Creation began on 03-14-10

Creation ended on 11-10-14

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Vigilantes of Evangelion

A/N: What if Shinji was given a darker side after something way too terrible happened to him and a deal was made? Here's a hint: He has a problem trying to regain the life that he lost.

Like him, I didn't want no part in the war with the so-called enemy known as the Angels. But the corrupted influence of those that wanted to get rid of them pulled my soul towards the darkness of ruination. However, after what felt like an eternity, I fought and freed my soul. Now, I'm forced to watch…for others…like me. Those that run and finance organizations like NERV are the ones that make true evil on what's left of Earth. It's the choices that they make to decide the fates of others that enslave their souls to Hell. I should know…I was killed by them, not the Angels, whom are not the actual enemy, not my friend…who has hated the sight as well as the stench of bloodshed ever since I met him. Now…it is his turn.

-x-

"…The Human Instrumentality Project is an exact science," said Gendo to a man that was cloaked in darkness inside his office. "If you want it done right, you do it my way."

"This time period you've set is a real pain in the buttocks, Ikari," the man said, lighting up a cigar to puff. "After the Ninth Angel, I thought we wouldn't have to wait another period of months just to bring about the salvation of existence. That's the deal that we made."

"I'm making you a guarantee," Gendo told him. "All you have to do is keep the old men off my case and see to it that I get what I've been promised."

"Hey! This is me you're talking to. If I say that you're the man, you're the man! You do for me, and in no time, you'll be running this place like a god instead of a king. And when the big piñata breaks, you'll have it all. Just see to it that you keep your end of the pact. Heh-heh-heh! Oh, and another thing: There's one more item on the 'To do' list, and it requires your personal attention. My people need a new recruit, and that kid you don't show any interest in reconciling with, Shinji Ikari, is the best candidate."

"The Third Child is doing enough where he is," Gendo uttered, his tone hollow and cold when the topic of his son was brought up. "What do your people need of him? Why do you want him?"

"What is what you people? Why must you always question? Why ask 'why' when 'how' is so much more fun? Eh-heh-heh! Look at what you've done to him: You made him kill one of his only friends after coming here, and all his other so-called friends have rejected him. He's all alone, just the way you wanted him. Put him outta his misery while you're at it."

Then, the man was gone, as though he were never there to begin, and Gendo decided on how to handle the situation.

-x-

Walking in the wilderness by himself one day, Shinji, sporting a bruise on his left cheek, courtesy of Asuka abusing him time and again, needed to get away from the people that only saw him as a tool and a killer…and not as a person. Ever since Toji's murder, he'd been the talk of the whole school, as well as the punching bag of other jocks that knew of Toji. He considered himself lucky that every time he was punched and kicked, it was always to his arms and legs. It wasn't his choice to end the life of someone he wanted to save.

Misato was of no comfort to him, anymore, not that she ever was. Ayanami hasn't spoken to him about what happened, either. And Asuka… Well, Asuka was still herself, and she couldn't have been happier with Toji gone, unaware that her only friend was completely heartbroken over it.

It should've been me, he thought bitterly, stopping to sit down by a tree for rest. None of this would've happened if I hadn't come here to begin with. But that man sent for me, forced me to fight an enemy I knew nothing of and don't want to know of, anymore.

As a cold, bitter breeze blew past him, he came to a shocking realization: If he didn't want to put up with any more what of his father had done to him, he should just leave Tokyo-3 for good. They all might've looked at it as running away, but for him, it was the best way to bury bad memories. If he quit, they couldn't bind him to the Eva, anymore, and that meant he was free to go on with his life before NERV tried to throw it down the drain. No more Eva…no more Angels…no more Third Child.

"No more," he uttered. "No more."

-x-

"Say what?!" Asuka shouted at Misato. "He's resigning?!"

"That's what he said," Misato told the redhead. "He's already leaving for the next train out of the city."

"Why the heck is that baka leaving now? There's still the Angels."

