My Special Keeper

by Traitor of All Traitors

A life that became fragile to the point of breaking…and a family that possessed different backgrounds and a bond of love that endured and transcended all boundaries. It's a ride for the whole family, past, present and future!

Creation began on 05-08-10

Creation ended on 06-01-13

Neon Genesis Evangelion

My Special Keeper

A/N: I'm not doing this one for profit, but just because the idea, like every other idea, seems good to use and wrong to ignore or pass up. I don't own the Evangelion franchise or the story by that successful woman that was made into a film…or the other franchises that inspired the other pieces to this story. I do own this story and its characters, though. Takes place predominantly in the manga universe with bits of the anime and film universes as minor add-ons.

"…We're sorry. The phone lines have been temporarily disconnected. Please, try your call again later." The electronic female voice said over the phone, and the young girl with a long, braided ponytail that was using it hung up.

"Shinji, the lines are down," she told the boy sitting on the steps next to the phone booth, breathing through a small, portable oxygen tank that was beside his left leg while he was listening to music on an iPod Touch on low volume.

He looked up to her and gave her the upside-down thumb, indicating disappointment. They could've just went back home, but Shinji felt the need to meet this man he didn't know, anymore, but knew of. His need was just to ask him what it was that he wanted of him after more than ten years since he'd last seen him, only to turn him down because of how he was treated the day he was left by him. Shinji, responding to a simple letter his father had sent him, telling him to come to Tokyo-3, simply wanted to know what this man wanted of him, just so that he could turn him down and then go back home and continue to move on with his life, no matter how little of it he had left.

The girl sat down next to him and looked at his letter again, not liking that his father, known of by her, as well, who had neither written to nor phoned his only son for many years, suddenly sends for him out of the black, blue and green, and doesn't know that Shinji wasn't even in any proper condition for anything other than trying to stay alive for as long as humanly possible, with the exception of mild traveling, exercising and occasional playtime.

"Maybe we should just go home now, Shinji," she tried to reason with him, but he nodded in the negative, just wanting to see what the man had wanted, and then go home after he turned him down. "You're impossible, Shinji… But, like always, I'll stick with you to the end."

Shinji then reached around his neck and pulled out a gold-chained necklace with a heart-shaped pendant of the same color from under his shirt and opened it up to reveal a picture of the two of them when they were younger: The girl was being hugged by Shinji from behind, but the odd part of the picture was that Shinji's hair looked like it was thinned out a little; the girl had shorter black hair and blue eyes that seemed like a counter to his brown eyes, like water and soil before they become mud when mixed together.

"You're welcome, Shinji," she had told him, and he put the locket down under his shirt. How did it come to this for him? Not me being here for him, but him being here because that man sent for him. Why does he want to see him after so long? Was he even concerned about him being unable to visit his own mother's grave three years ago?

Her thoughts were shattered when the sound of military jets flew over their heads, making her worry for Shinji, who held onto her for dear life with his scrawny arms. Then, she noticed a large creature that looked like a fish out of water, except that it also reminded her of that old movie about a monster from a lagoon…or one of her favorite characters known as the Swamp Thing: It was dark, slimy, had a bone-like mask on it, and a shiny orb of red in between what appeared to be bony ribs. It was scary for her, almost to the point where she wanted to wet herself. Almost.

Shinji took a deeper breath through his oxygen mask before grabbing the girl's arm and trying to get away, although his steps were slow.

The next thing that happened was a blue car showed up in front of them, driven by a purple-haired woman that had been in the picture that was sent with the letter Shinji's father sent.

Yeah, she fits the description, the girl thought, helping Shinji get in before she deposited herself in. "I suppose there's a reason for all of this?"

"Yeah," the purple-haired woman told her, but then realized that she was talking to a little girl, probably no older than ten; maybe even younger than that. "What are you doing here with him?"

"I'm Shinji's caretaker in the absence of our other relatives," she explained only that piece, not wanting to go into full details with the older woman unless it was absolutely necessary.

"His caretaker?" The purple head repeated.

"Yes. It's a long story."

As they drove away, the creature was being taken care of by the jets, but they were no match for it; it fired energy beams at them and watched them blow into smithereens.

"Just what is going on?" The little girl asked her. "What is that thing?"

"All we really know is…that thing's called an Angel," the older woman said.

"An Angel? That's not an angel; it's a monster. I've seen angels, and that doesn't come close to one."

Once they had gotten far enough from the Angel, they felt vibrations that indicated that something big had happened, and then felt the car turn over twice from a resulting shockwave.

"Ouch," the little girl groaned. "Are you okay, Shinji?"

She looked at the back seat and saw Shinji was dazed but still alive, as he gave her a thumb's up with his left hand.

"That's good to know," she smiled at him.

After confirming that the car could still function, they drove away from what had been discovered to be a blast zone of a former city. The girl was disgusted by the fact that the military had destroyed an entire city just to try and destroy one, large threat. While she was glad that she didn't live there with Shinji, she was disappointed that the people that used to live there now had no place to go back to. Not even leftover possessions to retrieve.

"So, um…he's Shinji Ikari?" The woman had asked her.

"Shinji Rokubungi, actually," she corrected her. "We had his last name changed four years ago. I'm Rumi Rokubungi, a close relative of his."

"Cousin?"

"That's what most people want to say or believe. Who are you?"

"Oh, I'm Misato. Misato Katsuragi."

"So, Ms. Katsuragi…"

"Oh, Misato is fine."

"Very well, then. Misato…just why did that man send for Shinji? He hasn't heard from him in over ten years or so."

"Maybe you should ask him that."

"We're going to see him, aren't we?"

"Don't you know him or what he does?"

"I've never met him, and the only pictures I've ever seen of him are all outdated and his expression was dirty. Not even our family likes to mention him much of the time after what he did to Shinji. And it's easy to develop a dislike of somebody when you know of them and not know them, personally. As for what he does… Probably pretends he's a lord of his own domain and that he can abuse whoever he wants to for his own amusement."

Misato didn't say anything else for the rest of the ride over to where they were heading, but was curious of why Shinji had an oxygen mask and portable tank with him the whole time. To her, he didn't look all that sick, and nothing in his profile (which was extremely limited in details, by the way) said anything about him needing to use an oxygen mask. Then, she remembered that she needed to give him the pamphlet that she had been instructed to give him that was in her glove compartment.

"Could you open my glove compartment and take out a pamphlet that's in there, please?" She asked Rumi. "And did Shinji receive an ID card in the letter he was sent?"

Rumi did as instructed and took out the pamphlet, seeing a logo that looked like some crazy, advertisement-based scheme made by some businessmen.

"Yeah, although I don't see why you people go through the trouble of doing so. It's not like he's staying long…and I don't intend to leave him alone with strangers here. NERV?" She asked her.

"That's right," she explained. "It's a top-secret, paramilitary organization under the direct control of the United Nations. I work there myself."

Rumi then said, "I'm sorry, but Shinji can't read this."

"Why not?"

"He's dyslexic. My mother tried to help him several times, but even that didn't do anything for him."

"I tried my hardest…but in the end, it never mattered," they heard Shinji speak up, sounding real sick.

-x-

"…But…we have no pilot," said an old man to a man in a black jumpsuit with orange-tinted glasses, concerned about the present situation regarding the Third Angel.

"Not to be concerned," the glasses-wearing man responded. "Another spare is being brought over. I'll leave all of this in your hands, Fuyutsuki."

After he left, the old man, Fuyutsuki, sighed as he said, "His first reunion with his son in ten years."

Then, he looked up at the large monitor displaying the injured Angel as it advanced toward the city; the N² land mine only doing slight damage to it. But what had him bothered was that there appeared to be something wrong with the way things were being played out. He couldn't tell why, but it seemed as though nothing would happen the way it was supposed to today.

-x-

Rumi, reading the pamphlet for Shinji, as well as navigating around the layout of NERV HQ for Misato, since she couldn't lead them to where they needed to be without getting lost, was finding it hard to understand why there appeared to such a need for secrecy with the way the pamphlet was made out. Some pages were marked with black ink, covering up whatever was originally there, while other pages were slightly edited, like there were things that Shinji wasn't supposed to find out about, almost similar to the way his letter was marked and edited.

No doubt that man is behind this, she thought, leading them to the elevator, which then opened up and revealed a woman with yellowish-blond hair (possibly dyed, many times over, to cover a different color of hair) and a mole near her left eye, wearing a white lab coat.

"Heh-heh, hey, Ritsuko," went Misato, sounding childish.

"Captain Katsuragi, why must you try my patience looking for you? You do realize that we're short on time and personnel?" The blond-haired woman asked her, as strict as a disciplinarian.

"Sorry, Rits, I still don't have the layout of the place memorized yet," Misato apologized to her.

Rumi didn't like her aura and backed away from the elevator to be close to Shinji.

Ritsuko then looked over at them and asked, "Is this the boy?"

"Uh, yeah," Misato answered. "According the Marduk Institute, he's the 'Third Child'. That's one of his relatives and present caretaker, Rumi."

Ritsuko looked down at the girl, who kept her distance with Shinji, and wondered why there was nothing in the boy's profile about a little girl being with him.

"I'm Ritsuko Akagi, technical supervisor and head of Project 'E'," she introduced herself to them.

"Rumi and Shinji Rokubungi, ma'am," Rumi introduced themselves to her.

"Shinji Rokubungi? Not Ikari?"

"His last name was changed around four years ago," Misato explained to her.

"Oh… Well, this way, please," she told them, leading into the elevator, mildly curious on how different the boy was right now if his name was changed.

They followed her, but Shinji and Rumi kept a set distance from her while the little girl had continued to look through the pamphlet for Shinji, and Shinji hearing whatever the older women were talking about, at the same time trying to avoid the urge to cough or throw up. They didn't understand much of their conversation, except hearings words like 'B-Type Equipment', 'Unit-01' and 'Oni'. Of those words, 'Oni' made perfect sense to them, since it was the designation and term used for a Japanese type of demon, but why they were using that word was beyond them. When the elevator stopped, they stepped out onto a narrow, bridge-like platform or walkway, enveloped in total darkness. Rumi kept Shinji away from the edges of it until a light was turned on, revealing a giant face…of an equally-giant robot.

"Whoa!" Rumi gasped, but stood her ground with Shinji, taking in details of the purple-colored giant.

"What…what is this thing?" Shinji asked, feeling the need to vomit.

"I didn't see this in the introduction," went Rumi, looking through the pamphlet again.

"You won't find anything about this in there," she heard Ritsuko say. "This is the last card that our species has to play: The synthetic life-form known as Evangelion…Unit-01. Built here in secret, and our last hope."

Removing the mask from his face, Shinji asked, "What…is this all about? Is this…that man's work?"

"Correct!" Rumi and he looked up toward a large, monitoring chamber of some sort where the guy they were supposed to meet was looking down upon them as though he were some sort of god. "It's been a while, and I see you brought a little girlfriend with you."

Then, Shinji, piled with his disgust at his father thinking that he and Rumi were an item, coughed up blood onto the floor before dropping to his knees, feeling his heart beat faster than it was supposed to. Rumi opened up her backpack and took out a bottle of water and a bottle of pills and helped Shinji deal with the pace of his heart.

"Are you happy now, whoever the heck you're supposed to be?" She asked him, seeing Gendo for the first time, and already disliking him even further. "Just what it is that you want?"

"We're moving out," he uttered, as if ignoring her question.

"What?! But Unit-00 is still out of action," said Misato, but then she looked at the purple monstrosity in front of them. "Wait, you intend to use Unit-01?"

"There's no choice," said Ritsuko to her.

"But Rei can't do it," she tried to reason. "We don't have a pilot."

"We've just received one," Ritsuko told her in a cold tone.

Looking at Shinji and Rumi, she uttered, "Are you for real?"

Rumi then came to the conclusion of why Gendo had sent for Shinji to be brought here to Tokyo-3, and was immediately repulsed by it.

"No," she uttered out.

"Shinji…" Ritsuko started again.

"No!" Rumi yelled out. "He can't!"

"It took Rei seven months to pilot the Eva. A boy without any training has no chance against the Angel; he just got here." Misato tried to reason again.

"He just needs to sit in the seat," Ritsuko told her, as Rumi helped Shinji calm his breathing. "We don't expect anything more than that. Our top priority is to halt and repel the Angel. It is imperative that we have somebody, anybody, really, that can synchronize to some extent with the Eva. Or do you have any alternatives, Captain Katsuragi?"

Putting the oxygen mask back on, Shinji, breathing the life-saving air once more, looked at the man that was nothing more than a stranger to him and asked, "What do you want from me?"

"You know why you're here." Gendo told him.

"No, I don't. I don't know why I'm here. You sent for me, the least you can do is tell me why, after too many years, of the reason you wanted me back."

"To pilot that thing, Shinji," Rumi told him, pointing to the purple Eva. "To fight that thing we saw outside, which you cannot be allowed to do."

"And why can't he?" Misato asked her.

"Look at him, he's in no condition to do anything other than try to continue living until his judgment day," she told her, still beating around the bush instead of simply telling them why he couldn't pilot that thing that they wanted him to pilot. "And I, for one, won't let him be used by people like he were some sort of common tool."

"Because you're his caretaker in the absence of his other relatives?"

"More than that."

And just then, Shinji grabbed his hair…and pulled it right off, revealing a bald head where natural hair used to sprout from. He'd been wearing a wig of artificial hair the whole time. In addition, some of his nerves and veins could be seen if you perceived them carefully, making the skin on the back of his head seem almost see-through.

"I can't pilot that thing," Shinji told them. "I won't pilot it, and I got less than a year to go through before my last day."

"Your last day?" Ritsuko questioned. "What are you…"

"He has APL: Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia," Rumi revealed, wishing it hadn't come to this. "A blood and bone marrow cancer…and it's killing him. I'm one of his guardians, so it's my job to make sure he doesn't do anything that could kill him, and that includes operating heavy machinery."

"There was nothing in his profile that said he had cancer," Ritsuko gasped.

"He was diagnosed with it when he was around four years old; the same age that man took the road of cowardice and left him with our other folks after his mother died, and with no contact from him until a few days ago."

Everyone looked at Gendo, who said nothing. But Fuyutsuki was now curious. Disgusted to the extreme, but curious, all the same. The only child of his prized student was dying and nobody of NERV knew of this? This was like an outrage of unprecedented levels. And one of his new thoughts were, Did Gendo know of this?

"I apologize for having wasted your time, but a dying teen isn't of any use to anybody except being a waste of space to a bunch of government hoods," Shinji told them, putting his wig back on, and looked back up at his father. "You have no idea of many times I had to hear doctors say that you could've probably helped me a long time ago, but you were too busy with your own interests to even care about me and my needs. Well, I got news for you: You're not welcome in what's left of my life…and I hate you. Good riddance to you, old man."

Rumi helped him turn and walk away, but stopped when Gendo asked, "Who is that girl to you?"

Rumi turned to face him said, "You'd only disbelieve it if we told you, but I have my share of parental rights on him; I just don't take them too seriously, like scolding him or not praising him when he needs encouragement from those that care about his mental health just as much as his physical health."

"Parental rights?" Ritsuko asked. "You? But you're just a kid. Probably five years old."

"Actually, I turn six in a few days, but that's beside the point."

"Please…tell us who you are to him," Ritsuko asked, being nicer to the girl.

"I'm Rumi Rokubungi, I'm one of Shinji's aunts, as well as his life savior in terms of his leukemia. I guess you scientists would prefer to me as a…designer baby or donor child, since I was engineered, made in a petri dish to help keep my nephew alive for as long as possible." She revealed to them.

"Whoa," went Misato, wanting to disbelieve this herself, but hearing from the girl's mouth made it too real to be some sort of lie. Wait a minute; I think I see the resemblance between the two. Yeah. You could almost mistake them for siblings if it weren't for the fact that this girl's his aunt.

"So, you're a donor for him?" Ritsuko said to Rumi.

"In everything except actual organs that can't be replaced so easily," said Shinji. "Our relatives and I had agreed on that over two years ago, when my kidneys had almost quit on me and I required a bone marrow transplant."

"What my nephew just said. And why did you need Shinji here in the first place? Why don't you have people that can actually deal with a situation that doesn't require using children as soldiers?"

"Because there's no one else that can do it," they heard Gendo say.

"You're a real piece of work, Gendo," Rumi stated, unafraid of the older man. "Shinji and I are leaving now. I'm not losing him to you or anybody else around here. Let's go, Shinji."

They turned to leave, but then the room began to rattle, causing them to fall onto the floor, and made Shinji vomit out blood again; so much of it than the last time, along with the pills he had taken prior.

Rumi handed him the water again, along with the pills, reminding herself that he needed to go back to the hospital when they got home. She knew him coming here was a big mistake; Gendo had made his condition worse by trying to get him to fight a creature that would've killed him before he had the chance to even try and put up a fight. Plus, her nephew was without any skill of self-defense; he couldn't fight at all, even to save himself in a conflict. So there was no way he could save others.

"…Wake Rei," she heard Gendo say to someone.

"Can we use her?" Another man asked.

"She's not dead yet. Bring her here." He told him.

Rumi looked to the opposite side of the walkway and saw a gurney being wheeled over, carrying a young woman, about her nephew's age, with sky-blue hair, wrapped from head to toe in thick bandages and was wearing a strange outfit that reminded the young girl of those old diving suits that people wore when swimming in the ocean, only it seemed modified for a different cause; her face was as white as a sheet and her eye that wasn't covered by bandages was as red as blood.

Bless the kami, this man is psychotic, she thought.

"Rei," went Gendo again, "our spare is useless. You must pilot the Eva again."

"Yes, sir," the girl, Rei, responded in a calm-but-weak tone.

Spare? Useless? Rumi heard his words echoing through her head. He really is a piece of work. Bad work. There's no way in Heaven that Shinji can be related to this madman.

She watched as Rei tried to get up off the gurney, but she gasped in pain from the effort of doing so, and fell to the floor. She couldn't even stand, let alone fight. What the heck was Gendo thinking? Rumi looked at the girl continuing her struggle to get up and then back to her nephew, who was breathing through his oxygen mask again, probably thinking the same thing she was, and then saw Rei fall down again, unable to even shed a tear.

These people are insane, thought Rumi again, feeling the need to call names out to people. To use children as soldiers is bad enough, but to use injured ones is going too far.

"They're crazy," Shinji uttered; a part of him viewing this as Gendo's way of trying to guilt-trip him, "and we're dead."

Gendo, for the first time in his short career, was losing control. Nothing was going as planned at all. Rei couldn't pilot on account of her injuries and the Third Child couldn't on account of is own illness…and his somewhat-overbearing aunt of less than a decade old. He couldn't achieve his goal unless he could prove the Evas could work against the Angels, but there were no other pilots available, as the Second Child was still in Germany. Looking down at the girl, a new idea came to mind: Maybe she could do it. Maybe she pilot the Eva.

"Little girl," he said to her. "Could you pilot the Eva?"

Shinji looked up at him and saw where this was going: If this man couldn't get him to do it, he would try to get Rumi to throw her life away in his place, as if furthering or extending the guilt-trip.

"If I get rid of that thing out there, will you leave my nephew alone?" Rumi asked, hoping to work out some sort of a deal with this jerk, and Gendo nodded in the positive.

Sighing, Rumi complied that she would, anything to protect her nephew, and it was just one monster. Fighting off one was something she was willing to do. She had no intention of staying longer than she had to with Shinji.

"Rumi, what if you don't come back?" Shinji asked, trying to keep her from throwing her life away just to save his own that dwindled away with each passing day.

"Oh, I'm coming back," she told him, and then took off something from around her neck: A pair of dog tags that had been given to her by her mother when she was four; they were something she had requested after watching a military film, except hers were custom-made. "If I don't, burn these for me."

He nodded that he would, but was hoping he wouldn't have to as she was led away.

"One more thing," she stopped and looked up at Gendo, "if anything happens to him, you're gonna regret ever seeing me."

-x-

Rumi wasn't a big fan of enclosed areas, and that was what the Entry Plug felt like to her: An enclosed area in cylindrical shape. After being given a short course of how to operate the Eva, she was set into the plug, which was then set into Unit-01. Hearing a series of short clicks that indicated to her that whatever kept the plug in place was locked tight, she heard someone say, "Preparing to flood the Entry Plug with LCL."

"Huh?" She gasped, seeing some reddish-orange liquid rising from the bottom of the plug up to her pants and dress, all the way up to her head. "Aaaaurgh!"

"Don't worry, Rumi," she heard Dr. Akagi say to her over the intercom, "once your lungs have been saturated with LCL, your blood will be oxygenated directly. You'll get used to it."

Losing her breath, she gasped as the LCL got into her mouth, leaving a bad taste on her tongue, along with a terrible stench in her nose. It reminded her of an old horror film she saw with Shinji by accident, but she couldn't place the reason why it tasted like something she had seen before.

This must be similar to what Shinji goes through whenever he vomits blood out, she thought, unable to see clearly because of the liquid.

Soon enough, her vision cleared, as well as the liquid, almost as though there was no liquid to begin with, and she was content with that. Meanwhile, up on the bridge, everyone was hard at work getting the Test Type Evangelion to work with the little girl, and Ritsuko was one of the impressed few, for Rumi's synchronization ratio with the Eva was at an amazingly acceptable level: About seventy-two point five percent. It was very amazing for the girl's first try, and she wasn't even a pilot candidate or wearing a plugsuit.

"Let's do this," Ritsuko told Misato.

Back in the Eva, Rumi was hoping that nobody, not even Gendo himself, above all others, was trying anything wrong in every sense of the word on her nephew, having a subtle belief that NERV might've tried to restrain him the moment they were separated. She felt the Eva being moved somewhere for a minute until it stopped, and then she heard Misato's voice on the intercom.

"This'll be a bumpy ride, Ms. Rokubungi," she told her, "are you ready?"

"Yeah, just do it," she responded back, and then felt herself being slammed into the seat of the plug by the force of the gravity. "Aaaaaahh!"

The Eva was going up like a rocket, straight to its chosen destination, and when it stopped, Rumi came face-to-face with the Angel. It was even uglier up close than it was from a distance, and it looked as though it had grown a second face for some reason, which was slightly smaller than its original that had been pushed to its upper right. When the last of the safety locks holding Unit-01 were released, it stood on its own power, leaving it free to deal with the threat.

"Rumi, just try to concentrate on walking for now," Rumi heard Ritsuko's voice through the intercom.

"And, just exactly, how do I do that?" She asked her, noticing only two handles that didn't look like they were for forward mobility, or any other form of mobility, whatsoever, at all.

"Just think on the concept of walking," the blond had explained.

Okay…walk…walk… She focused on making the Eva lift its right leg and position it forward, which it did, and was carefully set down so that it didn't break anything. Walking…walking…

It carefully moved forward, toward the Angel…until lost its footing and fell down.

-x-

Watching in relative safety in what Misato had referred to as Central Dogma, Shinji held onto his aunt's dog tags as he watched the big screens displaying the fight, or what came close to a fight, between the Angel and Unit-01. He was hoping to every god there was ever a religion for that Rumi would survive, even if it meant just sacrificing every dark soul in the city.

Please, he thought, don't die, Rumi. You're not supposed to before I do. You have more to live for.

Unit-01 got back up and just in time to block the Angel's right arm from grabbing onto its head. The Angel tried with its left arm to grab the Eva's right arm and managed to grab it by the wrist, after which its muscles just puffed up, like somebody had blown them up with an oversized straw. Shinji worried for his aunt, fearing that the Angel would kill her, something he didn't wish on any good person.

"Rumi, you have to calm down," he heard Misato say through the intercom to his aunt. "That's not your arm the Angel's grabbing."

What?! He thought, wanting to believe what he had just heard from the purple-haired woman was just as crazy as it was confusing. Is my aunt attached to that thing, somehow?!

Inside Unit-01, Rumi felt like somebody was treating her arm roughly and was on the verge of being snapped in half…until she willed the Eva to kick the Angel away, freeing herself from near harm. Now disbelieving that the city itself was empty with the exception of NERV employees and her nephew, she decided to get the Angel away from the city. Immediately rushing over to where it had fallen, she thought of picking it up and tossing it away, which the Eva did before it could react, which put a little strain on the girl's forehead.

I gotta end this for the sake of the innocent people that may be here, she thought quickly to herself, feeling a weight on her heart. For them, for Shinji…and for the rest of the family.

As the Angel fell on the ground outside of the city, the Eva approached it and picked it up again, tossing it further away from the city grounds.

Back in Central Dogma, Ritsuko was amazed at how well the girl was performing against the Angel, relying on basic strategy tactics to contend with the enemy's power. She didn't even so much as flinch when she saw the Angel fire its energy beams at the Eva, which simply blocked with its arms and then grabbed the beast's own arms and crushed their nerves and muscles, possibly as payback for what it tried to do to the Eva's arm, before kicking it even further away from the city.

"The Angel is now outside Tokyo-3 city grounds," a female technician said. "About forty-five feet away from the city limits."

"Incredible," went Misato, impressed by the girl's skills.

That's my protective aunt for you, thought Shinji, and then he looked up at Gendo, who looked displeased with the display on the monitors.

Fuyutsuki noticed his turned face and watched him turn back to facing the monitors, said to Gendo, "The girl is quite skilled, don't you think?" But Gendo didn't say anything in response to his former teacher's question.

Back on the surface, Rumi was unable to advance further toward the Angel because of the cable that was attached to the back of the Evangelion.

Lousy power needs, thought Rumi, and decided to risk the lack of energy required by the Eva and detached the cable off, setting down on the ground.

"Rumi, what are you doing?" Misato asked her.

"Removing limiter distractions," she answered back, and willed the Eva to charge toward the Angel, which slowly got up and was braced for impact.

CLASH! The Angel had been slammed back onto the ground and saw the Eva atop itself, raising its fists to put an end to it.

For my nephew…for the innocent…and for me… She thought, and brought them down onto the red sphere, cracking it.

Then, before the Angel could even react faster than the Eva, said Eva gripped the sphere and ripped it clean from the enemy, and it squirmed like an actual fish, flaying its crushed arms about itself before dropping them back to the ground. Looking at the sphere in her possession, Rumi noticed its glowing redness starting to fade away, turning from its former color to a brownish-red, like it was a light bulb that had blown out from overuse or something. Since it was now useless and because she was outside the city limits, she tossed it aside and got up, unconcerned with the possibility that the enemy wasn't dead, and returned to the city to pick up the cable it had discarded with what little time it had left, which revealed itself to be twenty-five seconds. Reattaching the cable to the Eva's back again, Rumi asked, "How well did I perform, Shinji?"

In Central Dogma, Shinji uttered, "You executed your task beautifully, Auntie."

Everyone else, however, was partially less than pleased and were partially unsure of what to make of this victory. It seemed like Angel was dead, as no life signs were coming from it any longer, but it seemed too easy, like an old video game that had a difficulty level setting set on its easy one, allowing for fast wins. Or maybe it had something to do with the girl's synchronization ratio being so high on her first sortie against an enemy she knew nothing of; that was also a possibility. But whatever the reason, the Angel was dead, the city was safe, and that was that.

-x-

Because it was too dark to go out anywhere, Shinji and Rumi had to stay the night at NERV HQ before they could go anywhere safely. As much as they were against this, they had to comply…but only this once because they had no choice. They were given a room that looked like it had the convenience of being soothing, but they knew better than to trust in appearances: It was quite soulless.

When daylight approaches, we're gone, outta here, Rumi thought, not wanting to stay any longer than this because of simple travel limitations.

I'll be glad to be away from this place, thought Shinji, as he slept as peacefully as he possibly could, and back to the peace and quietness of home.

As they slept, Gendo was at a meeting to deal with the battle involving the Angel. The Committee, having watched the battle on reruns, seeing the calmness of a great storm, were less than angry with him, but more than curious as to how something like this could actually happen, considering what had occurred earlier.

"We're not entirely impressed by this, Ikari," Kiel Lorenz, the leader, told him. "The pilot behind Unit-01 acted like they were a risk taker instead of a follower of orders. Even if Unit-01 didn't suffer any extensive or moderate damage."

"And we're to understand that it wasn't even your son that piloted it…nor the First Child," said a man bathed in yellow light, talking with a French accent. "Who was it that was piloting the Eva? The Second Child's still in Germany and we've been informed that the First Child was injured."

"It was the boy's aunt," Gendo simply answered, unwilling to refer to Shinji as his son or even utter his name. "A little girl, nearly six years old, and just so happens to be a designer baby, piloted the Eva and defeated the Angel in such a short amount of time."

"You made a toddler out of diapers pilot the Eva?" A man bathed in blue light asked, speaking with a Russian accent. "Why wasn't the Third Child able to pilot? He was there when the Angel arrived, wasn't he? Why didn't he do it, as you yourself should have instructed him to?"

As much as Gendo didn't want to say it, it was his only excuse.

"He was in poor health, his body wracked by his leukemia, making him incapable of piloting the Eva." He told them, without the addition of informing them of the boy's lack of pilot training.

"The Third Child couldn't pilot on account of being sick with some cancer?" Kiel questioned. "And why were we not informed of this earlier on?"

As the meeting went on, on the surface, right where the Angel had been left by Rumi, NERV was hard at work on disposing the body, while, at the same time, collecting samples from it, along with its damaged core, all being supervised by Ritsuko, who was still curious as to how a simple girl of half a decade of age could defeat such a monstrosity. Misato, on the other hand, was just glad that the Angel was dealt with, with very little to no damage done to the city itself.

"A miracle, perhaps?" She had once suggested to Ritsuko.

"Most unlikely. Besides, only thirteen-fifteen-year-olds should be capable of piloting, and we have no background details on this girl, aside from what she had revealed of herself."

"Well, it was either that or the end of the world. While I'm curious, as well, I won't poke my nose where it doesn't belong. Rumi only piloted to keep Shinji from doing so. Poor guy. Of every sickness in history, leukemia is one of the worst ones to have ever existed."

While the cleanup was going well, Gendo was also pressured by the Committee about the other projects that NERV was put in charge of.

"…It's not just the matter of the Evas," Kiel said to him. "What about the Human Instrumentality Project? To us, this is the only real hope we have in these desperate times."

Gendo stated that the project would proceed as scheduled, that nothing would interfere with its progress, and in the end, all would be well. Kiel, however, expressed some doubt, but would consider the budget requests needed for maintaining the Evas. When the meeting ended, Gendo was furious; the anger was directed more at the little girl than the old men. She had only agreed to deal with only that Angel if he left her nephew alone, unwilling to fight other Angels when, and if, they came.

-x-

"How are you feeling, Shinji?" Rumi asked, waking up and seeing his pale face.

"Like I have cancer," he stated simply.

"Heh-heh," she laughed, knowing it was meant as a joke, and then got out of bed. "Come on, nephew. I wanna go back home now. Back to where we both belong and where we're both loved."

"Mm-hmm," he agreed.

Getting ready (and by 'ready', Shinji wore what he had on the previous day while Rumi had to dress up in a fresher pair of clothes because the LCL-stained ones still reeked of the stench of blood and brush her messy hair, which she had unbraided and wore down), they stepped out of the room and walked down the hall. Just like the room, the entire complex felt soulless, not the kind of place that anyone would or should want to work in, and the stale scent of sterility made it all the more heartless.

"Rumi, do you…think that thing they call 'Evangelion' is…good or bad?" Shinji asked her, wanting her opinion on the purple, horned behemoth.

"Bad," she answered him. "Bad, immoral, dangerous and wrong. It's wrong in every sense of the word. To use children as soldiers to operate it, it goes against moral codes of ethics, misuses and abuses the authority that one has power over. And that jerk was gonna make you pilot it before he even found out about your illness. Although whether or not he knew about it, I don't like him now or tolerate the way he was going to treat you. I'm glad you stopped seeking his praise years ago before I was even around."

"I owe your mother for helping me overcome that problem," he told her as they made it to an elevator. "I'm glad I don't know him; we could never understand each other because he doesn't wanna be understood, so he'll live a life of misery, breathing a beautiful air that is poison to the heart."

When the elevator opened up, they stepped back at the sight of Ritsuko and Misato, whom were surprised to see them up and about.

"And good day to you, ladies," Rumi greeted them, standing her ground.

"What are you two doing up?" Ritsuko asked them.

"Leaving, that's what," Shinji answered her. "Kindly show us the way out or stand aside, please."

Since the women were coming to see them, anyway, they stepped back and let the pair into the elevator, going back up.

"So…how are you two feeling?" Misato asked them.

"Like I'm in a cage," said Shinji.

"Like I'm in a dark kingdom," Rumi added.

"And I take it that you can't be convinced to stay a while longer?" Ritsuko asked them.

"Nope," they answered back.

"We really have to get back home now," Shinji told her.

"My mother gets upset when we don't call her to let her know that we're fine…or as close to fine as we can possibly be." Rumi explained, holding up a cell phone she had. "I can't get any reception in this place at all. Are your cell towers out of order, 'cause I don't recall hitting any last night."

The elevator stopped and the doors opened, revealing Gendo in front of them. But Rumi and Shinji didn't so much as flinch at his presence, already used to his gray aura. The guy was just as soulless as the rest of the facility, his heart a black hole that sucks the very innocence out of people if they're near him for an extended period of time.

Rumi, out of mock respect (since she didn't have any for people like him), performed a curtsy before leading Shinji, who spoke not a word to him, out of the elevator and into the hallway. What she either didn't know or care about was that he turned around to glare at her behind his orange shades. Ritsuko had never seen him have a lack of control over his temper before, and believed that it wouldn't be the last time she'd see it. Misato, on the other hand, was mildly surprised to have seen Gendo glare at Little Rumi, like he'd sworn a vendetta against her, and he didn't even know her apart from what she had revealed of herself as being a genetic savior of sorts for Shinji, as well as having a measure of parental rights on him.

-x-

"They can't be convinced to stay at all?" Ritsuko asked one of the three MAGI technicians, Makoto Hyuga, as they were conversing in Central Dogma. "Are you sure of this?"

"Yeah," he answered. "Not that I can blame them. I mean, the boy is sick and dying slowly, and not knowing much about who his father is appears to be normal for him, as well as living away from him with his other relatives at home."

"And being near him…is abnormal?"

"Yeah. We heard what was said yesterday, and that he wasn't informed until he showed up, and the girl was against her nephew getting into the Eva and facing a creature he might've been unable to walk away from. He looked like he needed to see the doctor every month. Oh, and Ibuki finished looking at the synch-ratio of the girl; it went up a whole seven more points after she kept sending the Angel away from the city and ripped its core out."

Ritsuko was now amazed at this. Not only was Rumi capable of synchronizing with an Eva, but had been able to raise her score by a few points when she fought the Angel. She felt the need to find out more about her to see what she was all about: Who her parents are, what her hobbies are, what school she goes to (if she even goes to school yet), and who her other relatives are. There might've been a way to persuade her to pilot the Eva again if their original choice of a backup/primary pilot for Unit-01 was unusable, but another side of her was less than convinced if the girl had already disapproved of children being used as soldiers in a war they had no right to be involved in. But still…there had to be at least some way of persuading her to side with NERV for the betterment of mankind. Even a small one.

-x-

The city seems so empty, thought Rumi, as she and Shinji walked down the street toward the train station that would allow them to go halfway back home. It's…cold, miserable… Oh, what is that word I'm looking for? Hallow? Isolated? Oh, now I remember… It's soulless. It, like NERV, lacks that warmth that you get from people that show you kindness, love and trust. It lacks that very thing that makes us all actual human beings.

"…Rumi," went Shinji to her, having stopped walking four seconds ago because he heard something. "Do you hear that?"

She stopped and turned around, hearing the sound of an engine running, which made her fear for her nephew's safety. It could've been Gendo, wanting to get back at her for her curtsy and how she shows her concern for Shinji, but when she saw a blue car come out from behind a corner street, her fears eroded halfway, making her exhale some relief.

"Isn't that Ms. Katsuragi's car?" Shinji asked.

"Yeah, it's the only blue one we know of that ever got damaged when we met her yesterday," Rumi answered him, and said car stopped in front of them.

"Hey, you two," Misato greeted them.

"Ma'am," Rumi replied. "I thought you were working. You're supposed to be some captain at that place, aren't you?"

"I am still working, but I just needed to ask you something," she told them. "Do you…need a ride to the train station?"

The kids looked at each other and then back at her, asking her, "Are you for real?"

"Yeah," she told them.

"Nobody put you up to this?" Shinji asked her. "Not Gendo, of all bad guys?"

"No one," she answered him.

They looked at each other again and decided to accept her offer of being driven to the station, which was another ten blocks away.

As they drove down the street now, Rumi had to ask the purple head, out of simple curiosity, why she was helping them.

"You were the last person I had expected to see before we left," she went. "What's the deal?"

"I figured that if I were to get in your good graces, you wouldn't hate me for what Shinji almost had to do for everyone yesterday before we found out how ill he was," Misato revealed to her the reason for doing this for them.

She sighed and explained, "You are in my good graces, Ms. Misato Katsuragi, and I don't actually hate you; I just hate those that would actually use children as soldiers. It's unethical and immoral, though I'm only a partial exception, doing what I did to protect Shinji. Whose idea was it to build monstrosities that required kids to operate them in the first place, and why the secrecy? I mean, if the government knew that a threat of unknown origins was coming, you would've had an ample amount of time to better prepare and find alternative methods instead of relying on something that barely works for more than a few minutes and has the risk of causing a mental strain. I nearly had a bad migraine while in the Eva when that thing grabbed my arm. And why call that thing an Angel? It's not exactly a good designation for something that is more like a demon than a creature of purity and celestial justice. And more importantly, why put a man like Gendo in charge? Surely, there were better people that were more than capable than he probably claims to be, and don't run the gauntlet of having a hidden agenda where the only person that benefits out of something so wrong is the person that wants something to go their way. He can't be trusted with anything he gets his stained hands on, regardless of whether it's to save a city, a country or a whole species. There's a dark pair of designations for people like him; they're called cruel puppet masters and individuals with a god complex with a need to question or go against the law of the Grand Creator himself."

For the first time in a long time, Misato had to agree with Rumi about everything that she had said: Why were these creatures called Angels, who built the Evas the way they were when she saw them, why were only those capable of piloting them born after the Second Impact and there being a need for the secrecy so that the general public didn't know much of anything? And on a personal level, just why were the Angels here? What do they want? What do they really want?

When they arrived at the station, Rumi and Shinji thanked her for the ride, though they'd have to wait for about eight minutes for the train outbound of the city to arrive. So, to pass time, they struck up more on their conversation.

"So…uh, what you said back there…about you being a designer baby… That was all true?" Misato asked Rumi.

"It's all true," she answered back. "Some people can question that as playing God, but for me, it's not an attempt to play God…but an attempt to try and help someone you love as much as possible, even if it means you have to go to some extremes to do so. At least…that's what my mom tells me whenever I need to know something I have a right to know about. And, honestly, I never question what we had to go through…because in the end, I know that there'll be a sign of happiness for those that deserve what they earn and so on."

Shinji then took out his locket again to show Misato the picture of them.

"My grandmother got me this before Rumi was born, but held onto it until she was three," he explained. "She wouldn't give it to me until after we had our picture taken, despite my not wanting to get my picture taken with my head only having a few strands of hair left on it. I only agreed to it when she told me that it would only be for just the both of us. If I had to draw my family tree, it'd have to be comprised of the people I know: My grandmother, cousins, aunts and uncles; people I love…people I trust with my very life. I never knew who my mother was and neither could the others tell me, not even that man, who wanted nothing to do with me when he ditched, dumped and discarded me to the winds and rains of despair. But I owe my happiness to the Rokubungi family…because it was through them that I was saved from my own misery. If I wasn't sick, I'd help them run the family business."

"Oh? What kinda business do they run?" Misato asked.

"Are you familiar with the martial arts?" Rumi asked her. "We teach any that are willing to learn the methods they can use to defend themselves from certain danger, and depending on the way a person fights, we'd often teach them how to use a traditional weapon if we felt it was necessary."

"Like swords and daggers?"

"Exactly," Shinji told her. "You should see my Uncle Bumi; the guy's a pro with his bo staff, or my Aunt Miaka with her sai daggers. Even Rumi here is an expert with her choice of a weapon, though her mother was against it, originally."

"You mean, Rumi uses traditional weapons, as well?"

"Yes, I do," Rumi told her. "I use a pair of hook swords that were made to suit my height. If I had them with me, I'd show you how skilled I am with them. My mom tells me that I'm almost as skilled as her; I just need five more years' worth of practice until I can be declared a master martial artist."

"There's an old saying that we saw off a movie that really is true; that you can never be too rich, too thin or too well-armed. Don't you know that, Misato?"

"No, Shinji, I do not." Misato had spoken, and then they heard the sound of the train approaching. "Wow, time flies."

"Not all the time," Shinji retorted kindly. "I guess this is good-bye, then. Thank you again for the ride."

"You're welcome."

"Well, until we meet again, Ms. Katsuragi," Rumi stated. "Sayōnara."

"Yeah…sayōnara."

The train arrived and they got on, and then left out of Tokyo-3. Misato felt a little disappointed; she had only met them yesterday, and she just knew a little bit of them from them today. At least she was happy that they gave her their home address if she ever felt the need to come see them.

I should probably investigate why the Evas were made the way they were that requires children born after Second Impact to operate them, she thought, returning to her car.

Meanwhile, on the train, Rumi had found an empty compartment for Shinji and her to relax in, setting their bags down and sitting in the seats on both sides of the compartment.

"Glad to be outta that city?" Shinji asked her.

"Glad to be away from NERV," she responded. "Glad to be away from that man?"

"Glad to be away from that man," he responded, chuckling. "Hey, Rumi?"

"Hmm?"

"Thank you for saving me last night."

"Don't mention it. I'd do just about anything for you. Anything."

The ride was soothing for the duration of the rest of the trip, putting behind them the dark parts of their experience…while leaving the questions they had on the other things related to it up to discussion; like the condition of that mysterious girl that Gendo almost had pilot the Eva, or what Gendo was doing right this moment now that they were gone.

-x-

"…How was Rei today?" Ritsuko asked Gendo, finding him staring at the immobile presence of Unit-00, kept from causing a further calamity by means of a crucifix-shaped device sticking out of its spine. "Did you see her at the hospital?"

Gendo then responded, "She'll be able to work again by the time we'll be ready to reactivate Unit-00, as well as have the Second Child here with Unit-02."

"So, you've given up on the Third Child, then?" She asked him, but he didn't answer back.

"We may need the Fourth Child," he then said to her instead, but that was going to be difficult, for the potential candidates weren't in any condition to be selected.

Meanwhile, Fuyutsuki, in the Eva cages, stood in front of Unit-01 with a sour look on his face.

"I'm not sure how to make heads or tails with all that has happened," he uttered in front of it. "None of us knew that he was stricken with leukemia. Nothing went the way it was supposed to and now we're treading in deep waters. I don't believe what almost happened was meant to happen, Yui. If he had piloted, he might've died…and everyone else would've suffered, as well. And that girl… Maybe you'd approve of her, if she weren't so young, for being protective of him."

The purple Eva never responded, nor did he expect it to respond; the Evangelions never spoke a word since they either possessed no mouths at all or they were sealed shut to begin with.

"Leukemia; that's the worst condition a young person can be afflicted with, and nobody ever expected him to have it. We were expecting a simple, healthy teen instead of a dying one. No disrespect to anybody, and instead of this scenario that was planned, a little girl, whom we didn't have any insight on, stopped the Angel faster than it arrived."

Unit-01 just stood there in the cage, never doing anything unless there was an Angel attack; what it was required for and more. But there were no Angels currently attacking; there were only periods of pause before the next stage of despair known as atrocity took place.

"Maybe medical science has advanced enough that such a condition as leukemia can be treated permanently," Fuyutsuki then uttered out, and then left the cage.

Unknown to him, however, the left eye of Unit-01, for all of its impossibility, shed a tiny tear. If there was an answer to the reason why it did so, it would be that something it perceived as terrible had hurt it, and it was hurt badly.

-x-

"It's great to be home," said Rumi, standing in front of a path that led up a mountain littered with trees and flowers.

"But we're not home yet, Rumi," Shinji told her, walking ahead of her now. "Shall we hike this path until we reach the temple?"

"How many times are you going to call it a temple when it's an estate?"

"Estate, temple, shrine, they're all the same, Rumi. But it's still home to me; the only real home I've ever had in years."

They traveled up the path, stopping periodically, for five times to catch their breath, before moving again. It was a tough ordeal for them; Shinji, for his leukemia, and Rumi, for her current age, but they persevered due to their need to show that, just because of their respective conditions, they were able to perform what they dubbed a minute task as getting there. By the time they reached more than halfway up to the Tokyo Tower-sized mountain, the air felt thinner, causing them to breathe slower to adjust, and their surroundings below the mountain looked like tiny dots or puzzle pieces. Such a travel up a mountain this tall and with oxygen this thin would've harmed or killed an ordinary person, but they and the people that lived near it were used to it, having learned the principal terms of survival of the fittest; only Shinji and those that came to see the family were the exception to the rule.

"I know you two can still walk the other half of the two-mile trek to home," said a man's voice to the pair, "but maybe you should consider letting me lend you a ride."

They looked up at a tree and saw an elderly-but-well-built man with dark hair with bits of gray poking around, hazel-colored eyes, dressed in a monk's attire and was armed with a bo staff, smiling down at them as he stood on a thin branch that there was no logical way capable of supporting his weight.

"Well, if it isn't our great Bumi Rokubungi, here to see us," praised Shinji, dropping to his knees to kowtow to his uncle.

"Now, Shinji," went Bumi, "how many times have we been through this? You don't need to show respect in that manner. We're all good friends here: We live together, we train together, eat together, and even settle conflicts through peace together."

Shinji rose back up to his feet and uttered, "Heh-heh, it's an old habit, Bumi. You're the one that taught me how to kowtow in the first place."

Bumi leapt from off the tree and onto the ground, chuckling at his nephew, and then asked, "So, how was your trip to that city?"

Shinji and Rumi looked at each other and then back at Bumi, answering with, "We wish we never went to begin with."

"It was that bad with that man there, wasn't it?" He asked them, and they nodded back. "Come on; let's get back to the temple."

Rumi sighed, unsure of whether or not to say that their home was more like an estate than a temple or shrine, and followed Bumi with Shinji further up the path. By the time they reached the front gate, it was already sunset, and the sky was cast into a beautiful shade of red and pink.

Bumi knocked on the large, iron-clad doors and waited for a response of the other side.

"Who seeks entrance to this sacred sanctuary?" A female voice asked them, coming out of a hidden megaphone around the gate.

"Members of a great family that has endured over five decades of great efforts to help others and maintain balance, not just within the world, but within oneself," answered Rumi to the voice.

"Permission to enter this sacred sanctuary has been granted." The voice told them, and the old gates opened up for them to enter.

They were greeted with a marvelous sight in front of them; the sunset sky had bathed the expansive garden of the estate with a wondrous glow, with some butterflies flying over the flowers that flourished on the large walls that made the sealed-off grounds of the sanctuary, with their home itself looking like a miniature temple of sorts that was updated to look new instead of unkempt, with its seven pagoda towers, positioned with the first one in front with the remaining six in two rows of three behind it, reaching only three stories into the air above their heads. It was a unique blend of different cultures, particularly the Asian ones (the Japanese, Chinese and Tibetan) spliced with the western ones that made up the appearance of the Rokubungi estate, their ancestral home.

"Ah, it feels good to be back," Shinji said, breathing in the better air that was now around him.

"It sure is," Rumi agreed with him.

-x-

"Ooh, throw away your hidden scrolls, evil shoguns and black priestesses," said a young girl with long, dark hair with a silvery tint to it and a wooden sword in her hands, looking over at Shinji and Rumi, "the scatterers of the future's darkest shadows have returned."

"Mayo," Rumi said, as she leaned against one of the large, sand garden stones, "you know Shinji and I don't like it when you call us that. We're not trying to change the world on a grand scale. Who would want to, anyway?"

Pointing her wooden sword at her boy cousin, Mayo responded, "He, who has rejected everything he has ever learned of our family's expectations and traditions, to be better people, aimed to change the world, and pays nothing of the consequences of his actions. He, who questions the will of an authority greater than any that have ever existed…or will ever exist on this life-bearing planet, never thinks to look before he leaps, and whom we have had no contact with for many years. Is that man still the same, arrogant moron that he was when he left…or has he changed?"

"He has not changed, Mayo," Rumi answered. "He, who can never return unless he intends to go back to the old ways of our family, remains the same…only worse than before I met him. He, who's hands are stained with sins, wanted his only son with whom he left within his heart a pain so great that it nearly destroyed him to serve his twisted wants as though he were a puppet on strings, held up by a cruel puppet master. His answer to my question of why it had to be so was that there no one else that could fight a monster that a city was sacrificed to try and drive it away to the land of the dead."

Mayo gasped, and then pulled her sword away from her cousin.

"Our elders will not be pleased by this discovery," she told Rumi.

"No, they will not be pleased," she agreed, for she wasn't.

The four of them, Rumi, Mayo, Shinji and Bumi, entered the internal confines of the estate, set foot into a large room with a few large pillows scattered about the floor, and saw a pair of women that appeared to be of over thirty and forty years of age, based on their appearances, lying on the floor, facing the ceiling. The eldest woman on the left had the appearance of a beautiful Chinese from the ancient past, wearing purple and red robes in the manner of the people that practice Hindu, while the other, younger woman was clearly of Japanese descent, wearing the traditional attire of a miko, though her blondish hair at the moment was a contrast to the other woman's dark hair. They were Shinobu and Kanami Rokubungi, the upper-middle and lower-middle-aged elders of the Rokubungi family's female side, respectively.

"Mother," went Mayo to the one that was Kanami, "Shinji and Rumi have returned from their sojourn journey to Tokyo-3 and are back again."

Kanami turned her head to face her young, twelve-year-old daughter and smiled at her.

"Thank you for telling me," she uttered out, and then got up onto her feet. "Shinobu, they're back."

Shinobu then got up and kowtowed to them before saying, "Believe it or not, we've been worried sick about you two, especially when you didn't call."

Rumi bowed in front of her and replied, "For forgiveness, the place that man was in had no reception, and we couldn't leave till the next day."

"Heh-heh, I always knew that jerk preferred the isolation that can be found wherever you make it," Kanami uttered in disgust. "Not like the isolation of this mountaintop and the town built down below it, though, just the empty isolation; the kind where there's no one else but you."

"If isolation were a different dimension, he would enjoy it," said Bumi to them. "But what of you, Kanami? What would you prefer instead of the isolation?"

"Me? Why, I would prefer a world that just had people, regardless of how stained it is with past sins. If people are willing to change for the better, then, by all means approved of by the greater forces at work, they should be allowed to change. It's part of the philosophies that everyone tries to embrace."

"And the philosophies of one's own existence and the existence of the whole of mankind?"

"That one must find the reasons to why they exist in the world…and that life must be lived within the time that it's allowed to. However, if given a proper chance, a person can deviate, and live for an extended period of life. But, no matter what you say or do, regardless of how much you may want to beg for mercy, plead for more time, in the end, the end of your life, your expiration date, the curtain that must fall on your stage of present history…is inevitable."

Shinji sighed as that philosophy of life had once been a tragic blow to his mind ever since he found out about his illness. While he disliked the belief, he never hated it entirely, never spat on it or questioned it longer than another soul probably would. Of course, there was no denying that he accepted his approaching death on the other hand, either, but he still wanted to leave his mark on the world with the remaining time he had left before his body quit on him. Three friends of his outside the family have already died a year ago, each one either younger or older than he himself had been prior to their deaths, and he was certain that this year would be his last one to live out. The last year to make an impact on the people he loved and that loved him back and to be remembered as someone the rest of the world would just forget.

Rumi looked at the empty and hurt expression on her nephew's face and could tell that he was upset that he could die before this year was over. She was upset, as well. All of them were. From all the stories they told her of, it was still hard to believe that a good kid like him was born to a miserable man like Gendo and whoever it was that was his mother, cursed with a condition that they were unable to discover if it came from either of them, since it was possible that it was a recessive gene, and harder to imagine how they'd be forced to move on when he left them forever. She'd give anything she could part with willingly to keep him with them. Anything.

"Shinji," she told him, and he looked down to her, "let's go see your grandmother. She'll be bound to smile at the sight of your return."

Shinji removed his wig and replied, "Yeah. Let's see Grandmother."

"You'll find her in the south-east training chamber," Mayo informed them. "She's been upset ever since yesterday when you were unable to call."

"Knowing her, she's very upset and will vent her fears with her martial arts," added Bumi, praying that these two children would be alright facing her alone.

"Maybe this time, she'll teach me that ancient art she promised," Rumi responded, showing no fear.

-x-

There was always something so relieving about being surrounded by one-thousand candles as you practiced a delicate art that was as old as the Egyptians and their gods were…and wearing a gray cloak had the added element of making you a mysteriously calm person.

When Shinji and Rumi arrived to the room, they saw the cloaked woman practicing her skills of self-defense, and Shinji had his little aunt keep quiet, not wanting to interrupt his grandmother.

She moved her arms and legs quite well for an elderly person, as though her vitality, what gave her the youthful energy that she possessed, was still with her, and then, by gathering up something that couldn't be seen by the naked eye, she pushed what almost looked like a small streak of air at a few candles she aimed her wrists at, blowing them out without ever touching them.

Incredible, they both thought, seeing her pick up a staff that didn't resemble a bo staff quite well; it looked thinner and like it had been chewed on, all the while being carved.

The woman swung it around as any martial artist would a regular bo staff, but seemed to focus more on her hands than the staff itself. Twirling it around before holding it firmly in her left arm, she sent out a gust of air with her right arm that blew out a larger collection of candles. Resuming her twirling of the staff, she uttered out, "Balance and salvation are the links…between the people that live…and the universe that they live within." before holding it up with both arms before she kept it tight in her right hand. Slamming it down, hard onto the dirt, she sent out a wave of air on all sides of her that blew the remaining candles out before she took in a new breath of air. Removing her hood, she revealed not the face of an elderly woman in her late-seventies or eighties…but the face of a young woman that appeared to be in her mid to late-twenties or early-thirties, with long, raven-black hair, sea-green eyes, and an aura that burned with an unfathomable amount of kindness.

Shinji and Rumi, then, with wondrous awe at her would-be performance, applauded her.

"Well, if it isn't my special duo," the woman said, seeing the two in front of her. "How was your trip?"

"Awful," they answered.

"Nothing good came out of it?"

"No good at all," Shinji told her. "I never want to see that man again."

The woman smiled and hugged both children. She couldn't say that she had some hope that Gendo would change after several years away from home. But after being confronted with the letter addressed to his…addressed to her grandson, she couldn't say that his current behavior toward him was unexpected, either. Gendo, despite the way that he was raised properly in the beginning, like the other members of the family, could be quite the unpredictable troublemaker at unpredictable times. This was part of the reasons to why he was nearly disowned before he chose to leave on his own.

"Were there any good people there when you arrived?" She asked, wanting to switch subjects on the trip to Tokyo-3.

"Well, there was just one person that seemed nice enough," answered Shinji. "A woman named Misato Katsuragi, a member of the paramilitary organization with purple hair."

"Purple hair?" She questioned. "I knew four people in the past with purple hair. Was she, by any chance, the woman in the photo?"

"Yes," answered Rumi, knowing that she was disappointed in the woman's apparent lack of modesty.

"Please, tell me that she was dressed modestly when you met her in person, Shinji, Rumi?" She asked.

"She was…dressed nigh-appropriately," Shinji answered, unsure if seeing said woman wearing a black dress that barely reached below the knees was appropriate and modest.

The woman chuckled, although she knew better than to think that Shinji, of every person that has ever lived, or will ever live, on this estate, had a dirty mind like that. Ever since she met him when he was four, all she ever saw was a young boy that had been dealt a bad hand. She knew Shinji was a noble individual with a good heart and mind, not deviating from his original thoughts half the time in a day.

"…Um, dinner is ready, you three," said a female voice to the trio.

The new woman, younger than Bumi, had long, sparkling red hair tied into ox horn buns so that said hair's leftover strands reached only to her neck, pretty blue eyes and wore a green hanbok with a white apron around it.

"Okay, Miaka," they replied, and followed her toward the dining room.

-x-

Instead of arriving to Tokyo-3 in thirty days, Unit-02 and the Second Child were immediately told to come to said city as fast as possible, and the Second Child was fine with that. To fight Angels was what she lived for, and she would prove her worth to NERV. As nigh-calm as it was to travel by sea, travel by air was quicker, and Asuka Langley Soryu wanted to make a grand appearance to where she would be transferred to. In addition, she wanted to know who the pilot of Unit-01 was so that she could show them that she was the better pilot, having trained to do so at an early age.

Her guardian, Ryoji Kaji, was also curious as to who the pilot had been, but knew more than Asuka did; she only knew that the person had achieved a seventy-two point five percent synchronization with the Eva with no prior training, which shouldn't have been possible, and then rising up to seventy-nine point five percent. The only other part that he knew about was that the person that piloted the Eva wasn't the pilot that was originally intended, but a different one…with a different reason for doing so, and only once. Mr. Kaji wanted to know what kind of person was only willing to pilot an Evangelion once and then leave when informed that the fate of the human race was endangered by an enemy of unknown origin. He could've said that the person was a coward, but then that would've felt wrong, since he assumed it was just another unlucky fourteen-year-old that didn't remember much about their mother. Also, he had a package to bring: A suitcase that contained a very important item that could be used to benefit the world if used properly…or spell disaster if misused.

Fifteen hours, he thought calmly, as that was the time they'd be on the plane until they reached Japan. Fifteen long hours until we get there. Well, better fifteen hours than over a month's time at sea.

Drifting off into a deep slumber, he let his imagination run wild, visualizing whoever it was that defeated the Third Angel and left NERV a large corpse that they could take samples of and study, along with what had really intrigued the organization: The mysterious S² Engine, which had been ripped away from the Angel, depriving it of its life and power. It was mostly intact, based on the reports he'd discovered, and, if possible, could be repaired and installed into an Eva in the future, eliminating the external power requirements. This person, whoever they were, had lent NERV quite a grand hand in leaving a useful, scientific salvage.

-x-

"…Maybe I'm not blessed," said Rumi to Mayo, having failed again to produce a reaction toward the four items present on the table in front of them after they had finished their dinner: On the far left stood a lit candle, next to it was a pair of stones that did nothing, after that was a jug of water and on the far right was a simple hand fan. "Or maybe I'm still too young to know."

"Don't doubt yourself, Rumi, my dear auntie," Mayo told her. "Age is irrelevant, an unimportant issue. Grandmother Akira believes you may have the blessing. Besides, I love the fact that it's actually true. I could hear the words of it for a whole day."

"I know, Mayo, 'The power to control the elements…is bestowed only upon those that are chosen to bear them.' It's one of the oldest traditions of the village of Akira."

While there were still several other traditions that she was unaware of, Rumi was well versed in the history of the village town built around the mountain, since its history spans over a century and a half.

"Maybe our Little Rumi needs a little stimulation," went the voice of Miaka to them, having changed into her blue pajamas before deciding to go to bed. "Water, the flowing element that allows for change. Earth, the enduring element of stability and substance. Fire, the passionate representation of power, and Air, the evasive representation of freedom."

Rumi and Mayo sat down on the floor, the four items forgotten, wanting to hear the story they grew up knowing about.

"It's probably as old as history itself," Miaka started. "Before the modern societies took control, before regular histories were ever recorded, there were just four cities, four ancient cities, placed on all four sides of the planet, each with its designated element to govern them. Before and after they fell into the abyss of the past, the people that lived within each city would embrace their home: The Lunar Ocean City, the Spring of Mountain City, the Volcanic Ash City and the Winds of Freedom City. Each lived separated from each other, but were connected by a series of pacts, built on love and trust. Bridges, even. The people could harness the elements by harnessing the energy within themselves to do great things. But like all great powers, some wanted more…and some desired justice. Those that couldn't harness the power, however, were indirect casualties and never felt safe in the same place for more than a few days or weeks, always moving to safer parts of the world untouched by violence that they had no methods of defending themselves without having to resort to murder. The Masters, the head authorities of each city, could no longer stand what some of their people were doing to others because they felt they could, prayed to their God, a universal consciousness, for a miracle of their salvation. Their prayers were answered, in a way, by the arrival of a group of civilians that were quite the special few. While those that demonstrated their control over their unique element, these unique few were able to control more than one. Some could control two, others could wield three. Only a married pair could manipulate all the elements. They were the mysterious ones of the whole group. They could end in mere hours what others took longer to suppress for good. But arguments became feuds, feuds became battles, battles became wars and wars became slaughters. They couldn't end them forever…so they, without the authorities permitting them, buried the four cities in piles of ice, rock and ash. The events became legends…and, eventually, legends became myths. Not many believe in the story…or dare to remember the days that had transpired in those ancient times. The people of this village, however, believe the story, along with those that come here looking for a fresh start…just as I did over twenty years ago. But the rest of the world, they know not of the societies that had existed before them…and may never exist again."

Rumi and Mayo sighed, as they always did after hearing such a long story. It was great to hear it, but it drained them to hear it all the time.

"What became of the couple?" They heard Shinji, standing by the open door, deprived of his wig and wearing a green bandanna. "The ones that could bend all the elements?"

Miaka turned to face him and answered, "Some say they died. I believe so, as well, but not before they had children that inherited their powers…and their children and their children's children throughout the ages. I'm sure that some of them are out there somewhere, living peaceful lives, waiting for their time."

As the time became eleven at night, all residents of the estate were set to go to bed, but Rumi had been called by the head of the house, Akira, whom, despite her age, kept her room decorated with several items that looked as though they were from different time periods and worth a small-but-wealthy sum to the highest bidder if they saw them, for each item was very old but were kept in good condition.

"Yes?" Rumi asked, kneeling to the older woman, who sat by a wooden desk, wondering why she was asked to come see her.

"I had asked Shinji what else happened while you two were at that Tokyo-3 city…and I didn't like everything I heard."

Rumi kept her head facing the floor as she said to Akira, "I can explain my actions."

"Maybe, but answer me this first: Did Gendo really try to make Shinji pilot a monstrosity that he had never seen before in his life before he became aware that he was sick?"

"Yes. Yes, he did try to make Shinji pilot a monstrosity, but I told him that he couldn't do it at all."

"And then?"

"He sent for a girl named Rei, who looked as injured as people from large casualties do, and told her to pilot it after calling Shinji a useless spare."

"A useless spare?"

"Mm-hmm, but she could barely stand, let alone pilot, with her body in such a terrible state. Then…he did one of the newest of the worst things he's ever done: He asked me to pilot the monstrosity."

"This must be where Shinji told me that you cut a deal with him. Is this true?"

"Yes. I made a deal with him: I'd pilot the thing and fight some creature that was attacking the city if he left Shinji alone." Rumi explained, having left out none of what had happened that day and the day after. "I'm sorry if I have shamed you."

"You haven't shamed anyone, Rumi. You've actually done the opposite. You put your life on hold to preserve Shinji's, even when Gendo saw no worth in him, and you came out of the battle in one piece. You live up to your responsibilities as his guardian whenever you're with him by yourself, even when you don't take 'em as serious as others would. I'm proud of you, Rumi, you and Shinji."

Rumi looked up at her and had tears falling out of her eyes. She went over and hugged the older woman tightly.

"Rumi, you haven't cried like this since you were four," Akira chuckled. "You really are a mama's girl. Correction: This mama's girl."

-x-

"My apologies, Commander Ikari," a man in black said to Gendo, handing him a folder, "but nobody from that neighborhood has seen or heard from Bumi Rokubungi a month after he, his wife and the Third Child left, which was nearly eleven years ago."

After Gendo took the file and had the agent leave, he looked over it and wondered where Shinji had been for most of his life and why there was so little information on him. Of all the people that he could've left Shinji with, Gendo had to choose the one man that was his reason for leaving the family. Bumi…and his wife, Miaka. And if that wasn't the oddest of things, he had to go over the money that he gave them to look after Shinji, only to find that no a single ounce of it had been used at all.

Always the self-sufficient one, eh, Bumi? He thought, recalling the rumor of somebody making a large sum from salvaging an abandoned military ship in Chinese waters before the year Two-Thousand even began. You moved out of the ancestral home three years after you and your wife got married, and it was easy to find you after Second Impact. Well, there's only one place you could've run to, and that's back to that small town of Akira.

Fuyutsuki, who looked out the office windows, couldn't help but be curious at his other former student's sudden interest in knowing where his son was, along with the girl that might've been his former student's little sister. All he ever really knew about his past before he met his prized student, Yui, was that he hated one of his brothers, and by extension, the rest of the family. So he was curious as to why this was so, and what his real reason was for wanting to know where they were now. He had learned from Yui herself that there were often times where learning from the past makes the present clearer, but there were also times where the past was just as painful as the present and future.

Surely, they could've been as far off as he is, he thought.

-x-

Recalling the past was an easy thing for Bumi, since he specialized in the martial arts of Hung Gar and the Southern Praying Mantis with flying colors, and the Earth having memories of everything that has ever happened. As he lied on his and Miaka's bed, he visualized the cloudier days of the even cloudier years.

It's still hard to believe, let alone imagine, he had thought, that there was a time before all of this happened. It was the twelfth year of our marriage, and Gendo had, out of the blue and quite carelessly, abandoned his only son at our doorstep in the middle of a rainy afternoon. It was terrible to know that this is what he does to a child of his own blood…but surprising to know that he actually had a child. He was so small and helpless, with very little of anything. I wanted to think of it as nothing more than a sick joke to try and get back at me for what was never my fault but was attempted by him to begin with, only to realize that by abandoning his own son, he was getting back at me for what was never my fault. But I hold the contempt on Gendo alone, not on Shinji, since he was as much of a victim than those that lost their lives to that bogus Second Impact crud that I could never believe was caused by a meteorite so small that it could move at tremendous speed.

Remembering the third month of their nephew's presence within their home, as well as Miaka's four-month-long pregnancy, Bumi continued to relive the pain of the past.

"Good morning, dearest," he had greeted his wife when he entered the kitchen, and saw her sitting down at the table with a sad expression on her face. "What's wrong?"

"I think there's something wrong with Shinji," she had revealed to him. "I tried to get him up out of bed, but he won't respond."

Bumi then marched right over to his nephew's bedroom, seeing him lying there on his bed with his back facing him. Shinji had been known to do this whenever saddened, and he was still questioning why his father had left him that day and what had become of his mother, whoever she was. Originally, they had assumed his mom was dead because Shinji couldn't recall the last time he saw her alive.

"Shinji-Kun," he greeted the boy, shaking him to get him up from his slumber. "It's breakfast time, Shinji-Kun. Time to eat…"

He looked down at his shirt and saw a bruise-like marking that ran up to his nape. Tracing it up and down, he became very concerned that somebody might've been abusing him at the daycare center they took him to whenever they had to be somewhere else for a whole day that didn't take kindly to children, as they never saw this on him when they met him that rainy afternoon.

"What in the name of…" He questioned, but soon realized that his nephew needed to see a doctor to confirm what it was.

"It's some sort of anemia, right?" Miaka had asked the doctor when they took Shinji to be checked that same day. "But children his age shouldn't be able to get mono, should they?"

"It could be some sort of virus," responded the doctor to her as Bumi held his nephew's clothes while he wore only his underwear while laying on an examination with an expression of sadness mixed with an uncaring attitude. "I'll need to draw some blood and run some tests to be sure."

It wasn't until about two hours later that the doctor had some incomplete news for them; incomplete because he had no idea what was wrong at the time himself.

"Shinji's white blood cell count is much lower than normal," he explained to the couple as Miaka held Shinji on her lap.

"What could that mean?" Bumi asked him.

"Shinji could have an autoimmune deficiency," he suggested, handing Bumi a card, "or it could just be a lab error. We're running the tests again to be sure."

But when he looked at the card, he was unprepared for what he had read.

"Oncology?" He had questioned, looking at both his wife and the doctor. "But, Doctor, that's cancer."

Nonetheless, they went to see the oncologist that he recommended for them: Marlene Hanabishi. She had looked over his test results and gave them a further-to-the-point answer.

"Shinji's white cell count is very low, which does indicate an autoimmune disease, but he's also presenting ten percent promyelocytes and four percent blasts, and that indicates a leukemic condition." She revealed, which worried them.

"Leukemic?" Miaka asked, confused.

"A cancer of the blood and bone marrow," she explained; luckily, Shinji had fallen asleep at that time so he didn't hear a thing being said about him. "I'll need a bone marrow aspiration to confirm, but it looks like your nephew could have the subgroup condition known as Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia."

Miaka had covered her mouth while Bumi had a look of despair on his face. It wasn't long after the bone marrow aspiration, which confirmed of Shinji's cancer, that the couple tried to contact all of their relatives, which, to the disgust of Bumi, included Gendo, as well.

I still can't believe Gendo blew me off that day I tried to call him and tell that his only son was really sick, not even bothering to call me back to ask why I called, just to tell me, "Don't call me unless it's important!" before hanging up. Everyone else managed to show up, but not him. He thought, turning his head to look over at a family photo that had been taken three years ago, which had Shinji, with less hair of his head, having a heartfelt smile on his face, one of the happiest moments of his young life.

-x-

The next day, as Miaka and Shinobu were preparing breakfast for the rest of the family, the former was recalling the day the family had gathered to discuss Shinji's predetermined status.

"It's been too long since we all saw each other," she had said to Akira, when all the current family of that time, excluding Gendo, had shown up at her and Bumi's house a week after receiving the calls about what they had found out about.

Akira, who had helped put Shinji to bed after conversing with him for the first time in their short encounter on the day that they met, was pleased to have met another grandchild and even more pleased to have gotten together with all of her other children. Well, most of her children.

"Yes, it has been too long," she had agreed with her. "I had nearly forgotten your faces. Almost thirteen years, give or take a year or two, and yet…I see all of you standing before me…as though it were only yesterday. And I see you and Bumi have finally found the time to settle down."

Miaka placed a hand over her swelling belly and responded, "Yes, though it would be disappointing if Shinji couldn't be around to meet the kid, because that isn't what I want."

"You think Gendo knew about this and decided to leave him so that he wouldn't have to do anything about it?" Kanami, who was rocking her then-two-year-old daughter, Mayo, in her portable rocking crib next to herself.

"Whether or not he knew or didn't is irrelevant at this point," Bumi responded, not really wanting to talk about Gendo's absence at the moment. "I still want to believe that it was just a mistake and what I saw on Shinji's back was nothing more than a bruise he got from some other kid that decided to be a bully. Now, I've made my fair share of decisions after Miaka and I moved out to make a nice living outside the town, but when it comes to a decision like this that revolves around a person I've only started to get to know a little, I don't like making it by myself."

"You won't have to," said Shinobu to him, placing a hand on his left shoulder. "I'd do the same, calling the family. So…what must we do to ensure that there is nothing too serious that it can't be mended?"

"The doctors all suggested we put him through chemotherapy," Miaka had told them, "but they also said that without a bone marrow match, he'd… He wouldn't make it past his eleventh birthday."

"A part of me would say that his end should be without pain," went the then-twenty-two-year-old Nemo Rokubungi, speaking his mind in a way that was the opposite in which Gendo would usually speak his own, "but I just met my nephew and want to know more about him, no matter how long he has. We should find a way to help him live for as long as possible."

Miaka could've probably kissed him for that, viewing life, regardless of its outcome, as the ultimate gift anyone could ever receive.

"I wouldn't let any of you die before your time," Akira told them, showing that determination she always had in her eyes. "I wouldn't."

"Hey, Miaka, sis?" She heard Shinobu break her out of her train of thoughts. "Could you pass the butter, please?"

"Oh, sure. Here it is." She gave her the saucer of butter and resumed her chopping of various carrots and cucumbers.

"You were thinking of the past again, weren't you?" Shinobu asked her.

"Yeah, I was. Don't you?" Miaka asked back.

"Yeah, but not too much. If I did too much, I'd be reminded of how much it hurt to know such things that couldn't be resolved. I often talk to the kami, still. I ask if what we tried to do was the right decision, despite it doing some great good, and I'm still waiting for an answer."

"I thought you were also waiting for an answer from the kami about your relationship with…you know, the sister of that guy you helped."

"Hey, easy on the volume; I don't want any young ears hearing about it just yet."

"Akira found out and she was okay with you two seeing each other. She just wished you'd consider having kids later in your future."

"I intend to, but not until I decide on a number of how many I'd want to have. Akira is the only one in the family to gone past the regular numbers."

A yawning came from behind them and saw Shinji sitting at the table, wiping the eye boogies from his worn-out face.

"Good morning, Shinji-Kun," Miaka greeted her nephew.

"Good morning," he greeted back.

"Looks like somebody, like every one else around here, needs his morning fix," Shinobu said, walking over to the coffee pot and pouring a cup for him.

"Thank you," he praised her as she handed him the cup and drank his fix.

"Any good dreams last night?" Miaka asked him.

"Well, there was one, but I can't roll it out as a good dream; it ended in a cliffhanger for me," he answered her. "I think it was a dream I had three years ago that I couldn't make out much of. There was this room that looked like modern version of the kinda place that Dr. Frankenstein would be comfortable living in. There was also a boy looking through a glass wall at something large, and a lady's voice saying, "I want him to see how bright the future will be. The bright future ahead for humanity." and then an alarm went off. I don't really understand the dream, probably the result of watching too many sci-fi and monster films. Uncle Nemo does have an outstanding collection."

"Eh-heh-heh!" The women laughed in agreement; Nemo did have a habit of acquiring films of the science fictional category, and, at first, it was nothing more than a hobby of his, outside of his martial arts training meant for the future when he would have to defend himself, but it eventually grew into a friendly addiction that always had to be satisfied. "Nemo's always been the fanatic when it comes to the realm of make believe."

"Are y'all talking about me?" Their conversation was broken by Nemo himself, who, despite his different hairstyle and facial features, looked like a younger, more carefree and innocent version of Gendo in his early-thirties, albeit without the, somewhat, dark demeanor that was always on Gendo's face; a true child of change, like the water itself.

"Your hobby gave Shinji a rather unusual dream last night." Shinobu explained.

"Uh, Dracula or Dr. Jekyll?" Nemo asked, chuckling.

"Neither," answered Shinji. "Coffee?"

"Yes, please."

Soon enough, the rest of the family arrived, each member talking of many things, most particularly the festival that would be happening in less than a week: The Festival of Fú ('Luck' in Chinese). It was just another peaceful day with the Rokubungi family. Or as peaceful as it could often get when most of the members could be seen together by many other people and be looked upon as a group of people with different backgrounds, different base cultures outside their Japanese, and completely different appearances. But despite all of these factors, they were a family in and of themselves and nothing, absolutely nothing, could change that for them.

-x-

"Wow, Asuka, you've gotten bigger since the last time I saw you," Misato greeted Asuka as they met at the airport.

"Not only that; my figure has filled out, as well," the redhead responded to her.

"Hey, Katsuragi!" Kaji greeted, and Misato gave a look that, obviously, meant only woe and disappointment. "Surprised to see me?"

"Am I ever happy to see you?" She questioned him, irritated that he barely shaved that face of his. "Just what are you doing here?"

"Other than escorting Asuka here, NERV business," he answered, but almost missed the look in the purple-head's eyes that seemed to show some unusual doubt that wasn't supposed to be there.

As they walked out to go to NERV HQ, Asuka questioned Misato on the whereabouts of the Third Child, wanting to speak with them.

"He's, uh, not in the city," she told her, not really wanting to discuss the past predicament. "He went back home."

"Another boy, huh? Atypical. I bet he was scrawny and weak."

Weak, maybe, but it wasn't like he had a choice to be that way, thought Misato.

It didn't take long for Asuka to get settled into her apartment at NERV; try nearly a whole half-hour to cram eight boxes, six filled with clothes and the last two with her hygiene materials and laptop, into her assigned quarters. While during that time, Kaji was trying to stir up a conversation with Misato, who, apparently, had something else on her mind.

"So…you wanna tell me what happened when the Angel attacked the city," he asked her, "and why NERV has a large, inhuman corpse to work with?"

In her office, Misato sat by her computer, going over various pieces of information, until she turned to face her old flame and explained what she knew from that day the Angel arrived.

"Commander Ikari sent for his son, whom he hasn't seen or heard from in over ten years after he left him at a relative's place when he was younger," she started. "I was assigned to pick him up, which I did, but Shinji had a relative of his along with him: A little girl of five years, who, interestingly enough, is one of his aunts."

