Not right now! No curling into a ball! He straightens up, staring.
"I -- do you --"
No. Stop. Shinji squeezes his eyes shut and reopens them, trying to steady himself. He can't be passive like this. He has to -- /do/ something. Like a bat to a junkyard instead of spouting poetry to explain himself.
Swallowing, Shinji steps forward. He reaches for Asuka's wrist, more of a brush of his fingers than a hold, trying to get her attention before tipping his mouth toward hers. It was such a disaster last time. This time... he hopes there's an answer in there somewhere for both of them.
<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.
Asuka nods at Shinji, "Yeah. ... They weren't. You ask me to name five guys who served with me in the AEU, I wouldn't be able to get to two. Even broke a commanding officer's finger, I called him-"
Pause.
"-well it's a German thing but 'Commander Pointless' basically. He wasn't NERV, so me hitting him didn't matter."
It was Oberstleutnant Bananenbieger. Germans have weird insults.
"I don't even remember his real name or rank."
The pivot causes Shinji to sputter, and Asuka keeps looking away, a touch red cheeked from the cold. It was a stupid idea wasn't it? She shouldn't listen to Kaworu for advice! He-!
Shinji's stepping forward, and Asuka turns her head at the last second, dumbfounded, as Shinji's fingers brush her wrist, "I-" Whatever she was going to say is cut off by Shinji's lips against hers.
Asuka freezes momentarily, stiffening up, but it's not the same as last time. Noone's... looking. It's the answer to a question she asked.
After a moment, her fingertips flex, and she loosely puts her hand around Shinji's side, and her lips... move. This subtle osculation over Shinji's. This light taste of her cherry lip gloss.
She's not, really sure what to do, last time she didn't move at all, this time she might just be acting on the instinct to do /something/ anything.
So instead of freezing there, waiting for Shinji to do something... she moves, her lips, just subtly across his. She leaves it to him when to break it off...
... it was his answer to her question after all.
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
Shinji's face scrunches up with Asuka's story, a sound caught in his throat. That's actually pretty funny, and he is not sure he's supposed to laugh. "Sorry," he muffles into his hand. There's another stuttered breath. Pointless...
That's before judgment day arrives, though. Judgment hour? Minute. It feels like eternity.
And Shinji, for all his bluster in giving this as his answer, has precious little idea of what he's doing. Kaworu's advice to him was to practice on his hand. Which Shinji did not do! At all! That would have felt silly. Mortifyingly foolish. Look awkwardly at your own hand all day and wash it a few times extra kind of ridiculous.
Don't ask why he has specifics to that.
Hands are not a person, and most people are not Asuka, and all it takes is one motion and Shinji thinks he might short circuit. There's the faintest mirror of the idea of the motions, but it's altogether a short gesture. Clumsy and brief, but at least nobody suffocates.
It's over, and he looks back at her, any confidence he managed to pin up turned to a quiet hesitation.
Does that... answer her question? Was it a good enough answer...? Is it a problem he can't tell already?
Asuka is still holding a bat.
<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.
Shinji does not perish for his laughter, honestly this is the kind of thing Asuka approves him laughing at. Unless he told her the nickname sucks or something.
Then she'd sock him one probably. Maybe. She told Kaworu she wouldn't do that anymore.
The kiss happens though. It happens. And eventually, it's done, clumsy and brief and awkward for the both of them...
... but it wasn't a horror of horrors, that someone could post on the internet and embarrass them so hard they'd have to join the Jupiter Energy Fleet.
It was just, two teenagers.
Asuka stands there for a time after, more red faced than before, as she hikes up her scarf to cover her lower face. Apparently that answers that.
What's she supposed to do now? Ask if they want to keep kissing? She's not sure and no way she's now too embarrassed for that.
"That was... better." Asuka says after, clearing her throat, like someone assessing and evaluating his performance.
She says nothing about the answer to her question of wanting her. It sort of speaks for itself.
Again, awkward silence then a flustered... "... Let's...! Keep hitting things!"
Soon after, an old washing machine falls to her rampage. As do more things. It's a strange setting for a date, but perhaps it works for two disaster children.
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
No, but, they couldn't both join it. They'd have to draw straws, because if they showed up together that would only fuel their embarrassing horror story.
Luckily, that does not happen.
Shinji waits for the final verdict, then lets out a soft breath of relief and the smallest of smiles. He would rather not ask to keep kissing either. One took all of him as it was.
And it seems to answer that, for the both of them, and everything is... okay. Better. Everything is better than it was a little bit ago. Silence passes between them, and it is Asuka who mercifully breaks it.
"Right, y-yeah!" Shinji agrees, his voice a little higher than he means as he scoops his fallen bat from the ground.
A strange date, maybe. But it's harder to worry about ruining something when that's the whole point to begin with.