OOC Information
Player Name: Guessy
Player Age:21
Player Contact: guessy
Player/Character HMD: Here
Other characters in game: F/Z Shirley [AU] (apping)

IC Information
Character Name: Asuka Langley Shikinami
Character Canon: Neon Genesis Evangelion - Rebuild of Evangelion 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo. So sort of OU (from Rebuild's perspective), sort AU given there's a 14 year timeskip involved we knowing nothing at all about.
Character Age/Gender: 14 (Appearance), 28 (Actual)
Canon Point: The end of the third film.
Character Canon History:
It's none too clear how and where the story of Asuka Langely Soryuu (from the TV series) and Asuka Langley Shikinami (of the Rebuild films) differ. We know there are some differences; she has no obsessive crush on Kaji and is apparently willing to play with dolls (hell, it's even that doll that was instrumental to Soryuu's whole tangle of mental trauma in the TV series), and that she had made Captain in the European Air Force (in Germany, I assume) at 14 instead of graduating university at same as she did in the TV series. Her personality (during Rebuild 2) was a little lighter too; she was a jerk and still a spectacular tsundere, but not completely incapable of trusting or opening up to other people. From this, as pure conjecture, I assume the trauma with her mother never happened, resulting in a lighter personality and no hatred of dolls.

She's half-Japanese, half-American, though raised in Germany for most of her childhood, training to be an Eva pilot in Berlin-2 before being transferred to Tokyo-3. She's fluent in German, English and Japanese (though struggles with the kanji because seriously what language needs that many kanji), though the de-facto language of the Wunder is the last of the three. Outside of a very small pocket of people (probably no higher than 10), she is one of the last remaining German speakers. Mostly, she uses it either for private conversations or to swear violently. Which probably means the bridge staff are well acquainted with the noble art of German cussing.

In short, she was just an arrogant, childish military brat instead of a traumatised arrogant, childish military brat. During the events of Rebuild 2, aged 14, she loosened up, came to accept she needed other people, developed a crush on Shinji and even stepped aside when she realised he loved Rei rather than her. To the point she took on the test activation of Unit 03 in Rei's place so Rei could hold a dinner date with him and his father.

At which point it turned out the Angel Bardiel had hijacked Unit 03, and Shinji (with control taken by the Dummy Plug) was forced to destroy it with her inside on his father's orders, up to and including crushing the entry plug in Unit 01's mouth. Bummer, that.

In the aftermath of this, Asuka was sealed away in a secure medical containment, partly to keep her alive and partly to keep any potential lingering Angelic elements under observation. Hence, she missed the ending to Rebuild 2 courtesy of a medical coma.

And then we reach the 14 year timeskip between Rebuild 2 and 3. I'll cover that in the AU Information section, since I've had to almost entirely make it up (lack of canon information).

When we meet her again, she is a bitter 28 year old soldier who's seen the world end around her by human hands. She's cold, bitter and blunt, and far, far too used to seeing people die, all faith in humanity long dead. Welcome to Evangelion.

Character Personality: As her voice actor put it, 'an embittered mercenary'. After the perceived betrayal of NERV post-You Can (Not) Advance and the public revelation of the Human Instrumentality Project, followed up by the sheer loss of life after the Near Third Impact and most of the world's landmasses being eaten by the ocean, she essentially has no sense of home any more. She does not define herself as a NERV pilot, or a German-Japanese-American or even a Captain of the European Air Force; none of these things exist any more.

Instead, she defines herself by her loyalties to people. She is loyal to Captain Katsuragi and to a lesser degree Mari and the rest of the old NERV staff, having fought alongside them for 14 bitter years; they're all she has left. She was, at one point, hated for being an Eva pilot when the Eva pilots caused yet another Impact event, but by this point most of those people are dead anyway, so she no longer cares, though she'll still get defensive about it if it comes up.

She still has her cocky moments when it comes to day to day life and Evangelion piloting, and can be a little callous when it comes to loss of life (cheerfully embracing Colonel Katsuragi's 'the objective before lives' philosophy) mostly by sheer weight of simply being used to it by now. Death can come in a heartbeat, without regard for warning or your own agency; she knows this. It's a fact that's been hammered in over 14 years of humanity dying around her, parts of it at her own hands. She has her pride as a survivor; she's made it this far, and those she values have made it this far. Most of them, anyway.

For the most part, Asuka is as intelligent and as experienced as you'd expect a 28 year old ex-child soldier to be, but also extremely cynical and bitter:

"So much fuss over one person; no-one in this world has the time for that any more."