"He doesn't want anything more to do with the Evas or Angels. Nobody, not you, me or his father, will change his mind about what he's decided."

While Asuka was secretly happy that he was gone, that meant that she no longer had him as a punching bag to vent her frustration out whenever she had a temper.

Pen-Pen, whom was simply reading a magazine, heard the whole thing and wondered why the guy that fed him his fish had actually left…and that he worried about him. Not because of his stomach, but because of his conscious. Beyond his owner, the other guy was the only nice person he'd ever met.

-x-

The main thing Shinji hated about trains was that they took too long to arrive, even when the schedule displayed above his head showed how long it was until the next one out of the city was to show. For him, it like an old saying that he heard somewhere: "Short time to live, long time to wait".

"I'm finally free," he uttered to himself. If only things had been different. If only…I had never been born to begin with.

Now, with just five minutes left until his train arrived, he thought that his life couldn't get any worse than it was already. Well, he thought wrong.

BAM! A gunshot was heard, and he fell to the ground, a bullet having gone through his left leg.

"Aaaurgh!" He yelled out in pain.

"We've located the former Third Child," he heard a man say to somebody, seeing that it was one of the people from Section Two, having used a gun on him. "Commencing execution."

He was backed up by four other agents, all carrying containers filled with something. They opened them up and threw a liquid substance at him, covering him in it. To Shinji, the liquid smelled an awful lot like…the liquid used to fuel a vehicle: Gasoline!

"Sorry, kid," the lead agent told him. "Orders came from your father. It's nothing personal."

He then raised his gun at his head and pulled the trigger.

BAM! The bullet went straight through his head! He dropped to the ground, dead as an Angel. But the oddest thing was…the eerie feeling that his eyes gave, as though he were still living when he had just lost part of his brain matter.

The horrible truth was that he was still there, watching the guy light a match and incinerate his body, all the while hearing a voice that sounded like his father's, saying, "See you in Hell, Third Child."

So, this is how it ends for me? He thought, seeing the flames leaving only ash, and then a swirling whirlpool of fire, as he fell down said whirlpool.

-x-

CLASH! Thunder and rain covered the streets of Tokyo-3, drenching all that lived in it. Even those that were leaving it. CLASH! Another roar of thunder had disturbed the slumber of a man that lived in an alley, who looked as though he had faced hard times ever since before he arrived.

"Aaaahh!" He gasped, feeling the rain pouring on him.

"I guess someone got well-done instead of medium-rare," said a shadowed man, standing a few feet away from him. "Wow, I'm so looking forward to having fun with you. Ah-ha-ha-ha!"

The man got up and started wandering out of the alley, discovering that his hands were deformed, like he had no flesh on them. Stepping out onto the streets, he stood near a closed store and found his reflection staring right back at him. His face was as messed-up as his hands were: No hair, ears or skin on him, as though he were nothing but muscle tissue with a skeleton.

"What…is this?" He asked, feeling out of place.

"You've been gone for five months, old friend," he heard somebody say to him, and he turned to face him. "Do you remember me?"

"T…Toji?!"

"In the flesh. Well…former flesh." The man said, looking like the former Fourth Child. "Come with me now."

Leading the muscle-tissue-looking man down the street, the former pilot of the former Eva Unit-03 had led him toward an abandoned building. One that he was familiar with.

"This is…Ayanami's place," he told the guy.

"Was Ayanami's place," he corrected him. "She moved out two months after you were declared gone."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you remember your name?"

"Of course, I remember. It's…it's Shinji."

"Do you remember what you were doing the last time you checked?"

"I was…leaving Tokyo-3."

"Do you want to know what kept you from doing so?"

"What happened to me? Why do I look like this?"

"How do I sum it up for you? You're, um, pushing up daisies. You're in permanent nap time. You're fertilizer. Or I can just come out and say it. You're dead, Shinji. You were murdered."