"It's not all that surprising," Kaji stated. "Older men often end up marrying younger women, and if they have had kids from before they get remarried, then the new wife might be younger than the stepchildren, who would be older than she is."

"Yeah, but the relationship between the boy and his aunt is a bit more complicated. Commander Ikari and Ritsuko both wanted him to pilot Unit-01, but the little girl was against it for several reasons: The first being that she thought it was wrong to use children as soldiers in a war they know very little to nothing about; the second being that Shinji had never seen or heard of anything relating to NERV or the Eva, even when he was, originally, given a packet containing information that he couldn't read because he was dyslexic, and the last reason being that he was already dying from his leukemia…with the girl being his only lifeline."

"You mean, the girl's a donor for him?"

"Yes."

"Okay. And then what happened?"

"When Commander Ikari found out, he sent for Rei."

"The First Child?"

"Yeah, and he told her to pilot the Eva again, but she couldn't, either, on account of her own injuries sustained from an earlier activation attempt on Unit-00."

"Oh."

"And then, probably outta desperation, he asked the girl, Rumi, if she could pilot the Eva."

"He asked a five-year-old to pilot?"

"That's right, but she wouldn't do so unless he agreed to leave Shinji alone, so he had to honor his end of the would-be deal. The pilot that left the Angel a husk for NERV to study and dispose of…was Rumi Rokubungi…and she was operating the Eva like she actually had, in her possession, some skills worthy of a pilot."

"So, she was the one that achieved the seventy-two point five percent synchronization with the Eva with no training, whatsoever. I had always suspected it to be another fourteen-year-old that didn't remember their mother as much as they should've."

"Believe me, a part of me wishes that it was back then. The next day, those two left to return home. I don't think Commander Ikari actually tolerates Rumi as much as she and Shinji can't stand him."

"Well, not many people can relate to Ikari; he's not exactly friendship material. People don't know him but know of him and have personal opinions, and those that don't want anything to do with working with him…usually end up just disappearing."

"Disappearing?"

"They just never get seen or heard from again." Misato looked at him like he had something to hide from her. "Hey, you asked. I only found out about that from a co-worker back in Germany's NERV branch, and he found out through a co-worker from the NERV branch in Nevada."

After a long, two-minute pause, Misato spoke up again.

"What would you have done if you were Commander Ikari?" She asked him.

"If I were him? I'd check my kid's medical history everyday, kept him with me so he could be properly instructed, and tell him everything that was going on, holding nothing back." He answered her.

"Really?"

"Yes, really."

"That's good to know."

"So, what now?"

"Well, the Marduk Institute is trying to locate the Fourth Child, but they can't seem to find a perfect pilot, Asuka just got here and Rei's still in the hospital recovering. So, as long as no Angel thinks of showing up after the one we're still dissecting, we should be fine."

"But I don't believe that the Angels are going to be laying low after fifteen years of patience just because one of their own was defeated in less than a day."

"Either way, we got some time before the next attack."

-x-

Shinji always knows where to find me when he discovers I'm not in the house, thought Akira, as she practiced her usage of throwing stars, or shuriken knives, at seven distance targets on the estate's training grounds. I can hear his heart as he runs to find me.

She holds back from throwing the knife in her left hand when her grandson arrives ten feet away from her. There was always a way for Shinji to locate his only grandparent of his immediate family (immediate family means relatives that live with you, just in case you didn't know), either by asking another relative or just through looking. Ever since he could remember, Shinji has kept Akira at the top of pyramid of family relatives, with Rumi underneath her with Bumi and Nemo, Miaka, Mayo and Kanami came after them with the others; it was almost impossible to say why someone like his own parents weren't involved in the pyramid; if one didn't know anything or have any positive feelings about their own parents, then they had no rights to be part of the pyramid's internal structure, whatsoever, and one often had a large family of immediate relatives like Shinji did.

"Hey, Grandmother," he greeted her as she turned to face him.

"Hey, Shinji-Kun," she greeted back, putting the knife away. "How are you feeling this afternoon, if you mind my asking?"

"I'm fine, thanks," he told her, sitting down on a medium-sized rock that was behind him. "You don't…think I'm being wrong or selfish in my choice of this year, do you, Grandmother?"

"No, Shinji. You've always done the right thing your entire life."

"Not always. I have made wrong choices before."

"And you're forgiven for those choices." Akira sat down on the grass in front of him. "Despite everything that we've tried to keep you with us, science is imperfect, filled with flaws and false starts. You and Nemo would probably think me wicked for saying such things of it."

"No, we wouldn't; Nemo's a science-fiction-loving warrior-in-training over his blessing, and I'm a guy that wants to enjoy what little time he has left with the people he loves and loves him back. For me, where science can't fix all, family succeeds."

"Eh-heh-heh! Thanks, Shinji. You know, I still see you that day you told the doctors and I that you didn't wish to continue with any would-be large procedures. I was always wondering when you were going to make such a choice."

"I thought of it the last time I needed bone marrow. Three years ago."

"Might I ask why?"

"You remember when my kidneys almost quit on me?"

"Yes."

"I knew the doctors were gonna try and transplant one of Rumi's kidneys into me, but I refused. I couldn't let that happen, not even after I asked the doctors what could've happened to her if she went through with it."

"I asked the doctors the very same question."

"Rumi would have to be careful for the rest of her life…but I don't want her to be careful. Who would want to live that kinda life? I mean, is Rumi not allowed to participate in martial arts tournaments…or try out for cheerleading positions when she's a teen…or do what you've done for as long as you have?"

"And what have I done for a long time?"

"You're a mother, and I don't want to deny her that rite of passage to be one herself one day when she gets older and meets the one for her."

A small tear fell from Akira's left eye and she wiped it clean from her face. As they continued to converse, she couldn't help but think back to the choices that she had made when the family had all agreed on trying to help Shinji live as long as humanly possible when they were told that he'd need a bone marrow match from a compatible donor. It was like a door that had been closed off for a long time had been forced open again for her, and she had gone through it in order to help another person.

"None of us are compatible?" She heard Miaka say to Shinji's permanent oncologist, Dr. Gyatso, when they all came back to the town of Akira, explaining the trouble they were facing when Shinji had turned seven after almost four years of chemotherapy keeping him in remission. "Well, I get that none of us are entirely related, but don't we have to be a little?"

Doctor Gyatso, who was well into his late-sixties at the time, with over thirty years of practice in medicine under his skills, as well as being a close friend of Akira's for over twenty years, explained the situation to them as clearly as he could at the time of learning about their ill relative that he had come to admire for his family trying to keep him alive.

"You see, everyone inherits different sets of chromosomes that contain genes relating to HLA," he told Miaka, "but there's only a one in a one-hundred-fifty to two-hundred percent possibility that unrelated relatives will be perfect matches."

"What are the chances of an unrelated donor transplant?" Nemo had asked him.

"There's a fifty-fifty possibility that it works out right…or it doesn't." Gyatso explained.

"You mean that it's dangerous?"

"Yeah, and Shinji's case is becoming time-sensitive, and sometimes that's all we can work with."

It was almost getting to a time that Akira and Bumi were getting the same idea to go find Gendo and drag him back home to help save his son from his illness, but it was nearly impossible to even know where he was or if he was even interested in seeing his son. And with Shinji's condition becoming time-sensitive, meaning that his leukemia could come back and cause bigger problems any time soon, they had no honest clue at how long chemotherapy could keep him in remission until his body just gave up on it, as APL was much stronger than the regular forms of cancer.

"Could I suggest something completely off the record, though?" Gyatso requested from them. "There have always been many cases, small ones, where your immediate relatives aren't a match for something, but a new relative turns out just right. Have any of you considered having another child?"

Akira, Miaka, Shinobu and Kanami, along with another woman that was part of the family, Tsukiko, who had turned twenty-one just a few months ago, looked at him with suspicion.

"Not to be forward, but my new studies have shown that cord blood can sometimes be effective in treating leukemic patients. Some of the doctors say that it's almost like a miracle."

"But…how would you know that the new child would be a match?" Tsukiko had asked.

"We can make sure of it," he answered.

Bumi and Nemo, along with Kanami were all familiar with AI, IVF and PGD, more so since Kanami had taken the AI route after her boyfriend had died in a boating accident prior to Second Impact ever happening, just when they were becoming serious about each other; her daughter, Mayo, was even named after his grandmother to honor him.

"So, it'd be a donor child, then?" Nemo questioned, unsure of this suggestion of Gyatso's.

Nodding in the positive, the aged doctor explained, "It's not for everybody, and legally, even I can't officially recommend it. But, like I said, cord blood would be invaluable."

"Then we gotta do it," said Miaka, "or at least try."

The only question at that time was who would play the role of the mother of the donor child; Kanami had her hands full with just Mayo, Miaka and Bumi had only planned for their daughter, Taeko, and Tsukiko and Shinobu weren't looking to have children of their own just yet.

"I've been meaning to have another kid, eventually," they heard Akira say. "Still young, fit as an assassin, and willing to go to extremes to save a life."

"Are you sure about this?" Miaka asked her, concerned, and received a positive nod back.

And that was it, thought Akira, returning to the present. Grown in a tube and altered by the latest in science, Rumi was my only in vitro child, and the only person that could help keep Shinji alive longer.

"Grandmother," went Shinji, "just…why was it…that…he who turned his back on the family and became a traitor and severer of ties…left the town and hasn't been back ever since?"

She knew he was asking about his own father, and explained the past problem to him as clear as the sky was right now.

"He…tried to start a relationship with Miaka," she started, "except that she was already happy in her relationship with Bumi and didn't wish to be with any other man. I guess since he was turned down by her, he has always had contempt toward Bumi, whom he probably felt an unnecessary rivalry with like how he did with everyone else he felt a had a rivalry with. There was never even a competition between them; each had their strengths and weaknesses. Like most rivalries, the heart can be tempted, even by a mere glance at a person that you believe is beautiful and assume the would-be belief that you were meant to be with them in some way."

"But Aunt Miaka was meant to be with Uncle Bumi, not him," said Shinji.

"That's right. However, he was unwilling to let go of his obsession of her, and even tried to initiate the relationship with her…against her will. Bumi found out and simply asked him to stop, not wanting to settle the problem that Gendo himself started with unnecessary violence."

"But he refused to accept that she didn't love him."

"Yes, and in the end, there was only a subtle violence. In self-defense, Bumi left an impression of rage on his abdomen…with a mere piece of jade."

"How do you leave an impression with a piece of jade?"

"By embedding it within your opponent."

"Oh."

"Anyway, because he was unable to defeat Bumi or have Miaka to himself, and before I could probably even consider disown him for his behavior, he chose to leave, saying that we didn't kick him out, but that he left. We've not seen or heard from him around here since…until he sent you that letter. I'm surprised that he actually made a living by working with the government."

"The government…the United Nations, which the town of Akira doesn't answer to much of the time in order to avoid unnecessary conflicts with the rest of the world because we're one of the only places left on Earth that hasn't been changed by the Second Impact."

"That's right. What else has that teacher of yours been teaching you, Shinji?"

"Tai-Tai? Other than how to use Mace, she teaches the importance of learning properly from history, and that those that fail to learn are doomed to repeat their mistakes. A single individual is capable of making right choices and wrong choices, depending on their predicament; if the person thinks what they're doing is right, without the aid or opinions of others, then they don't know that later in the future, they might've made a wrong decision that had unexpected drawbacks, and if a person makes the wrong decision, intentionally, they are forced to accept the consequences of what drove them to make that choice to begin with. In the end, despite how far we've come as a people and as a society, we are ruled by our choices and actions. We have the power to change the world, but to do that, we must change ourselves by a slight amount…and by doing that, we, the people that change, gain a sense of insight of who we become later on."

"That's right, and it is by learning from these, we have always striven to do the right thing. Or, in the case of those less fortunate than we are, try to."

They looked over at the edge of the of the smaller wall that made less than half of the estate's south-eastern side and gazed down the mountain at the part of the town below, marveling at such a primitive construct that hides its secrets from the rest of the world to prevent such secrets from being abused for unnecessary desires, such as power.

"Grandmother, I really love this place I've been living in for the last ten years," Shinji told her.

"I know what you mean," she responded. "This town has been all I've known ever since its founding."

"Ever since?"

"You know I keep no secrets from you guys. I've been around long enough to know what there is to know about the town."

"And many of the people look up to you as their leader."

"And only their leader; titles such as those of a queen or a goddess are meaningless because they are the titles of mere figureheads. If war came to our home, our very priorities would be the survival of its people first, culture second and the very town itself as the last objective."

"And…if a monster were to attack the town?"

"It'd be the same thing. The people here are used to things like that, even if it's just a rarity."

"Grandmother?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks again for everything that you've all done for me over the years."

"Anything for my family and friends. Anything for trust, acceptance…and acknowledgment."

-x-

The very next day, the small town received quite a surprise as a few black cars had suddenly shown up on their little roads.

"Mommy, government cars," a little girl had cried to her mother, who picked her up and rushed inside their home.

When the aged Gyatso saw the cars, he felt like he almost had a heart attack, reached into his coat for his cell phone and called Akira to inform her potential trouble.

"Seven black cars just drove into town, and they each had a logo that isn't too popular around the world. That NERV logo." He told her, as she herself looked down at the streets from her son, Nemo's telescope, and noticed the cars driving further down the street, right to where the Rokubungi Self-Defense Training Dojo was…and that was a mere four blocks away from the west side of the base of the mountain the estate was situated on.

"Thanks for the Intel, Gyatso," Akira told her friend over the phone. "You'd best head home now and wait till it's safe to travel the streets again."

After hanging up and looking at Nemo, who was curious as to why some government cars would suddenly show up in their small village without so much as showing a sign of good reason, she asked him if he had something to say about this.

"Will we have to fight if they try something that isn't permitted around here?" He asked her, worried that these people might try to use force against them if they had a demand or series of demands.

"If it comes to that," she answered, "but, being the protective mother that I am, I won't risk any harm befalling any of you guys."

"I'm not worried about myself; I'm actually worried about every one else," he explains his fear.

"So far, all they've done is just drive into town without an invite. We'll keep our distance and play along for now."

"And if they have a demand that we can't or won't meet?"

"Then we simply ask them to vacate the town…or we'll just make them vacate the town."

"Without any deadly force?"

"Without any deadly force."

As Bumi, Shinji, Rumi, Taeko and Kanami were finishing their breakfast after hearing some cars pulling into town, Miaka was outside the gate and waiting for whoever it was that would be foolish enough to come to the estate unannounced. When she was informed, her first suspicion was that Gendo was coming to display his government authority, which had no place here. It would've been similar to his uninvited advances on her when they were younger and when she had found her soul mate in Bumi.

I don't know what his problem is this time, but enough is enough. We've all grown up and moved on with our lives and we try to live them as content as possible. She thought, now seeing a few men in black suits, wearing oxygen masks on their faces. To think that even outsiders would have to show their flaws.

Once they were within speaking range, Miaka told them, "I believe it's safe to remove your masks."

They did so and breathed in a good breath of air.

"How can you survive, let alone live up here?" One of them asked.

"The power to commune with nature, of course," she responded. "May I help you?"

"Yes, we're looking for a one Shinji Ikari," another of them asked her.

"There ain't no Ikaris around here."

The guy then pulled out a photo and showed her a picture of Shinji and Rumi, upsetting her.

"He should look like this kid in the picture," he told her, "with this little girl."

Then, she bowed her head and uttered, "I must apologize for what I'm about to do to you, sir." KICK! She had kicked him in his ball sack so hard he fell to the ground, wheezing like an old man. With the rest of them in shock, she back-flipped over the gate and was back in the estate's garden.

Wow, she thought, watching Nemo's live-action Guyver tapes really worked wonders.

As she rushed back to the house, the other men in black called their superiors and requested suggestions on how to deal with the current situation.

-x-

"…It would seem that your idea of sending Section Two on a 'simple visit' of your former home isn't going well, Ikari," said Fuyutsuki to Gendo, who had recently decided that SEELE's suggestion of the little girl being an Eva pilot might tip the balance of things in humanity's favor…at least until they had a time to setup the Dummy Plug System. Their only concerns were the fact that they didn't even know if the girl's mother was even dead, who else stayed with her, how she was actually able to achieve such a high synchronization rate with Unit-01 and without bringing out the Eva's true power.

"As long as she can synchronize with the Eva, it'll be adequate enough," said Kiel to him when nearly the rest of SEELE came to the same conclusion: Rumi Rokubungi had to be acquired for Eva training if she could synch with Unit-01 with relative ease.

-x-

"…Excuse me, gentlemen," went a woman that appeared to be in her early-twenties or thirties, with brownish-blond hair and hazel-colored eyes, wearing a simple blue shirt and black trousers. "What seems to be the meaning of this?"

"Ma'am, we're here on official NERV business," one of the men told her, which didn't please her to hear at all.

"NERV? As in that UN-controlled and funded, paramilitary organization charged with the purpose of defending mankind?" She asked.

"That's right."

"And with that logo with the fig leaf and the words, "God's In His Heaven. All's Right With The World", which comes from Robert Browning's poem called Pippa Passes?"

"Uh, yeah?"

"Well, unless you were invited by the residents of this grand estate, you won't get in. And most governments don't have many rights to come to this town unannounced, whenever they want, and expect its people to cooperate. We're one of the only places left unscathed by the Second Impact or wars brought upon by it…and we wish to keep it that way for our future generations. Besides, what could be so official about seeing the family that lives here that has done so much for others that live here, anyway? It's not like they'd be interested in a job position you have."

"We're just here to pick up a little girl. We were told she might live here." The agents told her.

They must mean Rumi, the woman thought. "Still, you'd have to be invited by them to gain entry. I was invited, so I'll need to ask you to move aside."

Meanwhile, inside the house, Akira was gathering up her shuriken and katana swords, in case the common subtlety wasn't enough to drive these men in black away; she had always believed in never taking part in a fight unless someone else starts it, similar to what her son, Nemo had found in a cartoon series he saw on television that featured turtles acting like people.

Shinobu, however, was disappointed; she had invited over the girl for a proper introduction to her family's older members, along with lunch, and these men in black show up to cause trouble. It made her feel nothing but a swell of pity for every poor soul that comes to either the family estate or the dojo just to find trouble. If this was a NERV-related issue, these men were ruining her opportunity to show her relatives how wonderful this person was to her before she would take her to the Fú Festival for a nice time…and maybe even more than a nice time. Maybe, in the near future, there would be a greater moment spent with her.

RING-RING! Her cell phone started ringing, catching her attention, and she answered it, seeing that it was the girl she had invited over.

"Hello?" She asked her.

"Hi, Shinobu, it's me," the girl said. "I'm right outside the gate, but these men in black suits are…very persistent on getting in to pick up one of your younger relatives. They've been informed that they can't get in, but they refuse to leave until Rumi comes with them to Tokyo-3 for some program."

Having all heard from Shinji and Rumi of what had gone on in Tokyo-3, Shinobu assumed that this 'program' was piloting one of those abominations called Evagelions, and fighting giant monsters hell-bent on destroying the world.

"Shinobu?" Akira went, concerned about her daughter's woe over the girl she had invited over being outside with the MIB right.

"Kagura…have these men threaten you in any way since you arrived at the gate?" Shinobu asked her.

"Yes; I'm a would-be hostage for them," Kagura had answered.

Shinobu and Akira exhaled in woe; taking someone as a hostage was one of the highest crimes in Akira Town, punishable by either banishment, a ceremonial duel…or imprisonment.

"Have they said anything else?" Shinobu asked.

"Only that they want Rumi; they're willing to trade me for her, but I'm telling you not to do it, that it's an unfair exchange to begin with. Who would trade a thirty-five-year-old woman invited over to have lunch with the family of a fifty-one-year-old woman that you like to be with for a five-year-old girl that gets to save her nephew's life?"

Nemo heard this conversation, as well, and said, "These men have no honor. They don't play fair, taking a woman as a hostage."

He rushed out onto the garden path heading to the gate and jumped up to the top of it, looking down at the men and seeing Kagura cuffed and leaned against a tree with one of the men holding her phone against her head.

"So, let me see if I got this," he told them. "You want us to just give you Rumi, my little sister, for some bogus program in Tokyo-3, in exchange for one of my elder sister's invitee for a proper introduction to the rest of the family here?"

"That's right," they answered him.

"But what if Rumi isn't interested in going anywhere with you, people that she doesn't know, or isn't interested in going back to Tokyo-3?"

"We're under orders to escort her to the city, either way."

"So, then, she has no choice in the matter at all?"

"That's right."

"And who authorized this action?"

"Commander Gendo Ikari."

Nemo then leapt from the gate and onto the ground, slowly approaching them. Then…he let all of Hell break loose on the agents: He broke fingers, knocked out teeth, and left quite a handful of bruises on some of them, but left them stable enough to escape. He grabbed one of them by his shirt's collar and brought him close to leave a clear message.

"You tell my black sheep brother this: If he wants something to even happen for him around here, he needs to come in person and talk with the family about it. We don't take orders and we don't take kindly to many government officials or whatnot. In addition, neither Rumi nor Shinji want to go back to Tokyo-3, regardless of the reason. You tell him all of that. Do I make myself, in any way, whatsoever, clear to your ears?" Nemo told the agent.

"Yes, sir," he responded, terrified by this man who beat down all eight of the agents with just his bare hands. This isn't good.

Releasing the man, Nemo made him leave with his fellow agents down the path, leaving the keys needed to free Kagura from the cuffs binding her to the tree she was on.

Outsiders, he thought, going over to the woman now and freeing her. You'd think they would learn to tolerate us by now. I guess this saying's really true: 'The more things change, the more they don't stay the same'.

"Thank you," Kagura praised the man, rubbing her wrists. "I apologize for making you save me."

"No apologies are needed; I chose to do so. So, you must be the young lady that Shinobu invited over for lunch with us. With your permission, I would be happy to escort you into the grounds of our home."

"Thank you very much, sir," she praised him again.

The gates opened up and Mayo poked her head out, asking them, "Is the cost clear?"

"Yeah, Mayo," answered Nemo to her, "they're gone now."

"Then we should begin our lunch time, as well as have our introductions."

Kagura was led by the two into the gardens and into the house, where she was greeted by the others, and was quite happy to see Shinobu again.

"I apologize if my being captured caused you any trouble," she told them and bowed her head.

"It's okay," said Akira, having finally met the young woman for the first time. "It was out of our control. As people would say, we must expect the unexpected."

"Well," Kagura had decided to introduce herself after seeing Shinobu's mismatched family. "I'm Kagura Mikage, a friend of Shinobu's, and it's an honor to have finally met all of you."

"Welcome!" Rumi, Mayo, Taeko and Miaka greeted in their cheerful way, much to the embarrassment of Bumi and Shinobu.

-x-

All things considered, Ritsuko thought that what had happened today could've gone better. She had just heard from Section Two that some of their agents had been beaten down by a young man that looked almost like Commander Ikari, only with a lot of innocence and with a fluid-like way of the martial arts that he used to defeat them when informed by Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki. That seemed, almost, impossible to believe, considering that all of Section Two had extensive self-defense training, themselves, but then their psyche evaluations would tell, otherwise, when they returned to Tokyo-3. A so-called 'simple visit' to a town that, interestingly enough, is hardly on any maps and has no record of being involved in any conflicts or wars that have gone on since its founding. And even stranger, still, was what had interested her the most about this place: It had been completely unaffected by the Second Impact; there were even women with teenage children living there, as if Second Impact had never happened at all. There was also the possibility of snow reports, which meant there was a series of weather changes that occurred only in that town.

I should probably see this place myself, she thought, typing away on her computer, running a diagnostics check on the MAGI. Is such a thing possible? A place unchanged by the wrath of the Angels from fifteen years ago?

-x-

"Bathing usually cleanses the mind and soul, not just the body," says Mother, thought Rumi, spending her quiet evening taking her third bath of the week. But sometimes, just like Shinji, some of my worst memories always manage to find me in the bath…even one as big as this one.

Sitting by one of the edges of the large, spring-like bathtub, the five-year-old girl found herself with some time to reminisce on her short visit in Tokyo-3, despite wanting to forget about it. She wasn't comfortable with the fact that such a city, with its high-tech and unrivaled…classiness, could appear so soulless and unable to bring a sense of harmony to a person like her. Was it all because Misato had explained that it was designed as a fortress city to repel the creatures NERV had dubbed Angels…or maybe it was because of something else that felt far worse than a case of unknown creatures coming to a city for reasons yet to be known by people? Or…maybe she was just being picky or questionable about other places.

It's not like the time we went to the ruins of that city by the bay, San Francisco, a once-proud city that attracted many people like fireflies, she thought, recalling her conversation to her nephew about the former city and the very trip they took last summer.

"Rumi, why question such a nice place to be in?" Shinji had asked, responding to his little aunt's question of how he could enjoy being surrounded by the remains of tall buildings that stuck out in the ruins by the water.

"But this place is just a bunch of old buildings that stick out of the water with large hills and rusted pieces of metal, weeds, grass and grime," she had told him, sitting on an old car that overlooked the large beach of steel sand that was made by the formation of cars that were piled against each other. "It's not really a good place of interest to me."

"I don't know why I like it," he had told her. "I just feel a calmness being here; like it's a big open space where you can just forget about your worries. Besides, this is one of the only, non-violent places I've ever been to outside of Japan, Rumi."

He's right about that, the girl chuckled as she stared at a small candle that was placed two feet away where she sat in the bath. San Francisco's one of the only, non-violent places he's been to outside of Japan; non-violent because it's been abandoned for years since its ruination. Everywhere else was changed forever by the Second Impact. Hearing about how others had to suffer makes you, who still lives in a place unchanged, think about how lucky you are that your life hasn't been taken or your home destroyed. I don't like suffering, but pain teaches people many things that are true: We learn to never be boastful of our abilities and never take what we get or have for granted. I like to think that, everyday, my family has been blessed with good fortune and love.

As the candlelight faded from her perception, Rumi couldn't help but think about that giant machine she piloted to defeat that monster. She had only felt pain at first when it grabbed her arm, but only at first; she'd even told her mother about this fact, and then beating it became similar to how she and the others would train in the martial arts daily to get stronger in the future where they would have to protect themselves and their loved ones. The Angel felt like a walking doll, almost like that girl Gendo summoned after seeing that she wouldn't allow him to use Shinji like some tool; Rumi found herself, while she was able to show sympathy for the girl's injuries, unable to show sympathy toward the whole of the girl herself, like there was something missing from her.

That girl, Rei, she then thought, now getting up and wading over to the center of the bath to float about. She didn't seem like a regular person… She looked almost like Shinji in one way: Sickly. Her skin was very pale, like chalk; without a doubt, she doesn't get enough sunlight or maybe suffers from albinism and requires medication. But what really bothered me about her was her eye; the very redness of it wasn't normal at all. Who was she? What was she?

As she continued to bathe, Shinji was spending his quiet evening working on his scrapbook that was part of his goal of leaving his mark in the Rokubungi family history. Akira had, more than anyone else, encouraged this and made sure he had what he needed to fill the large book he had that was, initially, empty and bare: Markers, color pencils, photographs and drawings that you could cut out of other books. It's even funny how it started: He was only eleven years old, he had required lymphocytes from Rumi, who willingly donated them, despite his initial belief that she was being forced to do so when finding out from Akira, after he had told her that he didn't want any other donations from his little aunt, after the cord blood requirement that had helped him out after she was born, against her wishes, that she had simply asked her to help him live longer, which she had also wanted, and after he had come out of the hospital, he noticed a little girl with a picture book that wasn't so different from one he used to look at when his mother was alive, filled with talking animals and fairies. He had become inspired to make a book of his own that he could share with the family when he finished it, and so far it had about seven pages left that needed to be filled up with the few remaining photos and scraps. And although he was dyslexic, he could understand some words, large or small, as long as they were big enough and spaced out so that each letter was clear to his perception.

Fantastic, he thought, having glued two pictures of Nemo and Miaka under and over the three pictures of himself, Akira and Taeko. This is coming out better than I had pictured it to.

Looking over at his copy of the family photograph, he found another piece of the solace he gained from living here with people he didn't know, initially, but grew to love them as they explained their wants for him to be in their lives; people that actually gave a care about him and wanted him for him. It made his dislike for Gendo, whom he couldn't even call any fatherly title after their recent and short-lived reunion, all the more less hard for his heart to endure.

Thank you again, he thought, resuming his work on the book.

-x-

Misato, finding out through Kaji about what had happened to some of Section Two's agents when she saw them sporting bandages and casts, wasn't too happy to find out that an order was made to go to the town that didn't exist on many maps (and, strangely, doesn't show up on many GPS systems, either), ignoring the facts of why they weren't supposed to go there in the first place, to pick up the five-year-old Rokubungi girl that had protected the city from the Third Angel in order to protect her fourteen-year-old nephew from his ruthless father…just to pilot the Eva again when they already had Asuka, who was willing to do it, and Rei, once she recovers from her injuries.

Why the sudden interest in a little girl that wants nothing to do with us because of the way we operate? She questioned, looking at the piece of paper that Rumi had given her before she and Shinji left to return home, containing the address and phone number; the address, although, wasn't very proper, as it didn't have a number or a street name; it was located atop a mountain that their town was built around and, interestingly enough, was named after its founder: Akira Town. Well, it couldn't hurt to try and contact them for a conversation. Maybe even an invite.

She picked up the phone and dialed the number in, waiting for the other end to pick up. It buzzed and buzzed until the other end was picked up.

"Rokubungi residence, this is Miaka speaking," the person on the other end responded.

"Um, hello," Misato uttered, "this is Misato Katsuragi. I'm trying to reach a one Rumi Rokubungi. Is she there?"

"She's taking her bath right now. Can I take a message for her? I'll make sure she gets it."

Before she could utter her next word, a sound on the other end came: It sounded like a door opening and footsteps approaching.

"Big sis," went a little girl's voice that sounded like Rumi's. "Out of curiosity, just who are you speaking to?"

"Someone named Misato Katsuragi, who's interested in speaking to you."

"Oh, well, let's see, then."

After three seconds of what appeared to be an exchanging of hands, Misato heard the little girl speak up in the receiver.

"Hello?" She asked.

"Hello, Rumi?" Misato responded.

"Hey, Misato."

"How are you doing?"

"I'm doing fine. You?"

"Work is alright. The reason that I'm calling is…did your family receive any unwanted visitors in the last few hours?"

"There was an unwanted visit from some men in black suits. Their reason for being here was unjust; they wanted me for what that man that turned away from all the good ways of living was trying to make my nephew do for him. Did…you have anything to do with it?"

"No, I didn't; I had just found out about it. That decision was made without even informing me."

"I believe you. Look, um, there's this special festival that's going to happen on the Fourth of July in another three days. Would you like to come to Akira Town to attend it? You're welcome to bring friends if you wish. It's almost comparable to a tourist attraction, except most of the people that attend the festival are all residents of the town."

"Um, sure, but…isn't that day an American holiday?"

"Yes, but not here in the town. While independence is important, it's embraced all the time. Come see it, enjoy yourself there; you might even get blessed with some luck."

"Okay, I'll come. That day will be my day off, anyway."

"Great. When you arrive, a guard will be there. Let them know I invited you over. Bye-bye."

She seems like a nice girl whenever she talks like that, like a real girl, Misato thought as she hung the phone up. I guess I might as well ask Ritsuko and the others if they'd like to attend with me.

-x-

Setting the phone away, Rumi sighed. She had just invited to the Fú Festival a woman that sent her nephew a provocative picture of herself and worked for the same organization that her outsider of an estranged big brother controlled, and that very man had sent people to come take her. And while it was true that she believed the older woman was being sincere when she said that she had nothing to do with the MIB that arrived earlier, she couldn't help but wonder why such an organization would be interested in her at all; their original interest was just Shinji, but now it was directed at her. She, like Shinji, didn't like being the center of any unwanted attention; time in the hospital in Shinji's case, and admirers, stalkers and the like in Rumi's case.

Sitting in the chair beside the counter that held the phone, she took a few breaths to calm her pulse, following the practices that her mother had instructed her to perform when she first started her martial arts training at the age of three years.

"Rumi?" She heard her mother's voice and looked up at her. "Are you okay?"

Clutching her bathrobe to keep it closed, the little five-year-old responded, "Yes, Mommy, I'm fine."

Akira chuckled, not buying that for a second, but knew her daughter would confess in her own time, and decided to change the subject.

"Looking forward to the festival?" She asked her.

"Very," Rumi answered back. "I have every right to be excited about it, right? I mean, the festival's good for me, as it is for every other child that drew their first breath on that day."

Akira knew what she was talking about; the Fú Festival had also been, oddly enough, Rumi's birthday.

-x-

Fú Festival of Two-Thousand-Nine

It wasn't a way that Akira wanted to enjoy the day, but what choice did she have? What choice did any other members of the family have? Doctor Gyatso, who also had a few degrees in prenatal healthcare, had informed her, once Rumi had been conceived and designed to be a perfect match for Shinji's failing health, that she'd probably be due on the Third of July, the day before the American holiday, and, as any expecting parent, was packed for her stay in the hospital a month early. To add a different wrinkle to how she was living each day in her pregnancy, she had to deal with Shinji's tormented state of emotions almost three months ago when he threw a large fit.

She had walked over to his room, which had been sparse and bare because he didn't show much interest in having any possessions, despite Nemo's insistence that he should act like a spoiled brat every once in a while (but Akira got the feeling that Shinji ignored him out of slight fear because of his subtle, facial similarities to Gendo, the very man that discarded him), knocked on the door to question Shinji on why he'd been playing loud music that seemed to promote unnecessary violence, but she got no response.

"Shinji? What are you doing in there?" She called out to him, but only heard him making a noise that didn't seem normal. "Shinji, come on. Let me in! I really need to talk with you."

Knock-knock!

"Aaurgh!" She heard him in his room, and then a crashing sound.

"Shinji!" She shouted, now banging on the door. "Shinji, you let me in this instant, please!"

The door suddenly opened and revealed Shinji with a bad expression on his face; he looked like he'd been crying all day and was wearing a wig that showed a wilder range of hair, unlike his traditional wig that showed the kinder version of his younger self before it started falling out due to his chemotherapy.

"Shinji, are you…" She started to say, but smelled something that reminded her of Bumi's adult lifestyle a bit. "What's going on in here? You smell like alcohol, Shinji. What are you doing?"

"Nothing," he said to her, but she knew he was lying to her. "I'm just…having a little party."

"But your birthday isn't for another two months."

"Not a birthday party, Grandmother. A going-away party."

"What?!" She gasped, and saw him holding one of Bumi's beer bottles in his left hand, indicating that he was, or had been, drinking a little before she found out, and threw it against a wall, shattering it. "What are you doing, Shinji?!"

"I'm leaving!" He yelled at her, having trashed his room and was now ready to finish the job with himself, holding up a bottle of sleeping pills that Shinobu had asked about because they went missing a few days ago.

"Shinji, no!" She cried out as she jumped him to the floor, seeing that he had just taken a lot of them in front of her. "Spit them out, Shinji! Spit them… What is wrong with you?! Spit them out!"

He kicked and struggled, even hitting her distended abdomen, but she took the pain and held onto his neck and made him cough out the pills as he cried out in sadness. When he was down coughing each and every one out, she let him go and dropped to her hands and knees, cutting herself on some broken glass by the fallen radio that Miaka had gotten him for his seventh birthday, and turned it off so they could converse on equal hearing grounds.

"You were gonna try and kill yourself?" She asked him, wanting the reason to the why. "You were gonna take your own life?! What's wrong with you?"

"My father doesn't want me around, anymore. My mother's gone! And it's not suicide if you're already dying!" He told her, still crying.

"You think we're happy about what has happened to you, Shinji? We're upset that he walked out of your life, too, but we're happy to have met you. I'm happy that you're here with us. But I'm not happy that you don't see that."

"You're already replacing me," he had pointed to her stomach, indicating potential jealousy of the unborn Rumi to Akira.

"She's not going to replace you, Shinji; that's not why I'm having her." She told him, placing her left hand on her belly.

"Then, why?"

"To keep you here with us because we don't want you to die. Most importantly because, even if it's true that your father doesn't love you, we do, back then and still."

"Are those the only reasons?"

"No, Shinji, but they are the most important ones."

"What are the other reasons?"

"Because I'm a mother, and I'd do anything for my children, even my grandchildren."

"Who would give a care for a sick boy like me?"

"I would, Shinji. You didn't choose to be sick twenty-four/seven, and I didn't choose for your parents to no longer be a part of your life; it's not so different from me not wanting my husband to die over a century ago and leaving me alone to raise my two daughters of that time."

"Over a century ago?"

"Yes, I might as well tell you more about myself. Everyone else knows, so it'd make no sense not to tell you about it. Shinji, I'm over one-hundred years old. I may look like a young woman, but I'm actually old enough to probably be your great-great-great-grandmother. Maybe older than that, but I've lived long enough to have had many children, but in the beginning, only two of those children were of my own blood. Before my husband died, he told me not to grieve on him, that I had too much love in my heart to wallow in despair. He told me that to live for our children…and any other children that existed out there in the future, even if they weren't mine. And he was right; not many of those children I had in the future up to the present were related to me by blood. Your uncles and aunts, even your father, they were all adopted, but I love them enough that blood and genes don't mean a thing to me. They know who they are to me and to each other, that this home is theirs as much as it's mine, and that it's even okay to feel the way that you probably feel right now. If there's something bothering you, you can tell us about it and we'd listen. We don't ever neglect our family, and if you can't always see me as a grandmother, I hope you can see me as a friend. Okay?"

Shinji nodded and hugged her, apologizing for what he had done and almost did, as well as trashing his room. Akira didn't pay the damages any mind, since the walls were mostly smooth and polished rock instead of wood and some of the material possessions he had could easily be replaced. It was the people in your life that you feel for, however, that could never be replaced, no matter what you did.

It was after that day that Shinji became a changed boy; he didn't dwell on his past with what could've been and lived each day with a better clarity that was provided to him by Akira. He even felt more comfortable talking to her about things that hadn't happened yet, like when she told him that when Rumi was born, he might never be sick again, which is what all of them were hoping for.

It felt like all of that was only a year ago, thought Akira, as she looked outside her patient room window at the lights that lit up the streets for the eve festival that she and the others were missing out on. "You know, you guys can go enjoy yourselves out there. I'll be fine."

"Right, and miss the arrival of our new sister?" Nemo asked, taking his eyes off his book to look at her from across the room. "Forget it, Mother. We're staying here with you."

"You couldn't send us away, even if you tried to, Mom," went Bumi. "Besides, you're not the only woman that's missing the festival that shouldn't even be happening until midnight, so what's going on out there is like a Fú Festival Eve. There are at least six other women expecting children, and half of them are holding out until midnight. Something about a Fú Festival baby getting things."

"The first baby born on the day of the Fú Festival is entitled to twelve packs of diapers and baby wipes for free and five-hundred dollars for some far-off college life," explained Kanami to them, while reading the newspaper of the day. "Oh, it looks like some Pyro Channelers are getting involved with the fireworks at the festival tomorrow."

Miaka, being the quiet woman that she usually is half the time during events like this one, uttered, "So, um, anyone wanna say what they'd want to say to Rumi when she grows up?"

"I thank Rumi for coming into our lives when things became boring," said Nemo.

"I thank my sister for enjoying my meals when I cook them," Kanami added, "and being a kind playmate to Shinji, Mayo and Taeko."

As they each said what they wanted to say to Rumi when she was old enough to understand, Akira could only think of two different things that were going on here: Herself with her contractions and Shinji going about his checkup and potential chemotherapy since he was up in the night with Tsukiko, since she wanted to make sure that none of the kids were being neglected when she went into labor earlier that day. Tsukiko had even informed her that Shinji was more concerned about her and Rumi than he wasn't with himself right now.

Looking at a clock, she registered the time as being eleven minutes until midnight, and then she started to feel pain in her stomach again.

"Ow! Ow, ow, ow!" She groaned. "I think I need the doctor. Now."

Nemo and Kanami both got up and went to retrieve the doctor assigned to her. Both started asking each other questions about what could happen.

"What do you think?" Nemo started.

"I think our new sis might be entitled to free diapers," Kanami answered him.

"And about those three letters that everybody refers to as hate mail?"

"The people that found out don't understand the seriousness of the situation we were all facing. They think that we're all trying to have a designer baby, but that's not like we're trying to achieve a…a…"

"Artificial perfection?"

"Yeah, Nemo, that. Thank you very much."

"Yeah, we're not trying to do that, even though we asked for specific traits, but they were only some of our nephew's traits in order to do the nigh-impossible: Try to keep him alive for as long as possible because he deserves to live as much as any other person that suffers from a cancer does."

"It's probably better that we try to do so for Shinji than that jerk that never did."

"Yeah, it is better, because if he leaves a message that says not to call him unless it's important when it is truly is important, then it only means one or two things: One) He doesn't really care about his only son if he left him at Bumi's when he was four. Two) He might have a god complex and family pales in comparison to power. I'd like to believe in the second possibility, but my soul tells me it's the first one."

"Nemo, once again, I take your beliefs and opinions seriously."

When they found Akira's doctor and brought her back to her room, she checked her cervix and said she was only eight centimeters along and had to wait a while longer for the other two centimeters to catch up before anything happened.

"All the other women are still holding out," she told them, her disbelief in the expectant mothers' desire to have their children born on the Fourth of July practically nonexistent now. "And midnight's only six minutes away now."

"Oh!" Akira groaned, unsure what was worse: The pain or the waiting. Short time till the birthing…but a long time to wait for it to happen.

After three more minutes, Akira's doctor checked her cervix again, and declared that Rumi was getting ready to crown.

"It might not even matter if you hold out or not. Your kid's gonna be very popular after midnight, another two minutes away," she told her.

"Oh, and I wasn't trying for any popularity at all," Akira groaned, as the nurses came and carted her off to the delivery room. "Oh!"

It wasn't even until fifteen seconds after every clock in the hospital struck twelve at midnight did people hear a new baby crying. That was Rumi, the newest addition to the Rokubungi family, and the youngest girl with the designation of being an aunt. The doctor, being reminded by Bumi and Miaka, who acted as the conscious behind what was supposed to happen after Rumi was born, made sure not to dispose of the umbilical cord that still possessed the blood required to, hopefully, put Shinji into permanent remission. She cut it from Rumi's body, gave it to one of the female nurses that would take it to be frozen for later use, and went back to tending to the nigh-timeless mother and her new daughter.

"Congratulations, Akira," she told her as she handed her Rumi's wrapped form. "Rumi's the first Fourth of July baby in town this year, which is also the day of the Fú Festival. She's very special right now."

"Yes," Akira had spoken her first words about her new daughter after her birth. "She is special."

-x-

That was most difficult for me to handle, two things at once that required a lotta energy, thought Akira, carrying her daughter to her room, which was across the hall from Shinji's. "Did you have anything planned with anyone, Rumi?"

"Just Shinji, Mayo and Taeko," Rumi answered her, being set down so that she could go put on her pajamas. "We're going to go watch the channelers a little before eating hotdogs, noodles and cotton candy, try to win prizes from the games, maybe even a fish or two, and then rest up before doing it allover again. Though, with my inviting a few outsiders, I may have to alter the schedule a little."

"Well, tourists do have a tendency to need to be shown around in order to understand how our home functions differently than other towns and cities."

Rumi placed on her lingerie, which consisted of gray, cotton panties and a blue undershirt, and then her pajamas of the next clean period, which was an oversized, green shirt.

"I'm hoping Shinji has a nice time at the festival," she told her mother.

"Same here," Akira responded. "Goodnight, Rumi."

"Goodnight, Mother."

-x-

"…And what's so special about this festival that's going on that day?" Asuka asked Misato, sounding uninterested in attending a good event.

"In the town, it's called the Fú Festival, celebrated every Fourth of July," explained Ritsuko for her, having read up on whatever information on Akira Town was available, known scarcely as the only place in Japan to avoid the massive devastation caused by Second Impact. "The festival was created sometime after the town was founded, though it wasn't due to the federal holiday; it was due to their belief that good luck and fortune would be blessed to the people on that day. It became a treasured gathering for the town people to embrace luck and good fortune."

"It sounds like something you see every year in other places," the redhead uttered, still sounding uninterested in going.

"Festivals like that never happen in Tokyo-3," Misato told her, and then sighed, "and I asked Kaji if he wanted to go, as well…and he said he'll be there."

That lit up the girl's face and she said, "I'm there."

Figures, she'd go if he was going, thought the purple head as she had now invited six people to come to the festival she'd been invited to (now, six people, including everyone's favorite animal mascot). I wonder what they'll have that'll be good to enjoy there?

As she was gathering up her invited guests, Gendo, having heard from Fuyutsuki, was also thinking of attending the festival, despite knowing that it would mean going back to Akira Town, the one place he had sworn not to go back to, no matter what. And the reasons to why he wanted to attend weren't because of the possible luck that people tend to get while there; his reasons were more personal.

-x-

"…So, what will you get Rumi this year, Bumi?" Miaka asked her husband, as she was preparing lunch the day before the festival.

"I might get her another stuffed animal, except that I've gotten her a stuffed animal every time," he answered, wanting to think of a good gift for his baby sister. "Do you have any suggestions?"

"Well, we could probably try getting her a book; Rumi does read in half of her free time."

"Yeah, and she surrounds herself in the literature of family dramas, which makes up a third of the genres she enjoys. What was that book you got her last year?"

"Looking for Home, and she told me she enjoyed it. I looked around the bookshops and found another book I think she might like, My Sister's Keeper, which also has a film adaptation with it."

"Why that one?"

"Well, despite it being fiction, it focuses on a family's struggle to save one of their own, kinda like how we try to, and how the family goes to many extremes to ensure the family that lives together stays together. In a way, it almost mirrors our own family; we're just real."

Bumi then looks away from her, toward a small rock that was just laying on the counter near his right arm, and he raises his left arm…which, like a magnet, attracts the rock as it shoots right off the counter and into his palm. He chuckles as he holds it in front of her face.

"You still got it, a sign that age and stress haven't gotten the better of you," she told him.

"In the last ten years, we've all barely aged; I only look four years older, and you're only two years older, half the years I've gone through already."

Suddenly, Nemo showed up and asked if they've seen Shinji.

"Yeah, Kanami and Mayo took him to the hospital for his monthly checkup," Bumi told him.

"I can see why," Nemo chuckled, but it was only a half-hearted chuckle; they all knew that Shinji just wanted to confirm if he was well enough to attend two events instead of having to face the possibility that he may have to spend another period of time in the hospital again because of his illness. "Where did he pick up his sense of precautions again?"

"Uh, I think he got them from you, Nemo," Miaka told him, tossing him an apple. "You did show him that film Monster House when he was ten…and he wanted to see Virus."

"The latter film was too scary at the time, and the former film was the lesser of the two horrors." Nemo confessed. "Have you ever seen the sculptures I keep in my floor closet? They're not always pleasant to look at when you're at a young age to know fear. Anyhow, I wanted his opinion on a gift I wanted to get Rumi at the festival."

"Oh?" Bumi and Miaka went.

"A yukata with a panda pattern on it," Nemo told them.

"Oh, that's really sweet," Miaka said. "Next to tigers, Rumi loves pandas the best."

-x-

"…Well, Shinji," said Dr. Gyatso to the fourteen-year-old boy that sat on the examination table as the aged man looked at his test results. "With all things considered, you're as fit as you were when you came back from your short trip to that city. Your CBC shows that your blood count is normal, your breathing exercises have done some good to your lungs and your kidneys are still in good condition. And how do you rate your pain of a scale of one to ten?"

"I'd say about three," Shinji told him.

"And your nutrition hasn't withered. My prognosis: You are fit to enjoy the festival and your aunt's birthday party."

"Thank you, doctor."

As Shinji got up off the table to leave, Gyatso stopped him.

"Aren't you forgetting something, Shinji?" He asked him.

"I don't think so," he answered back, and noticed Gyatso pointing to a plastic jar of cherry and grape-flavored lollipops. "Oh! How forgetful I am."

"You're never too old for one of these," Gyatso told him, and gave him a cherry-flavored one. "Have fun tomorrow."

"You, as well, Dr. Gyatso," he gave his thanks and left out the room to return home with his elder aunt and cousin.

Of all the good people that live here, he had to be part of the two percent of the population that we strive for to live long lives, thought Gyatso, putting Shinji's now-current medical form away with the rest of his file that was part of the collective documents of the Rokubungi family's medical history over the years of their existence. I had always hoped that he would be part of the few that could beat the odds all the time. Sometimes, I feel that I've failed him on every medical scale for the last five years after Rumi was born. I know my studies on cord blood were accurate; it was just that it was effective in some cases. Just some cases and I had hoped…we had all hoped…that it would help him recover and beat the odds of a short life. And for two years, it did, until he went and relapsed. I never stopped blaming myself for that happening.

The stroll down memory lane was often tormenting for the aged doctor; it was filled with many failures and false starts. But it was his memories of having to see Shinji suffer each time he relapsed that made him feel that he was unworthy of being a practitioner of medicine. He was always trying to ensure that there were always two paths for someone to take when suffering: The path of relief and the path of less suffering. But it always seemed that there was a third path for Shinji: The path of the hopeless, which was a path that Gyatso hated himself for, unintentionally, and, quite possibly, providing him.

He remembers the week after Rumi was born that Shinji was prepped for surgery to transplant the cord blood into his system in the hopes that Rumi, being his perfect match, would put him into permanent remission. Shinji seemed, somewhat, hesitant that he was getting a transplant from his newborn aunt; this stemmed from having the philosophy that when something is willingly given to you by another person, it has value, and this was taught to him by Kanami Rokubungi herself. Even though Rumi was too young at the time to actually say anything to anybody, it wasn't something she was going to miss or need later on. Shinji accepted, albeit reluctantly, and confused when he looked at certain picture books that belonged to medical practices; he became confused at how such a substance from the bones of a person could be called an organ to help another person.

It had been about two weeks after the transplant and it looked like the cord blood was doing its job; Shinji was more active than when he was on chemotherapy, and his hair was growing back to the way it was before it fell out during said therapy. Gyatso was proud that he had helped out in saving a life; it was always in his interests that young people lived to see the rest of the world. Although, unlike the many doctors that never lived in the town of Akira, he always had the troubling feeling that he couldn't let go of his friend's grandson's health just yet, and after two years…he was right.

It's bad enough that he's the only person in town that has APL; everyone else has AML or the other common forms of cancer, but it's hard to keep finding ways of extending his life. If it's not the requirement of bone marrow, it's lymphocytes or granulocytes. The only other thing that prevents him from receiving any operations that delay the inevitable is his unwillingness to accept a donation from Rumi unless it's of her own volition. Gyatso thought, deciding to look over at Shinji's medical history to review everything that has happened in the last ten years. What really bothers me about his unique case is that we needed to start getting whatever it was that we needed for him from Rumi the moment she was born, but it's like there's some god out there that's trying to say that, regardless of what we try, no matter what we do…it'll never be enough to save him. But I can't fully believe that. If there is something that can save him from the inevitable, without having to sacrifice another person, then people that are familiar with his case are sure to find it, eventually.

Looking over it, it was easy for him to see how the boy's medical history had intertwined with that of his youngest aunt's history; whenever he was in the hospital, she wasn't too far behind him.

-x-

…Something very bad is happening out there in the rest of the world, thought Rumi, having difficulty gazing up at the beautiful sky above on the garden grounds of the family estate, and I can't stop thinking about what happened in Tokyo-3…along with what almost happened here at home.

It was the day before the festival, and the future six-year-old girl couldn't help but wonder if something wrong was going to happen on her birthday.

"Rumi?" She heard her niece, Mayo, standing three feet away from where she laid. "It's almost lunch time. Bumi sent me to get you."

"Oh, well, thank you, Mayo," she praised her.

"Are you okay? You seemed bothered by something?"

"I, uh, well… It's that man again. Gendo."

"What he tried to do to you?"

"Yeah. I mean, what could possess a man to send people in black suits to go after a five-year-old girl that wanted only to protect her fourteen-year-old nephew from him, just to go and… Am I making any sense to you, Mayo?"

"Perfect sense. I can understand where you're coming from, and the only answer I can give you about what kind of man that would do such a thing is the guy we don't like."

"I'm also reconsidering going out to the festival the day after tomorrow."

"What?! But it's your birthday! Why wouldn't you wanna go have fun out there in the town?"

"He might try something on that day; just because he hasn't been here since he left doesn't mean there's no guarantee that he'll not be here this year."

"But Shinji just came back from the doctor to confirm if he was in good condition to attend the festival with us; he wants to have fun with you more than anything on that day."

Rumi got up off her back and asked her niece, "He…went to see Dr. Gyatso for me?"

"Yeah. We all know how he feels about being in the hospital every time he has an infection or when he relapses; he becomes depressed and unhappy, like he's ruined a good day."

Rumi then took off her dog tags to look at them; they had been engraved with her and Shinji's names the day after she had received them. They were meant to demonstrate to her, each and everyday, how special her nephew was to herself. Their very lives had been intertwined the second she was born; she cared too much about him to let him suffer from his illness.

Kami, please, just spare my nephew from any further agony, she thought, dangling them in front of their faces. He's already been through too many operations and they hurt those that care about him.

As she placed her tags back on and got up off the grass, Rumi took a deep breath and told her niece, "Okay, I'll go to the festival and embrace my birthday, but if something does go wrong, we're going home, right there and then, where it's safe."

"I can live with that; you're my aunt, therefore, you're responsible."

"I'm only responsible…when I need to be, but I'm no different from a regular child… I just have a set of genes that make me a suitable match for my only nephew."

"Hey…you know nobody treats you like… Well, what that man called Shinji, right?"

"Of course. There's never been a day that I view the way you treat me being any different. Like I said before, I'm no different from y'all."

Mayo smiled, saying, "That's right. You're no different from us."

-x-

"…Doctor Akagi-Sempai, we've been getting strange abnormalities from Unit-01," said Maya to her teacher, examining the core of the purple Eva.

"Really? How unusual?" Ritsuko asked.

"Well, internal scans show that there's nothing actually wrong with it; no contamination or such, but it would appear to be… I don't know, like it's unhappy."

Unhappy? Ritsuko thought, now curious to this change in the Eva's development. But Evas don't feel the way we do; they shouldn't be able to feel at all the way we do.

Now that she thought about it, the purple monstrosity did seem to appear different than before it went into battle with the Third Angel; it seemed to be depressed ever since the Third Child and his little aunt left to go home, afterwards. And she guessed it had a good reason to be depressed after hearing that he had a condition that was killing him very slowly each day; normally, young children afflicted with a terminal illness like leukemia almost never made it past the age of five. She assumed it was by short-lived advances in medical science (like the little girl herself) that allowed him to survive this long, not because of some hopeful miracles.

"It might be nothing, but just to be sure, we'll double-check the readings," she told Maya, her mind being focused more on the Eva now than the festival they were invited to by Misato, who had been invited by the little girl. I wonder if a boost in scientific advancement is part of the festival, as well.

As the women continued to work on the purple Eva, said Eva did indeed seem depressed. It was due to its spiritual resident, Yui Ikari, wallowing over all that she had seen in the little girl, Rumi's memories of her own son, Shinji; how he'd been living with his terminal illness ever since he was diagnosed with it, and how she had been conceived to try and save his life. All this girl had were happy days with her ill nephew that she cared about more than herself, wanting only for him to live and have a good life; Rumi had even been asked by him many times of what she pictured her future being like, and she would always answer in the same way: She pictured a good life in the town named after her mother, who was a well-respected centenarian of unfathomable wisdom, strength of body and mind, along with a history of adopting children and teaching them all that she knew and cherishing them as though they were her own, despite the lack of blood ties, meeting new people that came to either visit the town or to live within it in order to obtain a new lease on life, meeting that future somebody that was the one for her and then, potentially, starting a family of her own. The little girl was like his best friend in a way, always there to give him praise…or whatever it was that his body required to live because she never wanted him to leave the family while so young.

The only thing that really pained Yui was that when it came to the more secretive memories of the girl (which weren't hidden away from the Eva itself), it was the memory of when her son's kidneys had nearly quit on him and she knew she would have to donate one of her own to save him, only Shinji would have none of that happening; he believed that if he were to die from the loss of his kidneys, then it would have to be that way. He was tired of living just to see his inevitable death, having lived past many expected days and years where others had thought he would die, only to bounce back yet again. It wasn't only that, but because he didn't have any faith left in another operation, since a kidney transplant wasn't a guaranteed procedure, as it was potentially hazardous to both himself and to his young aunt. "Beyond that, I don't want my aunt to have to be careful for the rest of her life. Who would want to do that, anyway?" He had asked the other members of the family. Though Yui could see, from Rumi's point of view, that they had to accept that such words he used were true, Rumi wasn't entirely convinced because she still hoped to see him live a long life without the pain of his illness, even going so far as to wish for a massive amount of luck for him to be rid of his condition on an upcoming festival in their town.

Shinji…I hope that you may find it in your heart to forgive your parents for what they've done, thought Yui as she 'slumped' in misery. I never did take into account any of the possible risks of what could've happened later.

-x-

Tweet, tweet! The singing birds that lived in the town and on the mountain brought a series of irritated groans from many of the people that lived in Akira Town, particularly Rumi, who still wanted to sleep some more. She praised not requiring an alarm clock much of the time when the birds that had survived Second Impact in the town had the task of waking up her home.

"Oh! Ah…another day, another moment of life," she yawned, and then recalled what today was. Happy Birthday to you, Rumi. You're officially six years old today.

She got out of her bed and slipped her feet into her panda bear slippers. Stepping out of her room and walking toward the kitchen and seeing her mother asleep at the table.

"This is new," Rumi told herself, never seeing Akira asleep at the table before. "Mother?"

Akira stirred and opened her eyes; she, apparently, had an all-nighter again, which explained why she slept in her daily clothes instead of her pajamas.

"Oh," she yawned, seeing her daughter in front of her. "Good morning, Rumi."

"Good morning, Mother," greeted Rumi back.

"Did you sleep well?"

"Yes, I did. Did you?"

"No, not really. I had an unusual nightmare about you."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. You see, I saw you in a city that was probably Tokyo-3, but you were bound in shackles and standing in front of people wearing military uniforms and cruel expressions. Do…do you remember my telling you about the special ceremonies that only occur here when a task or duty is given to a person or group of people to carry out?"

"Yes, Mother. It's one of the town's oldest traditions."

"My nightmare was kind of like that, but with a flaw. You see, the people in the city were waiting for you to swear an oath for them that you would help them change the world for as long as you would live, that you would remove the weak and unworthy, among other things and people. And then they bowed to you, like how the ceremonies here are done…except that when they bowed…"

Rumi saw the look of hurt on her mother's face and cut her off, saying, "Except that I didn't bow back, unwilling to accept the task or duty they bestowed upon me."

"Yes."

Rumi then placed her head on her mother's lap to soothe her. It was always a rare moment that she ever saw Akira bothered by something other than what was tangible…and what could've occurred in the past or future. She didn't like it when her mother was pained by such worries; it troubled her with the possibility that something terrible could happen later on.

"I know, how about you come with Shinji, Mayo, Taeko and I to the festival," she suggested.

"Maybe, but I'd have to do something important for you first," Akira told her. "This year, you get four toys from me on your birthday, dearest."

"Yay," she cheered, though it was quiet to avoid disturbing the peace of the others that were still asleep in their rooms. "Thank you, Mom."

As her daughter retreated back to her room to change out of her pajamas, Akira went back to recalling her nightmare; she didn't tell Rumi of the detail in which she saw her being forced into a creature that could've been described as whatever it was that she piloted back in the city. And then, in the process…the thing had somehow eaten her, body and all. She didn't want that to be real; it would've been too much to bear upon her soul, and as much as it hurt her to lose any of her children, it would've been awful to lose her daughter at such a young age.

I won't let her get hurt like that, she thought, deciding to go to her room and change out of her clothes from yesterday and clean up. I won't.

-x-

The sci-fi stores were probably some of Nemo's favorite places to go to in town; they were like a haven for many otaku like himself, though he didn't consider himself much of an otaku, even if he was sometimes; he usually preferred the term 'addict', since it was like a drug for him that he didn't require any negative requirements for, such as a needle. It was also where he was looking for something to get his baby sister. His first idea was to get her an action figure, but then had to smack himself on the head; Rumi didn't have much of a thing for action figures, as they were more for boys than for girls. He also thought of a toy for her, but realized that this was the year that their mother would be getting her four of them, so he didn't really have to. Another option was a movie, since they all liked movies. So, spending some time looking at the collection of DVDs of all genres, from action to comedy, Nemo wanted to get one for her that was right about her age in mental development, had the right amount of fun and adventure, and not so much of any horror. His eyes stopped upon an old film that promised such an amount: Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland.

Okay, he thought, reaching out to get it, but his hand made contact with another hand. Okay, who's the wise one to think they can get this from me?

Looking toward the hand's owner, he gazed into the hazel-colored eyes of a lovely young woman with brownish-red hair and an elegant appeal. She looked back at him and lowered her arm down.

"I'm sorry," she apologized to him.

"Gomen nasai," he also apologized. "Were you reaching for Little Nemo, too?"

"Um, yes. Yes, I was. I had looked at comic strips of it and had been searching for the film of it. Were you going for it?"

"Well, yes. Today's my sister's birthday, and I thought she'd enjoy that film. Oh, where are my manners? I apologize, ma'am, I'm Nemo Rokubungi. And you are?"

"I'm Camille, Camille Moto."

"Wow, what a lovely name."

"Believe it or not, my father wanted to call me Sagi; he said I reminded him of a liar at first."

"Now, that's terrible. You don't look like a liar; you look more like the princess in the cartoon that has the same name as you."

"Say, were you named after the boy from the comic strips?"

"Nope, I was named after my late great-great-grandfather, Nemo Souma."

"Huh? I thought your last name was Rokubungi."

"It is; I was adopted when I was three."

"So…you mean you're one of Elder Akira Rokubungi's children?"

"Yes."

"Wow, I almost didn't recognize you because of your aura; you seem so innocent."

"Yeah, that's what people tell me. Um, you can have the movie if you want it; I'll find another one."

"No, no, you go on ahead and have it. I mean, it's for your sister, isn't it? She'll enjoy it. Is she a sci-fi lover, as well?"

"No. Uh, wait; you're an addict of science fiction, too?"

"Yeah, I enjoy the wonders of the world of make believe. My favorite film of all time is Perfect Blue."

"Are you for real? Perfect Blue? The one made by the great Satoshi Kon himself?"

"Yes, that one."

"I loved that film, too. Even the American film Red Planet was great."

"You saw that one, as well? Kami, you must have a great collection at your house."

"I consider my collection very small, though my sisters and brother say that it's huge."

"Maybe I'll see you at the festival tonight?"

"Yes, yes."

"Okay, then," she said, and then selected a different movie off the shelf and left to purchase it. "It was nice talking to you."

"It was nice talking to you, as well," he told her, and then looked at the DVD in his hands. Wow.

-x-

Akira became very concerned over her youngest daughter's future now. It wasn't the nightmare that was bothering her now; it was the toys that Rumi picked out. They were a stuffed dragon, a kite shaped like a bird, a mask shaped like a catfish's face and a carrying case that looked like a well-made, oversized mole. They bothered her because they represented the four elements most of the town could channel through themselves: Fire, Air, Water and Earth, respectively. The problem wasn't just that she had picked them out for herself, but the fact that, long ago, Akira herself had picked out four toys that used similar specific animals that her daughter's toys had been used to represent the elements. All four elements. It was a common factor among the town's traditions that when you don't know what element your child will embody, you allow them to pick out four toys that they like; it was a method used to show if they were blessed with such a power or not. Except Rumi wasn't told of this yet, and this was the primary reason for Akira's concern over Rumi.

Her toys aren't that different from the ones I used to play with…which were no different from the toys of others like me. She thought, driving Bumi's hydroelectric and solar-powered jeep back up the mountain path to their home. Should I ask her why she picked them out, why she chose them and not some other toys?

Rumi didn't like the silence, wondering if she had done something wrong to cause it.

"Did I do something bad, Mommy?" She asked her.

"Oh, no, Rumi," she told her. "You still surprised me with the toys you picked out. Why did you pick out these specific toys, anyway?"

Rumi tried to find an answer, but it was difficult; it was like there was a voice in her head telling her to find those toys and acquire them. The last time she checked, she didn't even like dragons very much…or moles or fish as much as she liked pandas and tigers.

"I…I…I think I did something wrong," she told Akira.

"No, Rumi, sweetie, you did nothing wrong. It was me. There was another tradition that I didn't tell you of that I probably should've said earlier."

"Which tradition?"

"One of the traditions used to find out what elements children will channel and which ones they won't. You see, when you can't tell for sure what element a child is blessed with, you give them a test by placing them in front of a large selection of toys, often asking them to choose four. If a child selects two or three toys that represent the same element and the other ones representing different elements, and that's only if they don't choose all four under the same element, you'll know which one they've been blessed with. But you see, you chose four toys that pertain to all four elements. So, assuming what you did was no coincidence, you may have the power to channel all the elements…just like I can…just like there have been others that were blessed with such a gift."

"You mean…you can channel the other elements? But…I only ever see you channel air, so I've always assumed you were an Aero Channeler."

"That's because air is my commonly-used element. It's also the element I started off with. I didn't train with the other three until I became of proper disciplinary age, which varies among many channelers. In my case, it was sixteen, the standard age that all channelers that can control all the elements begin to learn the other practices."

"Have you seen others that could…like you?"

"No, Rumi, though I wish I did. I was lonely before I met the love of my life long ago; I devoted my time to maintaining control over my blessing, which took me a total of eighteen years to master. Out of everyone in the whole town, I'm the only one that is stronger than the rest. I'm always at my peak."

They reached the gate and got out of Bumi's jeep, once again thankful that he acquired one that ran on water and solar energies instead of harmful substances like gasoline and oil. Rumi became concerned about knowing all of this; if it was true, then it also meant that she might not have a good life if there were those that might try to exploit such a wondrous gift she had been blessed with.

"Mommy, what if I just made a mistake?" She asked her as they walked inside the gardens. "And…if I didn't make one, which element would I have to learn first?"

Akira looked over at the concern on her daughter's face and explained, "Mistakes like this don't happen every generation, Rumi. And don't call it a mistake. A mistake is calling a blessing a curse. And the first element that you'll start with…depends entirely on you. You alone can choose which one to begin with; no one else is allowed to choose for you. It's your decision. I chose Air and once I mastered that element, I had to continue with Water as the second; Earth was next and Fire was last."

"Does it have to be in that pattern? Why does Water come after Air? Why not Water and Fire and then Earth and Air?"

"It's in that pattern because the different principles and disciplines will help you. If you tried to learn an art out of order, you'd end up causing trouble for yourself. I made that mistake once when I was the physical age you see in front of you. I tried to learn the arts of fire after I had mastered air, but my instructors from the past told me never to deviate from the pattern. "Water and Earth must come after Air, Akira, not Fire. Water is cool and soothing, it brings relief. Earth is hard and enduring, it brings stability. But fire…fire is alive, and when misused, it causes great harm to both yourself and those around you." One of my teachers told me…and I didn't heed his warnings when I still attempted to learn fire; the lack of understanding created for me a layer of my grief."

"W…what happened?"

"I had burnt the left side of my back, receiving a third degree burn that would've required months to heal if not for one of my Hydro Channeling instructors healing me. "The inexperienced hunter doesn't leap until after he looks," he told me. "When the apple falls hard from the tree, you had best look up before trying to evade potential harm." After that, I took the disciplines hard and never deviated again, mastering fire last."

"Will I…have to start learning them now?" Rumi asked her.

"No, not now. Maybe when you're sixteen…or in another year or two, once you build up more self-control. Just not now. Besides, it's your birthday. I want you to have fun today, not wallow over what you'll need to do in the future. Besides, learning to control the elements can wait as long as you wish. I'd never force you to learn them against your will."

"Thank you, Mother, and I think the first element I'll want to start with is air."

"Okay, Rumi. Now, let's go get changed for the festival, yes?"

"Okay!"

-x-

As the sun went down, the town came to life with lanterns, music, games, dances, kimonos, yukatas and people walking the roads. This was the Fú Festival that the town enjoyed each year. It even attracted several out-of-towners that had time to waste…and they found some luck of their own.

"Nemo!" Nemo heard Camille call out to him. "Over here!"

Nemo, swapping his casual street clothes for a navy-blue and black kimono, saw the young woman wearing a bluish-green yukata that reminded him of the princess from the cartoon movie he had acquired for his little sister.

"Wow," he uttered, "you look…so beautiful."

"Wow, thank you very much, Nemo," she praised him. "Well, is there anything you wish to do?"

"Well, there's the ring toss game. Do you care to try with me?"

"Sure."

As they fancied themselves to the game, at the front of the town, Misato, Ritsuko, Maya, Asuka, Pen-Pen, Kaji, Makoto Hyuga and Shigeru Aoba (Shigeru had been invited because he had nothing else to do, other than play with his guitar) had arrived toward a guard that had been posted there; what really bothered them, though, was that the town seemed very difficult to find, even when they had a good map of how to get there.

"Um, Rumi Rokubungi invited us here," Misato told the guard.

"Katsuragi, Misato?" He asked her.

"Yes," she confirmed.

"Ah, yes, she did mention you'd be here and that you would have friends. Welcome to Akira Town and the Fú Festival. We hope that you do enjoy yourselves and may you be blessed with luck on this pleasant night."

After passing the guard and stepping foot into the supposedly-unchanged piece of civilization, Misato found that parts of the place seemed like it was modern enough, but there were other pieces that stuck out a little too far back in history; there were some buildings made entirely out of stone and/or wood, transportation consisted of bikes, skateboards, scooters and those horse-powered carts, and, to her stunned eyes, it looked as though some of the performers they saw were manipulating large amounts of water and fire in front of others without any sort of optical illusion equipment needed.

"Whoa," went Kaji, interested and curious at the same time. "We're probably the only ones that stick out, too."

It was only partially true; the group was dressed in regular clothing, but none that blended in with the crowds of larger people that wore kimonos and yukatas of various styles and colorations.

"You outsiders look like you need to blend in," they were told by a elderly couple operating a clothing stand. "Most people that come to the festival often come ill-prepared."

Pen-Pen jumped out of Misato's arms and waddled over toward a small yukata with a fish pattern on it and pointed his left wing to it.

"I guess he wants you to get that one, Katsuragi," Kaji joked.

"Ooh! They got red!" Asuka cheered, seeing a red yukata with a rose pattern on it.

"It looks like two people got lucky enough to find something they like after arriving," said the elderly man, and he gave Asuka the yukata. "Go have fun, ma'am."

When they were informed that the festival was of the only ones they embraced that was devoid of any economic wants (meaning that much of everything was free for the day), they each acquired a kimono or yukata to blend in; some of their new clothes reflected some aspect of the four elements that was part of the town's culture: Misato's yukata represented a stubborn, demanding stability that was often shown by the Geo Channelers (it was also the color of her favorite beverage mixed in with some white flowers sewn into the waist and wrist portions of the outfit), Ritsuko's yukata showed a different aspect of the Geo Channelers, which consisted of the purified version that was metal, indicating a harder-than-normal outlook on life with its silver and white colors (and not many channelers of the Earth element could control metal as good as they could do with the regular ground), Maya's yukata was ruled by the flowing adaptability that comes with the water element that Hydro Channelers were blessed with, its blue and white colors representing the water and the moon, Makoto and Shigeru's kimonos were based simply on the red and orange colors of fire and air, respectively; Makoto's was red due to a, somewhat, hidden desire for what he almost believed he couldn't have, while Shigeru's was orange to represent the detached nature he possessed, and Kaji's kimomo was also reddish-brown; it represented the short-lived drives of fiery desires ("I think they suit you people just right," said the elderly man to them after they had tried the clothing on).

Once they acquired their new duds, they continued with their observation of the festival; many of the people there looked as though they belonged and could delude themselves with a belief of war being a lie, while others looked just like Misato and her group: Invited outsiders.

Asuka looked around and saw some people with balls of fire above their unbound hands, turning into burning shapes; she was curious as to how they could do such a thing, but chalked it up to optical illusions. There was no way that people could perform moves like that without advanced technology.

Kaji, helping himself to a cigarette from Ritsuko, he became ever curious as to how a town like this could survive Second Impact unscathed. Was there a foreign power behind it…or did the Angels decide that this place was one of the only few that was deserving of being spared.

"…I only recognize one person with purple hair!" He stopped walking and thinking and turned to see a little girl in a blue yukata with a panda pattern on it; he'd also recognized her face from the camera photos NERV had acquired when she had visited Tokyo-3 with the former Third Child.

"Rumi?" Misato asked, seeing her, along with Shinji, two other young girls and a young woman sitting by a ramen stand eating noodles. "This is…quite a place you live in."

"A blend between the ancient and the modern, but it's my home, all the same," the girl, Rumi, responded, impressed by their kimonos and yukatas. "Are you enjoying the festival?"

"Yes, thank you for asking. Friends of yours (Misato pointed to Mayo, Taeko and Akira)?"

"Nope. They're family. Since you already know Shinji, meet my nieces; Mayo and Taeko Rokubungi." Rumi introduced her nieces to the purple-haired paramilitary captain.

"Hello, ma'am," the graceful, twelve-year-old Mayo greeted her, setting her bowl of shrimp-flavored noodles down.

"Konnichiwa, Katsuragi-San," Taeko greeted, not so curious about the redhead behind Misato, but concerned; it was like there was something wrong with her personality.

"And this is my mother, Akira," Rumi introduced her mother to them.

"Such an honor it is to have met you in person," Akira greeted Misato, extending out her left hand.

Misato accepted and shook hands with her, though she was now curious; this woman's name was the same as the town, and she felt that it was no coincidence, either.

"I get that look many times when people think what you're thinking," Akira told Misato, shaking her out of her train of thoughts.

"Excuse me?"

"You were wondering if I was named after the town, which is actually the opposite; the town was named after me. I helped to build it…over a century ago."

At that moment, Ritsuko was surprised; she always looked at the world from a scientist's perspective, never believing that there was such a thing as magic.

"You…you're the founder?" Misato, gasping for air, asked her. No way! She'd have to be…well…she'd have to be really, really old by now.

"Granny Akira was blessed," said Taeko, all too familiar with her grandmother's age and appearance to be surprised.

"May we offer you some ramen?" Akira offered the group. "Questions and answers can wait a while as we eat."

With nothing else to do yet, Misato and the others joined the five by the stand.

"Thank you again for inviting me to the festival, Rumi?" Misato praised Rumi.

"You're welcome," Rumi responded, wondering where their future conversations were going to lead them. As long as no party crashers come around, it'll be okay.

"How about you introduce us to your invitees, Ms. Katsuragi?" Akira asked Misato.

"Uh, sure," she responded, looking over at Ritsuko. "This is my friend, Ritsuko Akagi. She's the head scientist at where I work. Something of a polymath."

"Oh?" Taeko went. "What is a polymath? Does that have something to do with shapes?"

"No, that would be a polygon," Ritsuko explained. "A polymath is a person of encyclopedic learning…or knowing many different things at once."

"Like a child prodigy, then?"

"Yeah."

"I'm a child prodigy," Asuka butted in, sipping on a cup of fruit punch.

"This is Asuka Langley Soryu," Misato introduced Asuka to them; since there was a possibility that Rumi's relatives weren't very pleased with how NERV works, just like how Rumi herself was displeased, she kept quiet about the Evangelions, and hoped that Asuka would, as well.

"A child prodigy, you say?" Rumi asked her.

"Yes; I went to and graduated out of college just last year," Asuka revealed.

"What degree or degrees were you aiming for?" Akira asked.

"Physics and computer technology."

"Oh, ha-ha-ha! Computers. I'm sorry, but you just reminded me of my son, Nemo; he needed three weeks to teach me how to use a computer since they were so modern. And he's a follower of the science fiction, which has partial roots in science."

The two groups became quiet again, allowing Misato to continue her introductions.

"This is Maya Ibuki," she pointed out the young woman that seemed to have a timid young mind to match her boyish features.

"Bunny," said Taeko to Maya, pointing at her head. "Bunny, bunny, bunny (she had then pointed to Makoto and Shigeru)."

"Taeko!" Mayo gasped, forcing her cousin's hand down to her side. "It's not nice to point and call names, you know that."

"They remind me of bunnies," Taeko defended her reasons for doing so.