She's angry at NERV, for betraying her. At her parents and her mother, for dying on her. At Shinji, for gravely injuring her, abandoning her, ending the world and then trying to run away from it (and promptly nearly ending it again within barely a few weeks of being out of stasis). At everyone else, for growing up and growing older whilst she is a woman stuck in a girl's body.

There are people whom she completely trusts, and would risk her life to save, but the list is short; Mari and the ex-NERV personnel (so Misato, Ritsuko and to a lesser extent the three ex-bridge staff). These people have all earned it however; it's a fourteen year camaraderie. They're the old guard, as it were, though that's where Asuka would gripe about not appearing old. Newer people she meets are inevitably compared against them, and will inevitably be found lacking because they lack that long term connection. Something similar to this is what happened when they recovered Shinji and Unit-01. Since he was locked up in stasis and sent into LEO after the end of Rebuild 2, he never had a chance to explain himself, realise his mistakes or grow up, meaning he was still his 14 year old self, whilst she was 28 and can no longer relate. Over the fourteen years however, this hope withered, and with Shinji's acts in the second half of Rebuild 3, finally died. From her perspective, they just needed Unit 1 to serve as the Wunder's main engine. Pulling Shinji out of it was just a courtesy; a mercy to the person who killed so many. It was not something they had to do, nor something they were obligated to, and WILLE's treatment of him was fully justified.

There are a few subtle implications she is aware of her less-than-human status; partly with the not ageing thing making it kind of obvious, but beyond that you have the cases where her eyepatch can be seen lighting up blue from underneath. At the end of the film, she also calls the crew of the Wunder 'Lilin' just as Kaworu (an actual Angel) does, and describes their environment as too harsh for them to even pick them up - though given Shinji and Rei are included in being immune to this, it's probably an Eva Pilot thing. Again though, she's past the point of actually caring about it; she presumably found out several years ago. Or Ritsuko told her, more likely. Given she was in containment at the end of the second film for possible Angel contamination (Ritsuko describing her as a 'valuable specimen'), it probably took a while for her to be cleared as safe to put in another Eva.

The people she's closest to are Captain Katsuragi, whom she respects and follows her orders without question, and Mari, her team-mate, whom she fights alongside seamlessly, even though they can and do bicker constantly like fourteen year olds the entire time. Mari is the only one who really brings out the 'younger' Asuka - Misato could probably do it if she were remotely inclined, only she's as bitterly cynical about things as Asuka is whilst Mari has barely changed at all and is generally kind of crackers (which is probably in turn what annoys Asuka so much and brings out her immature side).

Then you have people like Sakura Suzahara, who was younger than her during Rebuild 2. Then, as the years passed, Sakura grew older whilst Asuka did not, and Sakura was the adult to the 'child' Asuka, even if the latter was technically older. When she gets cheerful or cocky, she looks like a kid to other people. She knows this all too well, and probably get very annoyed by it in the past, but seems to have since stopped caring - presumably because the staff of WILLE know her and her true age anyway. Katsuragi no longer treats them as children - or, really, anything other than Eva pilots - and she respects that.

Regarding Shinji, she once had a crush on him as a teenager, but it's since grown distant and jaded. At the start of Rebuild 3, it's a mixture of anger and nostalgia; anger at what he's caused and nostalgia of the kids they used to be. By the end of it, that's died. He used to be an equal, but that's passed. Now he's just a brat that won't grow up, take responsibility for his actions or see the world as anything but all about him. She... sees him as a self-centred, pathetic, childish coward who doesn't listen; the fool who doesn't think and quite literally rushes in where Angels fear to tread. It's crystallized into hatred, and a demand that he be forced to hold himself to account.

She's still acerbic as hell; you derive how much she likes someone by how willing she is to spend time with them not by how often she insults them on a daily basis (see: all of her interactions with Mari). Shinji is something of an exception, as noted above. Someone she doesn't like, she will just do her best to ignore and hand off onto somebody else. She's kind of a prickly, angry troll, basically. Giving you good advice and insulting your mother's taste in random wild animals is not mutually exclusive you know.

In short, Asuka is still a lonely closet tsundere, but she's also now a mature, experienced and bitterly jaded military pilot; one who's lost almost everything and is ruthlessly determined not to lose anything more. She views her younger self with cynicism given she never ages, so the idiocies of her youth will forever haunt her. She's bitter, she's jaded and she's weary, but she's never actually given up. Whereas the Asuka who was actually 14 was a broken girl barely holding together the fragments of her psyche, this Asuka is older, more mature. The broken pieces have fused, resulting in something solid and unbreakable, though still prone to sharp edges and impaling anything that manages to get too close.

