Fanfic / Children of an Elder God

Do NOT gaze too long into it. It is dangerous...

Sometimes, children go into their parent's closet and dress up, pretending to be their parents, acting as if they were in charge, as if they ruled the house, as if they were the kings and queens of the Earth. But then their parents come home, and the game is revealed as a lie.
For millennia, humanity has played at being kings and queens, at ruling the world they call home. Now, the car is pulling into the drive...

Children of an Elder God is a Neon Genesis Evangelion/H. P. Lovecraft Fusion Fic by John Biles and Rod M, replacing the Angels with Cthulhu and all the rest of the Great Old Ones, giving an already mind-screwy stew an entirely new flavor.

It's the year 2014. Humanity feels safe in their homes, seeing themselves like kings of the planet. Little do they know, they live in an island isolated in the middle of an universe plagued with horrors... and those horrors are coming back home.

Only a few Children can stop the Old Gods from reclaiming their world. However, each battle makes their bodies evolve and gain new powers... and maybe to save humanity, Shinji, Asuka and Rei must stop being human.

The fic's main site is no longer available, although it's been archived. The original draft of the final chapter is posted at SpaceBattles.com. A fan-compiled archive of the entire story is also available.

Compare with Thousand Shinji, another Evangelion crossover with similar themes (the Children becoming more than human due to the action of Eldritch Abominations and picking up powers as they killed things). In fact, Children Of An Elder God gets credited as one of the biggest influences together with Shinji And Warhammer 40 K and Once More with Feeling.

---

This fic provides examples of:

A-C

• Abusive Parents: Shinji was abandoned by his father when he was four and recalled by Gendo ten years later because his father had an use for him. In chapter 7, when Shinji tells Asuka about it, she is shocked and furious.
• Ace Pilot: Shinji, Asuka and Rei are more skillful and more competent than their canon selves. In their first engagement, Shinji and Rei managed to kill an humongous spider-alike Eldritch Abomination had turned the whole city into a giant cobweb infested with billions of spiders. In her first engagement Asuka tore a Sea Monster to bloodied pieces when it got her angry. And every time they killed a new cosmic horror they became more powerful.
• Action Girl: Asuka and Rei are mecha pilots trained since they were little kids and have the powers of the cosmic horrors killed by them.
• Adaptational Badass: The Children are somewhat more heroic and way more badass than their canon counterparts. Shinji pilots his giant robot willingly and gains powers, Asuka becomes a better fighter and gains fire powers, Rei is terrifying...
• Affably Evil: Nyarlathotep is polite, congenial and charismatic... even when he is readying to obliterate your soul. When Asuka and Touji are fighting him and even swearing at him, he remains non-offended and even amused.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: In chapter 4, while Kaji and Asuka are talking, he laughs and ruffles her hair in a paternal, placating way.
• Airborne Aircraft Carrier: The Scimitar, NERV's mobile command carrier, is described as an aircraft carrier attached to a pair of zeppelin balloons, all heavily armored.
• Alien Geometries: The city of R'Lyeh is a five-dimensional dreamworld following the rules of Xoth, stuck into reality where Earth's laws of physics are polite suggestions. When the buildings are forced to obey gravity exist in a three-dimensional space, they collapse.
• Amazon Chaser: When Shinji met Asuka, he noticed two things about her: she was a beautiful girl... and she was a kick ass fighter. He wound up falling very hard for her.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: Shinji, Asuka, Rei, Touji and Hikari fight Eldritch Abominations and steal their powers after killing them. However the stolen power transforms them gradually until they become human-looking cosmic horrors. They never become evil -although their power tries to corrupt them- but they stop being human.
• Animalistic Abomination: The first enemy fought by Shinji was an Eldritch Abomination wich looked like a giant spider. Later on, Asuka fought a green, crab-like Great Old One. Another Angel constantly produced an endless stream of these.
• Anyone Can Die: The only main characters survived the war were Shinji, Asuka, Touji, Hikari and Misato. Everyone else died... but Ritsuko and Maya, although it is revealed in the last scene.
• After-Action Healing Drama: Chapter 19 starts when Asuka and Rei have been taken to the hospital to be healed after getting brutally hurt by the latest cosmic horror that they had fought... and by each other.
• The Ageless: The Children are permanently stuck in fourteen-years-old bodies due to their powers. Misato noticed this when she got old, but neither Touji nor Hikari aged.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: In chapter 21, a terrorist group invades NERV's German base.
• All Your Powers Combined: The Children have the abilities and powers of all Great Old Ones.
• Apocalyptic Log: The prologue consists in Gendo and Fuyutsuki listening to the "Transcript of the Last Transmissions of the Long-Smith Expedition", recorded by two scientists while they were exploring a network of caverns. The log abruptly ends up when they are found by an Eldritch Abomination.
• Apologises a Lot: Shinji has this habit. When Asuka tells him that her parents are dead he apologizes, and Asuka reminds him that he has nothing to apologize for.
  Shinji: So what are your parents like?
  Asuka: [sharply] Dead.
  Shinji: I'm sorry.
  Asuka: Don't be such a wimp, Shinji. It's not your fault they died.
• Arc Words: "The Stars Are Right", stated by characters like Gendo, Fuyutsuki, Rei... when they think or feel that the prophecies are about to come to pass. Sometimes the stars can be seen literally moving into position
• Archnemesis Dad: When Shinji found out about his parents wanting to use the powers that he and his friends had stolen from the Elder Gods to create a False Utopia, he and the other pilots rebelled and fought Gendo and Yui.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Yui ascends to godhood when she seizes the power of the Outer Gods and uses it to create a new world.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: Asuka is a temperamental, hot-blooded redhead, wears red clothes, pilots a red war mecha, and has fire powers.
• Attention Whore: Subverted. Asuka's foster mother helped her with her temper and self-esteem issues, but the German girl still liked and needed to being the centre of attention. However she develops powers and abilities during the War which bring the wrong sort of attention and freak other people out. After the Final Battle Asuka just wants to be unnoticed and remain anonymous.
• Awful Truth: In chapter 22, Asuka demands to know what happened to her parents, and Gendo tells her: Kyoko volunteered to get a genetically modified fetus implanted in her womb. Unfortunately it killed her, and in the resulting chaos, the lab went up in flames, and Asuka’s parents died.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Shinji and Asuka's relationship was uneasy at the beginning. Still, when Gendo lectured Asuka angrily, Shinji went out of his way to reassure her. And when Asuka found out that Gendo ordered Shinji getting into an Eva without previously warning his son that most people tried to synch with an Eva died or went crazy, she got angry.
• Badass in Distress: Misato is a very competent soldier, but in chapter 21 she was captured by terrorists and had to be rescued by Rei.
• Bad Boss: Gendo is a jerk who treats his subordinates like garbage, mistreats them, sends them on dangerous missions without warning them previously about the risks, insults them and belittles them rather reprimand them properly, and sacrifices them when it is convenient. For all that, though, he's unremittingly devoted to the salvation of mankind.
• Batman Gambit: Nylarathotep tried to make Asuka believe that he was the true founder of her religion so that she despaired and joined him. It nearly worked, but a third party showed her that Nylarathotep lied.
• Battle Aura: Asuka's battle aura is made of glowing flames.
• Battle Couple: Shinji and Asuka got together during the story. They fight eldritch abominations using their super robots... or power stolen from other monsters they killed previously.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: A consequence of insanity-inducing Great Old Ones, although sometimes it is less a "battle" and more a "rejection of a false reality".
  • After the Final Battle, the dead old gods whose power was stored in the combined body of all Evas tried to take over the Evangelion-entity; but they not only fought the Children, but each other, and by that time the Children had become so powerful that they had a farewell conversation with Rei (who would stay behind to ensure that they never obtained the power of Eva) while crushing them and not even noticing the effort put into it.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Shinji wishes to be a god during a dream, thinking it was just a silly dream. Later on, he gets godly power, but he doesn't like it because it corrupts him and removes his humanity gradually.
• Bedmate Reveal: In chapter 15, Asuka wakes up, looks around, realizes that Touji is sleeping on her bed and screams. Her screams wake Touji up, he sees Asuka and starting yelling, too. It is, obviously, all the fault of subconscious teleportation.
  Someone snored very close to her, so she rolled over and said, "Quit sno..." Having opened her eyes, she could see who it was. Touji was naked next to her except for his blue boxer shorts and white socks, which needed to be washed. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING IN BED WITH ME?"
  "Mmm, Misa..." Touji mumbled, then snapped the rest of the way awake. "AAAA!!!!! WHAT IN HELL ARE YOU DOING IN MY BED?"
  "I'm not in YOUR bed! You're in mine! How the hell did you get into my apartment?" Asuka shouted.
  "You're smoking crack! I wouldn't try to crawl into your bed if you were the last woman on Earth!"
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Shinji and Asuka had this for a while. He was an Idiot Hero, and she was his Tsundere Battle Couple. However their arguments were more civil than in canon since he was less wimpy and she less short-tempered.
• Beneath the Mask: In her first scene Asuka is interacting with Kaji, someone she trusts implicitly, so her mask is dropped and she behaves nicely. Later she is meeting other people, including her co-workers, so she keeps her mask on and she acts like a harsher, more prideful person. Throughout the story she gradually falls her mask as she gets closer to other people, especially Shinji.
• Berserk Button:
  • Asuka was not enthused about touching Amaliel, let alone fighting it. Then the aquatic cosmic horror bit her robot's hand off. Asuka bludgeoned it, torn its limbs off and then ripped flesh chunks off its body until she was sure it was very, very dead.