"I apologize for Taeko," went Rumi to the three people her niece pointed at.

"No offense taken," said Shigeru. "We get called that at work many times. 'Bridge Bunnies', they call us, even when there are other workers there. We're pretty much the main Bridge Bunnies."

"That's Shigeru Aoba," Misato introduced the Bridge Bunny. "He's the only one at work, so far, that has an affinity for the guitar."

"Guitar?" Mayo asked, sounding displeased. "You mean, those loud instruments that make that rock and roll music that young people today listen to?"

"Um, yeah?" Shigeru answered her.

"You should demonstrate your prowess on it; I'm sure it'd be good." Mayo then told him, smiling.

"She had a bad experience with the instrument once because a classmate of hers played the thing too close to her ears," Taeko revealed. "She's still a sensitive girl."

When Misato introduced Makoto and Kaji (though her former boyfriend's introduction was rather forced), she introduced Pen-Pen (mostly because Rumi became interested in the animal that seemed to glow with near-human intelligence).

"…He's a warm-water penguin," she explained bits of his existence; she hoped they didn't question why he had a metal backpack on.

"Heh-heh-heh," Akira chuckled. "I've never known a person that took in a penguin before. This is a first for me. Pen-Pen, huh? That's rather adorable. He's very rare; not many of the penguins here are as cute as he is."

"Yeah, well… Wait a minute?! Other penguins? Here? But…the Second Impact should've wiped most of them out fifteen years ago." Misato gasped.

"Before that day came and went, Akira Town had a penguin boom; there were at least forty-seven newly-hatched penguins running around." Shinji told her, drinking his herbal tea. "Then, there were the tiger, rhino, elephant and giraffe booms that also occurred before and after Second Impact. We had to expand a little just to provide space for the new baby pandas and hippos that came two years later. We're a lively and quiet town that's still small, despite its population. I just love it here."

Misato, Ritsuko and Kaji could probably understand why he did; the place just seemed to be completely untouched by the negatives of what had happened fifteen years ago while nearly everywhere else suffered. But here, people, and animals, continued to thrive. There was still a culture that was unscathed by wars and conflicts, even children that still possessed their mothers in their lives.

"How did such a place as this survive Second Impact?" Kaji spoke out. "Out of curiosity."

Swallowing her piece of chicken that was in her noodles, Akira uttered, "Do you believe in the power to control the gifts of the planet…with just the strength of one's will, young man?"

Kaji was left confused by her question; he had never heard such a question before.

"You see people…and see that they're worried, confused, frightened and praying for salvation. The blue skies becoming an enraged red, like a demon that looked down upon those as weaklings to be picked on. Your friends…your family…and with so little time left to act, you look to persevere and survive, along with wanting those you don't know very well to live, as well."

Somehow, Akira had swept the groups into her voice as she could recall that fateful day that the whole world that this town was a part of almost going away.

-x-

Second Impact

The skies were indeed a shade of red, with people running up the mountain to the Rokubungi estate. They were worried, confused, and desperate for answers to their questions. Running up to the gates of the estate, they made their presence known to Akira and the few Rokubungi family members that remained, which included the then-eighteen-year-old Nemo, the grieving Kanami Rokubungi, upset over the recent loss of her boyfriend, the then-thirteen-year-old Tsukiko and a worried Shinobu, who had just returned from shopping for food.

"Mother, what's going on?" Nemo and Tsukiko asked Akira, concerned and worried.

"I'm not sure, sweeties," she told them, seeing something rising from far away.

Suddenly, the head of the estate and founder of the town saw what might've been the cause of the people running up the mountain: A giant wall of water, thick in its gallons, strong in its speed, heading straight forward their home.

"Oh, God," she gasped, never expecting something like this to happen, but recalled a previous dream foretelling her of a great danger to her family.

"As a channeler capable of wielding all the elements, you're not meant to cause suffering to others, Akira," her mother had told her in her dream, just as she had in life when she was younger. "To save the ones you love…as well as the people you know deserve to live out their lives, you must embrace the gift the world has given you. Let the elemental souls flow through you like how water flows down a river; allow them to guide you…so that you, in the future, can guide others toward a new path."

She recalled her oath that she made to her husband a year before he died; he had made her swear to live on and give the children of her future, including the ones that weren't hers, a kind family that included her so that she would show them the way to a better existence, and so far in her years, she hadn't failed in teaching them that there have always been ways to seek better results in your life when things don't go the way you want them to. Her family, which had been large in her past, had slowly dwindled down to a mere few ever since the dawn of the Twentieth Century, taken not by the violence of war caused by those that don't understand each other, but by age and sickness. But she kept those sons and daughters alive in her heart, unwilling to let those bonds go, no matter how much their absence hurt her; it was those bonds that enabled her to move on and take in others that were without a proper future, families or relations that were present, teaching them how to live in a world that had lost much of its guidance in the hopes that it would, one day, regain it again.

"Please, Mommy," went Tsukiko, scared. "Do something."

Akira looked to the top of the mountain and saw a solution to their predicament.

"Open the gates and let the people in," she told Nemo, "let them know that there's nothing to worry about. I'll handle this situation."

Nemo ran over to open the gate and then, as the people from the town poured in, Akira leapt over their heads and ran out, straight to the peak, where she obtained a grand view of not just the small town but the world around it, along with a bigger view of the approaching tsunami. This was something she'd never attempted before, but it wasn't something she never thought of doing to help others; it'd been an opportunity to demonstrate how strong her will was.

"Okay, spirits of the elements," she spoke to the intangible forces around her. "Guide me so that I may guide others, please."

She then performed her Tai Chi practices, which were to enhance her ability to channel the power of the water, evoking the souls within the tsunami. As she performed, she envisioned herself in a meadow, standing before a large army of outsiders that refused to accept the flow of balance that she and the other channelers shared, and performed her stances to intimidate them with her power. In the process, the ground around her raised her higher into the air, granting her a closer contact with the approaching tsunami; the closer she, or any Hydro Channeler, for that matter, was to water, the stronger the will to control it became. Seconds later, her eyes flared an intense gold and silver, magnifying her power.

The tidal wave, as it came ever closer to burying the town and erasing it from existence, within moments of reaching its primary gates, came to a complete halt; Akira's will froze it! A face then manifested in front of her and the mountain through the wall of water, a seamless face, shaped similar to that of an infant…and it spoke to her.

"Why have you stopped me from fulfilling my purpose?" It asked her, neutral in gender; it spoke in what sounded like dozens of voices, all speaking at once to her.

"Your purpose?" She counted, her eyes still flaring gold and silver. "Your purpose seems to be in the way of my home and loved ones and the rest of the world. I ask you this: Why are you doing this? What have we done to deserve this fate which I'm trying now to prevent?"

"It's not what you have done; it is what those that have brought the ruination of your race into play. The whole of Antarctica, a place of perpetual nothingness, a wasteland of ice and snow, has been reduced to a dead zone; nothing, not even a life-form so tiny, it may as well be under your heart, can exist there any longer. The members of your species, which have instigated a game of suffering, wish to achieve a power they do not deserve." The wall of water told her.

"People with god complexes," she uttered. "I've seen and heard the type; they're not so noble or idealistic. Are you going to persist with your so-called purpose of destroying my home?"

"I have no choice in that matter," the wall of water told her.

"Then I have no choice to put you out of your misery," Akira told it, and raised her arms higher into the air; the water then evaporated off the ground in front of the town, becoming vapor and light snow. "I pray that you find peace in the next world."

As the snow fell upon their faces, the villagers of Akira Town, never seeing this much of the elemental power that their founder and leader had, expressed their gratitude in her protecting them from sure destruction. They cheered and congratulated her for her seemingly-easy effort in dealing with a large tsunami of devastating proportions, but what they didn't know that it wasn't entirely easy for Akira to hold off a tsunami; she had never done so in her years of mastering the flowing element of water.

Nemo and Kanami, who put aside her grieving to help their weakened mother, helped Akira walk down the path back to the estate where she could rest and regain her strength.

"You're a Superwoman, Mother," Nemo told her. "When will any of us be able to do exactly what you did back there?"

"You keep practicing your basics for another two years, you'll be able to control situations like that…but not in the same degree as myself," she told him. "I've had more than enough years to master and hone my control…over…the…"

Her train of words had been broken by the sight of the villagers gathered around in front of her, all of whom had proud faces. They then lowered to their knees and bowed their heads to her, as if she were to be worshiped as a goddess.

Kanami then remembered the reason to why they were bowing.

"Mother, they gave you a task to carry out," she told her mother, letting go of her left side once she was able to stand on her own. "You carried it out; you saved them from a catastrophe. A bowing of gratitude has been given to you…and you deserve it a lot."

Her children joined them in the bowing, which only had value when and if she bowed back…and she did. Kneeling before them, she accepted their thanks, grateful that she was able to protect them. But what concerned her a little was what caused the tidal wave to be created; if what it said was true, then there were people responsible for making it, and possibly many other waves of gigantic proportions. Everywhere else, people weren't so fortunate as the people of Akira Town; their homes were taken, lives ended, their very existence changed by what other people had done, just to obtain something that they didn't earn or deserve. She pitied their misfortunes, hoping that they, like the Geo Channelers she had known and seen, would retain their hope and endure, for in the end, that was what all of the rest of the would could do at a time like this.

-x-

"…And after the story came out, nobody here, not even me, bought the whole truth that was printed in the papers," Akira went on. "A meteorite so small and moving almost at the speed of light, colliding with the icecaps and melting them, raising the ocean-levels and burying coastal cities and removing more than half the planet's population? Don't make me shed a tear on that. Such a possibility exists only in the realm of the sci-fi. Something…far worse than a meteorite happened that day, something that should not have happened…and many innocent lives were the unfair tribute to survive."

Rumi and Shinji, also having heard the story in the textbooks, were just as disbelieving of the story as Akira was; being as young as they were, they preferred the truth as opposed to hearing flat-out lies.

"So, you people never believed the public story at all?" Misato asked, recalling her own experience in the Second Impact that claimed the lives of her parents. "Not once?"

"Never," Shinji answered, drinking a cup of herbal tea. "If there is a truth to the public being told a lie, the people responsible for causing such devastation to the world are the ones that have hidden it…and need to repent for their sins, dragging in people that had absolutely nothing to do with the dire state of present-day things. I've been to other places outside of town and the country, whenever I'm well enough to travel, that is, and I've never enjoyed how some of the places that are seemed so…unlike the places that were. Heh, even Tokyo-3 bites."

"But you were only there for a day," Misato tried to defend the fortress city, even though she had to agree with his and Rumi's belief that it wasn't so pleasant a city to live in, let alone visit. "Why not visit the city again and take in the sights?"

Shinji set his cup of tea down and said, "And see that man's face and hear his cold-hearted voice again? I'd rather explore the ruins of San Francisco again than to risk that possibility."

"You've enjoyed that old place ever since we went there on vacation two years back," said Rumi to him. "I've never…seen…"

The sight of a torch from afar burning bright blue instead of yellow-orange caught her off and distracted from what she was trying to say to him. She'd never seen fire change color like that before; it was normally impossible for fire to burn that color…unless controlled by those gifted with the power over such element that you couldn't truly hold without harming yourself. And worse, only one person alive was able to make fire burn blue…and that person used to live in the town.

"M…Mommy," she told Akira, pointing to the torch, now accompanied by three other torches burning the same color. "Look over there."

Akira saw…and was displeased; she had thought that this was going to be a peaceful night of fun and conversation between neighbors, villagers and outsiders, but now it seemed that something was either amiss or something was about to go amiss.

Shinji looked at the torches, wondering why they were burning such a color that he found very disturbing, and asked, "Grandmother, are the torches supposed to do that this year?"

"No, Shinji," she answered, getting up out of her seat. "You guys continue to enjoy yourselves while I go see what's wrong."

As she left, Asuka looked at Shinji and wondered why he had been in Tokyo-3 briefly, curious as to whether or not he was the one that piloted the Eva without any training, only to leave later when the Angel was defeated.

"So, you went to Tokyo-3 only once?" She asked Shinji.

"Yes," he answered, wondering where she was going with this conversation.

"A man with a cold-hearted voice, huh? That sounds like Commander Ikari to me," she said, after which Shinji choked on his sip of tea; was she trying to start something with him or was she trying to bring up the past, which he wanted to leave buried?

Rumi, Taeko and Mayo looked at the girl like she'd done said something wrong.

Misato, able to see that this was bad, said, "Asuka, that's a subject that's best left alone."

"Why? I was simply goin' to ask if he was related to him, that's all." Asuka defended.

Once Shinji regained his composure, he uttered, "What would make you assume that I'm related to that man that has a chunk of ice where a heart once resided? It takes more than blood and genes to be related to somebody that you barely even know directly. You need past experience, understanding and recollection of events that transpired in the days long gone up to the present with a person or group involved in your life to be related to them in some way or another. No, I'm not related to him at all. Who'd want to be related to him in more ways than one?"

His aunt and cousins agreed with him; not many of the people in the neighborhood wanted to be related to Gendo unless he had a full intention of wanting to absolve his past crimes and seek out forgiveness and salvation from the Rokubungi family.

"But…he is your father…isn't he?" Asuka asked him, just wanting to know that much.

"He was his father," Rumi answered for her nephew. "He lost that right to be such a long time ago."

"You…really don't like him, do you?" Maya asked them.

"We all have a reason not to like him, even when they're often the same reason," Taeko told her. "I would never mean any disrespect toward my cousin, but I'm glad that man's not my father."

"No disrespect even taken, Taeko," Shinji told her.

"So…um, Rumi?" The unshaven man, Kaji, went. "Do you have any interests in larger-than-life-sized dolls made of metal and you can sit in them?"

Misato grabbed his right ear, wanting to drop any subject relating to the Evangelions immediately before things got worse than they didn't need them to be.

"No, Mr. Kaji," she answered him, understanding what he meant by his question. "I don't like those type of dolls. I don't even call 'em toys. I only…played with one…and only once did I play with it. It wasn't even fun when somebody that didn't like dolls of that sort, as much as I didn't, wanted to break it, along with everything else for that matter. If I wasn't in the toy at that time, I'd let 'em break it all they'd like, but there was something I had to keep out of harm's way. Someone I didn't want to see hurt by other people because they thought they could dictate his existence; when you mess with a prize of mine, you're messing with me…and I don't really like to be messed with."

Ritsuko and Misato could, literally, feel the girl's major dislike of the Eva; it wasn't this strong when they last saw her, but now it was full-blown and being expressed in a very subtle manner.

The Bridge Bunnies could also feel this hatred, reminded that the only reason she ever piloted the Eva before was to protect Shinji, who wouldn't and couldn't due to his hatred of Commander Ikari and his illness, respectively.

Asuka then realized that she'd been mistaken; she had always thought that it was the boy that had piloted the Eva, defeating that Angel on his first attempt without any training involved, only to see that the former Third Child…was the former Third Child's young relative that piloted the Eva and defeated the Angel, both confusing her…and enraging her.

But…that's impossible, she thought, shaking a pointing finger at Rumi with her mouth open. She's not even fourteen! No way could she pilot the Eva just once without any training! It's unheard of!

"Never underestimate the power of Rumi Rokubungi when she's in her aunt mode," said Mayo to them. "She's a protector of sacred objects, and we're her treasures."

For Misato's group, it was still a little difficult to see that this little girl was their aunt, but it wasn't a little difficult to see that Rumi was the only one that could keep Shinji alive whenever he was rendered in poor condition by his cancer.

Rumi inhaled and then exhaled before saying, "In a war with that which you don't entirely understand, why must it be children that are the first to suffer? The pure violation of not being able to live a childhood of happiness and being given a childhood of suffering. The hurt of having your life taken from you before you even get the chance to live it and enjoy it. The torment of never having people simply care about you for you and not for what you can do. Why are children without a guide of light? A ray of hope? No salvation? Is the life that people caught up in war have for them is that of war, violence and self-destruction? Such isn't the way that people were meant to live. I've always heard stories of the ancient days. Times of total harmony, when balance between different places was unbreakable and people of different understandings and cultures understood each other and accepted each other without the need for violence. I've always believed those times to be when there was no need to do something so unjust that it held terrible repercussions for many innocent lives. Only the fragments of such a past exist in some form of history or another, and we try our best to express such a wish that there was no war happening outside the town, that people elsewhere would learn to understand and tolerate each other and that in the end, the rest of the world was as lucky as us."

Asuka, now hanging on those words, could recall her own childhood, the very childhood she'd done her best to keep buried in the past where it belonged; she had suffered when her mother had taken her own life…and even more before when she tried to take hers after something bad happened to her. After her funeral, her life went down a dark road; where she had tried to make her mother notice her, she had tried to outdo others to escape the pain of her past. The seemingly-endless hours of the equally-endless days of Eva training just to obtain an unobtainable acknowledgment, all for naught. And then there were her stepparents; not once did they try to open up to her…nor did she try to open up to them. She now envied the sick, dying boy and his youngest aunt; they seemed to have the kind of life she had once longed for.

-x-

"…Thank you so much," said Miaka, having acquired a small bag with a trio of goldfish in it for her fish tank back home for her nine-year-old daughter. "Taeko's going to love these. Her birthday gift comes a whole, three months early."

As she wandered around the streets, she saw various people having a good time, blessed with luck. Like every previous festival she attended, she enjoyed herself; it was always a blessing to be around such great people that understood each other and had no ill desires to commit any foul plays toward others. And, as her husband once told her, people could endure so long as they held onto their hopes and dreams of the bright future ahead.

"I see you've barely changed, Miaka," she heard somebody say behind her, with a voice so cold that she stopped walking and shuddered.

Turning around, she became disgusted at the sight of the one man that had, in the past, lusted for her: Gendo, wearing what looked like a black jumper with a black coat; he also had a pair of glasses with bright orange lens that hid his eyes from her perception. Of all the people to have come to the festival, the one man that had said that he wouldn't come back to the place where he was raised had shown up.

Standing her ground, she went, "Gendo? And what do I owe the unwanted pleasure of seeing you again after so many years?"

"Nothing," he said. "Just a simple visit."

Making fists with her toes, she could feel that he was, still to this day, lying about much of what he said; even in the past, when she had asked him if he was following her half her time while she and Bumi were dating, he would say that he wasn't when he actually was.

"How are things with you?" He asked her.

"Fine," she answered him. "You…still work for the UN?"

"Very," he answered. "How is the boy?"

That put a frown on her face; it was like he couldn't say his own son's name without something wrong happening, and it made her angry when she saw his letter addressed to Shinji.

"I think you should ask him…if he'll even let you speak to him," she told him instead. "He's buried the hurt in his past and has found peace with the people that love him."

Turning to walk away, she felt a hand grab her left arm; Gendo was overstepping his boundaries again.

"That's not what I asked," he told her. "I asked you how he was doing."

"Miaka?" They both heard somebody from around them in the crowd. "I found another novel for you."

It was Bumi, but when he saw Gendo, it took all of his will to keep his Positive Jing from making him attack the traitor without just cause, even when the man had an uninvited hand on his wife. This brought back unwanted memories of Gendo's attempts to make Miaka his girlfriend…and it was very bothersome toward the happy couple.

"Gendo," he said, "what brings you here on this grand evening of luck?"

"Luck?" He asked, letting go of Miaka. "There is no luck; there's only trickery."

"I see the years away from home have done very little to temper your tongue."

"Just as I see the years have taken quite a toll on you yourself. I thought you had left Akira Town shortly a few years after I did, and yet…here you are, back where time stands still, and I had thought this place would be changed after Second Impact."

"How pathetic we forget. When you're blessed with the power of the elements, there's nearly nothing you can't do when you have the will to achieve the proper desire."

"And you must think I don't have any proper desires?"

"Judging from looks alone, every desire you've ever had has been of the wrong sort. Why are you even here if you said you weren't ever coming back? We've all moved on with our lives and have found peace and happy days here, and we don't wish for any government officials or unnecessary wars to get in the way of that."

"He asked to know how our nephew was doing, as well." Miaka told her husband, stepping away from Gendo. "He wouldn't even say his name."

"Is that so? Wow, you've really become something that you shouldn't have. I can only pray that at the end of your career, you find what it was you were looking for. We shall be off now." Bumi told Gendo and they walked away; now Bumi had a reason to perform his Negative Jing.

Miaka turned around to make sure that Gendo wasn't following them and saw him standing there with a dark look on his face; he'd become ever so tainted by darkness. He was a cold spark of fire.

"Miaka, did he hurt you?" Bumi asked his wife, concerned about any bruises on her wrist.

"No, I'm okay, Bumi," she responded, "but now I'm worried about Taeko. I don't wanna think about what might happen if he ever got to her."

"Then we should go get her and go home. I have the bad feeling that Gendo being here is just going to cause problems."

"Same here."

As they ran off to find their daughter, knowing that Rumi, Mayo and Shinji would be with her, Tsukiko had noticed some of the torches inside the lanterns around the part of the town she was in were burning blue instead of yellow-orange; she had realized that there was bound to be trouble if the person that owned the blue flames was here for the first time in too many years of absence.

"Oh, Kami," she uttered, finishing up her ice cream cone and running down the street to find her sister, Shinobu, hoping that she wasn't with her date just yet.

-x-

BASH! Shinobu had knocked down another stack of empty bottles and won another prize, which was a stuffed cheetah this time. Her date with Kagura was going well; they had way more in common than they had realized: They liked the festival, which was a common truth, enjoyed classical music, both were martial artists and could harness the power of fire…and they fancied beautiful things.

"So, um, you have any goals for the future?" Shinobu asked Kagura as they walked down the street.

"Well, I still aim to be a veterinarian because I like animals," she answered her. "My brother once told me after I assisted in taking care of an injured bear that I had a talent for helping animals…and because I had a tendency to play doctor on all my stuffed animals. You?"

"Arts and crafts, architecture, singing and teaching self-defense to children. My mother tells me that if I'm lucky enough, I may live to be as old as she is. Although I really just want to live to be one-hundred; I'm happy with that age."

"My father once told me that I might reach that age, as well; my parents married kinda late at age fifty-six. I never thought that my folks would be that old when I was born."

"You should try my brother, Bumi; he's the oldest man of the immediate family, not just the sole family man. He used to be the second oldest…but one of my brothers from an older generation had passed away shortly before I was adopted."

"Was his name…Fuma?"

"Yes, it was. He was an Aero Channeler…and a very gifted one. He spent the last years of his life trying to create a technique that could be used for fun as well as evasion, but it put a strain on his heart. Mother was unhappy for a time when he died at age seventy-seven."

"My brother told me a story about him; how he once prevented a fatal stampede of bulls from running over people by using that technique he dubbed the Windy Rhino to halt the stampede. I wished I was there to see it happen; it would've probably been cool."

"Yeah. Say, you don't…find my family to be… I don't know… Odd in any way, do you?"

"What? Odd? No. Not in any way thinkable. I actually like them. I mean, they're mismatched, but they complete each other perfectly…except for that guy that left y'all years ago of his own volition after he couldn't have one of your sisters to himself. Was there ever anything about him that wasn't bad?"

Shinobu explored her past and found several things that weren't so bad about Gendo, but they weren't so good, either. How could she explain this to her date without sounding so angry about him?

"Well, he demonstrated some skill as a Pyro Channeler," she told her. "He was also a unique Pyro Channeler; his flames, even before he discovered his elemental blessing, were blue instead of yellow, orange or red, which were said to symbolize the passions of fire, the energy and life that fire provides. But blue fire, while symbolizing what I said…to a small degree, represented something else entirely."

"Blue fire is supposed to symbolize the hurt in one's life; that the flames are the embodiment of the channeler's own cold-heartedness. Despite the advantage blue fire can sometimes give a Pyro Channeler, it forever marks them as something to be careful of; that they may someday prove to be unpredictable or even dangerous." Kagura added in. "Not many Pyro Channelers demonstrate the ability to make their flames turn blue…or any other color. I guess it has something to do with the fact that nobody here can create their own fire yet."

As they continued to wander the streets of the festival, Shinobu noticed some torches burning blue, which startled her.

"Kagura, are you sure that none of the other Pyro Channelers here can't make blue fire out of existing, regular fire?" She asked her date.

"I'm certain that they can't," she answered, realizing where she was getting at when she saw the torches. "Shinobu…you don't think…"

"It's a possibility, but why would he come back?"

-x-

Gasp! Camille gasped at the person in front of her.

"Nemo," she whispered, getting his attention and alerting him to the guy in front of them. "That man… He looks like you, only older and colder."

Nemo looked up and saw the last person he had expected to see: Gendo. Unfortunately for them, they had stopped right beside Nemo's relatives and his little sister's invited guests.

Shinji turned to see and felt his heart jump up into his throat at the sight of the man he no longer had any sort of hope or love for.

"Why is he here?" He questioned, needing to drink his tea to calm his nerves.

Rumi, wondering the same thing, wished she had brought her hook swords with her for protection against this man.

"Did you invite him over?" She asked Misato, who nodded in the negative.

"He was never on my list," Misato defended; after hearing of Gendo's reputation and personality, she made no attempt to invite him anywhere. And didn't he grow up here?

The gathering crowd of people began to back away from the man they suddenly realized was the cause of the blue flames. Gendo, despite his years away from the town, hadn't lost his gift of fire; it showed in his aura.

Taeko and Mayo had finally seen the man that was their estranged uncle and were left tensed.

"That man," went Taeko, her hands gripping her seat. "I don't like him. He…he's all twisted up inside."

Gendo, huh? Mayo thought. He does resemble Nemo…to a degree…but he lacks any heart. He's…he's almost dark.

"I see that almost nothing has changed since I left all those years ago…except for the faces," Gendo uttered, turning his head this way and that, taking in the features of people.

Shinji wished he'd brought one of his wigs with him for the festival; he had to choose not to bring it with him just because he felt it was unnecessary.

"What are you doing here, Gendo?" Nemo asked him. "You've been gone for almost twenty-six years, and you choose now to come back?"

"It's none of your business," Gendo responded, looking toward the new bane of his life; his gaze on Rumi had been nothing short of complete hatred.

Said girl had inhaled a breath before saying, "If this is about my inviting them over, you're way out of line, Gendo. And if it isn't, you're still way out of line, regardless. Or…have you come back to be absolved of your past sins?"

"I don't believe in absolving one of any past mistakes, little girl. I'm disappointed to even see that nothing here has changed since the Second Impact happened."

"Well, you could call this town the only place where time has the capacity to stand still, even when it continues to mature, and why would Second Impact change it? Who would want a catastrophe, that many here don't believe at all was caused by a meteorite melting Antarctica, to alter its existence? If I didn't know any better, and I say this because I don't know you, personally, except for what you did in the past up to now, you were hoping to see a town built on traditions, beliefs, harmony and neutrality to be washed away."

A torch's flame suddenly shot out and became a streaming flame around Gendo's left arm, which was covered in a glove and tightened up into a fist; the torch then burned out, as they often always did whenever a Pyro Channeler took fire from them. He was feeling like the little girl was almost provoking him.

"To think that we'd see you here on the night of our festival," he then heard a voice that was unchanged by time, and turned to see the face of said voice. "What are you doing here, Gendo? You're disturbing the tranquility of the people."

"And why do you look like the woman that brought me up?" He asked her, which gave her a reason to feel insulted.

Akira replied, "Maybe it's 'cause I am the woman that brought you up…until you decided to leave."

Gendo was unfazed; no matter what, he believed that nobody could remain as they were forever.

"Oh, dear," he turned to see Miaka and Bumi showing up, alongside several other women, two of whom were holding hands. "Oh, dear."

"This isn't good," said Tsukiko, and the blue flames around them slowly reverting back to red and yellow. "This is very bad."

"Is that Gendo, Shinobu?" Kagura asked her date.

"Yeah, Kagura," she answered. "That's him."

Looking around him, Gendo could almost rule this out as a family reunion…if he had any other relatives to speak of instead of these siblings he wasn't related to by blood.

"Wow, it looks like the years away from home have done far too much to his face," Kanami had said, her eyes on her daughter, Mayo. "And too little to nothing to temper his tongue."

"I'm here for two reasons only," Gendo explained some of his actions, "and they're not to enjoy some bogus festival."

Shinji and Rumi were offended at how this man would show such disrespect toward one of their oldest traditions; it was no different from him showing such disrespect toward them.

"Well, then, what are your two reasons?" Akira asked him, trying her greatest not to show that she was hurt by his words.

"Why was I never informed that the boy (pointing his right index finger toward Shinji) was diagnosed with a cancer? And who is that girl's mother (he pointed toward Rumi, afterward)?"

For the umpteenth time in many a year, Akira frowned at such disgraceful behavior in such questions; Gendo wondering why he'd been kept out of the loop he felt the need to be a part of…and then demanding information on her own daughter's roots.

"Do you not even remember that day I tried to call you over ten years ago?" Bumi asked him, angry at him for even wondering why he didn't receive such details. "I contacted everybody, including you…but you blew me off, telling me not to call you unless it was important. How could trying to explain that Shinji, my only nephew, had a bad condition that we were trying to save him from, be unimportant to you? Hasn't anybody ever taught you that parenthood isn't a right but a privilege?"

Gendo frowned at Bumi beneath his shades, still wanting information on the girl. He didn't care any longer about his original question regarding his son, and just wanted the details about her. But when he turned to face Rumi again, he had to look at Akira, as well; the girl and woman seemed so much alike in their physical details, except for their ages.

"I don't think my roots have anything to do with you being here unannounced like this, causing trouble," Rumi told him, unwilling to be intimidated by a man that never tried to see his son after discarding him to the wet winds.

Gendo continued to look at her and her mother, and found his answer: His adopted mother, Akira, was Rumi's mother, which made sense in the girl being the former Third Child's aunt, despite her age. If such a case were genuine, then it would be difficult in managing a child born to a woman that, apparently, never aged after reaching her present age.

For some reason now, the sight of Gendo's glasses reminded Rumi of that liquid she'd been submerged in that night she fought the Angel creature that had been making its way toward Tokyo-3: The LCL, which still reminded her of blood. Recalling that stuff, it took Rumi the strongest shampoo her elder sisters had just to wash the scent away completely when she told them about it, and, quite naturally, they were disgusted that such a substance could cause such a stench…and that she had saved their nephew from being submerged in it.

"I guess it's true what they say," Gendo uttered, his attention now aimed toward the woman that tried to raise him properly with the other children that were never hers. "People like you never age…and never scar, just like that man from the novel and films."

"Hey," went Nemo, offended by his choice of words aimed at their mother. "Don't compare Mother to Dorian Gray; it's disrespectful to compare kind-hearted people that don't know a thing about hedonistic lifestyles that shouldn't be practiced unless you intend to live an existence without true happiness to those that do practice it."

"Forever the innocent child, Nemo?"

"Your behavior is intolerable, Gendo," went Kanami to him. "Just what are you doing here? You're ruining a good festival."

Just then, Rumi recalled the last time uninvited guests showed up and gave a darker frown at Gendo; his presence had to be about the Evangelion, the only reason he was wasting his time here. He wanted her to go back to that soulless city and pilot it.

"I know why he's here," she told them.

"That giant with the purple metal," said Shinji, having also realized why this man was here.

"Purple giant?" Bumi asked. "You mean that man-made monster he wanted you to pilot before he found out you were sick?"

"That's right," answered Rumi for Shinji as she got up off her stool. "Do you have any better reasons to show up here unannounced than for some project or program of yours that has some major flaws in it, Gendo? Plus, you're not exactly social in a good way; you drive people away."

The flame around his hand burned harder, waiting to be thrown at something or someone.

"Can you at least reconsider what you heard back in Tokyo-3?" He uttered, hoping to coerce her.

"Reconsider what? I barely heard much of anything." Rumi told him. "All I ever heard there was talk and gibberish about a giant monster that seems like an inspirational source for the Swamp Thing…or its ripoff, a giant doll of a robot or cyborg that was dubbed an Oni for some reason, the military destroying that Tokyo-2 city like it were nothing more than a scapegoat, and then there's you trying to send an injured person to her maker because I wouldn't let you use my nephew like he were replaceable or expendable. That's all I heard with my ears and all I told the family. Why should I even reconsider anything you ask or say to me?"

"Because there's more than one Angel out there, waiting to destroy the world," he told her, "and only people born after the Second Impact can deal with them. People like you that can control an Eva."

"No, Gendo. I won't be coerced like that. I won't be coerced at all. Call me what you will: A coward, a child, even a person that could care less. I simply don't care about your project or whatever you want to call it. I don't see much of a reason to take any further part in a war out there that shouldn't concern me or, as you put it, people like me. And just how many…Angels are left out there that want to destroy the world? Do you even know the number? And how many people will you attempt to use to see that they're gone? I wouldn't even be surprised if you had a hidden agenda before you showed up here tonight. That's how most people like you behave; if there's something troubling, you try to find ways to benefit from it. You might've coerced me once back in Tokyo-3, but I had a justified reason for doing what you told me. I had someone to protect from harm while there in that soulless pit that probably housed many innocents that bad guys were looking to abuse. I did what I was willing to do, then, but I will not get into that building-sized nightmare a second time. If you want somebody to do so for you, you should make sure they are willing to throw their lives and futures away to save yours that has nothing much left in it first."

Shinji looked at Gendo and saw something in his hollow and cold gaze that could be seen only for an instant: He saw desperation…and anger. He saw that this man was willing to go to extreme lengths to get his way. Recalling Nemo's sci-fi knowledge, the former Ikari knew that there would always be people that played by various methods on both sides of the line: The fair ones and the fouls, by the book or through crook, and this man that turned his back on everyone, even him, was trying to play by the very foul and crooked methods to get his way. The next thing he or anyone else knew, Gendo had thrown the blue flames around his hand…right at Rumi!

Tsukiko gasped and raised her arms up, taking control of the flames at the last second and dispersing them, saving Rumi from, potentially, dangerous heat.

Rumi, even with her pupils dilated to tiny dots to express her fear at almost being burnt by her estranged elder brother, stood her ground; even when wrapped in fear, she never turned to flee much of the time, even to try and protect herself or scream her lungs out.

Akira, infuriated by his act of anger, performed a stance and summoned a gust of wind right at him, blowing him off his feet and onto his back.

"What…in the world…is wrong with you?!" She raised her voice as he got back up. "You crossed a line right there, Gendo. Forget about what it means to follow the rules and traditions around here, but there are some things that you simply do not do."

She then turned to her daughter and saw that, had Tsukiko not intervene at the last second, Shinji was prepared to tackle Rumi to the ground to save her…and that she had done something she spent most of her life trying not to do, which was raising her hands against her children in violence. While she didn't assault Gendo, physically, it was pretty much the same to her.

"Um, Mommy," said Taeko to Miaka, expressing her sadness at what Gendo had attempted to do to her youngest aunt. "I…I want to go home now."

Miaka went over and picked her daughter up and walked away with Bumi.

"I want to go home, too," added Mayo, and she left with Kanami to follow Bumi and Miaka and Taeko.

Not too soon after they left that the crowds were turning away, all wanting to go home.

"I cannot believe that man," some of them said in disappointment.

"That disgrace! He just ruined the festival!" Others went.

In less than five minutes, the lanterns and torches were all out, many recreational stands were closed, and Gendo Ikari was by himself on the streets.

-x-

"…Um, was I the only person back there that was surprised that…he could do that with the fire?" Asuka asked, as she and the rest of Misato's group were walking up the mountain to the Rokubungi estate with said estate's inhabitants and their invitees.

"Most of the people that live here are just used to fire being used by one's own hands," said Nemo to her. "Unfortunately, using fire in that way is…looked down upon."

"Yeah," said Shinji. "You can use the elements for almost everything, but it's against the rules of the town to use them against children like that, no matter what the circumstances that triggered their usage might be."

"And…is that a hereditary thing, using the elements?" Kaji asked.

"No," said Akira, carrying Rumi on her back. "The gift to channel the elements has nothing to do with one's blood heritage. It's just bestowed upon those that were meant to possess them. However, I didn't teach Gendo much on how to Pyro Channel offensively; he was still learning his basics before he decided to leave after being defeated in an argument with Bumi."

"Why, oh, why did he have to show up and put an end to such good things?" Shinobu wondered.

"Because he's unhappy and wants the rest of the world to be as miserable as he is?" Kagura suggested.

"It makes me glad that I didn't see him three years ago," said Shinji. "I still would've given up on him."

"You sound like you really do hate your father," Asuka said to him.

Shinji looked toward her and uttered, "I do hate him. He's never been there in my life when I used to want him involved. He just discarded me at age four and thought nothing of the repercussions."

"You should've seen the letter he sent him," said Miaka to her. "What a lame piece of writing! He only wrote down one word, and it was filled with anger. It was no different from only having time on one day to see him for just a few short minutes, which Shinji couldn't do at all."

"What day and what reasons?" Makoto asked.

"It was three years ago," went Nemo, "the day Shinji had to go back to the hospital because he relapsed and needed Rumi's bone marrow for the first time to put him back into remission. Gendo had sent a letter that stated he wanted to see Shinji on the day his mother passed away…at her grave site. That was messed up, and worse: Shinji had no memory of his mother, not even a name or photograph at the time. I tried to find out whatever information I could scavenge of her by searching for people with his original family name, but to very little avail. It was like Mrs. Ikari's biography was wiped off the Net records. Only a DOB, DOD and a name. Nothing on family, all save for Shinji…and the jerk, public history, personal interests, not even a list of former jobs. It's almost like the woman didn't exist to begin with, so finding anything on her was impossible."

"With very little on her, I put such things away," Shinji added in. "If I can't remember a person, then it usually means they never existed to begin with, and if they never existed or you can't remember them, then they don't deserve to even try and be remembered. After I was recovering from the transplant and was told that he wanted to see me, I said that I didn't wish to go see him. My only memory of him in the past was just his back as he walked away, leaving me in the cold rain. I don't wish to have any other bad memories of a very bad man that took no parental interests in me."

Once they reached the gates of the estate and walked past the garden and training grounds to the house itself, the family received many 'oohs' and 'awes' from their outsider guests.

"You guys must live like kings and queens up here," said Maya, seeing how the place looked like it belonged in a fairy tale of ancient Chinese or Tibetan cultures, but at the same time it held a touch of modernness to it. "It's…like a live-in shrine or something."

"Yeah, it is," said Bumi. "We just like to call it home."

"Hold on, why are we here?" Aoba asked, since the festival had been ended prematurely and they had intended to leave back to Tokyo-3 after it ended.

"Did you really want to leave and not be invited to the birthday party?" Rumi asked him.

"Birthday party?" Misato asked. "Whose?"

"Mine. I was born on the day of the Fú Festival, so I was blessed with luck."

"What?!" Asuka gasped. "You celebrate your birthday on the same day as a festival?!"

"Yes. It's not so different from celebrating one's birthday on…Christmas or Halloween. Even Thanksgiving can be somebody's birthday. I wasn't the only kid born on a festival day; there have been others, as well."

"Rumi, you're, technically, the first child born on the day of the Fú Festival six years ago," Tsukiko reminded her. "There were six other women that had children right after you were born; they're just not as lucky as you are. I believe there's an old saying: "First come, first serve"…or something like that."

"Anyone up for cake?" Bumi asked. "It's got ice cream in it."

"Sure," Misato answered.

It wasn't long before they were done eating and engaging in friendly conversations about whatever: Science and the like for Ritsuko, Maya, Nemo and Camille; advice on maintaining a stable relationship between Kanami, Tsukiko, Shinobu and Kagura; life between Akira, Misato, Kaji, Bumi and Miaka, whom had an attachment to Pen-Pen now because of his attractiveness. All the children had fallen asleep; while the resident children had their rooms, Asuka, the guest, had slept on the floor pillows.

"…And the agriculture here is large due to the advances in channeling the power of the Earth to provide us with enriched soil," Bumi told Misato as the elder people were enjoying some sake. "A Geo Channeler's favorite pastime is to go to the town's massive garden and create tiny twisters of dirt to enrich the soil with animal manure."

"That's gross, but at least people can eat well later," Kaji said, but it sounded like he had something else on his mind. "Does every one here control the elements?"

Akira, finishing her fifth cup of sake, answered, "Un-uh. The power to do so is bestowed upon a chosen few…and the chances of a person being blessed with an elemental energy…are often slim. But only slim. As a select few know, there is energy all around us: The sun, the wind, electricity and other such sources that can be used and reused. One of the keys to harnessing the elements…is the ability to control the energy within the body. If there's a small city with a population of two-thousand people, the total sum of channelers within that population could range from two-hundred to maybe even seventy-seven, of course, it's depending on how many of them possess such a gift. At present, this town's population is nearing almost one-hundred-thousand, give or take. A large number of the people that live here are often runaways from other parts of the country…even other parts of the world, frightened, desperate to escape their past lives, or just had no proper guidance or sense of direction from the people they knew back then. One of my sons from the past was a runaway child; he was the victim of child abuse by his aunt when his mother died. I met him when he was seven years old. I took him in, protected him, and taught him a way to protect himself when he chose to go out and see the world. He put his past full of pain and fears behind him and lived to be sixty-three."

"How long ago was this?" Misato asked her.

"Oh, almost around the start of the previous century. The Twentieth Century."

Misato looked at her like she were crazy and then regained her composure and said, "I'm sorry. I just find it hard to accept that you're that…"

"Long-lived, Ms. Katsuragi? I'm used to people having a hard time accepting what is said to them. I could lie about my age, but I won't. I teach the people to accept themselves for who they are or who they'll be in the future…or even who they want to be. I don't teach shame." Akira then poured another cup of sake. "I was once challenged by a blind man, and he felt no shame in being unable to see the world around him when he could feel and hear it. That was thirty-two years ago, five years after being challenged by a woman whose handicap was that she only had one arm and specialized in fencing."

The conversation could've gone on, but once Akira drank her sixth cup, she passed out in front of them.

"Heh-heh-heh!" Bumi chuckled; this was the seventeenth time he'd seen his mother fall from grace after drinking too much. "You're lucky to see her do that; she only does so during the Fú Festival. It's not every so often that you pass out from something like that."

He then got up and picked Akira up to carry to her bedroom, once again complaining on how light she was, weighing only one-hundred-twenty-five pounds.

"Your mother isn't much of a drinker, is she?" Ritsuko asked Nemo.

"Nope, and it's only during this festival that she drinks sake. Every other festival or day, it's regular coffee or juice. Bumi, though, he's one to drink once a month."

"Only once a month?" Misato asked.

"Yes. Too much alcoholic beverages can damage the liver and other organs in the body, but limiting the number of alcoholic fluids will preserve your organs, as well as allow your brain to stay focused on your moral choices. Bumi doesn't even drive after drinking a can. My brother once knew somebody that loved to drink more than what was required, and at the end of his life, he only lived to be thirty-six. 'I never should've drank those cans' stands on his gravestone as a testament to how rotten his choice was to drink continuously."

Misato looked at her cup of sake now, holding it in her hand, but then placed it down.

"Is there a restroom nearby?" She asked him.

"I'll show you," Kanami told her as she got up.

Leading her down the hall to the bathroom, the ones that remained awake were trying to add more to their conversations.

"So, um, NERV?" Nemo uttered, changing the subject. "Is that an acronym or just how it's spelled?"

"That's just how it's spelled," went Ritsuko, answering him.

"Just what, exactly, is it that you do while there? A paramilitary agency with a science division? That's a bit curious…and unusual. Though, that's just my opinion, of course."

"It's just an agency that exists to protect the world from Angels," Maya told him.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"What are getting at?" Aoba asked him.

"Have you ever heard of the saying or term, 'The truth behind truths'?"

"Un-uh."

"Like an afterthought, meaning that there's more to it."

"Are you sure you're just an otaku and not some sort of former scientist?" Makoto asked Nemo.

"Please," went Camille, sounding offended. "Nemo's one of the only few people in town that possesses the wisdom of the world philosophies thrown into his sci-fi Intel."

"Philosophy, huh?" Kaji asked.

"Yes, philosophy," Nemo explained. "I was only twenty-five when I realized that there was no way that science could answer every question there was in existence, especially the rather interesting ones. So, to compensate for its lack of universal truth, I took a few philosophy classes while I was getting my degree in computers. But after I left college, I found the rest of the world was heavily scarred by what had happened in the Second Impact: Their beliefs and faiths broken by the devastation. Art, beauty, all of it either wasted or gone. The original laws, the…constitutions, even their religions were trashed. People less fortunate than we were left to suffer and die because of some people wanting what they didn't earn or deserve. Did they lose their faith? Did they feel abandoned by their deities? Or did they feel the need to show the world that there were no gods or salvation? The needs of the many, why, they outweigh the needs and desired wants of the few. While the world can view a person as being smart and people as dumb, it can be reversed; people can be smart…and a person can be dumb. What causes a man or woman to do such terrible acts that have fatal consequences for others, like dividing the world's population in half? The desires for wealth? Glory? The powers of a god? Immortality or truth? Or…is it because of their foolish curiosity? You tell me."

"You can't really rule it out as despair," said Camille. "How long has it been since people have lived in an age where there are more crooked authorities than ones meant to promise justice, security and a future of freedom and peace? Perhaps it all started when the original sin was made, which cast people out from the Garden of Eden, and we left the innocence of that time behind. Almost every night before the Second Impact happened, I had a terrible dream that I never could understand: I was at a beach, it was dark out, but, for some reason, the sun was shining, there was also a red hue in the background of the sky, the ocean waters were as red as blood, and rising from them was a giant. A giant that burned of white fire. A giant…of light."

"Did this…giant of light ever say anything?" Ritsuko asked, now interested, and curious, in what this woman had to say.

"It told me, "Peace is dead, happiness in ruins, and the fate of mankind left to suffer in bitterness…all because of the few that wanted what they didn't deserve. It is they that have condemned the human race into the damnation that you see before you." Then, another giant appeared beside it; a giant that wasn't made of light, but reminded me of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters: It was white, soft, but it wasn't friendly. It spoke, "This is the fate that befalls all that refuse to accept one another's flaws or correct the mistakes they have made over the years. People should've learned from their mistakes and sought out redemption and salvation by correcting such mistakes. And now the chance to do so is gone." Every time the dream ended, I awake to find my sheets wet from my sweat and my cheeks red from my tears. Whether they're a dream or a vision of what is yet to come, I don't know, but I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Who would want to live in a dead world?"

"Ocean water that were as red as blood?" Tsukiko uttered. "That sounds an awful lot like…that substance that Rumi was immersed in that one time when she used that thing you call the Evangelion to protect Shinji. A reddish-orange liquid that smelled and tasted just like blood."

"Not many people ever complain about it," Ritsuko told her.

"I find it odd that a science division of a paramilitary organization like yours could create a liquid substance like that," went Miaka. "How does a science division of a paramilitary agency, run by our estranged brother, manage to create a liquid that smells and tastes like blood when it gets into your nose and mouth, respectively…unless it were blood that had been altered to suit a different purpose than for life-saving transfusions?"

"That brings interest to the sci-fi person in me," said Nemo, who was now just as curious about the LCL than he was about the Eva, since it didn't take an otaku much brains to understand that something like a giant cyborg had to require a massive amount of currency just to produce one, possibly even more than one, based on what Rumi had told them about it. "If it were blood, that'd be disturbing and disgusting, just like a truck full of blood."

"Nemo," went Camille, "a truck full of blood? That IS disturbing, and not just because it was used in a horror movie remake."

It wasn't until Bumi, Kanami and Misato returned from where they were that they found their respective relatives, friends and co-workers engaged in a conversation that seemed to relate to the agency NERV; they were explaining why it existed, what the Eva was needed for and why there was such a substance called LCL. Though Ritsuko, Kaji and the Bridge Bunnies were careful not to reveal anything that was extremely sensitive, but they always got the feeling that these friends and relatives, due to the fact they grew up in a town that had its own history and culture that drew its sources from the four elements, didn't believe all that was spoken. Not that they could blame these people, of course. They nearly lost their home to a living tsunami if not for their town's founder using her power to prevent such a catastrophe from happening.

"…And the United Nations actually approved of Gendo taking care of a situation like this after they sent Tokyo-2 into the abyss of fire?" Nemo asked.

"They didn't believe that the Angel would be difficult to handle," answered Aoba to him. "It wasn't until after they had used their latest weapon, the N² Mine, did they see that it was going to be hard to deal with. Conventional weaponry is completely useless against them."

"N²? Is that a standard designation for 'Non-Nuclear'?" Miaka asked.

"Yes," Makoto answered.

"Well, at least the military can resort to something that doesn't cause a release of lethal radiation that can cause cancer or degrade vegetation, but couldn't the technology that made such a destructive weapon be used for a more beneficial purpose, such as making it so that people aren't so reliant upon fossil fuels and the like?"

The Bridge Bunnies, for once in their career at NERV, were defeated in a battle of the words and opinions by a simple housewife that made half her living by teaching children self-defense at a dojo. They never thought of using the technology that NERV uses to create and maintain the Evangelions for something more practical than what was asked by her.

"I mean, if this is a war between human beings and a race of creatures called Angels, despite Rumi seeing that the only one she and Shinji saw didn't look anything like the ones we're used to from the Biblical periods, what good will the science be when, and if, the war ever ends? And people can't live by a giant cyborg all the time. By, for or off."

One of her questions raised much suspicion within Misato: What was NERV going to do with the Evas after the Angels were taken care of? Put them into suspended animation? Take them apart for scrap metal? Or maybe advance science by further study upon them? She didn't have any answers to them.

Then, she noticed a wall in the hall that held several pictures of different people and went over to look at them; they were of Akira and her large family of adopted children over the years. Akira was the only person in each photograph, or a painting that took the resemblance of a photograph, that hadn't changed over time. Each picture displayed happiness and positive energy. Misato even saw what might've been the family's recent picture, due to a teenage Shinji being in it.

"Siblings and other relatives of the past, all the way to the here and now," Tsukiko informed her. "They go back over one-hundred years. Maybe even further back. Each man and woman around Akira have three things in common: They're related to each other by means of Akira, they were taught the traditions of the town and given a path of enlightenment to walk down to ensure they had a future to be proud of, and they were all given the right to decide their lives when they got older and were taught the martial arts."

Misato gazed at a particular photo and saw Akira beside a young man that looked almost like a warped version of Shinji, but the date imprinted on the picture was over eleven years before the Second Impact occurred, which meant that the man wasn't Shinji, but he didn't seem like Nemo, either.

"Who's this man next to Akira?" She asked, pointing to the man.

Nemo looked and then frowned.

"That's Gendo," he revealed. "That was the last picture he was ever in before he left Akira Town."

Misato looked closer at the photo and asked, "Was he always so cold back then?"

"His cold behavior was also reflected in his blue flames, like the ones you saw him use tonight." Kanami explained. "We had a dozen conversations with him, as well as social activities, like fishing and playing sports, but no matter what we did, no matter how kind we were to him, it seemed that the life he was living here was never enough to satisfy him. He was extremely different from the other Pyro Channelers here: He wanted more than he was allowed to have."

They conversed on many other things until they eventually passed out from all the talking; their final conversation of the night was simply what the people associated with NERV intended to do with their lives after this so-called war with the Angels had ended.

-x-

For the umpteenth time, Rei opened her uncovered eye to gaze up at the white ceiling of her room, her mind being as empty as her existence had been. Lately, ever since the Third Angel came and was defeated, she couldn't stop thinking about the young girl that had piloted Unit-01 in place of her and the former Third Child. A little girl that fought a giant monster, not for the sake of an injured pilot…but for the sake of a dying boy that she cherished. Rei had never been taught to place any values in most people, mainly because Commander Ikari found many of them to be a distraction and told her to think only of his scenario. She didn't understand why the girl could care so much about a boy that was going to die in the future, eventually, and decided she'd need to ask either Dr. Akagi or Commander Ikari when she saw them.

-x-

"…Of course, I'm coming. And by royal decree, I sentence you to no cigar smoking," Nemo heard somebody say, and opened his eyes to see that somebody was up watching television in the living room. Ugh, what time is it?

Getting up from where he'd been sleeping and walking into the living room, he saw his youngest sister and Shinji awake, watching Rumi's gift from him yesterday.

"How long have you two been watching this?" He asked them.

"Ever since seven-thirty this morning," Shinji answered him. "And what do you mean by us two? Mayo and Taeko are watching, as well."

Nemo turned to the rug pillows near them and saw his nieces sitting on them, watching the movie, as quiet as cats. Pen-Pen was also there with them, and just as quiet.

"Whoa," he uttered, not noticing them at all. "And how is the movie?"

"I like it," Rumi told him. "Thank you for getting it for me."

Nemo sat down with them and watched, accompanied several minutes later by his festival invitee, Camille. It wasn't long until Misato and her invited guests had awakened and were in need of coffee. It was a good thing that Kanami was preparing a pot of it for everybody in need of a morning fix; Misato was left surprised to know that the younger children of the Rokubungi family actually drank coffee among other beverages. Once every one had their caffeinated beverage fix, they felt re-energized and ready to take on the new day.

"I wonder if a brunch is the appropriate term to use for breakfast and post-festival-invited guests," said Shinobu, preparing breakfast for the people.

"If our post-festival guests were to leave before having something to eat, they'd be showing great disrespect to those that had invited them the day before," Akira told her, no longer wearing her yukata from last night and wearing a blue and brown dress, as she sat down and drank her coffee to free herself from the lingering aftereffects of the sake.

Rumi, having dealt with this side of her mother the previous festivals, asked her, "How's your head feeling, Mother?"

"A little better, thank you very much," she told her daughter.

Rumi then noticed, along with Shinji, that Misato seemed out of sorts drinking coffee.

"Is coffee not on your diet, Ms. Katsuragi?" Shinji had asked.

"Actually, she just doesn't drink coffee as much as she would regular beer," answered Kaji to him. "She drank many cans during our college years."

"And after hearing about what happened to this guy that lived only to be thirty-six, I have to readjust to coffee if I wish to live a long life," went Misato, still unable to get rid of the image of herself dying at thirty-one or thirty-four. "Oh…"

"Cold turkey, huh?" Shinobu and Miaka asked, impressed by her decision.

"That's good. You'll live longer," Miaka told her, setting some dumplings on the table.

RING-RING-RING! The phone rang and Akira got up to answer.

"Rokubungi residence, Akira speaking," she greeted, but then her positive expression contorted to that of fearful woe. "Wha…what?"

Shinji and Rumi looked at her, both feeling that something terrible had happened. When Akira hung up, they then saw tears falling from her eyes.

"Mother?" Rumi asked.

"Gyatso was attacked last night," she revealed, her heart wracked with pain over one of her oldest friends still among the living having gotten hurt.

-x-

They couldn't explain it in any other form: Somebody, possibly an outsider, jumped Dr. Gyatso while he was preparing to leave the hospital to retire for the night after he found that the Fú Festival had been prematurely ended by what he found only to be 'unforeseen and unwanted circumstances', and that didn't tell him much of what he wanted to know. Apparently, no one wanted to talk about what Gendo had done to cause the festival to cease last night, ruining everyone's good mood. People were hoping that he'd left right after the lanterns and torches went out, though, which would spare them the unwanted pleasure of seeing him leave.

The other doctors of the town's primary hospital became quiet when Akira arrived to see Gyatso; they saw the expression on her face twisted between great pain and great anger at who was responsible for this devastation. "Don't sugarcoat it for me, please," they knew her to say whenever she became involved in something like this. "I can take it, no matter how it is. What happened?" But it felt different this time, like someone had crossed a line with her.

When she walked into the room assigned to him, she saw how bad his injuries were: At his advanced age, he wasn't as impervious to injuries as he used to be, bearing several burns allover his arms and legs, three broken ribs causing him some trouble breathing, and his left leg had been broken, as well. While with time, medicinal herbs and the Hydro Channelers there to speed up his recovery, Akira still felt that her friend wouldn't mend fully; their relationship went beyond the mere fact that he was her grandson's doctor for his cancer… Gyatso was almost like a little brother to her, as she had no other siblings back in her generation or era. Hell, all of her friends that were still alive, just like her children and their children, were precious to her.

Gyatso opened his eyes and saw Akira standing there in front of him.

"H…hey, there," he greeted, smiling at her presence.

Shedding a tear before sitting down, Akira returned his greeting with, "I'm glad that you're alright."

"They told me it could've been worse. Akira…I know who did this and why, but I couldn't tell the police; my will kept telling me not to."

"Who, Gyatso? Who did this to you?"

"It was… It was Gendo," he confessed. "When I heard the festival had been ended prematurely because of some foolish and inappropriate behavior, I decided to call it an early day and turn in for the night, but then I realized that I had left my house keys back in my office. It was when I made it to my office that I got jumped by Gendo; the hospital staff was already at the festival and left home when it ended prematurely. I asked him what it was that he wanted, and he told me that he wanted the Rokubungi family's medical history records…for research. I was the only one there with a key to the storehouse where we keep the medical records of people, but his request wasn't even a request; it was a demand, an order, and I wouldn't help him on that. I told him that he couldn't have the records, so he beat me up and then used his Pyro Channeling against me; not many non-channelers can stand up against the elements being used offensively…especially at my age. When I came to, I was already on a stretcher and the storehouse had been ransacked, papers on the floor and file cabinets knocked over."

"So, he got what he wanted," said Akira.

"No, he didn't," Gyatso uttered. "He didn't get your family's medical history because I had it out already. It's stashed away at my house; I was looking over Shinji's medical files in an attempt to find out why nothing we've done so far has kept him in permanent remission."

"So, you protected my family's medical records without even trying to…from a member of my family that has grown into a problem?" Akira spoke out, chuckling at how unpredictable her friend could be at times with his degree in medication. "Thank you, Gyatso."

"Hey, it's not like he hasn't displayed problems in the past before," he told her, recalling many of Gendo's problems when he still lived in the town. "Do you remember the time when he was defeated by Kanami in that junior division of the Trimester Tournament?"

How could Akira forget about that? It was the only time she had to let Kanami display her martial arts prowess against a channeler; she'd been worried sick when it seemed like Kanami displayed some sort of envy at not being blessed with any elemental power and wanted to fight a channeler to prove that she could still defend herself against one…and the person that came up as her opponent had been Gendo, who displayed some sense of superiority to other channelers and wanted to prove that he was the best. But the whole point of the tournament was not to see who was the strongest…but to see who was capable of defending themselves in extended periods of their stamina and who showed room for improvement in their abilities. When the battle started, Gendo made all the torches around the stadium burn blue before using them to fight, which became his downfall. He had become depended on his ability to control fire that he didn't think to display his other martial arts abilities, while Kanami, being a non-channeler, showed good strategies and improvisation, making Gendo use up his channeling sources and then deliver the final blow by hitting his pressure points.

Kanami had won the battle and found where she needed only minor improvement…but Gendo demonstrated that he needed extensive improvement where he didn't rely so much on his channeling, which earned him his defeat. He accused her of cheating until Akira told him that the fight was only a test to see who needed more work in their skills, and Kanami showed everyone that it was he that needed more work.

It wasn't the first time he expressed his anger and it wasn't the last time he expressed it, either. Akira thought, conversing with Gyatso further. "If Gendo comes back, he'll have to pay a penalty for assaulting an elder and a doctor, and disturbing the peace, as well as for the damage he caused in the storehouse where we keep the medical records."

"Luckily, the records are marked with names and dates, making them easy to arrange in order in the likely event that they're mismatched. The only trouble of it is that it takes a while before they're stacked back in their proper places." Gyatso told her.

"Yes, that's true," she then got up and left the room. "I'll see you later, old friend."

-x-

"…I'm starting to miss that town of theirs," said Makoto, as he and the rest of Misato's group were on the train heading back to Tokyo-3. "They have such a… I don't know, uh, untainted society?"

"Either that, or they're just good at being protected and preserving their culture," said Kaji. "To think that their home had been saved by their founder from a tidal wave…merely by controlling the watery element and evaporating the wave. She could've probably done more than help build a town. Maybe build an empire."

"Not very likely," said Misato. "She doesn't seem like the type of person that wants to rule the world, even if it appears that she has the power to do so. She just takes in orphans and raises them as though they were her own. She even said that perfection and power are totally worthless, that love and happiness are what really mattered to her."

"And they all seem to be very happy," Asuka uttered, displaying a little envy. "They don't lose many things by any reason."

Something inside Misato told her that Asuka was very envious toward the youngest aunt of Shinji and his two cousins, simply because they still have their mothers in their lives. Or just that they had parents that care about them and don't seek to cheat their happiness through whatever means.

She lost her mother to the Evangelion program, losing her mind in a Contact Experiment, even attempting to strangle Asuka at one point before she killed herself. She thought, having gone over the Second Child's history. Her mother divorced her husband after discovering that he was having an affair with her doctor, and, even after several years later, she and her stepmother can barely stand each other because of the past.

"What do you think was up with Commander Ikari?" Aoba asked.

"Well, it seemed obvious that he was trying to persuade Rumi to come back and pilot the Eva, only she continued to shoot him down," answered Ritsuko. "And then, when persuasion didn't work, he tried to use force, which ended the festival and everybody being angry with him."

"I liked it when Akira knocked him down with the wind," Kaji told her.

"Heh-heh-heh!" Ritsuko cracked up.

It was true; Akira was, as far as their knowledge of Gendo's history was known to them, the only person encountered to have knocked him onto him onto his bottom…and with mere oxygen meant to satisfy the lungs, too. No one else has ever dealt any sort of injury, even a subtle injury, to Gendo and walk away from him unharmed.

"It's hard to believe that young-looking woman raised him," Ritsuko then stated. "At first glance, you can tell that they don't appear to be related; Commander Ikari's very black-hearted most of the time, and this Akira Rokubungi is very open-hearted, taking in many orphaned children and raising them as though they were her own, for years. That's quite an accomplishment for a woman pushing over a century and looking less than three decades old."

"I used to think that Tokyo-3 was a nice place to live in," went Maya, "except after visiting that town, I'm starting to reevaluate with Akira Town being a better place to live in."

"And they rely on different resources that are present instead of using the monetary system that the rest of the world lives on twenty-four/seven; in fact, they use regular currency very scarcely," added Makoto, also impressed by such a civilization where it seemed time stood still. It still possesses life that you can't find anywhere else, and there were hardly any cicadas making a sound like they do back home in the city.

"What I could do if I could wield one of the elements like they do," went Aoba, daydreaming about the elements he saw being used.

"If people could use elements like that, life would be different," suggested Ritsuko. "History would be rewritten and we'd probably be making less use of the materials that are hard to acquire now."

"Akira Town has fossil fuels, but they take it upon themselves to preserve Mother Nature's resources that are limited and can't be easily replaced," went Asuka. "They use wood and stone, from simple tools to whole buildings. They even take it upon themselves to derive power from clean sources; there wasn't any sort of device there that ran on gasoline or nuclear energy. It's solar, water, wind or geothermal sources for them; they even use regular rocks to burn instead of coal for their furnaces, and that makes their home…"

"It makes their home clean, untainted," Kaji cut in. "Wow…people can really appreciate their own town and treasure it like they would a memory."

As the train continued its destination back to Tokyo-3, the group all thought the same thing: Akira Town was, obviously, a marvel locked in time and sheltered from danger, filled with people that accept each other…with only Gendo being a bad thorn in its side.

-x-

"…Maybe now that you're a year older, you might demonstrate a change in this test," Tsukiko told Rumi, setting the materials in front of her little sister. "Which one shall we start with?"

"We should probably start with the water," suggested Rumi to her, standing before the table that displayed the materials that were meant to test her.

"Okay," Tsukiko poured some water from a jug and spilled it onto the table.

For a few moments, the water did nothing but expand outward due to the gravity that pushed the liquid toward the edges of the table…and then the water started to flow backward, forming into a yin/yang symbol in front of the girls.

"Wow," Rumi gasped; in the past, the water simply spilled over the table and that was that.

"I guess we had to wait until you were six to cause elemental reactions," went Nemo, as he and Shinji watched from a distance so that they didn't disturb Rumi's mental prowess.

Tsukiko cleaned up the water and then set a candle in front of Rumi; the light was burning in a regular manner for a moment, but then it started to point upward, as though a vacuum cleaner were trying to suck up the flames.

"Water, fire," Shinji uttered as his little aunt passed two of the four tests.

When his elder aunt set some rocks and a pinwheel, he watched as Rumi made the stones stand on their ends in a vertical line and the pinwheel reacting to a few wind currents, without her even touching it. Rumi had passed all four of the tests, proving her mother's belief that she, just like her, could channel the power of all four elements. Now, in the future, she would just require the teachings required to use them as she did her hook swords. A Unity Channeler, that's what Rumi had demonstrated she was, able to manipulate each elemental force once trained in the practices that were required.

"I can already imagine how you'll turn out when you get older," said Nemo to her.

"Oh, really?" Rumi questioned.

"Yeah. You out in the world, doing great things with the elements. Stopping floods, preventing volcanic eruptions, ceasing earthquakes. Need I go on?"

"I don't think I'd be able to stop an earthquake, let alone start one."

"You never know, Rumi," went Shinji to her. "It could happen…when you know enough."

Older, huh? The six-year-old thought, with a bit of uncertainty. I wish I could believe you, nephew…but I keep getting a bad feeling about my days yet to come, as they're woven with yours.

Ever since they found out that Dr. Gyatso was in the hospital, and who was responsible for putting him in the ICU ward, Rumi became worried that somebody like Gendo would try to get more involved in their simple lives than he wasn't permitted to. She didn't even tell her mother about the dream she had last night about Gendo: He was with her on a dark street that resembled the ones Shinji and she walked around in Tokyo-3, only at night, and then he shot blue flames at her…without a preexisting source at his disposal; the flames came from his bare hands, which were scarred with old sears. The only other details she could make out from the dream were that a comet was passing by in the sky and that the purple Evangelion, Unit-01, was watching from atop a building, with eyes that looked almost as though they belonged to something…human.

"…Rumi?" She heard Shinji call her name, which brought her back to the present.

"I'm sorry," she apologized to him. "What was that?"

"I just said that, maybe, you should go outside now," he told her again.

"Yeah, okay. Sure." She agreed and stepped out.

Shinji, for the umpteenth time, worried about her, almost as much as she often worried about him, which was common knowledge at home and the hospital. Only this time, the worrying stemmed from what that outcast almost did to her when she refused his would-be request and absolute demand.

"Nemo," he asked his uncle, "I know you never talked much with…him, what with you being a toddler back then, before and after he left, but tell me, please… Was he always so…demanding?"

The younger, more innocent look-alike recalled his childhood, back to when he was a newly-adopted Rokubungi family member at age three, and remembered that Gendo, one of his new big brothers at the time, along with Bumi, had bothered him senseless with his presence; the older young man glowed with a sense of feverish desires that he couldn't understand at that time due to his age, even driving him to sleep several nights with his new mama after their first encounter.

Tsukiko, who hardly knew anything of the man on a personal level, having been adopted much later after Nemo was, spoke up, "I'm sure that, whether or not he was, as you put it, demanding…doesn't have you beating around the bush, Shinji."

"No, not in the least," the young teen uttered back to her. "I'm just worried. After what he almost did last night, who's to say that he won't try something like that again?"

After saying that, both elder relatives became a little tense for their little sister's safety. If what their nephew believed was accurate, then Gendo's sudden interest in Rumi would, quite possibly and eventually, turn into an obsession, and people with obsessions often turn out to be dangerous. More so than people with negative addictions or criminals.

"Um, Shinji," went Tsukiko to him, "do you think you could help Nemo with his extra vocabulary research and astronomy notes while I go to the town to check out something? It should only take about an hour or so."

"Sure thing, Aunt Tsukiko," he agreed, and his youngest, Pyro Channeling aunt ran off.

-x-

"Asuka, your score has risen up a little since your last test," went Ritsuko to the Second Child, as she was back in the Entry Plug undergoing a synchronization evaluation later that day.

"Really?" The redhead asked her. "By how much?"

"It's at ninety-seven point eight right now; it's much higher than before."

"Really? Oh, great. Thanks." But Asuka's acknowledgment of such information was half-hearted; she couldn't shake off what Commander Ikari had almost done to Rumi after she refused his offer for her to pilot the Eva again. Disregarding the fate of the world for a regular life? Ignoring mankind's potential end for a quiet solace at home? How can she not understand the seriousness of the world's predicament? It's a live-or-die war between us and the Angels in order to prevent the Third Impact. But then again, she must not have heard all of the details. Still hard to believe that she could synchronize with Unit-01 on her first try so well…and defeated an Angel that quick, as well.

"It's not that she's unconcerned about the state of the world," Asuka recalled Akira's words the night of her daughter's birthday. "As she had explained before, the only reason she piloted that walking nightmare just once was because she had someone to protect. When a person has someone, not something, to protect, they bring out the best in their abilities. The world is just a thing to protect. A best friend, a little sister or a parent that can no longer defend themselves properly are someone to protect. Tell me, Ms. Soryu, do you have someone to protect? Someone that matters to you more than anything else in this whole world?"

Do I have someone to protect? Do I have someone that matters to me more than the world? Asuka thought as the test ended.

As the redhead went to the girls' locker room to wash the LCL off, Ritsuko, while checking Asuka's scores, was also looking at a book she had acquired from Akira Town; it was on the methods of how regular rocks could be used in alternative ways other than for simple building. It would've seemed that after they had all left that place, its very existence became etched in their minds to a degree that they couldn't stop thinking about it or the people that lived in it. The head of Project 'E' even thought that the man that was three years older than her, Nemo Rokubungi, was more attractive than his elder brother, Gendo, and wouldn't have minded asking him out, but he already seemed to have eyes for that woman he invited to his sister's birthday, Camille Moto.

All the nice ones usually get taken, she thought, and then set the book down to look over at the collected data NERV had acquired so far on the Third Angel.

And it was strange, the data was. This Angel seemed to be composed of an altogether different matter, whatever it was, that was like particles and waveforms, similar to light that has been frozen by some means. The red sphere, the S² Engine, which, according to an old theory that had been published months before Second Impact, gave the Angels their unlimited power source, allowing them to go on indefinitely, so long as the core, the seat of their so-called souls, remained intact. What had several of the scientists baffled, though, was that Rumi, who had provided them with the corpse, unknowingly, to study, had only hit the core once before ripping it away from the Angel, and she had no idea that it was the beast's weak point. She wasn't even concerned about the Angel possibly getting back up to start round two with her.

But what puzzled Ritsuko about the Angel's wave pattern, its basic DNA structure, was that it was extremely comparable to that of the human genome. And as Misato told her at one point when she found out about it, "It's disturbing if you think of these creatures being closer to us than the primates and gorillas are." The faux-blond wanted to admit that she was right in a way, even if it was just her own opinion. Everything they were getting from the Angels was intense, and all from one corpse they were still dissecting and taking samples of to catalog for later research.

In the girls' locker room, Asuka still pondered Akira's words of having someone to protect as she washed the LCL off her skin.

"Of course I have someone to protect," she told herself as she washed her hair.

Do you really have someone to protect? A voice, not too young, uttered in her head. Or are you just lying to yourself?

The young redhead couldn't answer that question, even if it was to an illusion of herself when she was younger and holding a stuffed monkey.

-x-

"Hmm?" Akira mumbled slightly, seeing Rumi standing in front of her, and both were in front of the Akira Town Museum of United History. "Rumi?"

"Oh, hey, Mom," said girl responded, though it was sad and bittersweet.

The centenarian woman could see that she was upset about something, and could probably deduce that it either had something to do with her nature as a channeler…or it involved Gendo's recent actions.

"Um, were you going into the museum, as well?" She asked her daughter.

"Mm-hmm," Rumi replied. "Huh? You mean, you were going in, too?"

"Yeah. I guess we think alike in a way."

"Yeah, maybe."

They then entered the building, rarely speaking a word to each other and going their individual ways around the place, looking at various statues, portraits, sculptures and antiques that were found and/or given to the curators; it was a rarity that such irreplaceable items were ever loaned to any one museum.

So many things to learn from, and so little to understand, Rumi thought as she gazed at some old antiques that her mother had found and gave to the museum several years before World War Two ever started, which Akira Town stayed out of and was left unscathed.

She stopped in front of a glass case that housed something that was quite unusual to her; she had never seen it before, and decided to cross the red rope divider to get a better look, despite her knowledge that the divider's color marked the item as extremely rare and not to be touched.

It looked like…an armored hand of some sort, with a triangular-shaped ruby and teardrop-shaped pearl adorning the backside of said hand and wrist. Age, rust and stress had left their marks on it, as well, giving it its antique nature. Never in her life of visiting the museum had Rumi ever seen such an artifact…or been entranced by one, either.

"Hmm?" She mumbled, seeing a label on the case. "It says, 'The Angelbreaker'. That's a rather unusual name for a gauntlet that looks like it could fall apart if it was put on again."

Pressing her face and palms against the glass, she gazed closer toward the gauntlet. As time passed by, the young girl thought about her dying nephew and long-lived mother, two very important people in her life, higher than even the other members of the family. She didn't even want to think of this year as being her Shinji's last one due to his near-death disaster caused by his kidneys almost giving up their purpose of serving him. She couldn't even picture him being unable to eat, as he needed his kidneys just to do that, to filter out the food waste from his blood. If her mother asked her to give him one of hers, she would've done so, but Shinji was forever against it because he wanted her to live more.

But…he deserves to live as much as I do, she thought, feeling a sense of twisted devastation. It's like what that woman said in that movie of Nemo's: "In one hand, you have your own life, and the other, you have his. One of you is going to die, but which one is entirely up to you." Did I choose this for him? Am I choosing this for him? Am I killing him all by myself?

Tap, tap, tap. Something was tapping the glass, catching her attention. Looking up, she had expected to see her mother about to scold her for crossing set boundaries, but didn't see anyone nearby. Tap, tap, tap. The sound was still there, tapping on the glass.

Gasp! She found her tapping source. The Angelbreaker, the aged gauntlet, tapping its index finger on the glass. Backing away from the display case, Rumi turned to leave, wanting to forget what had transpired there. As she ran out of the room she had entered, she bumped into her mother, knocking them both to the floor.

"Oomph!" Akira gasped, landing on her rear and catching her daughter on her chest. "I suppose you have a perfectly-logical explanation for that, Rumi?"

"I…I…I…" Rumi tried to explain, but was having a difficult time getting her words in orders. "Maybe it's best if I showed you."

Helping her mother up, Rumi led her to the display case of the gauntlet. Interestingly enough, it wasn't tapping the glass, anymore.

I've not laid eyes on this ever since the day I loaned it to the museum, thought Akira, looking at the Angelbreaker with an ancient interest. Father, you once said this belonged to Mother, and yet you never elaborated on why it was so special. I mean, look at it. It's just as old as from when you gave it to me, and it hasn't really done me much good except for being an object on my bedroom's mantelpiece. All you ever elaborated on it was that it was one of the most precious artifacts in existence, and that it even dates back to the prosperous times of the Four Elemental Cities. That, I find a bit difficult to believe in. I guess I should've asked for it to be examined and studied to understand it better. Nemo would probably have the answers for what it is made out of…or at least what it isn't made out of.

"It was tapping on the glass," Rumi explained to her.

"Tapping?" She asked her, and looked at the gauntlet, expecting to see it tap away, but it did nothing.

"But…it was tapping on the glass," her daughter told her. "I'm not making it up."

Akira approached the case and tapped the glass, but the gauntlet still didn't act up.

"I think this old thing has some issues that it doesn't wish to share, Rumi," she told her daughter. "I loaned this to the museum almost forty-five years ago because it was taking up space in my room, and it never really did me much good. Whatever it was doing moments ago, it's keeping quiet about it."

As her mother turned to walk away, Rumi saw the gauntlet moving its fingers again and tap the glass.

Akira turned to look at it again, and was convinced of her daughter's belief; the gauntlet was tapping on the glass. In all of her years of keeping it, it had never done anything but take up space. Worried, she took her daughter by her shoulder and calmly left the room it was in.

"Okay, I'm gonna go have a little chat with the curators and see if that gauntlet has done this before," she told Rumi. "Keep your distance away from it until I can be certain that it's not going to do something that isn't normal… Well, our sort of normal. Okay, Rumi?"

"Yes, Mom," Rumi responded, and then watched her mother leave to go find the curators. "I'll just be…looking at the other things."

"Try not to do anything naughty, will ya?"

"Mommy, I never do anything naughty."

-x-

"…What do you mean, a strange energy signature was detected fifteen minutes ago?" Ritsuko asked Maya.

"It's just what the MAGI said, Sempai," Maya explained. "Fifteen minutes ago, an unusual energy signature was detected twice, far away from Tokyo-3. At first, we all thought it was an Angel, but an AT-Field wasn't detected."