As a final aside, her world's both technologically more advanced and technologically more backwards than ours. They have things like Eva, Wunder, holographics, cloning, but displays still look like they're back in the 80s (Shinji uses a tape-playing S-DAT for mercy's sake) and internal ship communications are by corded telephone and radio. Her world was (pre-Third Impact) considerably more industrial (as evidenced by its ability to build and maintain Evas in the first place, not to mention the construction of the Geofront and Tokyo 3) and suffering considerably worse weather effects; higher sea levels and Japan was apparently in constant summer. Modern living and modern technology would be alien to her even without having to live post-apocalyptically on a boat for most of her adult life. The basic philosophy of the post-Second Impact world was 'if it does the job, work on the thing that doesn't'; hence, technological developments went into things like Eva and the system on which Tokyo 3 operated, rather than things like high definition TVs. If it did the job, you used it even if it was out of date. Given the lack of resources, a consumer culture never really appeared. And of course the Third Impact then went and shot all of this in the head...

She also has something of an affinity for water, mostly by dint of 'living on post-apoc boats' but also because piloting an Evangelion involves sitting in an entry plug which is then filled with LCL; a liquid that serves direct oxygenation, shock absorber and a variety of other advantages. The pilots' plugsuits are basically high-tech wetsuits with additional gadgetry on. The clips in her hair (A-10 clips) are also part of the synchronisation process.

AU Information: This Asuka is intended to be as in the film, but since we have so little information about what actually happened during that 14 year time skip, I'm having to make stuff up anyway. Basically, this bit is how she went from the Asuka we saw in Rebuild 2 to the 'embittered mercenary' we see in Rebuild 3. It is derived from canon evidence, but it's still pure headcanon on my part, which means Rebuild 4 can and probably will come and kick all this in the nuts at some point.

So, the end of Rebuild 2. Asuka's in a containment unit deep within NERV after the battle with Bardiel. Shinji snaps trying to save Rei, accidentally triggers a Near Third Impact and the world promptly goes to hell whilst she's in a high security coffin.

What happens next can charitably described as chaos; NERV is dissolved, the sea levels rise and the Angels keep coming. With Rei still missing, the only active pilot is Mari, so Asuka is recovered, released, and upon being confirmed as fully-ish human thrown straight back into active service.

With the oceans rising and the Angels continuing to attack, the last two remaining Evas see widespread use. In light of NERV's deception, it is disbanded by the UN, which cuts all ties to both it and SEELE, offering the old staff (Misato, Ritsuko, the remaining pilots etc) the choice of working for the new special organisation WILLE, dedicated to destroying the angels and the remnants of NERV, or being executed for crimes against humanity (Gendo and Fuyutsuki excepted; they're just wanted, period). It's known there is a second Eva production facility in America; it is likely this was WILLE's base of operations whilst destroying NERV's Japan branch, which was headed by Gendo personally.

The UN and WILLE attack and demolish Tokyo-3 and NERV HQ, sealing and destroying all the Eva facilities with bakelite. At some other location, Gendo and Fuyutsuki and whatever forces are still loyal to SEELE and NERV develop their own Evangelions, to be piloted by Kaworu and Rei clones, and the 'Nemesis Series' of artificial Angels. NERV is also responsible for sealing Unit 01 and Shinji and sending him into Low Earth Orbit (judging from it's defences in said orbit).

What results is a bitter, fourteen year war as humanity destroys itself. Every year, more land is lost to the rising oceans. Every month, another city is lost to the rising tides, or the post-Impact wars, or yet another Angel attack. The global population plummets. Animal life and arable land is almost entirely destroyed. Mass starvation, war, riots. And in the middle of this, the Evangelion pilots, partly held responsible for the destroyed, partly begrudgingly accepted as necessary.

The years pass. Angels happen less, but the war with SEELE continues. With only two Evangelions and no remit nor desire to make more, WILLE loses ground against the Nemesis Series. SEELE retakes NERV headquarters. The construction of the Wunder begins. Finally, for the final piece, Asuka and Mari are deployed to pull Unit 01 down from orbit to serve as the main engine, which is where the start of Rebuild 3 comes in. By that point, it's pretty much just the WILLE fleet left, with 'NERV' being represented entirely (it seems) by Gendo, Kaworu and Fuyutsuki (plus the Rei clones). So that's two old men, 1 angel, 1 clone-we're-not-quite-sure-what and the rest of humanity is literally just a fleet. Global population is probably only around or under 1 million.

