Spoilers Off applies to Wild Mass Guessing pages. As such beware of spoilers!
Stop giving me ideas, damn it!
Asuka would be on the first plane out of Berlin, if she had to steal it and fly it herself.
Rei would be throwing up into a bucket as fast as she could to get the drugs out of her, while sitting at the airport with Shinji who would be jittering his knee like mad and whispering over and over "When's she going to get here when's she going to get here when's she going to get here?"
Asuka would damn near tackle-snog Shinji off his feet as soon as she got the plane's door open... And fail only because he was running at her just as hard.
Rei'd be upset it would be months before {SPOILER}, and she'd have to wait that whole time. She'd give Asuka a big hug hello anyhow, happy to see her best friend again for the first time.
Then they'd get to work.
Of course, for any of that to happen, there would have to have been something terribly wrong happening during Third Impact or something like it.
@Mcnickel: So, this is the prequel to Doing It Right This Time?
- Half right. Shinji does confront Gendo about Yui, but Gendo does not ask Shinji to help rescue her. Per usual, he just has the boy arrested and abused.
- Given the recent Ship Sinking (of Asuka and Shinji both stating they just don't want that kind of relationship) and Rei's increased Ship Tease with Kaworu, it's looking less likely.
- A one-time possible way it could happen is if Rei decides to go all the way with Kaworu, but approaches Shinji and Asuka for a "hands-on demonstration" first.
- As of the recent update, he's learned that Kaworu is an Angel. And what do you know, he sent him out to fight Arael (albeit with Rei as backup, but still). So there might be some truth to this after all.
- And as of this update, it's outright confirmed that Gendo wants Kaworu dead. Upon Rei's Heroic Sacrifice during the battle against Armisael, she suffers a case of Came Back Wrong that she fortunately snaps out of... Except that there was another Rei in NERV HQ that was blindly obedient to Gendo, not unlike how our Rei was before she became True Companions with Shinji and Asuka. And at the end of Chapter 11, Gendo ordered his Rei to kill Kaworu because he, Kaworu, is the seventeenth Angel. Whether or not this sets up a Mirror Boss between Shinji's Rei and Gendo's Rei is up to debate, but at the same time Gendo ordered his Rei to kill Kaworu, the true Rei and her True Companions are plotting to get to Lilith in order to give Kaworu a transplant to nullify Tabris' Call, making it very likely for the heroes and Evil Rei to come across each other.
- And it will be amazing.
- Does the Backstage universe count?
- Given the huge Gambit Pileup (SEELE preparing the Mass Production Evas, Gendo having achieved a second Rei that's completely under his control, the heroes planning to use Lilith's tissue to nullify Tabris' Call), I believe there will be multiple battles occurring at the same time. My money is on Rei and Kaworu fighting Gendo and Evil Rei and Shinji and Asuka fighting the Mass Production Evas.
- It is possible for Evil Rei pulling a Giant Naked Rei in an attempt to do Gendo's scenario is out there. We do know for certain our Rei won't, given how she found an alternative that doesn't involve causing The End of the World as We Know It, namely being with Kaworu.
- Unlike in canon, where SEELE succeeds with causing Instrumentality, although: in the anime, Shinji and Asuka manage to escape Instrumentality; in the manga, it's rendered All for Nothing when Shinji undoes the Second Impact; here, SEELE will fail and Shinji, Asuka, Rei and Kaworu will Earn Their Happy Ending. Given how A&T makes more sense and has a more mentally stable cast (at least among the good guys, since Gendo and SEELE are still as fucked up as in canon) than canon, it also makes sense for it to have an ending that's happier and less weird than the canon one.