"Where was the signature detected?"

Miss Ibuki showed her teacher the location of the energy signature on a holographic display of part of the region Tokyo-3 resided in, and then showed another region where the energy was detected; it was near a massive, faraway portion of Japanese grounds that weren't industrialized. But what caught Ritsuko's attention about the display was the very location of the energy signature. It had been detected right where Akira Town resided, the only place on the archipelago that seemed completely independent of the rest of the nation due to their own resources.

"But…that's where…" Ritsuko never finished her response as the alarms went off; the ones assigned to warn NERV of an approaching Angel.

-x-

Asuka was a bit disgusted at the sight of the Fourth Angel; what kind of creature would look like a cross between an overgrown, reddish-pink squid and a love toy of the dark kind? It had shown up unexpectedly and had dispatched several military tanks and jets that were attempting to stop it before it reached Tokyo-3. But instead of stopping it, they were simply wasting currency over an impossible feat that couldn't be made possible with conventional weaponry. So Asuka was the only one capable of dealing with the situation at the moment.

Rei, still injured from her incident with Unit-00, was incapable of piloting the out-of-order Evangelion…and Unit-01 hadn't been reconfigured for her yet…along with NERV's inability to find another potential pilot for the Evas. Gendo wasn't even present when the Angel arrived.

"Asuka, be careful," went Misato over the intercom to the redhead. "Much of the city's been retracted into the ground except for the storehouses for weapons and backup umbilical cables."

"Got it," Asuka responded as the Angel entered the city limits and started standing upright. "Okay, ugly. Come get some."

The Angel, if it could talk with a form like the one it had, probably would've responded harshly, but instead unleashed two whip-like constructs that looked like light. It struck down two buildings and reduced them to debris that littered the streets around them.

Asuka fired a pellet rifle at the Angel and watched the bullets hit their mark, but nothing happened; the Angel didn't fall over or anything. Shamshel, the authoritarian Angel of the Day, unleashed its whips and sent Unit-02 flying overhead toward a mountainside, though for some odd reason, leaving much of the city unscathed. Asuka was nearly knocked out from the throw and quickly got up to shoot at the Angel again, but realized something that was a grave error: The pallet gun had run out of bullets to fire.

Shiest! She thought, and decided to draw out her Progressive Knife to continue the assault. Come get some, you ugly…huh?!

Before she could even make a move against the Angel that, originally, was advancing toward her, it stopped and stood where it was by the mountainside and city. Shamshel turned its…'head' this way and that, as if it were confused by something that only it could understand.

"Talk to me, Misato," Asuka told the purple head. "What's going on with this Angel?"

"We're not sure," said Misato back to her. "We're picking up an unusual energy signature that it seems to be looking for."

"What? An energy signature? From where?"

"Sempai, Captain," she heard Maya say to Ritsuko and Misato. "The signature's coming from that place again. It's coming from that town."

That town? Akira Town? Asuka wondered.

The Angel then straightened its 'head' out and looked at Unit-02, but gave a curious surprise when it retracted its whips and turned away.

"It's leaving," she told them, confused by this. "Hey! Come back here and finish this!"

Unit-02 charged with its Prog Knife held high to stab the Angel, but its AT-Field acted up and shielded it from harm, knocking the Eva down as it glided along the ground to safety.

"Urgh!" Asuka groaned. "What the Hell is going on here?!"

As for Shamshel, something drew its attention away from what it was after in Tokyo-3 with something that, for some reason, was just as precious. Potentially even more valuable than what it really wanted. It was being called to a place that offered less resistance…and no large obstacles.

-x-

"…So, they were just as confused," said Akira to her daughter, as they sat in the cafeteria of the museum to eat, discussing the Angelbreaker.

"An old gauntlet that taps onto the glass display case several times a week for the past six years and they didn't call it in to you to obtain your Intel?" Rumi asked, having finished her second hotdog. "When did it start tapping six years ago?"

"According to their display camera tapes and discs, the Angelbreaker started its mild, periodic tapping on its display case on the Fourth of July…at, exactly, fifteen seconds after twelve in the morning."

"But that was around the exact same time that I was born," Rumi told her. "Mom, I don't really mean to express a sense of disrespect to certain aspects of the past, but I don't think that gauntlet just starts tapping periodically after I was born for no reason. What if…it knows something's going to happen and it winds up on my hand or something like the things that occur in the comics that Nemo looks at?"

"Rumi, don't think like that for a moment," Akira told her, not wanting to jump to conclusions just yet. "It may just be a coincidence…and before I gave the gauntlet to the museum, it never showed any sign of doing anything that it probably wasn't supposed to. It might even be a reaction caused by its old and near-decrepit state, but even if it weren't so, you can rest assured that whatever it might do, I will not let it harm you; it'll have to break me down to get to you."

Rumi felt assured and thanked her.

"It doesn't even look like it has any sort of special properties to it," she told Akira. "I mean, how can it be special?"

"My father, your grandfather, once told me that it dates back to the ancient times, when the Four Elemental Cities existed. I find that hard to believe, but it might be possible, so it may be that old. Hundreds of thousands of years old. With age, come wisdom, power and so much more. Who knows, it might even have special powers that relate to the elements. Maybe even healing properties, too."

"Mom, you're just joking on the last part, right?"

"Hey, it could happen. Hydro Channelers developed the sub-skill that allowed them to use water for healing practices."

"Yes, by redirecting the paths of energy from the pools of energy within ourselves, we're able to heal a few injuries, like burns and lacerations. Nemo did once say that a Hydro Channeler managed to undo somebody's mental contamination by using river water. And…"

The girl then became quiet; something from the past had come to her mind and made it recall other things that were, at one point, hard to endure.

"Rumi?" Akira asked her daughter, concerned, as she saw her head lowering down that her hair, which wasn't braided, had flowed over to cover her face.

"Hydro Channeling…cannot be used to regenerate lost limbs or conditions that people have that have been listed as 'incurable'," she heard her say, realizing that the conversation had brought up the painful memories of when she found out how serious Shinji's cancer was. "It…isn't absolute or totally invaluable in cases like that."

"That is why…as people continue to discover new things that bring both great good and great darkness to the world, they must continue to seek out many things that help to either endure or overcome the parts that invite the great darkness." She told her.

"I can still remember that day, you know. When I was old enough to use words fluently."

"You were two years old, already walking properly and you knew everyone's name."

"And why I was needed in the beginning, which I understood well."

Akira remembered that day, as well; it had been a great shock to her and Rumi, but it also meant a serious action had to be taken when they had all believed that everything was going to be fine.

-x-

"It must be of her volition"

Two-Thousand-Eleven. Just two years after Rumi had entered their lives and, unknowingly, helped her elder nephew get by with her cord blood. It was on a regular Tuesday, when Rumi was helping her mother make lunch for everyone, that Shinji showed up in the kitchen, his hair having grown back a bit after his last trip to the hospital, though his skin still showed a few of his veins, and asked how they were doing.

"…We're doing fine, Shinji-Kun," Akira told him. "Rumi, can you say, "We're doing great"?"

"We're doing great," Rumi imitated. "Great, great, great!"

"Ah-ha-ha!" Shinji laughed, but then… "Ah…ha (cough, cough, cough)… Oh…"

As he slumped into a chair behind him, Rumi asked, "Shinji-Kun…not happy?"

"Oh, it's not (cough, cough, cough)… It's not (cough, cough)…that…" He tried to explain, not feeling well, but then his nose started bleeding and his head felt like it was spinning…and he fell to the floor in front of them.

Akira rushed over to him, lunch being forgotten, and helped him into the living room; Rumi, worried, followed suit.

"Mommy, what is wrong with him?" She asked her.

"I'm not sure," she responded. "Shinji?"

"Oh… I don't feel so well," he told them.

When Bumi and Miaka returned, Akira had the couple take Shinji and them to the hospital to find out what had happened. Nemo, Shinobu, Tsukiko and Kanami had also shown up, leaving Mayo, Taeko and Rumi down in the hospital's daycare center; when they had found out that Shinji was in the hospital again, they stopped whatever it was that they were busy with and rushed over to be with the family.

"…You think he's got the stomach flu?" Kanami asked Nemo.

"It could just be the Chicken Pox," said Shinobu to them.

"What could be taking Dr. Gyatso so long?" Bumi wondered aloud.

"Such things cannot be rushed, dearest," went Miaka, trying to calm him.

They were all in the waiting room when said doctor came out from examining Shinji; even after they all believed the worst was over, Gyatso still asked to continue being Shinji's medical provider. His expression was that of woe.

"Well, what is it?" Nemo asked, forgetting his proper manners. "Sorry. I mean, how is he doing?"

"Shinji's…" He tried to explain, but found himself unable to look any of them in the eyes.

Akira went over, raised his head up and asked, "How bad is it, please?"

Finding renewed strength, the good doctor explained, "Shinji's relapsed. His leukemia has come back."

Everyone looked at one another, confused at how he could've just relapsed when he was just fine the last few days for the last two years since his last stay in the hospital.

"Did… Does his relapse have anything to do with any flowers or the altitude of the mountain?" Kanami asked him.

"No, it doesn't have anything to do with any of that. His immunity system just stopped producing healthy cells for him," Gyatso answered her. "He just needs a lymphocyte transfusion to boost his immunity system and he'll be alright. There's only one, slight complication."

And they all knew what that complication was: Shinji needed the lymphocytes…from Rumi herself, as she was the only match they had to help him.

"Does Shinji know?" Miaka asked.

"Yes, I've told him, and he wasn't happy about what he heard. Apparently, Kanami's beliefs on items of value, when they're given to a person by another person, willingly, are making him refuse any sort of attempt to help him. He won't allow it without Rumi's given consent." Gyatso explained the situation, and all eyes were on Kanami, like she had done something wrong at the wrong time.

The young mother lowered her head down in shame, but Akira stood up for her and said, "It is true. Something given without consent has no value, whatsoever. I'll be right back."

She left out the waiting room, but not to see Shinji. They all knew where she was going…and Tsukiko went after her, a ping of worry in her heart.

"Mother, wait!" She called out to Akira, reaching her at the elevators. "I don't think we should do this without a further discussion on whether or not it's even right."

"But I haven't even done anything yet, Tsukiko," Akira responded, knowing where this was going, and didn't want it to go down an ugly path.

"I know what you're thinking, and I just can't sit with it like this," the young woman told the nigh-timeless one. "I just don't believe that Rumi should be made to donate blood to Shinji like this. I mean, she's only two years old, already speaking fluently. She doesn't even know why he got hurt today. She even thinks it's her fault and Nemo had to tell her that she didn't do anything wrong."

"You make it sound as though I'm going to force her into helping…and with cruelty, Tsukiko. I would never do that to her…or any of you. I'm simply going to ask her for Shinji."

"Do you really think she's gonna do so and not out of some sort of guilt or potential belief that she might be deceived by us?"

"I won't let her be wracked by guilt or dragooned by deception. If it ever comes to it, I'll explain everything to her. It must be of her volition."

"I find that hard for a two-year-old girl to understand completely."

Akira looked at her and wondered when she was just to going to try and hit her. They knew each other well enough to understand that they both didn't like this any more than the others did, but unlike Tsukiko, at that time, Akira held onto the hope that Rumi could understand, not wanting to be looked at as being cruel or immoral, but just wanting to keep the family together.

When the elevator stopped at the third floor, they were surprised to find the very girl they were looking for standing in front of them, along with Mayo and Taeko.

Taeko, feeling like she was going to get a spanking if her mother found out, came out and said, "It was Rumi! She made me do it! I was just minding my own business, coloring in my book while Mayo was playing with a puzzle, until she tells us that she wants to see Shinji."

"Taeko…" Tsukiko started, but was cut off by the young girl.

"I swear! I swear! It was all her!"

"Taeko!" She went again, silencing the young girl. "Believe it or not, we were coming to see Rumi. We didn't expect to find you girls trying to get into the elevator and go see Shinji…even when you have no idea which floor he's on."

"Oops," Mayo sighed, remembering that they didn't know which floor housed Shinji whenever he went to the hospital. "We're in trouble, aren't we?"

"Nobody's in trouble," Akira told her granddaughter, and then picked up her youngest daughter. "At least not in any serious trouble."

As Rumi left with Akira to the garden area of the hospital, Tsukiko was left with her nieces and had to ask them her curious question of how they got out of the daycare center. While out in the garden as the sun was setting, Rumi sat down on the grass with her mother. Akira, hoping she could explain everything as simple as possible but without sounding so demanding, looked down at her and waited for her to speak up first.

"…I…I just wanted to see if he was okay," Rumi explained her reason for trying to see her nephew earlier. "He didn't seem happy."

"Nobody's ever happy when they're sick," her mother added.

"Sick? What is sick?"

"Sick is when you're not feeling well…or when a part of you hurts too much."

"Is that why Shinji isn't happy? Did somebody hurt him?"

"Yes, and nobody hurt him. You see… Shinji's got a very bad cold that we've been hoping he got over two years ago after you were born because…um… Well, we needed your help at that time to make him get better."

"I…helped him when I was born?" Rumi questioned, trying to comprehend what her mother was saying to her. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well, um… How do I explain it clearly? Rumi, when we all discovered what kind of…cold that Shinji had, we were told everything that could happen to him if we didn't find him the right kind of help and medicine that could make him better."

"What could happen?"

"He would…he would suffer, he would feel pain everyday until the day came that…he would leave us…against his will. We needed you to help prevent that. You kept him from leaving home for two whole years."

The then-two-year-old tried to comprehend everything she'd learned from her mother, having not been told things that were too hard to understand yet; she didn't know that her mother used 'leaving' to cover up 'dying' or that the things he could suffer from were organ failures, coma, severe vomiting and other sicknesses associated to his cancer. But she had the ominous feeling that when her mother said that she kept Shinji from leaving the family against his will, she assumed it meant him leaving…and never coming back…with a man with eyes that were as cold as ice like a few pictures of the family from the past (she only ever saw one man from the photographs that almost looked like her big brother, Nemo, but without the so-called childishness that she saw him display a few times). She could've asked her if the man from the pictures would come and take him away from them, but she decided against asking and chose to ask a different question.

"How would…he leave us?" She asked her mother, needing to know.

"He would go to sleep," Akira told her, since dying wasn't so different from sleeping forever. "He would fall to sleep…but he wouldn't wake up again."

"Won't…wake up…" Rumi was hurt by this new knowledge, and had to see Shinji right then and there. "Mommy, I want to see Shinji. Now, please."

Akira had widen her eyes from her daughter's desire to see Shinji, and felt that her choice of words might've been too hard on her…and gave in to her subtle demand. When they showed up outside his room, being separated by the large viewing window and door that allowed them to see that he was looking at a picture book that Bumi had given him, looking like he was well from a distance and visually. It was only through blood examinations that it was shown he was sick again. He should've been resting, but he wasn't sleepy…and he didn't wish to sleep, either, fearing what would happen if he did, and his condition wasn't critical yet.

Rumi poked her head over the window and saw him wide awake, some of her fears subsiding now.

"Rumi, none of us have ever asked you of doing something that we knew you definitely shouldn't have to do at your present age, and I don't really want you to unless you're okay with it… So…I'm asking you, for Shinji, if you would help him get well if he gets sick again…and be his lifeline anchor. I'm asking you, Rumi, not telling you. You can say 'no' if you want and nobody would hold it against you. Shinji won't even let you do so without your permission." Akira told her, meaning what she had said; she refused to guilt-trip her into helping and she wasn't going to force her or use her like she was replaceable when she wasn't.

Rumi leaned against the wall and looked up at her mother and thought about what she'd been asked to do for Shinji. She could only guess that helping her nephew meant having to let the doctors get near her when she wasn't sick so that he wouldn't get any sicker; she'd seen stethoscopes and syringes a year ago when she was old enough to walk on her own, already knowing some of the organs and their functions and what could serve as remedies for ailing people. And she was being asked by her mother for her nephew…because he didn't want her to help him unless it was of her choice to do so. There were only two choices: Help him or lose him.

"If I help him, will he stay with us?" She asked her.

"Yes," her mother told her, chuckling a little. "Yes, he would stay with us."

It wasn't a total lie, but more of a half-truth; none of them knew how long Shinji would continue living until his body gave up on him completely. But she was determined to keep him in the family for as long as possible because they didn't want him to die. But she wasn't so sure about Rumi's feelings toward his current state.

"I don't want him to go," she heard her daughter say to her. "If he needs me to be his anchor, I'll be his anchor. I won't let him be taken away."

Akira bowed her head to Rumi and thanked her, hoping to every elemental deity that she hadn't, intentionally or unintentionally, sign some sort of form that was her daughter's pain or death warrant.

-x-

"…You never screamed, not even once, when the doctors stuck the needle in your arm to draw blood," Akira reminded her, after she had agreed to help Shinji.

"It was all for Shinji," Rumi told her, unable to eat her third hotdog because it had gone cold. "For him, I would endure anything the doctors threw at me. And…I appreciate that you asked me for him, even if it's become hopeless for him now. I'm glad to have chosen to be his anchor."

"Rumi, you're more than just his anchor. You're more than just his little aunt. You're probably his best friend and his special keeper. I guess you could say that you're his guardian angel." She then picked up her daughter's hotdog and used her Pyro Channeling to re-heat it for her.

His special keeper, the young girl thought, accepting the hotdog from her. That's me.

"Hey, do you remember that time you caught the Chicken Pox?"

"Yeah, it was after I find out that Shinji had caught it due to the winter weather. I had thought he'd caught it because of his leukemia before you told me that it was just a slight plague that can affect anyone that never had it before or have weak immune systems."

"And you thought that he'd need something from you that time…when all he really needed at that time was rest and anti-itching remedies. Then, you needed them when you caught it. But I guess it was better that you caught it at age three than to have never caught it at all."

"You only catch Chicken Pox once in a lifetime. Many things are a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence for select people."

As her daughter finished her meal, Akira, still with a bowl of garlic-flavored ramen only half-empty, wondered how many more once-in-a-lifetime occurrences were in store for her Rumi. She even wondered about a special event that was happening in three months' time this year.

"Mom?" Rumi asked.

"Yes?"

"Can we go home now, please?"

Looking down at her noodles, Akira responded, "Yeah. It is getting late. Just let me go dump this into the compost bin and we'll be on our way."

When the centenarian mother tossed her half-eaten meal away into the green waste bin and took her daughter outside the museum, she was surprised to find another of her children gifted in the art of coercing fire walking toward them.

"Tsukiko?" She asked, curious to her presence. "What brings you here?"

"I was concerned about Rumi," she explained. "I didn't…want that man to try something to her again like he did at the festival."

She noticed that both her mother and baby sister had an aura of subtle depression on and was curious as to why this was so.

"Old memories acting up from the past again?" She asked them.

"The past is always felt by the present," answered Rumi to her. "And when part of that past has you being a voice of reason and conscious morale, it's hard to forget why some things went down the way they did."

"You mean that time in the hospital."

"Yeah. I was being asked to help a relative."

"And you rarely ever screamed; even when it was normal to do so, okay to say that it hurts, you never did express your desire for them to take the needles out."

"I guess the syringes didn't hurt as much."

"You cried in your sleep when they numbed you to draw bone marrow," Akira told her. "That was as close to screaming as you went."

Rumi then placed her right hand over her leg, as if feeling phantom pain from the time the doctors needed her bone marrow to prevent Shinji's death a while longer. It was true, she did cry in her sleep; having been put to sleep to avoid any harsh reactions when they would stick the needles into her hipbones. But she was okay with that; it was all for Shinji's sake.

"What of Gyatso?" Tsukiko asked, wanting to change the subject to avoid bad memories.

"He's recovering, but I'm worried he won't ever walk again properly when his leg heals up." Akira told her. "If he ever shows the slightest change in his lower mobility, he'll need to attend a few rehab sessions until he straightens out."

Rumi then felt bad about what had happened to Dr. Gyatso, wondering if the real reason Gendo did what he did to the good doctor was because he couldn't get to her.

"Rumi," she heard her mother say to her. "Whatever it is you're thinking about what happened, stop it. It wasn't your fault."

"I just can't understand why anyone would want to hurt him," she explained. "He's never hurt anybody. Not intentionally, at least."

"Gendo's just throwing a tantrum," Tsukiko told her sister, it was another half-truth. "A really foul tantrum that's going to come back and hurt him, tenfold, if he's not careful."

As the three walked down the street, Tsukiko looked up at the sky and said, "Akira, have I ever told you that I have a bad feeling about what's to happen in three months' time?"

"No, Tsukiko, you haven't," the town leader responded. "What is your bad feeling?"

"That special event that's to happen…which happens once every seventy years. That event."

Akira then recalled that event, having seen it herself, more than once, and it made her have assumptions for every potential problem that could happen in the town.

"I think we better get home now," she told her daughters.

"Is what's to happen in three months…bad?" Rumi asked her mother.

"It could be," she responded to her. "We have to consult with Nemo to confirm the possibility."

-x-

Gendo wasn't pleased. He'd failed to acquire the little girl for his precious Unit-01, the Fourth Angel, which should've been defeated by Unit-02, since Unit-01 and Unit-00 were unable to do so, had left for some reason that seemed to originate from his former hometown, and he'd failed to obtain the former Third Child's medical records, simply because the old man that had been a friend of the town's leader was unwilling to hand them over to him…for research. Nothing was going well in his scenario, but then again, nothing ever was to begin with. Shinji was useless to him on account of his cancer, Rumi was unwilling to get involved with a war with an unknown foe any further than she did when she defeated the Third Angel, and Rei was still in recovery. But he still had his beliefs that he could achieve his goals…one way or another.

As long as I have Unit-01, Adam and Lilith, my goal shall be achieved, he thought, unwilling to let anyone, not even a centenarian woman that raised him from infancy, stop him.

-x-

"Yeah, Akira, it could end up bad if it were to happen that way," Nemo told his mother, after looking through his telescope and double-checking his astronomy maps.

As the adults were in the dining room, the kids were in the living room playing a board game that was based off an American movie they'd seen years ago.

"If you roll a six, you win this round, Mayo," said Taeko to her cousin.

"How bad could a passing comet be?" Bumi asked, unsure if it was something they had to be concerned about.

"It's not just a passing comet," said Nemo to his elder brother. "This one's extremely special, which might also make it dangerous if it were to be exploited the time it arrives."

"It's that powerful?" Kanami asked.

"Rayden's Comet, also known as the God of All Comets, an extremely-invaluable would-be talisman of power and so much more," Akira explained to her children. "A talisman of power…to Pyro Channelers. It only passes the Earth once every seventy years, and when it does, Pyro Channelers can use its presence to bring out the best of their blessing."

Soon, all of her sons and daughters present (minus Rumi herself) were wanting to know what made the comet so great…and so dangerous if ever exploited.

"When it arrives this year, it will endow all Pyro Channelers with the ability of the greatest of Pyro Channelers: The gift of being able to use their internal body heat, their very own source of light within themselves, to create their own fire." She explained further.

"Create your own fire? You mean that they wouldn't require torches or matches or anything like that, an external source?" Shinobu asked her.

"That's right."

"But…that feels an awful lot like…like cheating," said Tsukiko to them, disgusted at the mere thought of creating fire after being exposed to the energy of a special comet that only passes by every seven decades. "Who would want the gift of fire in that way? I mean, what sort of…fool would obtain the righteous gift of creating their own fire from a comet, even if it meant you would be on equal ground with the greatest Pyro Channelers, in order to get stronger?"

"Probably the desperate or power-hungry lunatics," said Bumi and Miaka to her.

"Yeah, those kinds of people would…if they could wield the power of fire." Shinobu added, not liking the idea of drawing the power of self-manifestation of fire by means of a comet as much as Tsukiko did, being a Pyro Channeler of a lesser caliber than she was, and not tempted by the desires of power.

"Do you really believe that…he would use its power to get stronger?" Miaka asked Akira. "After what he attempted to do recently, it doesn't look like he's practiced in years since he left; creating your own fire, or anything other than an element, is meaningless if you don't work out."

Rumi, paying more attention to her elder siblings' conversation with her mother than to the game, wondered if what they were saying had anything to do with her…or at least her recent dream.

"…Rumi?" She turned and saw Shinji looking at her.

"I'm sorry," she apologized. "What was that?"

"I said that it's your turn," he told her.

"Oh, thank you." She picked up the dice and rolled them, landing a three. That dream, that awful nightmare with Gendo attacking me with fire from his bare hands… What does it mean?

Later that night, in her room, Rumi wrote of the last couple of days in her diary; she had confessed to the book of blank pages everything she had worth talking about, from her short-lived involvement with the NERV agency and its head honcho, Gendo, along with the Evangelion, right to the Fú Festival and her birthday. Even her encounter with the Angelbreaker was included.

My mother and elder siblings seemed to be concerned over this Rayden's Comet that's arriving in a few months, she thought, also writing that down. I can understand that when it does arrive, it's supposed to ignite the sky and give it a wonderful flare, but they seem to be worried about the Pyro Channelers that'll see it; they're supposed to be endowed with the gift of creating their own fire without the need of an external source. I agree with Tsukiko in that using the comet to create your own fire instead of working on how to create it on your own is like cheating. I haven't asked Mother if she has ever achieved such a feat, but judging from their conversation, I guess it's possible that she knows how to create her own flames; if she'd been exposed to the comet more than once, she'd have been endowed with the ability instead of simply developing it from hard work. I'll ask her tomorrow.

She finished up her writing and turned off the light of her room as she changed into her pajamas. Tomorrow was another day and another day was bound to be either different or the same.

Across the hall in Shinji's room, the cancer-stricken teen had worked on his book some more before he turned in for the night; he was almost done with the third-to-final blank page. As he pasted in the last clippings of Shinobu and a recent photo of her girlfriend, Kagura, he had to be careful not to damage the other side of the page that he completed with the leftover pictures of Nemo and the recent photos of his festival invitee, Camille.

-x-

Misato, unsure of why she allowed something like this to happen, was spending some time with Kaji at a bar in the night, a few short hours after the Fourth Angel showed up, beat Unit-02 (though she wanted to believe it was some weird sort of stalemate, as neither the Eva nor Angel achieved what it wanted) and then left like there was nothing to gain. She was surprised that there were still many people left within the city after what had happened today; surely, they would've left after its departure. But still, it had to be a sign that NERV was at least keeping the city safe from the enemy.

"You really have gone cold turkey since our visit to that town," said Kaji to her, noticing that she hadn't taken sip from her first bottle of beer.

"That Akira and her eldest son, Bumi," she responded. "You got a young woman that's older than she appears to be, forever young and attractive, who only drinks during a festival that's celebrated once a year and you got a family man that drinks once a month so that his brain isn't inhibited too much…and won't drive after a drink…and is, like, what, in his late-forties?"

"Fifties, actually," Kaji corrected her. "Fifty-seven years old. His wife is five years younger than him, and she doesn't seem to drink, either."

"And I still can't understand why the Angel didn't just finish Asuka off when it had the chance to…or even try to enter the Geo-Front."

"Well, something back at that town was acting up, so there's mystery up and about. Something draws a creature Hell-bent on destroying the world away from a fortress city with the only thing capable of stopping it."

"What could cause it to leave, and possibly go elsewhere, like to Akira Town, anyhow?"

"Something."

-x-

GASP! Akira awoke from a nightmare! This one more frightening than the previous one: Some sort of giant, reddish-pink jellyfish or squid out of water had arrived to the town and started destroying several of the buildings, causing the people on the streets to scatter about in fear. She saw her daughter, Rumi, being pushed around until she had to seek shelter at the museum, right where the monster was now heading. Then…something extremely unusual happened. The monster was changed into a five-foot tall young woman in her early-twenties, with reddish-pink hair, a pale complexion, wearing a pink dress and wielding a pair of burning whips. In her dream, she called herself Shamshel, which sounded like a boy's name, and she entered the museum to find Rumi, and Akira herself went after the whip-wielding woman.

It seemed so real, she thought, looking toward her alarm clock and reading the time being five-eighteen, with the sky still dark outside. And Rumi… I'd better check up on her.

She got out of bed and walked down the hallway toward her baby daughter's bedroom, frightened by the sight of the door being open, but equally curious as to why Shinji's door was open. Peeking inside his room, she breathed a steady sigh of relief: Rumi was asleep in Shinji's bed…with Shinji. This made about thirty-seven times Rumi was known to get up out of her bed and into Shinji's, as if drawn to him by an unseen force meant to prove that they were tied together.

If I ask her again and she says she doesn't know, I'll be convinced that she has a habit of sleepwalking, thought Akira, as she stepped inside her grandson's room and sat in the oversized beanbag Shinobu gave him for his twelfth birthday. This…brings back more good memories from when they were younger. After Shinji got out of the hospital when he recovered from the cord blood transplant and Rumi was four months old, he often looked at me the same way he looked at Miaka when Taeko was a baby: A look of respect, devotion…and with a degree of envy…because he couldn't remember much of his own mother when he was a toddler; his abandonment by Gendo had left a severe impact on his positive memories of his life before her death. I asked him if he'd like to hold Rumi and he almost declined because he was afraid of hurting her, but I showed him what to do, how to hold a baby, and that made him cheer up a bit.

Placing her left hand on the drawer beside Shinji's bed, Akira looked at another photograph that her grandson kept around his room; this one depicting just Shinji, Rumi and herself by a lake. Rumi had been at least a year old by the time the picture was taken, and Shinji had gotten used to holding her.

As she tilted her head back, time passed by until Shinji's alarm clock rung and brought Akira back to full awareness as the sunlight slipped through the blinds of his window.

"Huh?" Shinji went, rubbing his eyes of the muck that generated during his sleep, seeing Rumi and Akira in his room. "Oh, man, did I get sick again?"

"Un-uh. If having a grandmother that was wondering where her youngest child went after waking up from a bad dream and finding her in your room, asleep in your bed, is even considered a sickness, then, yeah, Shinji, you got sick again." Akira answered, chuckling as Rumi got up.

"Did I sleepwalk again?" She asked them, really disliking this habit of hers; it was always Shinji's room that she went to, never even trying to slip into the rooms (or the beds) of her other relatives.

"I must be a living magnet," sighed Shinji as he got out of bed to open the blinds of his window, letting the light in.

"Duh-ow! Ow!" Rumi gasped, her eyes not yet adjusted to the sun again. "A little warning first, Shinji? That hurt, you know."

"Gomen nasai, Rumi-Chan."

-x-

Ritsuko couldn't believe she had taken notes of her medical appointment with Rei like this. Having a large dislike of the girl (for obvious reasons), she didn't think twice about anything she'd experienced in the past, which included the possibility of dreaming. But here she was, in her office, chalking down the information she had gotten from the First Child.

Rei, despite her confusion of it, said that she saw the Fourth Angel attacking a little town she'd never seen, going after that little girl, Rumi, and then seeing the Angel turn into a person armed with whips…in her sleep. She questioned if something like this was supposed to happen now, as it never happened before, and Ritsuko responded, scientifically, that she would need to look into this.

I wonder, she thought, having once read up on the claims of people believing themselves to be endowed with ESP…to various degrees. Could it be precognition?

As she continued to take down notes, Asuka, who was still angry at not being able to defeat the Angel that had turned away, was venting her rage in the recreational center of NERV, hitting a punching bag with some serious brutality.

That town with the elements, she thought, jump-kicking the bag, what could they possibly have that would call an Angel away from Tokyo-3? I mean, it's not like they have anything of value to an enemy that wants to destroy the world, do they? They live a prosperous lifestyle due to the elements and have avoided many wars, they still have animals that you can't find anywhere else, use the elements to simulate the seasons after Second Impact left Japan bound in summer weather, and…well, they haven't lost any massive lives at all in the Second Impact because their leader and founder protected them.

Now exhausted, but still hitting the bag, Asuka couldn't think of whatever it was that could divert an Angel's attention away from a fortress city meant to repel it. There was nothing in existence that could divert an Angel's attention away from the city…at least not to her knowledge that there was anything. But it soon raised an interesting question for her: Just why was it that whenever the Angels did show up, it seemed to be Tokyo-3 that was on their minds? It didn't make any sense to her. But if the Fourth Angel was now heading for Akira Town, NERV should've been on the call to help them.

I guess the commander is still mad at what his mother did to him when he used those blue flames at the festival, she thought; it had somehow slipped into a rumor that Commander Ikari had been knocked onto the ground by a woman with the power to command the winds, which, while said commander didn't say anything to confirm or deny it, made his expression of cold-hearted anger all the more known to the whole of NERV HQ. Is he hoping that, if something did draw the Angel to that town, it would destroy it…and them?

-x-

"…The sixth day of July," yawned Nemo, as he walked down the street with Bumi, who was drinking his one beer can of the month. "You know what this day says for my horoscope, big brother?"

"Nope," the Geo Channeler responded, thinking about going cold turkey with the alcohol for his wife and daughter. "But I know the old saying that everyday above ground is a good day."

"Bumi, everyday of life, of living and experiencing, is a good day. Except for what happened two days ago, that was bad. But we endure, adapt and so on. We…"

Suddenly, they heard the one thing they hadn't heard for fifteen years: The warning bells and gongs of the Temple of Awareness, run by the vigilant priests to inform the town of something large and potentially dangerous heading toward them. Bumi hadn't heard of them due to the fact that he'd been away from Akira Town for several years with his wife, having moved back when his nephew was diagnosed with cancer. This was the first time he'd heard of the bells and gongs, and while he should've felt honored, the very thought of his wife and daughter being in harm's way overruled any other thoughts of hearing them.

"Another tidal wave?" Nemo wondered.

Bumi placed his palms onto the ground, using his link with the Earth to feel for any changes, but found nothing to indicate a massive flood.

"Un-uh," he told his little brother. "It's something else."

"Head for the shelters!" Somebody cried, as people were running around in the streets.

"Oh, my deities!" Nemo gasped, seeing what had made the warning bells go off: It was some sort of giant squid out of water, flying toward the town. "We gotta get home, get the others to safety."

As the brothers fled, on the other side of the town, Rumi, Shinji and Akira, whom were just out for light footwork (more for Shinji's health than for the women's fitness), were caught in the stampede of people running. There wasn't such a scene ever since Second Impact, and what caused this one was hovering several stories in the air.

"Oh, my Lord!" Shinji gasped, unsure of what this creature was, but went out on a finger to assume that it was another one of those things that he saw back in Tokyo-3: An Angel.

"Ah! Mom!" He then heard Rumi cry out, as she was separated from Akira and he by the people, unable to find a way through the long legs back to them.

"Rumi!" Both Akira and he gasped, trying to fight through the crowds.

BOOM! The Angel had apparently smashed a whole building of stone and wood into rubble and continued to make its way toward into town.

Some Geo Channelers tried to drive it away with some large stones, but this creature ignored them as it aimed for something within the crowds of running people.

SMACK! A larger stone, used by at least eight Geo Channelers, was thrown at the Angel, but it didn't even react to that assault. Not in the way that it would've if it was facing an Evangelion; it looked down at the channelers, unsheathed its whips and knocked them away, but the strangest thing was that the whips, which should've left the channelers dead or in a severe state of medical attention, only knocked them out…and the light that made the whips glow like fire, were simply that: Light, and nothing more. Something was wrong with the way its powers were acting up; Shamshel tried firing a beam of energy toward a building, which it accomplished, but the beam only destroyed a piece of a wall instead of the whole building. All the powers it possessed…they were withering away, weakening…by means of what it was after…to undo whatever it was doing to the Angel.

"Whoa! Akira, look at that thing!" It looked down and saw two people that stuck out in the withering crowds; a dying child and an elder woman that still looked young always managed to stick out.

But they weren't what it was looking for, and hovered over them, after what it saw further up the street.

-x-

Rumi, having been picked up off her feet by the running people, had managed to get out of the crowd and fell onto a flight of steps that made up half of the entrance to museum's southern side; she rarely understood why the building had to have a strange series of architecture that made it stand out as one the oddest buildings in town: The northern side looked like an entrance to a regular building without steps, the eastern side had an entrance shaped like a large tunnel in cylinder form with small, misshapen holes allowing for sunlight to slip in to casts bright spots on the walls, and the western side had a small pond with a bridge overpass. Somebody or a group of artists had a unique sense of creativity that they used to make the building.

A shadow appeared over her head and she looked up, seeing a giant, squid-like creature that reminded her of the Third Angel she defeated because of one simple detail: This creature had a red sphere, similar to the one she had fractured and ripped off the Angel, under its 'head'.

"Oh, no," she shuddered in disbelief; the very thought of an Angel attacking her village was like a nightmare she hated to recall.

Rumi… She heard a voice in the back of her head. The museum… You must come into the museum.

"Wha… Who was that?" She questioned, seeing her mother and nephew approaching the museum as the Angel hovered closer.

"Rumi! Duck and cover!" Shinji called out to her.

"No, no! Shinji, she has to take shelter within a strong structure. Rumi, press yourself against the wall." Akira told her daughter.

Please, Rumi… You must come into the museum, the strange voice told her again, and she obliged, running into the history building.

Shamshel, raising its whips up as it assumed its combat stance, suddenly felt a larger decrease in its energy, and, without warning, shrunk down in size. Its thick hide, which made it nigh-impervious to harm whenever it wasn't using its AT-Field, shifted into something soft and vulnerable, with the reddish-pink tint becoming more pinkish-white.

"Oh, Kami, what is that thing turning into?" Shinji wondered, seeing the creature turn into something that seemed impossible except for in the movies and comic books. "Oh, my elementals."

When the transformation was completed, Shamshel, for all intents and purposes, looked like the girl from Akira's nightmare, wielding a pair of burning whips. Her skin was pale, hair was reddish-pink and her wardrobe consisted of just a pink dress with, oddly enough, a red, jeweled necklace around her neck. Her eyes were as dark as night but were also as bright as daylight.

"Aaurgh!" Shamshel shrieked, flinging one of her whips toward the entrance to the museum and shattered the glass. "Aaaaurgh!"

She then ran up into the building, intent on dealing with the little girl that, despite all realms of impossibility, put her brother down and left him to be used by other humans as a decaying specimen.

"Shinji, go call the cops and tell them to come to the museum," Akira told her nephew, and then she ran toward the museum, while Shinji did what he was requested to do.

-x-

"Commander Ikari, this satellite footage just came in," one of NERV's technicians came into Gendo's office and presented him with some photos of what seemed to be the Fourth Angel attacking Akira Town.

Gendo didn't recognize the layout at first, but when he noticed the shape of a large mountain with a series of small buildings around it, he became interested in what was going on.

"The Fourth Angel had been spotted approaching what appeared to be a town, but then, minutes after its initial attack, it suddenly disappeared right off the map, but its AT-Field was still being detected there, like it's still there." The technician told him.

"You may go now," he told the young man, who obliged and left the office.

Fuyutsuki, who remained quiet during the whole thing, asked, "Are you going to do anything about the Angel attacking the town…if it's still there, of course?"

"It's not attacking Tokyo-3," Gendo responded. "The demise of a little town is not of any concern."

"So many innocent lives… It's almost too cruel." Fuyutsuki sighed, once more, questioning why he'd accepted to work for Gendo years before back when NERV was GEHIRN…before one of his prized students became a prize to be sought after, literally.

-x-

Within the museum, Shamshel wandered around the halls and large rooms filled with precious artifacts that told of the town's history, looking for Rumi.

"Where are you, little girl?" She asked, surprised that she could speak like these creatures that caused her master so much pain fifteen years ago. "You can't hide forever. I will find you…and I will kill you. A life for a life."

SLASH! She demonstrated her proficiency in the use of her whips by shattering a large display case with a suit of samurai armor, leaving a scattered pile of cracked, crunched pieces of ancient metal that were partially burnt.

"Are you…another Angel?" She heard the girl ask her. "Are you…like the one that attacked Tokyo-3?"

"Tokyo-3? That place where you took my brother? Yes. I am Shamshel, Angel of the Day. I am the guardian of the entrance to the Garden of Eden…so says your myths."

"The Garden of Eden? You mean that place really exists?"

"The place of pleasure and no pain? Yes. But you'll never live to enjoy it. Man was banished for good."

Then, from behind her, Rumi ran from her previous hiding spot and sought out another; as curious as she was about this Angel and everything, she didn't want to die.

Shamshel turned around and ran back a few steps, seeing a moving shadow.

"You killed Sachiel. You killed him, and now you must repent."

Rumi silently showed up behind her and said, "I'm sorry for your brother, but I was told that he was a monster trying to destroy the city and the rest of the world. He had already sent a few soldiers to their deaths and there was somebody important to me that I couldn't let him take."

Shamshel flung her right whip behind herself at Rumi and nearly struck her in the waist. The little girl ducked and slid across the floor.

"Rumi!" They both heard Akira, who then sent a stream of air at Shamshel.

"A breeze will not stop me!" Shamshel yelled, being halted by the strong wind current which, for some reason, didn't affect any of the lighter items around her. "Aurgh!"

Rumi got up and ran to hide, but Shamshel managed to knock over a large display case toward Akira, who dodged and hovered over her in the air.

WHIP! Shamshel flung her left whip at the centenarian woman and nearly left a burn mark on one of her legs, had Akira not possessed a bottle of water for preventing dehydration and mild disinfection.

Landing back onto the floor, she picked up an antique sword and ran to find her daughter.

Small room…forbidden… Akira heard a voice in her head, and sounded like it was coming from…

"Uh, Mama?" She heard Rumi, having fled to the room where the Angelbreaker was being kept. "Oh!"

Behind Akira was Shamshel, swinging her whips like she was on drugs or something; they were being used on the walls, leaving burns and cracks on their textures. When her mother ran into the room with her, they both realized something: The room they ran into was a dead-end…and Shamshel was moments away from getting them.

"Mama, she just wants me," Rumi explained the problem to her.

"I know, I heard, but I can't let her hurt you. Taking one's life doesn't equal to the closure and justification of another life that was recently slain. You were just trying to protect innocent lives from being taken. You thought the creature was a monster; anyone could sympathize with that." Akira told her daughter.

Tap, tap, tap! They turned to the display case of the Angelbreaker; the ancient gauntlet was tapping again, but with more force, so much force that the glass was starting to crack under the pressure.

"What in the name of…" Rumi asked, but then saw, through the nigh-reflective properties of the glass display case, that Shamshel was now in the room with them, and she flung one of her blazing whips at them. "Aaaahh! Dodge!"

Akira reacted faster than Shamshel and grabbed her daughter, leaping out of harm's way, allowing for the whip to impact on the case and shattered it to pieces.

Yes! Freedom! The girls heard that voice again as they slowly hovered in the air.

The Angelbreaker, which wasn't destroyed, despite its age and decrepit state, soared over the heads of Akira and Rumi, made a summoning gesture with its index finger, and then, almost as mysterious as said gesture, attached itself to Akira's right arm before she and Rumi fell to the floor.

"Oh! Rumi, are you alright?" Akira asked her daughter.

"I'm okay," the daughter responded, but then pointed toward Shamshel, whose face was twisted with hatred and bitterness.

"Time to die!" She then flung her left whip at them.

With no time to summon an element, Akira simply covered her daughter with her body and hoped to endure the pain that was to come with being harmed by a burning whip. SLING! The pain that should've came never did, and Akira realized that her right arm felt brittle and hard, seeing that the old gauntlet was now on her wrist. Shamshel saw and reacted by using both whips to deal in retribution to both mother and daughter.

"Die!" She yelled, lashing out at them again.

Rumi held onto her mother tightly as Akira held her close. The air around them started to heat up and heard the roaring sounds that usually occurred when fire was being used…along with the searing screams of a young woman. And then…a voice, almost identical to the one that kept calling out to them, uttered, "Let the Angels of Life and Death be broken…and the existence of a race preserved for the betterment of the future."

Another voice, similar to Rumi's, yelled out, to somebody, "You…are not protecting him! You're not even there for him. You never were!"

-x-

The Hydro, Geo and Pyro Channelers worked vigorously to put out the flames that engulfed parts of the museum. Several civilians and dogs were watching in fear as the smoke went up and blanketed much of the night sky. The fear of the creature that they saw this morning had been replaced by the woe that some of their people might've been killed in the explosion that came to the building.

Nemo, Bumi, Tsukiko and Kanami had showed up to get Akira and Rumi, who were sitting on a bench across the street from the museum, after Shinji had called them once he called the police. He'd been worried sick that they were hurt or…well, he couldn't have lived with himself if something worse had happened to them, and they were more important than he was.

"Do you…have any idea what happened in there, Akira?" A police officer in his mid-forties asked the town leader.

Holding her head up, Akira responded with, "Shinoda, I run into the museum after the girl to keep her from hurting Rumi, she destroys a few antiques, I halt her with a stream of air while Rumi runs for cover and… She was really proficient with those flaming whips and… The next thing I know is that…"

Rumi, who was just as unscathed as her mother, said, "There was the explosion. That girl caused it."

Nemo, whom had run off to speak with the janitors, caretakers and curators of the museum, had returned to share what he had discovered.

"I spoke with them and they explained that the hydrogen pipes that they use to light up the torches of the place were over seventy-seven years old. They're ancient. The girl's whips probably hit one of them in a ricochet-like action and sparked the explosion." He told them.

"Kami, it felt almost like a grenade," Rumi said.

"No, no way. The blast was much too big for something like that," said Kanami to her. "Nobody can understand how you two weren't…um…"

"Scorched, Kanami?" Akira asked her, knowing that Pyro Channelers, even the well-experienced ones, hardly ever dodged explosions.

"Yeah."

"You do know who that girl was, don't you?" The officer, Shinoda, asked them.

"Only that she said her name was Shamshel, that she was the creature that attacked earlier…and was only interested in getting rid of Rumi because of a mishap involving her brother," Akira answered him. "How is she, by the way?"

Unsure of why she would show some degree of concern toward a person that tried to kill them, Shinoda answered, "She suffered second-degree burns on her arms and torso, but nothing fatal. She's being taken to the hospital right now. After she recovers, she'll be placed in holding until we can figure out what to do with her. At the most, she doesn't seem to pose much of a threat. Her whips were taken and she doesn't have any sort of knowledge of the martial arts."

"Then I guess that explains why she seemed so dependent upon them," Rumi sighed, reminded of the story of how Gendo was shown to rely heavily on his Pyro Channeling instead of the martial arts.

"But this gets weird," went Nemo. "The cameras that we were able to salvage showed that there were at least two other people in the museum with y'all. But all they caught on video were their shadows, as if they knew the cameras were there. Did either of you see anyone else in there?"

Rumi nodded in the negative while Akira said that she didn't remember seeing anyone else beside Rumi and Shamshel.

"…This ain't over!" They heard Shamshel yelling out as she was strapped to a gurney and carted away, allowing her to get a good look at Shinji, who was breathing through an oxygen mask to avoid inhaling the toxic fumes created by the burning debris. "So, you're the one my brother's killer holds most dear? Oh, you must be very proud that a little child murdered somebody just to save your slowly-dying carcass…along with other people that don't deserve to live!"

Rumi got upset and got up, wanting to hit Shamshel in the face to shut her up; just because her brother was dead didn't give her the right to yell at her nephew because of her own past actions, but Tsukiko stopped her.

"Don't, Rumi, sis," she told her. "Let it go."

"What little child?" Shinji asked her through the mask. "All I saw was a giant, man-made abomination defeating a creature that looked like a comic book character. There was no deathblow being delivered to your brother by a little kid, just a large thing."

Shamshel couldn't say anything else to him as she was taken away to have her injuries treated. Shinji, on the other hand, sighed at the contempt that another person that used to be a creature of unknown origins would accuse his youngest aunt of murder; Rumi's hands weren't stained with blood and she hadn't directly caused any deaths, so she couldn't be blamed by any authorities. Rumi had saved his life by getting into the Evangelion…and it was the Eva itself that defeated the Angel, not Rumi, serving only as an operator of sorts. It was no different from justifiable homicide or whatever. Either way, Shinji couldn't blame Rumi at all for what the Eva did…even if the deities themselves wanted to convince him of such.

Rumi then caressed her right wrist, just as Akira was softly caressing hers, both of which bore an ornate bracelet with a gold and silver band as a foundation, respectively, and possessed a pair of large, circular rubies and pearls that were their sole decoration. Neither knew they were there at all, not even the other family members noticed them.

From afar, away from small crowds, Nemo's would-be love interest, Camille took out a cell phone and called somebody.

"Yes?" A woman on the other end picked up and asked.

"They have it, just like you told me they would…just like your dream stated," Camille responded. "That means that everything's going to change for the better, right? Okay. No, I'm to meet Nemo tomorrow for lunch. I do like him, but not because of those reasons. We have similar interests. When I asked you about the family, it was to know more about their history from a distance. Anyway, if everything changes for the better, I'm content with that. They're everything your dreams said they would be. I gotta go now. Bye."

When she hung up, she disappeared into the shadows.

-x-

Gendo wasn't pleased with the meeting with SEELE the next day; apparently, his neglecting of the Fourth Angel attacking a small town that barely existed on any maps due to its partial, geographic isolation where, for obvious reasons, the girl that piloted Unit-01 once and the former Third Child resided was almost inexcusable for their scenario, which they were trying to adapt to the current situation that they were facing. But what really caught the secret organization's attention was that, while the Fourth Angel was detected by satellites the day before, several minutes after its initial attack on the town, it disappeared off their trackers. It didn't fly away or go underground…it simply disappeared, leaving no trace to follow.

Kiel, who knew that Gendo had been living in the town some time before he left, had tasked him with finding out if the Angel was gone…or was hiding within the town…and to be subtle, because they'd been tipped off of his recent visit to the town and that he tried to set fire to the girl that piloted the Eva against the Third Angel when she refused to cooperate with him. Though how he tried to set fire to the little girl was left out.

Gendo couldn't believe this! Not what he was being told to do by the Committee but by what he'd learn; the Fourth Angel not only disappearing but his former rearing place was still intact. He had hoped that it'd be left in tatters by the time the Fourth Angel was done with it, but it would seem that he'd been let down by a different force at work. Now he had very little to no choice but to go back and find out what happened…if the people that were still there were willing to divulge anything.

-x-

The Seventh of July progressed slowly as the clouds blanketed the skies with fog, making the afternoon quiet and dull. As the channelers tried to rebuild the structures that were damaged, the Rokubungi family members that were out yesterday returned back to their home, having spent the night at the hospital as a precaution, which was to make sure that neither Akira nor Rumi had post-traumatic stress after what they went through. Though Shinji was taking what happened quite well; the Angel, Shamshel, hadn't caused his body any defects that were due to his cancer.

"Ah, home, sweet home," sighed Akira, stopping at the door to her room whilst Rumi and Shinji had stopped at theirs.

"Mother, are you sure you don't need any assistance with anything?" Nemo asked her.

"Yes, I'm sure," she answered. "I know that I'm fine, that I didn't have a concussion or anything. Go, enjoy your day with Camille. I can manage the fort."

By 'manage the fort', Akira, Rumi and Shinji would spend the day indoors and recoup quietly.

"Okay," Nemo gave in, allowing Shinobu, who'd been cleaning up in the kitchen, to keep an eye on the three if anything happened.

"You know, I could make some 'kilochinos' if you three would like some," Shinobu offered the trio.

"Heh-heh-heh," Rumi laughed. "It's 'cappuccinos'. Have a nice day, big sis."

"Right. Um (her mother, sister and nephew were already entering their respective rooms)…some shrimp-flavored ramen, then?"

"Goodnight," the three told her, closing their doors.

"Right…" Shinobu chuckled as she returned to the kitchen. "That cartoon, Bob and Margaret, again."

But as she left, Rumi came out of her room and knocked on Akira's door. Akira let her in.

"Rumi, are you disoriented?" She asked her daughter.

"Un-uh," Rumi answered.

"Jittery? Chills?"

"I'm okay…but do you know how I got this?" She showed her the gold bracelet on her wrist. "I didn't have this on me yesterday."

As she raised her daughter's arm to examine the jeweled band, they noticed that she herself had one, as well, with a silver color that dominated the detail scheme.

"What the heck?" Akira wondered.

"Wow. Where'd you get yours?"

"I have no idea." She then removed hers, examined it more closely before setting it on her bedside drawer to hold her head. "It's been a long day."

Rumi then took hers off and placed it beside her mother's, imitating her head-holding gesture.

"We didn't clean up while we were at the hospital, Mama." Rumi informed her, and so they took a bath together, but didn't strike up much of a conversation during the whole half-hour.

It's been a tough and extreme day, thought Akira as she scrubbed her legs clean of the dirt she picked up the previous day. I don't know why I didn't pay more attention to my dream. Was it a premonition? Some sort of warning sent by the gods? Retribution for what Rumi did to protect Shinji? If the people here are being dragged into a type of war against strange creatures, then I gotta do something to ensure that we don't pay a heavy price for what was caused by other people years ago. I gotta keep us out of the crossfire.

As she continued to scrub herself, Rumi sat against one of the sides of the spring and sulked, soap suds on her upper back and shoulders.

I can barely remember the last time we took a bath together, she thought, watching Akira as she bathed. Was it on a Saturday when I was four…or was it on a Tuesday when I was three? To think…I'll be fourteen in eight more years and she'll still look as she does today. Many women would give anything to be like Mama: Young, beautiful and graceful. But Mama would probably like a few wrinkles on her face, a small series of moles on her wrists, or even a permanent scar wound to show that she could get older. How long has she been alive? Unity Channelers have a longer lifespan than regular channelers. How old will I be when I stop aging? Kami, I'd rather live to experience the sight of my hair turning gray. Eternal youth? That's a nightmare. It's only skin deep.

Moments after thinking, Rumi took notice of the intricate tattoo on her mother's back: It was an avian-like creature that seemed to be based off four animal gods belonging to Chinese mythology; there was the head, shaped like a bird's with a long, scaly neck of a dragon, the feet seemed like those of a tiger's complete with the stripes, but on the back of the creature, in addition to the large, avian wings, was a large shell, like that of a turtle's. The tattoo seemed like a painting come to life due to its surrealism; it almost looked like it could jump off Akira's back and fly away.

"Whoa," she whispered, just before her mother rinsed the soap off her front, allowing water to spill over and around her back, giving the impression of a waterfall forming over the creature.

"Rumi, you've barely washed your back," Akira told her, holding up a wash cloth. "Come here, and I'll wash it for you."

Rumi snapped out of her train of thought and slowly got out of the warm, shallow water, seemingly cautious of her surroundings.

"Don't worry. No one's watching," Akira assured her, wrapping a large towel around herself.

The little girl slowly came over and sat on the bathing stool…where she asked her current question that came to mind.

"Mother, how'd you get that tattoo on your back?" She asked Akira.

"My tattoo? Oh, well, um…it was part of my graduation out of my Aero Channeling teachings," Akira explained, reminded of the short years she took to master the disciplines of controlling the element of air over one-hundred-seventy years ago. "Getting the tattoo was a…rite of passage, if you will."

"A rite of passage? Like the few ceremonies that people live by in order to obtain their status?"

"Yes, Rumi (she was now gently scrubbing her daughter's back). Do you want one?"

"Huh? I have a choice on getting one?"

"Of course. The mark is just used nowadays as evidence that you know how to channel air…or a sense of decoration. Not many Aero Channelers have the mark on their backs; how they prove their mastery over air now is based on how they hold their own against an opponent or how efficient they are in wielding the air currents."

"Well, air is a very subtle element. I don't think I'll be wanting any type of markings in the near future."

"Then, that's a good choice. We still use the traditional art of tattooing: Needles with paint."

Rumi chuckled at that being mentioned; as much as she could endure the pain of being stuck, poked and prodded by syringes to help her dying nephew, she wasn't ready for a tattoo just yet. As Akira finished the thorough washing of her daughter's back, she channeled some water from the rinsing bucket and dumped it onto her skin with a simple hand gesture, washing away the soap suds. Once they had finished, they returned to the centenarian's bedroom and sat there to relax; Rumi had went to her room minutes earlier to change into her underwear and put on an oversized shirt. Their bracelets remained on the counter, untouched during their bath time.

"Do you think Nemo could find out what they are?" Rumi asked, lying down behind her mother.

"Maybe," Akira answered, but then noticed that her answering machine, one of the only few technological devices she kept her in her, along with an alarm clock and small radio, had a message on it from before she returned home. "Oh, I have a message."

She pressed the button and listened in.

"You have one new message," the machine voice uttered, and then replayed the message left by the unknown caller to her. "Hello, Akira. It's Tomoyo. Is everything alright? I heard what happened to you and one of your kids yesterday at the museum, and I really… Please, call me if you need anything."

When the message ended, Rumi, who had also listened in, asked, "Who's Tomoyo? Mother?"

Akira sighed and answered, quite bluntly, "Just an old friend…with a questionable sense of judgment."

Rumi crawled over to her right side and asked, "Did she do something wrong?"

"You could say that she did. I haven't seen or spoken with her for almost two years."

The six-year-old was familiar with the frailty of bonds; not all pacts were eternal…but they weren't weak, either, and something in the past had caused the pact between her mother and this Tomoyo woman to become strained. Then, her attention was diverted back to her gold bracelet; she could almost assume that it was speaking to her to look at it…as if it had a voice. A silent voice, deaf to her ears.

"It's magnificent, isn't it, Akira?" The older woman heard, her attention focused on the bracelets. "It is a magnificent artifact."

Voices ran rampant within their heads as they gazed down at the little trinkets. It was almost as if…they were coming from the bracelets themselves.

"What type of artifact was it back in the past?"

"It looks like it could fall apart at any given moment, ma'am."

"It's been around for a very long time, probably since the beginning of human history."

"Nobody can understand how you two weren't…um…"

"Scorched, Kanami?"

"You're not protecting him! You never were!"

FLASH! A series of old images that looked like they belonged in an old film were playing in front of them, revealing an unusual history of things they didn't quite understand. They saw space, the sun, a large, black rock that looked like the moon. Then, there was the planet known as Earth, shifting from the time of the dinosaurs to the age of humankind itself, with a fragmented series of different histories, possibly all of them existing at once. A woman, wearing a strange set of armor, almost low-slung on the ground like a Chinese dragon, fought her way through a large group of men that were turning into large, humanoid animals. What caught their eye on the woman was that she was wearing a gauntlet similar or identical to the Angelbreaker. Further down the series of different histories, they saw a gathering of men and women of various cultures, cheering toward a trio comprised of two women and a man, all of whom were wearing a bracelet not so different from the two that they had obtained, who raised their bracelet-wearing right wrists toward them in a gesture used by kings and queens.

"As long as you live, you shall always have hope for the future!" The young man told them.

Further down the path, they saw a young man fighting in a war, leading various children to safety, armed with nothing more than a sword that glowed like gold and silver.

"To the freedom of the future of the world!" He had told the children, and charged toward some men that stood in their way.

Many other images flooded into their minds, even long after they drifted off to sleep on Akira's bed. One particular scene was of some sort of large, chalk-white creature being crucified to a large, red cross, perverting the crucifixion of Christ himself, except this creature had no legs to bind, as they were lying several feet below the rest of its body, having been cut or ripped away. Beneath a strange mask that displayed seven eyes, you could almost hear the creature yelling at the people below it that started to walk away.

"One will come for me! Your fate will be decided in the future that has been written! We can no longer live as we are! We must evolve to a higher level of existence! Aaaaurgh!" It yelled out, sounding like a woman that was twisted with hatred and rage. "How can you do this to me?! The one that gave you your lives?!"

The people didn't answer the creature, but one of the women leaving held up another gauntlet, just like the Angelbreaker, and gave it to a man beside her.

"Bury this…in the Mountains of Destiny…until it is needed once more." She instructed the man. "Lilith must not be allowed to end mankind, even if our existence on this planet was never meant to be. It wasn't our choice to live on someone else's domain, but we must make the best of our time that nature allows. I believe in the potential to live in harmony with the enemy if we can live on equal ground, which is what the Angelbreaker can provide."

What she had said to the man had made both mother and daughter confused to the extreme; was the Angelbreaker that old, and, if so, what era were they all from and when was it made?

GASP! Akira woke up in the dead of the night; her dreams being both exhilarating and terrifying. She looked to her daughter, who continued to sleep peacefully.

"Mama… Shinji…" Rumi uttered in her sleep.

Akira got out of bed to go check on her grandson, finding he had fallen asleep at his desk again for the umpteenth time. His need to complete his scrapbook nearly overtook everything else he did…but not everything. The periods of time he needed with every one else here rivaled that desire to finish his grand masterpiece to share with the family. She picked him up carefully and deposited him into his bed (she was glad he had changed into his pajamas before he went to work on his scrapbook) before turning off the light.

As she walked back down the hall, her thoughts redirected back towards Tomoyo, the very woman she'd not been speaking to for nearly two years.

Tomoyo Kudo, she thought, almost bitterly. It's almost hard to forgive you for what happened to her. For what happened to Xiaolongnü.

Old memories of a little girl, no older than Rumi was when she was four, with pretty green eyes and gray hair, smiling peacefully before the presence of an outsider showed up and put an end to that.

But can I really blame her? She didn't have no say in how the future works…it just happened, unexpectedly. Hmm… I'll speak with her tomorrow.

-x-

According to the latest evaluation of Rei's recovery, the First Child might've been capable of resuming Eva piloting within a few, shorter days instead of the long, thirty days as it was mentioned sometime earlier. Ritsuko had discovered that, since the girl had been on heavy medication. But what really stumped her was the notes she collected on the latest dream the girl had: She had seen the Fourth Angel turned into a human woman, deprived of her powers and apparent immortality, making her no different from regular people…and was defeated by a little girl and her mother. Rei had informed Ritsuko that the Fourth Angel had gone to the place they were living in…to put an end to the little girl.

Could the little girl had been Rumi? Ritsuko thought; Rumi was the only, actual, little girl that she'd seen, as Taeko and Mayo didn't count as being little, anymore. Why would the Angel go after her?

Deciding to inform Gendo, who would find out about this, regardless, she got up out of her seat and left her office to see him in his, once more loathing the engravings of the Tree of Life that was the only decoration within; there was always a dark intolerance to the engravings when around them for a long period of time.

-x-

"…Good morning," cheered Miaka and Tsukiko to Akira, as she stepped into the kitchen the next morning.

"Hey, y'all," she greeted them back, sitting down at the table and taking a mug of coffee for herself.

"Akira," went Kanami, taking notice of her mother's appearance, but couldn't see what it was about her that she viewed as being different today. "You look a little different."

"I do?" She asked her, feeling a lot better now that she had coffee in her system. "Like, older or younger, perhaps? Please, let it be older."

"No, not like that different. Did you do something new with your hair?"

"Nope."

"Wearing a new dress?"

"Un-uh."

"Makeup?"

"Never."

Miaka then took notice of the bracelet on her mother's wrist and pointed it out for them.

"Where'd you get that bracelet?" She asked her. "I've never seen one like that before."

The silver glistened and gave off a shine that seemed like it was metallic, and Akira covered it with the long sleeves of her blue dress.

"You got me," she told her daughter-in-law, although never labeling her as an 'in-law', since they were all her kids, regardless of how you looked at the family. "I looked up and the next thing I knew, it was on my wrist."

Tsukiko looked at it and declared, "It's beautiful. I wish I had one like it. But then, I'd be copycatting you, and it'd be out of greed and want, all the darker traits of a Pyro Channeler."

Soon, Rumi stepped in and sat in her seat, seemingly free from any sort of post-traumatic stress from the other day. In addition, she was wearing a long-sleeved shirt to cover her mysterious bracelet from the other day. Getting her cup of milk, she greeted the other women, who, excluding her mother, noticed that she, also, was a bit different, and not because of age.

"I had a very odd dream last night; odd, but better than my last dream," she told them.

"Oh, really? What was your dream about?" Miaka asked her baby sister.

"I was fighting a large creature that looked like some sort of a shining crystal with lots of wings…in space…with a strange sword that seemed…almost like it was alive…and it gave me wings and armor to defend myself."

"Wow…that is very odd for a dream. But that's fantasy for you: Your imagination plays with your perception as often as you don't expect it to."

Before Akira could help herself to a piece of toast, Shinji came in, looking a bit worn out, even with his skin being paler than it usually was due to his illness.

"Are you alright, Shinji?" Rumi asked first.

"Last night," he started his response, "I had the worst series of nightmares I ever thought imaginable. Each one more horrendous than the previous one."

"Elaborate, please."

And he explained each nightmare in clear detail: The first one had a monster that looked like a living, geometric diamond that could shoot out energy beams and assume various, geometrical shapes, and it tried to cook him alive before he could try to run away from Tokyo-3; the second dream featured a pair of grotesque twins that were similar to the Angel that Rumi defeated in Tokyo-3, only they couldn't be defeated unless at the exact same time, and they were fighting a giant, red humanoid that seemed similar to the purple Unit-01; his third dream was of Akira Town, the only place he could ever call his home being an attempted victim of ruination by a large monster that was a living bomb…and that this occurred just mere hours after he was forced to meet Gendo in the cemetery that his mother was buried…just to try and capture him to force him into the purple destroyer against his will; his penultimate nightmare was of Kanami and Mayo being crushed to death in the hands of a large, black Evangelion that had long arms and had just left the Soryu girl, Asuka, bruised on the ground and buried under rubble; the worst and final one was of being inside Unit-01, screaming his lungs out for everybody he held most dear, which excluded his mother and father, as they were nothing more than faceless, soundless whispers and cold-hearted strangers, respectively, submerged in the yellow-orange LCL that smelled of blood, and about to be approached by some sort of phantom-like monster that was inside the purple humanoid with him.

"That's freaking intense," said Rumi to him, passing him a cup of orange juice.

"I don't even believe that Nemo's sci-fi films could do a fraction of those dreams any justice," added Kanami, shuddering at the mere possibility of Mayo and herself being crushed to death by an Evangelion. That's almost just as worse as… It's almost as worse as that wench of a failure that hurt me years ago.

"I woke up with my sheets wet from all the sweating I did," Shinji informed them, adding that his nightmares felt very real, almost too real.

-x-

Shamshel was unhappy. The bandages around her arms and torso were irritating, along with being locked up in a holding cell of carved stonewalls, thick wooden floors and molded metal bars. It was one of the cells afforded to a simple criminal or non-channeler, who had no means of breaking out; channelers were often placed in cells designed to inhibit their connection to the elements if they ever did a great wrong that couldn't simply be forgiven until a later time. As she was a non-channeler, a attempted murderess and a former creature the size of a large building shaped like a squid, she was placed in here until the town authorities could figure how to handle her later.

Why not just kill me? She thought, despising this flesh that humans wore as their armor against the elements. My powers are gone… My brother's death is unavenged… That girl, that member of the Lilin, still lives. My brethren will know of her existence and make attempts on her life. Once she is dealt with, our goal to remove the usurper, Lilith, will resume. Sachiel's death will be avenged.

Suddenly, just as she was lying down on her cot, she heard some footsteps; somebody was coming down the hall. She turned to face the bars and see whoever it was. She was the only person in the restraining facility; the crime rate in this town was massively low to the point of nonexistent. Who was coming to see her after being on the mend for less than two days?

The person of the Lilin that came…was the mother of the one she tried to put an end to, this Akira woman that prevented the revenge from being achieved.

"How are you feeling today, Shamshel?" She asked her.

Shamshel turned away and uttered, "What would it mean to you?"

"Well, I'm not looking at a girl that used to be something that, maybe in the near future, a bunch of military scientists that aren't smart enough for their own good would want to experiment on. I'm looking at a girl that tried to murder one of my children just because her brother was murdered by a man-made abomination that has nothing to do with the people that live here. I'm asking you, Shamshel, how do you feel right now? Please?"

She looked back and responded, "Your bandages feel too thick, your medicinal remedies have a foul taste, and I really hate your daughter."

"You can't live with hate and vengeance in your heart, ma'am," Akira told her. "At least count yourself lucky that you're in holding and that, because no one was murdered when you arrived, you won't be executed; there's not really a death penalty here in Akira Town. There's only prison, community service, and the potential for being rehabilitated. Death and murder creates only negative energy that has the ability to tarnish people's hearts and souls…until they are either made filthy by the sins of injustice…or consumed by them."

"Why not just kill me and be rid of me? Then you'd have one less enemy. One less monster."

"Heh-heh! One less monster…in a world that's full of them? That wouldn't solve anything. It'd only cause another fraction of imbalance that's devastating the planet. For each life taken, we create a world that's full of pain that is difficult to manage without consequence." Akira then grabbed the bars of the girl's cell. "I'm not a killer, Shamshel, and neither is my daughter, Rumi. She can't be held responsible for your brother's death. A life for a life doesn't measure up to anything but pain and suffering. What would happen if you did take her life? Somebody would, most definitely, want to kill you in revenge. Maybe even me…if I lost the will to seek out alternatives to murder. Death is never a good solution; sometimes, it's only a cheat to satisfaction. And if I killed you, somebody would want me dead in revenge, and the cycle of vengeance would continue."

Shamshel frowned at the woman; this was a method of sympathy and understanding of how one should live. This woman, this member of the Lilin race, had lived her life with relatively little desire for revenge, closure or justice, and had tried to teach others the same. She must've lost people over the years, time and again, and the loss hadn't consumed her yet. Would there ever be a time when she would be consumed and desire everything she felt she deserved in the future? But then, Shamshel took notice of the silver bracelet on the woman's right arm, and went wide-eyed.

Akira took notice of her expression and became concerned.

"Are you alright?" She asked her.

"Why are you still wearing that?" Shamshel asked her, indicating to Akira that she was referring to the bracelet on her wrist.

She raised her arm up and exposed the rest of the jewelry.

"Do you know what this is?" She asked her, but Shamshel's expression seemed to be that of fear; there wasn't a single hint of hostility left within her.

"Keep away," she told her. "Don't come near me with that."

The leader of the town then covered the bracelet with the sleeve of her large coat. This girl was obviously aware of something about this bracelet that she didn't know of and was scared to death of it.

"You…you do know what it is, don't you?" She asked her.

"Please…don't come near me with that," Shamshel begged.

Akira looked down and said, "I'm sorry."

Walking away from the cell, the leader became concerned…and afraid. The girl knew very clearly what the bracelet was, but was unwilling to divulge in any detail of what, exactly, this trinket was. She'd have to ask Nemo and his friends later, as they would probably give her an answer of what it was. Or, at least, what it wasn't.

Could these bracelets have come from the museum? She wondered, deciding to go see the other woman she'd hadn't spoken with in two years.

-x-

Misato should've been thrilled at the privilege of returning to Akira Town to ascertain the possible whereabouts of the Fourth Angel, but she didn't. It had been Gendo, according to Kaji, who'd been instructed by his superiors to head up the search for the Angel, but instead, Gendo threw the duty onto her, since it was she who had been invited by Rumi to the festival that he ended prematurely. And while Ritsuko and the Bridge Bunnies were also with her, and Asuka (in Unit-02, a safe distance away from Akira Town, as to not cause panic) ready to do what she'd been trained to do for ten years in case of trouble, she didn't feel any safer coming to a place that strives to remain without a history of war and massive casualties just to find out whatever they could about the Fourth Angel. She felt like she was bringing the problems of NERV to the home of a little girl that would, probably, throw her life away to protect her ailing nephew's.

As she drove through the streets of the town's outer structure, several people that took notice of the NERV truck behind her started vacating the streets with vacant expressions. This was obviously their way of showing a complete disinterest in NERV. There was even a woman nearby that scooped up her little girl and ran inside her house.

They're obviously not happy to see us, she thought as she looked left and right at the people that ran into their homes (or even alleyways to avoid them).

She stopped her car at the sight of a familiar woman she'd seen at the festival: Miaka Rokubungi, carrying a grocery bag and looking her way. Misato hoped that she could and would tell her something.

"Uh, hey, Miaka," she greeted.

"Don't tell me," Miaka responded, not happy at the sight of NERV-owned property. "Kaiju-related business brings you here?"

"Um, yes."

"Well, my answers will depend upon what sort of kaiju you're asking of." Misato then stepped out of her car and presented the woman with a photograph of the Fourth Angel, to which Miaka shuddered. "That looks like a squid mixed with an inappropriate love toy."

"Uh, yeah. Did anybody here happen to see it?"

"Yes, we saw it…and it caused minimum destruction to our home. A few buildings were dinged, but at least, and I thank the kami, no one died or got hurt severely."

"Does anyone know where it went?"

"Yeah. Everyone here knows where it went."

"And?"

"It, or rather, she, is being detained at the Akira Town Correctional Center in a holding cell. Akira got through seeing her after she was mended up at the hospital the night of the day she wrecked our museum. It'll be a while before that place will be reopened to review our home's ancestry."

When Ritsuko showed up and heard of where the Angel was being held, she demanded the exact location of the facility it was being detained at, but Miaka frowned at what she viewed as an order, so Misato asked politely of this facility, to which Miaka gave the location, but also gave a warning: While they might be allowed to see the girl, they shouldn't expect more than just that.

"Ever since Gendo's uninvited presence at the festival, anything and anyone associated with NERV is being viewed with some suspicion," she told Misato. "Try not to overstep or overexert your authorial boundaries to those who do not answer the calls of demands."

Misato nodded that she would keep that in mind, and left with the others to see the Fourth Angel.

-x-

Akira couldn't remember the last time she ever stepped foot of the staircase of the Kudo residence. This small, two-story home had seen less cleanliness than the rest of the town. Its lawn unkempt, the wooden fence's blue paint peeling off, and the windows were covered in grime. It became clear that in the last two years of their strained relationship, Tomoyo let her family home fall into ruin.

Akira sighed and went up to the front door; even that was covered in grime and had decayed bugs on the wood.

DING-DONG! She ringed the bell and waited for who she felt with her Geo Channeling abilities was inside to answer. Through her connection with the ground, she felt the vibrations of another person making an advance toward the front door; this sensation was probably similar to how bats traveled around when it flight. The front door then opened up and revealed another young woman that appeared to be in her mid-thirties, with long, braided, dark gray hair, green eyes and wore a white dress with a blue gem hanging on the chest area.

"Akira," she uttered, only to have said woman bow to her.

"Tomoyo," Akira greeted her. "I hope I wasn't disturbing you."

"No, not at all." The woman, Tomoyo, told her.

This was an unexpected moment between the two. Tomoyo was really expecting Akira to call first before showing up; after what happened to Xiaolongnü two years back, she'd been in a state of utter wreck, trying to keep herself together. It wasn't until after what she heard happened at the museum with Akira and her daughter, Rumi, that she snapped out of her despair and tried to get her life back together and restoring her home and, quite hopefully, her friendship with the village leader. But with Akira coming by before calling, she was hoping to at least mend the smaller things.

Akira sighed again and asked, "Would you…like a hand in fixing the place?"

Tomoyo lowered her head and responded, "Yes. Please, help me."

But Akira didn't step inside the house, despite her wanting to; it was always improper to enter one's home uninvited.

"You have to invite me in, Tomoyo, or it'll make me an improper guest," she told the other woman.

"You may come in, Akira Rokubungi," Tomoyo replied, and Akira stepped inside.

As she walked up the steps, the centenarian noticed that, despite the disrepair of the rest of the house, one bedroom's interior remained unchanged. Its futon and animal-themed bedspread held no trace of dust, the pink walls showed no signs of peeling, and every stuffed animal in the corner as clean as the day they were obtained. Akira felt like she had stepped out of the present and back two years…before the tragedy happened.

"…Akira?" Tomoyo called out to her, snapping the elder woman out of her trance.

"Huh?!" Akira gasped, turning to face her. "Oh. I'm sorry."

Tomoyo looked in the room and uttered, "I don't blame you. Even after two years, I couldn't bear to touch this room and remove its possessions. I'm probably foolish but, in a way…she still lives here."

"Yeah, as does everyone else that lives here," she agreed, though it was more for herself than for her friend's family problems.

They started cleaning up the kitchen, sweeping up the garbage on the floor, wiping the table, stove and counters clean of stains and grime, and even repainting the walls with some leftover paint from the last time the walls were painted. After that, they cleaned up the hallways, which were the easiest of the spots to clean, since there was only garbage bags filled with biodegradable materials. There were two bathrooms, one upstairs and the other downstairs, that they split up to take care of before meeting up in the living room to take care of the trash in it. As Akira swept up behind a desk, she took notice of an old photograph and picked it up. It was of a little girl with dark gray hair and bluish-green eyes, dressed in a pair of jeans and wearing a large, purple shirt with a dragon sewn into it.

