Roleplay / Asuka Quest

Asuka Quest is a Forum Quest run on the BROB forum of SpaceBattles.com by TheOneMoiderah. The first thread is available here while the final thread is available here. It started in March of 2013 and then was concluded in October.

The basic premise of the quest is that an unknown person with no memory of their previous life wakes up one morning in the body of Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion, shortly after her arrival in Tokyo 3. Their actions, controlled by the collective votes of members of the SpaceBattles.com forum, almost instantly lead to massive derailments of the Evangelion plot. Usually in ways that cause her far more problems than they solve.

The quest covers the new Asuka's attempts to survive her battles with the Angels, prevent Third Impact, and solve the various psychological issues plaguing the Eva cast. It also features glaring abuse of the laws of physics via AT fields, extreme cat obsession, and frequent massive Mood Whiplash.

---

Asuka Quest provides examples of:

• Aborted Arc: "STEVEN KILLED HIMSELF". Arael was going to tell Asuka who 'Steven' was, but the posters decided to just kill him instead.
• Achievements in Ignorance: Forking oneself to create an AI is widely considered to be a very bad idea, since the last guy who tried it died along with the fork. Asuka, however, was not aware of this, and during the simulator/matrix battle with Iruel, she forked herself by using the dev console to spawn in a copy of her for help. Both the original and the copy (dubbed 'AIsuka') survived the forking process and the subsequent Giant Alien Starfish battle, and Aisuka became an important reoccurring character.
• Adaptational Villainy: There isn't much canonically known about Yui Ikari, and there's a lot of conflicting theories. The one Asuka Quest goes with is that she wished to cause Third Impact herself. It never comes to anything and it's left as implications in the main quest, but the author has confirmed it.
• The Alcoholic: Asuka drinks herself into a stupor upon realizing where she's is after first awakening, and her alcohol consumption remains fairly heavy until the Matariel battle, in which she got Shinji drunk. The consequences were horrible enough to convince her to give it up for good.
• Animal-Eared Headband: Asuka buys some sets from a costume store that move in reflection of the wearer's mood.
• Anti-Villain: Kyoko, who is understandably horrified by what she sees as Demonic Possession of her daughter and is trying to cure it, even if it means turning Asuka into an Angel hybrid like Rei.
• Arbitrarily Large Bank Account: NERV pays its pilots well. Asuka generally has all the money she needs when she wants to go on shopping sprees.
• Badass on Paper: All the pilots. They've done amazing things, forced the Giant Alien Starfish to take a collective level in badass just to not get curbstomped, and are capable of causing an Earth-Shattering Kaboom if they felt like it (one of Asuka's stray attacks against Arael does obliterate a small planetoid). But if you look at them in person, they're a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits consisting of a gamer, a cat-loving nutcase, her socially-malformed girlfriend, an AI with serious issues relating to being a real person, an overly enthusiastic nicknamer, and the human persona of the angel Tabris, all being living emotional crutches to each other.
• Batter Up!: One of Asuka's tricks is to form a bat out of AT fields and whack someone with it. It worked best on Sahaquiel, who ended up flying over the Pacific Ocean.
• Berserk Button: Kaworu, as the Angel of Free Will, does not like Aisuka, a self-aware person, being tortured into submission by SEELE.
• Big Bad: SEELE, and Lorenz Kihl in particular. The final battle is against him, merged with a massive multi-cored MP Eva into something posters referred to as a 'demi-Adam'.
• Body Horror: Asuka suffers from increasing amounts of this as the quest progresses, thanks to the real Asuka's mother influencing her Evangelion to replace her flesh with angelic tissue whenever her synchronisation increases too far, in an attempt to gain enough influence over Asuka's body to drive Quest!Asuka out.
• Cast Full of Gay: Almost every relationship entered into by any character in the course of the quest is same-sex. It's even Lampshaded by Mari once she arrives- she jokes about there being a bet that NERV Japan is 'full of lesbians'.
• Celebrity Paradox: Parodied during the earlier parts of the thread where the players (posting on the real life Spacebattles forum) urge Asuka to get an In-Universe Spacebattles account. Much Self-Deprecation ensues, but it at least helped Rei learn to socialize.
• Cute Kitten: Asuka is obsessed with these, and by extension with all cats. The fact that the real Asuka isn't almost gives her away to Kaji.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Asuka works very quickly in de-frosting Rei. Also counts as Defusing the Tyke-Bomb, since the original plan was that Rei would see nothing better for herself than Third Impact, but Asuka showed her what she'd been missing.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Several ways to cause these via abuse of AT fields were discovered in simulators. As were several techniques theorised to be capable of destroying reality.
• Evolutionary Levels: Brought up in the final battle, as Asuka points out to Kihl/Demi-Adam that evolution doesn't actually work that way, and Instrumentality would be what truly stagnated humanity.
