Creation began on 07-17-14

Creation ended on 07-18-14

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Final Struggle: Teaser

A/N: This is just a teaser trailer-like foretelling of what's to come.

The lands, the skies, space itself in a single universe became lifeless. All save for two people, a boy and a girl, left alone because of the actions made by those that sought ultimate power to end all things.

"How disgusting," the girl had said, and the boy, broken in excess, physically and psychologically, did the only thing that he could do: He strangled her whilst screaming insanity.

"Aaaaaaurgh! Gaaaaurgh! Urgh!" He yelled, strangling the girl until she was as lifeless as the world around them. "Aaaaaaaaurgh!"

The boy, abandoned by everyone, in that single moment, rose to untold power that drove him even further mad with the pain of loneliness. His consciousness saw things, other lifetimes that weren't his, but he desired them in excess, wanting desperately to forget everything he went through.

"Everyone died," he said, his voice becoming hollow as it became cold, even colder than his father had been, and he saw the dead girl in red change into a large, skeletal throne of sorts for him to sit upon. "Mother left me, Father left me. I couldn't save anyone. Everyone used me, betrayed me, betrayed my feelings, lied to me. I will make them pay, one way or another, no matter what it takes."

His throne of bones levitated from off the ground and he left the dead world that was once Earth, no longer interested in what happened to it in the future because nobody was coming back. He had a bigger interest in mind.

"Where are you? Mother, come out, come out, wherever you are. I have a bone to pick with you." He called out to the vast abyss that was space, looking for the one thing that led to his grief.

Beyond the sun, across the moons, beyond the planets he was once familiar, he saw the very thing he hated with every fiber of his being.

-x-

Evangelion Unit-01, the sole construct made from the flesh of Lilith, fossilized and still containing the soul, the scientific essence of Yui Ikari, floated about the abyss, standing as the eternal testament of mankind's existence, bore witness to the approaching being that was as enraged as it had once demonstrated in its past.

No, its resident soul gasped, seeing her son, consumed by grief, reshaped by despair, and driven by a different sort of revenge that was all but familiar to her.

"Mother!" Shinji yelled out, his appearance changed in every way imaginable.

He was about six-feet tall now, his black pants became blood-red while his white shirt became a tattered shawl for his bare arms and covered his black undershirt. His face had aged prematurely, with the left side of his hair turning gray; he had become stressed by all that he had gone through that turned every last inch of his life upside-down. But what really terrified Yui was his eyes, for they had become tired and made him look like he needed sleep more than anything.

"You drove me to this, Mother!" He yelled at her, looking past her fossilized prison that she purposely chose to remain in. "You drove me to this!"

The moment he made contact with the fossilized head of Unit-01, a large explosion occurred, covering the abyss in white. Then, as if someone had dropped something made of brittle glass, the sound of cracking or shattering came around. It was as though the entire abyss of space had become replaced by a vast, endless white space, and then the whole space began to show cracks allover the place.

And laying on the ground of this endless realm was Shinji Ikari and Yui Ikari, both a mere eight feet from each other. The boy, now sporting a bloody gash on his forehead that had blood seeping out to cover the right side of his face, struggled to get up. His mother, somehow restored to her mortal state, complete with the diving suit-like outfit she wore when she participated in the experiment that she made her son watch as a small child, struggled to do the same.

"Shinji…" She groaned, making it to her right side on her elbow, looking at him.

"It was never about a bright future for all of mankind," she heard him say, seeing his tears no different from the blood he was losing. "It was always about how you were going to be remembered. You, always you. Not me, not the people. You used me. You made me kill everyone, drove me mad, made me crazy. Nothing matters, anymore. Not you, not I, nothing."

"Shinji, please," she begged him, managing to get up onto her feet on the cracked floor. "I can still fix this. We can still fix this. We can make it all like it was before."

Getting back onto his feet, coughing out blood, the son she had abandoned looked at her and her frightened expression was all she needed to see in order to know what his choice was.

"You can't fix this," he told her. "Nobody can fix any of this. You…are going to die now. You…and all of your beliefs…your…selfish beliefs…are going to Hell where you belong."

What have I done? She thought, wanting to run, but there was nowhere to run.

"Grraaaaaurgh!" Shinji growled, approaching her, but then, as if struck by lightning, he fell in front of her. "Urgh!"

Blood ran out his head and mouth…and his eyes lost all their color.

"Shinji," Yui whimpered, slowly approaching him.

"This…will not end," she heard him say to her. "I…will not…stop. You…had best start running. You run…run…for as long as you can…because I will kill you. No matter what it takes."

Then, she saw him slowly rise back up, struggling just to breathe. His face forming a hysterical smile.

"You should be running," he told her, wanting to see her run for her life.