The town leader could've said that this was one of Tomoyo's pictures, except the girl had shorter hair, seemed somewhat of a tomboy, due to her subtle, boyish face, and the imprinted date on the photo was showing that it was taken over two years ago. No, this wasn't one of Tomoyo's. It was Xiaolongnü, Tomoyo's four-year-old baby sister…before she died. She could've lived to be six years old today, just like Rumi, had it not been for the unjustified hand that Tomoyo had been dealt with.

I've held her responsible for what was never her fault to begin with, Akira thought, setting it down as a tear was shed. We both loved that girl.

Tomoyo appeared beside her and saw the picture, recalling more memories of why, before her sister had passed away, it was just she and her. Their mother was fifty-three when Xiaolongnü was born; Tomoyo hadn't believed her parents wanted another child at such a late age where many things in the body tended to cease their proper functions, but her mother had that strong morale that every life was sacred, even a tiny life that has no say in its existence, something she didn't fully understand at the time. Tomoyo, at that time, was working at an arts and crafts shop in town, not really looking to change her life for any degree of reason, but when her mother had died in childbirth, she had to adjust to rearing Xiaolongnü, especially after their father died three months later due to heart failure. She wanted to blame her little sister for their deaths, but knew that such a belief was cruel and immoral towards a child that never had any say in its existence or knew what was happening around them; Tomoyo couldn't even bring herself to pick up a knife and cut out her own heart to escape the mild madness she believed her baby sister had caused. But when she told everything to her friend, Akira, the centenarian woman, who had bore a child herself on the same day as her mother, installed in her the belief that it was okay to feel the way she had felt back then, and that there was never any shame in having friends help you in rearing a close relative, which is what she had tried to do with her friends, and for a while that helped her as she tried to find the proper stability in her life with Xiaolongnü. Unfortunately, her search for stability had reached an unwanted breaking point two years back on the Third of September.

If only I had known I was being followed that night, she thought. If I had known that one of my friends had friends with violent habits and an affinity for what was forbidden around here, I could've done something. I could've reported it to the authorities, hired a babysitter to watch her for the night, something that could've prevented her death!

"…I blamed you, even when I knew it wasn't directly your fault," she heard Akira say.

"What?" She asked her.

"I held her death against you after that night," Akira responded. "But what happened that night wasn't your fault. It was never your fault. You didn't know you were being followed by a bunch of men that acted more on inappropriate desires than moral comprehension. You are beautiful, as they put it that night. But you weren't interested in them, devoting your time to bringing up your sister than to pursue a relationship with a guy."

"But what you told me the day after, that was true: At the end of the day, we're all responsible for the decisions that we make. I chose to take her with me when I went out of town for three days to show her the world outside of Akira Town…and I brought along my friends. I should've known that one of them had outsider friends that enjoyed the use of guns after the Second Impact. They found me attractive…but I didn't find them very influential toward my sister. And… and then (tears were forming in her eyes again)… Oh, how often I wish it all hadn't went down the way it did that day! It should've been me. I was thirty-four, twenty-fourteen, almost three and a half decades old. But fate dealt me a loss I was unprepared for. What's the term they use for a big sister that loses her little sister due to a single bullet through the chest?"

"They don't have a term for that. Kami are often just cruel to those that don't deserve what they get in the end."

"Speaking from experience?"

"Yes."

"What do you think when you lose someone?"

"I feel only grief in not being allowed to be with them for just one more day…and torment in having to live until my age finally gets the better of me."

"But as long as you live, as long as there are those that need you in their lives…and want you for you, you find happiness. You find…rejuvenation and such."

Akira nodded, and gave the photograph to her.

"Do you think I failed him?" She asked her.

"Who?" Tomoyo became curious.

"Gendo. Do you think I failed him? Was I wrong in not giving him more of my attention than I try to with the others before he left?"

"Akira, you never failed Gendo. He failed you. He was incapable or unwilling to adjust to the life he had with you and the others. I mean, up there on that mountain, you guys live above the rest of the world, enveloped in all your spiritual energy that even permeated the soil, not so different from the ki that flows down a mountain and nourishes the land as it passes by. I heard that when he was seven, he couldn't even demonstrate the patience and self-control required for controlling fire, never paying attention to the philosophies needed to understand the art."

"Or the time where he couldn't accept his defeat, handed to him by Kanami during the Trimester Tournament, and inability to adjust his abilities, relying less on the art of fire and more on the stances of the body."

"And you're not the only one he failed," Tomoyo added on. "He even failed one good person that he should've been there for…but chose to pass out on every opportunity available…until that person no longer wanted him around."

Akira knew she was referring to Shinji, whom Gendo did indeed fail. Her only grandson had reached a level of acceptance that his own father, who should've taken the time to be a father and not something else, could not be welcomed into his life with the others that provided him with happiness, despite his crippling illness. Shinji had learned that there was a massive difference between the positives and negatives of want and need; the discovery of positive want originating from the family that loved him for him…and the knowledge of negative need provided by Gendo when he showed up at Tokyo-3.

Gendo…didn't want Shinji back in his life at all, she thought. He only needed him for something dangerous, something that he shouldn't have helped him with at all. But right after I got Shinji out of his suicide attempt, he didn't want Gendo involved in his life if the guy never showed any interest in him simply because he was his son. Somehow, I can't even picture this Yui Ikari woman being any better at child rearing than Gendo wasn't. Wait a minute, how old was that woman when she died? Twenty-six? Twenty-seven? Gendo should be about forty-eight this year. How was he able to marry somebody that was at least over ten years younger than him? Wasn't there a law against marrying somebody either extremely young or old several years ago? I better look into this.

By the time they had finished cleaning up Tomoyo's home, it was already sunset, casting the sky in a pleasant shade of orange and pink.

"I really appreciate you helping me clean up the inside of my house, Akira," Tomoyo praised her.

"Sure. Anytime," Akira told her back. "When should I return to help you with the rest of the place?"

"Is two in the afternoon good for you?"

"Definitely. See you, then."

"Okay. Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

-x-

Misato was, once more in her career as a captain and tactician for NERV, surprised by what she had encountered when she and Ritsuko stepped out of the holding facility. The girl they had seen, the one that the people who were present before the explosion at the town museum took place, had confessed to being the Angel that had attacked Tokyo-3 several days ago, and expressed that there was nothing she could do against anyone without her powers, which had been taken from her mere moments after she came to the town that played home to the girl she held responsible for the death of her brother. She even had Ritsuko surprised that the Angel seemed as human as they were now and was capable of understanding them, not just that she was telling them what she was willing to express. As much as Misato, due to her own issues with the Angels, wanted to shoot this one in the head and be done with her, she had to obey the rules of their agreement with the staff of the facility that watched the girl: They were allowed to interrogate and examine her, but anything higher than that, such as murder or experimentation, even trying to gain custody of the former Angel, was prohibited, regardless of what their superiors decided.

As long as the girl was in their facility, and human, she was no threat. "If she could hurt us without those burning whips of hers that were confiscated, she would've done so by now," one of the security guards had told her, "and she's been a little freaked by her visit from Akira Rokubungi earlier today." But what made Misato curious right now was how the heck could a woman like Akira freak out a girl that used to be a large monster and was now deprived of her abilities and rendered no different from a regular person. It probably bordered on the supernatural, which was unheard of.

I don't suppose the town has a motel or building where we can all crash for the night? She thought, recalling that the last time they were here, she never toured the whole place. Then again, we traveled by helicopter this time, we should be able to make it back to Tokyo-3 by midnight.

But while Misato was pondering on between places to stay and getting back home, Ritsuko, while taking a drag on a cigarette, was trying to come up with an excuse to give to Gendo about the Fourth Angel no longer being a threat to people…but was still very much alive.

He's not going to like this, she thought, but Gendo didn't like much of anything at all.

-x-

Back home, Akira lied on her bed, wondering what to do about Gendo should she or the others see him again in the near future. In addition, she was also recalling how she got him when he was just a little boy; the discovery of how he came to be still a haunting memory in her mind.

Gendo… I tried to rear him away from echoing the actions of his father and grandfather…but he may actually be just as worse as them…as him. He never even got a chance to know his mother, not that I could ever blame her for dying. She was young…too young…and her father wasn't very helpful.

And to think that this was what she sometimes did while waiting on dinner…and it was Shinji's turn to cook a little bit with Shinobu an hour ago before retiring temporarily to his room. Akira had even chuckled once at what her grandson wanted to be when he grew up…if he ever got the chance to see old age like his passed-away aunts and uncles and their children's children.

A chef, she thought again. What are the odds of someone like him wanting to be a chef?

KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK! Somebody knocked at her door.

"Yes?" She asked whoever it was.

"It's Tsukiko," said the person on the other side. "Dinner's ready and Nemo's come home."

"Okay, thanks."

As she got up to go see her son, her daughter, Rumi, who was with Shinji in his room, saw him put the finishing touches on the front of the last page of his scrapbook. He just needed to do the other side and it was done, his mark on the family's history made.

"Almost hard to believe that you started on this at age eleven, and you completed it three years later," she cheered him.

Shinji was about to say something back when he noticed the bracelet around her wrist…and it enticed him a little.

"When did you start wearing jewelry, Rumi?" He asked her.

"Huh?" She questioned, and he pointed out the bracelet. "Oh, this? I don't know how I got it. Akira and I, we're waiting for Nemo to see if he can find out what they are."

"I thought Nemo's specialty was in computers, philosophy and a small degree in forensics, not the study of jewels."

"We just want Nemo to see if he can tell us something we have a slight suspicion about."

"Which is?"

"Whether or not our bracelets came from one of the displays at the museum."

Shinji set his stick of glue down and looked at his young aunt's bracelet-wearing arm, examining the item. What made him curious about the possibility that this thing not coming from the museum was that it didn't look like it could've: It was shiny and looked new. Everything else in the museum was ancient, both in their appearance, texture and history. This trinket wasn't even anything like an artificially-made piece of jewelry that you could find at a diamond shop or off the Internet; this thing had an aura that seemed as old as time itself, engraved upon the carved stones that decorated it. It was authentic and genuine.

Suddenly, his perception on the pearl and ruby became more focused. His face became blank and free of expression, like he was in a trance or something. A face appeared within the jewels, one he hadn't seen before: A woman, well into her late-twenties, with short, reddish-blond hair and green eyes, whose facial structure seemed similar to that of the injured girl they saw in Tokyo-3, Rei Ayanami. But there was something about her that seemed both familiar and haunting, like he had seen her in the past, but couldn't recall anything about her.

"…Shinji?" Rumi snapped him out of his trance.

"Huh?" He reacted.

"Are you okay?"

"Oh, um, yeah, I'm fine."

Rumi looked at her bracelet and saw nothing that probably shouldn't have been there.

Knock-knock-knock! Somebody knocked on Shinji's door.

"Shinji, Rumi," went Tsukiko, "dinner's ready. Come eat."

"Alright, Tsukiko," they both responded and got up.

-x-

Impressive, thought Fuyutsuki, as he and Gendo just got word from Ritsuko. The Fourth Angel is no different from a regular person now…and the authorities of the town it's in won't hand it over.

Gendo wasn't happy to hear of this. Somehow, it had to be a ploy being used by the Angel. It could be, somehow, able to manipulate the people into believing it's harmless and poses no threat to them. There was no way that an Angel, a descendant of Adam and inheritor to the Fruit of Life, could be rendered human after attacking a small town built upon the four, classic elements of history and culture.

"What do you think they're going to say about this when they find out?" Fuyutsuki asked him, not really expecting an answer whenever it came to SEELE.

-x-

The Ninth of July brought another aura of change to Akira Town. The farm grounds had larger crops to harvest for the market places, some Hydro Channelers had caught a large bounty of fish and several flowers related to the summer season had finally bloomed. It was like another day in a piece of paradise on Earth…if it weren't for the fact that some drama from the outside world kept trying to tarnish the balance that the people that lived within it strove so hard to keep from becoming imbalanced this fifteenth year of what seemed like a post-apocalyptic time.

In her cell, Shamshel, still recouping from her visits from Akira and some people that were responsible for the man-made abominations that she still held Rumi responsible for using to murder her brother, woke up to the sounds of birds singing outside. She had never heard any sort of creature that could sing something so beautifully beside her sibling of music, Israfel, who needed to always split in two to do so because whatever song was used sounded terrible. Looking out her cell window, viewing the birds, she almost thought they were a perverse combination of her siblings Israfel and Arael, a singing bird the size of someone's hand, but they were so beautiful and pleasant.

What are they? She thought.

"Excuse me, miss," she turned her head to look toward a security guard that had a cart with him. "Are you hungry?"

"Hungry?"

"You know, like food? Eating? Consumption? You do eat…don't you?" He asked her.

Her stomach then growled, demonstrating the need for sustenance. The guard opened the cell door and brought the cart inside, presenting Shamshel with a selection of breakfast foods, ranging from a bowl of rice and fried fish to pancakes with melted butter and syrup on them. The girl had never seen such a selection in her life. She tried some of the rice and suddenly felt a feeling of weakness in her mouth.

"What is this feeling?" She asked the guard. "It's pleasant…in a weird way."

"I believe that would be taste, ma'am," he answered her.

"Taste, huh? Well, in a world full of you Lilin, you have at least fascinated me with your song birds and tasty food."

"Song birds? Oh, you mean the birds outside? They're the town's natural alarm clocks. Them, the roosters and other such animals that can awaken people from their nightly slumber."

After finishing her meal, which consisted of the bowl of rice, pancakes and a cup of orange juice, Shamshel, with a full stomach, lied on her cot and rested. It was only her second day in holding and already, she felt like she'd been there for over what the Lilin referred to as a week. She wanted to assume this was some sort of ploy used by the Lilin to weaken her resolve against them, but she refused to let go of her dislike of them…or, to be more precise, her hatred of the little girl. Despite her severed connection from the rest of her brethren, she knew that, in due time, her brother, Ramiel, would come to succeed where she failed.

He might be a large piece of glass, but when it comes to power, he does his job right, she thought, though the 'glass' part might've been too strong; being reduced to a member of the Lilin, she didn't really know what her brother was made of, other than that they were both born from Adam.

-x-

If the Angel's, more or less, humanized, she shouldn't be much of a threat, anymore, thought Asuka, having been informed by Ritsuko and Misato of the Fourth Angel's status in Akira Town. I mean, it shouldn't be much of a threat, anymore. They're the enemy; it's pointless and stupid to think of them as people.

Having spent the night in a hotel in the town, she, like the others of NERV, were set to go back to Tokyo-3 and await the arrival of the next Angel that would pose a threat. But something in the back of her mind told her that another Angel arriving in Tokyo-3 was easier believed than expressed, said than done, since the Fourth Angel arrived at the city…for a few minutes before leaving to attack this town and got more than it bargained for. The very possibility of the next one coming to face an Evangelion and try and instigate the Third Impact, which she'd been told, years ago, would wipe out the rest of the human race, was very slim to nonexistent.

But…NERV has the only weapon capable of defeating them, she wanted to believe, and by 'defeat', she meant 'destroy', but both words had complete differences.

-x-

In his bedroom, right after breakfast, Shinji couldn't shake off the image of that woman he saw in the stones of Rumi's bracelet; her face was as strikingly beautiful as it was haunting. She reminded him of this picture of a large sea serpent underwater and surrounded by sunken, pirate-like ships and sharks with hammer-like heads; something that could be respected and feared at the same time. To cope with the problem, he took out his sketchpad and started sketching the woman's face from memory; when it came to people he'd seen and known enough over the years, like his aunts, uncles, cousins and grandmother, familiar faces were always welcomed into his heart, but with people he knew nothing of and were not welcomed into his heart, like how Gendo wasn't, and now this strange woman, they were a disturbing presence in his mind that he tried to bury in the abyss of the mental garbage that didn't serve him well. He started with the outline of her head, adding the features of her hair and eyes later, and finished with her nose and mouth before adding in the colors to mark her identity and features.

It's strange, he thought, stopping between several minutes to think about the woman's face. She looks like that injured girl with the red eye and bluish-white hair, but older and with different color pigments. Could she be a relative of hers?

At eleven-thirty-three, he'd finished the drawing and examined the face more thoroughly; the woman did seem similar to the injured girl, but there was an aura around that felt like…whoever she was, she wasn't somebody he could speak to about anything in his life…or even have a desire to get to know. Deciding to speak about this woman some other time, he got up, changed into some of his casual clothes (not like a school uniform, but a pair of blue, baggy shorts and a black, short-sleeved shirt with a picture of a falcon on it), and headed out to town to the arcade center.

-x-

Rumi wasn't so sure of why, but she felt incomplete without that bracelet of hers on her wrist. The same feeling applied to Akira, as well. While they both handed them to Nemo just to confirm what they suspected, they were also hoping that it might've been a mere coincidence that those bracelets found their way onto their hands. As her was helping her friend, Tomoyo, fix up the outer layers of her home, Rumi wandered around the interior of the place, just looking at the details of how well they cleaned up.

"Thank you again for coming to help me," said Tomoyo to Akira, repainting the left side of the house.

"Sure, anytime," the centenarian responded, repainting the right side.

Rumi, now bored, laid down on the sofa and shut her eyes to block out the world. She didn't resent Tomoyo or anything, but she missed Shinji right now. She wondered how he was doing, suspicious of whatever he zoned out on when he looked at her bracelet. Whatever it was, she feared it took hold of him a little.

We can't go on together…on suspicious minds, the lyrics of that old song by that famous dead guy caught hold her mind again. We can't build our dreams…on suspicious minds… Huh?! That post-Second Impact film, Lilo & Stitch again! Oh, why did Kanami make me watch it with Mayo?

"…You both seem different this year, that's all I'm saying," Rumi heard Tomoyo say to someone.

"It's called maturing, which is what we all do," she heard her mother respond, "and if not physically, then, at least, mentally…and spiritually. We grow, we change, we make mistakes and we have to pay for those mistakes."

"Yeah, that's true. Hey, she fell asleep."

That's when Rumi opened her eyes and replied, "Not sleeping. Just resting."

Akira, leaning over the couch, chuckled and told her daughter that they had finished the repainting and could go now if she wanted, to which Rumi replied with a plea of wanting to leave and go see Shinji. The timeless mother chuckled, complied and picked up her daughter, promising to see Tomoyo another time in the future.

-x-

"…This cannot be, Ikari," said one of the SEELE monoliths marked 'SEELE 08 SOUND ONLY' to Gendo, who was surrounded by at least twelve of the fifteen members of the SEELE organization. "Nowhere is it written in the Dead Sea Scrolls of any of the Angels being humanized after attacking a town that doesn't officially exist on many maps."

"And we're to know that the…former Fourth Angel is being held within the town as an inmate in a rehabilitation center located there?" The monolith marked 'SEELE 03 SOUND ONLY' asked him. "Why did you not order the people there to relinquish the enemy?"

"I did not have authority there," Gendo answered, which was true; he had authority over NERV, but not Akira Town. "And NERV's presence there was not tolerated. We were allowed to examine the former Angel, but anything beyond that was prohibited."

"Is it possible that with the changes that have happened, the scrolls no longer hold their sway upon the present?" SEELE 05 SOUND ONLY asked.

"It is possible," SEELE 10 SOUND ONLY responded. "Ikari, make sure that the next Angel is dealt with. We do not desire a repeat of the Fourth Angel."

When the meeting ended, Gendo was losing his cool. So far, only one of the Angels had been reduced to another member of the human race that was at a virtual dead-end. Something was going on in that village of elements and he had to find a means to stop it to get his scenario back on track. Or else he was also doomed.

-x-

"To think that you didn't ask for a video game set for your birthday, Shinji," said Akira to her grandson, reaching the gate of their home. "I'm sure Nemo would've went through an iceberg to get you one of those PlayStation things that most of the kids are stated to love."

Shinji didn't respond to that, though he wished he had.

Bumi, who was practicing with his staff, saw them enter and greeted them.

"Hey, y'all," he said, setting his staff down. "Miaka became a slave to her curiosity and couldn't help going into Shinji's room to see if his book was finished, but instead of seeing the book, she saw something that was much more interesting to her."

"Miaka went into my room?" Shinji gasped, worried that his unfinished book might've actually been tampered with; everything else in there wasn't as important as what he poured much of his time in.

"She didn't touch anything. She didn't even see the book. But she did wanna know who the woman was in that drawing on your desk."

"What woman?" Rumi asked, now curious herself, although showing a slight frown that indicated more than simple curiosity to Akira, who was also curious.

Shinji led them to his room, pleased to find everything exactly as he left it when he went out, and showed them the picture.

"Hey, that almost looks like that girl from Tokyo-3," Rumi pointed out. "The one that was hurt and worked for NERV."

Akira looked at the woman, and only saw two things: Her hair style and facial structure were, quite subtly, mirrored or echoed within her grandson's features, like they were related. But before he met any of them, Shinji had no recollection of any other people except his father, who turned his back on him one rainy day; there wasn't even a single recollection of who his mother looked like.

"No disrespect, Shinji, but this lady looks like she could be an extremely distant relative of yours from outside the family," said Bumi to him.

"No disrespect taken, Bumi," he responded. "I don't even know this woman. I just saw her face in my head and drew her down."

Rumi looked at the woman more thoroughly…and felt a slight degree of dislike toward her, like she'd done something that was so bad that she couldn't be forgiven for it.

"If she's a distant relative, she can live up to the distance that she puts in," she told them.

"Rumi," Akira uttered, taking that as a form of disrespect.

"Gomen," her daughter apologized.

"Miaka thinks that she might've seen this lady some years before, except she can't place the date," Bumi added in. "She's rummaging through old photographs and her diaries to see if she can confirm ever seeing her…oh, and Nemo's waiting for you in his room, ladies."

Akira and Rumi then left Shinji's room and walked down the hall to Nemo's, hoping he'd confirmed their suspicions about those bracelets. They'd found him playing with his microscope, probably examining some microbes again. Knock-knock! Rumi knocked on his door, and got his attention.

"You wanted to see us?" She asked him.

"Yes," he answered her, and then revealed that his microscope was being used to examine her bracelet. "I don't know how to say this to y'all, but these…are a conundrum charted in unknown terrain."

"Excuse me?" Akira asked, being handed back her bracelet by her son.

"I've done extensive, scientific research, and I can definitely tell you, categorically, these aren't from any of the displays at the museum," he explained, as Rumi examined her bracelet in her hands.

"Are you for real?" Rumi asked him.

"Positive," he answered her, and then handed Akira what looked like a museum brochure. "To confirm it, I even picked up one of their brochures that listed everything that was on display going back many years before Second Impact ever occurred, and those bracelets weren't on it. I even checked with the curators to be sure. They never had any pair of bracelets matching yours."

After looking at the brochure, Akira gave it to Rumi, who looked and looked, but couldn't find anything relating to her bracelet in it.

"Wow," both women sighed.

"It's really the strangest thing," Akira told him. "Neither of us have the slightest clue of how we got these at all."

"They are kinda nice, though," Nemo expressed, trying to shine some positiveness to the situation. "I could take one of them if you don't want 'em."

Rumi then tightened her grip on hers while Akira responded, "That's awfully kind of you, Nemo, but I think we'll hold onto them. Finders, keepers, right?"

"Yep," he agreed as they set their bracelets back onto their wrists. "Oh, I even did a chemical test on them, trying to cross-reference their structures with the table of elements, but the gold and silver bands seem to predate the table…or it's incomplete. Then I checked to see if they were possibly dangerous to one's health, and they checked out pure of any sort of contagion. They're just an odd combination of unidentified metal and stone that looks like gold, silver, ruby and pearl."

"Thanks for telling us all of that, Nemo," Rumi uttered back, feeling a bit better now that her bracelet was back on her wrist. "Peace out."

As the youngest girl left his room, Nemo was left with Akira, who leaned against the wall with a poster of Godzilla fighting Mothra.

"Let me guess," she went. "The Fifth Element as a foundation to the 'what if'?"

"Yeah…combined with natural curiosity," he added. "I had to be sure they weren't…dangerous."

"The only things more dangerous than getting hurt by an inanimate object are the things you'd least expect to happen…or not to happen at all."

"What about that American saying, 'What's the worst that could happen?' that usually foreshadows something unexpected? That is an urban American belief that can be used in other places, as it is important to draw knowledge from different places."

Akira then noticed on the dresser beside her one of his movie disc cases without the movie in it.

"What movie were you looking at?"

"Splice, why?"

"I think the guy that made the film was too smart to express to the world the dangers of abusing the science of genetics, even if it's to try and help others."

Nemo then uttered, with a hollow tone, "Like the science that people working for the family's sole rogue abuses?"

She sighed and nodded in the positive.

Don't…Akira…

Protect them…

The power is yours alone.

Defend the future…of the past…

Akira turned her head left and right, making Nemo wonder what was up.

"Uh, Nemo, did you hear anybody speaking just now?" She asked him.

"No, why?" He answered.

"I thought I heard somebody. Well, I'll speak to you later."

"Sure."

Leaving his room, she returned to hers, but found Rumi there, on her bed, as if waiting for her.

"Rumi?" She asked.

"I…heard voices…in my head," she explained. "Did you hear any voices?"

"Yeah, I did. What kind did you hear?"

"Two of them, a man and a woman. They were talking all science-like, but then another woman's voice came in and told me to ignore them, using that philosophy that Nemo often uses sometimes. She said to follow your heart and not your brain."

"Well, I can say that there's good news…but then I'd have to say that there's bad news."

"I'm listening."

"The good news is that we're both not crazy, but the bad news is that I don't know what those voices we've been hearing mean."

Rumi lied on her back as Akira walked over to the other end of her bed and lied on her back.

"How long do you think it'll be before the museum's up and running again?" Rumi asked her mother.

"Based on the damage that explosion caused? I'm thinking…anywhere from a month to even two months, not to mention the salvaging of the antiques that we can re-obtain. Then, there's the restoration of the hydrogen gas plumbing that allows for the lighting and heating."

"That crazy Shamshel. Just one person…one person causes so much damage to a precious piece of our town's history. Mother, was I out of line when I…you know, back in Tokyo-3?"

"You didn't do anything wrong, Rumi. Nobody blames you for anything that happened. You're not responsible for any accidents that happened there."

"Thanks for telling me that."

She then pondered many things a six-year-old girl would ponder of, while her mother would ponder of things people past her age would. Meanwhile, Shinji, in relative peace, had done what he spent the last three years doing: He'd finished his scrapbook with the last photograph he had left at his disposal.

"I've done it," he uttered, sighing as he dropped his hands to his sides as he waited for the glue to dry.

-x-

"Ikari may be incapable of dealing with the situation," said SEELE 04 SOUND ONLY to the other twelve, present members of the organization. "If one of the Angels has indeed become human, then that means the chances of the next Angel being defeated by an Eva are very slim to nonexistent."

Then SEELE 06 SOUND ONLY responded, "There was something written within the scrolls that had been overlooked by one of our translators some time before Second Impact, and only now has it come to my attention."

"What did the scrolls say about this?" SEELE 01 SOUND ONLY asked.

"It said, 'When all hope is placed on the ailing child, protection is granted by the young of a timeless guardian, who, in turn, will hold the key to the power of the Breaker, and on their side is not the salvation desired…but the salvation needed…and balance'. I believe that Ikari's son is the 'ailing child' while this Rumi Rokubungi is the 'young' of this 'timeless guardian'."

"But what is this 'Breaker' of which the scrolls spoke of?" SEELE 07 SOUND ONLY asked.

"This 'Breaker' is supposed to be something the scrolls tell of going back to the beginnings of humanity and to the ends of existence, that it's been sought after by many for thousands of years, but is bestowed upon the chosen few that would lead the world away from what was desired to what was needed."

"What was needed? Not desired?" SEELE 01 SOUND ONLY repeated. "We may need to find out more about this 'Breaker' with a further approach."

-x-

A few short days went by until it was the Twentieth of July, and in those short days, things were quiet and were slowly returning to normal in the town of elements. With so many people volunteering to repair the museum, it'd be a matter of several days before the exterior was fixed up, along with the salvaging of the antiques with their restoration from any possible damage. Although, despite their best efforts, the curators had to break the ice to Akira that her family heirloom that she gave to the museum, the Angelbreaker, could not be found…and may have been ruined beyond restoration. But Akira, beyond her ability to forget about something that had been precious to her family, couldn't place the feeling that her mother's heirloom, since the gauntlet had belonged to her, as far as she knew or believed, wasn't long gone.

The centenarian didn't know how to explain it, but she felt a strange bond toward that antique metal gauntlet, almost as much as she felt a spiritual attachment toward all her friends and loved ones. But she did want to know something very trivial nowadays elsewhere (but out of concern to her and the family): How could her grandson get a common sickness known as the mumps that usually occurs in childhood at a much earlier age? It was as confusing to her as it was to both Rumi and Shinji. Well, mostly to Shinji, who found it hard to speak for the last three days since he caught it.

The fourteen-year-old, already used to being cancer-stricken twenty-four/seven for the last ten years, hated being bed-ridden again with the only medication being bed rest and ice cream (he had believed ice cream to be a remedy for people that required their tonsils be removed due to inflammation or otherwise). The only other thing he disliked about it was the subtle isolation he felt when the others, or at least those that could catch what he currently had, were separated from him. This was a loneliness he could live without because a life without the voices or complains of others he cared about was comparable to a life of living death, and that was a life he often edged toward each time; it was a least-used term the people of the town had for sick people like him: The Living Dead of Akira Town, because they lived and died at the same time each day something bad or nigh-fatal happened to them.

Knock-knock! A knock came to his door.

"Shinji, it's Taeko," said the visitor; Taeko was one of the few that could see him because she had caught the mumps at age five. "May I come in, please?"

"Hai," he responded, and she stepped inside, carrying a stack of comics with her. "Nemo's?"

"Mm-hmm. They're his old favorites: Spider-Man, Daredevil, Batman and the usual. I don't understand how people like these stories about costumed heroes."

"They're heroes with flaws and they try to help those that others can't or won't. You see, Spider-Man's one of the heroes born of tragedy. He got bit by a spider and gained powers like those of a spider's, failed to stop a bad guy from hurting his uncle and swore to help others with his abilities. Batman's the same, except he doesn't have any special powers. He lost his parents to a bad guy at an early age and then swore to protect people at people believe the darkness of the night can cover up a multitude of sins that have been committed."

"And this Daredevil? Is he a tragedy that made a hero, too?"

"Yes. Unlike most other heroes, he's blind, but has his four remaining sense that act better than sight."

"Somehow, I find heroes like the Fantastic Four and Superman to be greater. Tragedy's not always a good thing."

"Sometimes, it can be. It always helps people to learn from a grave error. The error is in the past, and the past is part of history. Those that fail to learn from history are always doomed to repeat it…until they do learn."

Taeko then realized that she'd been getting him to speak in order to teach her about the comic book heroes, forgetting that he had the mumps, and asked, "I'm sorry. Does it hurt when you talk?"

"Only when I open my mouth too wide, which I've avoided. It stinks when you're sick."

"And you feel like you're alone?"

"More or less."

"You know, even when you seem like you're all by yourself…you're not really."

Shinji knew that Taeko was meaning that in the literal sense; it was because she was with him, along with the others that cared.

Taeko's attention then became disturbed by the sound of the television on the other side of the bedroom and looked to see what he was originally looking at.

"Hey, isn't this that American horror movie that Nemo acquired that I'm not even allowed to look at?" She asked him.

"The one with the ghosts and the big, glass house that functions like a puzzle and a maze put together?" Shinji asked back, trying to confirm her question.

"Yeah."

"Yeah, this is the one."

"How can you stand to watch it? Is it that scary?"

"Not really. There's one ghost that isn't even violent. It starts out violent, but ends on a happy and funny note. You'll understand it when you get older."

"Aw, and I wanted to look at it."

Shinji realized that he might get in trouble if his youngest cousin acquired nightmares, but the last thing he wanted to do right now was make Taeko angry with him, and gave in.

"If your parents ever find out about you watching an 'R'-rated film like this with me, don't say I didn't tell you so," he told her.

"Yeah, yeah," she sighed as she climbed onto his bed and watched the film with him.

-x-

Rumi, in the middle of the afternoon, while practicing with her hook swords, was trying to perform some Aero Channeling moves that she really wasn't supposed to be performing. It only occurred to her two days ago that what happened on the day Shamshel showed up to hurt her could have easily happen again, and she would need to be on her guard against stalkers. Her mother didn't know of this, having decided earlier with Rumi that they would hold off training her in the elemental arts until she was older. She would explain why she was going against this when her mother got back from helping fix up the town museum with the other volunteers…and visiting Shamshel at the rehabilitation center along with Dr. Gyatso, who had gotten out of the hospital a few days ago.

Is there some sort of requirement to channel the power of the winds? She wondered, swinging her swords, but all she did that gave a cheap imitation of controlling the air was that her swings made said air blow the other way, something anyone could've done. Come on, Rumi, you're smarter than this. There's something in Aero Channeling that's needed…and it's lighter than air. What was it? Willpower? Determination?

"You're never gonna channel air like that without a teacher, Rumi," she heard somebody several feet away, and stopped to see who it was.

Shinobu, who had finished her third shower of the month, had found her little sister practicing her martial arts that could probably rival a kung fu fighter. She had suspected for a while that her baby sister was trying to learn Aero Channeling by herself, but kept quiet about it until she got confirmation…and she just did.

"Shinobu, I, uh…" Rumi tried to explain herself, but the words weren't coming properly. "I, uh…"

"In order to manipulate the wind currents, you need more than just air," Shinobu told her. "You need to unlock the power housed within your spirit. The spirit, which is infinitely lighter than air, lighter than gaseous substances, is what grants you the strength to extend your energy to blend with the energy that works behind the air we breathe…and the air we use to power our wind-based energy sources, not just to cool our hot foods and drinks. Unlock the strength of your spirit, Rumi, and you gain the first step to becoming an Aero Channeler."

Setting her swords down, Rumi asked, "How do I unlock the strength of my spirit, big sis?"

"There are many ways to do so, Rumi," she responded, sitting down on a rock, removing the towel that she had wrapped around her head to dry off her long, flowing dark hair and let the cool breeze dry it for her instead. "There's meditation, a method used by the Aero Channelers in order to obtain their tattoos; breathing exercises, to lift one's spirits, not just calm one's nerves; drinking tea, not just a recreational liquid substance that provides good flavor after a long day around here, and there's also engaging in a simple conversation, though that rarely works."

Rumi then sat down and tried to meditate; she'd already learned that one of the marks of a master Aero Channeler is that you must be able to meditate for long periods without ever losing your focus of obtaining enlightenment. In the ancient past, some of the oldest, most powerful Aero Channelers could meditate for eight days at a time in order to achieve their mastery over the element. She cleared her mind of all distractions, thinking only on the air around her. She felt calmer than she did an hour ago; sitting down and letting the air blow around her felt good, soothing, relieving.

-x-

"…You're a lot quieter than when I visited last time, Shamshel," said Akira to the young woman, unwilling to keep thinking of her as a former Angel, as the people associated with NERV called creatures like her. "Have you had a pleasant few days?"

Shamshel, now taking to the privileges of meager pleasures one was allowed in the rehabilitation center, was listening to some nature-themed music provided by an iPod. But when Akira showed up, she had to cease this pleasure in order to speak with the town leader.

"Two weeks of being here, and I've all but forgotten my grudge against your little girl," she told Akira. "The first thing I ever started to enjoy since I was brought here was the singing birds outside. And then, it was the selection of food that you eat for breakfast. The third thing was, and quite beyond anything I've experienced, learning how to read and write. And now, it is the indulging of listening to music. You Lilin, generations and boundaries behind what I used to be, and some of you actually manage to do your race some good justice."

Akira pressed her head against the bars and sighed, hoping that, since Shamshel was in a lighter mood, she could answer her some questions she didn't feel she could ask others.

"About the first time I visited you here, we didn't really get off to a good start," she started up with. "And I'm hoping that we can put our violent introductions aside and start anew. You seem to know things that I probably don't, and I would appreciate it if you could help me find out some things."

Shamshel, who was sitting on the floor of her cell when the town leader showed up, got up and sat on her cot, putting the iPod away and responded, "Just what is it that you wish to know?"

"Please…do you know what this is?" She asked her, showing her bracelet to her, and Shamshel shuddered; the girl had seen it so many times, if not in person, then in memory, and she still couldn't shake off the fear she had of it.

The former guardian of the Garden of Eden exhaled and told her, "It is the Angelbreaker."

"Excuse me?" Akira asked her.

"Your bracelet," she repeated. "It's the reason I'm like you, internally and externally. It's the reason I'm no longer a threat to anyone."

"My bracelet's not the Angelbreaker," Akira defended, though she was still curious. "It can't be the Angelbreaker. I mean…"

"It was in the display case that I shattered moments before the explosion occurred, which we survived," Shamshel told her, trying to refresh her memories, however few there were, of that day she showed up.

"Shamshel, I had one of my boys examine this bracelet and another one that belongs to Rumi, and he confirmed that neither came from any of the displays from the museum. Besides, everyone here knows that the Angelbreaker's…a decrepit, metal gauntlet that I donated to the museum decades ago…and it's been in my family for several generations and that it belonged to my mother once."

The young woman then lowered her head but kept her eyes on Akira and said, "The Angelbreaker's capable of changing its form so that it doesn't draw unwanted attention…and dividing itself among the people it's around and chooses. Haven't you felt a little different since the day at the museum? Haven't you…had any dreams lately that you couldn't understand quite well?"

Akira looked at her wrist and the bracelet glistened in the light.

"Let's suppose that I did believe you," she told Shamshel, "that this bracelet, along with my youngest daughter's, is the missing gauntlet. Why is it on our wrists? Just what is it?"

"All I know about it is that it's been around for a long time and that it eliminates threats like the one I represented to your kind by humanizing the enemy. It made me like you. It's a special weapon that's not a weapon in what you prefer as the traditional sense and that it only goes to those that are able to use it, and that it chooses who it wants. If it split itself in two and placed itself upon you and Rumi's wrists, then it's no coincidence that you both have it. With the Angelbreaker, nothing happens by coincidence or by accident. You were both chosen by the Angelbreaker because it knew a danger was upon your kind and that it would be needed, and that only you two could wear it…could wield it…and serve it."

"So…we've just become pawns in somebody's twisted game of chess?"

"No. The only other thing that I know about it is that it doesn't kill; it's a weapon of protection, not destruction. It can only humanize threats; by humanizing a threat, it eliminates the danger. You can use it to harm, but it can never kill. How you use it is entirely up to you."

"Does…anybody else know about…"

"My brothers and sisters know more about it than I ever could. Other members of the Lilin race, perhaps, but my siblings know more than me…and like me, they fear it. They fear it because they know what it can do to them if they cross its path. The only other thing I could say is that my eldest brother, Zeruel, always despised the belief that such a weapon could draw in danger…only to remove it before it could cause massive harm."

"Draw…drawing in danger? Like how a magnet draws metal objects toward itself when in close enough proximity?"

"If that's how you wish to view it."

Akira couldn't believe this! If the Angelbreaker was her and Rumi's bracelets, and it was the reason that Shamshel was like other people, then it also meant that the gauntlet was drawing danger to the people she didn't want to harm. She looked at her bracelet again, unsure how to feel about, albeit unintentionally, taking back part of her family's heritage, or the fact that the other part had gotten a hold of her youngest child. It would be something she would have to either adjust to or try to undo.

"I should get going now," she told Shamshel. "Thank you for telling me."

As she left, Shamshel, for the most recent time of her stay in the center, felt another emotion that she had some trouble dealing with; it was the emotion of regret. She felt regret for the timeless woman and her daughter, whose fates weren't even changed in the slightest degree. They were merely vassals to a higher purpose, like the others chosen by the Angelbreaker. She then felt envy; if it had been her, if she'd been like them to begin with, if she'd been chosen to wear the Angelbreaker, she'd use it to do many things to protect her family.

She should view it as a duty, she thought quietly. An honor…a privilege…a cause.

-x-

…Maybe I went too far when I suggested she should meditate, thought Shinobu, as she continued to watch Rumi meditate on the ground, although it looked like she had fallen asleep while sitting. "Rumi?"

The six-year-old girl didn't respond to her big sister; she was too far gone to hear anything of the outside world. In her mind, the clarity of air was both seen and heard. She wasn't on the grounds of the estate, anymore; she was in some sort of forest, occupied by dimly-lit lanterns that were lined in the formation of a path shrouded in mist. It was dark, but she didn't feel worried about any potential dangers around her.

"You're not killing him, you know?" She turned her head to the left of the path and saw a young man with gray hair and gold eyes, dressed in a kimono patterned after fire burning in the night.

"Excuse me?" She asked him.

"Your nephew," he told her. "You're not killing him. You were never killing him. You can believe you are, but deep down in your heart, murder is not within your capacity to perform."

"How do you know that? Who are you?" She asked him.

"My name…is Takeru. I am a representative of the force of men that is bound to the Angelbreaker that you wear upon your wrist." He answered her, and she looked at her right arm, shocked to find that her bracelet wasn't there, replaced by a newer-looking version of the Angelbreaker gauntlet she saw at the museum and in her dreams, except with predominantly gold-colored scheme.

"No way," she gasped.

"I wouldn't lie to you," the man, Takeru, told her. "I am forever truthful. Only a liar would say differently and would never admit it. That…would be telling the truth."

"Like the story about a traveler trying to reach a village of truth tellers, but there's a village of liars that lives right across from it?"

"Yes."

"Why are you here?"

"To help you protect the world you live in."

"Excuse me?"

"The Angelbreaker… The timeless gauntlet chose you and your mother to preserve the future of the very planet from a threat that only it could deal with. It is both a blessing and a burden that only the two of you can bear."

"But…the Angelbreaker was lost in the explosion that trashed the museum."

"No, young lady. The Angelbreaker is eternal; nothing from regular campfire to a grand explosion could remove its existence. Those that sought out its powers for the wrong reasons could never obtain it…and those chosen by it have used its powers for the right reasons: To Preserve the future, draw knowledge from the past to correct mistakes that have been made, and to ensure that such mistakes are never echoed again."

"But…why me…and why my mother?"

"Because only you two could do what no one else has the means nor the rights to do, which is to preserve existence. Those that take lives for unjustified reasons aren't always privileged to wear the gauntlet or use its powers…unless chosen to serve their penance and atone for the lives that they took."

"Those that take lives? But there's this girl I've seen, and she blames me for causing…"

"Shamshel, also known as the Angel of the Day, one of Adam's brood, a messenger of a deity of considerable power and authority. Yes, she blames you for what happened to Sachiel, the Angel of the Water, her brother, but she blames the wrong person. You did not kill him…and it is not too late for him to be salvaged from his damnation."

"What? You're saying…that her brother can be brought back to life?" Rumi asked him.

"The Angelbreaker can do that. The Angelbreaker has powers. Many powers. But only the chosen ones that wield it can truly master them all. You were chosen; therefore, you can wield these powers."

"But…it looks like a gauntlet and not many gauntlets have special powers."

"The Angelbreaker's not an ordinary weapon of protection, dear girl. This belief is as old as history: The power of an object, weapon or otherwise, exists because people believe it does. Belief itself, Rumi, which is no different from one's faith in something or someone. Faith, like love and friendship, is one of the strongest, intangible forces of all existence. The power of belief creates what is there to see, feel, smell, hear and taste. The choice of the greater powers will be totally up to you, Rumi. The power of the Angelbreaker, its true strength, is, ultimately, yours to decide. You can choose to believe or disbelieve. I believe in you, that you can save the people you love, and so does the person you wish to save from a terrible fate."

Rumi looked at the gauntlet again and wanted to know some other things, but felt that she didn't have the time or the right to ask Takeru of them. This was all so sudden. Much to process, and she was wondering how much time passed outside of this world in her mind. While this was a meditation method used by the Aero Channelers in order to obtain their tattoos, she doubt that she could meditate for long periods of time without losing her focus…and she worried about Shinji.

"Don't worry," Takeru told her. "You've only been meditating for forty-two minutes. I'm impressed that you're able to meditate this long for a young child. Your aura is remarkably strong."

Suddenly, the mist around them began to thicken up and envelop Rumi.

"Our time is up…for now," Takeru told her.

"But wait! What if I have other questions or need guidance?!" Rumi asked as he started to disappear from sight.

"I'll be around for you. I'm part of the gauntlet you wear. All you need to know from the Angelbreaker, from me, will always be available to you and Akira…when you know just where to look." He answered her, and then he was gone.

Before Rumi could ask one more question, she felt herself back where she had left in the tangible world, feeling groggy like one did after a long sleep.

"Rumi?" She heard Shinobu say to her, worried. "Are you alright? You were gone for a while."

"Yeah," she told her. "I'm fine."

She got up off the ground and gathered her hook swords and placed them back in the closet of her room where she kept her wooden set of swords that she started with before adapting to metal. Looking at her wrist where her bracelet stuck out, she became worried about what she learned from the guy in her meditation attempt to harness the power of the air. If it was indeed the Angelbreaker, or a part of it, then a part of her fears about the gauntlet came true; the gauntlet had wound up on her body like that artifact in one series of comics that Nemo looked at involving the New York detective, but in her case, age was no limitation. She wanted to think of the bracelet as just that, a bracelet, that this whole situation was nothing more than a dream she was trying to wake up from, but she couldn't bring herself to lie to herself. This was no dream, not even a hallucination. This bracelet was the Angelbreaker, and it had picked her and her mother to wear it.

"The Angelbreaker has powers. Many powers." Takeru's words echoed in her mind. "The power of the Angelbreaker is yours to decide."

Shinobu, whom had followed her baby sister to her, leaned against her door and asked, "Are you sure you're alright, Rumi? I say this, not out of curiosity, but out of concern. You seem haunted by something…or someone."

Rumi then went to sit on her bed, sighed and looked up at Shinobu. As she made it a point not to keep secrets about anything that could be serious and required family and friends to know about to be kept in the loop, she decided to come clean with what she had learned.

"Shinobu, I… My bracelet's the Angelbreaker," she revealed to her.

The elder Pyro Channeler wanted to disbelieve her sister about the bracelet, but her gut told her not to.

"Are you sure?" She asked.

"Yes. I wouldn't lie to you, any of you."

"She's not lying," Shinobu turned her head and found Akira home, walking up the hall and stopping in front of her. "I just came from the rehabilitation center. Shamshel revealed some stuff I wish wasn't true. I could say that Rumi's lying, but then I'd be lying myself."

Shinobu then looked at Akira's right hand and took notice of the bracelet, how similar it was to Rumi's and asked her, "Is that the gauntlet, too?"

"Yes. It split in two between the people it chose."

"I'm sorry, 'chose'?"

"That's what the girl told me. If it's capable of choosing and dividing itself among its wielders, then that means it must be like we all are: Sentient, aware, intelligent."

"You mean, the Angelbreaker is some thinking, living hunk of metal and stone? But they don't look like the gauntlet from the museum."

"Shamshel explained that the gauntlet could change its form so as to not draw so much attention when not in used."

Before Rumi could say anything else what she had learned about the gauntlet, the women had heard somebody shout out in pain in the living room.

"Ow!" One of the men they lived with cried out, and they went to see who it was.

-x-

Shinji had to have had a record for accidental, self-inflicted injuries going on three years now. He was simply looking through the rug pillows for the living room television remote control device, only to acquire some small rug burns on his left arm when he found it underneath the bigger pillows.

"Why me?" He asked, hating simpler means of getting hurt than his cancer. Did Miaka have to give me this minute task as a penalty for letting Taeko watch the horror movie with me?

"Shinji?" He heard Rumi say his name, and saw her with Akira and Shinobu, and could tell immediately that they were curious as to why he wasn't in bed where he should've been to begin with. "Why are you out of bed?"

"Just…a little punishment for childish persuasion," he chuckled, but knew they weren't convinced. "Okay. To be honest, Taeko wanted to watch Thirt13en Ghosts with me, which I let her do so. She fell asleep in the middle of the film. Miaka found out and made me look for the remote to the living room television. I found it, by the way."

"You were swayed by a nine-year-old?" Rumi asked him as she came over and examined his arm. "If she does get nightmares, it'll be both your faults; hers for wanting to see it…and yours for letting her see it. Your rug burn doesn't look too bad. Mother?"

Akira came by and looked at it, and then went to the kitchen and came back with a bowl of water.

"Hold still," she instructed him, and used Hydro Channeling to heal the rug burn marks on his wrist. "How's that feel?"

"Better, thank you," he answered her, and then handed her the remote.

She accepted it from him, but then told him, "Mumps…bedroom…recouping…now, please."

"I'm going, I'm going," he responded, reminded that he was still sick from a regular illness, and returned to his room.

"If this was serious, I'd probably challenge that Geo Channeler to a duel," Akira uttered. "That movie was too dark and only eleven of those ghosts were disturbingly grotesque."

"Nemo researched each ghost in the film, and because it's a DVD, there were files on them included," said Shinobu to her. "But you did say that you liked the fourth ghost, the Withered Lover."

"She was the only one that wasn't malevolent, due to her being filled with kindness, even in death. Plus, the cause of her death was partially benevolent. How many mothers throw their own safety away to protect their children?"

"Well, you used to say that motherhood is a status that isn't given but earned over time."

Rumi could see that they were speaking of the movie and she'd never seen it herself, and asked them, "Could you show me the film so that I can understand it, please?"

Both women looked at the six-year-old and calmly answered, "No, Rumi. You're not old enough to look at a film like that."

"And I thought age was only a number," she retorted kindly, going to Shinji's room to keep an eye of him. "I wonder if he's watching Spirited Away now, which I am old enough to look at."

-x-

The next day, Akira made a decision that was most disbelieving: She had announced that she intended to go to Tokyo-3 and speak with Misato.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Nemo asked her.

"Yeah," she answered him.

"Does that also mean that you intend to speak to Gendo, as well?" Tsukiko asked her.

"Yeah, it does."

"If he ever asks about that girl we have in rehab, let him know what happened to her will be the same as any other beast that wants our home demolished," requested Bumi.

"I'll be sure to tell him."

As she packed up for at least three days, since she had no clue as to how long she actually intended to be outside of the town, Akira wondered if Shinji had anything to say to Gendo that she'd gladly do for him in his place. Just like motherhood, fatherhood wasn't a status that could be given just because you, more or less, fathered a child or more, but earned the right to call yourself a father by actually spending time with your successor or successors. And whoever both his parents were in the past after Second Impact, his mother included, they hadn't earned their rights to parenthood; they just had Shinji, not raise him. Sometimes, knowing how Gendo turned out made her angry, and not knowing who this Yui Ikari was made her suspicious as to whether or not she was an actual person and not a name without a face attached.

"…Are you sure going to Tokyo-3 is a good idea, Akira?" She heard her sole grandson ask behind her as she finished packing her bag.

"Yeah. I just need to…gather some more precautionary details for the future." She told him.

He still had to be careful when he moved his mouth because he hadn't gotten over the mumps yet. But his illness wasn't the reason he was hoping that she wouldn't be gone for too long. It was the possibility that, almost like Rumi when they went to the city, she had to put her life on hold just to ensure that he could still live his own. He didn't want his grandmother playing the superwoman and potentially getting hurt, regardless of how old she really was. He could care less if she were more than ten-thousand years old and not less than three-hundred, he just wanted her alive and not…like how he was becoming: Less than whole.

"Just…be safe," he told her.

"Safe?"

"Yeah, safe," he repeated.

"From him…or them?" She asked again, wondering if he meant Gendo…or the Angels…or something else entirely.

"All of thee above," he answered, meaning everything and everyone that could be a danger to her.

Akira sighed. Ever since she saved him from his suicide attempt over six years ago, she felt like one of those support beams that acted as a means to keep him from trying to repeat his attempt at taking his own life. It wasn't as much as a need for him to want her coming home as much as it was a want. Her want for the family to remain together was not so different from his want to stay with the family.

"How will you be getting there?" Shinji asked her, only to see that she had her staff leaning against the side of her dresser. "Oh. Is it really that reliable?"

"What can I say? Sometimes, it beats flying on a plane…except whenever it rains or snows." She answered him.

"What are you, a survivor?"

"A Unity Channeler with a great training routine to stay in shape. Perhaps."

"And are you ever…incapacitated?"

"No, never. Can't you tell?"

"But…do you ever feel…like you're too…to be doing the things that you do?"

She knew he didn't like to ask her if she ever felt the negatives of her advanced age, despite never looking as old as she truly was, and answered, "Shinji, I am twenty-eight years old. But…I've been like this for less than three centuries. Even elderly people can decide that they don't feel old when they look it. I'll be back in due time."

"But…just so that you know, you might not like all that you see. I've only seen it once, and I couldn't feel any degree of attachment toward that city that's supposed to be a fortress. I don't believe in such a thing as a fortress city meant to repel invading, would-be enemies."

"A city that is high-tech…but very soulless?"

"Yes."

After promising to call them when she reached the city, Akira took her staff and, despite the visual details of it, opened it up to reveal that it wasn't just a staff; its sides revealed a large pair of green-colored wings with ornate dragons on both sides, top and bottom, with a tail assembly with a purple color scheme left without any other features. Another attribute to Aero Channelers was the ability to manipulate wind currents to enable flight on a glider crafted by the older, more experienced masters themselves. And not many Aero Channelers in the town like Akira herself were skilled enough to perform such a feat.

"Sometimes, a technique as old as this one," she told them as she got set to run off the edge of the cliff side, "it's the only true way to fly."

She charged toward the edge, the family watching her in anticipation. She'd done this many times and it never got too old for them. Holding her glider up high with her hands, she channeled a small gust of air beneath her legs as she dove off the cliff, going down at first…but rising above their heads seconds later, taking high into the sky.

Rumi waved goodbye to her as she flew toward her destination.

-x-

Misato, still as much of a slob on her off hours, walked around the trash of her apartment, never in any shape to clean house. Even Pen-Pen stayed in his freezer to avoid going out into that jungle of garbage. It seemed that all Misato ever did there was pile up trash and barely clean her clothes. But, true to her inability to consume alcoholic beverages after the Fú Festival, she had drained out over forty gallons of her cans of beer in the last few days.

I don't suppose I could convince Asuka to live here, she thought, looking in her fridge for something to eat, but there was barely anything edible.

RING-RING-RING! Her phone started ringing and she went to her room and answered.

"Katsuragi residence," she greeted.

"Akira Rokubungi to Misato Katsuragi," the caller responded. "It's been a short while."

"Akira?" She asked, needing to sit down. "Yes, it has been a short while. Uh, what can I do for you?"

"Well, I just got through talking to my family two minutes ago after I arrived in Tokyo-3 and I've just called you. Is it possible to meet up with you?"

Misato looked at her apartment and quickly responded, "Um, where can I meet you?"

"I'm at some hill sight where you can get a nice view of the city. It looks like a small setting where you have a picnic at."

"I think I know where you're talking about. I'll be there in fifteen minutes."

"Thank you."

True to her word, Misato arrived at the hill sight where you got a nice view of the city, and found Akira leaning against the railing.

"How'd you get here?" She asked the centenarian.

"I flew," Akira answered her, holding up her staff.

"On that? Are you sure you're not some sort of a witch?"

"Are you sure your hair is purple?"

"Sorry. So, uh, why are you here?"

"I needed to know if any other would-be invaders had come to this city after Shamshel's unannounced arrival and sudden departure and relocation to my town."

"No. No other Angels have shown up since…her," Misato explained, still finding it hard to actually call the girl that was, in her point of view, and still is, for all intents and purposes, an enemy of the human race, even when she was now a part of it.

"Well, that's good to know. I got curious as to if they had shown up elsewhere around the world…or just different parts of what remains of Japan."

"Now that you mention it, the Angels don't seem to pop up anywhere else…except close to Japan. Or at least the first two." Misato told her, and then took notice of the bracelet she was wearing. "Nice jewelry you have there."

Akira then placed her right arm behind herself; it would be a while before she could accept that her family's unusual heritage was bound to her will half the time.

"It's just an antique that I was given by the curators at the museum," she explained, hoping a half-truth would keep her from poking her nose into places best left alone until such secrets were ready to be shared with outsiders. "Since you're probably about the only person associated with NERV that I can even speak with, I need to inform you of some things that I've learned recently."

"Me?"

"Yes, you. You're supposed to be some sort of captain at NERV, aren't you? These…Angels, as you call them… I don't believe they will be troubling your city any further than they did when they started showing up."

"What do you mean by that? What, you mean that…they've given up?"

"No, not given up. Didn't Shamshel divulge in any information with you or the others that were with you when you came to confirm of her presence in the town?"

"Probably not as much as she revealed to you. She told us that she hated your daughter, Rumi, despises everyone else for existing, and that her brothers and sisters would symbolize our end."

"Well, I see that her unjustified dislike of Rumi hasn't withered as much as I hope it will later on. And if they got a grudge against people, they should go after the few that are responsible instead of the many that had nothing to do with whatever happened to them. Unless, of course, everyone's guilty of something that relates to them. That would mean that innocence is now gone from the world. I hate the idea of that actually being true…simply because I don't like the idea of children being guilty of something that they don't understand. Are there any innocent people left on Earth…or is every remaining a guilty soul, undeserving of their future?"

"I'm sure there are many innocent lives left alive, Akira."

"The Angels won't come back here to this city…until after one of them has dealt with my daughter, which will not happen."

"The Angels… They've sworn a vendetta against Rumi?" Misato asked, worried.

"Use an abomination made by scientists to put down a creature you've never seen, who do you think the monsters that remain, those that have a kinship with their fallen comrade, will want to go after for the loss of one of their own: The abomination made by scientists…or the person that used the abomination to save a life they held most dear to themselves, maybe even more than their own?"

Misato could barely believe it, but it was too crazy not to believe it, either. The Angels wouldn't resume their invasion of Tokyo-3…until after Little Rumi was dealt with in Akira Town, simply because she, albeit indirectly, caused the end of one of their own, and now they wanted revenge against her.

"Uh, look, I, uh… Maybe I can talk to Commander Ikari about this and…"

"No," Akira cut her off. "If anything, he only needs to know that if the rest of them do come to my home, they will fall under my jurisdiction, just like Shamshel. The people don't want an Eva setting so much as a large hand wrapped in armor within the outer town limits if it brings violence."

Akira then raised her right arm up to reveal the bracelet again.

"There's an old adage that says, 'Take the cause out of the man, there is no cause for a man'. If a man, or woman, even, has a cause they themselves try to live for, they will do all that is within their ability to achieve the completion of said cause, but if you remove the ability to achieve what the cause wants, all you have left is a cause that cannot be completed because the people can no longer perform their duties. It is both failure and mercy…without the requirement of death." She told Misato. "This bracelet…was part of a gauntlet at the museum named after me that has been in my family for generations, on my mother's side. It's called the Angelbreaker. It's the reason that Shamshel was reduced to a regular person like the both of us. And it's the reason the remaining Angels will be drawn to my home instead of yours. They'll be pulled in, one after another, and then humanized when they get close enough, deprived of their powers and removed of the threat that they represent."

Before Misato could say something to disbelieve the older woman, her eyes widened to the sight of the bracelet changing its shape and appearance from a simple bracelet to a large, silver gauntlet with talons where the fingers were and an elaborate series of markings that looked like Japanese characters mixed with Chinese, but they were displayed in a way that she'd never seen before. There was also a triangular-shaped ruby with a teardrop-shaped pearl on the back of the gauntlet, like a pair of eyeballs placed vertically atop each other. When her right hand had been completely covered by the strange piece of armor, the purple-haired captain of NERV was left stunned by the sight of it.

Akira, wondering if she had convinced this outsider of what she had just shared with her, uttered, "Do you believe me now?"

Pinching herself on her cheeks to make sure that she wasn't dreaming, and confirming that she wasn't, Misato nodded and asked, "What are you going to do with it?"

"What it picked me to do," she responded, the gauntlet returning to the form of the bracelet. "To ensure the future of mankind's continued existence, to eliminate the threat of the Angels by humanizing them, to make sure that nothing so bad happens that a terrible scar of blood, like the ones left by Second Impact, is placed upon the planet. I'm one of the only two people this has chosen to make sure that we're all not plunged into some sort of massive genocide, the other chosen one being Rumi herself."

The next thing Misato knew, she had, either by lack of conscious or because she noticed that Akira had a travel bag with her, brought her over to her apartment, seeing as she had no place to stay for the night. If need be tomorrow, she would take Akira to NERV HQ and straight to Gendo, only to inform him of what would happen later on. Stepping into her home, Misato tried to show Akira in, but saw that the centenarian woman was still outside in the hall.

"You have to invite me in, Ms. Katsuragi," she told her. "To enter one's home unannounced is great disrespect to the owners."

"You can come in," Misato told her, and then Akira stepped inside.

Akira carefully walked around the place, and, to her shocking belief, found the apartment was in major need of tidying up. It looked like it was recently acquired, but hadn't been cleaned up for months. Garbage bags piled up on one side, scattered food wrappings and instant meal packages piled on another side. She could guess by instinct alone that Misato lacked housekeeping qualities needed to maintain a stable home environment. While it had a lived-in feeling, it was more of a pigsty and less of a place to actually live in.

But it's not as bad as when I first stepped foot into the city, she thought, recalling the sensation she felt when she touched the grounds of the city. There was no warmth in the ground. No flow of strength, not even a tiny sense of belonging. Only a large series of tall structures and something massive beneath the streets, shaped no different from an egg or ball. Shinji and Rumi were absolutely right; Tokyo-3's a high-tech city that is virtually soulless.

"It's a bit messy in some areas, but I've been meaning to clean it," Misato told her.

She's not lying, but she's keeping herself from doing her duty of maintaining her home.

The next thing Akira knew, she felt her left leg getting clung onto by something and looked down, only to see Pen-Pen hugging her.

"Squawk-squawk!" He greeted her.

"I'm surprised that he remembers me," she uttered out, and then patted the penguin on his head.

Later in the night, while settled in an empty bedroom that was remarkably sparse, Akira looked up at the ceiling and listened to the sounds outside the window. She was only here for less than three hours and she was already feeling homesick, wondering if her kids were alright in her absence. And if she was going to explain bits of what she discovered to Gendo, it would cost him some information he had, due to her curiosity of a few things. Whatever was going on in the present, if it brought danger to her home, she'd need to be prepared for anything, but she wouldn't allow the presence of an Evangelion in Akira Town, no matter what.

The sound of a passing train came to her ears and she expressed appreciation in such a simple vehicle, but wished it would've run on simple, safer energy sources like water or thermal energy instead of gasoline or oil. She had hoped that the beginning of the Twenty-First Century would enable people to start anew without the errors of the Twentieth Century weighing them down. Unfortunately, her hope was tarnished when Second Impact came, and several layers of innocence were taken away by layers of violence and bloodshed.

-x-

"…Shinji," went Rumi, knocking on his door in the middle of the night, "are you awake?"

His door was half-open, allowing her to see him lying in his bed. He sounded groggy when he responded to her.

"Uh, yeah, Rumi," he told her. "Is there something you need?"

"Is it… Is it alright if…I sleep in your room tonight?" She requested of him.

He got up and looked at her with half-open eyes.

"You…miss Akira?" He asked her.

"Yeah," she answered back.

"Yeah, come on in," he permitted her to enter his room, which she did, climbing into his bed and lying next to him.

"Thank you," she praised him.

"Anytime," he responded.

-x-

Misato had become an extremely odd person to Akira the next day when she woke up. The centenarian could barely speak a word about her sense of nightwear, which consisted of a woman's tanktop, short-shorts, and her hair was messy. If anything, Akira wanted to assume that Misato had two souls living within her flesh; one that belonged to a carefree child of the modern, high-tech wilderness…while the other was an adult that tried to find a semblance of order wherever she could. Or it could've been that this was a side-effect shown by some people that survived Second Impact's results, one of which could've been a serious damaging to the education system; Akira never saw Misato as a well-educated woman…though that also went the same for the other woman, Ritsuko Akagi, who seemed smarter than Misato, but who's intellect seemed to lack the morale of a person that could think outside the box and not regret her decisions.

At least she has coffee, she thought, reaching into the refrigerator and grabbing a canned coffee beverage. Whether it's cold or hot, coffee is coffee.

Snap! She opened the can and drank its contents clean.

When Misato stepped into the kitchen, groggy and looking like she had a drink of beer, Akira greeted her with, "Good morning."

She yawned and responded, "Good morning."

Akira gave her a can of coffee and wondered how she was feeling without a drop of alcohol in her home; she heard that going cold turkey was different for many people, but some reviews stated that some people overcome alcoholism while others are forced to give it up.

Misato could barely get used to coffee; it did the opposite of what beer did: Instead of feeling eased, she felt alert, which had her feeling that something could happen in a day and she would be the first to know what it was.

"I'll be heading to NERV in a few minutes, and I'll see if I can get you in to meet Commander Ikari later," she informed the older woman. "So, until I come back, make yourself right at home."

"Oh, that shouldn't be much of a problem," Akira told her, but she didn't express what she had in mind.

Misato then left her alone with Pen-Pen, who really seemed to develop an attachment toward the woman, and walked down to her car. She was considering explaining to her why she took in such a useless bird that was used in an experiment at one of her previous jobs, but wondered how Akira would respond to simply knowing she was involved in the business that had possession of the penguin. Somehow, she felt that if she knew that such a place as Akira Town existed before Second Impact, and still had animals that couldn't be found almost anywhere else, she'd probably persuaded her late mother to move there. Maybe then, she'd have never experienced the trauma of what she saw that horrid day, or have to put up with her mixed feelings of hatred and admiration toward her late father.

As Akira watched from the floor level she was on with Pen-Pen in order to see Misato off, the Unity Channeler sighed as she uttered, "I have a very short while to meditate…and a very long list of things I feel the need to perform."

Looking over at the penguin, Akira patted his head again.

-x-

"…You should've brought more," said somebody on one of Nemo's videos as he, Shinji, Bumi, Tsukiko and Mayo watched the film.

"Popcorn, anyone?" Mayo asked, passing the bowl around.

"Sure," Bumi answered her, accepting the bowl from his niece. "You, Shinji?"

"No thanks," he answered him. "I still got some behind my teeth."

"…Don't you shut them! I'm a producer!" Another man in the film shouted out, as he was sealed inside a room by the protagonists.

"I hope the next film has more action with the creatures," said Tsukiko to Nemo. "The dogs are the coolest ones by far."

"Yeah, they are," he agreed with her. "The zombies are losing interests in the later films since they don't show more abilities than they should."

From a personal point of view, these family members were lacking motivation since Akira wasn't around; it was like when a primary part of their lives is absent, the other pieces aren't together properly. It was different from when Shinji and Rumi left temporarily to go to Tokyo-3, as they were gone for just a span of several hours to one day; with Akira being gone for more than one day, and her being the eldest of the family, they were unstimulated and their motivations weakened to a degree. While some of them weren't as crippled to do something as these five were, the others tried to maintain the hope that Akira would be back and soon…or at least call them again to let them know that she was still alive in that soulless city.

-x-

"…Akira, I'm back now," went Misato, who, after getting permission from Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki to bring in Akira to inform them of her Intel, returned to get her. "I… What the Hell happened here?! Akira, what did you do?! My home is…is… Spotless…"

The apartment in question was deprived of any and all garbage, the beer cans were gone, the floor was swept up, the table and kitchen counters were sparkling clean and there was an elaborate display of flowers in a vase on said table. Her bedroom, which had been cluttered with dirty clothes and such was partially sparse and her laundry had been washed, folded and put away for later use. She checked the refrigerator and found it full of groceries that she normally didn't get, along with some food that she normally did. There was even the scent of incense burning and it permeated the place with a nice, cinnamon odor that Misato sniffed.

Entering the living room, Misato found Akira sitting cross-legged on the floor with Pen-Pen, meditating. She couldn't believe that Pen-Pen, a useless, greedy and genetically-modified flightless bird was meditating with an extremely-elderly woman that never aged after reaching her late-twenties a long time ago.

"I trust that everything's in order," Akira, with her eyes still closed, asked Misato.

"I, uh, yeah," she answered back. "Did you…clean up the place while I was gone?"

Akira opened her eyes and responded, "Yes. I should've asked before you left, but I sought to surprise you with a proper environment that is a haven from the external world."

The centenarian then got up off the floor with a soft breeze that set her on her feet.

"You were going to tell me something?" She asked Misato.

"Uh, yeah. I have permission to bring you to see Commander Ikari."

"Why must you address him as such? He can't truly be such an important person now, can he?"

"He's the one the United Nations placed in charge of defeating the Angels."

"They must've been desperate to give him the duty. Very desperate…or very foolish."

"You…don't trust him, do you?"

"No, I don't trust him. I don't trust that he won't do something extremely wrong in the future, like he has done before in the past."

"Um, Mother Knows Best?" Misato asked.

"No. Fear of consequences unseen and unheard of. Nothing is always as it seems, Misato Katsuragi. Anything and everything can be connected to anything and everything else, and every action one takes has many reactions. Even one question can have many different answers."

Minutes later, the two women were driving toward the Geo-Front, which explained why Akira felt there was something round beneath the streets. But for some reason, Akira felt something else the more she came in contact with her destination; it was like a dark feeling, not so dissimilar to her monthly menstrual cycle or the presence of an unwanted stalker behind her. Whatever it was, it made her half of the Angelbreaker react by making the ruby and pearl glow, so she covered it with her sleeves. Misato had taken notice of this and asked if it did that often.

"No, it has never done this before," she told her back.

Her first impression of the sight of NERV HQ was that someone had an architectural orgasm if they decided to build a building shaped like a pyramid that had another pyramid inverted and used as a foundation for an artificial lake of sorts. The place also had the same aura of being soulless as the city above it did. She sighed that the only trace of life in this environment were from the widespread trees and some small animals that roamed around them, like an imperfect blend of technology and nature.

Misato led her to the inside of the place, showing her around before taking her to see Gendo (Akira had requested that Misato would address her rebellious, adoptive son by his given name outside of his presence, as she didn't view him as doing a great job of the duty he was given, nor did she see his title status as a proper authority figure). And since Akira knew about the Evangelion due to Rumi and Shinji telling her, they were also to be shown to her. But the sight of the one known as Unit-01 gave Akira the most discomfort and made her heart beat with uneasiness.

The Angelbreaker, when its glowing ceased, showed its wielder some of what the Eva was, revealing several small things to her. But Akira got disgusted (although she didn't express it, facially) with such knowledge that the man-made abomination was some sort of cybernetic organism like the ones from Nemo's comics and movies, only surreal and somewhat nightmarish to the imagination under all that armor. Shuddering from the mental image of what this thing looked like without its armor, she couldn't express the possibility of this creature being molded from something that was, initially, trying to destroy the human race before wanting to mend the damage done to the pride of the would-be enemy.

"Akira?" Misato asked her, seeing her adverse reactions to the Evangelions. "Are you alright?"

Rubbing her head with her left hand, the centenarian responded, "Yeah. Just a little disgusted that people actually made something like this that only children can use. It's not right. I wouldn't mind them being used for a different cause that could prove beneficial, but I don't like that they're more hazardous to the safety of the people they can be used by. Many things can be detrimental to a child if this is used too much…or just once if the initial exposure is too extreme: Mental contamination, decrease in one's intelligence, hallucinations, autism, or even brain-death. Hell, even such a concept as Phantom Limb Syndrome is another possibility if, and when, something so severe happens like a hand getting chopped off or the innards being boiled. From a cosmetic standard, they're not too bad-looking, but from a tolerance standing, I may barely be able to ignore their existence. I'm already resentful of this one (she points her left thumb toward Unit-01) right here."

Misato accepted her personal opinions of the Evas and then led her to Gendo's office, where the centenarian and her adoptive child met again after the festival.

Akira inhaled as she took a step forward, causing the vibrations to give her Geo Channeling a detailed description of her son's office because there was very little lighting within it, and couldn't believe he had such a detailed engraving of the Tree of Life formula that was made ages ago. In addition to Gendo, she could feel the presence of another man in the room; the guy behind him as he sat at his desk, the only furniture present.

"It's been a while, Gendo," she greeted him calmly.

"State your business, Mrs. Rokubungi," he responded, which was no surprise to her; he was probably still edgy about her knocking him off his feet when he tried to scorch Rumi for refusing him.

"The Angels will not be invading your city in the future yet to come," she explained to him. "It would seem that they have a vendetta that is a matter of pride that they want to settle in the village of Akira. If they ever settle it, they'll resume their affairs with your organization."

With his hands in their usual position of being in front of his face with his orange-tinted glasses, Gendo uttered, "Then the Evas will deal with the matter there."

"No," Akira told him. "They will stay as far away as possible from the town if they manifest violence."

Kozo looked right at her and, for a moment, became enticed by her ability to refuse him something. But when he looked at her face (and I mean, directly, at her face), he went wide-eyed.

"If the Angels, as you call them, ever come back to your city, they fall under your jurisdiction, but should they come to my town, they fall under mine, and what befell Shamshel shall befall them. The way I'm trying to see it, they can suffer in two different ways, depending on which path they take on the road: The Path of Humanization…or the Path of Death. If they become human, the threat that they pose to the world is removed, indefinitely, and there would be no need, whatsoever, for those things that you made. There'd be no personal risks to one's own safety or mental functions…or tarnishing of the spirit itself."

-x-

Asuka was a bit disgusted at the idea of not being able to fight the Angels if they were going to be invading Akira Town simply because of a matter of pride. She'd been trained since childhood for the sole purpose of fighting the Angels and using the Evangelion to do so, and now she couldn't because of a vendetta against the six-year-old Rumi that defeated the Third Angel to protect her dying nephew? This was low and disgracing to her pride! And she had just learned about this from Kaji, who couldn't resist the need to eavesdrop on a conversation going on inside Commander Ikari's office between himself and the woman that had raised him when he was younger.

"…Look on the positive side," Akira's voice went on. "As long as they stay away from this city, it might change from seeming so soulless to actually being a place that isn't a fortress but a sanctuary."

"NERV exists for the sole purpose of defeating the Angels, regardless of where they strike," they heard Gendo's voice say to her.

"Except people have the right to say 'no' to something they don't want or need, which includes a kaiju-sized artificial construct that can be dangerous if it ever got in the wrong hands. If it's between an Angel and an Evangelion being in the town, they'll tolerate an Angel instead, the lesser of the two dangers to their lives and homes."

"And they'll risk the safety of the human race over some little brat?" They heard Gendo ask her.

"He's really pissed about Rumi, isn't he?" Asuka asked Kaji.

"My little brat, as you put it, did keep the first threat from getting out of hand, and she wasn't going to make it a hobby, career or habit of giving you a repeat performance," Akira told him. "If you wish to continue relying on something that won't work for more than a few minutes and runs the risk of causing psychological problems, find people that are willing to pilot them and have no problem with throwing away their futures instead of trying to force the unwilling and unable to dirty their hands with the sins of others. And that's if these Angels ever do achieve their goal of taking out Rumi just to mend their tarnished pride because she operated an abomination that defeated one of their brothers. You remove the skills and resources needed to achieve one's cause, and they are no longer able to fulfill their cause. It's not as different from taking the cause out of a person. That's what happened to Shamshel; her skills and resources were taken; therefore, she couldn't complete the cause that was to get revenge on my daughter by killing her for the death of Sachiel. Speaking of which, you shouldn't try to touch the soul of another without their given consent; it's cruel and intolerable."

"What do you mean by that?" Gendo asked her.

Before another word could be uttered, they heard a phone ring.

-x-

The still-preserved remains of the Third Angel, having been transferred into the Geo-Front when enough of its tissues had been taken and cataloged for research and development, making it easier to transport and dispose of, was acting up. The scientists and support staff that were still dissecting and disposing of its corpse for further research and development all ran out of the large chamber where it had been brought in when it started convulsing. What they didn't know was that this wasn't a reflex of being dead; this was a reflex of reviving! It felt a tinge of energy from afar and reacted with rejuvenation!

A tumor-like mass protruded from the left side of what remained of its torso and much of its remaining nerves and muscles were being transferred to the tumor-like construct. What remained of the eyes of the Angel flared bright red and bulged out of what was left of the face. As the tumor ceased its expansion, something within it started taking shape. A body, not so different from a human one, was emerging from the tumor, with pale skin, greenish hair and the build of a young man in his early-twenties, dressed in a dark shirt and baggy pants combination. He fell from the tumor and hit the floor, and with a wet, smacking sound, since the floor was covered with fluids.

People came to see the man that emerged from the Angel as he lied there, unconscious and weakened. Even Gendo and Akira showed up; the Commander of NERV showed up only because he'd been informed of the strange activity while Akira showed up simply because she was curious as to what was happening here. They were quietly murmuring as the man suddenly moved his hands and head. They backed away a little as he slowly got up, revealing a pair of golden-yellow eyes in his sockets.