"What?! Murdered? But I…" He couldn't say any more, as his mind flashed back to what had happened to him. I was murdered…by Section Two agents…under orders…from my…that man.

The very memory unlocked the other pieces of what had resulted from his murder. He could recall going down a burning vortex and landing hard onto a type of ground that was burnt. Getting up, he found himself in another place with fire and brimstone, and many, many people screaming their lungs out, either in despair or in anger. In the background of his perception, he saw a colossal beast that looked like a rabid rabbit that had been skinned to death and set ablaze.

"Aaaaaauurgh!" He heard it growl, looking directly at him, as a mist of pale-green surrounded the burnt boy. "This is the bargain, boy: If you lead my army of fallen warriors, you can have your old life back. What is your answer?"

As the mist was sucked into him, he answered, "Yes! Yes, I'll lead your army! Anything to have my life back!"

Within seconds, he was surrounded by multiple landmasses floating around the place, and on each of them were thousands of people that looked like they were, in various methods, burnt, disemboweled, dismembered and butchered like animals. They, too, were surrounded by the green mist that had seeped into his own body.

"If you fail me, you will die," the creature told him. "Avenge your murder. Kill Gendo Ikari."

"Yes. Yes!" Shinji responded, and the flashback ended.

"It takes the amusement outta being alive, doesn't it?" Toji asked him as he slumped onto Rei's old bed.

"So, put quite simply, I went to Hell…and I cut a deal for my own soul?" Shinji asked him, looking at his burnt hands. "I traded any possibility of going back to who I was…for this?"

"Not entirely, Shinji. When I died, I made the same choice you did, but I realized that I couldn't go through with it. I went back on the deal for my own soul. I fought hard to reclaim my existence. I can help you take back yours if it's what you really want. This is no longer a war between just people and the so-called enemy, the Angels. It's a war between Heaven and Hell, where the battlefield is Earth…and the price is the souls belonging to every man, woman and child left alive. Second Impact had sent a massive amount of souls to Hell, with only a scarce few ascending to Heaven. A lot has changed since you were gone, and almost everyone that was willing to change have changed for either the better or the worse. Mostly worse."

"How worse?"

"I'll explain it all later. You need to rest up, and tomorrow, you'll no longer look like a burnt victim that looks like he's made of muscle fiber and such, though you'll wanna wear a headband or bandana to cover what'll be there tomorrow."

After their conversation ended, Toji had just, like the switch of a lighting system, disappeared from Shinji's perception, leaving him alone in the room.

"This…is my purgatory," he muttered to himself, falling onto his back on Rei's bed.

-x-

When he awoke the next day, he found the familiar hands of his in front of him, and his clothes were those he wore on the day of his murder. Getting out of bed, he went over to a mirror and saw that, to some of his happiness, he looked the way he did before he was killed, except for the bullet hole in his forehead, looking fresh. Still, accepting that he looked as close to normal as any dead guy, he decided not to sulk about it and covered it up with a purple bandana he found lying around in another apartment in the building before heading out to the cemetery where he once believed his mother was buried until he found that a body was never there. But he theorized that if there were some people buried there, then he himself had to have been buried there, as well.

The streets of the city looked as they were ever since he had arrived here: Empty, lonely and soulless. Nobody was present to even see him walking the streets. A perpetual ghost town of sorts.

This city's nothing but loneliness, he thought as he made it to the cemetery. Is there anybody left?

His answer was most unexpected when he caught the sight of a woman laying a bouquet of flowers down near a tombstone. She looked well into her late twenties and had long, blackish-purple hair.

"M…Misato?" He said, but then walked away to keep her from seeing his face and avoiding questions.

The woman looked and saw only a kid in school clothes with a purple bandana on his head, but almost thought that she heard someone call her name.

Must be wishful thinking, she thought, and left the place.

Shinji then went over to the site of the flowers and saw what he'd been looking for: His own grave.

"'Ikari, Shinji. From Two-Thousand-One to Two-Thousand-Fifteen.'"He read the writing off his grave marker. I really am dead.