  • Just try and hurt Shinji when Rei's around. Even if she's not around, she will know anyway. Shown best in chapter 12, where Orifel almost convinces Rei to switch sides, until she sees Shinji being overwhelmed by Orifel's children, at which point she promises to eat his heart.
• Beta Couple: Touji and Hikari developed as the same time Shinji and Asuka started out their relationship. At the end they chose to remain among normal human beings unlike Shinji and Asuka, who could not fit in human society anymore.
• Big Damn Heroes: Rei performs one in chapter 1 to save Shinji when he had been trapped by the spider-alike monster Matarael. Just about all the Children pull them off for one another at some point.
• Big Ego, Hidden Depths: Asuka came across to other people like as an arrogant, brash girl, but when they knew her a little, most of them realized that she was trying to mask her insecurities and psychological issues. Although she's certainly more balanced than the Asuka of canon... at least, in the beginning.
• Bio-Augmentation: NERV tried to use this to create humans capable of piloting Evangelions. It went... horrifically.
  • One of the methods Keel Lorenz used to prolong his life, along with just about everything else imaginable.
• Bittersweet Ending: At the end, Shinji and Asuka have lost almost everyone that they care for, and due to their mutations they don't fit into human society any longer, so they abandon civilization forever. Still they are still together, the narration states that their remaining friends will meet them again, and thanks to them humanity has been saved and will endure for several centuries more.
• Blood Knight: Deconstructed. Due to her upbringing Asuka is very aggressive, battle-hungry and eager to engage the enemy. However her first fight was against an alien horror was so repulsive-looking she does not even want to go near it. When it bites her robot's hand off, though, she loses her shit, rips its limbs off, and bludgeons it until it is a bloody pulp... which earns her a 'very' harsh reprimand for being too aggressive and ignoring orders to capture it.
• Body Horror: Appears absolutely everywhere. The Evas, the Children, the Angels...
  • Amaliel was a dark, green blob with crab-like claws, tentacles and something vaguely resembling a head.
    ... an almost globular torso, with six long sinuous limbs terminating in crab-like claws. From the upper end a subsidiary globe bulged forward bubble-like; its triangle of three staring, fishy eyes, its foot-long and evidently flexible proboscis, and a distended lateral system analogous to gills, suggested that it was a head.
  • Violator -another of the Lovecraftians abominations fought by the main characters- had mouths on its palms. And mouths, tongues and tentacles everywhere. It had both male and female sex attributes, raped corpses, and ran around after its head was blown off.
  • All the Children can mess around with their physical form like a demented molder of clay. One of the creepiest instances include Shinji crying spiders, Asuka producing hundreds of blood-sucking tendrils from her mouth, face, and shoulders, and Shinji turning his arms into snakes and shoving them down people's throats.
  • The Evangelions are fond of making tentacles.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Asuka is her squad's best fighter. She is as enthusiastic and lively as in canon, and more sociable and more congenial, making her easier to hang out with.
• Bonding over Missing Parents: In chapter 7, Shinji and Asuka do this. Shinji tells him that his father abandoned him after his mother’s death and then he asked her what her parents were like. She replied that they were dead, and they talk about how they lost their parents.
• Bonus Material: This story's original homepage included several omakes with crazy scenes (one of them written by the author of HERZ in which Kaji goes crazy after reading a "forbidden text"), and the newest homepage includes author's notes explaining some scenes or clarifying several homages, as well as an introduction to the Cthulhu Mythos.
• Break the Cutie: Throughout the story Shinji has to fight humongous, super-powerful cosmic horrors. In the process he gradually stops being human, loses his -blood and surrogate- family and almost all his friends and although they win, he and Asuka are so removed from baseline humans that they say goodbye to their last remaining friends and leave human civilization forever. Everyone gets a bad case of this, really.
• Break the Haughty: Asuka was somewhat arrogant and brash when she came along (albeit she was calmer than in canon thanks to be raised by a good foster mother). In her first battle she was supposed to capture her adversary alive, but she got carried away when it got her mad and she killed it. As a consequence of it, she got lectured, berated and threatened by Gendo. During the War she sees her friends and people getting insane or dying because of the Eldritch Abominations they are fighting as she gets put through several defeats and humiliations, including being raped due to the influence of the absorbed remnants of Y'golonac and when all is over she pretty much has no pride left.
• Bring My Red Jacket: Asuka had the most violent fights.
• Broken Ace: Asuka is the best fighter and mecha pilot in her squad, a college graduate, and she is bolder and more cheerful than her canon self. However she keeps hiding deep childhood trauma and abandonment issues, and fighting ancient cosmic horrors got her even more broken during the War.
• Broken Bird: In order to try to get over her mother going crazy and killing herself, and her father abandoning her shortly after, Asuka trained to become the best war mecha pilot ever. Thanks to finding a decent mother figure, she did not become as hostile to and frightened of other people as her canon self, but she still tried to be self-reliant. Through the war she lost friends, her own humanity and she was raped, but her reaction to each tragedy was trying to become more badass and more independent.
• Broken Hero: In spite of everything what they endured, the Children tried to remain upbeat and positive during and after the War.
• Broken Tears: After being raped, Asuka sobs and cries uncontrollably.
  And then the memories came, and all Asuka could do was curl into a ball and cry.
• Brown Note: In episode 9, "The King In Yellow" play makes an appearance. When it's performed, a lot of people goes mad and die, and Hastur shows up at the end. However, it's defeated and destroyed.
• Burning with Anger: Asuka is a very hot-blooded, very powerful pyrokinetic redhead. When she gets angry, she goes up in flames. Literally.
• But Now I Must Go: After the War, Shinji and Asuka leave their remaining friends. Misato and their friends ask them if they really have to go, and Shinji and Asuka reiterate that they can't stay because they don't belong among humans anymore. Subverted because Misato and friends friends followed them a while later and they were together again.
• Came Back Wrong: When Gendo and Yui created a False Utopia using the stolen power of the Outer Gods, they brought Kaji and other characters back to life. However they were puppets with no life of their own. They'd stop moving if no one was looking at them.
  • The risk of this is why Fuyutsuki doesn't resurrect Gendo again after he gets his head crushed by Nyarlathotep.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Shinji liked both Asuka and Rei, so he didn't say anything until he was sure about his feelings. King Alars from the Kingdom of Joy has an identical problem with Uoht and Cassilda.
• Can't Live with Them, Can't Live Without Them: Shinji is this to Asuka. Sometimes he drives her mad, and sometimes he makes her happier than nobody ever. In chapter 16:
  Sometimes you drive me nuts. But then you do something that changes my mind, like dancing wonderfully. I had a lot of fun tonight, Shinji.
• Chick Magnet: Shinji is meek, quiet, self-effacing... and girls are obsessed with him. And he has no idea why. Mere minutes after meeting him Asuka was already clinging to him (albeit in an attempt to make Kaji jealous), and Touji commented that Shinji had all of the girls behind him despite being a dweeb.
• Child Soldiers: Played for horror. All adults who try to synch with an Evangelion go mad, mutate, or die. The only ones capable of piloting an Evangelion are a very small number of fourteen-year-old kids (the others all go made, mutate, or die) who have to fight Cthulhu and co. to save humanity, and whose bodies change and mutate whenever they kill an Eldritch Abomination. Eventually they stop being human, and although they don't go mad, they're very traumatized.
• Clingy Jealous Girl:
  • Asuka displayed this trait around Kaji and later Shinji. When she saw a picture of Kaji surrounded by Misato and Ritsuko she wrapped her arms around his and asked who those women were.
  • Rei gets jealous and aggressive when other girls come near Shinji. Mainly Asuka.
• Clueless Chick-Magnet: Shinji is really thick and oblivious. In a scene Shinji is watching Rei trying to talk Asuka into sharing him… and he thinks that they can’t possibly want a threesome with him.
  Asuka: And I'm not sharing my boyfriend with you!
  Touji: Damn, Shinji, a lot of guys would kill for a deal like that.
  Shinji: I'm sure they weren't actually talking about sharing me.
  Rei: We were.
• Combat Tentacles: Rei is capable of sprouting flaming tentacles from her back and impale an enemy with them. Asuka can produce blood-sucking tendrils, and Shinji can turn his arms into snakes. And after beating Adam, all the Children gained the ability to basically do whatever the heck they wanted to their bodies.
• Convenient Coma: Ritsuko was in a coma after the Final Battle. Maya looked after her while she was comatose, but she had to wait for a long while until Ritsuko woke up and they had their happily ever after. And by "a long while", we mean "almost 600 years".
• Conveniently an Orphan: Shinji, Asuka, Rei, Touji and Hikari are motherless. They are also giant robot pilots and fight cosmic horrors.
• Cooldown Hug: In chapter 7, Shinji tried to comfort Asuka after she realized that Kaji would never love her. Asuka broked down and held him tightly as she sobbed. In reaction, Shinji hugged her back until she calmed down.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: Misato, as always. And although she's normally an excellent chef (unusually taking Shinji's role as the household chef in fanfiction), she occasionally likes being "creative" and mixing foods that were not meant to be mixed:
  Misato woke up clutching her stomach, which was mildly nauseous, and wondering if Asuka had put LSD in the homemade pizza. I'm never letting Asuka make saurkraut pizza or whatever that was, ever again.
• Crossover: Between Neon Genesis Evangelion and the Cthulhu Mythos.
• Crush Blush: At the beginning, when Asuka still had a crush on Kaji, she tended to blush around him. An example happened in chapter 4:
  "You say the sweetest things, Asuka," Kaji said casually.
  Asuka blushed furiously and tightened her embrace just a little bit.
• Cry into Chest: After Asuka realized her crush Kaji loved Misato, Asuka broke down sobbing onto Shinji's chest when he tried to comfort her.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Asuka against Amaliel in chapter 4. The Sea Monster sliced her mecha's hand off while she was squooshing it like a cooshball. She bludgeoned it and tore it to pieces.