• Eyepatch of Power: Asuka eventually gets one to hide her corrupted eye.
• Groundhog Peggy Sue: It was discovered near the end of the quest that Kaworu had in fact been stuck in one of these, and was currently on his fifteenth or sixteenth attempt.
• Flat "What": A common reaction to Asuka's more over the top stunts and AT tricks.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: Averted with Hikari, after the Bardiel fight. She is still alive, but can't be a pilot again due to massive PTSD. Asuka still tries to spend time with them and to be a good friend.
• Gender Bender: The person who woke up in Asuka's body doesn't remember much of their background, but in what they do remember, they're referred to using masculine pronouns.
• Hearing Voices: How the Spacebattles community manifests to Asuka.
• Heel–Face Turn: Gendo, after Arael's Japan-wide Mind Rape showed him that his idea of reuniting with Yui was impossible.
• Home-Run Hitter: Asuka manages to bat a home run on Sahaquiel with a bat made out of her AT field.
• Hope Bringer: SB!Asuka. Because of her actions the entire cast is more mentally stable and everything is going far better than in canon.
• Idiot Ball:
  • Grabbed by Asuka on several occasions, most notably when she forces Shinji to drink alcohol before the fight with Matariel, out of belief that it might improve his piloting.
  • Due to the nature of the quest, all of these instances can also be said to be caused by the SpaceBattles community themselves grabbing the Idiot Ball. Though in context, it was a decision made after a string of continually successful schemes, so enough people just went with it on a whim without realizing how significant the implications would be.
• Logical Weakness: Exploited against Sandalphon. The Angel is tough and strong enough to swim in magma. So how do Asuka and company defeat it? After it reaches the surface, they poke a hole in the AT field that allowed it to ignore the massive pressure difference between magma and air. The angel promptly explodes.
• Loss of Identity: The consciousness that awoke as Asuka somewhat remembers identifying as a male before. However, as the memories start dimming and he starts identifying as Asuka, he prefers to salvage what little he remembers of the canon plot rather than any other personal details.
• Mad Scientist: Several of the players are this. It's the reason why there's so many ridiculous exploits with AT fields, as they just got curious about railguns, degenerate matter (also known as neutronium, it's a substance so dense it normally only forms in the cores of neutron stars), space creation, what happens if you set an AT field to only block certain particles (the answer is usually 'a massive explosion', in case you were wondering), and how AT fields interact with quantum physics.
• Mind Hive: Both Space Battles!Asuka and the original Asuka share a body throughout the course of the quest (while hearing the Spacebattles posters as voices). This also allows them to alter their dreams however they see fit, leading to many moments that are both awesome and funny.
• Mind Rape: Arael, to the whole of Japan including the other pilots, easily earning it the title of 'most hated Angel'.
• Mood Whiplash: The quest basically had three settings: warm and fuzzy, slapstick comedy, and horror right out of Canon!Evangelion. Posters eventually get paranoid whenever the fluff comes up, since they know that it's probably the prelude to something horrific.
• Official Couple:
  • Asuka and Rei.
  • Hikari and Toji.
  • Ritsuko and Maya.
  • Kaworu and Shinji.
  • The epilogue also hints at Aisuka and Mari.
• Off the Rails: So much compared to Canon!Evangelion. A list:
  • Shinji and Rei are now comparatively mentally stable. Rei falls in love with Asuka, who reciprocates, and they start dating.
  • The fight with Iruel takes place in the sims, and results in the creation of an AI fork of Asuka. 'Aisuka' survives the battle and goes on to be a major reoccurring character.
  • Asuka's mad science with AT fields caused several of the later angels to be more dangerous in response (i.e. Bardiel could distort its body like it was The Thing (1982), Zeruel is more aggressive and powerful, and so on).
  • Toji and Hikari end up as a couple.
  • Hikari pilots Unit 03 instead of Toji and is physically unharmed from the Bardiel battle, but comes away with PTSD.
  • Arael mind rapes the whole of Japan to draw Asuka out, which ultimately catalyzes Gendo's Heel–Face Turn. Also, the fallout from that battle and the powerful AT tricks she used results in world leaders recognizing EV As as potential planet busters.
  • The battle with Zeruel ends with Unit 02 consuming its S2 organ, instead of Unit 01.
  • Rei survives the battle with Armisael, thanks to Asuka's meta-knowledge.
  • Due to EVA armor and pills containing tiny shards of the Lance of Longinus, Kaworu is able to survive Tabris's turn.
  • Kaji and Gendo collaborate against SEELE, which results in both of their deaths. On the bright side, the world is now aware and distrustful of SEELE, limiting their powers considerably.
  • There are four EV As available to fight the Mass-Production EV As instead of just one, and they knew to target cores and plugs, so the battle ends in a victory with no losses for NERV. The JSSDF also does not attack.
  • SEELE creates a demi-Adam in a last-ditch attempt to begin Instrumentality, forcing Asuka and Mari to defeat it. This averts Third Impact entirely.
• Oh, Crap!: A very common occurrence in battles, both for Asuka and for her opponents.