And he found that he was buried next to his mother's empty grave. If he was able to shed tears, he would've done so, but there were no tears. There was only the twisted agony of knowing that he was dead and that there were only two options of dealing with that fact now: He could either move on, if that was even possible, or he could avenge his murder, lead the army of fallen warriors for this creature he made the deal with and regain his former life. It was becoming a strain for him to even choose how to take those offers being handed to him.

He returned back to the building Rei used to live in and slumped on her bed again.

"I'm guessing you had a bad morning?" He heard Toji ask him.

"Yeah," he answered him. "Are you going to tell me everything now?"

"Yes."

"I'm listening."

"After you died, Misato became a wreck for four weeks; she couldn't believe you were just killed like that and that there was no investigation, no one was held responsible and that when your funeral came, she, Rei, Asuka, some other woman with two men and an old guy were the only ones that ever showed up to mourn your death."

"Asuka came to my funeral?"

"Yeah, she did. She cried for you, called you names, said for you to quit playing dead and climb outta your grave and come home. She was both positive and negative. Despite how she abused you, she displayed her feelings of you after you died; even apologized for all that she had done to you, promised that if you came back, she'd be nicer to you."

"What happened to her later?"

"She became another victim of the Evangelion. When another Angel showed up and almost destroyed everything, her Unit-02 went berserk and ate the Angel up. Later, it was discovered that her own Eva had eaten her up, or, as Ritsuko Akagi had said, broken her body down into tiny pieces and trapped her mind, her soul, into the Eva itself. There was an attempt to try and restore her to normal…but it failed. Asuka didn't want to come back unless you were around. She's been in Unit-02 ever since, unwilling to leave unless you show up and convince her you're back. I believe you may be able to save her from the personal Hell she's condemned herself to."

"What of Hikari?" Shinji noticed the sad look on his face. "Toji?"

"She's a hollowed-out shell of who she used to be," he answered him. "First, I was killed, then you; she couldn't take the senseless dying that had happened. She even snapped when NERV tried to recruit her as another pilot for the Evas, nearly took her own life to show the world how cruel it was being to children. In the end, she was put in an institution and is being monitored around the clock to make sure she doesn't hurt herself."

He couldn't believe the girl that liked his jock friend had tried to kill herself once when NERV tried to get her to pilot an Evangelion. It was sickening.

"What about Kensuke? Why didn't NERV try to recruit him?"

"They did…but he refused them, as well. After what happened to Hikari, he even refuses to speak to people. He doesn't even carry his camcorder like he used to. Nobody can seem to reach him, like he has a wall around him that's unbreakable."

"And Ayanami?"

"She coped with your death, but was just as devastated as the others were. Her way of coping was transferring to Misato's to keep her company after losing both you and Asuka. Your father wasn't happy about this, but she threatened to leave and live on the streets if her request wasn't met. She thinks about you, constantly; about who killed you and why, what your emotions were as you saw your killer, and where your soul wandered off to."

"So…almost everyone that mattered to me have been affected for worse. I feel like my skin's about to explode now."

"Oh? Oh, that's just your necroplasm reaching the ends of its larva stage. That was a benefit of the deal you made with the Devil. In a while, you'll become the host organism of a symbiotic-yet-parasitic suit of armor that'll be tied into your central nervous system. The transformation will be painful at first, but only at first."

"The afterlife's just full of surprises."

"Not all the time. Just to the lucky few."

"When I woke up that night…there was somebody else in that alley with me."

"Yeah, I saw him, too. He's one of the Devil's men on Earth, sent to corrupt the hearts of the already-corrupted in order to satisfy his own ends: To harvest more souls for the army of Hell. Whatever you do, stay away from him. He'll try to trick you into doing terrible things to innocent people so that you'll be driven to serve the Devil; it's one of his missions here. Think of him as your shoulder demon."

"Okay. Then…what does that make you? My shoulder angel?"