D-F

• Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: Subverted. When Shinji suggests that maybe his father had a good reason for ditching him, Asuka replies that that's dumb:
  "I guess he just lost interest after your Mom died. The bastard."
  "Don't call him that," Shinji said. "He's doing his best to save the world. I guess that has to take priority."
  "That is NO excuse for how he treats you. I'd beat him down if he was my father and treated me like that. He wouldn't even let you live with him!"
  "Maybe he knew I'd be better off here," Shinji said faintly.
  Asuka started to reply, then wondered for a moment if Shinji was right. "You are better off here," she said. "With people who actually care if you live or die."
• Dare to Be Badass: In the first chapter, Gendo does this to Shinji. Shinji agrees to get in the giant robot because he thinks that he'll let Gendo down if he refuses.
  • Subverted in the annotated version of the story, with author's commentary included. Gendo actually used mind magic on him.
• The Dark Times: Cosmic horrors ruled Earth in the past. The story happens because they're returning... and they don't particularly care about the ape-like creatures infesting their ancestral homeworld.
• Deadpan Snarker: Ritsuko is a very sarcastic person and is armed with a very dry sense of humor.
  Ritsuko: Hmm. I see you're busy. When you two are done, I need to see Misato.
  Misato: I was just trying to find out who his girlfriend is!
  Ritsuko: I suppose he had it written on the inside of his underwear or something?
• Death by Childbirth: Asuka’s little brother killed Kyoko when her genetically modified fetus tried to eat her way out.
• Death Glare: In chapter 4, when Asuka wraps her arm around Shinji and both walk away together, Rei hurls at her a jealous, angry glare could melt steel, combined with glowing red eyes. She does this a number of times when she thinks other people are getting close to Shinji.
  Rei was staring at Asuka, intensely, her face twisted in anger. Her fists were clenched, shaking slightly. It was hard to tell in the sunlight, but they thought they saw her blood red eyes glow brightly for a moment.
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: Asuka's parents died in a lab fire when she was a little child. She remembers them fondly and misses them, as opposed to her canon self who loathes her father.
• Defiled Forever: Asuka feels like this after getting raped.
• Defrosting Ice Queen:
  • Shinji turns Rei -a cold, emotionless Humanoid Abomination- and Asuka -a temperamental tsundere with no social skills- into this through working together closely, fighting together and -in the case of Asuka- living together. Both girls develop feelings towards him and are often jealous of each other.
  • In chapter 4, after hearing false rumours about Shinji and Rei dating, Touji asks his friend how much he did melt the "ice queen".
    "So tell me, buddy," asked Touji. "Exactly how far didja... y'know... melt the ice queen, if ya know what I mean?"
• Defusing the Tyke-Bomb: After losing her parents and becoming the NERV's puppet, Asuka found a decent foster mother who defused her. Several years later she helped Shinji to find a better reason to keep living. At the same time, Rei's friends tried to defuse her, but they weren't quite successful.
• Designer Babies: Deconstructed. Since most people went mad or mutated horribly when they tried to control an Evangelion, NERV created genetically mutated fetuses and implanted them in volunteers, which eventually ate their way out of the wombs and tried to kill everyone. One of them killed Asuka’s mother.
  How could you do something like that? That's horrible, going around altering the genetics of babies! How could you do that to my parents?
• Despair Event Horizon: Nylarathotep tried to invoke this when he tried to make Asuka believe that everything she believed in was a lie. It nearly worked, because Asuka lost hope and wanted to burn everything and everyone down.
  It was too much for her. She'd never wanted any of this. The flame washed out of her like a torrent; she heard the people behind her burst into flames and die, but she didn't care. If this was the world, she wanted to destroy it. Better that nothing exist, if the Outer Gods were all there was. Humanity would be better off dead.
  Nylarathotep tried to speak, but her flames rushed through him, charring him to ash in an instant. But he wasn't dead. He would rise again, she knew, and that knowing infuriated her more.
  She gathered her strength. This world would burn. Burn, burn, burn. If it burned hot enough, maybe she would die herself, and not have to live in it.
• Destructive Saviour: The main characters often cause so much property damage when they fight that most of cities become a bunch of ruins in their passing.
• Determinator: Shinji is pretty pliable and passive, but he can become a determinator when something important is at stake. In chapter 8, he wouldn't stop fighting in spite of his enemy's power because he would not fail Asuka and Rei.
• Determined Defeatist: When Gendo tells Shinji that he is to pilot Unit-01, Shinji thinks that he can't do it... but he decides to try anyway.
• Devoted to You: During the War, Shinji and Asuka become inseparable. At one point Asuka tells Shinji that she'll not leave him, ever. And she didn't do.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: In an omake Gendo asked Kaji if he had not been stupid enough to read a forbidden text. Kaji intended to tell he did not read it... and then he said he did it.
  "You do know that, like the text of 'The King in Yellow', this material here is Seraphim clearance only?"
  "Yes."
  "So I trust you weren't foolish enough to read it?"
  'Of course not' Kaji wanted to snort in reply. "Of course I did."
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Shinji, Asuka, Rei (and later Touji and Hikari) spend the whole time fighting and slaying cosmic horrors, in and out of their giant robots. Sadly, they do not literally punch out Cthulhu, though.
• Disappeared Dad: Shinji's father abandoned him. Shinji tries to give his father the benefit of the doubt, but Asuka thinks Gendo is just a bastard.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Rei overhears a classmate saying that she wants to ask Shinji to the dance. Rei's response is to find her dreamself in the Dreamlands and brutally murder her. This put the girl in a coma.
  • Rei does not react well to Asuka's closeness to Shinji, even before they became romantically involved.
    "Langley," she replied quietly.
    "Asuka? What about her?"
    "She was with Ikari."
    "With Shinji?"
    Rei nodded."What do you mean, 'with Ikari'?" asked Maya. "They weren't..."
    "Ibuki-san," said Rei evenly, "I want to kill her."
• Distant Finale: The last scene happens a long time after the Final Battle and its initial aftermath and features Maya telling Ritsuko what had happened to the remaining characters and the world in the meantime.
• Doomed Hometown: It happens systematically and repeatedly. The main characters live in Tokyo-3, the whole of Japan is destroyed. They move to NERV Germany, and their Home Base is destroyed. After the War they settle on America, but Shinji and Asuka can't lead a normal life anymore and leave.
• Double Standard: Rape, Female on Female: Averted when Violator takes over Rei's body and rapes Asuka. The event is treated as horrifying, disturbing and psychologically scarring for both girls, and no one thinks it's hot, sexy or whatever.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: Many people, sometimes even those unrelated to Eva, have at least partially prophetic dreams. Considering the influence Great Old Ones have over the Dreamlands, this is appropriate.
• Dreaming the Truth: At the beginning, Shinji had intensely disturbing dreams where he turned into something inhuman after killing several Eldritch Abominations. Then he realizes that's what is happening to him and his teammates.
• Dream Sequence: In chapter 5 Shinji has a fairy tale-like dream (and he is aware of it being a dream the whole time) where he is the Prince of Tokyo-3 and has to move all of Princess Asuka's possessions to her new room before sunset in order to receive King Gendo's reward and become a god, and Pen Pen and a horde of penguins help him to complete the task. From that point the dream got increasingly and quickly disturbing.
  • Misato had one that read rather like a drug trip after eating saurkraut pizza.
• Drives Like Crazy: Misato is a terrible driver that ignores or otherwise disregards the existence of a tiny, non-important thing called "limit speed". In chapter 5:
  Misato roared through the streets of Tokyo-3 in her car as if all the Angels were chasing her. Asuka laughed with delight while Shinji clung to his seatbelt, shaking. "Faster, faster!" Asuka shouted, while Shinji prayed for engine failure.
  "I'm gonna have to slow down soon, or I'll drive right through our apartment building. I don't think the Andersons would like that." Misato took the corner at about fifty miles an hour without any trouble, thanks to the absence of any traffic. Shinji, on the other hand, was glad he hadn't eaten dinner yet.
• Dual Wielding: When facing Nyarlathotep, Asuka wields two swords when she fights: one of them is covered with fire and the other radiates light. They're normally very powerful, but considering who she's fighting...
  Two swords came out. One was covered with orange-red flame, the other shone with pale moonlight. They rose, dispelling the gloom that had fallen upon the balcony, then sliced down in unison. The Regent caught one with each hand, and the fire and light were snuffed. "Fire dies and light fades." His hands twisted and the flaming sword was wrenched from Asuka's hands, falling at Cassilda's amber-frozen feet. The moon sword simply snapped in his hands, then crumbled away to dust.
• Dug Too Deep: The story stars out when a team of spelunkers met an Eldritch Abomination while they were exploring a vast network of deep, unexplored caverns. Said Eldritch Abomination decided to kill all them and go outside, setting in motion the world-ending prophecies that the main characters intend to avert.
• Dude Magnet: Asuka became instantly popular among her male classmates.
  Kensuke and Touji were over by them in an instant, followed a few seconds later by a tide of humanity. A rather small tide, but it was disconcerting nonetheless. Asuka smiled and waved and said hello to three dozen people, quickly learning their names. The only really hard part of it was trying to sort out who was shouting what.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: The main characters got to fight and slay cosmic horrors to have a chance to lead a mostly happy life. This is most evident for Ritsuko and Maya. The former awakens from a 500-year-long coma, where she has been watched over by the latter all that time. Ritsuko is still a mermaid of sorts who can't breathe air, but Maya assures her that it might be possible to make her human again. Regardless, they can finally live their lives together again.
• Eating the Eye Candy: When Asuka appears in chapter 4, Shinji spends a while looking to her while she leaves her giant robot's cockpit and washes the Lc L off her body, and thinking she is a very beautiful girl.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Great Old Ones take the place of the Angels...and then there's the Outer Gods.
• Eldritch Location: The city of R'lyeh was a kind of multi-dimensional dreamworld "forced into reality", forged by an Eldritch Abomination in memory of the physics of Cthulhu's own home planet of Xoth. Earth's laws of physics were nothing but mere suggestions.
  R'lyeh was nothing more than a dream forced into reality, a memory of a place long destroyed - reduced to dust by the dream's creator, in his arrogance and power. And now the dream was over and reality surged in, and the laws of Earth asserted themselves.
  Buildings which twisted through five dimensions suddenly were confined to three, and fell in chunks or crumbled to dust or toppled over because the supports in the fifth dimension were no more.
  The very ground below it evaporated or inverted or became one-dimensional threads which snapped under the weight.
• Emotionless Girl: Rei is pretty emotionless. It is played for horror, as it was meant to be in the original show.
  He had looked into the girl's eye. It was red, a bright, vibrant red, but otherwise seemed guileless, straightforward, and void of any particular emotion.
• Everyone Can See It: Everyone knew what Shinji and Asuka were falling for each other. However Shinji kept saying "It isn't like that!" and Asuka kept protesting "He's just a friend!" whenever someone brought the subject up, until they got together. Likewise, most people could see the growing attraction Rei felt for Shinji.
• Expendable Clone: Gendo treated Rei as this despite her being closer to a Humanoid Abomination; as time passed, however, this was subverted as he wouldn't have time for the DAGON project to produce a viable copy, even when he wanted to be rid of her. Later she sacrifices herself to save her friends and protect humankind, arguing that she must be the one to make the sacrifice because she is not a normal human being.
• Extreme Mêlée Revenge: Asuka bludgeons Amaliel to death after it chops her Eva's hand off.
  The giant red Eva, in a surprisingly swift movement, heaved an empty tugboat out of the water and repeatedly smashed Amaliel with it.
  "You call this a battle?" asked Touji.
  Unit-02 grabbed a fistfull of tentacles, then ripped them savagely off of Amaliel's body. A horrific shriek of pain ensued.
  "Looks more like a savage beating to me," observed Touji. "So, Shinji, how d'ya like the new pilot so far?"
  The children paused a moment to watch Asuka perform three elbow drops in a row, flattening Amaliel and burying him in a concrete crater.
  Shinji shrugged. "Well... um... violent."
• Eye Scream: Ritsuko and Maya stabbed Naoko's eyes when they killed her.
• Falling into the Cockpit: When Matarael and its spawn came along and invaded the city Shinji was dragged along to the Evangelion Unit 01 and ordered to pilot it. Later he describes the episode to Asuka and she is flabbergasted -since he piloted an Eva without prior training- and horrified -since nobody informed him of the risks (most people die or go mad when they try to pilot one).
• False Utopia: Gendo and Yui's plan is to harness the power of Great Old Ones after the Children kill them all to create a paradise for humans. This takes the form of a peaceful pocket universe (or something) where everyone is content, dead loved ones are back (most prominently Kaji, Gendo, and Kensuke), and peaceful First Contact is on the horizon. Unfortunately, the power source corrupts everything, creating disasters that Gendo and Yui have to put increasing amounts of time into fixing, and the resurrected people are just puppets. Ultimately, the Children notice something's wrong with the world, learn that the method Yui and Gendo intend to use would only hasten the corruption of the world, and sorrowfully rebel.
• Fiery Redhead: Asuka is moody, hasty, feisty and temperamental. In her first appearance she got ordered to capture an aquatic Eldritch Abomination. She did not really want to because she would have to touch the slimy, repulsive thing to seize it. Then it bit her robot's hand off. She started to yell, swear, pummel it and claw it so savagely that there only were chunks of bloody flesh smearing the ground when she was done with it.
• Finger-Tenting: Gendo does this so often than even in his dreams in chapter 5 Shinji imagines his father tenting his fingers:
  Prince Shinji kneeled before the throne of his father, King Gendo of Tokyo-3, who sat on his great basalt and onyx throne, his gloved fingers pursed to form a triangle.
• Fire Purifies: Asuka wants her fire to become a tool to purify rather a weapon to destroy.
  The flames of hell are the fires which burn away impurities.
• First Kiss: Shinji and Asuka kissed for first time in chapter 16:
  "Have you ever been on a date before?"
  "No."
  "Well, you do know how a date ends, right?"
  He blinked. "Umm...no."
  A second later, she was right in front of him.
  "It's supposed to end with a kiss." Before he knew what hit him, her lips met his. He nearly fell down from surprise. Then she was back at a more normal distance.
• Fish People: Ritsuko gradually transforms into a Deep One from the Cthulhu Mythos, resembling a humanoid fish with lanky, scrawny, human-like limbs, gills, fins and tail, and she loses the capability to breathe air. Fortunately, the process is halted partway; while this unfortunately means that she wound up breathing water instead of being amphibious, she also isn't as hideous as a full-fledged Deep One.
• Fix Fic: The fic fixes some little things (Shinji is less meek, Asuka's childhood is less horrid...) before sending everyone and everything to Hell.
• Flying Firepower: Asuka Langley Sohryu, whose pyrokinetic powers allow her to form flaming wings.
• Follow the Leader: This story was possibly the first example of super-powerful, badass Shinji. Many other Eva fics such like Thousand Shinji followed its lead.
• Forceful Kiss: In chapter 16, after their first date, Asuka walked up to Shinji and she kissed him all of sudden.
• Foreign Cuss Word: Asuka resorts to swear in her native tongue when she gets angry.
  • In episode 4 an Angel ripped off her robot's hand (and Asuka felt it as if it was her own hand). Her answer?
    "ICH WILL DIESEN KLEINEN SCHEISSKOPF TOTEN!!!"
  • In an omake an Asuka action figure says "Gott in Himmel!" if you squeeze her chest.
• Foreign-Language Tirade: When Asuka was fighting Amaliel, the Eldritch Abomination cut her robot's hand off, making Asuka feeling the pain of getting her hand ripped off. She launched into a very loud, very colourful rant as she tore the monster apart. She started off shouting "ICH WILL DIESEN KLEINEN SCHEISSKOPF TOTEN!!!" and it got angrier since that point.
• Fun with Acronyms: Developed Automatic Guardian Organic Navigator: Dagon.
• Fusion Fic: Between Evangelion and the Cthulhu Mythos. The pseudo-Christian stuff is replaced with HP Lovecraft, right down to Misato wearing an elder sign instead of a cross.