"I…I'm alive?" He questioned, turning to see the still-decomposing husk of the Third Angel.

He then turned to face the people watching him and gazed directly toward Akira, or, to be more precise, the little bracelet on her wrist. The centenarian didn't break eye contact with him, and she somehow knew the truth about him: He was Sachiel, the Angel of the Water, rendered human by the power of the Angelbreaker and fully restored to life. The proof was also evident in the strange necklace he was wearing that wasn't so different from his humanized sister's.

"Who…are you?" He asked her.

"You go first?" Akira countered him.

Looking at his moist hands, he answered, "Sachiel."

"Akira. Were you that creature behind you?"

"Yes…until you changed that."

"I did nothing. I just got here."

"You wear that which poses a threat to my family."

"Your family has sworn a vendetta against one of my family for your defeat."

"That girl hurt me."

"You were trying to kill innocent lives."

"Nobody's innocent."

"Reserve that judgment for those that are truly guilty."

The man, Sachiel, then tried to attack her, but before he could land a blow on her face, Akira sidestepped him and struck him in the underneath of his left shoulder with her right index and middle fingers, causing him to slip and fall onto the floor.

"Aurgh! Urgh…what have you done to me?! I can't move my limbs!" He demanded of her.

"I just froze one of your pressure points. You won't be able to move for a while."

"Why not just kill me?"

"Man, you sound like your sister when she asked me that very same question. I don't believe in murder solving anything. It's just a cheap feel at satisfaction, nothing more than a hollow victory."

-x-

GASP! Shamshel woke up from her afternoon slumber, having experienced a massive nightmare that worried her. In her dream, she'd seen her brother, Ramiel, who, moments after being rendered human by the Angelbreaker, tried to kill her for failing to settle the vendetta that she had, apparently, given up on. He had a large weapon in his hands and aimed it at her, preparing to fire until the little girl they had been trying to kill defended her, taking out Ramiel and putting him in the rehabilitation facility along with her.

"Shamshel?" The guy that regularly saw her came by and spoke to her.

"Yes?" She asked.

"You have a brother named Sachiel, right?"

"Yes."

"Well, if you're lucky, Akira said that he'd be coming to town."

"My brother? Coming here? He was killed, and when you're dead, you don't just come back to life."

"Well, some people say, and believe, that death is a revolving door for a select few. Akira called and said that she was in Tokyo-3 and your brother just came back to life, humanized and everything, just like you."

The guy then left her alone, obviously just bringing a message that was now heard. Shamshel didn't know whether to believe or disbelieve what she had heard. She knew that the Angelbreaker was dangerous to her kind by humanizing them, thereby eliminating the threat that they pose to the Lilin, but the possibility of reanimating her dead brother was like what the Lilin referred to as a dream.

But even if he was brought back, that wouldn't change anything, she thought. My other siblings would still want the little girl dead before resuming the goal to find Adam and remove Lilith. Despite Lilith being the progenitor of the Lilin race, it's like she pales in comparison to the little girl that had defeated Sachiel. Our pride is still tarnished…and only her death will restore it.

-x-

In her bedroom, Kanami looked over her photo album that contained every picture from her past. Sometimes, whenever Akira was out of town, she'd look into the album and reflect on her older days with the leader, even reflecting on the night that they met for the first time. Sighing for a moment, she looked over at her rocking chair and at the stuffed koala she'd been given to by Akira after discovering something so devastating, so scarring…and potentially permanent that she didn't want to worsen the problem she was having back then.

My first savior, she thought, closing the album up.

Knock-knock! Somebody knocked on her door.

"Yes?" She asked.

"It's Tsukiko," the person outside went. "Akira called and said that she might be back tomorrow."

"Okay. Thanks for informing me."

"Uh, is it alright if I come in?"

"Yeah, sure."

Tsukiko opened the door and stepped inside, once again curious as to why Kanami, one of the lower-middle-aged adult siblings of the family, kept several stuffed animals in her room and not a single doll shaped like a person. It was also a little strange as to why she had tried to bleach her hair blond a few months ago and slowly restore it back to its natural darkness.

"You do you know that when you look around my room, you constantly express the question, "What's with the stuffed animals, Kanami?", and it's getting a little irritable, sissy." Kanami told her, which got Tsukiko looking at her with one of her more serious looks. "Well, you do."

"I tried asking Akira about it once, but all she really ever told me was that if I wanted the truth, I'd have to ask you about it, as…it's a very touchy history that's best left alone until the storyteller wishes to share it with their listeners. She would only say that the stuffed animals are, possibly, a representation of a better toy to a child at an early age in their development."

"Well, sometimes, they are. Or…they are in my case and the early development of Mayo."

As Tsukiko sat on the edge of her sister's bed, she was hoping to hear the story behind the animals. But it wasn't something Kanami was very willing to express half the time. Not so different from Shinji, she had tried to keep the pain of her own past buried, which included people that held no place of importance in her heart, anymore. But since her sister asked and wanted to know out of simple curiosity, which wasn't a sin, she decided to share her past history with her.

"Well, you know how Akira often gets us when we're young, right?" She asked Tskiko.

"Of course. She often gets informed by the town sages whenever they foreknow of events that have happened to children that have experienced trauma and such that has harmed them. Even those that, despite their own family statuses, have no other relatives left alive that can steer them clear of possible dangers. That's how she got Bumi, Shinobu and even Nemo."

"That's true, but my case was different from theirs. I was adopted…while my mother was still alive."

"Wha…what happened to your mother?"

"She became a disturbed woman because of her obsession with…with dolls," Kanami expressed, although it was forced out of her mouth. "I didn't realize it until I was six years old. I didn't see the signs of how unstable she was getting until one night, when I went into her room. She must've kept hundreds of them in there. So many, shaped like people, with eyes that never close, always looking at you, never saying anything, surrounding you with their accessories. And…I turned to look at my reflection in her dresser mirror… That's when I realized something so terrible was going on."

Tskiko leaned in further to listen to the story, unable to turn away now; even if she had, it wouldn't change how the story of her older sister ended.

"I looked so much like her dolls," she told her. "She would always call me names that I didn't really pay any attention to because I simply cared about her. I mean, I loved her as much as any kid can love their parents. But when I saw how much I resembled her dolls, I came to a disturbing assumption that…my own mother…was trying to turn me into a living doll. I couldn't believe that…and I couldn't live with it, either. So I ran out of that house, running down the streets with no destination in mind. I just wanted to get away from her before she tried to find me. It was probably fate that in that same night I ran away that I ran into Akira. Heh-heh! You could imagine the look on her face when she looked at me. "Whoa, there, little miss, where are you off to in the dead of the night?" She asked me. "I have to get away from my mother. She's crazy! She's trying to turn me into a doll." I told her, and, of course, back then, she needed to see the woman and ascertain the problem. She didn't get her chance to that night, however, because the police had shown up after hearing the neighbors, the other parents of my preschool classmates, complain about the way my mother was behaving. They had shown up to see her, wanting to check around for any beer, drugs, the usual things, but when they saw all the dolls she kept in her room…and then the few dolls that were in mine, I guess that, along with a diary she had, was more evidence than what they were really expecting. They had to drag her out while she was yelling, "Where's my doll? Where is my doll?" I guess when she was saying that, she was referring to me, her 'doll', not her daughter."

"I can't believe she did such a thing to you. I mean, it's horrible. It's cruel. What happened, then?"

"Three days, later, Akira got her chance to speak with her after spending so much time talking to me, but she didn't really like all of the conversation between my mother and herself. She wouldn't tell me until later that during the whole, fifteen-minute chat, my mother never once referred to me by my name, only identifying me as her doll, and the cops had tried returning the ones that were taken from the house, but I was the only one she wanted back. Her psychiatrists interviewed her and, periodically, tried to calm her down, although they had to use sedatives when their subtle methods failed them, and even scanned her brain, only to discover nothing wrong with it. The brain is just a wad of tissues with wrinkles. It's a physical piece of the body that's in your head. Where is the mind? That was something they couldn't figure out. So, after seeing that they couldn't evaluate her properly, the doctors declared my mother legally insane."

Tsukiko lowered her head down; she was unsure of how to ask her next question, which was of what happened to her after her mother was declared insane.

"Akira had asked about what was to happen to me later the day my mother was locked away in the town's mental institution, and found that I didn't have any other relatives to take me in; my father had died when I was four, nothing of any aunts or uncles was mentioned, as my mother had moved into Akira Town before I was even thought of, and I had no grandparents. It was also confirmed that I didn't have the gift of channeling any of the elements; I was just a regular girl with no martial arts training…with a crazy mother. The cops had even asked her what she saw me as the night we met, as they asked her if I looked anything like my mother's dolls."

"What did she say to them?"

"She told them, "On the surface, she did look like a doll. But she was one that was now terrified of her mother…her…her manufacturer. I don't blame her for being afraid of somebody that should've referred to her as a person an not an object shaped like a person. I wouldn't even be surprised if she became afraid of a doll later in life. But…if she has no one else to look after her, should she be forsaken because of her mother? I can't forsake her, even if she'd been born to a pair of criminals. Give her to me. You know my history of raising children that aren't mine but might as well be. I'll make sure she turns out better, and, hopefully, she'll be able to put all of this behind her." I actually praise her telling them that back then, I only looked like a doll on the surface, and that she didn't identify me as one later on. Even when she took me in, introduced me to Bumi, Shinobu and Gendo, and just like with them, she taught me martial arts, and it wasn't because of any pity or doubt; it was so I could defend myself later on in life. On my seventh birthday, she gave me the stuffed koala on my rocking chair; it was part of her attempt to help bury my pain of the past by presenting me with a different type of toy. At first, I thought it was some sort of doll shaped like a person until Bumi had to explain to me that stuffed animals and dolls shaped like people were very different. I looked at the koala and couldn't see any sort of comparison between it and a regular doll. I took it everywhere with me, even on vacations during the summer and winter. Then, I started collecting stuffed animals…until I was fourteen…when I stopped. I have to admit that back then, as much as I began to hate my mother for everything she did and tried to do to me while I was ignorant of it all, I am grateful to her for the night I tried running away and meeting Akira."

"That explains why you hate dolls and everything, but…is it also the reason that you… You know…"

"Raise Mayo around stuffed animals?" Kanami asked her.

"Yes. It is to avoid being like her, right?" Tsukiko answered.

"I won't deny it. Before I even had her, I would worry that I might do something like my own mother, and cause Mayo to fear and despise me for it. I swore on her father's grave that I wouldn't be like my mother, that I wouldn't turn Mayo into something I had no right, whatsoever, to even try turning her into. I love her more than life itself. Who knows, if she did want a regular doll, I could probably tolerate it for her sake. That's still a sensitive subject."

Tsukiko nodded in agreement and said that she thanked Kanami for sharing her history with her, that she had a clearer understanding of her now. She could sympathize with her for having a tormented childhood before they met Akira, having been dealt a serious blow in her own youth of having lost her own parents and elder sibling to a circus-related crime when she was four years old. It seemed that their adopted mother had the strangest, most unusual, most extraordinary luck in meeting her future adoptive children after a crisis that, if left unchecked, would've probably left them with different futures that led down dark paths they couldn't turn away from.

-x-

"…I can't believe you made him give in to your request to cut that guy loose," Misato said to Akira, as they were outside walking in the streets of Tokyo-3. "I heard it's difficult to make him do anything he doesn't want to."

"If Sachiel's a human, just like his sister is, and no test they perform on him will show that he's anything else, then they shouldn't keep him as a prisoner for the purpose of experimenting on him like he has no freedom rights of his own that can be bent for the purpose of rehabilitating him." Akira responded her opinion on the previous situation. "Plus, you still have the previous body that was his, so you should still have a viable sum of workable material that you can still run your scientific research on, however long it'll take for you to gather what you want from the would-be enemy."

Prior to leaving the Geo-Front, Misato was curious as to why Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, the only other leader of the NERV agency, rarely ever took his eyes off of Akira, like she were other-worldly or something mystical and divine. She wasn't sure if Akira noticed this, having not asked her yet, but was curious as to whether she did or didn't.

"I have a question, Ms. Katsuragi," Akira told her, breaking the short silence. "I didn't want to say it while underground. Just why was that elderly man in the brownish-gray suit constantly looking at me?"

"Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki? I'm not sure why he was looking at you like that. Love at first sight's a possibility, though."

"Well, then, I'll have to break his heart. I'm not looking for a new love interest."

"Oh, why condemn yourself to the solitude of widowhood?"

"I was devoted to my first love…that forever remains my sole love when it comes to romance. While I've accepted that there will always be people that find new loves in the future, I would prefer the love that I lost when my husband died. I've always wanted to believe that love, being one of the strongest beliefs in existence, is stronger than death, and can transcend more than one lifetime…and be reborn."

"You believe in such a thing as rebirth?"

"Well, I think that Sachiel coming back as a regular person like you and I confirms part of the belief. He has the same memories from before Unit-01 defeated him, he remembers having a part of his chest ripped off of his being, and he, like Shamshel, holds Rumi responsible for what she never did. Rebirth, reincarnation, resurrection, or even what Nemo taught me of the word 'reanimation', they are all different ways of saying that one word, that one meaning: 'Life', or 'to be alive'."

"What was your husband like?"

"He was a regular martial artist…who craved excitement, adventure and to see how good a fighter he really was. I met him for the first time during a tournament, and…well, unlike love at first sight, it was love in the first fight. He wanted to take it easy on me…just because I was a girl. But I told him not to go easy on me; the fight would've been meaningless to me if I obtained an easy win. I remember how he broke my left arm, so I gave him a pair of black eyes, nearly knocked his lights out. I guess the battle was… Well, it was probably similar to a first date, except everyone was watching, there was no dinner and a movie, and we both wanted to win a prize for a good cause. I was thirty-six years old and I needed two-hundred gold pieces in order to pay for my father's medical bills. He needed the money so that he and his little sister could pay off their father's old gambling debts prior to his death. So it was a win-or-lose battle between the both of us."

"What happened in the end?"

Akira stopped walking and sat down on a bench to catch her breath.

"I asked him, during the battle, what the consequences were if he couldn't win the match, and he told me that his defeat would cost him his little sister. The people his father owed money to would take her to settle the debt…and raise her in a whorehouse. Because I can tell when a person's lying due to my Geo Channeling, I knew he was being honest with me. If I lost the match, I'd just be stuck with looking for a different way to pay my father's hospital bills, not a dying man who wouldn't reach the end of his life until he passed away at the age of ninety-three. He held his sister dearest to himself, not wanting to lose her, so I threw in the match. I let him win."

"You let the love of your life, over one-hundred years ago, defeat you?" Misato questioned her, but then chuckled. "Well, did the story have a happy ending?"

"Yeah, it did," Akira answered. "He paid off the last of his father's debts, kept his sister from being turned out into a whore, and he ended up paying for my father's medical debt with the gold he had leftover. I was eternally grateful."

"And I'm guessing that sometime later, you got together, traveled around a lot when you were able to, settled down, raised a few kids, taught them martial arts until he passed away?"

"Yes. A part of me hated it that, while I remained the same as I do today, he lived to become an elderly man with wrinkles and gray hair. But he never hated me or himself for what he considered a gift. All he really hated was that he couldn't be with me and our children for just one more day. He would've given up all that he had for just one more day with his family. I've been a widow for over one-hundred-fifty-three years, Misato, and I still have meaningful moments with my husband…and all of my other children from the past…even though they're dead. I ignore the words of people that see me and tell me that I have the only two things worth having in life: Looks and youth. They're not something that guarantees happiness. They're just fringe benefits given to you by nature. Even after I founded Akira Town, I had hoped that my end would come soon and that I could be with the people I lost, the people that I loved more than life itself. But I'm still waiting for Death to come knocking at my door. Say… Don't you have somebody that you love? I noticed that during the time at the festival, you weren't very pleased to be in the company of that Kaji guy you brought with you."

"I had invited Asuka to come with me, but to get her to come, I had to invite him. She's infatuated over him, believing he's a real man."

"Well, nobody's perfect, only human. I've been around for a long time, and I've never seen a perfect person, just those that try to be perfect for different reasons, be they for other people or hidden desires."

"Yeah, that is true."

"You did like him years ago, did you not?"

"What? It was a childish crush! We met during college. It was a different time, then. A very different time. Very different."

"Second Impact?"

"Yeah. That changed everything for me."

"What happened?"

"Well, you know how it happened in Antarctica, right? Well, I was part of an expedition that was there doing research. My father was head of the research that was going on. The next thing I knew…"

Whilst hearing her talk, Akira became enveloped by images that seemed to mirror all that Misato was saying to her. Apparently, the Angelbreaker was showing what was needed to be seen in order to be believed and accepted. She saw a world of snow and ice melting away from the radiant heat given off by some sort of creature shaped like a giant, glowing humanoid, featureless except for a pair of dark eyes, a dark sphere in the torso, and a series of wings protruding from its back and into the air. A man, with flesh and blood melting and/or evaporating from his body, carried a young woman that looked like a younger Misato Katsuragi into an escape pod of some sort and sealed her inside; the dying man had to be her father. As the giant of light expressed its wrath upon the world, the Angelbreaker showed Akira other things prior to this happening: There were images of a much younger Misato at home with another woman that appeared to be her mother (Akira could only assume this was a possibility due to the fact that both women had purple hair), and the man that was her father hardly there to be with them, leaving some degree of resentment on Misato's part. Then, there was a scene in which a court battle was going on and Misato and her mother left her father; there was little satisfaction in the divorce and custody battle over the young girl.

This must've caused her problems before Second Impact even began, she thought, returned to the present and sitting beside Misato. "What drove your old man to do such horrible acts of neglect toward you and your mother?"

"His work, which was his whole life," Misato answered. "He was working on how to create a new and efficient source of energy and had all these theories he wanted to try out. This one theory that he spent most of his time on was the Super Solenoid Theory, or S² Theory. The majority of his research took place in Antarctica. It was stupid. I didn't even want to be there with him, but it was his turn to spend time with me, as per the court orders. But even when I was with him, he spent most of his time working. All of his time, actually, so we never had a relationship."

"Hmph! Like Gendo and Shinji; they don't have a relationship, either…'cause Gendo walked away from fatherhood, a privilege he never even tried to earn."

"Akira, I might sound out of line for saying this, but…is there something about Gendo that's messed up and severe? I mean, I've seen you and your family…and you don't seem dysfunctional or dissociated in any way, whatsoever, but he's all… Well, he's all cold and distant."

"He's been that way ever since he was a child, but I can't blame him entirely for the way he turned out. His father and grandfather are partially responsible for his cold personality."

"Who were his father and grandfather? Who was his mother? I can understand that he was adopted, but what's the mystery behind his roots?"

Akira looked at her and wondered if she could even tell her the story that made her concerned about her rebellious child years before he even left to live his own life. Of all her children, Gendo was, practically, the worst one due to the blood that coursed through his veins and the fact that he lived on twisted wants instead of required needs. But, because she still wanted to care about Gendo and not resent him entirely, she held her tongue when it came to his heritage; his mother had deserved pity while the men of her family were to be condemned to life for their sins.

"Or…is it that his past is taboo?" Misato asked her.

"Is your place private?" Akira asked her back.

"Yeah, sure, it is."

"Okay, let's head back there…and I'll explain about him. I warn you, though: Gendo's parents were both pitied and disgraced."

-x-

With the Third Angel now brought back and humanized, Gendo was beginning to feel that he was losing total control over everything. The Angel could no longer cause trouble, but knowing that it was on the same grounds of existence that regular people were on, it was only a matter of time before SEELE found out.

Fuyutsuki, however, wasn't very interested in the situation with the two humanized Angels at the moment like half of NERV was; ever since he saw Akira Rokubungi, his attention had been split between the past and present. It was like he'd stepped far back into the past.

She couldn't be, he thought, though such a face was nigh-impossible to forget, especially one that remained the same each day for years.

It was completely separate interests that were being thought of in Gendo's office, with the gray-haired gentlemen wrapped up in a past from before he met Yui, and the cold-hearted tyrant trying to reassert control over the scenario he was losing control over due to distant…family matters.

-x-

Like how it was pleasant to see his grandmother perform her martial arts, Shinji got the same, positive reaction from watching Rumi perform her hook sword stances while in the same room with the lit candles. While both mother and daughter used different signature weapons that they were used to, their stances weren't entirely different. Shinji had noticed many things that were similar about every stance that his aunts and uncles used when they trained for the matches or tournaments each year; it seemed that each style, each martial art, was designed not just to counter each other, but to be used with other corresponding styles, as though they were all descended from the same art. As Rumi swung the hook sword in her left hand around, her nephew sat a safe distance from ring of candles surrounding her on a large, wooden bench on one of the opposite ends of the room.

Rumi probably never said it out loud, but she drew praise from Shinji watching her train. It made her want to do better in the style that she was best at. The next thing she knew, a warm breeze came in front of her and she sliced it in half with her right hook sword, unintentionally blowing out some candles…while less than two feet away from them. She stopped and dropped her swords, never expecting the candles to blow out…or a breeze to manifest in a room that had been built purposely without windows so that sunlight wouldn't distract any in-trainees.

"Rumi," Shinji had gasped, never believing he'd see this before. "I think you just channeled air for the first time."

"You really think so?" She asked him, looking at her hands.

"It was unexpected, but incredible," he confirmed.

"Arigato," she thanked him.

-x-

Like how coffee was difficult to adjust to as a beer substitute, even regular tea was something that had Misato wishing she could just down a few boozes and feel cheery. But the image of herself in some hospital with machines keeping her alive because of organ failure caused by extreme alcoholism made her resist the desire to do so. At least jasmine tea had a nice taste to it, so she wasn't the least bit disappointed in drinking that beverage. As they were sitting in her kitchen, she hoped there was something about Gendo's past that would clarify why the man was so cold-hearted.

"For some time, I hoped that not talking about it would remove the negatives of one's past," Akira had told her as she poured her own cup of tea, "but I guess it's true when people say that some wounds never always mend. Have you ever heard of a young woman named Joya Mu?"

"No."

"Not many people do, anymore. Those that did are either in the heavens or waiting for the end of their lives on the mortal plane. She was Gendo's mother, though she never had the chance to get to know him. I never got a chance to know her, either, but when I saw her last photograph, I both respected her…and pitied her. She was always a good girl, with great friends, good grades, a girl with a future in the culinary arts. Her only curse…was her father, a man named Noroi Mu. He changed everything for her…against her wishes."

"What, was he some sort of drunkard or criminal?"

"No. He became a reclusive, bitter forty-eight-year-old man that worked for a nice and respectful business firm that specialized in helping the homeless get back on their feet. He went down a bitter path of self-destruction after he lost his wife in a car accident. Kamau Mu, a very kind and compassionate woman that loved her family more than she did herself, died when her daughter was only eleven years old. People that knew her closely always said that she and Joya looked alike in every detail, except that Joya was younger. I didn't… I didn't know what had happened with their happy life until I was contacted by the hospital in Akira Town when Joya was administered and later reported to have run away from her father. This was discovered three days after she had died."

"How old was she by then? Twenty-three? Twenty-five?"

"Thirteen going on fourteen."

"What?!"

"After her mother died, her father started looking toward her as a replacement…and acted with hostility whenever she tried to refuse him. There had been numerous reports about her later and much larger absences from school, and many attempts to visit her parents' house, but Noroi was very adamant against letting anyone, even a friend, see his daughter. Later, it had been discovered why: He was abusing his daughter, sexually, ever since she was thirteen. He had gotten her pregnant and refused to let her leave the house. And then, when she couldn't take what he had done, anymore, she managed to get away from him, went missing for over a month, but was, somehow, able to find her way toward Akira Town three days before her due date. Somebody that worked at the hospital found her on the streets and brought her in. When she was due, she died in childbirth; her health was pretty bad. Her last words were reported to have been, "I can put down my troubles now, knowing I'll never come back." It was as though she were relieved. The only other word she was reported to have said by the doctors was 'Gendo', which they all assumed was what she had named her son. 'Gendo', meaning 'limit' or 'restriction'…or another way of saying it would be 'behavior'. Out of the two ways, the one for 'limit' seemed to be the primary one. So…before I took him in, he was simply Gendo Mu, a newborn that had nothing and no one, and, thus, was limited. His father and grandfather…were the same guy: His mother's father, looking to relive his time with his wife before her death through his own daughter. His penalty, once he was found out, was life in prison; his daughter's friends viewed execution as being too merciful. That's why Gendo's parents were to be both pitied and disgraced… Because his mother was disgraced by her own father…and people pitied her for her premature death. Gendo was another unique case for me when I adopted him. Normally, I get informed of orphaned children the instant the sages I know of get informed, but there have been times where I am told by others not affiliated with the sages or I just wind up in the right or wrong places at the right or wrong times. The only other child of mine that I took in that currently resides in my home, without being informed of by the sages, is Kanami, and her case was more unique than my other children, for her mother is still alive, only insane and incarcerated in a mental institution."

Misato couldn't believe this. She had always thought there wasn't another layer to the bad things about Gendo, but this story proved her wrong. Gendo was cruel, cold-hearted, and the result of an unwanted, incestuous fling between his mother and father/grandfather. She even started considering that Gendo was another type of person that wasn't heard of much of the time: A bad seed, which might have explained his behavior at the festival…and how he treated Shinji and almost mistreated Rumi when she refused him in piloting the Eva again.

"Wow," she sighed. "I can't believe this."

"Nobody ever says that the truth is supposed to be easy… They only say that it's supposed to be a means to help people learn from history so that they don't repeat the mistakes of the ones that came before them. The truth is never easy on most people."

"Do…they know about him?" Misato asked her; she wanted to know if Akira's other children, or even Shinji himself, knew of Gendo's roots.

"Excluding Rumi, they know, but their own kids are oblivious to his heritage. I won't even tell Shinji about this side of Gendo; he's not a result of cruel or disgusting forces gone wrong and doesn't have any siblings or blood relatives to develop an unusual attraction toward, so there's never really been a need for him to know…unless, of course, he asked and pressed me about the issue."

"But, um…does Gendo know?"

"He knows nothing of his father's crimes…or his grandfather's…but I told him about his mother without revealing her age. Not everything's a lie, just half-truths. If he ever did learn of the truth, I'd hate to imagine what he'd do to others as a means to vent out his potential rage. I kept the truth from him to keep him from turning into something dangerous, something Hell-bent on whatever was wanted. Yet, it would appear that my previous attempts to rear him were less than promising: He's not skilled in the martial arts, he lives on wants that he disguises as needs, he gets into trouble, sees select people around him as either pawns, tools or obstacles, and, in all honesty, doesn't have a relationship, whatsoever, with Shinji. He's not as I feared he'd possibly turn out as. If anything, he may have turned out into something worse than his old man."

Taking a sip from her cup of tea, Misato sighed and then asked, "You really worry about him, don't you, Akira?"

"You have no idea," Akira responded. "I worry…about each of them."

-x-

Going through old photographs from the time he was a small child, Kozo had found the one he was looking for: It was of a twelve-year-old him during a winter evening, accompanied by a young woman that bore an uncanny resemblance to the woman he saw earlier today.

"But…it can't be her," he told himself. "Who is this woman? What is she?"

-x-

"I guess the train's the best way to escort Mr. Sachiel to his sister," Akira told Misato the next day as they were eating breakfast. "Though, it's not something I'd wanna travel in today."

Like with dinner the night before, Akira prepared breakfast, while Misato, not up to another canned coffee, prepared green tea. The purple head was completely sober by now, unable to stand the sight of a beer can.

"Never underestimate the ability to adapt to different flavors and tastes," Akira told her, preparing the scrambled eggs now.

DING-DONG! The doorbell ringed, which startled Misato; she hadn't been expecting anyone…and she was half-dressed. Neither did Akira invite anybody.

"It's that elder that was looking at me so much yesterday," Akira told Misato.

"Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki?"

"Yes."

"But what would bring him here at this time of the day?"

"Have you ever invited him over?"

"No. I only moved here a few months ago, the only person I ever invited was Ritsuko."

"The faux-blond?"

"Yeah."

"Well, the only way to know why is to answer the door."

"You do it. I gotta go change."

Akira sighed and went to answer the door, looking the aged man in the eyes.

"May I help you, sir?" She asked and greeted him.

"I…I just needed to confirm something about you, ma'am," he responded.

"If it's about my decision to take the former Angel back to my hometown, I'm not reconsidering my choice on the gentleman or his brethren, should they appear in the future."

"No, it's not about the Angels. It's about you."

"Me?"

"Yes," he then took out the photograph and showed her the front of it. "I just want to know…if the woman in this picture from over forty-eight years ago…is you."

The town leader looked at the photograph and focused on the boy; he had a small grin on his face while the woman herself gave a slight chuckle. They were surrounded by a light shower of snow when the boy took the picture, and it was like Akira had taken a step back through time.

"Why would you want to know if this woman is me?" She asked him.

"Because her resemblance to you is uncanny," he answered her, "and I've not seen her since I was twelve during the time that I met her…when she saved my life one time."

Akira's eyes widened a little at this revelation.

"You… You mean to say…that you're…Kozo-Kun?" She asked him. "Kozo-Kun, a formerly weak boy that was constantly harassed by a few of his classmates and fantasized about getting revenge on them…is the elder that's second to a disgrace I had to force to give up the would-be enemy that's harmless in every major sense of the word now?"

"Kozo Fuyutsuki," he presented himself to her, now knowing for sure that this was the woman he'd met less than half a century ago in his childhood. "At your service."

"Akira Rokubungi," she presented herself. "A pleasure it is to meet you again after so many years."

"You've become quite infamous around NERV."

"Oh, really? And here I thought that the reason I came to Tokyo-3 in the beginning was to acquire information that would better help me to protect my home against enemies that aren't even interested in me. I didn't expect other things to happen while I was here, like reviving a defeated gentleman from the abyss of darkness and then getting jurisdiction over him and taking him back to where his sister is being restrained. Just how, exactly, did I get infamous around NERV?"

"You refused Ikari. Not many people can say 'no' to him about anything."

"My youngest daughter refused him, along with my grandson…and my only daughter-in-law before she got married to one of my boys. It would seem that at least four different people have had him surrender to their wishes of not wanting to get involved with him in any sort of way."

When Misato returned, dressed in her NERV uniform and her hair brushed and combed, she didn't expect to see the two individuals engaging in further conversation…or a photograph dated over forty years ago that had Akira with a little boy that looked like a younger Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki.

"…It's still hard to believe that he's an adopted child," Fuyutsuki said to Akira.

"It's hard to believe that you work for him."

"Would it be hard to believe if I told you that I don't even like him as a person?"

"No. That is easy to believe. Why work with somebody you don't have respect or affection for? Unless, of course, there was some form of benefit involved?"

"I had very little choice in the matter."

"You mean, you were forced?"

"Yes."

"How does an elder like you, who had no proper direction in his childhood due to lack of financial advantages, and lived much of his education with nothing but these theories on his mind, get forced into working for a man who may as well be one of the worst ones left alive after Second Impact?"

"Bad choices."

"If I wanted to, I'd pressure you for more straight answers than what you have just said…but because I still have respect for you, along with not having seen you for over forty years, I'll leave the truth behind your association with Gendo be for now. How has your life, pre- and post-Second Impact, been?"

"Over the years, I met people that were either brilliant or crazy."

"You would've rarely seen many of those in Akira Town. Hold on, either brilliant or crazy? You just reminded me on someone my youngest son tried to find out about years ago. Have you ever heard of someone named Yui Ikari?"

Kozo froze at the sound of that name. He could lie to her, say that he didn't know anything about Yui, but she'd know he was lying. Yui was a jewel that wasn't well-shared with others.

"Yes, I knew her," he answered instead. "I met her at Kyoto University when she was a student there back in Nineteen-Ninety-Nine."

Suddenly, the Angelbreaker acted up and showed Akira images that weren't easy to organize: There was a younger Fuyutsuki at the Kyoto University, just as the elder version had explained, along with a young woman that matched the one in her grandson's drawing; another image showed Fuyutsuki with a younger (and more tarnished) Gendo with a bandaged wrist, who said that he was used to getting bad reactions and getting into fights, some of which he started, intentionally. There was even an image of the same woman and Kozo hiking up a path and the woman, who'd been dating Gendo for some time now, saying that she found Gendo endearing and claiming that he hated being alone (which, to Akira, felt like nothing more than a contrast, since Gendo discarded Shinji after his mother's death instead of rearing him), along with others not being able to understand him; then, the latest image showed something horrible: The Antarctic grounds that were devastated by the Second Impact, reduced to a red sea that had several pillars of ice sticking out of the surface, with Gendo and Kozo speaking very few words, and Gendo revealing that he'd changed his name upon marrying the woman from the drawing that Akira became convinced was Yui herself, leaving Kozo somewhat bitter on the emotional level. When the images stopped there, Akira was wondering just what was going on in this soulless city of technology and what Gendo had done in the last few years of his own life.

"Akira?" Kozo asked.

"Sorry," she apologized. "Lately, I tend to zone out. Probably a sign of my age finally catching up with me for the first time."

Kozo wished he could've believed that, but he knew her to be lying a little; she had zoned out, but not because of her advanced age. He had recalled bits of his past prior to Second Impact and after it, and he knew that, somehow, she'd seen some of what he'd experienced. He knew she saw some of his open memories of Yui, his first meeting with Gendo, the sight of Antarctica transformed into a lifeless ocean, and that she heard everything ever uttered in those memories. How he was able to know of this was beyond his capacities for rational thought.

"I've yet to experience zoning out," he told her, deciding not to reveal her response to his initial woe. I have a strange feeling that if she ever met Yui, she might not have much appreciation of her beliefs.

-x-

"You stick him with any more needles, already aware that you'll find nothing in him to dissimulate him from yourself, I won't hesitate to teach you that science cannot explain all your questions," Akira's words echoed in Ritsuko's mind, having been informed by the town leader some time after Sachiel had been revived and humanized, and unable to bear the thought of what the woman that was old enough to be one of her ancestors, was easily dissuaded from trying to perform endless tests on the former Third Angel, knowing that the results would be no different from Shamshel's: Human on all levels.

Sachiel, who was placed within a room after he was examined by the scientists to see how human he truly was, awaited the woman that brought him back and degraded him to come get him and take him to his sister. Since he no longer had the power he had, initially, to fulfill his purpose, he was worthless to his brethren's cause, just like Shamshel. All he could do was wait for the others to do what they could no longer achieve to redress the balance between their goal to find Adam, remove Lilith and her brood, and restore their tarnished pride as Angels.

She brings me back, only to defeat me, but then says that I fall under her jurisdiction and that she'll take me to her village and my sister. Well, better to be defeated than to be killed a second time…and to be away from those that would gladly kill me a second time. One of those members of the Lilin looked at me with those covered eyes and I could see only bitterness within him.

The door to his room opened and the female member of the Lilin that brought him back and humanized him stepped in.

"Are you ready, Sachiel?" Akira asked kindly.

"Yes," he answered back, though he felt forced.

"Well, let's go, then. The sooner we're away from this city without warmth, the better we'll be."

She led him out of the room, met up with Misato and followed her down the hall toward the elevator that would take them back to the surface. As they walked down the hall, Akira received a series of stares from many of the working people that had signed on this paramilitary organization with the sole purpose of getting rid of the Angels; they felt like, because the one they started their would-be campaign off with getting rid of being brought back, their very purpose was all for naught, and only because the Angels yet to come had sworn a vendetta against her youngest daughter…and because the Third Angel claimed that Akira herself had brought him back as a man. Though only Misato knew she was wearing the Angelbreaker; NERV as a whole didn't know of it, and until the town leader was willing to share the knowledge with them, they were to remain ignorant of the one artifact that could defeat the would-be enemy without actually killing them. She paid them no mind, of course; they had probably seen destroying the Angels as the only solution to saving the world, unable to, or unwilling to, explore other, potential, alternatives.

Sometimes, the best way to win a battle or war is not to fight, Akira thought, and halted herself and Sachiel due to the sight of a person that stood in the way of their advancement to the elevator…and one that had been described to her when her daughter and grandson came home. So, that's her, huh?

Rei Ayanami, pilot of Evangelion Unit-00, the First Child, with a full recovery and in her school uniform, stood in front of her commanding officer and the woman that was taking the humanized Third Angel with her. She looked toward Akira, emotionless and without just cause. Something was not right about her; there was an aura about her that could very well be proper and beneficial…but hostile and dangerous to others, especially her.

Akira looked at her, but felt like she'd seen her face somewhere else. She looked just like Yui Ikari, except younger and with a different color scheme. They looked so much alike that they could've been relatives in a way, but Akira felt very little of an aura emanating from her; it was like she'd been born without a soul, making her a living shell of incomplete existence.

"Oh, hey, Rei," Misato greeted the girl. "They let you out of the hospital today?"

Rei looked at Misato and nodded in the positive.

"Is this woman taking the humanized Angel with her now?" She asked back.

"My name is Sachiel, miss," Sachiel uttered, offended that he was labeled different terms due to his status as a former Angel.

"Yes, she is taking him," Misato answered her, which gave some cheerfulness back to Sachiel, as she had said 'him', not 'it'. "He, like his sister, Shamshel, has fallen under Mrs. Rokubungi's authority."

Rei returned her stare toward Akira, now looking as though she'd been offended.

Sachiel hid behind Akira; he was willing to take any degree of protection from this female Lilin than to stay as a test subject in this place.

Akira felt the Angelbreaker acting up again, but tried to keep it from doing anything unexpected. Whatever it was reacting to, she didn't want it doing so in front of everyone. She stepped over toward Rei and presented herself.

"Hello, ma'am," she started, extending her left hand out. "I am Akira Rokubungi. How do you do?"

Rei looked, but didn't shake it. While this act showed some disrespect to Akira, the older woman accepted this as either fear or lack of socialization skills on the girl's part.

"I guess we'll be off," she said instead, resuming the advance toward the elevator. "Shall we be going?"

Misato and Sachiel followed her in and out of the hall, leaving Rei there, who didn't take her eyes off Akira at all. As the doors closed, the centenarian exhaled a breath once the Angelbreaker stopped acting up on her wrist.

"Was it just me," she asked Misato, "or was she unhappy about my taking away Sachiel from y'all?"

"Rei? Why, she's always like that. She rarely ever talks, though…unless she has a question or is spoken to. She's mostly seen in the company of Commander… I mean Gendo. No one ever sees her smile or laugh much of the time. Ever, really." Misato answered her.

"Shinji and Rumi told me once that when they saw her once, she was hurt. What happened to her?"

"There was an incident over a month ago with Unit-00, before Sachiel ever showed up."

"Hey, it wasn't like I had better things to do," Sachiel defended his former reasons for attacking people on his way to Tokyo-3. "Anyhow, I was resting, gathering up my power before I made my debut."

"We were attempting to activate Unit-00, but the test failed and Rei was injured."

"I thought you once said that it took her seven months to operate that thing."

"It did. She had to go through dozens of simulations before she got to work with the actual Eva."

"And?"

"When she got hurt, Commander… Gendo rushed over to her superheated Entry Plug and pried it open with his bare hands, burning them severely, to save her."

Although she probably should've felt proud of Gendo for committing such an act, Akira couldn't bring herself to say such a positive thing because it didn't seem right.

"He helps a child that isn't his, but ignores a child that used to be his, and then later tries to use the girl to shame him into helping him when he says no to him? That's just wrong."

"Huh? Used to be Gendo's?"

"He lost any and all rights to be Shinji's father a long time ago. How many parents do you know of have ignored the needs of their kids in favor of their own wants or needs?"

Misato couldn't answer that question; this was due to her own issues with her father, who ignored her and her mother in favor of his work.

"Before the priority of my brethren's goal, which is to find our father, could be achieved," went Sachiel, "we had to go through obstacles setup by the Lilin. Your kind hurt Adam, and then you took him. That goal still lives on with those you haven't seen, but now it lives as a secondary objective."

"And the new primary one is to put down my youngest child to restore your pride as Angels. You can't restore anything if it means you have to murder somebody to do so," said Akira to him. "And you're blaming everybody as a whole instead of the ones responsible. Sachiel…we're not all that different right now, in terms of goals or desires. We could probably help each other if we can negotiate some kind of truce. We can achieve the means to coexist. You want to find your father, I want to protect my people, and we both don't want to cause massive trouble like the trouble we're already in. I have half of the one thing in existence that I know very little of, so far, that can bring victory without the need to murder any of your brothers or sisters. Can there be peace, association and acceptance between us both, Sachiel? This…I'm asking you as a person, not a thing."

Sachiel looked at her, then at Misato…before responding, "Maybe with the few of us you've humanized, but with the ones you haven't, you're going to have a hard time trying to get them to accept you since they, like Shamshel after my defeat, want your daughter dead to restore their pride before they can get back on track with finding Father. They're pissed, Hell-bent and demand their own brand of justice against your family."

"And they hate the Evas, don't they?" Misato asked him.

"You made something in the image of our father," Sachiel was offended by the very monstrosities that the Lilin made. "Of course, we'd be offended! You hurt Father, captured him, stole from him, perverted him, and have tarnished him in ways that will only enrage the rest of us to the point where after the girl has been dealt with, if she ever gets dealt with, everyone else will follow her to the afterlife."

"Hold on, made something in the image of your father?!" Akira questioned, looking at Misato. "Is this true, Misato? Are those…things modeled after the father of the Angels?"

Misato sighed and answered, "Yes. They are copies of the First Angel. Before there was even a conversation about the Angelbreaker, NERV relied on the Evas because they, initially, were the only defensive weapons available against what we thought was a hostile threat to the world."

Once they reached the floor they were getting off on, Akira felt disgusted as she stepped out of the elevator with Sachiel.

"Okay, we got to talk more about this," she told Misato. "I was picked, along with my youngest daughter, to do what was needed to be done. Now, I feel that, in order to do what I'll have to do later, I'll need information about what truly happened fifteen years ago on the Second Impact. The information my kids gave me was limited to what I just found out from Sachiel and yourself. Complete honesty. What happened on that day in the year Two-Thousand?"

"My father's expedition was conducting research on what they designated the First Angel. I'm not entirely sure about what they did, but on the day Second Impact happened, Adam self-destructed."

"Father may have done so to try and protect himself from what your people were doing to him," Sachiel uttered. "Whatever it was, I doubt it was subtle."

"All I know is that because of that day, a living tsunami tried to destroy my town and it told me that people started something all for the sake of getting what they didn't deserve to acquire: Power. Whatever kind of power that is, I'm not sure of, but it all probably adds up to transubstantiation: Changing from a mortal…into a deity. I'm not much of a religious person, but I know enough to know that only people chosen to become something of that sort, even a demi-god, are allowed to accept or reject such a status or honor. People, young or old, smart or dumb, homo or hetero, regardless of one's ethnicity, even, must know and accept their place in existence. Trying to be a god, or to try and create your own god, is disgraceful! What would you possibly do if you were a god?"

"I'd remove those that hurt Father," Sachiel said to them, expressing what he'd do.

"If what happened at home and at Antarctica are true, and there are people trying to become gods, and if they ever succeeded, then they're responsible for the deaths of the lives taken by Second Impact. It wasn't an accident, it wasn't a mishap. It was intentionally caused. They caused the deaths of half the world…on purpose. They instigated a war with people that they don't understand…on purpose. This is like…a big mess made by naughty children, and now I have to clean it up before it gets out of hand!"

Misato remained quiet after hearing this. Although this could've all just been assumptions, it seemed to be genuine. If Second Impact was caused by people, then things like the Evas were planned on right from the start. And slowly, things were getting ugly.

-x-

The cold, night air on the mountaintop of Akira Town's sole mountain that stretched high into the sky was warm; this was due to Tsukiko practicing her Pyro Channeling. If it weren't for wanting to be like her mother in the ways of such an art that extended thousands of years into the past, she'd be doing something else. But this wasn't the case with her.

Fire is the element of power, she thought, making the flames of several torches around her on the training grounds bigger. But it's also the most dangerous element in terms of offensive strength. Several years ago, there was a large decrease in its activity due to lacking defensive stances. Akira knew the arts, but wouldn't use them unless they had more than simple defenses like walls of fire or shields. When she found out I'd been blessed with such a channeling ability, she wasn't going to teach me the offensive stances until I had mastered the defensive ones. Huh! That Gendo… He never mastered any of the stances, not only being a rogue and rebel, but an amateur Pyro Channeler that may become dangerous if he ever got the power to create his own flames.

Rayden's Comet was her reason for practicing tonight; she wanted to create her own fire by herself and not be blessed with the ability by a comet that passed the planet once every seventy years. Once she started learning the offensive stances, she was impressed and mesmerized by Akira's ability to create her own fire; the town leader and eldest citizen was the only one in the channelers' population that could, and it made Tsukiko strive to be a master of the art. It was one of four aspects that made a Pyro Channeler a master of the art: Proper breath control, economic in terms of energy so that you could fight for extended time periods, the manipulation of the fire element and self-manifestation of one's own fire. So far in the immediate history of the Pyro Channelers today, they had only achieved three of the four, but Tsukiko was determined to achieve all of them before the comet arrived. She refused to be made a cheater due to some space rock that caught on fire eons ago.

"Tsukiko?" The youngest woman heard her oldest niece come outside and catch her attention, so much so that the torches were burning regularly now. "Why are you channeling so late at night?"

Mayo, who should've been asleep, couldn't do so because of the sounds of searing flames, something her mother could sleep through for hours if she had to. Tsukiko apologized and sat down on the large rocks in the sand garden that served as a training ground for both Geo and Pyro Channelers.

"I just want to get stronger," she explained to her, wanting to hide her desperation in wanting to create her own fire. "I didn't mean to keep you awake."

"As much as I respect your need to defend yourself in the future yet to manifest, couldn't training wait until tomorrow morning?" Mayo asked her, yawning. "Akira will be back soon, and I wish to be rested up so that I'll be good to go when she returns."

Suddenly, a breeze caught their hair as something landed on one of the roofs of the house.

"I don't think you'll have to worry about being rested to see me, Mayo," went Akira, sitting on the edge of the roof she landed on. "How much did I miss?"

"Not much," Mayo answered her. "Shinobu's at Kagura's house and Nemo's at the lake."

Akira then leapt off the roof and landed on the ground.

"So, just how was your time in Tokyo-3?" Tsukiko asked her.

"You want complete honesty?" Akira asked back.

"No matter what happened, for better or for worse."

"You remember the tsunami incident on the day of Second Impact?"

"Yeah. It's not hard to forget when a wall of water speaks to you."

"That day…when too many people died… It was massive genocide, purposely caused by some people that wanted something that shouldn't be sought after, and they had some expedition of people that triggered the devastation, but weren't the driving force behind it. I had shown up at Ms. Katsuragi's and informed her of some very important information and how that soulless city would be ignored by the Angels until what they wanted to deal with here is done."

"Getting rid of Rumi," Tsukiko uttered.

"Yeah. Shamshel's brother, Sachiel, is now a cell next door to hers and the two are getting reacquainted. The more I had discovered while there, the more I became disgusted with the NERV agency…and disappointed with Gendo."

"It's that bad with NERV?"

"Very. Giant robots modeled after a creature that I discovered was the explosive powders behind Second Impact, Adam, the First Angel and progenitor to the two that Tokyo-3 encountered and now we have in rehab, meant to be weapons against them. I saw three of them and didn't like them at all, especially the purple one Rumi operated that they called Unit-01; there was something about it that made me feel that whatever bad happens to it later will be deserved and justified. I told Gendo that the Angels would be coming here, because, in all honesty, they will be coming here, and he wanted to bring his pet monsters here to deal with them."

Tsukiko and Mayo held onto each other after hearing that Gendo wanted to bring the things here to their peaceful town.

"Don't worry, I told him that they weren't allowed to come here," Akira assured them. "If the other Angels do come here, they fall under my jurisdiction because I won't let anything bad happen to any of you. There are other things I will share with you because you deserve to know, but not tonight."

"No secrets kept, no secrets sought after, right?" Mayo asked her, recalling that philosophy Nemo used.

"That's right," Akira answered. "For better or for worse."

-x-

"…What do you think of the woman, Rei?" Gendo asked the First Child, having purposely sent her to see Akira before she left with the revived and humanized Third Angel.

"She seemed very devoted to making sure the humanized Angel was taken from NERV," Rei answered him. "She dislikes the Evas, seems concerned about the safety of her home being insured not by NERV, but by herself, wants to deal with the Angels herself, without the Evas, and is disgusted by Tokyo-3, seeing it as an insufficient fortress city."

"Don't concern yourself with her," he told her, now pondering his next move. "She's an old town girl. She could never understand why NERV exists, which is to defeat the Angels."

"Except the Fourth Angel attacked her home and was humanized," Fuyutsuki expressed, having doubts about Akira, still the same in body as she was when he was a youth, and curious as to why she seemed convinced that the Angels wouldn't be a problem for her. "Maybe her home has a weapon that the people took from the Angel right after it invaded their home. Maybe the town was built on special grounds that caused the threat to be eliminated without destroying the Angel. That could be why she seemed convinced that the Evas would be unnecessary."

Gendo remained silent after hearing his old teacher's opinion of why the Evas would be unnecessary for the Angels if they went to Akira Town.

"That's not why she was convinced," Rei uttered. "She had something on her right arm, something that didn't belong there."

Fuyutsuki then recalled that Akira was indeed wearing a bracelet when he had to confirm if she was who he believed she was earlier yesterday. Could that have been what Rei was referring to?

"What was she wearing that didn't belong?" Gendo asked, interested and curious, though he hid such emotions behind his glasses and gloved hands.

"It…looked like a bracelet. A very ornate bracelet, but it also looked like something else…like an armored hand that looked alive."

An armored hand? A gauntlet, perhaps? Fuyutsuki wondered, trying to decide if Rei was honest or just downright crazy now.

-x-

To think that Shinji would be involved in a meeting with the family later the day Akira returned home after showing up late in the darkness of the night. And to think that the meeting revolved around the NERV agency; as much as he wanted to know how his grandmother's trip was when she was in Tokyo-3, he didn't really want anything further to do with NERV…or Gendo…or anything else associated to that organization, for that matter.

I wonder what she's gonna tell us, thought Rumi, as she sat next to Shinji on his right, in between him and Kanami, waiting for Nemo to show up because this was a family meeting, involving immediate family members. Of course, we all live with her, so we're all immediate members.

Nemo then showed up, having gotten the message earlier in the morning and rushed home on a twister of water from the lake he went to and shifted the liquid into its gaseous form and rushed into the house.

"I'm home," he made his presence known.

"Welcome home," went Bumi, sitting next to Miaka and Shinobu, who had returned earlier in the morning after having breakfast with Kagura. "Shall we begin?"

Akira, who remained quiet much of the waiting period, sighed and then nodded her head in the positive as Nemo sat down next to Tsukiko and Taeko.

"Okay," she started, knowing where she intended to start off with. "Do you remember the day the museum was trashed by Shamshel?"

"It's hard to forget when an ancient landmark that contains pieces of our culture is partially consumed by fire," Kanami answered up. "Go on."

Rumi felt that she knew where this was going.

"Prior to the explosion, Rumi and I got a hold of the Angelbreaker, which kept us from getting scorched. Sometime after the explosion occurred, it divided itself between the two of us and changed into the bracelets we're wearing."

Rumi then raised her right arm up to display her half of the ancient gauntlet.

"You…actually believe that the gauntlet you donated to the museum is those two bracelets?" Tsukiko asked, not doubting her words, but wishing to see proof.

Akira then raised her right arm up to reveal, much to their surprise, a gauntlet that looked like the Angelbreaker they had seen some time before, but it looked newer, redesigned and glistening. It covered her limb from hand to elbow, but what had startled them the most about it, especially Taeko, was that the metallic features of the armored hand looked…almost organic.

Taeko had no time to gasp, for she looked over at her youngest aunt and saw that her hand, too, had become enveloped in a gauntlet, a gold one with the same features as Akira's silver gauntlet.

Shinji, out of natural curiosity, which was rather lacking, raised his fingers up to touch Rumi's gauntlet, but received quite a surprise: The metallic features didn't feel like metal, exactly; they felt like flesh!

"Nemo, you're the sci-fi sage," he told his uncle, "you didn't notice these before?"

Nemo touched and examined Akira's, but became intrigued by the details. It was like armor…but it was also like flesh. Some sort of bio-armor, maybe even biomechanical.

"But…this can't be right," he uttered. "I examined the bracelets, and they didn't do anything at all."

"Maybe they're supernatural," Mayo suggested. "Maybe magic, even. What are they for?"

"Well," Rumi uttered, but then kept to herself. "I'm not even sure. I haven't done anything with it."

"You think it can protect the town from creatures like the one Shamshel used to be?" Shinobu asked them, having been convinced earlier before Akira left to Tokyo-3.

"It can. They can," Akira answered. "They eliminated Shamshel's threat by making her as human as we are. And, as far as I know, the shift from Angel to human is permanent. She's no longer a threat. The same goes for her brother, Sachiel, whom I brought back from the city, and now he's in rehab."

By the time it was three in the afternoon, Akira had expressed everything she knew about the Angelbreaker, what Shamshel had told her about it, and what she learned from her time in Tokyo-3. Rumi had also added her knowledge of the Angelbreaker having many powers at the disposal of the people chosen to wield it. The conversation lasted for at least fifteen minutes, with each member asking and answering questions as to what would happen in the future to come. Akira told them that she wouldn't hold it against them if they didn't feel safe any more than they should've after Shamshel was taken care of and wanted to leave (and, in truth, she really wouldn't hold it against them because she wanted to keep them safe).

"To flee from the sight of the next monster." Shinji went, after hearing Akira say that she wouldn't hold it against them if they left. "Where would I possibly go if Akira Town's wasted? This is the only home I've ever had in this life that I live."

"Yeah, and most of the people that live here have nowhere else to go," Rumi added in. "People depend on you to preserve their way of life here. If you protected them once from a living tidal wave, like how I protected Shinji from that jerk and Shamshel's brother, who says we can't protect the town from the remaining Angels?"

"It is you they're coming after, baby sis," said Miaka. "I doubt they'll care about anything else getting in their way, and you're not even in the way."

"I picture retribution to the tormentors," added Taeko, worried about Rumi now. "Shouldn't we just try and hide her where they'll not find her?"

"That would be no different from running away, cousin," Mayo expressed.

"It's not running away if you're trying to protect who you cherish. I'd hide y'all away if I could."

"Likewise."

Nemo couldn't take his eyes off the gauntlets that seemed so life-like, making his thoughts more philosophical for himself to comprehend.

Akira took notice of this and wondered what her youngest son was thinking.

When the meeting ended and everyone returned to their regular activities, Shinji went to Akira's room to speak with her in private.

"Do you believe you can actually do it?" He asked her, referring to the Angels if and when they came for Rumi to get revenge to their pride. "Can you humanize them and remove the threat they represent?"

Akira nodded and said, "Yes, Shinji. You think such a task will kill me, don't you?"

"No. Maim you? Yes. Leave you disfigured beyond healing? Totally. Wrack you with agonizing pain? Without any doubt. But the thought of any of the Angels killing you? I'm actually worried for Rumi because of that bracelet. At first, I thought it was just a dumb bracelet, really just a dumb bracelet. But after seeing you go and turn it into that gauntlet… Akira, I'll be wracked by great pain myself if anything happens to her. I view life as you once told me it is: Sacred, irreplaceable and precious, but I don't care what happens to mine. I just don't want her to end up…getting ripped to pieces, burned to ashes, reduced to pulp or snatched away by any of them. I don't even want Gendo sending people to come and take her like he tried to that first time."

Akira looked at her bracelet and then back to him as she sat on her bed. This was no different from the time her grandson had recovered from another relapse and needed blood from Rumi a second time; Rumi, laying in a hospital bed to recover from having much of her blood drawn from her wrists, told her mother to be with Shinji, but Shinji, who was recovering from the blood transfusion in the room across the hall from the one she was in, told his grandmother that she needed to be with Rumi. Akira hated this part of her life, the mere possibility of playing favorites. She didn't have a favorite child, grandchild or friend; she tries her hardest to care about everybody equally ever since her own mother died of old age. It felt wrong that parents with more than one child would have a favorite and a least favorite to a most hated child…and disgusting and cruel that those with just one child could and would favor someone else's while despising their own because of unjustified reasons, like why they don't have straight or beautiful hair or pretty eyes or a high IQ. She didn't favor Shinji because he was slowly dying from a disease that causes him to go bald from chemotherapy or to suffer from potential organ failures, which he hadn't yet, deteriorate the strength of his muscles little by little, temporarily forced him back into diapers for almost two years and cough up blood every now and then…just like how she didn't favor Rumi because she was the only one that could keep him alive longer because she was able to provide for him, medically. She'd do anything in her power to keep all of them safe without playing favorites or sacrificing anyone.

"I promise you, Shinji," she told him, "I'll keep her safe, no matter what."

Outside her bedroom door, Rumi had eavesdropped on the conversation between her two concerned relatives and became concerned herself…but not for the same reasons as Shinji. While she was happy that he, like the others, was worried for her safety since she was the target, not them, she didn't want to be protected by them. She could recall the night her mother came into her room when she was four and was asked if she ever had any desires to be a normal girl, to stop being a donor for Shinji, and Rumi had told her a little of how she felt about the very possibility of just letting her nephew die. "There's no such thing as a normal life, Mama. The family wouldn't be whole, anymore. I don't want him or anyone to just slip away from home and never come back. I'm happiest when everyone's here…and saddest when they're gone…for a long time. I had a terrible nightmare about Shinji: He was alone, in the night, on some street, running away from a monster the size of a building. It grabbed him and started squeezing him tightly until… I promised myself I wouldn't let him go." Those words were as meaningful to her back then as they are right now, and normalcy and a broken family were something she didn't want in her life, which wasn't normal. It was never normal. It was…special. Her life was special to her because it had all that she needed.

I'll keep you safe, she thought, retiring to her room. I promise.

-x-

NERV's scientists found themselves in another bind. The remains of the Third Angel's original body, with all the materials they hadn't collected from it, had gone and transmuted into a different material resembling regular lead from a common pencil.

"How could this have happen?" Commander Ikari, when he was informed, asked Ritsuko.

"It must've happened when the Angel was revived and humanized," she had theorized, "or it must be the very nature of this particular Angel. After dying, what remains of it only has a lifespan of several days before the deterioration to its body completed its course without its soul sustaining its continued existence. The only remains that didn't degenerate were the samples that were collected prior to this discovery, but the S² Engine has also deteriorated; we were informed by the NERV branch in Germany no more than forty minutes ago."

Fuyutsuki then asked, "What of the data they were able to acquire from it prior to deterioration?"

"It's all useless," Ritsuko answered him. "They were barely able to understand it themselves."

The remains of Sachiel's original body, true to Ritsuko's words, now looked no different from the regular lead found in a common pencil, with only the materials collected from before this happening remaining intact for later research and development. Its legs and sides were cracking from the weight its mass, crumbling to dust very slowly. The people that discovered this were shocked that it did so, but were thankful to have collected enough tissues from it that would allow them to perform their research for a while until they ran out.

"Two humanized Angels and a town leader of a town barely on any maps that has taken authority over them," Fuyutsuki sighed, though it seemed befitting that the Angels be dealt with by being made human; it meant nobody would have to suffer further because of the Evas.

But Gendo was now furious even more. All because Akira was becoming an obstacle in his way just like her daughter and the dying boy were. In fact, all of Akira Town had become a problem, now housing two Angels and probably treating them as though they were equals or something.

"Are you sure the Third Angel was rendered harmless after it came back as a human?" He asked Ritsuko, hoping to find some information that he could use as an excuse to try and exert his authority against Akira's, even take the humanized Angels from her possession.

"The Third Angel was checked time and again, poked and prodded and we couldn't find anything in him that we wouldn't find in a regular person," she explained. "Sachiel's as human as we are, down to the last strands of hair and layers of skin. Regular health, dentition, perfect vision, auditory functions and all ten digits on all four limbs."

In short, Sachiel was one-hundred percent human, complete with organs and red blood cells, a full-fledged member of a species that suffered because of the Second Impact…and incapable of causing a Third Impact at all.

-x-

"…How can you stand to eat this stuff?" Sachiel asked his sister, picking at his bowl of rice in his cell, whilst Shamshel sat against the wall of her cell and read a good book while eating a dumpling.

"Is it that terrible to you?" She asked him.

"Yeah, it's terrible! How can you stand to eat something so bland?!"

"You can ask the guards to add some flavor to it. You don't have to eat rice plainly."

"I cannot believe you sound like this."

"Sound like what?"

"Like the Lilin! Listen to yourself!"

"Brother, whether we like it or not, we are a part of the culture that exists independently of the rest of the planet. We are a part of the race we tried to get rid of to avenge and find our father, and we must accept our fate. These people could kill us if they wanted to and not care, but they have a strict law against murder. They view life as sacred, and it's why they won't end ours, even if we still wanted to hurt them. We can't forget we ended up this way because you were defeated by a little girl protecting someone she held most dear. We had someone to fight for, just like she has someone to protect."

"I don't believe you, sis. They've practically tamed you."

Shamshel couldn't deny such a possibility; her temper against the girl that she was originally after had cooled down and she didn't think about her as much as she used to. What was the point of thinking about somebody you couldn't harm if you were in a place where you couldn't get out?

Suddenly, the alarm bells were being rung outside the building.

"Attention! Attention!" The siblings heard someone shouting through a megaphone. "Please, vacate the streets and get to your nearest shelters! A large, unidentified creature is advancing toward the town!"

They stopped doing what they were doing and thought the same thing, Could it be Ramiel, finally here to do what we failed to do?

The guards showed up and opened their cells up.

"Come on, you two," the one that was a regular to Shamshel said and grabbed her off her cot. "We gotta get to the shelter underneath this place."

"Why are you getting us? We used to be giant monsters," said Sachiel.

"Yeah. You used to be. Past tense. But we don't see two giant monsters. We see two fellow people that, just like everyone else living here, need to be protected from harm." The other guard told him.

"I've killed people before," Sachiel told him, trying to convince the guard that he wasn't worth saving.

"You can tell us about it all later."

Outside on the streets, people were fleeing from the thing that was the new invader: A large, nigh-translucent diamond, floating high in the sky. This was Ramiel, Angel of the Thunder, one of Adam's strongest children, but also one of the largest and most passive. Once he became informed of Shamshel's humanization and loss by the other Angels that remained, he came to deal with the little girl, but would also take care of other loose ends before going to Tokyo-3 and handling business there with the usurper.

-x-

"Wow," went Nemo, looking up at the new Angel through a regular pair of binoculars. "That's one weird creature. It doesn't even look alive."

Akira took notice of this and wondered what this creature was doing so high up in the air. If it was an Angel, then it would face the same fate as its siblings had. She looked at her bracelet, wondering why it hadn't done anything strange yet.

I wish something like this had come with a manual guide, she thought, having Bumi take the others to the shelter within the mountain.

"Akira, I know that I should be heading to the shelter, as well, but do you really think you can handle that thing? This ain't like fifteen years ago."

The centenarian picked up her staff and opened up its wings.

"Which is why I gotta try something different with each opponent," she told him, and took off into the air to get a closer look at this creature. This creature mirrors one of the events Shinji spoke of from his nightmares. Even that red Eva, Unit-02, was seen in his nightmares. Was he having premonition-like nightmares of events yet to happen?

-x-

"…This must be the Fifth Angel," said Fuyutsuki, observing through a satellite monitoring system with the rest of the staff at NERV, after being informed by the UN of an unidentified object located in the sky.

Misato became concerned about this predicament. As the Angel was being viewed, it wasn't anywhere near Tokyo-3 or even on the ground, attacking any towns or cities. But as she took a closer look on the main screen, it looked like the Fifth Angel was somewhere in Japanese airspace over the town of Akira, as the mountain shown on the screen was much taller than that of Mount Fuji, which meant that the Angel was high above said town, possibly to keep safe from the Angelbreaker's power to humanize it.

She said that she'd keep her people safe from them with that thing that picked her to preserve the future so that mistakes aren't echoed. She thought, wondering if Akira could actually do such a task, regardless of the danger.

"Hey, what's that?" One of the technicians uttered, as they all saw something tiny flying directly toward the Angel. "It looks like a…a glider."

Gendo observed and recalled that Akira was the only person he'd seen with a glider; not many Aero Channelers elsewhere in Akira Town could demonstrate enough discipline to use a glider and were often stuck riding on miniature tornadoes for sport. Was this what she meant when she said that if the Angels attacked her home that they would fall under her authority? He wanted to send an Eva out there against the wishes of a town full of people he cared nothing for, but wanted to see where this would go with Akira trying to defend a little village from a servant of God.

Let's see how well you fare, he thought, having some hope that the Fifth Angel dealt Akira a fatal blow; it would serve himself as revenge against the woman that stood against him.

-x-

So, you're the mother of the little bitch that defeated my brother? Akira heard a voice rang inside her head, coming directly from the giant diamond-shaped being.

She stopped flying toward it and manipulated enough air currents to keep her floating in front of the giant creature, six feet away.

"Who are you?" She asked it.

I am Ramiel, Angel of the Thunder, the creature answered, sounding more like a man, but a very passive one.

"Ramiel?" Akira questioned, recalling something about a being named Ramiel that existed in some religious culture she looked into when she turned one-hundred-forty-five years old. "But aren't you the person that governs the souls of the deceased that enter the heavens on Judgment Day? Today cannot be that day. You're here to pass judgment on my daughter, aren't you? But that cannot be made a reality, either."

She has stained the pride of Angels by dealing a fatal blow to my brother…and then avoided dying at the hands of my sister…only because you interfered. And now not only the girl must be dealt with to restore pride to our status as Father's faithful children…but they who defend the girl must be dealt with, as well.

"Your brother's not dead, anymore," Akira tried to reason with him; since he spoke in a male tone, he had to be a man, not wanting to fight unless she had to. "Sachiel's alive once more and Shamshel's alive, as well. I don't want to fight with you, sir, so I must request that you, as a person first before anything else, cease this vendetta against Rumi. Whoever caused harm to your father are the ones you should be angry with, not my daughter who did only what she had to in order to protect her nephew from harm."

In the end, all humans are a threat to the whole of existence, Ramiel responded. No one is innocent of a crime as harsh as the one Father was the victim of. If you continue to stand in the way of greatness…the restoration of the dominion of Angels over the planet that had been taken from Father by the bitch known as Lilith, then you will suffer the same fate that awaits the little girl.

"Please, reconsider. There's no need to fight somebody that doesn't want to pass judgment on anybody. There's no need to bring bloodshed and twisted desires for revenge to people that don't want to get involved."

There is no reconsidering of anything I've decided, woman, Ramiel responded, and then fired his energy beam toward Akira; it was weaker than it shouldn't have been due to her half of the Angelbreaker limiting his strength, but it was still high enough to use in its offensive/defensive ways.

Akira was hit in the stomach and sent falling, but, strangely, she wasn't hurt as much as she expected the attack to do much damage to herself; she felt protected from the brutality of the beam, as though she were wearing an armored dress.

-x-

Rumi, in the mountain shelter with the others, couldn't help but wonder why her stomach hurt a little, but she wasn't screaming in pain. It just hurt, like there was an injury that never existed to begin with on her. She sat crouched away from her elder siblings and nieces and nephew, wondering if it was even right for her to sit and do nothing while her mother tried to deal with an Angel that was interested only in getting rid of her. She looked at her bracelet and wondered if she could speak with that boy again like she had the first time. It was worth a shot.

Takeru, she called out to the representation of the strength of men inherit within the Angelbreaker. Takeru… Takeru…

She then found herself back in the place she met him, seeing him sitting atop a jagged rock.

"You called me?" He asked her.

"An Angel has shown up in my town that hasn't been humanized," she explained. "My mother's fighting it right now, but I have my concerns."

"You should help her if you are concerned for her safety."

"I know, but she told me to stay with the others in the shelter. I do want to help her, but they'll see me leave and try to stop me, and I don't want to endanger them."

"Sometimes, you have to bend rules in order to avoid breaking them…and there will be times where you have to break rules in order to achieve a goal that is necessary. Akira, your mother, told you to stay in the shelter with the others…but she didn't say for how long, which should allow you to bend the rule in order to help her. As you both wield the Angelbreaker, you must both be involved in dealing with the threat, unhindered by the fear of being defenseless. The gauntlet protects its wielders from whatever level of danger they're in. Go, save her and help her, defeat this Angel without murder and protect your home and loved ones."

The mist gathered around them again and Rumi felt herself being pulled back to the mortal coil of existence. She looked around and saw the others either sitting against the cave walls that had been sculpted by Geo Channelers to eliminate rough edges so that people could press their backs against them without feeling irritation or standing against them while watching out the only accessible path to gaze at the sky. Two feet from was Shinji, who seemed to worry about Akira getting hurt, since he himself confessed that he wasn't worried about her getting killed.

"Shinji, what do you know about the manipulation of rules?" She asked him, getting his attention.

"The rules?" He asked. "Well, uh, only that they've been abused by others for hundreds of years. Why do you ask?"

Suddenly, she got up and ran out the entrance to the shelter.

"Rumi!" He cried, getting up, but falling back down. "Rumi, come back!"

Bumi, Kanami and the other older siblings became aware of Rumi's quick getaway and went after her, but her head start gave her more time to keep away.

"The Angelbreaker has powers. Many powers. The power of the Angelbreaker, its true strength, is, ultimately, yours to decide." Takeru's voice repeated in her head, as she ran toward the edge of the path that led to the shelter. Okay, Rumi. Whatever powers this gauntlet has are up to you to decide upon.

As she came closer, she took notice of her mother falling in the sky, which prompted her to simply think and believe what the gauntlet would do for her to help save her mother if she didn't save herself.

"Rumi, stop!" Bumi called out to her. "Sis, don't you dare jump!"

But she did. She jumped off the mountain and into the air. Her brothers and sisters thought she'd made a critical error in her judgment, but were silenced by her half of the Angelbreaker acting up and forming around her right arm and back. Rumi was quite surprised to see a strange pair of what looked to be organic, metallic wings sprouting from her armored back and a large, armored right hand.

"Whoa!" She gasped, the wings now flapping gracefully and taking her up towards her mother. "I'm coming, Mama!"

Ramiel, who had assumed that the girl he was intending to kill had decided to take her own life to save him the trouble of doing it, but became concerned when he saw her sprout wings and a large claw. This was something he only felt around the older woman that he shot down, but this little girl was radiating the same energy the woman had, and it made him shudder.

No, he thought, seeing Rumi catch her mother. Not that weapon! I barely got away from it last time, hundreds of thousands of years ago, before I was fully developed!

Within seconds, he felt his body decrease in size and mass, shrinking down. But still, due to the distance he was keeping away from the pair, his strength remained substantially high enough to still be dangerous to them…so long as he remained a safe distance away.

-x-

Kozo felt relieved. At first, he thought the Fifth Angel had shot down whoever was flying the glider and fell to their death, but then somebody else showed up and saved them, but what caught his attention about the mysterious savior was that it looked like a kid with a large, right hand and wings made of living metal. Was this Rumi?

Gendo, on the other hand, wasn't pleased. He thought the Angel had dealt with Akira when it blasted her, but now someone else got a hold of her and saved her from potential death.

"Can we try to get an ID on whatever saved that person?" He asked the technicians below him.

Fuyutsuki became curious to why he wanted an ID of the person, if it was even a person to begin with.

Misato was also curious, since she was starting to believe the person with the wings and large hand was Rumi, wielding her half of the Angelbreaker.

As the camera from the satellite zoomed in, both the captain and sub-commander got a good look at the winged savior: It was Rumi, wearing some strange thing that granted her flight.

Asuka was freaked out! The town that specialized in using the four classical elements wanted the Evas kept away from their homes in favor of something that flies around and saves falling women?!

"Surely, the Evas could handle something like that," she muttered.

"Believe me, I wish I could believe so," Misato added in.

-x-

Akira regained consciousness and found herself being held in the air, by a large claw with wings. She looked up and saw a face belonging to someone she was certain should've remained in the shelter where it was safe.

"Didn't I tell you to stay in the shelter where it was safe?" She asked her daughter.

"Yes, you did," Rumi answered, descending down to the streets below. "But you never did say how long I was to stay in the shelter, and it looked like you needed my help."

Once they were on the ground, Akira became upset and said, "When this guy is taken care of, you're so grounded, Rumi. No 'ands', 'ifs' or 'buts'."

As the wings and claw retracted and disappeared, leaving Little Rumi with just a gauntlet, said girl nodded that she would accept her punishment…but only after this Angel was dealt with. She then noticed that her mother's gauntlet was acting rather strange, the same as hers was. Then, she looked up and cried, "Watch out!"

Akira looked up, but it was too late! A blast of energy had struck the ground they stood upon and left a burning dome of black fire where mother and child once stood.

Ramiel was pleased. He'd taken out two enemies in one, concentrated, bolt of energy, along with what threatened his status as one of his father's greatest children. Now, nothing stood in the way between closure, justice and revenge from being obtained.

The Lilin…truly Lilith's worst descendants, he thought, but became concerned that his great powers hadn't restored completely to where they were prior to meeting the mother. Is this permanent?

Within the fire, two figures, one tall, the other small, rose from the ground and walked out of the inferno, revealing themselves to be Akira and Rumi, deprived of their casual attire and dressed in what looked like gold, silver, black and purple armor with a scaly, reptilian theme to them, but it was a sort of armor that could've been designed by men for women of the darker side of love. Akira's predominantly silver-colored suit of armor revealed the flawless, upper curves of her sternum and the lower half of the graceful mounds of her breasts; her slender waist armor showed her belly button and armor on her upper thighs revealed some of the flesh but covered the lower half of the waist; armor covered much of the lower legs, ending in armored shoes modeled after high heels called stilettos while her arms were wrapped in the armor that made up her half of the Angelbreaker gauntlet, her left arm had a gauntlet identical to the predominant one on her right hand; tendril-like strands were on her facial cheeks and forehead, forming a strange helmet of sorts that allowed her hair to flow out, and her eyes were now a glittery silver, like how most of the armor was. Rumi's predominantly gold-colored armor was similar to her mother's, except that it covered more of her front, since she was still a child under ten years of age, allowing her body some more modesty, while her footwear resembled sandals; her eyes were a molten-gold color like parts of her armor were. For some strange reason, one section of their bodies that wasn't completely covered in the armor were their bottoms; the armor covered part of the front of their pelvic areas and extended to the bottoms of their backsides, but the flesh that made up their rear ends was still highly exposed to the world.

What?! Ramiel gasped, seeing them alive. Impossible!

They both looked up toward the Angel of the Thunder, now reduced in size to that of an average human, but still in the shape of a large crystal, and sprouted wings similar to those Rumi had once sprouted and flew upward. The power of the Angelbreaker now spread across the air around the Fifth Angel, eliminating the remainder of his power and immortality, including his levitation ability to keep him airborne, causing him to descend.

Rumi's left arm protruded a large, jagged blade and she used it to cut off a part of Ramiel's bottom diamond piece off, forcing him to bleed a little, and his blood was red, just like a human or animal's.

Akira's left arm produced a hand-held jagged axe, which she used to leave a jagged gash on the left front side of the Angel's body; though neither mother nor child cared about which sides of the being were his front sides, they all were the same.

Ramiel tried to at least change from his diamond form into his five-pointed star form, but he could only manage to produce two of the five points, one on each side, horizontally. He accepted this and tried to concentrate enough of his energy to fire at the little girl; if he was going to be defeated, he'd go down taking her with him.

For our honor! He shouted, and successfully fired a small beam at her, aimed at her belly, which was partially exposed to reveal her belly button.

But Rumi, due to being a safe distance from the attack, simply lowered to being below the beam and it missed her, making Ramiel's final attempt a failure.

Akira then shifted the armor on her right arm into a large sword modeled after a scimitar and flew toward Ramiel again, not only using it to cut his body in half so cleanly, but exposed his weak point; it would seem that all of the Angels had one other thing in common other than the desire to get rid of Rumi, and that was a red sphere.

Ramiel's sliced body fell to the ground, but instead of shattering into pieces or crumbling to dust, he was reduced even further until he became like the Lilin: His new body was that of a blond-haired young man with bronze-colored eyes, a bulky muscle build on his chest and arms, was dressed in black and blue sweatpants and silk shirt, a grayish-blue skin tone, and was armed with what looked like a large bazooka. He groaned as he got up from his fall, seeing the pair descend toward him. Angry and terrified, he picked up his weapon and ran.