"Yeah, something like that. That…or some sort of guide or mentor."

"I think I saw Misato today when I went looking for my grave."

"She's the only woman around the city with purple hair."

"She put flowers on my grave."

"She misses you a lot."

The rest of the day became the rest of a night of quietness. The more Shinji lied around in Rei's old bed, the more he felt like going back to Misato's to see her, even if it was only for a short while, like to say goodbye or explain who killed him…or even that he might've had a shot of living again if he tried to break his deal with the Devil. He wanted to help people with this new life he had right now, deprived of the Evangelion. It was nothing but a curse that his parents made to inflict harm on others. If he could help people without the pain of the Evas, maybe…just maybe…he could carve for himself a better identity that would be independent of his former life.

A life without Eva, he thought, the pain in his partially-restored flesh subsiding, but not yet the time for his armor to show up yet. And not just me, but everyone else, as well. They all deserve a life without the Evas ruining things for them. That bastard that ended me… NERV's head honchos have gone too far with what they've done to the innocent people.

He got out of bed and stepped out the apartment, heading to the one place he dreaded now: NERV HQ.

-x-

The place hadn't changed much after the battle with the last encountered Angel that cost Asuka her physical existence. It was quiet, almost empty, and above all: It was still soulless. There wasn't a night shift guard, so Shinji had an easy time wandering around, though the hardest part was just getting to the facility: Shinji had been dead for five months, so his entry code had been removed from the computer system, forcing him to try a different method that he knew about only in the movies and comic books…phasing through walls like a ghost. He was like a zombie or phantom with the body of a young boy that had been dead for just five months, so he was still like a regular individual with flesh that was partially fresh to a degree. Reaching the Eva cages, he found Unit-00, with a new paint job: Purple…with red and bluish tints that could be seen if you looked carefully.

Ayanami…did you ask for this? Shinji wondered, looking into the large eye of the prototype Eva. Was it because of Unit-01's color…or Misato's hair…or to try and keep reminding yourself that I was once alive before my death?

He left the cage of the prototype Eva to find the one he was looking for, but the next cage held onto an Eva that he had grown to despise for an obvious reason: The cage of Evangelion Unit-01, the Test Type Eva that, if taken into his recent accounts, was a factor in his leaving. He frowned at it, balding his fists, recalling how it murdered his friend, how he couldn't save him from the Angel and it sickened him to be near this monstrosity.

Never again, he thought, taking deep breaths to calm himself down. Evangelions saving the world? They can't save anybody; all they do is cause death and destruction. What good are they really for?

To remedy his current predicament, he immediately left the cage to the next one, not wanting to see this purple Eva ever again, and found the one he was looking, which made his lifeless heart weigh heavily with sadness.

Asuka, he thought, gazing up at Unit-02, still the same as the day he first saw it. Asuka…I'm here to see you after being gone for so long.

The red Eva didn't do anything to indicate that Asuka was aware of his presence.

"Toji told me that you went to my funeral and everything; you wanted me to stop playing dead and come back, promising to treat me better. Asuka…I know you're still in there somewhere, lost and without a guide back to this plane. I promise you, I will help you get outta there." He told the red Eva.

A sound, like footsteps approaching, snapped him to the present and forced him to end his conversation with the girl trapped within the Eva. He ran off the bridge to hide somewhere, and found a nice, shaded spot by some doors that lead to the cage of Unit-02. He hid behind those and waited for whoever it was to arrive, just wanting the suspense to end. Whoever it was was really trying his patience.

"You're not going to believe what I think happened today, Asuka," he heard a female voice he hadn't heard in a while. "I think… I think I saw somebody that looked like Shinji; he was wearing the same clothes as he normally did, but had a bandana on his head. I didn't see his face because he was walking away, but something in my heart told me that it had to be him…or at least, just maybe, his ghost. You'd probably think I'm crazy saying all this, but I just wanted you to know that."