G-I

• Giant Equals Invincible: Since the enemies in this story are Eldritch Abominations of the Cthulhu Mythos, conventional weaponry, tanks, fighter jets, missiles, nukes... are predictably useless, and they can only be found using bio-mechanical giant super robots which are, in fact, cloned eldritch abominations.
• Giant Spider: The first enemy Shinji fights is a skyscraper-sized spider-shaped Eldritch Abomination spread its webs all over the city and spawned millions of smaller spiders danced around its legs and flooded the city's streets.
  It showed a creature that resembled a huge spider, hundreds of feet tall, lying on its side, its legs working the air feebly. It was surrounded by a charred cocoon of spider silk and the corpses of countless spiders. However, more were erupting up from the ground and forming from its blood, which was puddled around it. Further more, the charred marks on its exterior were fading, and ichor was no longer leaking from it.
• A God Am I:
  • Nyarlathotep-possessed Anna got into this, too, openly announcing it to cause rioting and chaos.
  • After the Children fight the MP-EVAs, Yui seizes the power of the Outer Gods to ascend to godhood and recreate reality according her will.
• A God I Am Not: Once the Children gain their powers by killing the Great Old Ones and absorbing their powers, people start worshiping and treating them like divine beings. While all of the Children are uncomfortable with it, Asuka is the most appalled due to her being a Christian — in her eyes, the only being worthy of worship is God.
• God Is Good: In a dream, Asuka has a vision in which God reveals that He sent her and the remaining Children to protect mankind from the Outer Gods. It's ambiguous if her vision was real or only a dream, though.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: It happens a lot. Most of people who tried to pilot an Evangelion went mad, mutated or died because they had to synch with the mind of an Eldritch Abomination. Most of people who saw "The King Of Yellow" being performed went crazy and died when Hastur got summoned. And the list goes on...
• Gratuitous German: Asuka uses her mother tongue extensively.
  • Chapter 4 -where she shows up- is full of examples:
    • When she is ordered to trap an Angel alive: "Scheiss egal"
    • When Amaliel rips her robot's hand off: "ICH WILL DIESEN KLEINEN SCHEISSKOPF TOTEN!!!"
    • When she emerges from her robot after battle: "Hat jemand ein Handtuch?" ("Does anyone have a towel?")
  • In an omake NERV makes figurines of the pilots as part of a money-making scheme. If you squeeze one of the Asuka action figures she says: "Gott in Himmel!", "Halten Sie!", "Schnell!" or "Sieg Heil!"
• Green and Mean: Amaliel, Asuka's first adversary she fought and killed was a lime-green, gelatinous Sea Monster packed with claws, pincers and tentacles.
• Green-Eyed Monster:
  • Asuka at the beginning got agitated, angry and jealous when she saw her crush Kaji flirting with Misato. Later she got jealous over Shinji.
  • Rei was usually calm, but she could get very jealous where Shinji was concerned. When she saw Asuka clinging to Shinji's arm in chapter 5, she actually growled. While she glared silently at Asuka, her clenched fists shook, her eyes seemed to glow for a second and her friends got very, very scared. She even murdered a the dreamself of a classmate who was going to as Shinji to the dance, sending the girl into a coma.
    "For such a dweeb, that Ikari's got chicks all around him, huh?" asked Touji.
    Kensuke nodded, still videotaping.
    Suddenly, his camera died.
    They heard a growl.
    It wasn't just your ordinary growl, from a dog or a wolf. This was a deep growl, the sort of growl that suggested monstrous origins, dark and shadowy nights, and the promise of endless hours of pain. It was accompanied by a blast of cold running down their spines. The two turned around, slowly.
    Rei was staring at Asuka, intensely, her face twisted in anger. Her fists were clenched, shaking slightly. It was hard to tell in the sunlight, but they thought they saw her blood red eyes glow brightly for a moment.
    "Ohshit," whispered Touji. "She's mad."
• Grew a Spine: In this story Shinji kept being shy, quiet and non-confrontational like his canon self, but he resolved to learn to face his troubles, and he charged headlong into combat against whatever was threatening him and everyone.
• Half-Human Hybrid: In chapter 21, Ritsuko reveals that her mother was half human, half Deep One.
• Headphones Equal Isolation: In episode 23, Shinji resorts to his headphones to try to forget his current predicament:
  He laid in bed, music in his ears from his headphones and tried to zone out, but his mind kept spiraling back to Asuka.
• Heartbroken Badass: Misato was pretty heart-broken and hurt after Kaji's death.
• Hellfire: Asuka wields supernatural fire that can consume anything and everything.
• Hell Is That Noise: In the prologue, two scientists and a team of spelunkers are exploring a nnetwork of caverns when they hear several fain, faraway screams. They freak out right away:
  [there are faint screams in the distance]
  Home Base (Speaker unidentified): What the hell was THAT?
• Here We Go Again!: In the final scene, Maya and Ritsuko prepare eldritch beings who menace humanity again; not aliens, this time, but in the form of the evolution of the human race.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Asuka wielded two swords in several fights.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Asuka had a breakdown in chapter 18 after she got raped and in chapter 21 after killing several human terrorists.
  • Shinji also had a breakdown after killing an army of terrorists that invaded NERV's German base.
  • And in chapter 23, Asuka breaks down again during a dream.
• Heroic Sacrifice: During the Final Battle Rei sacrificed herself to ensure that the Great Old Ones remain sealed forever.
• He Who Fights Monsters: The premise of the story is the Children fighting Cthulhu Myths' Eldritch Abominations and gaining their powers after slaying them. They did not stop being heroes, but they gradually stopped being human. Gendo stated that "they gazed into the abyss, and the abyss became them."
• High-School Sweethearts: Shinji, Asuka and Rei met when they were fourteen. Although Shinji also had feelings for Rei he fell in love with Asuka. At the end of the history he and Asuka left human civilization together. It is implied that they will always be together, not matter what.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Nylarathotep tried to drive Asuka to despair. He was successful… to the point that she decided to burn everything down, starting with him.
• Holding Hands: Shinji and Asuka held hands several times, including the night they left humanity. Shinji grabbed Asuka's hand and they walked onto a boat before sailing out.
• Hot-Blooded: Asuka is exuberantly passionate: she is cheerful, bold, hot-tempered, impulsive and brave (as shown when a sea monster got her mad. She roared, charged... and the cleaning crew had to scrap its remains off the floor).
• Hot Wings: Asuka gained pyrokinesis and flame wings after killing a good number of Eldritch Abominations.
  Asuka soared through the night on wings of flame.
• Hopeless Suitor: Asuka to Kaji in the early chapters when she still chased after him. Meanwhile Kaji (who was after Misato) ignored her or treated her like a little girl.
• House Husband: Shinji takes care of all household chores in the Katsuragi's household because Misato is a slob.
• Humanoid Abomination: Shinji, Asuka, Rei, Touji, Hikari and Anna are outwardly human-like... but the dead Great Old Ones live inside them. They have weird, creepy powers (insect and reptile control, twisting their body into bizarre forms, controlling the weather, making ice, forming living beings from their own blood 'by accident', fire manipulation, shaping the earth, possessing people who know their name, space bending...), their bodies regenerate damage instantly and don't age, and their presence creeps other people out.
• Humongous Mecha: The gigantic bio-mechanical Evangelions are severely -and disturbingly- different from canon, and piloting them is more dangerous (most people die or lose their minds when they get into the cockpit).
• I'm a Humanitarian: The Deep Ones are a race of man-eating fish people. In their Evangelions, the Children also ate other Evangelions.
• I Am Who?: During a nightmare in chapter 23, it’s revealed to Asuka that the Children are literal Angels sent by God to save the world from the Outer Gods, and she’s the incarnation of Gabrielle.
  • Although it's debatable as to whether it actually happened; this is not brought up again, not discussed with the other Children, she has been shown to be a devout Christian, and she was in an easily-manipulable dreamscape.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Asuka has blue eyes, great fighting skills, and a fiery temper.
• I Didn't Mean to Turn You On: After fighting Amaliel Asuka wraps her arm around Shinji's and drags him away, urging him to tell her all about his battles. She was not intending to turn Shinji on, but "with Asuka's arm entwined with his and her warm tone of voice, his mind turned to mush".
  • Very disturbingly approached following the defeat of The Violator, Y'golonac. The Children inherited his perverse lust, and are freaked out by it. To understate things.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Gendo's approach to everything he does. Also when NERV was invaded; Shinji and Asuka brutally slaughtered a small army of soldiers trying to kill them. They don't even realize that they're treating the humans little different from the Angels until afterwards, at which point they're horrified and start justifying their actions to themselves.
  "Me too. I...we did what we had to do," Shinji said. "I feel terrible about it, but we really didn't have a choice. They had...they had to be stopped, right?"
  "Right," Asuka said. "We didn't have a choice. Really. They invaded our base and wanted to use us to fight for their madness instead of against the Angels. And they had...they had Katsuragi-san."
• I Kiss Your Hand: In chapter Kaji 4 kissed Ritsuko's hand when he met her. In reaction she laughed and withdrew her hand.
  "Ah, Ritsuko, as beautiful as ever," said Kaji smoothly. He took her hand in his and kissed it.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: In chapter 19, Rei is forced by circumstance to possess Hikari, and Asuka and Touji try talk to her to free her.
  Touji approached Hikari slowly. "Um... Hikari?"
  Rei's voice replied to him, "I am not Hikari."
  The Children felt a chill run through them. "Let go of her!" screamed Asuka. "Get out!"
  Touji grabbed Hikari's shoulder. "Whadaya mean you ain't Hikari!" he said desperately. "Of course you're Hikari! Stop playin' around!"
• Imagine Spot: In chapter 23, as Rei tries unsuccessfully to persuade Asuka to share Shinji, Asuka can't help but envision it:
  Her mind flickered with something. It couldn't be a memory, as she knew it hadn't happened. Just an image of herself on a bed, Rei wrapped around her from behind, kissing her neck, as Shinji kissed his way down her belly. Her eyes widened and she drove the image out of her mind. She wouldn't do anything like that with another girl and ESPECIALLY not with Rei.
• I Miss Mom: In chapter 7, Shinji tells Asuka that he's an orphan and he barely remembers his mother's face. She also misses Kyoko, even though she found a decent foster mother.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Although she did not flaunt her skills as aggressively as in canon Asuka still tried to come across as a prideful, bombastic girl to hide her deep-seated insecurities. However her mask cracks during the War and after a while she stops wearing it.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: Shinji has clear blue eyes and he was a traumatized but innocent boy. He even tried to believe that his father was a decent person, despite of abandoning him.
• Insecure Love Interest: Shinji was very insecure about his feelings towards Asuka or Rei, and he was oblivious to theirs.
• Interrupted Intimacy: In chapter 19, Asuka and Shinji are about to have sex when an enemy attacks the Home Base. Shortly after they were making out in the locker rooms when Touji suddenly entered, saw them and gagged.
• It's Personal: Misato wants to kill the Angels to avenge her father.

