Creation began on 04-12-19
Creation ended on 04-14-19
Outlaw Star
Away from Space and Grounded in a New World
A/N: This was laying around in my head for a long time since the Evangelion/Pokemon crossover got more depth in the adventures. And I had seen the Outlaw Star episode that inspired this idea. Here goes.
She couldn't recall what happened after making the account of her ship's damage and the loss of her cats, but Hanmyo thought about Jim Hawking as she lay wherever she was. As she waited for the end of her life, she started to realize something was off. Her ship, The Torarato, had been destroyed, which killed her in the process after the deaths of her cats, Kemi and Mata, were killed…and yet she was still thinking of what happened…and still conscious, too. So…if she was dead, then her heart should've stopped beating, implying that she was very much alive.
Am I dead? Hanmyo wondered as her vision came into focus. My ship blew up by the Outlaw Star, so I should've died. What is going on here?
"Meow!" She heard a cat, and she found herself lying under a tree in front of a large lake.
"Skitty!" Another sound was heard, and she looked over to her left, seeing two strange, cat-like creatures sitting beside her.
The cat on the left was dark in fur coloring with a gold charm on its head while the cat on the right was a light pinkish color with what looked like…pins in its tail.
"I'm alive?" She questioned, and then the two cats jumped onto and nuzzled her hands.
FLASH! Her vision was obscured by memories of Kemi and Mata.
"What… Who are you two?" She asked the cats, and they jumped off her.
"Skitty!" The pin-tailed cat tilted its neck to the side, revealing a collar on it with a tag.
Hanmyo looked at it closely, seeing the name "Mata" written on it.
"Mata?!" She gasped, and then looked at the other cat, finding a similar collar on it, with another name she knew. "Kemi?!"
Somehow, not only was she alive, but her cats had survived, as well, transformed into…some other types of felines.
She got up to her feet and walked over to the water, seeing her reflection. There wasn't a sign of any scars or burns on her, and her clothing was intact. Somehow, she was just…in one piece in a strange place that clearly wasn't the afterlife.
"Hello!" She heard someone yell, and looked towards a different part of the lake where a picnic table was, seeing two young men with some strange animals with them. "How are you?!"
Hanmyo ran over and stopped in front of them, seeing their features more clearly: Both seemed to be in their early-teens, but one had freckles and glasses on his face while the other seemed…kind of cute like a girl, only he was a boy.
"Excuse me, but can you two tell me where I am?" She asked them.
"Huh?" The cute boy responded, now sporting a strange, brown creature that resembled a little fox. "You…don't know where you are? This is Lake May."
"Lake May? Wait, what planet is this? Tenrei? Sentinel III? Desgradia?"
"Earth?" The bespectacled boy responded, and then noticed the cats. "Are those a Meowth and Skitty you have?"
"Meowth and Skitty? You mean, Mata and Kemi? What are you talking about?"
The boys looked at each other and then back at Hanmyo, confused.
"Uh, wait, let's start over, please," the cute boy suggested. "Some clarity will do us all some good because we don't know what's going on. Ladies first, please."
"My name is Hanmyo," she introduced herself to them. "These are Kemi and Mata."
"I'm Shinji Ikari," the cute boy introduced himself, "and this is my Eevee, Misato."
"Eevo!" The brown creature, an Eevee, chirped.
"Kensuke Aida," the bespectacled boy added, "and this is my Machamp, Brute-Chan."
"Machamp!" The four-armed, bluish-gray humanoid behind him greeted.
"You have an alien?" Hanmyo pointed to Brute-Chan.
"No, he's a Pokemon," Shinji explained. "Your Meowth and Skitty are, too."
"What? Pokemon?"
"Creatures that live among us on the planet and beyond the stars," Kensuke expressed. "Hanmyo, are you even from around here? What region are you from, the Kanto Region? Or maybe the Johto Region, even?"
"No, no, I'm not from here at all," she answered. "I was in space! I was in an explosion! My cats and I were… I don't know how we ended up here!"