Shinji stuck his head out from behind the doors and saw Misato, standing in front of Unit-02. He had no idea that Misato was still here…or that she was talking to the red Eva, attempting to converse with Asuka, who was trapped inside it.

"I caught Rei in your room again, going through your clothes like the last time," he heard her continue. "I had to ask her why until she confessed to missing your presence around her, even when she admitted that she couldn't stand your personality half the time. So she was going through your clothes in an attempt to relive old memories that she clings onto. She even says that school isn't the same with you and Shinji gone (then, he saw her crying tears). God, I miss you two so much. I miss the sound of your voices, your complaints, your faces and your overall presence around the house."

Unsure of what his newest thought convinced him to do, Shinji decided to make himself known to her, even if it was going against whatever rules or regulations the world of the dead had. He stepped out from behind the doors and silently walked over.

"Misato?" He went, trying to get her attention. "I'm still here."

She looked over at the new face, and recognized the bandanna from earlier this morning. But what caught her gaze the most was the face; that very face that she had lost before Asuka was condemned to her suffering inside Unit-02. She wanted to believe that she was going crazy, that it was just her imagination, but she couldn't believe so; her last therapy session concluded that she was still sane, just going through the motions of loss. And this person couldn't have been an apparition; the body of the boy was too solid, too tangible and too much of everything else that made Shinji who he was before his death that was never solved.

"Shinji?" She asked him, to which he nodded positively. "Is it really you?"

"Yes…and no," he responded. "I am dead…but I'm right here with you now."

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"Not knowing who killed you…or helping you when you needed it the most."

That stirred up the memories what occurred during his murder, and he brought it up for her to hear.

"It was Section Two…on orders from my fat… From that man." He told her.

Misato couldn't believe it, but at the same time, found his words to be no figment of his imagination. She always knew that Gendo cared very little for his son's well-being; that was discovered to the extreme when she found out about the Dummy System that overrode the control he had over Unit-01 and destroyed the Angel-possessed Unit-03 at the cost of Toji's life, but she never expected that he would arrange a hit on him. Now, with all of her beliefs on him proven to be quite horrid, she couldn't stand that the Commander of NERV would commit such a crime of paternal filicide. It would've also explained why, when the last Angel showed up, and when Unit-01 refused to activate for both Rei or the Dummy System, every monitor within Central Dogma displayed Shinji's face that one time.

"We…we really need to talk some more," she told him.

"Yeah, we do," he responded.

-x-

Deciding to meet at Rei's old apartment wasn't their best suggestion, but because Shinji didn't want to risk Misato finding out so much of what he knew and get in trouble with NERV if they ever found out what she knew. Besides, Rei's old apartment had no surveillance whatsoever left there, so they could talk without their conversations being monitored…and because Shinji wanted to reintroduce her to Toji, who was in a similar state as his.

"So, you've been living here?" She asked him.

"Yes, but only for two days. When I came back, I awoke in an alley." He answered her. "How is Toji's sister, by the way?"

Misato looked down at her feet and uttered what was probably her worst memory of what happened, "She wanted to leave the city after she found out her brother was dead, no longer wanting to stay in a place where so many people had to die. Even though she hadn't recovered complete function of her legs yet, she was very against the doctors denying her her the right that she be allowed to leave. Her father tried to convince her to stay in the hospital, but she flat-out refused, using the reason of why she shouldn't stay, what would happen when she recovered enough to leave, and the fact that he was never home to begin with and never came to see her like her brother had. Her grandfather took her side and left with her to a different part of the country and is currently overlooking her recovery. He's not sure if she'll be on speaking terms with her father again…ever."

"I don't blame her for leaving. Tokyo-3, literally, is a place where so many have died, with many others taking their chances at living elsewhere. You never could answer my last question to you when I was alive: How many people do you have to kill to save humanity?"

"And my only answer to that is that nobody should die to begin with. And again, I apologize for putting all of NERV's so-called wishes of peace and happiness onto you."