J-L

• Jerkass Has a Point: Gendo is a Bad Boss, a bastard and an asshole, and at least a modicum of his anger stemed from annoyance at having been ignored, but he had a point when he told Asuka that charging the enemy blindly and not following orders will get her and everyone killed.
• Jumped at the Call: Downplayed with Shinji in chapter 1. When his father asked him piloting Unit 01 he was not particularly enthusiastic about it, but he agreed to do it because he thought NERV had no one else and he did not want that his father thought he was a coward.
• Just Before the End: In the final chapters, the five pilots are anxious and worried because they can feel the end of everything is coming.
• Just Friends: When Toji and Kensuke tease Shinji about Rei, he insists that they're only friends.
• Kid Hero: All pilots are teenagers.
• The Kid with the Remote Control: Only Shinji, Asuka, Rei and few other children can pilot an Evangelion. Other candidates are driven to madness when they try. This is because the Children are all descendants with particularly strong blood of the Elder Gods, and possessed one of the more fortuitous mutations from the fallout of Adam exploding.
• Kill It with Fire: In chapter 1, billions of spiders -whose sizes range from spawned by an Eldritch Abomination are flooding the city. As Shinji and Misato are running from them, Shinji sees a man setting himself on fire to burn away dozens of spiders clinging to his body. Rei also uses fire to burn away the city-wide webbing capturing Unit 01.
  • Once she gets fire powers, Asuka hardly enters battle without calling on them.
• Lampshaded Double Entendre: In chapter 4, after hearing false rumours about Rei and Shinji dating, Touji asks his friend:
  "So tell me, buddy," asked Touji. "Exactly how far didja... y'know... melt the ice queen, if ya know what I mean?"
• Last Girl Wins: Shinji falls for and ends up with Asuka. He meets her in chapter 5, after meeting Misato, Rei, Hikari... and all remaining relevant female characters (save Anna, who was clearly never in the running anyways).
• Last Kiss: In the final episode Shinji kissed Rei before she sacrificed herself to keep the Great Old Ones sealed forever.
• Latex Space Suit: The pilots wear skintight pilot suits called plug suits. According Shinji, they look nice and are actually comfortable.
  The plugsuit wasn't bad. It looked fairly snazzy and it was remarkably comfortable for something so form-fitting.
• Leeroy Jenkins: During her first deployment, Asuka lost her temper and ripped a cosmic horror apart. Later on, Gendo criticized that behavior, stating that fighting like an enraged berserker would get them all killed.
• Let's Wait a While: In chapter 23 Asuka is feeling very strong urges to make love to Shinji. However she suspects the Outer Gods want them to give in their base instincts so they can wipe humankind out, and she restrains herself, telling herself they are still too young and with no idea of how to do it properly.
  One day...one day she would she would make love to him. But not now. She was too young, and so was he, and she had a feeling that was what Nylarathotep wanted.
  Also, she wasn't sure how to do it properly.
• Lighter and Softer: Subverted. At the beginning it looks lighter and softer than canon: the characters are a bit happier and more psychologically stable, the battles against the Angels are less traumatic... and then more and more elements of the Cthulhu Mythos are introduced, and the setting becomes very dark.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Shinji and Asuka become hugely co-dependant over the course of the story. At the beginning they were just friends, then they were dating, and then they needed each other to keep their sanity while their world collapsed, their friends died, and their powers corrupted them. At one point Shinji begs Asuka not to leave him, and she answers she'll never, ever, leave him.
• Love Confession: In chapter 23 Shinji and Asuka are resting in his room, wondering if they will be slaughtered in the next battle by the latest Eldritch Abomination they are fighting, how longer the war will last... then Asuka tells him she loves him, and Shinji replies he loves her, too.
  "Shinji," she said softly. "I love you."
  He gulped and kissed her again, then said softly, "I love you too, Asuka. Don't ever leave me. Please."
  "I won't," she said. "Never."
• Lovecraftian Superpower: To a degree; this is just how they choose to use them. Several of the Children have been seen using the abilities normally used by others. Apart from normal abilities like control of the elements, they have:
  • Shinji is capable to create and control insects, spiders and snakes. Including crying them out of his eyes.
  • Rei is capable to possess people (among other things).
  • All of the children can produce living things from their body. Usually on accident.
  • Their blood can reverse mutations, heighten them, or just outright kill people.
  • Shinji and Rei can give themselves claws and fangs (Rei, in particular, can give herself arachnid mandibles).
  • Shinji can transform his limbs into serpents.
  • Shinji can slip out of any grasp and can spew forth webbing.
  • Asuka can produce hundreds of tiny tendrils that pierce the skin to drink blood.
  • They can teleport in what is often described as a swarm of bubbles (folding of space-time producing an appearance vaguely similar to Yog-Sothoth).
  • They can make tentacles
• Love Hurts:
  • Rei fell for Shinji as soon as she met him, but Shinji was deeply in love with Asuka and he regarded Rei as a good friend. Worse still, one of the Eldritch Abominations absorbed by Rei forced her to hurt Asuka physically and mentally. Rei had no chance to talk Asuka into sharing Shinji or having a three-ways relationship after that (although once things cooled down between them, she certainly tried), so she resigned to having an unrequited love.
  • In the Final Battle, Rei sacrificed herself to save everyone. Even though they won and survived the war, her teammates couldn't fully celebrate their victory because they loved her and missed her, even Asuka. But at least she finally got her kiss from Shinji.
• Love Interest: Shinji is Asuka and Rei's love interest. And Asuka is his.
• Lovely Angels: In this crossover Asuka and Rei team up to destroy Eldritch Abominations... but not of the usual kind.
• Love Triangle: During their first battles together Rei fell for Shinji. Then Asuka came along and as soon as she started to get familiar with Shinji, Rei was very, very jealous. Both girls competed over Shinji until he chose Asuka. Rei would have been perfectly content if it were to become a threesome, although Asuka denied her.
• Luminescent Blush: In chapter 4 Asuka bushes profusely when Kaji praises her offhandedly:
  Asuka blushed furiously and tightened her embrace just a little bit.