Soon, Shinji had a look of realization on his face; it was as though he understood what was going on here.
"You're from another universe, aren't you?" He asked her. "You're from another universe, another place, separated by time and space. Something must've happened before, during or even after the explosion you were in, and you somehow ended up getting relocated here."
"You really think so, Shinji?" Kensuke asked him. "If that's possible, then…that would put her on the same boat as you."
"What?" Hanmyo went. "You mean, he's from another universe, too?"
"We both are, but his case is more extreme; I was part of an experiment meant to keep in touch with Shinji subconsciously, but now…I'm just with for a longer period."
"There's a term for my predicament, Hanmyo. It's called universal displacement, where you're ripped from the universe you're associated with and placed in a different one. This…is the Pokemon world. What was your world called?"
"It was called the Toward Stars Era, a time of expansion and colonization across the cosmos."
"Ah, space exploration," Kensuke realized, "discovering new worlds and new lifeforms across the stars. That's why you asked if Brute-Chan was an alien; it's because you've seen aliens before, haven't you?"
"Yes, several: Silgrians, Rorgans, Sith, even Corbonites."
-x-
After a warm meal and a detailed explanation of what the Pokemon world was about from these two young men, Hanmyo and her cats accompanied them towards their next destination, this Fallarbor Town on their way to this Lavaridge Town.
"So, Shinji," she decided to ask the cute boy, "how long have you been here?"
"Here as in the Hoenn Region," he responded, "or here as in the Pokemon world?"
"Here in the Pokemon world."
"Oh…almost three-and-a-half years now; Kensuke has been traveling with me for almost three years since he was supposed to have returned to our world within three days, but after he didn't, I appreciated his company more."
"Three-and-a-half… How do you keep from going crazy in a place like this?"
"I have friends to keep me sane, like Misato here, nicknamed after my guardian."
"Eevo!" Misato uttered, stopping on the path to climb atop Shinji's left shoulder.
"Heh-heh! She's been with me since I first showed up here, becoming my first Pokemon and best friend."
Hanmyo then looked down at her Meowth and Skitty, her cats somehow transformed into Pokemon variations upon the displacement into this universe.
"Kemi and Mata have been my best friends since before we got here."
"What were you before you ended up here?"
"If I told you, you wouldn't feel safe around me."
"It wouldn't be my first mistake to try and give a stranger I don't know the benefit of the doubt. Whatever it was, it doesn't have to define who you are here. Who I was before I became a Pokemon Trainer was…not a life I was content with…and rather not go back to again if I ever manage to return to my world."
"Very well, then. I was… I was a member of seven-person group of unique assassins. We were called the Anten Seven."
"You were an assassin? As in…you used to take out other people for a living?"
"You asked."
"Yes, he did," went Kensuke. "Wait, aren't you a little…"
"What, young?"
"Yes."
"I'm eleven years old. I've only ever taken out eighteen targets in the two years I've been a part of the Kei Pirate Guild, and only when they were considered a threat to my employer."
"Well, you're not bound to that life, anymore while you're here. I mean, you don't have to be. Maybe there's a way for you to get back to your world here, just like there is for Shinji. Maybe we can help you find that way back…if you want to, that is."
"Is there a choice?"
"There's always a choice, Ms. Hanmyo," said Shinji to her. "To have a choice is to have options, and to have options is to have different paths open to you."
Hanmyo thought about it, and it felt like for now, her best way of possibly finding a way to return to her universe…was by sticking with these two that have been here in this one for years until she decided she needed to part with them for a while. She knew how to survive on her own and it wouldn't be like anyone she knew would be looking for her.
"What did you used to do before becoming a Pokemon Trainer, Mr. Ikari?" She asked Shinji.
"Just Shinji is okay," he responded, "and to answer your question, I was a pilot for a skyscraper-sized combat unit called an Evangelion, fighting large monsters codenamed Angels to protect the human race."