When Akira set her feet on the ground, she Geo Channeled and sent a streak of energy toward the former Angel in the form of a fissure, knocking him off balance and burying his left foot in a hole of softened sand.

"Aaurgh!" He ground, aiming his weapon toward the town leader. "You bitch!"

BLAST! He fired not a missile, but a ball of electrical energy at Akira, who channeled fire directly from her hands and sent a larger ball of fire to defend herself and Rumi. The spheres of elemental energy collided, but instead of another explosion, they just disappeared.

"Energy, my dear Ramiel," Akira uttered, but her voice sounded like it belonged to a seductress instead of a town leader or a mother. "Positive and negative cancel each other out, like how when four souls come together to form a perfect balance that can be used for great good or wrong."

"You…urgh!" Ramiel grunted, and prepared to fire again.

He never got his chance, as Rumi raised her left hand and fired something that looked like a needle, and it struck the former Angel of the Thunder in his heart. He felt his strength leaving him; the muscles relaxed, his breathing became taxed, vision was blurring and his hearing was fading.

"Who…are you people?" He asked them.

"Guardians of the past and future contained within the eternal present," answered Rumi, her voice sounding just like Akira's altered voice, as well. "Tormentors to some of twisted desires… Saviors to others of desperate needs. Sorry for the beating we gave you, but, as a person full of hatred and dark desires… You don't do it for us."

Ramiel then fell to the ground, out cold, hoping the next Angel could succeed where he had failed.

They approached him and Akira found where his only mark as a former Angel resided: Unlike the necklaces of Sachiel and Shamshel, Ramiel's red sphere was placed onto a bracelet that was set on his left wrist, mounted on bronze, interlocked 'A's that were shaped like chains. She had assumed that with each humanization of an Angel, their mark as former Angels was unique to each one, as they were different from each other.

-x-

"…Kami, did y'all see that?" Nemo asked his siblings, having run down the mountain, seeing Ramiel being changed, defeated, and by their mother and little sister, whom were dressed in armor after being attacked from above by him.

Shinobu, wishing to capture this moment, took out her camera and got at least two photos of Akira and Rumi in their armored guises.

"I know they said the Angelbreaker could humanize a threat like these Angels, but I didn't think they could do all of that," said Kanami.

"Their armor's too revealing," sighed Tsukiko, and her siblings looked at her like she had a problem with it. "What? You can see their bottoms and Akira's bust sticks out a bit."

Miaka sighed and said, "Who cares that they're half-naked? They beat the Angel."

"Hey, did Mommy say that Granny Akira and Auntie Rumi were half-naked?!" They heard Taeko yell out to them, as she, Mayo and Shinji were coming down the path. "Are they alright?!"

"Half-naked, huh?" Shinji questioned. "I hope they're properly covered."

By the time they made it down to where the siblings were standing, Akira and Rumi, and checking to confirm that Ramiel was unconscious, were shifted from out of the armor that retracted back into their bracelets and back into their regular clothes…or rather, what remained of their regular clothes: Akira's baby-blue dress and white, baggy pants were partially burnt and shredded, while Rumi's black skort and yellow shirt were accompanied with burnt edges and a rip on the midriff area of her blue undershirt, but still very modest than the armor was, partially. Then, they fell to their knees, exhausted from what had happened.

"Are…you okay, Rumi?" Akira asked her daughter.

"I'm…in one piece," she answered her. "You?"

"I need a drink of OJ, a nap…and my glider/staff." She explained, before passing out.

"Yeah," Rumi added, before passing out herself.

You two did well, Rumi, she heard Takeru's voice in her fading mind. You did well.

-x-

"…It would seem that a picture isn't worth a thousand words," said Kiel to the other members of the SEELE council, reviewing some photographs taken by their organization's own special satellite system. "Four pictures, altogether, are priceless."

The pictures in question displayed the Fifth Angel, Rumi with armored wings and a large claw, the humanized Fifth Angel, and an armored Rumi and Akira prior to the Angel's defeat.

"The girl is definitely the 'young' the scrolls foretold of, while her mother is the 'timeless guardian', but they both seem to have the 'Breaker'," said SEELE 13 SOUND ONLY. "Whatever this 'Breaker' is, it allowed them to defeat the Angel without having to worry about its AT-Field."

"And to think that this Angel was the second one not to be defeated by an Evangelion since Second Impact," uttered SEELE 10 SOUND ONLY, sounding upset. "Now what? If the Angels are made human, as our contact within NERV has informed us, the threat that they oppose is completely negated. Even if we did kill them, nothing that has changed would be undone."

"So…we may be stuck where we are," added in SEELE 06 SOUND ONLY. "This…'Breaker'…this…Angelbreaker…is the direct cause of our plans not working properly. Along with the girl and her mother. What must be done with them?"

"They should be eliminated," suggested SEELE 03 SOUND ONLY to the others. "They've interfered with our plans, so their lives should pay the forfeit of this war!"

"Further translation of the scrolls tells that when the Angels are placed on the same level as humans, the path to the future that is needed will be shown…and the path of desires, perfection…will be removed from the hearts of those that remain." SEELE 08 SOUND ONLY added. "This could mean that the Instrumentality Project will never be realized. We have yet to procure the Spear of Longinus from Antarctica's dead waters. Without it, we cannot use Lilith to achieve our goal. And even if the Angels were defeated by the Evas, we may not be able to use Unit-01 in place of Lilith."

"None of this might have happened had Ikari kept a perfect leash around his son's neck," said SEELE 10 SOUND ONLY.

"Yes. Had the boy not developed cancer to begin with, none of this would've happened, and now he should be dealt with, as well." SEELE 02 SOUND ONLY added.

"We should leave the boy be," said SEELE 09 SOUND ONLY, the most quiet of the council. "He should be allowed to die of his own accord. He's of no use to anyone, and he has no intention of piloting an Eva. Why waste time on him if he's going to die soon, anyway?"

"You know, ever since we found out about Ikari's son, you've been rather quiet lately," said SEELE 03 to him. "Care to explain?"

"Every man has his reasons," SEELE 09 expressed. "The boy should be left alone. From an earlier report from our contact, he hates Ikari as much as the people of the town he lives in do. And he remembers nothing of the Evangelion, knows nothing, and cares nothing for it. Please, leave him be."

"A dead boy avenges nothing…nor achieves anything," says Kiel to them all. "Let's see if we can deal with these keepers of this…Angelbreaker…peacefully."

-x-

"…You think she'll suffer any side-effects from what happened?" A man's voice uttered.

"No way, little brother," another voice responded. "She's as tough as we are."

"She might start aging again like she did before she turned twenty-eight," a female voice added in.

Fluttering her eyes, Akira's vision perfected until she saw the faces of Nemo, Bumi and Tsukiko around her and said, "I doubt I'll ever age again. If I did, I'd probably end up as a shriveled, old lady that surrounds herself with cats to pass time."

Rising to a sitting position, she found herself in a hospital room and asked Bumi what had happened.

"After you and Rumi took care of that new guy that used to be that giant diamond, you both passed out from exhaustion," he explained. "You've been asleep for almost half a day."

Placing her left arm over her forehead to steady her still-dizzy brain, she asked, "What about Rumi? Is she alright?"

"She's in the room next door," Tsukiko answered. "The kids and Kanami are with her. She woke up half an hour before you. That's only because Shinji was holding her hand, though."

"Oh, really?" Akira uttered. "That's impressive, really."

"Yeah, better than the photos that some of the people not in their shelters got of you and Rumi wearing that racy armor." Bumi sighed, revealing a piece of detail that made Akira's eyes widen.

"I'm sorry. Racy armor?" She asked him.

"You mean, you don't remember? You and Rumi were wearing armor when you defeated the guy that calls himself Ramiel. It was racy and everything. Well, partially racy in Rumi's case and extremely racy in your case. Even Shinobu took a picture and had it developed."

Tsukiko then took out a photo from her pocket and showed it to her mother. The picture showed the town leader and her youngest child dressed in the armor that left almost nothing to the imagination, both front and back.

Akira flushed with embarrassment; she had never seen an outfit that seemed, somewhat, seductive and violent…or herself wearing one, for that matter. Her partially-exposed breasts looked one size larger than they really were and her midsection was exposing her navel, and just by judging at the way the waist armor was positioned, her backside was only partially covered, but left very little to the imagination as the cheeks were exposed.

"Oh, my God," she sighed, handing the picture back to Tsukiko, "and Shinobu took this?"

"Yep," they answered her.

In the room next door, Rumi, having seen the photo already, was wondering when she'd be allowed to leave the hospital now that she had recovered from her initial exhaustion. She was also embarrassed that her nieces and nephew saw her wearing armor that exposed her like that in her fight with Ramiel. It was like when she was two years old again when Akira tried to get her to take a bath, and that ended up with disastrous results that were her running around the house naked after her clothes were taken off.

Why me? She thought, looking over to her left side of the room, staring not at the window, but at the small Get Well card that Shinji had gotten her. And it was supposed to be me worrying about Shinji, not the reversal.

-x-

"You two are disgraces!" Ramiel yelled to Sachiel and Shamshel. "You get beaten and tarnished by two members of the Lilin, and now you get to spend your days behind bars!"

"Yeah, look who's talking, brother," retorted Sachiel. "I was only here for less than two days until you showed up and got yourself beaten and tarnished by the two Lilin! Nice skin, by the way."

"Why, you little… I should kill you two myself! Oh, wait. I was going to do that once they were dead!"

As her brothers argued back and forth, Shamshel ignored them as she continued to read her book; their bickering was common among the other Angels, except to their big brothers, Sahaquiel and Zeruel, who bickered on who was the strongest of them all. She didn't want to argue over anything they no longer had any control over and just enjoy the fact that she was still alive. Her nightmare of Ramiel killing her was set aside.

How can the Lilin in this story not get along when the cover of the book shows them being happy together? She wondered, the romance novel that she was given by the guard that was her regular being very interesting.

"…And they were half-dressed! You got beat by half-dressed girls, Ramiel!" She sighed at Sachiel's reminding of Akira and Rumi wearing revealing armor while defeating their brother.

-x-

The Twenty-Seventh of July came and Akira and Rumi were allowed to go home, but the fact that one of the photographs of them in the armor was in the paper was something the people weren't going to let them hear the end of it. Akira had already received several letters from some of the town cops that knew her from years past that asked where she got a suit of armor like that or how Rumi got a similar suit tailored to her body.

"I can't believe we wound up in the newspaper," she said to Rumi as they got home.

"I can't believe we wound up on the front page in the newspaper," Rumi responded, sitting on a stool in the kitchen. "Why did Shinobu really have to take a picture of us wearing that armor? So our butts were showing. We didn't know!"

"Our butts? She wasn't the only one that got a photo of us in that armor, Rumi. Almost twenty-seven other people that weren't in their shelters had cameras on them, and they were using them. The one that made the headlines in town got a perfect view of my chest."

"Mama, your chest is supposed to be like that. You're a bigger girl."

Since they had a copy of the newspaper everybody was immortalizing, Akira showed her daughter the picture and asked her to compare her bust size from said picture to her bust size right now.

Hmm… She examined her mother's boobies and then looked at the ones she had in the paper, and could see the difference: The armor made them look one size larger, explaining why she was so unhappy about it, being large and quite subtle for a simple B-cup. "Oh. The armor makes your boobies bigger than they really are, like melons."

Akira sighed and gave up on the photograph, since it was going to follow them for a while, regardless of what size her bust was, and tried to pick up on their regular, day-to-day activities and routine.

"You're still grounded, Rumi," she reminded her daughter of her penalty for endangering her own life.

That made her slump as she asked her, "For how long?"

Never having thought of a time frame, Akira sighed and answered, "Until the Tenth of August, fourteen days from now."

"No hook swords?"

"No hook swords."

"No martial arts?"

"Exactly."

"And no…that?"

"No that."

"Aww!" Rumi whined, knowing that 'no that' meant 'no playground', either.

"But explain to me one thing: Why did you leave the shelter where it was safe?" Akira asked her.

"I needed to protect you from harm. You weren't the only one wearing the Angelbreaker, need I remind you? We were both chosen by it; therefore, we both had to deal with Ramiel."

"I could've handled him alone."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes, really."

"Oh, and if you did go at him alone, where would you be right now, if not in the hospital?"

"I'm responsible for y'all, Rumi, and parents are supposed to protect their children."

"Just like how children are supposed to protect their parents…sometimes."

"What?! Where'd you hear some craziness like that?"

"Nemo and Miaka, they told me once."

"I'm gonna have to really chew them in when they get back. That's not always true, Rumi. And I…I promised Shinji I would keep you safe."

"I know, Mama. I eavesdropped on your conversation with him. He doesn't want me getting hurt because of these Angels…but that's a promise that had to be bent or broken. I can't always be some…tiny flower or lotus that has to be supported all the time. Yeah, I'm not entirely mature sometimes, I can say things that might be harsh to people, make mistakes and so on. No one's perfect. You needed my help…and I needed to help you. What's the point of being chosen to wear something like this to protect people or the future (holds up her wrist to brandish her half of the Angelbreaker)…if you're not allowed to get involved in a situation where your services are warranted?"

Akira sighed, wanting to question why fate chose her youngest daughter to wear one half of an ancient weapon that belonged to her side of the family for a long time since it came into their possession, but had to accept that sooner or later she would be needing Rumi's help in dealing with the Angels…and any other threat that she couldn't handle on her own. But to see one's own child or children placed in danger by something that thinks and feels almost like regular people…it almost made Akira desperate to keep them all safe from something only she should be placing own her life on the line for. She was older than she looked, not worth any amount of currency, and a mother figure of over fifty different children over the years since before the town was ever founded. She knew she wouldn't live forever and nothing was forever, but she would've given up her own life to do the right thing for the people she loved, instead of seeing them give up theirs.

"Mother," she heard Rumi say to her, "if you got my back, I got yours. I protect you… You protect me, and we protect every one that lives here from the Angels and anyone that comes looking to bring trouble. Yeah?"

She nodded in the positive; it was either they worked together to deal with the situation regarding the Angels or they'd just have problems with each other later on.

As the modern saying goes: There's no 'I' in 'team', she thought. "Okay, Rumi. The next Angel that comes here, we'll both take care of it."

"Okay," Rumi agreed, and then got up off the stool.

"Oh, and Rumi?"

"Yes?"

"You're grounded…until the First of August."

"Okay."

-x-

The evening night was once more pleasant. The streetlights were beaming, the few people walking about the streets were conversing and the aura was well-balanced between light and darkness.

Nemo was enjoying such an evening, even more so because he was spending time with Camille, just as he had planned to before the Fifth Angel showed up to cause trouble. And while he did have concern for his little sister, Rumi had told him to go out and be with his love interest, since she could see that, as he was getting older, his perception was swinging toward the girl he met prior to the festival.

But for some reason, it seemed that Camille wasn't thinking about the evening aura…or Nemo. It was as though her thoughts were aimed toward the newspaper from earlier.

"You don't seem happy, Camille," he told her.

"I saw your mother and baby sister in the paper today, and it got me worried about things," she explained a little bit of her concerns. "I tried talking to my grandmother about it, but she didn't know how to reduce the tension I was feeling."

"But what about your mother or father? Why not talk to them?"

"Believe me, I wish I could, but that's not a possibility…unless you believe in contacting the domain of the spirits. Because that's where they reside now."

"I'm sorry."

"No, it's okay. They passed away a long time ago. I was eleven years old at the time… They just got sick. Bad things like that happen. Nemo…there's something I really need to tell you, but I fear that if I do…you won't like me, anymore."

"How could I, possibly, not like you, anymore? You haven't done anything wrong."

They stopped walking down the street as Camille leaned against a wall, sighing.

"I've been keeping a terrible secret from you. I've been dishonest with you, and if my grandmother ever found out, well, I'd hate to think of how she'd react."

"What…what do you mean, Camille? What…does your grandmother have to do with any of this?"

Camille inhaled and exhaled, looked him in the eyes and uttered, "The day that girl attacked your sister at the museum… My grandmother had foreseen it. She dreamt it would happen and told me the day after the festival when you brought me home. She asked me to be her eyes and ears to make sure it either happened or didn't. And she knew about the Angelbreaker gauntlet…that it would choose your mother and sister. That is what I've been keeping quiet about. That is why I've been holding this newspaper displaying the photograph that everyone's whispering about in this town. This…is why you won't like me, anymore. There, I said it all."

Not waiting for a response from him, she turned to leave, but was halted by her left hand being grabbed, not in a forceful grip but in delicate one that offered no pain.

"Camille," Nemo had uttered, "your grandmother knew this was going to happen in the form of dreams…not you. Yes, you've been keeping this secret, but I don't blame you for any of what has happened. Why not introduce me to your grandmother? I would like to see her."

"Nemo…I hid the truth from you. I'm guilty."

"It's called taking responsibility for one's own choices. We're all responsible for our own decisions. That's part of faith and fate, which are also part of destiny, which is also linked to the soul."

Camille nodded in agreement and led him down several blocks until they reached her home. Unlike some of the more-urban newbies that had moved to Akira over the years following the Second Impact, Camille's family lived in a small, two-story house, not so different from regular people that lived in small homes instead of apartment buildings. One of the few things about regular houses in Akira Town was that they were so plain, so common, and thus so indifferent. Just regular homes, nothing supernatural or sci-fi blended in with their structures.

But Nemo was a little fearful of meeting Camille's grandmother; he'd only walked Camille to her doorstep, but had never actually set foot in her house.

Camille opened the door and stepped inside.

"Grandmama? I'm home. I've brought along a friend from the Fú Festival over." She called out to her grandmother, but got no response. "That's odd. She hardly ever leaves home."

She invited Nemo inside, and he asked her, "Did she have a former profession?"

"She used to work at the museum, probably spent some time studying up on the ancient myths and so on," she explained what she knew and assumed, as they walked up the stairs. "Grandmama? Are you here? I'm home."

They entered the living room and found an elderly woman lying asleep on a sofa in front of a television set, but what surprised Nemo about the woman was that next to the sofa was a wheelchair; Camille's grandmother had been disabled for some time.

So, that's her grandmother, huh? He thought, not disappointed, but curious about how long it has been since she stopped working at the museum.

Camille went over to check her grandmother's pulse and sighed to find that she wasn't dead yet, and shook her from her sleep.

"Huh? What? What?" She uttered out, seeing Camille as her vision perfected…but also seeing a young man behind her that looked like a younger and gentler version of the Rokubungi family's cruelest brat and modern nightmare brought to life. "Camille? You're home… And you brought a man over."

Camille looked behind to see Nemo, who remained quiet.

"This is Nemo Rokubungi, Grandmama," she explained to her.

"Your…boyfriend?"

"If that's how you wish to perceive him."

Nemo turned his head away to hide his blush; ever the innocent, he might've been, but when it came to strong emotions, blushing was one of many things he couldn't control.

"So, this is Nemo? It's hardly even a challenge to try and compare him, in appearance, to the rogue; they look nothing alike. Your boyfriend's a regular gentleman and rather delicate, just like hymens and booties." Her grandmother said, which made Camille gasp with a large blush of her own.

"That's 'diamonds and rubies', Grandmama," she corrected, ceasing her blush as she helped her into a sitting position. "And there's a reason to why I invited him over."

She looked to her granddaughter and then to Nemo, who, having ended his blushing, had a look of concern mixed with seriousness.

"I knew you'd tell him," she told Camille. "I had dreamt that, as well."

Camille pointed over to the other chair behind Nemo and waved for him to sit down, which he did.

"Camille tells me that…you knew about the Angelbreaker gauntlet attaching itself to my mother and sister after splitting itself between them," he told her grandmother. "Where are my manners in this first introduction? I am Nemo Rokubungi. And you?"

"Akane. Akane Yami. Pleasure to meet you."

"Yami?"

"Maternal grandmother."

"Oh. That explains everything."

"Not everything. The Angelbreaker and how I knew it would do what it has done."

"Heh-heh…yeah."

Akane sighed and then uttered the first beans to be spilled, "On the first day of July, I had this first of a recent string of dreams that were hard to make out until the night before the creature dubbed the Angel arrived and trashed the museum in the failed attempt to off your little sister. I saw events playing themselves out in different ways, different from how they're being played out right now."

"Like…like an alternate timeline, a different sequence of events?" Nemo asked.

"Yes. But in the penultimate dream so far, your family's rogue had done horrible, unforgivable acts that resulted in a terrible trauma for Akira. In my dream…or vision…he killed your little sister and then your only nephew after hearing of his son's renal failure…"

Suddenly, Nemo could picture the scene in his own mind as if he had seen it happening for himself: Shinji, lying dead on an operating table with his abdomen cut open in an operating room with a single light in the darkness, and in another room laid Rumi, deprived of both her right hand and some of her insides; the doctors, or whoever it was that cut her open, had possibly taken more from her than just one of her kidneys in a cruel attempt to save Shinji's life against his will, as he'd never take his child aunt's irreplaceable organs, even to save himself from the inevitable.

"…Drove Akira to kill him in a blind rage of temporary insanity…"

He saw Akira, wrapped in similar armor like the one in the photos and newspaper, except that it covered every inch of her and looked more like traditional samurai armor, her face contorted with rage as she willed the armor around her right hand to retract so that she could use a regular katana sword to behead Gendo, right in front of a large creature that reminded him of the purple Eva he'd been informed about by Rumi.

"…And then Akira, somehow, used the Angelbreaker to pierce the boundaries of time…rewinding it to the very beginning of a day that something was supposed to happen that would end up resulting in violence. The day this Angel showed up, the Angelbreaker was supposed to bond with Rumi in a violent way, making her brutal, and Akira was supposed to get hurt badly by the creature, but none of that has happened, just like what was supposed to happen with the previous monster; the day at the museum was supposed to be extreme, but it wasn't. Not in a loss-of-life way."

Then, Nemo saw Akira using the gauntlet that had been in her family's possession for God-knows-how-long to pierce an intangible force around her, sending the very planet into a psychedelic super storm of blurs and rapid movements.

"I think I've seen what you've explained to me just now," he told her. "I saw my nephew lying dead with his waist cut open and Rumi's insides hollowed out, Gendo's head was sent flying by my mother after she had found out that he killed them, and then she pierced the veil of time and causality."

"It's a wicked dream…of a wicked omen," Camille sighed. "It hasn't happened. If it did, it happened in a different timeline. The Angelbreaker hasn't done anything it might've done before to people, and nobody we cherish is dead because of that NERV agency or whoever foots the bill to keep it alive."

"Rumi and Shinji kept the pamphlet they were given the day they showed up in Tokyo-3, the same day they saw the creature that ended up as that guy Akira brought back with her to be rehabilitated like Shamshel, the girl that trashed the museum. It said that NERV is a clandestine organization, semi-public and under the direct control of the United Nations… But I don't always believe what I see on the paper. It didn't speak of its top project revolving around giant, man-made monsters called Evas or their…former purpose of dealing with the Angels, as they're so-called. The pamphlet makes the organization that was supposed to be in charge of rebuilding the path of the future of mankind sound like crazy…and false…advertisement, which is as worthless as a petty criminal."

"That fortress city, Tokyo-3, isn't even meant to protect people from the Angels," Akane told him. "It's only meant to draw them toward it for the purpose of killing them, regardless of the cost of lives that wind up in the crossfire. If anything, that city of artificiality doesn't compete with this town of elements, possibly the only place left on Earth that has any real balance, any real life left in it at all."

"Can the Angelbreaker stop the Angels…for real?" Nemo wanted to know, but also if that gauntlet would protect his mother and baby sister.

"It can, for it needs to," Akane told him. "Tokyo-3 draws them in for the purpose of killing them; the Angelbreaker draws them here to Akira Town for the purpose of humanizing them, eliminating their threat, permanently. It's basically a fate worse than sudden death, the lesser of two evils."

"How do you know so much about the Angelbreaker?"

Akane sighed before showing Nemo a strange mark on her right hand; it was shaped like an egg or teardrop, with an interlocked pair of circles almost resembling the horizontal infinity symbol under it.

"When I worked at the museum, I spent much of my time studying up on the Angelbreaker," she explained, "but one day, my curiosity got the better of me and I couldn't resist the urge of wanting to wear the gauntlet myself. I believed in it having incredible powers that it could bestow upon its chosen bearers to fulfill the world's needs. Unfortunately, I didn't know of the darker side of the Angelbreaker, that it would be cruel to those that weren't supposed to wear it and don't understand its reasons for not wanting to be worn by them until they get the message."

"Wha…wait a minute, cruel to people that aren't supposed to wear it?" Nemo asked, confused right now about the gauntlet.

"It's sentient, Nemo," Camille told him. "It may look like a gauntlet, but it has the capacity required to think, feel and make its own decisions about something. It's a weapon of protection that goes only to certain people that are able to wield it…and it chooses the people that it wants, for better or for worse. Maybe it was a basis for the whole plot of that American comic book series we both look at because there's a living gauntlet in it, as well, but have different backgrounds. However this gauntlet came to be, it was meant to preserve our future."

"A part of me still wants to believe that it's just a damn piece of metal and stone sculpted into a glove…that divides itself in half and turns into a pair of damn bracelets…but I can't let go of what I saw it do."

"Trust me…for I still wish to believe that the gauntlet didn't do what it did to me until I developed the will to take it off." Akane told him.

"How bad was your experience with it?" He asked her.

"It was late at night. I was on night watch, and I decided to place it on my hand to further my studies on it. That's when I felt my hand burning. As much as I wanted to take it off at that moment, I couldn't let go of my curiosity. The Angelbreaker burned me, punished me so severely that I finally got the message it was sending through to me and ripped it away from my seared wrist. But even my brief exposure to the weapon was enough to enable to see some of what it has done over the years, to explore the past that it shared with its previous wielders, how it defeated creatures that inspired nightmares and fairy tales, saved villages and brought balance to people that had none. It was like living several lifetimes in that one moment." She answered him. "It's been both a blessing and a curse. The Angelbreaker's a grand mystery, locked in a maze of many questions and very few answers."

"A conundrum…charted in unknown terrain."

-x-

GASP! Shinji awoke, drenched in sweat. It was another nightmare, one that revolved not around the Angels, but by one of the people he'd seen at NERV. He was certain of that.

Just when I thought I could look forward to happy days, he thought, lying back down on his pillow. I don't know which is worse: The Evangelion, the Angels, Gendo or the Angelbreaker. The Angelbreaker doesn't seem too dangerous; it just shows up, attaches itself to my grandmother and aunt, turns a monster into a person and then turns itself into a pair of bracelets when not in use. Gendo…that madman uses people. The Eva…it uses people. The Angels…they take lives…but the Angelbreaker… It needs people to help it…to do what it can't do by itself…and protects. So…why did my dream show that girl with the red eyes wearing a gauntlet just like it?

In his dream, he saw that girl he and Rumi encountered at NERV when Gendo summoned her to replace Shinji after calling him a useless spare, Rei Ayanami, fighting against his grandmother, wearing a gauntlet similar to the Angelbreaker…but almost dangerous, not like the actual weapon itself, which was a weapon of protection, not destruction. And the girl herself…was completely devoid of emotions, no sense of identity, whatsoever. She was as frightening as she was dangerous at the moment. And the setting of their battleground: Tokyo-3, the city of the soulless, the artificial, a desolate place without a shred of hope…in the silence of the night.

Creak! He looked up at the sight of his door opening and…there was Rumi, with her eyes half-open, standing there at the entrance.

"Uh, Rumi?" He asked her, but she didn't respond; she stayed quiet, but walked over to the other side of his bed…and climbed in.

Rumi was sleepwalking again, and once more, it was always her nephew's room, as well as his bed, that she always went to. Once she tucked herself in, she laid on his pillow and remained quiet.

Okay…this is odd, he thought.

-x-

The First of August came, a month of new events to replace the events of the previous month. But in the last three days at the rehabilitation center in Akira Town, Sachiel and Ramiel bickered and tried to beat each other each time they were let out of their cells for external recreation. Only Shamshel remained the calmer and more tamed person out of the three siblings that had been humanized. It might've been due to her lack of motivation to maintain her anger against the little girl that caused all of this, initially, or maybe it was because she found the time to start embracing the positives of being part of the Lilin society (or at least the society of Lilin of Akira Town), as she had all the time she could ask for when it came to having nothing better to do. Whatever the true reason, she was now spending a pleasant afternoon in the sun, reading a new book in the yard of the rehab center, while her brothers were made to vent their anger out against the guards, who were able to deal with them due to their extensive martial arts training.

"Whaaah!" She heard Sachiel scream, being thrown back onto the ground by the guards. "Aurgh!"

"Aaaaahh! Aaah!" Ramiel cried like a girl as he was thrown to the ground.

Shamshel tore her eyes from the book and looked at them, seeing them covered in bruises and scrapes. It was almost impossible not to laugh at them, seeing them for the weaklings they had been shown to be without their powers, their blessings, and how she got off by not picking a fight with any of them.

"You could bother to help, sis!" Ramiel shouted at her.

"It wouldn't get me anywhere, big brother," she told him. "Just sit back and relax. Help yourself to a cup of lemonade, eat some dumplings."

"Traitor!" Sachiel called her. "This planet was ours, billions of years before they showed up!"

She closed her book and uttered, "They had no say in the matter. They're here now, they've been here, and they're still here. These people here, they're not fighting us, killing anybody, or trying to spread their beliefs upon the world. If you want to blame somebody for everything that's happened, blame the people that captured our father! Blame the woman that took dominion over the planet from him! I blame them, but you two seem to claim silent, meaningless victories over hating a little girl that thought you, Sachiel, were originally a monster, and a woman that you, Ramiel, did shoot because you couldn't see reason or solution."

The brothers looked at her and then at each other, wondering how tamed she'd become.

"Well, you do," Shamshel told them, turning away to resume looking into her book. "We've been invited into their town. They're taking a big risk in sheltering us because we used to be different from them, and I thank them for their hospitality."

-x-

It would seem we have competition in getting rid of the Angels, thought Ritsuko, typing away on her computer. Three have been humanized…and, supposedly, there are still eight that haven't been beaten yet. The Committee are already angry with the lack of progress with the Evas, I wonder how they'll respond to the lack of the Dummy Plug System since we have yet to check Rei's synch-ratio.

"…We're ready to begin, Sempai," went Maya, reminding the pseudo-blond that they were now about to attempt reactivation with Unit-00, which had been repaired and checked for further instabilities before they were to start.

Rei, fully recovered and in the Entry Plug, awaited her instructions. At first, she had thought they would attempt to activate Unit-01 and have her pilot it, but Commander Ikari had declared that the purple Eva was to be used as a last resort if reactivation with Unit-00 didn't work out. Rei had also seen the satellite footage of the Fifth Angel's defeat at the hands of Akira and her daughter, Rumi, wondering how they were able to do so when it was discovered that only an Eva could fight the Angels. It was like flaunting one's ability to do something to show that they had ways of achieving success.

Even Asuka was both impressed and disgusted. She had spent her life training to deal with the Angels and now she couldn't because of a bunch of mishaps caused by the actions of a little girl's actions. While she could vent out her rage through facing simulations, it wasn't the same as the real thing, and she lost to the Fourth Angel when it showed up and then left. If she could defeat one Angel, just one, she'd be content that she could do her job right. Was it too much to ask the gods for one Angel to face and defeat herself?

"Did you hear about some of the people leaving the city?" The redhead overheard some NERV technicians talking to each other. "It turns out that even after the Third Angel was defeated and no one got hurt, some families still wanted to leave."

"Yeah, 'cause somehow, the knowledge of a little girl being inside the Eva got out and made some civilian women quite disgusted. They're questioning how the army could resort to using kids to fight in wars." The second technician responded to the first. "But is it true? Was the girl that piloted Unit-01 related to Commander Ikari?"

"Definitely," the third tech answered. "There was even a rumor that he tried to burn the girl for not wanting to pilot again. He even called her a brat once."

"What kinda man tries to put his hands on somebody else's child in front of them?" The fourth tech, a woman, had asked. "He should be tried for attempted child abuse."

"He already abandoned his own son," the second tech told her. "He didn't even bat an eye when he found out he was sick twenty-four/seven. Maybe that's why he tried to get the girl to pilot: He was looking for a replacement for the boy. I heard the Marduk Institute hasn't even found anyone qualified to be the Fourth Child yet."

"I don't see why they even bother looking," the third tech uttered. "The Angels haven't been here since the Fourth Angel left. They go to some other place and try to cause problems there. Did you see that footage showing the woman and the little girl? Where'd they get such armor like that?"

Asuka couldn't understand how fate dealt her a bad hand with the Eva being unused for the betterment of mankind. She was a chosen being, a special person, meant to ensure their future with Unit-02, and yet she was being put to the sidelines as a watcher of events instead of being a part of them.

Suddenly, the alarms went off! Something had caught NERV's attention!

Misato showed up at Central Dogma and demanded information.

"An AT-Field was detected off the shores of the Kii Peninsula, south of Tokyo-3," said Hyuga to her.

"What is the name of…" Aoba uttered, as the image that appeared on the screens made several people want to vomit.

"Is that it?" Asuka asked. "Is that the new Angel?"

The creature on the screens looked like a giant, bone-white and red, prehistoric fish-like manta or shark on the shores of the peninsula. It was partially out of the water, but appeared to be stuck on the ground, immobile due to its new environment. It didn't even look to be alive, as its body didn't move, despite its organic appearance.

"The Sixth Angel…is that thing?" Asuka asked again.

-x-

I don't believe this, thought Gaghiel, Angel of the Fish and Adam's only son well-suited to life in the sea, as he had found himself in a drying-up situation: His attempt to get out of the water left him land-bound…and he couldn't move.

The water behind his body was helping him to a degree, but without his whole body being submerged in the life-sustaining element of his natural environment, he was bound to end up as what the Lilin had termed "out of the frying pan and into the fire". He had called for his sister, Israfel, to help him out of his predicament, but she was taking so long to come get him. It was only a matter of time before the enemy Lilin that had been the initial driving force behind their father's abduction and tarnishing found him and put an end to him, and all he had attempted to do was go to where Adam was and free him, staying true to the goal of reclaiming their father and punishing Lilith for taking the planet from them.

Israfel…please…hurry… He thought.

-x-

"It looks like this Angel's not designed for life on land," said Ritsuko, looking at the Angel on the monitors. "It's like a fish out of water. A giant fish."

Minutes, earlier, Asuka and Unit-02 had been dispatched to deal with the Angel; because it wasn't going toward Akira Town…and because the location of Tokyo-3 was south of where the Angel was located, NERV decided that it was their problem and the beast fell under their jurisdiction. This allowed Asuka an opportunity to satisfy her desire to destroy one of them and prove her worth…and it allowed Gendo to demonstrate how important the survival of the human race depended on the Evas.

But somehow, Misato wasn't entirely convinced that the Sixth Angel was going to be an easy win. Her encounter with the First Angel fifteen years ago, along with seeing the Fourth Angel last month made her for certain that none of them, not even the Third Angel, were going to be cakewalks. Having seen Akira's handling of the resurrected Third Angel, as well as hearing her daughter complain of nearly getting a headache when it, or he, grabbed her wrist, and wondering how she was able to make it seem so easy, whereas everyone else couldn't even put the former beast down.

Still, she thought, if we can get rid of this one…we'll just be one Angel short of a full set of humanized enemies. And this one isn't near the town.

-x-

Arriving to the shores where the Sixth Angel laid, Asuka, carrying an Assault Rifle in Unit-02's left hand and a Smash Hawk in the right, was itching to lay waste to the immobile Angel. Setting her Eva's AT-Field at max, she neutralized the fish's AT-Field, leaving it susceptible to being destroyed.

Gaghiel saw the red Eva, so alike in resemblance to his father…but so disgraceful at being a tarnished forgery of him. Where was Israfel? Why hadn't she come to help him yet? This had become a live-or-die situation for him now!

"Rrrrrrraaurgh!" He growled, trying to intimidate it by seeming dangerous, but Asuka wasn't intimidated by him.

SPLASH! The water behind Gaghiel exploded and doused Unit-02 as something else arose from the ocean. It resembled the Third Angel a little, but instead of a bird-like face made of bone, it possessed a strange, plate-like face that resembled the yin/yang symbol. It charged and knocked Unit-02 away.

"What the Hell was that?!" Asuka shouted.

"It's another Angel!" Misato informed, surprised by the new creature.

"Two in one day? Gott, I must be lucky!" Asuka expressed; this would be the ultimate payback for the day the Fourth Angel defeated her and left.

Getting Unit-02 back up, the redhead used the Assault Rifle and fired its payload at the designated Seventh Angel, leaving several bullet holes in its left side; the Angel was, seemingly, ignoring its injuries, grabbing the Sixth Angel by one of its fins and, literally, tossing it back into the water. Then, it proceeded to concern itself with the red abomination modeled after its father.

How dare you attempt to hurt my brother with your piece of filth, thought Israfel, as she slowly healed from the bullets.

Asuka couldn't believe that this Angel helped the other Angel escape; Gaghiel was still there in the water, however, watching in relative safety, ready to aid his sister if necessary now that he was back in his element.

Abandoning the use of the long-range weapon, Asuka used the axe and hacked Israfel's arms off before going after her cores, slicing both in half as she slit her body in half.

Hey! Gaghiel gasped, hatting it when somebody, even his own brothers, hurt his sister like this. This is messed up, big time!

He plunged into the water and swam in circles, creating a large twister, shooting it upwards and using it like a missile of sorts to hit Unit-02!

-x-

"This is most unusual," said Fuyutsuki to Gendo; two Angels in the same day was never in the scenario nor was this attack. "For a large fish, this Sixth Angel is impressive with the water."

On the screen, to everyone's shock, the Seventh Angel's sliced remains started acting up…and turned into an Eva-sized pair of miniature replicas of its larger self, brownish-red and whitish-silver. The Angel then used its twins to gang up on Unit-02, whom had gotten back onto its feet.

"We should have Rei and Unit-01 out there aiding Asuka," Misato suggested, as Unit-00 wasn't combat-ready yet.

Rei was inside the plug and inserted into Unit-01, hoping the Eva would accept her like it did last time when the Third Angel arrived. The last time it was ever used was when Rumi had piloted it, and that was to keep Shinji from doing so and risk getting killed. It had never been confirmed or theorized what the risks were if the pilot of an Evangelion were cursed with an illness that seemed incapable of being removed from the body. Now, Rei was on medication, but she didn't suffer from anything that couldn't be taken care of, and she moved Unit-01 several times before.

-x-

"…Rumi?" Rumi, whom was lying on a wooden chair atop the back porch behind the house, lifted up her head to see Shinji walking over to her, looking over the large, stone railing that had been Geo Channeled ages ago to keep people from falling over and hitting the trees and stones below. "Kanami and Mayo were looking allover for you."

"Huh? Why?" She asked, sounding she had woken up from a light doze.

"It's almost September. You start school by then," he reminded her. "Although the day you actually start in that month will be based on your registration and everything."

"Oh. The idea of school was the farthest thing from my mind. Actually, it was too far from my mind to even think of 'cause of what has happened this summer."

Shinji sat down next to her, wearing his regular wig to give the impression that he was fine, and said, "That's life for ya: It catches you by surprise with everything it throws at you."

They looked out at the town below, just marveling at its beauty, its simplicity. Rumi then felt her wrist acting up and looked at the Angelbreaker; the bracelet had sprouted small tentacles that hanging around the jewels of the artifact. Her nephew, who should've demonstrated some degree of fear of the bracelet, didn't think to get away from her; while he did distrust the Angelbreaker's decision to choose Rumi as one of its wielders, he didn't doubt Rumi's ability to control it.

"Has it been doing that lately?" He asked her.

"No," she answered, trying to remove the tentacles and return the bracelet to a simple piece of jewelry. "The only time it ever did anything extreme was on that day Ramiel showed up."

The Angelbreaker ceased its activities and returned to normal; this allowed Shinji to relax more around his little aunt.

"It's peaceful out there in the town," Rumi spoke up.

"It always is peaceful out there," Shinji agreed.

"Not always," Rumi disagreed with him. "There's always something out there…and it's either troubling or disturbing when it comes here."

"Yeah," Shinji sighed, and then coughed a little.

"You okay?" She asked him.

"I'm fine," he told her. "I'm good."

"You sure?"

"Yes."

"You swear?"

She always had this look, this expression, that she used to show her minor or major concern for him, and he sighed and answered, "I swear, Rumi."

BOOM! Something loud struck their ears, but in a subtle tone, like an explosion from far away occurred and what they felt was like a shockwave of some sort that vibrated through the ground. Shinji and Rumi gasped and grabbed onto each other in a protective hug.

Akira and Bumi ran out onto the porch and found them together; they had felt the boom, as well.

"Are you two alright?" Akira asked them, her heart felt like it was trying to jump into her throat.

"Yes!" They both answered.

"What the heck was that?" Bumi wondered; his Geo Channeling had never felt such a phenomenon like that before. "It felt like an earthquake…but it didn't feel like an earthquake."

"Explosion, maybe?" Rumi asked; she and Shinji recalled the 'Non-Nuclear' explosive device the Japanese military had in their possession and used against Sachiel.

"Un-uh," Akira expressed. "We felt what large explosions feel like on the ground, and that wasn't an explosion of any kind. Not even the one you two endured."

Allover the town, those that felt the vibrations in the ground or had their homes shook a little were wondering what had happened to cause them. It was like somebody dropped a massive hammer against the nail that was the massive island they lived on.

-x-

It would seem that Father will have to endure the enemy for a while longer, went Gaghiel, swimming away from the battlegrounds with his sister's two halves in tow.

Meanwhile, on the ground, Unit-01, having arrived in time to aid Unit-02, had been laying on the ground with its legs ripped away, leaving Rei in a load of pain due to the synchronization that had been made between her and the Eva. Unit-02 had suffered less damage than the Test Type Eva; only the left arm and waist had been damaged with said arm severed and the armor of the waist destroyed. While the Angels could've killed them and continue onto the fortress city, they had to mend their injuries, as well and assault them another day. The large shockwave was provided by Gaghiel jumping out of the water and slamming hard onto the ground, knocking both Evas off their feet and knocking everything else away, but the resulting aftereffect was that Israfel had to gather her two pieces and carry him out to the water again before he dried off too much.

Accursed abominations, thought Israfel, as her two halves recombined into her whole self. Gaghiel, brother, if it's between going against those freaks to free Father and going after a little girl to restore the pride of us children, I'd rather take my chances going after the girl.

Uh, no way, sister. Before Ramiel was defeated, I saw through his internal eyes that the girl and her mother had the Angelbreaker. You'd have to be in two pieces or so just to deal with one half of the thing they got.

The Angelbreaker… That accursed monstrosity! If it didn't exist, we wouldn't have trouble dealing with these Lilin! I want closure and justice for what that little bitch did to Sachiel before he got turned!

We all want to do the bitch in, Israfel. We may have to ask Sahaquiel or Zeruel to take care of those abominations and the girl, respectively.

As he swam them away to the deep abyss of his territory of what used to be a coastal city, they couldn't stand to admit that, while they had escaped with their lives, they had been beaten for a time.

-x-

It seemed that Rei had just gotten out of the hospital…only to be thrown back into it. The doctors had informed Gendo that she'd be bedridden for at least three days. While her previous injuries had mended, her legs were a new injury.

Asuka, on the other, suffered no other injuries than the one to her pride. While the end of the world didn't happen, her desire to defeat an Angel had been taken again. It was like she was being taunted, mocked and made a fool of. She wanted closure and justice against the Angels for the hurt they inflicted on her pride.

"…This is like a new type of game," sighed Misato, sitting at her desk whilst Ritsuko grabbed a cup of coffee. "They show up, they fight, they get hurt a bit and then they leave. How are we looking?"

"Both Evas will need five days to repair," Ritsuko answered. "This is like a game…except there are no winners in sight for the foreseeable future."

"If this keeps up, we may have to do something the government hasn't thought of."

"Which is?"

"Go to Akira Town and ask Akira and Rumi to deal with the Angels for us."

Ritsuko sat her cup down and questioned Misato.

"You're joking, right?" She asked, not really wanting to piss Gendo off any further than he already was when Akira told him to keep the Evas away from her home.

"They have three former Angels, defeated and in rehab…and we haven't defeated any recent ones since the Third Angel. The Fifth Angel didn't even bother trying to come here. What does it really take to deal with these guys? An Evangelion copied from the First Angel or a strange woman and her daughter that just cover themselves up in armor and fly around and stuff?"

The faux-blond couldn't believe Misato had brought up the photos of Rumi and Akira; half the whole of NERV HQ that saw them were wondering how the two were able to do what they did to the Angel without getting hurt, not to mention the older woman showing that much skin to the public.

"Misato, you said that Akira had been to your house before, right?" She asked the purple-haired woman. "Was there anything she spoke of to you about anything relating to the Angels?"

"Can you keep a secret?" Misato asked her.

"Not if it helps to save the human race."

"No, but when I left to get permission to bring her here to speak with Commander Ikari, she did clean up my apartment for me."

"It was Akira that cleaned your place up?" Ritsuko was shocked; she had been by Misato's yesterday and was surprised to find the place glistening like new…and the refrigerator packed with some non-instant food ingredients.

"It was a little weird having her there. I had to invite her in first in order to get her in and then later, she cleans my place up. Cleaning up, I get, but inviting her in was odd."

"It's not odd. Maya looked up something about people blessed with elemental powers a while ago in a book she acquired from the town. It turns out that certain channelers over one-hundred years of age have a subconscious need to be invited into a person's home. It's like an under-used piece of vampire lore: A vampire cannot enter one's home unless they've been invited. If a channeler enters your home uninvited, their abilities will act up and cause them some form of discomfort until they leave the person's home or have been invited. In a one-hundred-year-old Hydro Channeler's case, they'd be drained of the water in their bodies; a Geo Channeler's bones would become brittle; the skin of a Pyro Channeler's body would burn like a third-degree assault and an Aero Channeler's lungs would stop working, leaving them to suffocate."

"What about a Unity Channeler?"

"They can suffer each one of the four sufferings, depending on how many times they entered one's home unannounced. If Akira entered your home unannounced, she could've lost her fluids, have soft bones, burning skin or seized lungs and suffer from asphyxia, depending on which one she suffered from previously. Because of this, it's also part of the culture of the town of Akira to let the centenarian elderly ask you if they can come into your home before entering. Akira herself is no exception, as she is over one-hundred years old."

"Somehow, I can't imagine Rumi's mother's skin burning or her lungs being seized. Still, if the UN went to that town and asked them for help against the Angels, they wouldn't have to worry about the people wanting some form of monetary compensation in return."

"Yeah, that's true. Commander Ikari, however, probably wouldn't allow that, though."

Misato had to sigh in agreement; even if the government went to Akira and sought to hire her, Gendo would have words about that…but then again, Akira would probably turn them down.

-x-

The rest of the day calmed after that strange phenomenon that occurred outside Akira Town from afar, but Akira wasn't convinced that something so odd that happens so far away wouldn't happen a second time in the future. She got the feeling that something happened that involved that NERV agency; an Angel attack or just a show of power…with some drawback issues. Looking down at her bracelet, she wondered if it could show her events that transpire from great distances.

"Could you show me?" She asked it.

Her vision blurred for a moment and then returned to normal, but her perception wasn't of the present; the Angelbreaker answered her plea by showing her what had happened to cause the loud noise. A giant, fish-like creature jumped out of the ocean and slammed onto the ground, aiding a pair of twin-like monsters and knocking two Evangelions to the ground…and damaging them before being able to escape back into the water. The fish-like creature had to be dragged into the water by the twins and the Evangelions had to be airlifted back to Tokyo-3 for repairs while the pilots, the First and Second Child, required some medical attention.

So that's what happened, Akira thought, as the images ceased. Why didn't those Angels come here? I can understand how little a fish can do when out of water, but a creature that splits itself into two when assaulted by something… I wonder…were they trying to make my daughter a secondary concern that time…or were they just demonstrating some natural persistence to flaunt their abilities? There's still so much we don't know…and so much that needs to be done.

"Akira?" She turned to the sound of her nephew's voice, seeing him standing three feet away from where she sat on the steps of the front porch, holding a scroll in his left hand.

"Shinji," she greeted him, "is something wrong?"

"I just…needed to talk to you about that woman," he uttered, lifting his scroll-bearing arm up. "The one that I drew."

She nodded and gestured for him to sit next to her, which he did. When he unrolled the scroll to present the drawing of the woman he'd seen in Rumi's half of the Angelbreaker, Akira became concerned for him because of this woman.

"You said that you found out a little more about this Yui through the Angelbreaker when it delved into the mind of the elder you once knew who works for Gendo. I just need to know one thing: Did she look anything like this woman I drew?" He asked her.

Akira nodded and sighed, "Yes, Shinji. That's Yui Ikari… That's…that was your mother."

"My mother, huh?" He sighed, and then rolled the scroll back up again. "I don't see much of a resemblance between myself and her. I only see it between her and that blue-haired girl at NERV. A face…to go with a name…but still lacks one important piece: A history…to go with a person. Even if she was my mother, and I have a large doubt that she even was in the major sense of it, I still don't know her. I don't remember her. I don't even remember being as close to her as I am with y'all."

"And…you feel it's due to the factors of being discarded and having no photographs or people that did know her willing to tell you anything about her?"

"Along with her being a factor: Who was she? Who were her relatives from before she got married? What she did for a living? What she spent most of her time doing? I don't believe she embraced motherhood herself; she just had me…and that was that."

"Parenthood is a gift and a privilege, one that has to be earned. Just because you have children, that doesn't make you a parent. If she did do such a thing with you, Shinji, what will you do about her impact on your life: Will you bury her in the abyss of the past…or will you let her hollow memory consume you? We both already know that, for some reason, Rumi doesn't like her, and she's never even met her."

"I'd leave her buried in the past where she belongs if it weren't for a dark feeling I've had ever since I drew her."

"What dark feeling?"

"Unsure, but maybe the possibility that she wasn't as innocent as she appears in the drawing."

"Innocence dies. Pride doesn't."

"You think she was proud of something?"

"No, since I, myself, don't know her."

Shinji inhaled the air around him and exhaled, refreshing his lungs.

"I see you still use that Pyro Channeling breathing exercise I had suggested for you to take," Akira expressed. "How do you feel?"

"Good."

"That's good to know."

-x-

August Third arrived and the evening after the afternoon revealed Nemo and Camille trying to initiate the first attempt at a stable and, potentially, long-term relationship: A first date. Nemo had asked Camille out to dinner at a ramen stand, not exactly how he pictured it, but Camille responded that a ramen-themed dinner was no different from a regular or romantic-themed one, and accepted.

"Garlic bread, Nemo?" She asked him, holding a slice.

"Yes, thank you," he obliged, accepting said slice.

Camille had been a little worried ever since she revealed what she and her grandmother had known about the Angelbreaker, but it appeared that Nemo didn't look down upon her at all; he still liked her…and wanted for what they felt toward each other to be genuine…and everlasting. She was also impressed that they had the same taste in shrimp-flavored noodles with a pinch of hot sauce in it.

RING-RING-RING! Nemo's cell phone started ringing, but in the tone he set it for in case of an emergency. In other words, he'd stop what he was doing and answer it.

"Go on," Camille told him, as he had looked to her to explain the tone. "It's okay."

He sighed and answered, "Hello? What?! When? Oh, Kami… Okay, I'll be there."

Camille helped him up and he paid for their meal, running down the street toward the mountain.

"Anytime you wish to fill me in?" She asked him.

"My nephew, Shinji," he expressed. "He got sick again!"

"How bad is it?"

"We don't know. He's not answering his door."

When he arrived home, there was already an electric-powered ambulance outside the gate and Mayo was out front waiting for him.

"What happened?" He asked his elder niece as they all went inside.

"When Shinji wasn't feeling well this morning, he decided to go rest," Mayo started from the beginning, "but earlier this evening, Rumi heard him coughing a lot inside his room. She couldn't get him to open it and then she heard him fall to the floor, so she used her hook swords and broke the door open to get in."

"Wait a minute. Rumi broke the door open with her swords?" Nemo repeated, unsure of whether to believe that or disbelieve it.

They showed up in the hall outside Shinji's room and saw at least three paramedics and Akira talking in his room, Rumi beside Shinji, who was sitting on the floor against his bed; Shinji looked like he was on the edge of suffering in silence.

"Oh, man," Nemo sighed, recalling how his nephew's skin had paled a little the last time he had relapsed, and shuddered at the sight of Shinji puking out blood. "Oh, dear, God."

"And we didn't know about it," said Bumi to his brother. "I asked him earlier this afternoon if he was lying about feeling a little out-of-sorts, and he never gave a hint that he was lying."

"He must've thought it was nothing serious," said Miaka, holding up Taeko, who was worried about her oldest cousin as the paramedics started picking him up and carrying him out; at this point of his illness, he had to go back to the hospital.

-x-

"…I should've known something like this was going to happen," Rumi sighed, laying on the couch in the waiting room with the others, awaiting her turn to see Shinji in his room whilst Akira was sitting next to her.

"He must've believed it was just something trivial," Akira added in. "I didn't know, either. None of us did. No one's at fault."

Camille, because she wanted these family members to have some family time right now, sat a great distance away from them in the room.

Nobody's making a lotta large talk, but seeing them all together here, past eleven and approaching midnight, allows me to know that when something like this happens, it tends to be very serious due to their strong bonds born of association, acceptance and suffering. She thought, admiring the family for how they try to stand together when one or a few of their own suffer.

We're practically disconnected right now, thought Kanami, recalling all the other times they've played out this act again, with all their roles repeating themselves again. Everyone's quiet and distant as a whole, but individually, we're yelling at ourselves in mass hysteria over who's to blame for this act of torment. Excluding our extended moments at home and vacation periods, I feel like we never really get to see each other…except during the festivals, parties…and disasters like this.

Moments later, Bumi, who had been on the lookout for Dr. Gyatso, saw him approaching, walking just like he used to before Gendo's assault on him, and the good doctor was accompanied by an assistant.

"Here he comes," he told every one, and Tsukiko went to get Shinobu, who was seeing Shinji in his room. "I wonder how bad it is."

When Shinobu showed up, that's when Gyatso was allowed to freeze the water into ice…only to shatter it into bits.

"His leukemia's come back," he explained. "He's no longer in remission."

"We checked his test results and cancer cells are showing at thirty-three percent," his assistant added.

"Uh, just how many is that for it to be considered bad?" Miaka asked them.

"Any to all of them," Gyatso answered.

"Chemo?" Nemo suggested.

"Well, it's an option, but Shinji doesn't seem to take it very well…and his cancer may be too far along for it to have any effect on him."

Rumi sighed at a defeat before a battle can even begin and said, "So…you need more of my bone marrow, then?"

"Yeah…but the leukemia's not the biggest problem Shinji has right now. Apparently, whatever happened outside the town that resulted in that boom affected one of his body's necessary functions," Gyatso explained, but that put a worried look on Rumi.

"You mean…his kidneys don't fight, anymore?" She asked him, and he nodded, sadly, in the positive. Oh, no. Why…why now?

-x-

Shinji hated this. First Akira and Rumi get out of the hospital after recovering from fatigue…and the next thing he knows is that he has to go back because of his cancer, and worse is the knowledge of his kidneys dying, permanently, this time. He felt fine before the small boom that happened and later, he only thought he had to worry about a small cough that was meaningless. Now, he was back in the hospital, hoping he wouldn't have to be here.

We had always assumed I would only live for one more year because the doctors said that my kidneys regaining their function was a small miracle due to the bone marrow Rumi gave me, he thought, removing his wig from his head. I tried not to believe it, hoping that I'd be alive to see Rumi have a good life of her own, maybe even beating this illness of mine. But…it's as I've been told before: The gods are often cruel to people. They'll do mysterious acts to justify the things, for better or for worse…that people have done in the past, present and future.

Knock-knock! He turned to the door of his room and saw Rumi standing there, her expression evoking sadness. He hated it when she was saddened by his suffering.

"Hey, Shinji," she greeted him.

"Hey," he greeted back. "They gave me a lotta morphine in case I started feeling pain. Heh-heh, like I feel pain right now when I don't, really?"

Rumi knew that he was trying to make a joke, but couldn't find the strength to laugh. Instead, she went over and sat by his bed.

"Comedy's never been one of your strengths, Shinji," she told him. "Arts and crafts and culinary remedies were your thing."

"Like hook swords are yours."

There was silence for about two minutes before Rumi spoke up again.

"You know…all you'd have to do is ask me, and I'd do it," she told him, and he knew what she was talking about.

"You know I wouldn't, Rumi. Even if I did, it wouldn't be right. It wouldn't even work out in the end. They'd just end up with the both us in trouble."

Rumi lowered the upper half of her body onto his bed, looking up at him with a small smile; he was always going to be against an irreplaceable organ transplant, whether she was willing or unwilling. Nothing any of them said to him would convince him to change his mind. He was a mountain in his own right against the positive wind that was what others tried to suggest in the interest of saving his life: No matter how much the wind, everyone else, howled, he, the mountain, couldn't bow.

"Why did this have to happen?" She asked him.

"I don't know. Karma, perhaps?" He suggested.

"I don't believe in karma, Shinji."

"Me, neither."

-x-

"…Research on the Third Angel samples has progressed," Ritsuko informed Gendo, two days after the Third of August. "We were able to replicate the cells that aid in accelerated healing and can begin applying them to the Evas."

"It'll have to wait," Gendo spoke up, irritated by the agency's continued inability to defeat the Angels…and irritated at the fact that SEELE had instructed him and Fuyutsuki to oversee the special project over in Antarctica. "NERV is on constant stand-by."

Ritsuko could tell he was angry about the humanized Angels, as well…and hoped something else she discovered would remedy this.

"There was something else one of the researchers found," she started off with. "He was able to get one of the bone samples to regenerate into a different form. It replicated and shifted into a basic triangle."

Fuytsuki didn't like much of where this was going; ever since NERV saw the satellite footage of the Fifth Angel's defeat, the R&D department has been working vigorously with the preserved samples of the Third Angel. They had even managed to catch a few extra seconds of the armored Rumi and Akira changing out of the armor and into regular clothes, but saw the source of the armor being a pair of strange bracelets. He wondered if Ritsuko was trying to create a weapon from the samples.

"Go on," Gendo permitted her to continue.

"It's still only a theory, but it's possible to copy the same things that woman and the little girl had used against the Angel. They had generated something very similar to an AT-Field during the battle. So the armor and weapons they used must've been made similarly like the Angels."

Now Fuyutsuki knew he didn't like where this was going. Knowing that NERV was facing some ridicule at being unable to handle the Angels with the Evas was degrading enough, along with the Angels that did show up attacking a small town instead of the fortress city because of a vendetta they had sworn against the little girl that used Unit-01 to defeat the Third Angel, but trying to create smaller weapons from the remains of Angels using the inspiration of a pair of damn bracelets was over insane. He believed people had played God too many times and were now trying to pervert creation even farther with the Angel samples they had collected.

"How long would it take to make a viable copy of one?" Gendo asked her, not showing that he was interested in the theory.

"Potentially, just three days," Ritsuko suggested.

"You may proceed," he ordered her, and Fuyutsuki knew something terrible was going to happen.

-x-

"…Ew… I can't believe that stuff's bone marrow," said Tsukiko, looking at the disgusting sac of fluid that the doctors had administered to Shinji half an hour ago when they acquired Rumi's bone marrow to treat his leukemia again; she had never seen bone marrow before until now.

"Yeah," went Shinji, looking up from a picture book, "I'm disgusted by the color, too. Gross."

It had been a day after Shinji had to go back to the hospital for treatment, with the others wondering how he'd hold up not being able to go anywhere for extended periods with his kidneys not working.

"They tried a new Hydro Channeling method of extracting fluids and solid waste from a patient on me," he told his second youngest aunt.

"Oh? What happened?"

"I needed a bedpan after the doctors channeled the liquid leavings out of my body. They do it once after every three hours, whenever they try to feed me, that is."

"And it works?"

"Mm-hmm. Although I have to say that hospital food still tastes stale."

"Heh-heh-heh! Yeah…it may always taste like that."

"How are things at home?"

"Everyone's worried about you. Kanami and Mayo started making paper cranes yesterday because of the legend and commonly-told belief that if you make one-thousand of them, whatever one wish you make will cone true."

"One can and will hope that such a feat can be achieved," Shinji sighed with a small smile.

"I heard from a friend I met years ago that belief creates reality, as belief is synonymous with faith as well as with the soul." Tsukiko expressed; Nemo's philosophies had really gotten a hold of her sense of truths and beliefs.

Knock-knock! They turned toward the door and saw Bumi, holding the large scrapbook that Shinji had worked on and completed.

"Hey," he greeted them, and then presented the book to his nephew. "Is this the one you asked me to get from your room?"

"Yes," Shinji answered. "Thank you, Bumi."

The eldest Geo Channeler handed the book over his nephew, but then confessed to something he hated himself for saying.

"Shinji, despite you, like some of the others, being against an organ transplant, even it meant to save you, I think you're a little selfish in that area. A little selfish." He uttered out. "There, I said it."

"Maybe…maybe," Shinji agreed with him. "Except everyone's got a right to say 'no' to something or someone sometimes, Bumi. And, honestly, I don't believe I'd survive it…and I'd be signing a second departure warrant to go with my own."

"But…you also wish for everyone else to be considered about it," said Tsukiko, still upset about the fact that one of the only things keeping her nephew alive for now was, aside from his will, a small machine acting as an artificial pair of kidneys to go along with the medical remedies and Hydro Channeling practices needed to aid his immune and waste disposal systems. Somehow, I feel that it's partially my fault for this part of his behavior.

Tsukiko used to be against the idea of Rumi being a constant donor for Shinji every time his cancer came back to hurt him, and now she felt desperate that somebody should save him from dying. Her nephew used to ask her why she always seemed so miserable about him and Rumi when he suffered from a previous relapse three years ago.

"…But nobody chose for this to happen," Shinji had told her when she expressed her misery. "There's more than two sides to every story written out…just as there are more than two sides to a problem and a solution. But are there any sides to a family matter, Tsukiko? I don't see the sides. I only see the imbalance…myself as a scale, always tilting between right and wrong, life or death. I know that being alive is a positive thing, even if it comes with all the pain, but to die… I'd probably be freed from pain…but I'd be hurting the people left behind, and that's wrong."

And it was, pretty much, a combination of Kanami's belief that when something is willingly given, it has value, Tsukiko's former uneasiness against Rumi donating her tissues to Shinji, Shinji's own unwillingness to accept said girl's tissues without her permission and Akira's unwillingness to force or trick Rumi into helping her only nephew that made the super-centenarian woman make sure that whatever happens medically, both Shinji and Rumi got the last say instead of the elder members of the family. While Shinji was already at the legal age to be emancipated, a special set of documents had been required to make it so that nobody could ever decide anything for Rumi, medically, except for Rumi herself…or whenever she asked for assistance due to her young mind.

Shinji opened the book to the first page, showing that his initial work had been crude and not well-made: He had used magazine clippings of natural environments like forests and deserts for a background before he used some photo clippings of each family member's head to dot the background. They were much younger back when he started out making the book, and now everyone was older and either more wiser or mature. "Draw strength from the Whole of the Family and the Love of the Heart" was written around the back of the front cover and the first page.

"It's impressive," said Tsukiko as she saw the picture.

"Extremely," added Bumi.

"Thank you," Shinji praised them.

-x-

GASP! Misato awoke from a nightmare, drenched in sweat, shrouded in the darkness of her bedroom. It was of that horrid day in the South Pole…where the end of the world nearly took place. Only instead of seeing Adam, she saw a giant version of Rei Ayanami, holding a black sphere in her hands…with a smile that seemed to border on insanity.

This is getting crazy, she thought, getting out of bed and entering her kitchen for a glass of water. What did I get myself into when I met Akira and saw that bracelet of hers?

Ring-ring-ring! She heard her house phone ring…at four in the morning, and she picked up.

"Katsuragi residence," she uttered. "Huh…what? Okay, I'll be right there."

She hung up and went to her room to change into her NERV uniform; the call came from NERV about Angel detection from the same sight as the Sixth and Seventh Angels.

-x-

As sunlight shone through the forest west of Akira Town, Rumi ran past the trees with a gracefulness that was unsurpassed in a six-year-old child.

"Shinji!" She called out, peeking behind a tree. "Come out, come out, wherever you are."

Quickly, she climbed the tree and hid atop a branch and looked around for her nephew. She couldn't remember why she was there or when Shinji had gotten out of the hospital, but it seemed like some sort of a miracle to her.

"Rumi?" She heard him calling out to her and she looked down and saw him looking up right at her; his skin wasn't that sickly shade of pale-white or showing veins on the wrists or nape. "I see you."

She liked this appearance of his: He looked well, without any type of illness hampering his life, even had a full head of hair like one of his wigs.

"Catch me, catch me!" She cheered, and then jumped off the branch and into his arms.

"Whoa!" Shinji had gasped, falling onto his back with her atop his chest. "You're getting heavier when you jump from high places."

"I do not!" She told him, knowing he was only joking. "Hmm?"

"What is it, Rumi?" Shinji asked her as his aunt got up off him.

"I thought I heard somebody," she expressed, looking around.

"Who's that?" He wondered, catching her attention as he pointed up toward the trees.

A woman was above their heads, dressed in a pink blouse, black skirt that moderately covered her knees and a white lab coat. She reminded them of that albino girl they saw only once in Tokyo-3, but then Rumi recalled her nephew's drawing of that strange woman with the different color pigments. This Yui Ikari that was his mother…but it put a frown on Rumi's face to see her here.

"What is she doing here?" She asked, masking her irritation.

"I don't know," Shinji responded. "I thought she was dead."

Then, without warning, Yui leapt from off the tree branch she was standing atop of and made contact with Shinji, knocking Rumi out of the way…and stabbing her nephew with a knife!

"SHINJI!" Rumi gasped, as the forest suddenly lost its brightness and flow of natural life, shifting into a dark setting: The trees became metallic and crystallized, the grass became lifeless black sand and the sun had turned into a blood-red moon, casting a reddish hue on everything.

"Urgh!" Shinji groaned, feeling the knife pierce him underneath his heart.

Rumi, from out of nowhere, pulled out her hook swords and aimed them at Yui.

"Get off him," she demanded, earning a menacing glare from the older woman, who started to resemble Rei Ayanami more and more without much emotion. "Don't make me do what I will do to you."

"You'll do what, exactly?" She asked her, sounding rather vicious instead of moral or motherly.

"You're hurting him," Rumi asserted herself, not wanting to assault this woman while Shinji was beneath her. "Get off him or else I will hurt you."

"You know something, missy," went Yui in response, "I don't think you're going to do anything."

To try and prove her point, she drove the knife inside Shinji deeper.

"Aaaaurgh!" He cried out in pain.

Forgive me, Shinji, Rumi thought, and then turned her left hook sword around and hurled it at Yui's head, knocking her away with the spiked hilt.

"Ow…" Shinji groaned quietly as his aunt helped him off his back and pulled the knife out his chest.

Rumi then ripped off part of her skort and tied it around his injury to staunch the bleeding. Her gaze hardly left Yui by the time she finished dressing up the wound.

"Give him back to me," they heard her say, getting back up and sporting a gash on her forehead.

Using her remaining hook sword, Rumi aimed it at the older woman and uttered, "Stay away, woman."

"He's mine."

"He was yours. Not anymore."

"I've crossed back over to the living to get him."

"You only live once in your life. His mother died when he was four."

"I AM his mother!"

"You ARE not!" Rumi then jumped the woman to the ground, raising her sword over her head. "You're not his mother! You don't know him! You're not even the one that protects him!"

Yui's face suddenly shifted from what almost became Rei's face into Gendo's, with red eyes and a pair of horns on his forehead.

"You will die!" He uttered, demonic in his tone…and cold in his cruelty.

"Stay…AWAY!" Rumi shouted, and slammed the hook on his head, shattering it to pieces.

GASP! Rumi awoke to find herself in her bedroom, panting from the intensity of what was nothing more than a surrealistic dream.

It…it was just a dream, she realized, looking at her right arm; the Angelbreaker had formed a series of strange, biomechanical scaly armor down to her elbow…slowly reverting back its default form as a bracelet to hide its existence. I thought it was real. I thought Shinji was okay.

She checked her clock and saw the time was five minutes after six on the Fifth of August. Falling back to her pillow, she sighed at the impossibility of herself actually harming another person like how she did in her dream. Sure, she fought Sachiel and beat him in a brutal fashion before he was humanized, but that was before she knew he was a 'he' and not an 'it'…and she was protecting her precious nephew from harm.

"Shinji…I miss you," she told herself.

-x-

At the same time, Shinji had quietly reached out into the air with his right hand, having awoken several minutes ago from a similar surrealistic dream like Rumi's: He was being held in some sort of hospital that wasn't like any he'd seen before, and was being poked and prodded by doctors he was unfamiliar with. Then, he saw Gendo and Rei looking down at him, and Rei was sporting a bracelet on her left arm that was similar to the Angelbreaker bracelets: It was bone-like in its outer structure, with a red jewel that looked almost like an eye that pulsated a little…but had an aura that was extremely unlike the Angelbreaker itself. It…was like that other dream he had with Rei fighting against his grandmother in Tokyo-3. And then…he heard Gendo say, "As long as he suffers from his leukemia, he's useless to me. However, the girl's organs should help keep him alive until all the Angels are dealt with. Proceed."

He had cut Rumi open, he thought, recalling the sight of his youngest aunt laying on a gurney with her torso surgically cut opened and much of her insides had been removed…along with her right hand and her half of the Angelbreaker. He killed her…to keep me alive…against my will…just to fight in a war I didn't want to become involved in.

He turnedto the counter where his book lay, and atop it was his locket; it had been taken off when the doctors changed him out of his clothes and into his hospital gown, though he was lucky he was allowed to hold onto it because it helped to keep him calm during his examinations when they brought him in. He opened it to see the picture of himself and Rumi when they were younger. While it served its purpose of bringing relief to his soul, it also brought the unwanted pain of knowing that, because of his leukemia, Rumi was somehow, despite all attempts keep him permanently healthy, bound to his fate. He was always grateful that Rumi was asked to donate something he needed to make him feel better before the doctors started poking her with needles, even if he rarely ever said it to her because he was in recovery, but he hated that her freedom felt, somewhat, restricted much of the time because of him. As long as he was like this, she'd never be free of his unintentional hold over her.

I'm sorry, Rumi, he had told himself, wishing he could've told her, face-to-face.

-x-

"…It's the Sixth Angel again," said Hyuga to the rest of the staff. "Same location: The Kii Peninsula. It's staying several meters away from the shores."

"Yeah, it's trying a different tactic than what it did the last time," said Aoba, as everyone saw on the screens that the giant, fish-like Angel was using its fins to splash large walls of water into the air and onto the ground, as if it were trying to get noticed.

"Any sign of the Seventh Angel?" Misato asked them.

"No other AT-Fields detected so far," said Maya to her. "What's it waiting for?"

"How are we doing with the Evas?"

"They're still out of action. This is bad. The only one that even functions is Unit-00, but it's not combat-ready yet."

And at a time where we couldn't afford to lose in this war, Misato thought bitterly; while the idea of using Unit-00 was still a possibility, only Rei was capable of synchronizing with it to a small degree, Asuka only had experience with Unit-02, meaning the chances of her synchronizing with the Prototype Eva were slim to none, and that was even if she tried to pilot it; the Second Child was selective of which Eva she was willing to pilot.

As Gaghiel kept splashing water around air and dousing the ground and half-sunk buildings until they shattered from the repeated impacts, NERV was trying to come up with a strategy to compensate their lack of preparation at this time.

"Uh, I can make a suggestion," said Shigeru to Misato.

"Yeah?" She asked back.

"Why don't we ask that leader of Akira Town to take care of the Angel? Her daughter and she did quite well with the Fifth Angel." Shigeru suggested, and that caused some of the other technicians to look at him like he had doubts on NERV's ability to deal with the Angels. "It's only a suggestion!"

"That or have the JSSDF deal with the Angel with an N² Mine," suggested Maya, though she was also considering Shigeru's idea of having the little girl and her mother take care of the Angel…and possibly all other Angels to go along with the ones they've already humanized.

It was a questionable decision: Request the aid of the Japanese military…or the aid of a mother/daughter team that had in their possession the one thing that could actually deal with the threat? And because Misato was left in charge, Gendo and Fuyutsuki having left toward the South Pole, it was all in her hands now. Her choice held the potential for the fate of the human race. She took out her phone and dialed a number.

-x-

"…I can't believe this is how one of own meets their end," sighed Akira, waking up from a night of darkness and total lack of dreams to make time seem slower. Maybe I can see if Gyatso can find a replacement kidney from the donor registration system. No, that'd be suicidal. Even if he did find a unrelated match, a transplant of that sort would be half and half. Why didn't I think of performing Hydro Channeling on his kidneys before they gave up on him? That could've helped, right?

Some of her hair was out of place in the front of her head, so she raised her right hand to set the strands back in place, but then discovered something different about her half of the Angelbreaker: The bracelet, which had originally been loose-fitting around around her wrist, was now fasten onto her wrist, like a ring was on a finger. She placed her left hand on it in an attempt to remove it, and the bracelet became loose-fitting again.

It becomes form-fitting when on my hand…but loose-fitting when I choose to remove it? Wow, you're just full of surprises, aren't you?

She then got out of bed and slipped into her slippers, walking down the hall to the kitchen, ever thankful that, despite the shrine and temple-like exterior of the estate, much of the interior was no different from a regular house most of the time, allowing the pleasant, warm-welcoming feel.

"Huh? Rumi?" She halted, seeing her youngest daughter at the kitchen table with a cup of milk in front of her.

"Huh? Oh. Hey, Mom," Rumi responded, turning a little to face her, but then turned back to face the cup. "I didn't hear you get up."

Akira got herself a cup of milk and sat down across the table from her.

"You wanna talk about it?" She asked her.

"Talk about what?" Rumi asked.

"Well, you look like you had a bad dream, so I assumed that was bothering you…or our current state of existence with one of own in bad shape."

"I was with Shinji…in my dream last night," Rumi revealed. "We were in a forest, running happily around the trees. But then…that…Ikari woman shows up and hurts him. I…I just lost it and struck her in the face with the hilt of one of my swords because she wouldn't get off him."

She continued with how the woman then turned into Gendo and she shattered his head to pieces, sighing as it came to a conclusion. This made Akira concerned about the mere possibility that Gendo may try something against Shinji, which could drive Rumi to be hostile toward him if she ever found out…and the very aura of devotion and protection that was present in Rumi. And as much as the super-centenarian could deny it, there seemed to be something about her grandson that made Rumi particularly devoted to his continued existence, almost like she'd be less of herself if he ever did die.

"…I really don't like the woman," she heard Rumi say, referring to Yui Ikari. "I just…don't like her…or Gendo, either. They're not good people."

Akira gulped down her cup of milk and responded, "I don't have much of an opinion for…the Ikari woman, as you put it, but Gendo's not in his right mind, wherever he misplaced or discarded it. Can you describe your emotions when she comes to mind?"

"Anger… Fear… Desire…and bitterness. It's like she has the look of a woman that pretends to be who she isn't…and is after something that is best left alone…and can charm certain people to help her along the way to achieving her goal… Or goals."

"Like an angel…a fallen angel from ancient times…hiding behind a mask of deception that is under a mask of righteousness, weaving a web of lies."

Rumi drunk her milk and nodded, "That's how I feel about her. How old was she at the time of her…not-of-old-age departure?"

"Around twenty-seven, but based on Shinji's drawing of her, I'd have to say that she looked more than likely to be in her early-twenties instead of her mid to late-twenties."

"And Gendo married her? Isn't there a law against that?"

"Not in this country, Rumi. Here, it's legal for women to marry right after they turn sixteen. With men, it's twenty. That marriage law's been around for a long time."

"Sixteen-year-old girls are able to get married, huh? Kanami might wanna bat men away from Mayo when she turns sixteen."

"Just like how I'll want to block the ki of the first guy that tries to lay a finger on you?"

"Uh…I still have to wait ten more years for something like that to happen."

RING-RING-RING! The kitchen phone started acting up and Akira got up to answer it.

"Rokubungi residence, this is Akira speaking," she said to whoever was on the other end of the line. "Could you repeat that request again, Ms. Katsuragi?"

