Chapter Text
Tōji realised upon waking up that, given that every part of his body hurt and the air smelled of hospital, he was alive. He hadn't died when Shinji's robot killed him.
Huh. Weird.
Too weird. Like hell he would have survived that! This was just a dream he was having while he waited to be admitted to the afterlife.
But if it was a dream, he would probably feel healthier than this, right? So maybe he was alive.
“No grave can hold my body down.”
Tōji had no idea where that quote was from. But it sort of made sense that it had come to his mind now. Life had hit him hard over the past few days. Any harder and it might as well have been using a baseball bat. First, that Dr Akagi woman had got him called to the principal's office. When he first noticed the colour of her hair, he thought he recognised her as Misato's friend from when they threw her the promotion party, but that blonde was a cheerful beauty in skimpy clothing. Dr Akagi was a tired and miserable-looking one in the bizarre getup of a lab coat and bright red lipstick that made her look like someone dressing up as a slutty chemistry teacher for Halloween. And she absolutely stank of cigarette smoke.
And what she had to say to him was even grimmer than her appearance: she told him he was the next Chosen One to pilot a fucking Evangelion.
No way was he doing that! But then she got all creepy on him: taking her lab coat off to reveal a figure almost as hot as Misato's, and leaning over the desk so her tits were nearly in his face, she told him that Nerv would let him have anything he wanted if he agreed to pilot their robot.
No way! He wasn't going to be taken advantage of by a malodorous hag!
Then, Tōji realised that “anything he wanted” didn't mean “sex with an older woman”, it meant “anything he wanted”.
And what did he want?
He wanted his sister to get better. What happened to her was bullshit! The idea came to him that the people who created the circumstances that injured her so gravely might be able to create the circumstances to fully heal her.
So he asked Akagi if it could be arranged for the Tokyo-3 Children's Hospital patient Sakura Suzuhara to be transferred to the medical wing of Nerv's headquarters.
“Of course,” she said.
And so began the first episode of the ‘Suzuhara Tōji is a Jackass’ show…
They must have given him painkillers, and they must have been wearing off. He felt a lot more like he was dying than he did when he first woke up.
A nurse knocked on the door and then opened it. “Suzuhara-san, you have a visitor.”
A visitor?
The nurse stepped aside to let Tōji's visitor into the room.
It was… the Class Rep?
Fuck!
He couldn't think of anything worse than being given homework right now.