M-O

• Making Love in All the Wrong Places: In chapter 19, Shinji and Asuka are making out and about to have sex in the base's locker rooms when they are caught by two fellow pilots.
• The Man Behind the Man: The main characters spend a long time fighting the Great Old Ones only to find that they are acting at the behest of the Outer Gods, their true enemies (well, Nyarlathotep. The Outer Gods probably don't care in the slightest). This same story had played out again and again, with the defenders of the planet eventually being corrupted by the power they consumed eventually turn on their people and become the new Great Old Ones.
• Manipulative Bastard: Gendo played with his pawns' emotions the whole time to get them to carry his goals out... or to save his own hide when his subordinates had got it with his crap. In a scene in which Asuka was angry enough to want to fry him -literally-, he resorted to point out that her boyfriend Shinji would be unhappy if she killed his father.
• Man on Fire: In chapter 1, billions of spiders—whose sizes range from tiny to dog-sized—spawned by a massive, spider-like Eldritch Abomination flooding the city. As Shinji and Misato are running from them:
  Shinji saw a man setting himself on fire to get dozens of spiders off of him.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Asuka and Shinji are a couple. Asuka is bold, outspoken, hot-blooded and domineering and belligerent; Shinji is shy, quiet, insecure and peace-keeping. When they interact, Asuka is bolder, more blunt and more aggressive than Shinji, who is more passive and calms her down when she gets angry with someone.
• Mecha Show: Giant robots are used to fight cosmic horrors.
• Masturbation Equals Sexual Frustration: Darkly subverted. While he is in a steady relationship with Asuka at this point, Shinji relies on masturbation not because he's sexually frustrated, but because the Great Old Ones are trying to corrupt him. He used masturbation after he was overwhelmed by the vile influence of the Violator to keep from forcing his lusts on others. Later, he discovers that Adam's power had caused his semen to transform into hideous living monstrosities. Fortuantely, he later figures out how to turn the life-producing abilities of Adam off.
• Mêlée à Trois: In the Final Battle, the Children have to fight the dead Outer Gods once again. However the cosmic horros hated each other as much as they hated the Children, so they tried to fight the Children and each other simultaneously.
• Metamorphosis: Chapter 16 reveals that Ritsuko is in the process of turning into a Deep One. By the end of the fic, the transformation is complete.
• Mildly Military: Played with. Nerv is a pretty informal organization, but when Asuka forgot to follow orders during a sortie, Commander Gendo reprimanded her personally and harshly.
• Mind Screw: In chapter 5 Shinji has a horrid nightmare where he was dragged to a great underground lake to be turned into a god. The pool was filled with a black, oliy liquid substance which bubbled and seethed and sometimes rippled and formed tendrils that rose and fell. When Shinji tried to back away, a mob grabbed him, ripped his clothes and threw him into the pool. Then the real mind-screw began:
  His clothing was ripped from him, rough fingers bruising his flesh, and then naked, they lifted him like a sacrifice. They howled incoherently now as they ran towards the lake, while Ritsuko chanted and shouted in a deep voice not her own. "Come, Lords of the Outer Realms! Come and recieve this one into your number!"
  They hurled him into the lake as he screamed, and the lake rose up and pulled him under. It suffused him, leaking in through his pores and sphincters, eating away at him and replacing him with itself. He became LCL and it was him. And the black fluid became a void, and around him, all was filled with the idiot flautings of a dozen mindless tentacled frog-things, which capered and played a dance for the beings who capered about in a great circle, ringing something behind him. The part of him that was still his 'real' self knew something horrible was there, but the god Shinji turned to gaze upon its master, giving a great incoherent cry of soulless joy.
  At the last moment before he would have gazed upon it, the void cracked open, and there was light. And the light burned away the darkness, the void, the gods, and the dream.
• Missing Mom: Shinji and Asuka's mothers died when they were little children, although Asuka was taken in by a foster mother.
• Mobile Fishbowl: In chapter 22, Ritsuko's metamorphosis is accelerated by Anna under the influence of Nyarlathotep, then arrested using Touji's blood. She winds up unable to breathe air. One of the pilots immediately thinks of a water-filled diving suit, but the actual solution is a neck brace that circulates water over the gills.
• Motherly Scientist: In contrast to her canon self, Ritsuko is a bit warmer and cares about the pilots. When some of them tell that they fear that they’ll become monsters, she states that she will not let it happen.
• Must Make Amends: Rei wanted to make amends with Asuka after an Eldritch Abomination forced her to rape the red-haired girl. She felt so guilty that she was willing to let Asuka kill her.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning: Invoked when Asuka manages to kill Nylarathotep during a nightmare. She just knows he’ll rise again.
  Nylarathotep tried to speak, but her flames rushed through him, charring him to ash in an instant. But he wasn't dead. He would rise again, she knew, and that knowing infuriated her more.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Rei has this reaction when one of the cosmic horrors that she absorbed overwhelmed her emotionally-deprived with inhuman lusts and raped Asuka. Even though she wasn't responsible for its actions, she felt guilty about Asuka's pain because she was unable to stop it, and she wanted to be punished by her teammate. To the point of being willing to be beaten to death by Asuka if that was what it took.
• My Parents Are Dead: In chapter 7, Shinji tells Asuka that his father sent him away. Then he asks her what her parents are like, and she replies "Dead".
  They both laughed. "So what are your parents like?" Shinji asked.
  "Dead." Her voice was a little sharp.
  Shinji looked away. "I'm sorry."
• Nice Guy: Shinji is too nice and kind for his own good. He tries to be nice to and understanding with everyone, and he even tries to give Gendo the benefit of the doubt and think that maybe his father had a good reason for abandoning him.
• Nightmare Sequence: Shinji has one in chapter 5. It starts quite innocently, looking like a fairy tale where knight Shinji has to move all of Princess Asuka's possessions to become a god, and he is helped by a horde of cute penguins. Then it takes an increasingly unsettling turn when he is led deep underground until a vast subterranean lake filled with a bubbling, seething sludge from which formed tendrils. Shinji tried to back away and then a horde grabbed him, ripped his clothes and threw him naked in the lake. And then it got real disturbing.
• No Endor Holocaust: Averted. The body count in some battles is pretty high, even if the main characters aren’t fighting with their giant robots. At the end of episode nine, after defeating “The King of Yellow”, Misato looks over the devastation, and thinks:
  Medics and police covered the auditorium, checking on the wounded of body and soul. Misato looked at the devastation with sadness.
  They were at war, and every war has its casualties.
• No Indoor Voice: Asuka may be very loud when she's happy and thrilled. In chapter 7, Shinji finds out about this when she walks into the classroom and talks very loudly.
  "Loud? Me? OF COURSE! I'M THE GREATEST!" boomed Asuka.
• No One Gets Left Behind: Subverted. When Rei wants to stay in the final Eldritch Abomination to control it and protect her friends, they refuse to leave her alone. However she insisted on it until they caved.
• No Sense of Personal Space: Asuka is not familiarized with the concept of "personal space". In her first appearance in chapter 4 she quickly latched on to Kaji. And later she stayed close to Shinji and wrapped an arm around his, despite of barely knowing Shinji at that point (although her intention was truly to get Kaji jealous):
  Asuka quickly stepped up to Shinji's side, taking his arm in hers, and strolled along with Kaji and Misato.
• No Social Skills: Shinji is meek, introvert and not good interacting with other people (especially pretty girls who are apparently taking an interest in him). He admits that in chapter 4:
  Shinji Ikari was not a people person. He lacked severely in people skills. This went doubly so for girls that showed signs that they liked him. With Asuka's arm entwined with his and her warm tone of voice, his mind turned to mush. "Um, well, you see..."''
• Not What It Looks Like: Parodied in chapter 19 when Shinji and Asuka are caught when they were about to make love in the lockers and Shinji automatically says that it is not what they think:
  Anna peeked into the boys' dressing room just in time to see her friend stradled atop Shinji, both wearing their plugsuits, though the way they were kissing, she had to wonder if the plugsuits were going to come off again. At Touji's outburst, the two lovebirds paused a moment and looked up, then quickly stood up and straightened themselves out.
  "Aaagh!" screamed Touji. "It's true! You've turned kraut!"
  "I-it's not what you think!" replied Shinji desperately. They all stared at him. He smiled weakly. "Okay, so it was what you think."
• Now or Never Kiss: In chapter 23, Asuka kisses Shinji and tells that she loves him, just in case they die in the next battle.
• Oblivious to Love: During a large fraction of the story, if you tell Shinji that Asuka and Rei are smitten over him, he will laugh and say that is crazy talk.
  Touji glared at him. "You're gettin' all mushy on Asuka, ain'cha."
  "D-don't be ridiculous!"
  "I see the way she fusses over ya sometimes," said Touji, arms crossed with a stern expression.
  "It's nothing like that!" insisted Shinji.
• Official Couple: Shinji and Asuka. Touji and Hikari.
• Official Kiss: Asuka kissed Shinji for first time after their first date in chapter 16.
• Oh, Crap!: In chapter 4 Asuka clings to Shinji, driving Rei mad with jealousy. When Touji realized quiet, soft-spoken Rei was mad, he got this reaction.
  "Ohshit," whispered Touji. "She's mad."
• Old Flame: Misato and Kaji got back together during the War but he died later on.
• The Old Gods: The Great Old Ones inhabited Earth long before mankind… and now they want to reclaim their home.
• One-Man Army: Shinji, Asuka, Rei and their teammates killed the Great Old Ones and stole their powers, as well as those of a few masks of Nyarlathotep. Any of those kids was able to destroy whole armies, kill eldritch abominations and level cities.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Rei is usually calm, quiet and soft-spoken. It is hard to get her angry. Then in chapter 4 she saw Asuka wrapping her arm around Shinji's. She was so consumed with jealousy she actually growled and clenched her fists while she glared at Asuka. When Touji and Kensuke saw she was actually mad, they freaked out.
• Operation: Jealousy: In chapter 4 Asuka sees her crush Kaji flirting with Misato and clung to Shinji to make Kaji jealous. Kaji did not even notice her antics, goading her to try harder. Her ploy failed and anyway she eventually fell for Shinji.
• Original Character: Reporter Megumi Kunzama, Anna (the Fifth Child).
• Orphan's Ordeal: Shinji and Asuka lost their mothers and were abandoned by their fathers shortly after. Fortunately their parental substitutes were more competent in this story than in canon, so they were somewhat more stable and less introvert before the beginning of the War (and then a bunch of world-shattering Eldritch Abominations came along and their sanity suffered serious blows).