Whilst her eyepatch is almost certainly a result of her being mauled during the Bardiel fight, the rest of the apparent injuries / damage to her plugsuit are mixture of that and scars from the fourteen years of fighting. She has, apparently, fought / met Rei clones during this period (presumably the former more often than the latter), so she knows all Rei's history. And most of NERV's secrets. And probably most of Mari's... whatever those actually are..... (UN's attempt at a counter to NERV HQ, presumably).

Amusingly, despite all this, she still has no idea who Kaworu is; just that NERV still has an extra pilot that isn't Rei.

Character Abilities: Accomplished Evangelion pilot, which admittedly won't mean much unless she somehow improbably gets her hands on an Evangelion. That's kind of unlikely. Cannot, for example, drive (because the seas rose so where are all the roads anyway), but she almost certainly by now has at least some idea of how to maintain and fix mechanical equipment. It's quite probable she can fly a helicopter - partly because of the 'Captain in the EAF' thing, even if that was mostly Eva training - and partly because after the Near Third Impact it's one of the few ways to even get around any more. On a related note, she can probably handle a boat for the same reason (and having lived aboard them for near 14 years).

Beyond that, she's had military training and survived 14 years of the world ending, so in short, she's tough. Can shoot and fight in close combat if pushed.

There are some indications her eyepatch is more than it appears; it has a tendency to glow faintly blue when she's angry or when she actives her Eva's Beast mode. It's probably something left over from her time being possessed by Bardiel, though precisely what it means is unclear. We'll find out in Rebuild 4, presumably.

Character Inventory: A black, white and red plugsuit, her eyepatch and some kind of compass / altimeter thing. That's literally it.

Samples:
INTERACTIVE: Shinji Ikari (Test Drive, TV series)

THIRD PERSON:
Whoever had decided a simple television had to be this complicated deserved to be shot, she had decided. Preferably out of one of the Wunder's cannons and even more preferably into Unit 01's gaping maw. A TV just needed to have channels and a record button not all these... menus and crap. And why did it need to be in so many parts anyway? What was so fancy about a 'flatscreen'? Mein Gott she felt as if she might break it if she stared too hard. One small rumble and the thing would be in pieces...

...It wouldn't pass muster on the Wunder, that was sure. Or any of the fleet. If it wasn't securely fixed down, it had a tendency to fall off whenever the boat rocked or the Wunder turned too hard. Akagi would have taken one look at the thing and laughed.

Asuka scowled. What would the rest of them have done in this situation? Let's see... the Colonel?

Glared at it a second and told Akagi to do it.

Akagi? Laughed it at it a second and told Maya to do it. Haha, Maya.

Maya... would probably have kicked it out of the window. And she used to be such a sweet kid...

Aoba would have stroked his stupid beard. The pink haired bimbo would have given up in a matter of seconds. Makoto or that woman on the nav controls could probably have worked it out, though the former would have complained about being old all the while. Mari would have laughed at her and just sat there merrily sipping tea the four-eyed favourite dummkopf.

She sighed and tried to settle in the stupidly squishy sofa. It felt like she was trying to sit on a crash mat not a chair. The odd weightlessness was a little comforting at least. The television before continued to pound out something loud and colourful and annoying.

Rei wouldn't have cared.

Shinji would have ignored it.

The two stooges would have been in awe, clambered all over it like idiots and then probably tried to look up porn. Stupid teenagers.

Hikari would have scolded her over not doing her homework. Sakura... Gott, Sakura? Which one?

The cheery pre-teen 10 year old that had just come out of hospital? The older, slipperier medical student who took her life in hospitals as one cosmic joke?

She groaned just trying to think about it. Here she was; no Wunder, no Eva, no pinky four-eyed favourite, just her; with her too many years and her too few eyeballs and one stupid television.

What in the hell was she even doing.

Weary, tired and old, the not-quite-14 girl dragged herself up. Rather than horse about turning it off, she deactivated the thing at the plug, cutting the power on the cheery, happy advertising with a blunt and sudden 'whump'. Who even needed the thing anyway. Least of all here with it's weird, crazy rules. Body contact? Seriously?

Dusting herself off, she figured she may as well just leave. A wetsuit wasn't quite a plugsuit, and as an Eva pilot she wasn't quite on duty, but who the hell cared. Donning the not-quite-the-right hat and her not-quite-the-right jacket, she headed outside into the not-quite-the-right world.