"Sounds like a glorified superhero job."
"There was no glory or any recognition. I didn't even want to do it in the beginning."
"Then why did you?"
"His father forced him," went Kensuke to her. "Not something any man should do to his kid, but his old man isn't a good person."
"How many fathers aren't nice people?" Hanmyo questioned him, which implied to the boys that she probably could name a few…or had one herself.
"Mine's the worst I know of," Shinji stated his belief. "I used to want his acknowledgement of me, to at least care about my feelings… But now I know better. He's a man that will never show any love to his own son. Even if I manage to find a way back, he's just gonna pass my return off as something akin to a waste of his time."
If I ever met your father, Shinji, I'd probably kill him out of disgust, Hanmyo thought. "Focus more on the present right now, please. The past, especially when it's full of pain, is not something that helps you in the here and now."
And my past is pretty much nothing but pain, thought Shinji as he petted Misato's head. "Your Meowth is quite an unusual Pokemon, Hanmyo. I mean, it doesn't look anything like a Meowth is supposed to, according to the Pokedex."
"Kemi? But don't all Pokemon have the same appearances?"
"Not every Pokemon of the same species has the same looks. Like how there's always people with different names and identities, Pokemon have identities, too, separated by behavior or limitations. Kensuke and I have never seen a Meowth with dark fur. There are Shiny Pokemon, that is Pokemon with different coloring from the standard coloring, but that doesn't strike me as a Shiny Pokemon."
"Meowth!" Kemi went, sounding offended a little by Shinji's assumption of what kind of Meowth it was.
"What about Mata?" Hanmyo asked as her Skitty hopped onto her head. "Is she unlike the others of the Pokemon she was turned into upon arriving here?"
"No, actually, she's fine," Kensuke stated. "There isn't any known Shiny Skitty in the world, let alone this region."
"One other question, but it's probably nothing serious if nobody talks about it here…but doesn't a Meowth have a nose?"
Shinji and Kensuke looked at each other and then chuckled lightly, as though they were bothered by the very question.
"I once asked about why that was so," Shinji explained to her, "and the answer was that through continued adaptation over the generations, the nose of the Meowth just…diminished from the surface of their faces. They can still smell, it just doesn't look like they have a nose to smell with. It's quite an evolutionary predicament regarding the Meowth species."
"Very. Is that the town we're heading to?"
Shinji looked up ahead and saw some tall buildings above the rows of trees.
"Yeah, that's Fallarbor Town," he told her. "They have some shopping centers, so we can get you some basic necessities, Hanmyo."
"You don't need to do anything for me, Shinji."
"He's a Good Samaritan, Hanmyo," Kensuke told her. "He has a capacity for goodness that draws people and Pokemon to him every now and then."
"Thank you," Hanmyo acknowledged.
-x-
Lily of the Valley Island
Less than a year after parting with Shinji and Kensuke, Hanmyo, deciding to travel for a while on her own with Kemi and Mata after learning that as Pokemon, they were capable of several moves that were beyond what a regular cat was capable of, and traveled to the Sinnoh Region after hearing that Shinji was going to be there trying to win the Pokemon League they had. It was a short journey, but they finally made it to Lily of the Valley Island, and all she, Mata and Kemi had to do now was find out where Shinji was and see how he was doing.
Last I heard, you got second place in the Hoenn League, Shinji, Hanmyo thought. How far will you get in this conference?
Walking down the street with her cats, the former member of the Anten Seven began to wander the town for the Pokemon Trainer that used to be an Evangelion pilot and his military otaku friend that was accompanying him.
"Shinji Ikari," she uttered to herself, "I will find you here. You can train, you can run, but you cannot hide from me."
A/N: And now we can resume the crossover where we'll meet Hanmyo later. I feel better writing this because I didn't like how in the Outlaw Star episode where Hanmyo died, and thought what could've happened if dying in space was just getting displaced to another universe. Let me know what you think of this.