P-R

• Parental Abandonment: Gendo abandoned his son Shinji after his wife's death to focus on eldritch studies and the upcoming war, and only recalled him when he needed him to kill Cthulhu and co. Asuka was similarly abandoned by her father after losing her mother, but she met a decent foster mother.
• Parental Substitute:
  • When Shinji arrived to Tokyo-3 Misato took him in and took care of him.
  • After her parents died, Asuka was adopted by Dr. Himmelfarb. Her foster mother took care of her and mentored her for many years. Later Kaji became her guardian, and when the war began, Misato took her in together with Shinji.
  • After the end of the war Shinji, Asuka, Touji and Hikari have lost their respective families. Misato insists on becoming the surrogate mother of the four teenagers. When they warn her that other people will give her grief about it, Misato retorts she does not give a damn.
• Parents in Distress: When a terrorist group invaded NERV's German base, they captured badass soldier and Mama Bear Misato, and her wards Shinji and Asuka together with Rei had to rescue her. The three kids didn't want to kill people and they were hugely distraught about it afterwards, but they couldn't let those terrorists hurt their surrogate mother.
• Past Experience Nightmare: Due to his childhood trauma, piloting an Evangelion (which drives most people insane), fighting cosmic horrors and stealing their powers after killing them, Shinji has frequent bad dreams. Sometimes they start out innocently but they soon devolve into nightmares where he is seized by a mob and thrown into an underground lake filled with black sludge which will turn him into a monster.
• People Jars: In chapter 20, the clones of Rei are seen swimming inside their huge liquid-filled tank (and trying to break the glass to escape).
• Person of Mass Destruction: Shinji, Asuka and Rei –and to a lesser extent, Touji and Hikari- pilot Humongous Mecha and wield powers of Eldritch Abominations. “Mass Destruction” doesn’t even come close to describe the kind of devastation that they can make.
• Phantom Zone: The Dreamlands are a strange, dark fantasy land set in a parallel dimension.
• Pitbull Dates Puppy: Downplayed compared with original canon, but Asuka is still pretty aggressive and combative, and Shinji is pretty wimpy and timid, so their relationship looks like this to their friends.
• Playful Cat Smile: Asuka smirks wickedly after kissing Shinji for the first time.
• Playing with Fire: Fire generation and manipulation is one of Asuka's powers.
  She sat upright, face contorted into an angry scowl, her fists suddenly ablaze with flame.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: In chapter 23 Shinji and Asuka are resting in his room, wondering if they would be killed by the latest Eldritch Abomination in the next battle. Shinji kissed Asuka and begged her to never leave him:
  Asuka: "Shinji," she said softly. "I love you."
  Shinji: "I love you too, Asuka. Don't ever leave me. Please."
  Asuka: "I won't, [...] Never."
• Power Echoes: When Yui uses the stolen power given to the Great Old Ones by the Outer Gods to ascend to godhood, her voice echoes when she talks.
• Power Floats: After stealing given to the Great Old Ones by the Outer Gods, Yui floats when she uses her power.
• Power Gives You Wings: During the War the Children gain the ability to grow or form wings. Asuka's are long flaming wings.
• Power Glows:
  • Asuka gives off an orange glow when she uses her pyrokinesis.
  • Yui also glowed white when she used her powers during the Final Battle.
• Powers in the First Episode: In the first chapter Shinji gets a giant robot and fights his first Robeast. When he kills Matriel, he feels something entering his body. That something was the power of the monster he had just slain.
• Power Makes Your Voice Deep: When Gendo and Yui seized the power stolen from the Outer Gods by the main characters, their voices plummeted and boomed when they talked.
• Prophecies Are Always Right: Gendo and Fuyutsuki use several prophecies like guidelines. They usually are reliable. In the prologue, Gendo quotes a prophecy after it has come to pass.
• Psychic Powers: Asuka is a pyrokinetic.
• Rape as Drama: One of the monsters Rei absorbed forces her to rape Asuka in one of the later chapters.
• Really 700 Years Old: When Ritsuko wakes up from a coma and sees Maya, she thinks that she's in her forties. Maya informs her that she's nearly six hundred years old thanks to advanced aging-slowing technology.
• Recruit Teenagers with Attitude: All pilots are teenagers. Asuka is thirteen and their teammates are fourteen. Several of them –like Asuka or Touji- are quite hardheaded, too.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: When Rei got jealous in chapter 4, her red eyes glowed for a split-second. Touji and Kensuke were utterly scared out of their wits when they saw it.
  Rei was staring at Asuka, intensely, her face twisted in anger. Her fists were clenched, shaking slightly. It was hard to tell in the sunlight, but they thought they saw her blood red eyes glow brightly for a moment.
  "Ohshit," whispered Touji. "She's mad."
• Red Is Heroic: Asuka was a heroine, piloted a war mecha and fought cosmic horrors older than the world, slaying them and stealing their powers. She was a redhead, she wore red, her giant robot was also red, and she even gained fire elemental powers.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Asuka is the Red Oni -being fiery, high-spirited and loud- and Rei the Blue Oni -she is quieter, colder and usually emotionless-. As a bonus, Asuka has fire-related powers.
• Relationship Upgrade: In chapter 16, Asuka and Shinji have their first date. They dance together for a little while, and finally Asuka kisses him. From that point on, they are officially a couple.
• Resist the Beast: All Children face this because their stolen powers are inherently foul and corrupting. All of them feel dark urges and desires, and they struggle against them the whole time. What happened with Rei and Asuka is a chilling reminder of what would happen if they failed.
• Robeast: At the beginning the Angels fought by the main characters seem to be just weird, massive aliens monsters, although very ancient and slightly eldritch. Then it is revealed that they are full-blown Eldritch Abominations and there are worst things behind them and their attacks.

S-U

• Sailor Earth: Anna, Asuka’s friend from Berlin and Fifth Child.
• Save the Day, Turn Away: During the War, Shinji, Asuka and Rei absorbed the powers of all Eldritch Abominations killed by them until they became Humanoid Abominations. When they fought the remaining Outer Gods, Rei chose to seal herself with them forever, telling her friends that she'd never have a normal life. After saving the world, Shinji and Asuka left his friends and human civilization forever because they didn't belong with humans anymore (in a subversion, they left together).
• Say My Name: In episode 19, after Rei unintentionally hurts Asuka's body and soul, Asuka decides to face off against her:
  "REI! Face me!" she bellowed, her fists lighting into flames.
• Saying Too Much: In chapter 5 Gendo reprimands Asuka, warning that she can be replaced. Asuka retorts according her foster mother, training a replacement is hard. Gendo asks what other classfied information she has been given, and Asuka wonders if she has not accidentally gotten her foster mother in trouble.
• Science-Fiction Fanfic: The giant robots, the giant alien monsters and the ancient cosmic horros are only the tip of the iceberg.
• The Scottish Trope: One of the Angels (actually a Lovecraft-canon creature) can possess anyone who knows her name (even by simply seeing it written down), and will be almost guaranteed to do so if the possessee-to-be speaks it out loud. After Rei defeats her, she gains this power and applies it to her own name. Did you read that spoiler?
• Sea Monster: In chapter 4 Asuka fought Amaliel, an aquatic, sea-dwelling monster resembling a viscous blob with tentacles and pincers.
  ...an almost globular torso, with six long sinuous limbs terminating in crab-like claws. From the upper end a subsidiary globe bulged forward bubble-like; its triangle of three staring, fishy eyes, its foot-long and evidently flexible proboscis, and a distended lateral system analogous to gills, suggested that it was a head.
• Self-Made Orphan: Gendo and Yui used the power of the Outer Gods to create a perfect world. However, their stolen power was gradually corrupting that world. When the Children realized what was happening they rebelled and resolved to destroy the dream world. Unfortunately, Shinji -helped by his teammates- had to kill his mother Yui to achieve that goal.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend:
  • In chapter 6 Asuka claimed she wrapped her arm around Shinji's earlier because she was trying to make Kaji jealous and she did not like her fellow pilot. Of course, everyone disregarded her claims.
  • Several chapters later, Shinji insists that Asuka isn't his girlfriend.
    Touji glared at him. "You're gettin' all mushy on Asuka, ain'cha."
    "D-don't be ridiculous!"
    "I see the way she fusses over ya sometimes," said Touji, arms crossed with a stern expression.
    "It's nothing like that!" insisted Shinji.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran:
  • After fighting and defeating a bunch of cosmic horrors from the Cthulhu Mythos, Shinji and Asuka are so traumatized that they feel they no longer fit into human society so that they say goodbye to their remaining friends and leave civilization forever.
  • Rei, too. She commits a Heroic Sacrifice while stating that normal life is not for her.
• Shipper on Deck: Misato shipped Shinji and Asuka. In a scene she asks if they’re making out, and when they deny it, she pouts.
• Ship Sinking: Rei's chances to hook up with Shinji or having a three-ways relationship with him and Asuka vanished when the Violator forced her to rape Asuka.
• Ship Tease: Teasing between Shinji and Asuka started as soon as Asuka's first appearance when she, trying to have Kaji paying attention to her, wrapped her arm around Shinji's, prompting him to blush because a beautiful girl was talking to him and touching him. The teasing between him and Rei started even before then.
• Show Within a Show: In chapter 4 Kensuke proposes to go to the cinema to watch Gekiganger-X, a movie based on a Super Robot Genre show (the name being a homage to Gekiganger3 and Mazinger Z).
  They've got Gekiganger X down at the movie theatre today.
• So Proud of You:
  • Before dying, Asuka's father told that he was proud of her because she had potential to pilot and Evangelion and save humanity.
    He told me to be brave, that he was proud I would be an EVA pilot, and he wanted me to do my best to save humanity.
  • In chapter 7, Shinji tells that Gendo caught him when he was leafing through a dangerous-looking book and his father spanked him... but intriguingly, Gendo looked mad and proud at the same time.
• Socially Awkward Hero: Shinji, Asuka, Rei and -to a lesser extent- their friends, Rei, Touji, Hikari and Anna... could fight and kill Great Old Ones easily, but socializing and fitting in with other people became increasingly hard. After every battle they became more powerful and simultaneously less human. And at the end, Rei knows she can't ever lead a normal life, and Shinji and Asuka don't belong among humans anymore.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil:
  • Played straight. The first enemies were weaker and less mind-screwing, and one or two giant robots could take them without too much trouble. The last enemies fought by the main characters were ancient eldritch horrors which could obliterate planets with a mere gesture.
  • Gendo invoked the trope in the first chapter when the first Angel (a giant spider) came along, and he said it will likely be the weakest since it is the first one. He also said several times that their first enemies were -comparatively- weak and dumb, but their future adversaries would be more dangerous.
• Speak of the Devil: Misato escapes her kidnappers by repeating Rei's name over and over; as Rei helped kill the Elder God Y'Golonac, this allows Rei to possess one of the kidnappers.
• Spell My Name With An S: Often the authors misspelled Asuka's surname, writing “Langely” instead of “Langley”. It was lampshaded in chapter 21: Shinji's spiders spun a heart-shaped web with Asuka's name written on it. Asuka says it's very sweet... but her name is misspelled.
  "Except it's 'Langley' not 'Langely', Shinji-kun," Asuka said, pointing.
• Spit Take:
  • Shinji very nearly got this reaction when he read a newspaper was spreading rumours that Rei and he were dating. In chapter 4:
    With the last of breakfast done, he took a seat at the table, took a sip of water, unfolded the morning paper, then nearly spat his drink out.
  • In chapter 12, Misato spat her beer out when Rei suddenly appeared right in front of her:
    She turned to the keg, filled her mug, began guzzling it as she turned once more to the sunset, then spat out her beer as she suddenly found herself locking eyes with Rei.
• Square-Cube Law: In the prologue, a scientist finds an arthropod-like, gigantic Eldritch Abomination and wonders how it can support its own weight:
  How... How can that thing support its own weight?
• The Stations of the Canon: The first episode of the anime (where Shinji reunites with is father, meets the NERV staff, and the other Children) is reproduced fairly faithfully, but with just enough minor alterations to signal the reader that something is off. The canon timeline is then thrown completely out of the window when Shinji fights Matriel, who is truly Atlach-Nacha (note the name difference from Matarael) in lieu of Sachiel, supported by Rei. The Angels are completely different and so is the story.
• Stepford Smiler: In chapter 22, Asuka tries to smile when her friend Anna tries to comfort her, but it was plainly visible that she was still in pain.
• Super Fic: The main characters gain powers after killing Eldritch Abominations: Shinji controls arthropods and snakes, Asuka wields fire…
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: In chapter 16, Shinji and Asuka cried out that they didn’t do anything when they were alone.
  "On the other hand, I gotta feel sorry for Shinji here, knowin' yer freaky abusive perverted nature. God only knows what ya did to the poor guy."
  "W-we didn't do anything!" Shinji and Asuka cried.
  At the same time.
  Touji raised an eyebrow, then looked at the two of them suspiciously.
  "Shinji, buddy, say it ain't so."
• Talking in Bed: In chapter 23 Asuka goes to Shinji's bedroom and while they lay together, they talk about the war, their fear of dying and their feelings for each other.
• Team Mom: Misato becomes this to the Children.
• Tears of Joy: When Ritsuko woke up from her long coma, Maya cried in happiness:
  Maya looked to be in her forties now, and she had a long white streak in her hair which rather reminded Ritsuko of a skunk. Her smile was still so bright; she was starting to cry, though she smiled.
• Tears of Remorse: After the lingering, perverted essence of an Eldritch Abomination (appropriately titled "the Violator") overwhelms the emotionally stunted Rei and drives her to rape Asuka, Rei cries, blaming herself for Asuka's pain since she was unable to stop that cosmic horror.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Asuka and Rei were members of the same squad, but they didn't get along because they were in love with the same person. After an Eldritch Abomination seized Rei and forced her to hurt Asuka, their teamwork was even more strained.
• Tender Tears: In chapter 7, Asuka cries after realizing what Kaji loves another woman.
  And with those well-chosen words, Asuka finally snapped, tears flowing from her eyes. "I don't WANT anyone else! I want KAJI!"
  "I... I'm sorry."
  He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze.
  What happened next took him entirely by surprise.
  She suddenly turned around and cried on his shoulder, holding him tight as she sobbed. He didn't know how long she cried on his shoulder, and it didn't seem to matter. She was someone in need, and all he could do was be there for her.
• Thermal Dissonance: Touji and Kensuke were standing next to Rei when Asuka met the group. When Rei saw the German girl wrapping her arm around Shinji's and dragging him away, the ambient temperature suddenly dropped, and Touji and Kensuke felt a blast of cold hitting them.
• These Hands Have Killed: When a terrorist group attempted to take over NERV's German base, Shinji and Asuka had to kill humans for first time. After the battle they spend a good while feeling sorry and depressed, trying to cope with their actions and telling themselves what they did what they had to do.
• Think Unsexy Thoughts: In chapter 23, Shinji is trying to keep his hormones under control, so he makes himself think of his father, hoping that it’ll turn him off.
• Threesome Subtext: Between Shinji, Asuka and Rei. In chapter 23, Rei tries to talk Asuka into sharing Shinji. Asuka says no... but she can't help to be tempted.
• Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe: Played with. The main characters' base is located in Tokyo-3, and most of battles happen there... but the Angels also attack other countries and the pilots often have to fight in other places such like the USA West Coast or Canada.
• Took a Level in Badass: The three pilots take levels constantly: every time they kill an Eldritch Abomination they steal its power, and their bodies evolve to adapt to their enemies. So, every battle they grow more powerful.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: After getting orphaned and abandoned Asuka was a very angry, very hostile little girl. However her foster mother took care of her and helped her with her issues, and when Asuka met the remaining cast she was considerably more cheerful than her canon self.
• Took a Level in Idealism: The Children are more optimistic and somewhat happier than in canon thanks to several changes on her upbringing (as an example, Asuka got a good mother figure. Ergo, she still is hot-tempered and tries to stand out but she is not constantly angry and she does not try to push everybody away constantly because she no longer is frightened of bonding with other people).
• Took a Level in Kindness: After losing her mother and being ditched by her father, Asuka's temper got real bad. Fortunately she got a decent foster mother who raised her properly, and her behaviour softened after a while.
• Troubled Fetal Position: In chapter 18, Asuka curls into a ball and cries after being raped.
  And then the memories came, and all Asuka could do was curl into a ball and cry.
• True Companions: In spite of all their fights and arguments, Shinji, Asuka, Rei, Touji and Hikari are a team and fight together during the War. After the Final Battle they think of themselves as a family.
• Tsundere: Due to have a better parental role model after her father died, Asuka's personality is softer. She still has a harsher, rougher, angrier side, but she displays her kinder self more easily, and her character gradually softens up after meeting Shinji.
• Tyke-Bomb: Rei and Asuka were raised by NERV since they were little kids to be the organization’s tools because they were the only ones capable of piloting Evangelions without mutating, going insane or dying. Asuka grew into a relatively normal teenager, but Rei was extremely creepy and unable to lead a normal life.
• Unbroken Vigil: After her transformation into a Deep One, Ritsuko fell unconscious and was in a coma for five hundred and twenty-eight years. Maya kept watch over her, leading a mostly normal life and even occasionally dating, but remaining as long as possible by her bedside, patiently hoping for Ritsuko waking up. When she finally and suddenly woke up, Maya was overjoyed.
• Uncanny Valley: The main characters creep most of people out because they can tell that those Children may look human but they're something different and very dangerous.
• Uncanny Valley Girl: Rei looks like a normal if emotionless and creepy girl. That creepiness hints that she is not human but something completely different and infinitely more dangerous and frightening.
• Undying Loyalty: In chapter 23 Shinji pleaded with Asuka to not leave him. She replied she will not leave him, ever. Later when they are considering leaving human civilization after the war, Asuka says plaintively that she will go wherever Shinji goes. She never considered parting with him.
  Shinji: I love you too, Asuka. Don't ever leave me. Please.
  Asuka: I won't, [...] Never.
• The Un Favourite: Rei is Gendo's favorite pilot. In chapter 19, Asuka went mad with Gendo because he always favored Rei, not matter what.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Between Shinji and Asuka since they met and Shinji noticed how beautiful she was. For a good while, though, neither of them dared to give the first step because they were afraid of rejection. Even after getting together they were hesitant to go beyond kissing because the Outer Gods could use their desire and lust to corrupt them.
• Unwitting Pawn:
  • Megumi Kunzama is a reporter that believes she’s getting the scoop on NERV. In reality, Gendo and Fuyutsuki are using her, leaking harmless or false information to her. And she’s no idea.
  • In the Kingdom of Joy, the man who would become The King in Yellow manipulated everyone to bring about the fall of the world.
  • All Children are Gendo and Yui's unwitting pawns, since they're using the pilots to fight the Great Old Ones and the Outer Gods and steal their powers in order to carry their plans forward.
  • Everyone is the Outer God's unwitting pawns (or maybe just Nyarlathotep's, it isn't entirely clear): all sorts of planets are set up with the same situation as Earth so that should the Children-equivalents win, they would fall to their own corruption, turn on their own species, and become the new Great Old Ones.