Stepping into the small apartment, they saw that Toji was was standing right by the window, looking at the moonlight.

"I knew you'd be bringing back company, Shinji," he told them, turning to face them. "'The more, the merrier', as people used to say."

Misato couldn't believe it. Not only was Shinji one of the undead that walked the Earth, but Toji was one, as well. It made her wonder if there were any normal people left or if the dead were coming back to overthrow the living.

"The walking dead don't overthrow the living unless they have an agenda for wanting to do so, Ms. Katsuragi," Toji uttered, as if he could read her thoughts like an open book. "We don't have the agenda of wanting to take over; we just have the agenda of wanting to do whatever it is to regain what was lost because people like the head honchos at NERV like to mess with things that you often take for granted…like us."

When the three sat down and Misato was revealed certain things that they knew; details of Shinji's murder and his being sent to Hell as a consequence, his purgatory state, what he aimed to do now that he was back, and how Toji freed himself from the confines of his own deal and how he aimed to help Shinji break away from his contract with the Devil. Much of what she learned made her worry about Shinji's mental and emotional state, since being dead could've changed him for the worse than likely possibility that he would give in to his hatred over his father for the crimes he did to him. But then again, there were already a varying few that didn't like Gendo for obvious reasons, stating that he always had hidden agendas, wasn't known by people but known of by people, and that he only does what he does if the situations he ever finds himself in benefits him more than others. Long story short, Gendo Ikari was a world-class bastard that had no sense of morality…and even less of any bonds, if any at all, with people his son would die to protect.

"So, um…what are you going to do, Shinji?" She asked him.

"Whatever I can do to set things right," he said to her. "Set Asuka free from her Eva, find out why that bastard wanted me dead, and in the end, hopefully, put an end to NERV without the need for further bloodshed. I intend to do that…without the Eva."

I knew he was going to stick with his decision to avoid Eva, she thought.

-x-

Ritsuko found it difficult to try and perfect the Dummy System, despite it being her creation in the emergency that a pilot would have a crisis of conscious, as situations like that always did happen. And almost six months had past since Shinji's death, not that she paid any attention to that; it was a war and people die, left and right, up and down, without many others knowing why or how. However, what she did pay attention to was that Gendo often had secret meetings with a cloaked man that was interested in the Human Instrumentality Project…but not in the same way as the Human Instrumentality Committee lead by SEELE's leader. Whatever his reasons for being interested in it, she was bound to find out sooner or later…and she hoped it was sooner.

Everybody's so different now, she thought, switching from her frustration with the Dummy System to the relationships between everyone at NERV. Misato and Rei seem to be close, Asuka is still inside Unit-02 with no sign of leaving it at all, making the Eva useless, but at the same time the only complete Eva we have since it took the Angel's S² Engine to add with the soul and core. Some lower-ranking employees have resigned to deal with their personal griefs, my grandmother keeps calling to check up on me, and Kaji's been missing ever since the last Angel attack, possibly grieving, as well.

Although Ritsuko had also assumed that Kaji could've also been dead, killed because of his being a spy for the Japanese Ministry of the Interior and his whole obsession with the truth. She never discarded that possibility, but she also never thought of it as much. If she did, it would've just added another life lost to the war.

-x-

"…Shinji," went Misato, "why not come home and see Rei? Beyond that, how about you come back there and live with us?"

"I'm not sure about that, Misato," he told her. "Not seeing Rei, but living there again, I mean. I've been dead for a while, and won't people get a tad bit curious at why somebody who's been gone for months is suddenly back as though they were never gone to begin with or start thinking that it may be a clone or look alike of me?"

Misato sighed, never taking that into account, just wanting him to come back and see Rei; she thought that the girl would be happy to see him again.

"Still, it wouldn't hurt anyone to see Rei again," he told her. "Just don't let her see the bullet hole on my head, please."

To be continued…

A/N: This was created first, but not the first to be published. In time, however, the rest of the story will be made.