• Parents as People: The parental figures are from freaking Evangelion, of course they're messed up. That said, most of them are more dysfunctional than actively malevolent.
  • Misato is an irresponsible drunk, but she's about the only one to actually care about the pilots as people and attempt to do right by them.
  • Kyoko essentially abandoned her daughter to be part of Unit 02, but she does love Asuka enough to try to get her body back, and proves willing to listen when Asuka tells her that she's doing more harm than good by corrupting SB!Asuka.
  • Gendo is the neglectful father, but that stems more from his self-esteem issues and co-dependency on Yui than an actual dislike of Shinji. When Arael mind rapes some sense into him, he expresses regret about how things turned out and wants to make it up to his son.
• Person of Mass Destruction: The pilots are even more this than they are in canon, thanks to AT field tricks that can do a reasonable impression of nuclear weapons, crack planets, perhaps destroy the universe via Reality-Breaking Paradox, and more.
• The Power of Friendship: Asuka manages to make Shinji and Rei much more stable people simply by being a friend they can rely on (and introducing Shinji to Dark Souls).
• Sherlock Scan: The line of logic Asuka uses to explain how she deduced Rei's half-Giant Alien Starfish nature (although she really knew it because of Spacebattles' meta-knowledge): Rei has blue hair and red eyes. Humans, even albinos, cannot have that hair and eye color (albinos have white hair and blue/gray eyes, which can look red-tinged because of the reflection of blood vessels). Rei isn't the type to dye her hair or use colored contacts to simulate having odd coloration. Therefore, Rei isn't entirely human. Rei's life is entirely focused on NERV, an organization which deals with bizarre alien entities and has managed to create synthetic humanoids (the evangelions) using their DNA. Therefore, Rei is likely another NERV experiment, this one meant to create a human-sized Evangelion-like being.
• Shmuck Bait: Updates frequently contained invisible text (visible only when highlighted) that revealed useful information or good options. Then one set of invistext was revealed to be a message from the Angel Arael only after the voters had noticed and voted for it. Mind Rape ensued.
• Spanner in the Works: Asuka herself. It's kinda hard to plan for a pilot suddenly being possessed by an amnesiac person and an entire Internet forum, then proving to be crazy awesome and rehabilitating the pilots by being one undeniably good thing in their lives. Because of her, the JSSDF never attack NERV, the world ends up turning against SEELE, the Tabris incident is nipped in the bud and Kaworu survives, and Third Impact never happens as Gendo has a Heel–Face Turn (indirectly caused by Asuka, as she provokes Arael to Mind Rape the whole of Japan, including Gendo, instead of just focusing on her), and Asuka and Mari destroy the demi-Adam/mutant EVA that was SEELE's last-ditch attempt.
• Starfish Alien: Asuka calls the angels 'Giant Alien Starfish' since they aren't actually angelic beings, but they are massive and very weird aliens.
• The Stations of the Canon: Zig-zagged. The Angels attack in the same order and at around the same time as canon (Justified- the Dead Sea Scrolls had already set out this information long before SB!Asuka came on the scene), but other things don't happen in the same manner, like Hikari being the Fourth Child and Kaworu showing up long before he was supposed to.
• Swiss-Army Superpower: What happens when people with a lot of time on their hands and knowledge about physics get their hands on AT fields. Basic uses involve making weaponry and platforms to stand on, while the more esoteric uses involve degenerate matter, anti-matter, and reality-breaking paradoxes. There's also IFF-fields, which is what happens when you set an AT field to block something and ignore something else. Uses for those include weapons of mass destruction, electron ripping, forcing plugs out of Evangelions, and more.
• Took a Level in Badass: All the pilots. They took so many levels that the Giant Alien Starfish had to take a collective level in badass themselves to stand a chance.
  • Asuka learns multiple AT field tricks, some capable of destroying the Earth if aimed wrong.
  • Shinji loses his Cowardly Lion aspects and comes into his own, even managing to make up a few AT field tricks of his own.
  • Rei learns to make use of her AT field outside of Unit-00, although doing so hurts her.
  • Mari struggles a bit in the sims at first, but she eventually picks up AT hax fairly well.
• True Final Boss: Adam takes over the mutated EVA from Kihl after several of its cores have been destroyed.
• Video Game Caring Potential: Most of the decisions were fueled by this. Those that weren't were for awesomeness. Notably, at one point, everyone (including the Space Battle audience) was shocked by how much more mature and emotionally healthy Shinji was compared to his canon counterpart, thanks to the audience's influence.
• Wham Line: When Asuka's teacher introduces a new transfer student.
  New Student: Thank you, Mr. Rojinsei. My name is Kaworu Nagisa. I hope you treat me well.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Aisuka, Asuka's AI clone. Interestingly enough, it's mostly on Aisuka's end, as Asuka and company easily accept her as a living being worthy of respect. SEELE doesn't, though, and they implant a spyware program in her and try to torture her into acting as their spy. Everyone who actually knows Aisuka is furious.

---