V-Z

• Victor Gains Loser's Powers: A pretty dark example. When Shinji, Asuka, Rei and other pilots defeated an enemy they stole its power (usually by uncontrollably feasting on its still-living body)... but their enemies are the Eldritch Abominations from the Cthulhu Mythos. Ergo, their powers allowed them easily obliterate a planet... and corrupted everything around them, making people frightened. Finally Shinji and Asuka were so fed up with people freaking out whenever they passed by they left human civilization forever because they did not fit anymore.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Misato and Ritsuko are good friends but they often enjoy teasing or poking fun at each other.
  Ritsuko: Hmm. I see you're busy. When you two are done, I need to see Misato.
  Misato: I was just trying to find out who his girlfriend is!
  Ritsuko: I suppose he had it written on the inside of his underwear or something?
• Walking the Earth: After the War, Shinji and Asuka don't belong among normal human beings anymore, and after graduating high school, they decide to leave their guardian and friends and go sailing "around the world". They never returned to human civilization.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Shinji agreed to pilot Unit 01 -among other reasons- because he did no want his father thinking he was a coward.
• We Used to Be Friends: Asuka and Rei managed to get along, even though both girls liked the same boy… but after the battle against the Violator where Rei hurt Asuka unwillingly but brutally, their friendship all but came to an end. It only started to heal at the very end parts of the story.
• What Does She See in Him?: In chapter 9, Asuka and Hikari argue because Asuka doesn't like Touji and doesn't get why Hikari likes him. Ironically, Hikari thought Asuka's crush on Kaji was bad because Kaji was an older man and a playboy.
  Asuka started to retort, then sighed. She didn't want to fight with Hikari about this. He was bad for her, but she just wouldn't ever see it. I can't believe she likes this guy, Asuka thought. "Okay, okay, I'll try to get along with him, but..." He's a butthead, she thought.
  I'm not too fond of your date either, Hikari thought. How can you like that guy? He's just a playboy. This is gonna be one big mess. But it gives me an excuse to ask Touji out, so... "Right. I'll talk to Touji as soon as I can."
• What If?: This story replaces the Angels with Cthlhu and co. The result is the Children look saner but they become Humanoid Abominations, and their world is more insane, darker and bleaker.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • When Gendo finally reveals Asuka what happened to her parents and tells everything about NERV’s genetic experiments she is absolutely furious and asks how they were capable to do such a thing:
    Asuka: How could you do something like that? That's horrible, going around altering the genetics of babies! How could you do that to my parents?
  • The standard response to the resulting damage after a battle against an Angel.
• What You Are in the Dark: In chapter 23, Nylarathotep tried to tempt all Children while they slept, talking them into join him. All refused him.
  Nylarathotep: Look, my offer stands, up until the bitter end, okay? So when you're face down in the dirt and your friends are all dying around you, keep me in mind. Just say the word and you'll be saved, your friends will be saved, your sister and Kensuke will be saved, and everything will be alright.
  Touji: You're still not taking my soul.
• When She Smiles: In chapter 7, Rei Ayanami blushes and smiles when Shinji says she's beautiful. Touji and Kensuke agreed that her smile was memorable.
  And then she smiled.
  It was a small smile.
  A very small one.
  But it was a memorable one.
• Will They or Won't They?: Shinji and Asuka spent months dancing around each other until they got together in episode 16.
• Winged Humanoid: All the Children gain the ability to sprout wings and fly. Asuka has fire wings, while the wings of the others aren't consistently any particular form.
  Shinji nodded. They stood, and formed wings, and rose into the sky as the sun began to peek through the trees on the eastern shore of the Rhine.
• With Friends Like These...: Misato and Ritsuko argue constantly although they’re friends.
• You Have Failed Me: At the end of chapter 9, Cassilda, possessing Rei kills The King of Yellow, arguing that he’s failed and the Outer Gods don’t tolerate failures:
  "The Crawling Chaos will devour you all!" The King shouted. "The Outer Gods cannot be mocked! I have gazed upon the Throne of Azathoth! I have..."
  "You have failed. And the Herald of the Outer Gods has no patience for those who fail him."

---

Fuyutsuki: "They gazed into the Abyss and now it lives inside them."

---