And Yui, realizing that Shinji, too consumed by all that had happened, was beyond her current reach, and ran before he gave chase. Her feet running over the fractured ground nearly made her lose her footing as she tried to run faster as she heard her son staggering to chase her and put an end to her life. She soon realized realized that, despite her efforts to do what she had done, she had destroyed her son's belief in there being any happiness to be obtained in life, the belief that Heaven exists after death and that all he had to do was live, and gave him grief, rage and the desire for closure, even if it cost him everything that he no longer had.

CRASH! The ground beneath her shattered and she fell into a deep darkness, followed by Shinji, who ignored this darkness in favor of revenge.

-x-

Sometime later, Yui awoke to find herself in a forest-like setting, filled with mist and lanterns hanging on several branches. She got up and started walking down the path in front of her, wondering how she got there.

"Where…am I?" She wondered.

"Welcome…to the Forest…of Conflict," said a woman's voice to her, and Yui turned to a large rock with a person sitting on it. "This…is where your final conflict with your son will begin."

The woman had shoulder-length, ebony hair with a gray streak on the upper left side, eyes that were a deep sea-blue, and was dressed in an outfit similar to that of a miko, but with darker colors, not red and white as the traditional ones were.

"This forest is like a maze…with many paths that can be taken," she told Yui, "with a different light at the end of each one taken. Each path…leads to something different from what one had…or didn't have. He will be around soon, so you should run. If he has become consumed by all that has happened to him, he won't stop until he has achieved some measure of peace. What may be your only hope of delaying the inevitable…is to run down as many paths as possible in order to avoid him. Live for as long as possible in as many different lifetimes as you can find yourself in…until you can't run from him, anymore."

"WHERE ARE YOU?!" They heard Shinji yell out.

"While you're still alive…and until you're able to face him," the woman told her.

Yui then ran down the path in front of her. She ran until she came across a fork in the road, with the path on her left leading up to God-knows-where and the one of the right leading down to the same unknown. With desperation in her heart, she chose the path on her right; she figured running down would give her more distance between them.

"Yui…Yui… Wake up!"

FLASH-GASP! Yui, who had somehow blacked out, awoke and found herself in the last place she expected herself to be.

I'm…I'm home? She realized, finding herself in her childhood home.

"Yui, breakfast is ready!" She heard her father's voice outside her room.

She got out of bed and went over to her desk and saw her reflection in the mirror; she resembled herself during her high school years. She then went over to her calender and checked the date: It was the day of her high school graduation ceremony! Somehow, she must've gone back in time and wind up in her younger self's body from before she met Gendo and had Shinji.

But as she went to her closet and changed out of her pajamas, she found something that didn't make any sense in the past she found herself reliving. On the closet door was a poster that had a geographic picture of Japan…with a sign that read, "Japan is Earth's Most Cleanest Nation in terms of Recycling!" That didn't make any sense, whatsoever. To her, in her past, Japan was not entirely a clean nation and wasn't as adjusted to recycling as the rest of the world was striving to be.

Something has happened, she realized.

-x-

At the same as Yui's realization of living in an entirely different life in Japan, Shinji, unable to recall what he was so angry about, awoke in a room that looked like it was part of a mansion, filled with many things that a fourteen-year-old boy would be interested in, from comics to movie stars. He looked toward a window and saw a large city that looked like it was made out of stone and wood instead of concrete and steel.

Where…am I? He wondered, slowly getting out of bed and walking over to a mirror on a dresser, seeing himself unlike what he had been before: He looked deprived of hatred, seeming pleased with his life right now and before.

A small picture caught his eye and he looked at it, seeing a group of people that were unlike any he had seen before. It was some sort of ceremony or event with him holding a large trophy, surrounded by few men and various women, and a large banner that read, "Fushigi-Tokyo's Greatest Family!" With a cloudy memory, the boy recalled things that he wasn't sure was true, but felt like they happened, that he had been a member of a large family and spent his whole life in a city made of stone and wood.

"Shinji, are you up yet?" He heard a little girl's voice outside his room, and he looked at the picture again, seeing a little girl hugging him as he held the trophy.

"Yes," he responded, setting the picture down. I was somewhere…doing something…but I can't remember what it was.

-x-

In the Forest of Conflict, the woman that Yui saw looked down the path that she and her son had taken, sighing.

"And so…it begins, the path to the final struggle between the ties that bind," she uttered.

A/N: Here it is. If anybody can tell, it pretty much starts where End of Evangelion left off, but it features the horror and agony that Shinji has succumbed to, and the hatred he has for Yui. But now both off them, or at least parts of their souls, have wind up in different places, different times, totally different dimensions. What do you think? What do you expect from this? What has already come of it?