Rumi turned to face her mother, wondering why that purple-haired woman (she assumed it was Misato, the only person she'd seen with purple hair) would call this early in the morning.

Akira looked to her daughter, hearing Misato's request being uttered slower than asked to be, and uttered, "Can I trust that there won't be some sort of a problem, afterward? Okay, we'll deal with it (she pointed to Rumi and then herself). Contact you later. Bye."

"What was that all about?" Rumi asked her mother.

"Heh. NERV, apparently, has experienced a difficulty in dealing with an Angel that's nowhere near here or Tokyo-3," she expressed. "Misato has asked that we, you and I, who have already dealt with Ramiel, to deal with this one, and, if possible, the other one that came after it a few days ago."

"NERV, thee NERV…wants us to humanize an Angel they can't use their weapons against?"

"Yes."

"Are they desperate?"

"Let me see… They don't have their abominations in any capacity, whatsoever, to deal with them right now, they don't want to contact the Japanese military because they don't want to redraw any mappings of the archipelago, Gendo and Kozo aren't there to give any orders and they don't want the end of the human race to end, like that'll ever happen. Of course, they're desperate."

"But…Mama…we haven't had any training with the Angelbreaker ever since we used it to humanize Ramiel. I mean, what we did last time…it was just reflexive."

"The first time is always by reflex. We'll have to learn to use it while we get to the Kii Peninsula."

"The…Kii Peninsula? But that's at the edge of this large island. It's a ruin over there."

"We…should at least try to get there."

"Will you promise not to fall again?"

"I promise."

"Then, we should go."

"You haven't eaten yet. Breakfast, first, then the Angel."

-x-

"…This is the real Dead Sea," sighed Fuyutsuki, looking out at what used to be Antarctica, now reduced to very small icecaps sticking out of reddish-orange water. "You could call this Hell…"

"And yet Man exist here, still showing signs of life," uttered Gendo, as a large object was secured and wrapped in straps on the ship they were on.

"Because we're protected by…what, science?"

"Science is mankind's true power."

"But the power of science has yet to overcome the power of nature. Science means artificiality, what isn't normal. Nature means naturalism, what is normal. Only a few of humanity's species can form a subtle balance between the two."

"Like that place? That town? The one that has the highest signs of life in Japan?"

"The town you once resided in? It has the highest concentration of life than the rest of the planet combined? Well, look at how the people as a whole are dedicated to the continued existence of life there: There's no landfill, no garbage, no oil to be harvested by large, industrial power plants, and no massive death tolls. Captain Katsuragi once said that there's more recycling and composting going on there than the rest of the world."

"Recycling. Reducing waste by reusing materials that have been used. People will never understand that no matter how hard you try, in the end, it'll all be in vain."

Moments later, a man arrived behind Fuyutsuki and whispered something in his ears before leaving again, which made the Sub-Commander the least bit concerned.

"Less than three minutes before four this morning, the Sixth Angel returned to the Kii Peninsula," he informed Gendo. "Eva Units-01 and 02 are still incapacitated from their previous battle with it and the Seventh Angel and Unit-00 is still not battle-ready. Captain Katsuragi has requested the aid…of a little girl and her mother in dealing with the Angel."

He purposely left out their names to spare himself Gendo's anger; it had become common knowledge to him and Dr. Akagi that the mother/daughter pair were people Gendo hated to speak of, aside from Shinji and SEELE. He was also wondering who Gendo hated the most: His adoptive mother, Akira, her youngest daughter, Rumi, SEELE…or his own son, Shinji, who hadn't done anything ever since they, NERV, saw him when the Third Angel had shown up?

Gendo, after hearing this, flexed his right hand a little. Once more, he viewed his…former guardian and her brood trying to remove his chances at using the Evas to achieve his goal. Did they want for mankind to be stuck with a future of death and self-destruction? Were they convinced that they could stop all of the Angels without an Evangelion? Or were they just trying to achieve their own goal that involved the Angels, their own Instrumentality Project?

"Was their presence ever truly part of the scenario?" Fuyutsuki asked him.

"There hasn't been a scenario ever since that little girl piloted Unit-01 in place of the Third Child," Gendo answered him.

"So, then, the whole goal of eliminating the Angels has been progressing in an unpredictable fashion? Instead of destroying the Angels, they get spared by being converted into regular humans, and instead of the Evas fighting against them, the world unknowingly pleads for the help of a woman and her six-year-old toddler? The Committee must be restless at knowing this."

"But you knew the woman years back, didn't you, Sensei?"

"I was twelve when I met her. It was the winter season and she was fulfilling the last request of a dying relative that used to live in Kyoto. It was fate that introduced me to her one night."

Kozo couldn't forget that fateful night after he saw Akira again, over four decades later, and still as young and beautiful as she was prior to Second Impact. He used to hate his childhood days because of his days of being bullied by a group of classmates that had the finances his family lacked because of being lower-classed people, but that all changed when he met her that night.

-x-

Winter of Nineteen-Sixty-Seven

The streets of Kyoto were empty due to the snow, and that allowed the twelve-year-old Kozo all the free space he needed to fantasize hurting his tormentors. In his hands was a small pocketknife that he had to save up money for five months just to acquire. He stabbed at some trees, a mailbox and the air, pretending that he was hurting his classmates.

"What are you staring at, poor boy?" He used the quotes of his tormentors. "Are you staring at me? Well, kiss off! What's your problem? Are you frightened of me?"

He looked at a tree and began stabbing at it.

"Scream… So scream!" He shouted, letting himself go.

WHOOSH! A strong gust of wind caught him off guard and he fell to the ground. When he got back up, he noticed something almost out of his line of sight, and turned toward a bench across the street from where he stood near the tree. There was a woman sitting on the bench, looking quite radiant, as though she were extremely wealthy or was just blessed with great beauty. Kozo had never seen her around the neighborhood before.

"What are you doing?" She had asked him, the moment he was close enough to engage her in conversation. "Why were you stabbing that tree?"

"No reason," he responded. "What are you doing out here?"

"I had just gotten through putting one of my boys to bed and decided to get some air. It's hard to breathe when your vacation spot smells like infant droppings. Lame reason, but honest."

"Do you live around here?"

"Yeah, for the time being. I live here on this bench. Heh-heh!"

"Seriously, where do you live?"

"In the building next to yours."

"Huh?! How do you know where I live?" Kozo asked her.

"I just have a way of knowing things," the woman told him, and then got up off the bench. "Just so that you know, I don't believe you should be playing out here in the middle of the night."

"Why?"

"It's only a matter of when the next time you decide to do so that you'll regret your decision and find yourself in a situation that you can't turn away from. Anything can happen to you: Being kidnapped, sold into slavery, used as a test subject for drugs and left to become an addict…maybe even just a simple case of a drive-by shooting. Must there be any other reason? For the less fortunate, they must always be on their guard."

As she turned to walk away, Kozo told her, "What makes you think I'm afraid of any of that, lady?"

-x-

…That was our first night encounter…and I had disrespected her, Kozo thought, wishing he could've taken back the words he had uttered last to her that night.

It had been subtle the night after they met. Akira, due to her years of caring for children, was often concerned for other children due to the dangers of the world outside of Akira Town. But he was used to the dangers because he lived in poverty.

"So, you've come out into the night again." She had said whilst they sat on the bench, though Kozo was on the bench first.

"So, you've come out into the night again." He echoed.

"I don't want you out here during the dangerous hours," she had expressed to him.

"Likewise," he told her.

"Then you should go home, where it's safe."

"You go home where it's safe. I've lived here way longer than you have."

But somewhere along the back and forth talking, they managed to bond a bit.

"I can't see how you could've known her all those years back," uttered Gendo, who seemed disgusted with Akira even more because of her past association with Fuyutsuki.

"Strange, how you develop a dislike of her for unjust reasons, and she introduced me to you while you were an infant once."

-x-

"…You guys really need to try alternate fuel sources!" Akira yelled at the pilots of the Heavy Fighter Jet VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) that NERV had 'borrowed' from the Japanese military. "This doesn't run on oil or gasoline, does it? They're combustible, you know!"

One of the pilots turned to look at the centenarian and her youngest daughter, but Rumi gave him a head and hand gesture that meant for him not to talk back.

"We're trying to get these jets to run on biodiesel, ma'am," he uttered. "That's a clean, reusable source."

Misato, who couldn't believe that Akira had found the time to complain about military vehicles running off limited resources that were consumed heavily. She was wondering if there was anything that she never complained about.

"You'll have to forgive my mother," went Rumi to them. "This is her first time in a military-based aircraft. Not to mention my first time, as well."

Misato then took notice of that staff of Akira, recalling that she used it to travel from her town to Tokyo-3 with Rumi where they met up with Misato and boarded the jet they were using to get to the peninsula where the Sixth Angel had arrived.

"Just how big is this one?" Akira asked her.

"Well around three-hundred-seventeen meters." She answered back.

"Is that big?" Rumi asked.

"Think of a large battleship." Misato then saw Rumi give her a look that indicated that she had never seen a real battleship before in her life. "It's really, really big."

"Oh."

"Whoa, boys and girls, I think that's it right there," they heard Akira, looking out the side hatch toward the peninsula. "What do you think, Misato? Male or female?"

"What?"

"A boy Angel or girl? You've seen Shamshel and Sachiel."

"Boy."

"You are definitely from Man's world."

Rumi looked down at it and couldn't help but feel like she were looking at a giant sea serpent. She had once been informed of how terrifying the Jaws franchise was with a Great White Shark causing mayhem in the water and compared this Angel to said sharks.

"Ugh!" She shuddered. "I hate to be picky right now, but can't these Angels ever be beautiful, like the pictures of angels from those Biblical time periods?"

"Likewise, Rumi, dear," her mother agreed with her, "but I don't think these siblings intend to sprout out feathery wings, play portable harps and lyres or wear halos any time soon."

Then, their Angelbreaker bracelets started acting up and turned into gauntlets around their respective right hands.

"Um, be back in a bit," Akira told Misato, and then jumped out of the jet, surprising all but Rumi.

"I should yell at her," Rumi uttered, undoing her seat belt. "Bye-bye."

She jumped out of the jet and followed suit, seeing her mother sprouting the same wings she had when they fought Ramiel. They flew to the grounds almost 25 feet away from Gaghiel, whom ceased his wave-causing mayhem and raised his head up to look at the pair.

Oh, no! He realized, hoping his sister's plan worked, since convincing their big brothers who were symbolized by the sky and strength were unwilling to participate in the feud until they learned enough about whom they were dealing with.

Despite their desire to bring closure to this war, Sahaquiel and Zeruel were hesitant in showing up, and their most disturbing sibling, Bardiel, was lying in wait, looking for an opportunity to capitalize on.

"He don't look like he's capable of anything other than swimming, Mama," Rumi told Akira, hovering over the sands and concrete stones.

"I'd rather humanize him now and avoid many, unpredictable events, like loss of life and extensive collateral damage." Akira responded, and raised her right arm up, which began to flare up.

Rumi followed suit, thinking of nothing other than humanizing the Angel, removing him of the threat he posed to the world. But as she did, one other thought crept to her consciousness: How Shinji was doing. The gauntlets then unleashed a pair of streams at the giant fish and heard it shriek out in what seemed to be pain.

Gaghiel splashed around, sending waves against the remains of the destroyed buildings and also gotten the girls wet. He shrunk, convulsed and changed his form: His bone-white coloring became a solid, bone-gray tone belonging to skin, whatever parts of him that were originally red had been relocated to his head and became red hair, his eyes were the deepest blue you'd find in a man and he was reduced to a height of five feet and three inches. The clothing he was provided with were just a pair of blue swimming trunks, possibly as an example of his original form of a giant, aquatic creature. And interestingly enough, Gaghiel also had a weapon like Shamshel and Ramiel: A trident-shaped spear.

"WHY?!" He howled, getting up out of the water. "This is overkill, Angelbreaker bearers!"

"He acts like we hurt him, Mama," said Rumi.

"Well, we kinda did," Akira responded. "Huh?"

A large wall of water rose up from the ocean and was about to hit the girls. The Angelbreaker gauntlets formed strange, sphere-like constructs around them and they were hit by the tidal wave. Unfortunately, Gaghiel, who was human now, was also hit by the wave, and due to his newfound limitations as a human, had to swim up to the surface of the dissipating water for breath.

"Aaaurgh! Israfel! Why have you forsaken me, sister?!" He questioned, seeing the cause of the tidal wave: The Angel of Music, Israfel.

-x-

"…How's he doing today?" Miaka asked a male nurse as she quietly stepped into Shinji's room.

"He's doing a bit better than yesterday," the nurse responded, collecting the minute trash that would be checked for reusable items and recycled. "I think the bone marrow transplant left him a bit exhausted."

"Either that or the dialysis."

Shinji, who had gone back to bed after his initial waking up from a previous dream, woke up again after hearing some commotion being spoken around him.

"Uh…there really should be a sign in the room that says, "Please, keep the volume down"," he sighed.

"Sorry, Shinji-Kun," Miaka apologized. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I've been bitten by a vampire and thrown down a shaft," he expressed, getting up. "How is everyone at home?"

"Taeko must've had a dream about you last night 'cause she was talking in her sleep last night. Instead of calling for her parents, she called out for you…not wanting you to die yet. Heh-heh…she even threatened to hurt you if you crossed the line between life and death. How crazy is that? Nemo was looking at his Batman Beyond DVD collection and Shinobu's developed a habit of sneaking into your room to play with your vibraphones. Tsukiko's constantly drilling in her Pyro Channeling because she's desperate to try and make her own fire. Oh, and Bumi's decided to acquire a daishō."

"Why would he want a pair of samurai swords from the days of feudal Japan?"

"I'm not sure. I'm his wife and best friend, but I'm not his fortuneteller."

"And what of Kanami and Mayo? Akira? Rumi, even?"

"Kanami and Mayo? They're still working on their paper cranes…and Kanami's considering teaching Mayo on the use of a real sword instead of the extended training through the wooden sword."

"But…I still think Mayo's not ready to bear the responsibility of an actual sword…but…that's only my opinion. You think that Kanami could try teaching her how to use a tantō? I think it's safer."

"I'll tell her you suggested that, but I can't control her. Each parent to their teaching methods in the ways of the martial arts."

"Yeah, that's true. Is it alright if I ask you something about Taeko?"

Miaka looked to her nephew and wondered if what he wanted to ask about her daughter revolved around her heritage…or rather…her lack of complete embracing of her heritage. She nodded that he could ask her.

"I believe y'all, without a doubt, whatsoever, when you say that she's a Geo Channeler like you and Bumi, but why did you decide to keep her in check when you started training her in the art of manipulating the energy beneath the Earth that allows for quakes and eruptions and other terra-based actions and reactions?" He asked her; ever since he saw his younger cousin's ability displayed the year after she had turned six, he noticed that her ability to control stones was extremely less than the average Geo Channeler's.

"It was my decision, really," she answered him, and then sighed. "It's always been stated and made common knowledge here that the next generation of channelers born would be stronger than the previous generation…and by 'stronger', I mean that the new channeler's abilities would be at least twice as great as the ones that came before. I didn't want Taeko accidentally hurting anyone because of her abilities. And with you being sick, I didn't want to risk the possibility of an small quake or landslide happening so close to home."

Shinji inhaled and then exhaled before saying, "Better safe than sorry, right?"

"Yes."

"That explains why Taeko only ever does her basic training: Simple, earthen shapes and breathing exercises to get a better grip on the element of stability and substance. But…I'm not at home for the moment, so shouldn't she be allowed to advance?"

"Heh-heh-heh! That's what Kanami asks me. I told her, "Maybe"."

"We're not getting any younger."

Miaka then noticed the locket around his neck and looked at the picture of him and Rumi within it. To her, these two were always, in a strange way, like peanut butter and jelly. Or two sides of a coin; one half wasn't whole without the other. Even Bumi mentioned once that he had a dream about the two playing by a beach, except that Rumi had grown to age fourteen while he had aged to twenty-two.

"…She misses you," she told him.

"Rumi?" He asked.

"Yeah. She's like a pearl in a clam in the ocean: Isolated."

"I had expected her to come see me today."

"Yeah, she was supposed to, but when I got up, she and Akira were already gone."

"She and Akira left? Where to, exactly?"

"We're not sure. Akira left a note on the refrigerator that stated they had to attend an obligation elsewhere, but they would be back in due time later today."

"An obligation? That sounds almost as though…it were a means to mask the job they were bestowed by the Angelbreaker to deal with."

"They probably sensed an Angel was coming and immediately took off to deal with it. I'm still not convinced that they should be called Angels; they don't have pretty, bird-like wings or wear dresses, play portable harps or have halos over their heads."

"Miaka, that's all part of religion from other parts of the world. It's mostly Christianity and Judaism, which relates to the stories of the man the Americans call Jesus Christ, who was crucified."

"I've always hated that part of the story. I never believed, not even once, that just one person was related to a deity…or was born to a woman that had never lain with a man. I never even believed that his crucifixion was a requirement…but a mere demand to save the lives of others…and that he was left with no other alternatives."

"He died for the sins of his people…not any sins that he might've committed in the past. In a way, he became their hero. And I agree with you that I don't believe he was related to a god. That might've been a mere rumor, which spawned myths and legends. The Jews, the Christians, Sumerians, Egyptians and Greeks, they all had myths and legends about their gods and demigods. If people choose to believe that they existed at one point, or still exist, but remain hidden to the world, then they probably did at one point, and still do. It all comes down to belief."

"Well, I do believe in at least two myths that were always immoral and may hold their sway on people: One is the Oni. Devils. And the second is the largest serpent I loathe more than sea serpents: Orochi."

"Orochi? Isn't that an eight-headed beast?"

-x-

Akira wished that Misato had informed Rumi and her about this Angel that had become challenging for them.

"You won't be able to beat my sister, Israfel," Gaghiel's human voice echoed in her mind as she climbed out of the rubble she was slammed into by the now-human-sized Angel Israfel.

The Angel in question was now approaching Rumi, who had her swords held defensively.

You try the patience of those of us that remain unchanged and unconquered, little girl, Israfel told her, sounding like a seductress hiding behind a mask of virtue and kindness. I assure you that death isn't all that scary.

"How would you know? Have you died before? Have you seen a white light? Seen any pretty angels?" Rumi questioned her, backing away with each step the Angel took toward her. Why isn't she turning into a full-fledged human?

It had been fifteen minutes after Gaghiel had been humanized and with his sister here, things were difficult; the Angelbreaker, for some reason, wasn't affecting this Angel, except for reducing her size to that of a full-grown rhino. So far, Israfel hadn't displayed any other abilities save for strength, which appeared to be natural.

Rumi decided to try an offensive action and struck her with the left hook sword. It had the intended effect on the Angel: Knocking her backwards.

Akira saw this and used Geo Channeling to create a wall of stone that stopped Israfel from flying backwards any further, but it unfortunately had the unintended effect of breaking her in half at the waist. This was beyond the saying, "Too much of something can be bad for you".

"Oops," she gasped, rushing over to the fallen Angel. "Are you all right, ma'am?"

There was no blood, not even a semblance of blood, and Israfel got back up…in two places at the same time! Her legs got up and sprouted a head and torso while her original upper body sprouted a new set of legs to use.

KICK! The Angel twins kicked the centenarian away before back-flipping from the wall of stone.

Oh, why did that have to happen? Akira thought, getting back up.

She summoned a small twister and blew the twins apart, sending the one that had been whitish-silver closer to where she stood and sending the brownish-red one over toward her daughter. She was starting to curse herself for wishing that dealing with these…twins was easy like dealing with Ramiel was, but deduced that the only reason that battle was easy was due to not being fully aware or conscious of the battle. Nothing more than a reflexive action that allowed them to walk away unscathed.

You're just delaying the inevitable for the girl, she heard the Angel's voice in her head. We will have our justice.

"Oh, do you people ever stop going on and on about your sense of justice that requires somebody to die to make you feel better?" Akira asked them, the Angelbreaker forming tendrils of armor around her wrists and waist. "You know, it's not even justice that you really want. All you want is a scapegoat for your first failure, an excuse to feel like you're still in control."

The brownish-red twin tried to slash Rumi, who kept ducking and evading, to bits, but was unable to touch her due to her size and agility. And the Angelbreaker formed tendrils of armor on her skin.

You won't win this battle, little girl, the Angel told her, managing to pin her down by bringing her right arm on her swords. Any last words?

As Rumi struggled to hold off this part of the Angel, much of her thoughts were directed away from the fight and toward her nephew. She was intending to go see him at the hospital, but the interference of the Angels and NERV's lack of resources required to deal with a threat not approaching her home was messing with her schedule of the day. This Angel was making her angry; seeing Shinji should've been more important than this battle. So now she made it a goal: Beat the Angel, go home and be with her nephew if she won.

Rumi, looking at the Angel's legs now, saw an opening and swung her left sword at the left leg.

SLAM! It felt like hitting a wall made of half-dried clay, especially since she wasn't trying to cause severe injury to the Angel with the hook end.

"Rrrraurgh!" The Angel shriek; Israfel's AT-Field wasn't even helping to defend it from the power of the Angelbreaker.

But Israfel, like Zeruel and Bardiel, knew one fatal flaw of the artifact when it came to its need for a chosen one to wear, wield and serve it in its duty: If the chosen wielder were to ever be killed before his or her duty to the Angelbreaker were completed in the time that it was needed, it would be reduced to inactivity until a new wielder was chosen.

To protect our goal, the little girl must die, the reddish-brown half of the Angel thought, raising her right arm and slamming it down.

Rumi dodged by going under her legs. For some reason now, other than simply wanting to live and see Shinji, it became a necessity for her to keep from being killed by any one of these Angels.

The Angelbreaker…is it warning me? She wondered, the gauntlet now forming more armor around her body. Oh, I hope you don't make my butt show out again like you did last time.

Suddenly, came the whitish twin flying toward the reddish twin and crashed into each other; in all the commotion between the red one and Rumi, Akira dished out the full intensity of her maternal strength against the white one. The Angelbreaker had formed spiked wristbands on Akira, which she had used in conjunction with Geo Channeling to leave cracks and scratches on the white twin she dubbed Israfel Beta, and then used her natural strength to throw her against her sister half that, for the sake of individuality, was dubbed Israfel Alpha.

Rumi ran over to her and asked if she was all right.

"None of my previous rivals from one-hundred-seventy-seven years ago fought with this much persistence," she told her daughter.

"Mama, I don't know for certain, but I think the Angelbreaker warned me that neither of us must get killed." Rumi told her of this discovery.

"Yeah, I got the same feeling. It's like putting an end to a story before it can be completed. But hey, I got your back if you got mine, Rumi."

"I got your back, Mama."

The two saw the twins get back up and then displayed an unusual act of body movement. Both raised their left and right hands up at the same time, not like they were signalling each other or something, but more like mirroring each other's actions. They then ran up to them and nearly slammed them into the ground, had it not been for Akira blocking their assault with another wall of stone.

"Mama, they weren't fighting like that before." Rumi gasped.

"Rumi, what was that old Biblical story that Nemo told you of?"

"The one about the guy named Legion?"

"Yeah, that one. What was the quote used regarding him?"

"'My name is Legion, for we are many'."

"Of course! Rumi, we have fight them as one."

"Uh, Mom, I don't understand."

Akira then produced a large dome of stone around and generated a ball of fire in her right hand.

"This Angel, Israfel, is still just one enemy, only split in half to do battle with us both."

"But…I haven't learned any simultaneous martial arts yet."

"Who ever said we had to use simultaneous martial arts on one seriously ugly woman, hmm?"

Rumi then got what she meant by that and uttered, "Let's give her a major walk-up call."

"On three. One…"

"Two…"

Akira lowered the dome and they jumped up into the air, over the twins, who looked even uglier from above than they did on the ground.

"Three!" They finally said and grabbed their claws; Rumi had gone for Israfel Alpha's left while Akira took Israfel Beta's right.

The twins were lifted off their feet, spun around a few times, and then finally slammed into each other; during this action, the Angelbreaker provided Rumi with strength equal to that of Akira's. The twins were left staggering until they fell to the ground and were restored to one body.

"Nice one, Rumi," Akira praised her daughter.

"I can't believe I did that," Rumi expressed; she had never felt so powerful when she lifted the Angel up. "I should be weight-lifting."

"Maybe when you're older," Akira sighed, not wanting her to lift heavy things until she got bigger.

The limited armor created by the Angelbreaker gauntlets then shrunk away as the tendrils and organic-like metal was sucked back into the bracelets, leaving them in their regular clothes once more.

Israfel's body then glowed brightly as she was made to complete her humanization: Her body became more human-like, the flesh turned to a brownish tan tone and red and white hair sprouted from her head. Her cores, which were on her torso area, were relocated her waist, placed on what looked like a belt buckle for a belt designed to support a dress, which had also manifested on her body. But what surprised the mother/daughter pair was beyond the previous humanizations; Israfel had enough energy left in her to split apart again, completing her transition in two separate bodies, one with red hair and the other with white hair. When the change was over, Israfel was reduced to the appearance of a twelve-year-old pair of girls that seemed like near-identical twins, minus the hair coloration, each wearing a yellow and red dress with their belt buckle holding their cores.

"Uh," the now-humanized Angel said, or rather, the now-humanized Angels said, for the sake of individuality. "You've beaten us, the Angels of Music."

"As we've defeated your brother, Gaghiel, the Angel of the Fish," Akira told them.

The Israfel Twins got up, staggering a bit, unused to walking on human legs, and looked over at their brother, who seemed irritated that they lost like their previous siblings.

"This really sucks!" Gaghiel cried out, not even willing to use his spear against the Angelbreaker wielders, lest they leave him further injured than his sisters' arrival had.

"Are y'all ever going to let this hatred die out?" Akira asked them. "If you let anger consume you, you lose sight of everything."

"You stand in our way," said Gaghiel to her. "Our father is all we have left in this world full of Lilin. The way we see it, there are four enemies on the list of enemies: Lilith, the usurper, the Lilin, her descendants, the Angelbreaker, the weapon of untold power and guidance, and your daughter here, who has tarnished our pride."

Rumi walked over to him and said, "Sir, I only did what I had to in order to protect someone special to me. I didn't care at all about some silent war between your siblings and those that stood against you out in plain view of the world. I'm just six years old now, still a young woman waiting for puberty to start up, and still ignorant to most of the problems of the world. I don't even know of this Lilith woman y'all speak of or why you keep saying Lilin. What's a Lilin? Why do you perceive me as a threat when I don't even want to fight you or anyone else, even to the death? I'm not looking to hurt anyone or be hurt by anyone. Details, please?"

Gaghiel looked at her like she had grown brightly in the last fifteen seconds and then looked toward her mother, who nodded in the positive for what was required.

"Lilith, the usurper, is the progenitor of all life on the planet, minus my siblings and me," he revealed. "The Lilin, as we prefer to use, are her greatest descendants in the history of her reign…but you only know the Lilin…as the term you use often when dividing different creatures into species…which is the dominant species on the planet."

"What species would that be?" Akira asked, already certain that she knew, but wanting to be properly confirmed by these new members of the human race.

"MAN!" The Israfel Twins shouted out to her. "Man is the dominant species on this planet! Man… Lilin… You… Your daughter… Humans!"

Akira inhaled and exhaled as Rumi looked back and forth between her mother and the newly-humanized Angels.

"You mean…you mean that…people are the ones you call Lilin?" She asked them.

"Yes," Gaghiel answered. "You're Lilith's brood, which dominates the Earth."

"You're wrong," Rumi then said.

"Excuse us?" The twins asked her.

"I said that you're wrong," she expressed. "Whoever this Lilith is, a usurper, as you call her, she's not a relative to any of us. Maybe she did create people in the beginning, but only in the beginning. Now people are the makers of more people, not her. You call me her brood, which is just another way of saying 'child', but I could never identify Lilith as my parent. I've only ever known one woman that is my parent, and she's right here with me."

"It still doesn't change the fact that you are of Lilith's flesh, even if it's millions upon millions of generations ago that she spawned the planet's sentience that you believe to be natural life." Gaghiel told her. "You're still…"

"It's moot," went Akira, agreeing with Rumi. "Maybe Lilith did spawn all the life that exists here today, but she's not our maker, anymore. She probably hasn't played the role of a mother to anything new that lives on the planet. While that doesn't change the fact that she produced the planet's life and is therefore a parent herself, she doesn't guide, teach or control us."

Gaghiel and his sisters couldn't believe they were hearing this from two of Lilith's descendants. Not only were they against the belief that their existence stemmed from their ancestors being born from Lilith herself, but they didn't view her completely as a parent or anything of the sort that mattered. But when Gaghiel looked at Akira again, noticing that she seemed somewhat like some other members of the Lilin race he'd seen in the quietness of the thousands of years before: Akira seemed wiser and much more mature and accepting of certain things than a regular woman of her status as one in full bloom of her beauty and power.

"You seem different from the other Lilin," he told her, pointing a finger at her head.

"Do I look a little older than I appear?" She asked, always needing to ask if she looked older, simply out of habit now because she ceased aging at twenty-eight years old.

"No," he answered. "You seem more mature than others."

"I've lived long enough to become a responsible adult."

-x-

"That makes five Angels humanized," said Maya as the Bridge Bunnies leaned back in their seats. "Five Angels."

"Those two help save lives and all we do is watch," sighed Aoba, not upset that the Evas didn't handle this, but he wasn't happy about this either; if this kept up, he'd probably be out of a job, just like the rest of NERV.

Ritsuko, on the other hand, while observing the battle, was taking notes on the Angelbreaker's displayed abilities, hoping to incorporate them into her project. While it appeared to be a powerful object, its limitations seemed to be due to the person it was attached to, so she theorized that strong subjects and strong items fit together better than strong items and children below the age of adolescence. Though she was, somewhat, impressed a little to see a little girl like Rumi hold her own against an Angel for an extended period.

If NERV had the object, and then mass-produced copies of it, it would probably make the Evas more efficient to use, she thought, letting the scientist part of her speak up.

-x-

Misato came over to Akira and Rumi, but kept her distance with the newly-humanized Angels. She couldn't believe that these two were able to humanize and eliminate the global threat of two Angels in the same day.

"Are you two alright?" She asked them.

"Great," Rumi responded.

"Peachy?" Akira said, unsure how certain people could use a word based on a piece of fruit.

"Well…congratulations are in order," Misato praised them, but Akira turned her head away toward the ocean. "Uh, Akira?"

"You don't hear it?" Akira asked them.

"Hear what?"

"Helicopters."

Rumi heard them and pointed to where she saw some.

"I don't like this," she told her mother.

"Did you, by any chance, request some sort of backup against these two when they were still Angels?" Akira asked Misato, though still identifying Israfel as a single individual instead of identifying them as an actual pair of twins.

"No, it was only the jet to get us here," Misato answered truthfully, taking out her cell phone and dialing someone's number. "Hyuga, what's with the incoming helicopters?"

As the conversation between Misato and one of NERV's workers began, Rumi started feeling a sense of danger directed toward her mother and herself; the helicopters appeared to be armed with weapons ranging from missile launchers to that large, cannon-like gun this Australian movie star used in one of his pre-Second Impact films that made him famous.

"We might have a problem," Misato told them after she hung up. "The Japanese military want to take you two in because of the Angelbreaker. They want it."

Rumi then placed her right hand behind her back and gripped her bracelet tightly.

"Precautionary concern for the world, best interests of my daughter and myself or because they want the Angelbreaker simply for the sake of obtaining power?" Akira asked, unsure if she was right about at least one of thee choices.

"More like all of the above. And they also want to take you in for questioning on where and how you got it. If you refuse to surrender, which is what they're also demanding, you will be executed on the spot. I'm going to call the UN right now and ask them to back off because you've just helped in saving the world again."

Akira looked at her half of the ancient, powerful artifact and uttered, "Can I trust you to inform me of the next possible attempt made by the military to come after Rumi and me for the Angelbreaker, Ms. Katsuragi? Because, for all intents and purposes, while they might be deluding themselves to believe that we will, as they'll probably expect, come quietly, I will not hand over the Angelbreaker or allow my daughter to be taken simply because the gauntlet picked her as well as myself."

"What do you mean, the next time the military make an attempt to come for you?"

"We're going home right now…through the ground."

"Yeah, you can trust me."

"Thank you…and I must apologize to you."

"For what, exactly?"

THRUST! Akira, simply because she had to make it look like an escape attempt, assaulted one of Misato's pressure points and sent her falling to the ground.

"Don't worry, you'll be like that for only an hour," Akira told her, as Misato couldn't move her limbs or speak a word. "Goodbye, Misato. Until next time."

Then Akira performed a stomping act with her feet until the ground she, her daughter and the humanized Angels were on sunk into the Earth.

"Bye, Ms. Katsuragi!" Rumi yelled out as she sunk into the planet.

The ground beside the large hole then covered it up and made it look like nothing happened. Meanwhile, underground, the Rokubungi women and the humanized siblings had gone at least twenty-five feet into the rock and dirt.

"It's so dark down here," said the twins' voices at the same time. "I can't see a thing!"

"Oh, no, what a nightmare," went Rumi's voice, being sarcastic; she'd been through this before.

Akira then lit up the darkness with her left hand catching on fire, expressing her control over her Pyro Channeling abilities to create her own fire and provide light. However, the fire proved a subtle reminder of the comet that was returning in another two months.

"Well, we'd better start walking until we get far away from where we are," she told them, and led the way to safety.

-x-

"…I told you what I know," said Misato to the soldiers, a hour later, after she regained her mobility and speech capabilities. "I don't know where they went, but it's obvious that she wasn't going to let you cause her family issues."

"Can you think of any place they would go to, Captain Katsuragi?" One of the soldiers asked her; they were under strict orders from their superiors at the UN to bring in the woman and her child along with the artifact.

"Only their home, but they probably wouldn't go back there yet, not if they were going to be followed. Why bother with them? The Angels have been dealt with again, nobody's dead or dying. Leave them alone. They don't want to be troubled with military or political affairs." Misato told them.

"We got orders, ma'am." He told her.

As Misato spoke with the soldiers, on the other side of the world, Gendo and Kozo had just found out about the Japanese military acting on orders from someone in the UN to bring in Akira and Rumi for the artifact that they used to defeat the latest Angels.

It had to have been SEELE, thought Kozo. It was only a matter of time before they found out about what those two were doing and acted out against it.

Gendo, however, could think very little about his adoptive mother and little sister, but the artifact that they had was somewhat…impressive. Something like what they had would've probably made his scenario within excellent reach. If only he could get his hands on it. It displayed remarkable abilities of shape-shifting qualities, weakening and even eliminating the AT-Fields of Angels, and it even covered up the two in body armor that was fireproof and could withstand massive amounts of damage.

Maybe it can do more than that, he thought, wondering if the thing could achieve an extremely impossible feat, similar to an act of God.

"So, the Committee are interested in these two?" Kozo asked Gendo.

"No," he answered him. "It's not them… It's the thing they're using."

-x-

The pages of the scrapbook that held pictures and drawings of Rumi brought relative peace to Shinji's conscious, but her absence from home didn't erase the fact that he was the one that missed her. The time was now past two in the afternoon and she and Akira still hadn't returned. He was beginning to worry heavily. The visits from Miaka, Nemo and Mayo were joyful, but one from his youngest aunt would've made a lot of difference in one day. It was never a want to see Rumi; it was only a need. An almost desperate need.

NERV, he thought, wondering if they had a hand in her absence, just like how one of his nightmares showed that they had a massive hand in her death in his dream. Was it a premonition? A vision of a great horror to come?

He closed his book and slowly got out of bed; while he had no kidneys to process much of his food waste, he could still walk once in a while, so long as he was careful. Some mild walking around was good for him. Looking out the windows, gazing at the beauty of the town, it helped to ease some of his worries…but not all of them.

Rumi…where are you? He wondered as he sighed.

-x-

Some people spread the belief that the darkness can cover up the sins committed, but there has been a subtle belief that the darkness can reveal to people their innermost fears…or darkest desires. Such was the case with one desire that might've been considered dark due to the environment it was being shown in: Twisted, semi-organic/metallic tentacles and tendrils of dark colors writhing around, brownish-red lumps of metallic flesh pulsating like heartbeats, and hideous, scarred eyes watching from within the shadows. They were observing the actions and reactions of two people in the center of their mingled, tangled mass of partially-organic and metallic constructs. A young man was on the bottom of it all while a very young woman was atop the man, covered in similar tentacles and pieces of organic/metallic, armor-like constructs of a brownish-gold color.

"Oh…" She moaned, gripping her hands onto the bare man's sides. "Oh…oh…"

"Ohh…" The man beneath her moaned, reaching up and making hand contact with her…very young bosom, barely able to grasp the slightest trace of a teat.

Several strands of dark hair covered the woman's face, but couldn't hide her gold and blue eyes; the left eye was gold while the right one was blue, looking down at the brown eyes of the man she dominated. When the strands lifted themselves away from her face, she was revealed to be none other than…Rumi, looking down at her only nephew, Shinji, who was, more or less, as well as can be, as well as bare-chested and slightly older than fourteen, but less than eighteen, while Rumi herself seemed a little older than six, but still less than ten, which explained her retention of her flat-chested body.

"Oh, Shinji…" She moaned, enjoying this moment with him.

"…Rumi…" She heard somebody call out to her, but she was so caught up in her lustful exhilaration with Shinji that she assumed it was him calling out to her for more. "Rumi… Rumi…"

GASP! Rumi opened her eyes and found herself back in the tunnel with Akira and the new humanized Angels; everything that had happened previously had been nothing more than a daydream.

"Oh?" She went, her mother now having her attention.

"I was just saying that you should probably take a nap," Akira told her, as they had been walking underground for over two hours now.

"Oh. I'm sorry, I guess I kinda slipped off into a daydream, heh-heh." She confessed.

"What was your dream about?"

That, of course, made Rumi hesitant on revealing the details. She didn't want to express any of it. At least not right away. But she couldn't keep a lie from her mother completely; Akira could tell much of a lie from the actual truth if the person wasn't being honest.

"Being with Shinji," she expressed. "We were hanging out and were much older than we are now."

It was another half-truth; in her daydream, they were older…and they were hanging out, just not in the proper sense of it all. This seemed to convince Akira that it was the truth, however, as she sighed and chuckled seconds later.

"I guess none of us are willing to envision a life without his presence," she uttered. "For better or for worse… I'm still hoping for a great miracle that can undo this great wrong…without anybody having to give up anything."

"I'd give up all but my life for him…maybe even my life…but he's always against it."

"He's not the only one (Akira then pointed to herself, indicating who else thought differently about it)."

"You, as well?" Rumi asked her.

"Yeah. My only reason…my only excuse…is that I can't and won't play favorites with anyone."

"You must be the only woman in the history of mothers that could never have a favorite relative."

"It's just not part of my existence. To pick one or a few over the many others is just plain unfair."

"A Lilin that doesn't play at favorites," they turned and looked at Gaghiel. "You make my devotion to my father run a little bitter…as he's always played favorites."

"He was one of Adam's least favorite children," said the Israfel Twins. "In our family, it's always been a battle as to who would be the top-favorite child and who would be the least favorites. The one Adam doesn't really show much affection for, due to his abilities and flaws, is our little brother, Bardiel."

"Well, that's a consequence of having more than one child related to you by blood, marriage or adoption. You pick your best from your worst based on their skills, appearance or even social status. You're supposed to love them all equally. To play favorites is to give the ones you don't think about the least bit of love and respect that they're entitled to just because they're yours."

"If it weren't for the fact that you're both wearing the Angelbreaker, you wouldn't have us swayed a little bit," said Gaghiel to them. "You could use it to crush dictating empires and kingdoms, put an end to slavery and wars, even build your own empire and obtain all that you ever wanted."

"Swaying you a little bit?" Rumi asked him.

"With the Angelbreaker, you have unlimited potential to earn the trust and respect of those around you. Now, when I say 'earn', I mean that you gain their trust and respect with what way you prefer to as 'honorably'. No threats…no cheating…and no confusion." Gaghiel explained.

"Honor, respect, discipline…some of the moral ethics to learning the martial arts," Rumi said to him. "Also some of the old ways of the world that most have forgotten how to live by."

As they resumed the journey back to Akira Town by means of traveling underground, Rumi was being carried on her mother's back. Part of Rumi still lingered on what her daydream had shown her; while her devotion to Shinji had been around ever since she could remember being two years old…she wondered if her feelings toward him had often reflected in…that way. Was she becoming impure because of that vision of impurity? Was her affection for her nephew that of an aunt…or of something more…and unrequited? She couldn't answer these questions on account of being unsure of herself. And if so, she didn't know how to tell her mother just yet…and not sure of how to explain that her latest daydream of being with Shinji involved having a tryst with him, something she didn't really know about herself.

-x-

"The Spear of Longinus has been acquired," uttered Kiel to the rest of the SEELE council present. "With it, we can use Lilith to achieve the goal we sought to complete."

"Any sign of the wielders of the Angelbreaker?" SEELE 03 SOUND ONLY asked.

"No trace, whatsoever," said SEELE 04 SOUND ONLY, "after the defeat of the Sixth and Seventh Angels, they went underground. Captain Katsuragi was left immobilized and has no concrete idea of where they're most likely to go."

"Have we tried that town they live in?" SEELE 07 SOUND ONLY asked.

"We're sending soldiers there right now in case they do return there, yet we've been getting rumors that the people there don't take kindly to most outsiders looking to stir up trouble or the military due to the history of wars." SEELE 11 SOUND ONLY explained.

"Sacrifices must be made if we're to bring salvation to the human race," Kiel expressed, meaning that if the town of Akira intervened with their plans for the world, it would be dealt with severely.

This isn't right, thought the person behind the holographic monolith that was SEELE 09 SOUND ONLY. Initially, there would be only trouble from Gendo, whom we had very little faith in. Now the trouble is coming, unintentionally, from a bunch of people that don't even know we exist…and they're just trying to live in relative peace, something the rest of the world has lost.

-x-

"How are you able to go on," asked Gaghiel to Akira and Rumi, still traveling underground, "knowing that you're at war with those that want back what your kind has taken from them?"

Rumi looked up at the guy in swimming trunks holding a spear and answered, "We just wanna live out our lives without having them taken. Say, what's your father like, anyway?"

"Adam, the first of us? He ain't much for talking, but when he becomes threatened, his actions speak louder than his words…except for that one time when Lilith showed up and took the planet from him."

Uh-oh. Bad question. Rumi had realized too late.

"I got a question about Lilith," went Akira, now curious about the so-called originator of the human race…and the rest of the life on the planet she was familiar with over the years. "What does she look like? You say that all life on Earth, minus you and your siblings, comes directly from her that, which, of course, I don't entirely believe, but it's hard to picture a woman that might not even resemble a woman. Physical traits, descriptions, eye coloring, number of limbs, the usual."

Gaghiel and his sisters looked at each other, trying to recall what Lilith looked like, but their memories of her had been stunted because of their anger and the devastation caused by her arrival. Whatever they could recall about her were all murky and vague.

"She's…about Father's size, give or take," Gaghiel told them.

"Pale," added the Israfel with white hair, speaking by herself. "Real pale, like white."

"White? Caucasian, you mean?" Akira asked, familiar with human ethnicity.

"No," answered the Israfel with red hair. "White, but not of Lilin colorations. She doesn't even look like a woman. Not even a man!"

"Her face… There was a mask hanging from her face by the time she took over…but… No face. She had no face!" Gaghiel expressed; recalling his ancient memories must've been painful to him.

"Gah! No face?! Freaky!" Rumi gasped, but when the former Angel of the Fish revealed that this Lilith had no face, she was thinking of No-Face from Spirited Away, not the literal type of not having a face.

"Hey, wait a minute," Akira uttered, recalling one of her dreams prior to her discovery of her repossession of the Angelbreaker, "I think I've seen her before."

While maintaining her hold on the ball of fire in her hand for light, she focused on her Geo Channeling with her feet and instantly made a small, detailed model of what she believed to be Lilith on the ground: There was a large cross, a creature that had very little features and a mask with seven eyes.

"Is this what Lilith looks like?" She asked them.

"Gah… Aaaaaurgh!" Gaghiel yelled out. "That's her! The usurper! The usurper! The thief! The bitch!"

"Huh?!" Rumi expressed, having never heard that last word before like that, but looked at the creature that they identified as Lilith and was instantly repulsed. "So, this is Lilith? I don't mean to sound so rude, but she's not very attractive nor does she look special."

"Looks can be deceiving, Rumi," responded Akira.

"Where did you see her before?" The red-haired Israfel asked, pointing to Lilith.

"It was in a dream I had. The night after I got my half of the Angelbreaker."

Gasp! They all heard Rumi gasp, seeing back away from the model.

"Rumi?" Akira asked her.

"I just remembered that I've also seen her in a dream," Rumi revealed. "A nightmare. When I was four. She's the monster that tried to take Shinji in the silence of the night, chasing him down a highway. She was covered in mucus and things that looked like soaked bandages, as if something was ripped from off her body a while ago, allover her body…and she was extremely cruel."

"That's the fate of the mother of all life on this planet: She's not pleasant to be around." Gaghiel expressed. "She's not worth being around at all, actually."

"Did she and Adam have a grudge against each other or something that made her take control of the planet from him?" Akira asked him. "Or…is it that the truth behind this family feud lays buried in the mists of time?"

The former Angels of the Fish and Music couldn't answer that; they were only newborns and toddlers around the time Lilith entered their lives.

"Why not just speak with her and ask her to atone for what she did in the past?" Rumi had suggested.

"We probably would've if we knew where she was, but our concern has always been finding Adam." Gaghiel expressed a limited possibility at Lilith's potential forgiveness. "You have no idea how hard it is find someone you value when they're missing."

"It's like a needle in a haystack," said Akira. "Literally."

-x-

"…I wonder what's on the news today," Shinji said to himself, reaching for the remote and turning on the television within the room. "Maybe I'll find something of Rumi there."

But all he found on the news channels were emergency broadcasts and blue screens, both of which were useless to look at. Flipping through channels, he stopped upon a program that was a favorite of his despite being past the age of watching it: Ponyo. It was like a kinder retelling of The Little Mermaid.

"…B-U-G O-F-F," the mother of the main male protagonist uttered as the boy translated it into the signal light.

"That still makes me laugh," Shinji expressed, and tried to suppress a chuckle when the mother repeated the signal translation numerously.

If anything, Shinji could've compared Rumi to Ponyo a little: Both were adorable little girls, very energetic, and, in a humorous way, had the roundest of tummies you couldn't find elsewhere.

"I hope she's doing alright," he uttered, watching the scene where Ponyo changes into a human and surfaces to meet the boy she loves.

-x-

SLAM! Nemo might've been an otaku like Camille, but he was no pushover when it came to the martial arts and sports. Having been challenged by his girlfriend to a game of basketball, he was proving to be more skilled than she was due to his extensive martial arts training over the years after he was adopted. Camille stood no chance against him as she couldn't get a single shot through the hoops.

"Any time you want to surrender, just say when," Nemo told her.

"I… I give," she sighed, giving up. "You're…"

"How did I overcome you?" He questioned her.

"You're…you're too fast for me to keep up with," she responded.

"That's a requirement for Hydro Channeling: Water is never in a fixed form, not always is it solid, liquid or gaseous. It is forever the flowing element that allows for change. It is also nearly impossible to catch water with one's bare hands."

"Nice lesson. And I always thought speed and flexibility were a requirement for Aero Channeling."

"Aero Channeling focuses on Negative Jing, since the channelers of the evasive element of freedom never seek a battle unless conflict between them and others cannot be avoided. They are the most flexible fighters in channeling history."

"Hydro Channeling is a perfect balance between Positive and Negative Jing, Pyro Channeling was, in the ancient past, all about Positive Jing before Akira incorporated the lessons of the other arts into it to provide balance, and Geo Channeling is based on Neutral Jing, which I have no idea of what it refers to." Camille expressed, though her understanding of the jings was adequate.

"Most people don't know what it means," Nemo told her, sitting with her on the ground now. "It means to wait and listen before striking or blocking, or, as Akira told me so that I understood it better because I was younger when she told me, to do absolutely nothing."

"Like…what we're doing right now? We're just sitting here, doing nothing?"

"Yeah. Exactly. However, these jings that we use in conflicts aren't just designed for the sake of battles. They're also for our day-to-day lives and the actions and reactions we perform. Jings can be expressed and reflected by the choices we make everyday, like the Positive Jing that was used in our time here at the park. Or the Neutral Jing we're using of us doing nothing right now."

"I think I get it now," Camille said, but then noticed that the sun was starting to go down a little. "Nemo, I'm getting worried about your mother and little sister. You said that they left this morning and it's approaching the evening."

"I'd try worrying about my nephew, as well," he added. "He's probably wondering himself sick on where Rumi is, wondering why she, of us all, hasn't come to see him yet today."

"I tried looking into something that was related to that paramilitary organization."

"Go on."

"It's called the Vatican Treaty. It's some form of international agreement that NERV has to follow that limits the number of those Evangelion things they have in their control."

"That's strange, I didn't think that the government would be interested in making sure that there was a limit to those bio-robots, but that would be a major necessity, since building something like what Rumi and Shinji told us about would cost a substantial sum and deprive Earth of many resources that we should be conserving for our future generations."

"I agree with you on that, but it looks like the government's sole concern, besides the politicians and fast-talking bureaucrats, is just eliminating the so-called enemy, the Angels. So far, the Vatican Treaty limits the number of Evas to just three units per country. So, by regulation of the treaty, Japan, due to being a country itself, is only permitted to have three of them."

"And since the Angels have made it a priority to come here, anyway, there aren't any other Evas in the making, so that leaves much of the planet's resources in check for the moment, but I get the feeling that NERV has contingency plans in the unlikely event that one of their abominations is wasted."

"So, then that means they probably have more than the set amount? How many could they possibly have? Four? Seven, even?"

"Who knows? How'd you get the information on the treaty?"

"I had to ask a contact outside of town to find it for me; I didn't want to endanger the people."

"Thinking before doing. Smart."

"Though I'm not sure my contact is… At least not smart in the moral way. I met him over the Internet. A military otaku, very knowledgeable about battleships, planes and whatnot."

"He got a name or alias?"

"Yeah. Aida. Kensuke Aida. And judging from the sound of his name, I have the feeling that this guy's a lot younger than I believe him to be, probably still a student in grade school."

A streetlight above their heads lit up and illuminated the bits of darkness present around the young couple. Nemo checked his watch and found the time to be seven minutes after seven.

"You think you can get me this Kensuke Aida's e-mail so that I can have a chat with him?" He asked Camille. "If he's got information on NERV, he might be able to explain to us whatever he can find out about them, which, in turn can probably help Akira and Rumi better in the future."

"I was just thinking the same thing," Camille agreed.

-x-

"…Okay, if my sense of direction is precise," went Akira, "we should be directly under the front gate entrance to Akira Town."

"There's only one way to know for sure," went the red-haired Israfel twin, Kou; Rumi had decided that these girls needed individual names for the sake of convenience and identity, naming the red-haired Israfel Kou and the white-haired Israfel Otsu, which made them, technically, Alpha and Beta if translated into English. "Show us the way to our new home."

Over time during the travel back to the town, the twins became less linked and more individuated, developing their own personalities that were unique to themselves. Otsu Israfel even asked to carry a tired Rumi for Akira, something that Kou Israfel refused to do. As Akira used her channeling to break open a hole in the ceiling of the tunnel, Gaghiel wondered how his other siblings had put up with being like the Lilin; surely, there was nothing great about being one of them, not with their being fragile, weak and easily corruptible. When the hole was made, Gaghiel experienced for the first time as a Lilin, the wondrous beauty of the night.

"It's beautiful," he sighed, seeing the stars and moon. "I've never seen such an amazing sight since I was born."

"What, the night?" Akira asked him.

"Yes."

The centenarian then used her channeling to lengthen the hole and raise them up to the surface, right at the front of the gate. The cold wind made Rumi wake up from her nap and she realized that with the darkness present, the day had ended…and she didn't get to see Shinji at all.

"Wow," went Otsu, looking at the tall mountain that stood in the center of the widespread buildings and trees. "Nice."

They walked through the town to a particular destination that Rumi realized wasn't home; they had stopped at the hospital.

"What is this place?" Gaghiel asked Akira.

"It's called a hospital," she explained. "It's where people come to have their injuries taken care of by doctors, people experienced in the art of healing others."

"Your fragility will always be a downside of your vulnerability," he expressed, but then shivered. "What was that I just did?"

"You're experiencing a case of chills from standing out here half-naked in the cold," said Rumi, pointing out that the guy was wearing swimming trunks.

"Hey, I was a giant child of the seven seas and I never had the displeasure of suffering from…hypothermia? Is that what you call it?"

"Exactly. Beyond that, we've been underground for much of the day; I'm worried that Rumi might've gotten an infection or her eyesight may be stunted a little…and there's somebody other than the doctor that she needs to see."

That last piece sparked Rumi's interests for being here. As they entered the building and advanced toward the receptionist, the little girl wondered if her nephew was awake or not.

"Akira?" A woman, slightly older than the centenarian, physically, with grayish-blond hair and blue eyes, uttered at the sight of the town leader. "You were gone for most of the day. People were starting to get worried that something terrible had occurred and caused you distance grief."

"I wouldn't know of distance grief, but we traveled on foot a great a distance from here, not to mention I'm concerned that Rumi might've caught something while we were traveling underground."

"Oh, dear. And who are they?"

Akira looked at Gaghiel and the Israfel Twins and expressed, "Other siblings of the new family at the rehabilitation center."

The receptionist looked at them more closely and recognized the red, marble-shaped object that the other people that used to be large monsters possessed, but noticed how the young man didn't seem to have one present. Gaghiel seemed to notice this and opened his mouth, revealing that his former core had been placed on his tongue, looking almost like a piercing, except there was no opposite end under his tongue; it appeared as a large bump on his muscle.

"Whoa," she whispered, and then got them administered for evaluations.

-x-

"…Our insider tells that they've returned to their hometown and have gone to the hospital," said the twelfth member of SEELE to the others. "He's awaiting further orders."

"For now, he's to keep watch over the hospital…discreetly." Kiel told him.

"Surely, it would be easier to just send the military in and just take the woman and her kid," the seventh member uttered.

"And risk provoking unnecessary bloodshed?" The fourth member questioned. "Some of the members of the UN were angst when the very suggestion of sending military forces to the town was made; apparently, some of them had grown up in that town and go out of their way to protect their ancestral roots from external harm."

"For now, we just keep watch over them…waiting for an opportune moment to strike…and then…we take control," said Kiel again.

-x-

It was past eleven and Rumi slowly walked down the hall of the cancer ward, heading towards Shinji's room after having her eyes checked and found that they were okay. A part of her was wondering what the point was of seeing Shinji if it was possible that he was already asleep, as he wouldn't know she was there. She assumed it was going to be another habit until the root of it was…severed, but as long as she was here, she was going to see him, asleep or not. Since the door was open, there was no need to knock; Rumi could see Shinji lying in the bed with his back facing her. Rumi walked in and sat in a chair nearest the observing window outside the hall.

He must've worried himself sick, wondering if I was coming or not, she thought, and noticed how his left hand was out of place beneath him and holding the locket that had their picture in it.

Quietly, she removed her dog tags and set them on the counter where his scrapbook was set, yawning as the need for sleep consumed her again.

"Goodnight, Shinji," she said, hoping that he heard her in his sleep.

Several minutes passed along before she was completely asleep, and then, unknown to her, Shinji had turned his head around to face her, his eyes half-open but displaying ease.

Took you long enough to show up, he thought as he smiled.

-x-

"Gaghiel?" Shamshel asked, seeing her brother dressed in warm weather clothes. "And Israfel…I think."

"Kou and Otsu Israfel, actually," said Kou to her, "for the sake of individuality and convenience."

"So, one of our sisters has been reduced to being a pair of sisters," said Sachiel. "How pathetic."

"Hey, at least we're not the ones that got beat by a little girl that had better things to than to face any of us before the Angelbreaker picked her!" Gaghiel told him.

Here we go again, thought Shamshel, wishing that her siblings would cease the bickering because of Rumi's involvement in their individual defeats.

"She could've killed us like how we wanted to kill them," went Otsu, "but she wouldn't. Even when we traveled underground to get here, she and her mother had every chance available to get rid of us, permanently, without the aid of the artifact…but they chose to keep us alive. They chose to keep us all alive instead of killing us or handing us over to members of the Lilin that would've gladly wasted us without hesitation or kept us locked away as subjects to poke and prod at. I don't know which one's more terrifying: Getting killed or kept as a slave."

"The Angelbreaker's a curse on us but a blessing on those girls," went Ramiel. "We're forced to walk this miserable road of mortality as members of the Lilin race until we suffer from what they suffer from: Sickness, old age, murder. What is so better about about being one of them, anyhow?!"

"I like the night," said Gaghiel. "I never realized how beautiful and mysterious it was before I was turned. I've always viewed day and night as one and the same."

"I've had plenty of time to reflect upon other points of interests while I've been here," added Shamshel. "Listening to music and reading are some of the meager pleasures I've indulged in, alone with the occasional eating of meals."

"Girl, you've become their pet!" Kou gasped. "They've turned you in all the worst ways! They… Did you say they let you listen to music?"

"Yes. I don't do too bad for a…pet…now, do I?"

Sachiel and Ramiel saw Kou give a strange expression and uttered to her, "Don't you dare! Their music ain't even all that! It's poison!"

With each humanized Angel in a holding cell, they were kept from trying to hurt each other, but the occasional conversations were a must, and Kou Israfel was starting to feel the effects of what was known as curiosity and seduction.

"What kind of music?" She asked her older sister across the hall.

-x-

August Fifth came around and had Rumi waking up to the first rays of sunlight.

"Hmm…what a weird dream," she mumbled, rubbing her eyes.

"Did you sleep well?" Somebody asked her, causing her to look toward the medical bed and see Shinji looking down at her.

"Oh!" She gasped, jumping out of the chair and hiding behind it. "Shinji, I… You're alive… I mean, you're awake… I mean…um… How are you?"

He chuckled and responded that he was all right. Rumi then sat back down and asked how long he was looking at her.

"Half an hour," he expressed. "You're much different when you sleep in a chair."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. You look as though you're just thinking with your eyes closed."

"Wait a minute… You looked at me for thirty minutes? That's not boring to you?"

"It's hard to be bored by somebody you love and trust."

"Wow… Uh, look, I… About yesterday… I'm sorry I made you wait so long."

"It doesn't matter. You still showed up last night, which means you did show up yesterday before midnight. In the words of Nemo, "Because of technology, the time and dates become limited. When the clock reaches twelve at night, it is officially the next day". But you showed up before eleven-thirty ever came around. So…what happened yesterday?"

"Angels. Two of them, although it's three of them now."

"Two become three?"

"The Israfel Twins, Kou and Otsu."

"Alpha and Beta? Huh. All they're missing is Gamma, heh-heh-heh!"

"Initially, I wanted to call them Alpha and Omega, but that didn't seem right."

"Of course, it didn't seem right, Rumi. Alpha and Omega put together means the beginning and the end happening at the same time."

"The beginning…and the end?"

"You're not in school yet, so you don't know about the multiple religious cultures of the world or their influence in science. Nemo had once did some reading about something called Kabbalah and how all souls are just fragments of a greater force at work. We're cast out into the world with very little to nothing, we develop and experience things, gather knowledge and when we die, we return to that greater force at work and bring back whatever we gather to it."

"Um…that sounds like something out of that DVD series of his called Beast Machines."

"Yeah, it does…because the series was made with a religious aspect put into it. The Matrix, the All Spark, is a representation that links all things that have ever lived or will ever live."

"Oh. So, basically, this greater force at work, God or the collective of gods, or even the All Spark itself, simply siphons off the pieces of the world that become who and what we are, who are then cast away into the world to mature…so that when we die, all of that can mature."

"Yeah, you're getting it."

"Sometimes, I wonder why I should worry about school when I learn a lot from you guys."

"Home schooling can only get you so far. The same with being self-taught."

Grumble! The sound of Rumi's stomach interrupted their conversation.

"Oops," Rumi sighed.

Grumble! She looked up at Shinji, whose stomach seemed to pick up on the need to feed.

"I guess we can't really converse on empty stomachs now, can we?" Shinji asked her.

"I…don't really like any of that hospital food they got here," Rumi expressed.

"Likewise."

-x-

"…Good morning, Ms. Nakamura," said Akira, as she stepped back into the hospital and greeted the receptionist from last night.

"Hey, Akira," she greeted back. "Did you read what was going on in the newspaper recently?"

"Un-uh, what's going on?"

"The USA's throwing a fit with the rest of the UN. After the devastation caused by Second Impact, the people were just barely able to recover and move on with their lives. But now, with some of that talk about that paramilitary agency, NERV, they're angry like Pyro Channelers on Saint Patrick's Day."

She handed Akira today's newspaper and the town leader read the article about the USA: It turned out that, due to NERV's so-called purpose for existing was to defeat the Angels, the United States didn't want to aid in the goal due to the massive costs of maintaining NERV's sole weapon that was, supposedly, capable of defeating the Angels. Even after seeing reruns of the first battle between an Angel and Eva, they were against the necessity.

In the end, the Americans will complain about financial concerns just like the rest of the world does because they fail to see alternatives than what's already there. Akira thought. "So the USA doesn't want to kick in with NERV. I believe they're doing the right thing by refusing."

"Whatever they call these 'Evas', they must cost more than what I spend when I take my boys on vacation outside of the country. And why should they want to assist that agency, anyway? They practically lost their job at getting rid of these Angels the moment you and Rumi started changing them into people, the lesser of two evils. The UN should try hiring you two."

"Could you actually picture Rumi and I working for the government? I mean, me, somebody who's happy where she's at, teaching at a dojo down the street, and Rumi, a little girl still getting used to being six years old, and probably has better things to do than to…play heroine each time an unpredictable enemy shows up because the both of us were picked by my ancient family heirloom to save the world."

Miss Nakamura looked at Akira like she was resenting the Angelbreaker a little bit because of her youngest child's involvement with the situation.

"You don't like what that bracelet has done?" She asked her.

"No, it's not that," Akira responded. "There's still a lot about the Angelbreaker that we don't know about, and with the Angels getting humanized time and again, I get a little worried about how long it'll be before this is all over, when this pointless war with an enemy you don't understand ends. We don't even know how many Angels there are left to be humanized and there are already five of them in the rehabilitation center, although one of them was split into twins, body, mind and soul."

"So then, that should be six Angels, technically."

"No, because the twins were originally one, they still count as one. I think if I knew how many there were altogether, I could spare myself the worry."

"I'll be cheering you two on if the next Angel shows up."

"Thank you."

Akira then left the lobby and entered an elevator heading to the cancer ward. Yes, if she knew how many there were altogether and how many were left, she could stop worrying. This was always a potential benefit of dealing with a battle: How long it was going to be, how many enemies were there to deal with, and how many sacrifices had to be made.

It wouldn't hurt to know these sorta things, she thought.

Getting off the elevator and walking down the hall, she wondered of the potential things…and people she would probably have to let go of when this…war was over and done with. The years of continued existence had allowed her to differentiate between her values on spaces, objects and people. She valued her family and friends at the top of her list with places being second and the material possessions as the last of her values. While the Angelbreaker hadn't taken much of anything from her, except perhaps her ability to actually have a social life for long periods of time…and whatever bits of a social life her daughter had, but it didn't appear to do anything severe. And as far as Akira knew, it might've not done anything severe to past wielders.

She knocked on the door to Dr. Gyatso's office and waited for a response.

"Who is it?" The response came.

"Akira," she said.

"You can come in." She stepped inside and found the good doctor sitting down at his desk, going over some documents. "So, what brings you here today?"

"Other than seeing how Shinji is feeling? Seeing how you're doing."

"Well, as you can see, I've made a full recovery. All my bones healed up perfectly."

"That's good to know. It's hard to imagine you requiring a cane to walk."

"Heh-heh! Yeah. Maybe when I'm eighty, I'll require one, but for now, it's unnecessary."

"Heh-heh-heh! Yeah, maybe," Akira chuckled, but her eyes looked down at what documents he was looking at and saw the same ones he seemed obsessed with. "Any new theories on the APL case?"

Gyatso looked at down at the medical files and sighed.

"Yeah, one theory, but it's one I don't want to perceive as true due to there being no hard evidence on it. I had tried comparing Shinji's case with at least twelve other cases outside of the country and found…two differences between the twelve foreign cases and Shinji's."

"Go on."

"Well, the first difference was with the foreign cases: Each of the patients was diagnosed with APL, half at the exact same age Shinji was diagnosed with it, while the other half didn't realize they had it until they reached the age of ten. Out of those twelve, four of them died from three different organ failures in the last three years. But when I compared Shinji's case with theirs, I discovered something different that worried me. While all of them in question suffer from varying stages of the leukemia and have gone through transfusions and other operations, Shinji's bone marrow aspiration didn't match up with their aspirations."

"Meaning, what, exactly?" Akira asked, concerned.

"Well, that's the theory I've come up with," he told her. "I've either did my studies wrong when I tried comparing…or Shinji's APL isn't just complicated, it's abnormal. Unnatural, different from a virus that evolves over time."

"I…I don't understand, Gyatso. Just…what are you saying? What is your theory?"

"I'm saying that… Shinji's condition…may not be natural. It may be…artificial. A man-made disease, even. Which would imply that…somebody, either by accident or deliberately…infected him with cancer long before any of us ever found out about it."

Akira slumped back into a chair behind her, looking like she'd been defeated in a battle and left to mellow over it.

It can't be…it just can't be, she thought. Shinji, our Shinji…was made sickly by somebody? That just can't be possible. And I thought that the worst possible scenario would be that, despite our best efforts, we'd discover that his illness was terminal, that we'd been wasting our time trying to save him.

"It's not suicide if you're already dying," her grandson's voice had echoed in her mind from before Rumi was born, when he tried to kill himself.

"Tell me," she asked him, "is this what you truly believe…personally?"

"Personally…I don't believe it," he answered her, "but medically…it's only in theory until it's proven it's not, anymore."

Sighing, Akira got up and walked toward the door.

"Akira," Gyatso stopped her. "I still believe that Shinji can beat this."

She turned to face him and smiled.

"Thanks," she praised him, and left his office.

-x-

"…Thank you," went Bumi, purchasing his new daishō set from the town's martial arts weapons shop. "Hey, Kanami, you found the right sword for Mayo to use yet?"

"Not yet, Bumi," responded Kanami, as she browsed through the swords and didn't find one sufficient enough to be her daughter's first blade. "Hmm?"

One small sword caught her eye and she looked at it. It was a ninjatō, one the few short swords in the world of martial arts. She checked the blade; it was fashioned with a blunt back with the front being sharp, allowing the user the option of striking with either the front or back of the sword. And with the way she was teaching Mayo in the way of the sword, this might've been a good match for her along with a tantō.

"Found one?" Bumi asked his younger sister again.

"Yep," she answered, and left to pick up a tantō to go along with it.

"A ninjaken?" Bumi used one of the other names it went by. "Hey, Kanami…we ain't the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles here."

-x-

Gendo was extremely angry with the way things were progressing with the war with the Angels. Absolutely nothing was within reach in his scenario. Even with Unit-01 repaired, it didn't make things easier with five Angels reduced to wearing the flesh of mankind instead of being killed. Excluding the Sixth Angel, she was supposed to have taken down the other four, but only ever took out the Third Angel…and even that hadn't gone the way it was supposed to, and Gendo blamed the Rokubungi family for his misfortune. Akira, Rumi and Shinji, in particular: Shinji for his frail body and will to stand against his plans and not even know about them, Rumi for keeping the boy out of the Eva, even when he himself had asked her to pilot Unit-01 out of desperation and to prove the Evas worked against the Angels, thereby causing his scenario to deviate for the worst, and Akira, simply for her part in raising the boy away from him and allowing him to develop a backbone to forget about his predetermined destiny with NERV. And then there was the Angelbreaker artifact, something of which he knew little to nothing on. He definitely wanted to believe that, if he could possess something like that, it would help him achieve what he wanted the most.

"Commander," went Ritsuko, standing beside him in the cage housing Unit-01.

"Yes?" He questioned her.

"The prototype of the copy is ready," she answered.

"Show me."

She led him to a small lab and pointed toward a table that held an object: It looked like a gauntlet made entirely out of sculpted bone, with a strange, reddish-orange marble that seemed like an eye, staring at nothing in particular. As Gendo examined it, he found that while it looked like it was made entirely of said substance…it also looked like metal had been incorporated into its design, along with a compartment on the base of the gauntlet that looked as though it housed a small blade.

"While it's still in the experimental stages, it functions similar to the artifact the woman and child were using." Ritsuko explained the details of the object.

"According to the Committee, it's called the Angelbreaker," he informed her.

"The Angelbreaker?"

"Correct."

Sounds like something from out of a comic book, thought Ritsuko, unsure of the designation. "Unfortunately, this is designed similar to an Eva, so it requires one of the pilots to use it. It's been tested using one of the dummies in storage and barely changed into any complicated shapes."

Gendo's eyes then widened a little bit; hearing that this copy required one of the pilots to use it because some of its gaps were filled in using the technology used to create the Evas made him protective of giving the prototype to Rei.

"The Marduk Institute is currently searching for a suitable candidate," Ritsuko added in.

-x-

"Ugh," Shinji shuddered; he had just felt a weird sensation tinging at the back of his mind.

"Shinji?" Rumi asked, finishing a bagel with jelly on it.

"Oh, it was just a nightmare from a while back," he expressed. "It's nothing."

"What was it about?"

"It was…" He started and sighed. "It was about Akira…in Tokyo-3 at night…and she was fighting that girl, Rei, who had an object that seemed similar to the Angelbreaker. That was also the same night you sleepwalked into my room again."

"Oh, that's probably going to follow me to the ends of the Earth."

"You said, as you were waking up today, that you had a weird dream. You care to tell me what it was about, Rumi?"

That made the little girl flush with embarrassment! Her most recent dream had also involved Shinji, but much of it revolved around the both of them in a violent situation that forced Rumi to do something of which she wasn't sure she felt comfortable doing toward her nephew. Already, she was doing things she wasn't entirely comfortable doing, but those revolved only around the Angels. Her day-to-day social life was kept separate from the life revolving around the Angelbreaker.

"Like your dream, the setting was also in that city," she gave in and expressed what she imagined. "Somehow, you were captured and brought there by…that man…and placed inside that thing. I was looking for you, wanting to tell you something. I'm not sure what it was that I wanted to tell you, but by the time I found you, you were screaming and the man-made monster was up and about and trying to fly away with you as its unwilling passenger. Somehow, I chased after y'all as you flew up into the darkest reaches of space. I couldn't recall anything else as I woke up from it."

"Those ugly things should be in a movie," Shinji stated, referring to the Evas.

"What kind?"

"Sci-fi, like many of Nemo's films. Of course, I probably wouldn't watch it, of course."

"Me, neither. Hey, what does 'post-apocalyptic' mean?"

"After the end of the world. It's a genre often used in movies and novels. After the end of everything, there's more."

"How can there be more to the world if it ends?"

"It could be a way of saying that after the fall of society, not the actual world itself. An empire can be reduced to rubble and its people can still be alive, only scattered about, trying to rebuild their lives."

"Oh."

Knock-knock! They turned to the door and saw Akira knocking on it.

"Hey," she greeted.

"Hey," they replied as she stepped in.

"So…how are things back home?" Shinji asked her.

"Oh, we're finding it hard to cope with your absence," Akira expressed.

"But…there hasn't been any…worries that I should be concerned about, right?"

It was that question that made Akira want to break out in tears and tell Shinji what the good doctor had theorized about his cancer being the result artificial contagion rather than an unexpected heritage and that it would kill him sooner or later, but due to having more self-control with her emotions, she uttered, "None, whatsoever. Heh. Miaka and Bumi are starting to teach Taeko more advanced Geo Channeling and Tsukiko's still trying to create her own fire."

"I've never seen Tsukiko so driven in the art of coercing the flames before," Shinji said.

"Well, fire is an element that requires total control. It's about keeping it from causing severe harm when you use it. Fire is destructive when abused, but is not an element that should be frowned upon. Think only of the positives of Pyro Channeling while thinking little on the negatives."

"Would one of the positives include the channelers putting an end to the fire at the museum before it got out of hand and spread to any other buildings like a firestorm?" Rumi asked her.

"Yes, Rumi, like that." Akira then generated a small ball of fire and took great care to keep in her left palm. "While it was the last element I achieved mastery over, it was the longest of time I took to learn it properly. The basic philosophy on Pyro Channeling is keeping the fire you hold or create at a constant heat that you're used to using. If you make the flame too little or weak, it'll go out, but if you make it to big or wide, you may lose control over it. Notice anything about this fire that you don't see in regular, uncontrolled fire?"

Shinji and Rumi looked at the flame and almost saw nothing different about it until Shinji noticed that the tiny sphere of burning air looked like it expanded and contracted every two seconds, similar to a…

"Hey," he uttered. "The flame's almost like a heartbeat."

"That's 'cause fire is also like life, not just something that puts an end to life. And wherever there's energy to generate fire, there's life for it to spark."

"So, fire is energy and life." Rumi discovered.

"Exactly."

"How do you create your own fire?" Shinji asked Akira. "Is there some sort of quality that you need in order to do it? Some form of beneficial agenda?"

"It's called self-manifestation of one's inner fire, and it's unique to each Pyro Channeler," Akira explained. "It's not easy and there's no way you can cheat…except with a comet that passes the planet every seventy years, which has me worried because it can be exploited and abused."

"Rayden's Comet?" Rumi asked. "You guys have been, somewhat, bothered by that since last month. Is that also part of the reason Tsukiko's training heavily?"

"Yeah. She and Shinobu compare the power of the comet to cheating, which I agree with them. However, when it comes to creating your own fire without some sort of external stimuli, there are no shortcuts to achieving mastery over the art."

"But…how do you do it?" Shinji asked again.

"You have to experience a heightened state of emotional distress, something that makes how you feel rise to a level where you can't keep your emotions in check. This can range from a memory to whatever happens in the here and now, but it must be a strong, genuine state of emotional turmoil, a very powerful state of emotional turmoil. Only then…can you create your own fire. Although, while I wasn't told until I mastered my basics, the first time you make your own fire…is always the hardest time."

"How so?" Rumi asked.

"You're exhausted from the release of the flames and the stress you're under from the turmoil within your emotions. The only bright side to it all is that every time you create fire after the first time will be easier to achieve."

"Somehow, I don't think Tsukiko has experienced anything that makes her emotions go beyond her ability to keep in check," said Shinji. "She always seems to be cheerful along with the morality of trying to be sensible and stuff."

"It probably stems from the way I raised her…along with how she was part of the audience during her days in the traveling circus." Akira expressed.

"Tsukiko traveled with a circus?" Rumi asked, never knowing this.

"She sure did. Since her family before us was part of the acts, she went wherever they did."

"What were her parents like?" Shinji asked, also interested in hearing about Tsukiko's past life.

"Gifted acrobats, they were. There was her parents and older brother. Chika, Takuya and Genma Aizawa, respectively. Their act was always the Flying Trinity."

"Trinity? Ain't that Christian for the Father, Son and Holy Spirit?" Shinji asked.

"Yeah, but in their case, there was no Christianity involved. They just didn't want to use their family name or the word 'trio'. "It's not the right amount of excitement," Chika, Tsukiko's mother had said. Because Tsukiko was only four at the time, she couldn't participate in the performances with them, so she watched them in the audiences."

Both Shinji and Rumi then sighed, knowing that the next question either of them asked about Tsukiko's past would be a heavy one: What kind of tragedy befell her?

"What…what happened to her family during her time in the circus with them?" Rumi spoke up.

Akira sighed and responded, "Yakuza. They were trying to integrate the circus into their protection racket, but the head of the circus didn't want anything to do with some criminal group. I was there in the audience when the horror happened: They were performing like they always had, many times over, and then… A part of me wanted to say there was retribution that day, but there wasn't any. There was only unnecessary pain…for unwanted services."

She couldn't forget what she saw that night at the circus: The Flying Trinity, in midair, started falling from their happy grace. Like normal acts in the circus that revolved around gravity, there was always the use of a safety net…but that didn't save them, either. Somebody had sabotaged both the lines and the net as revenge for what they didn't get for what they wouldn't be allowed to do because it was wrong, and it cost a nice family their lives…all save for a little girl…whose final image and memory of their act was filled with pain. And the worst part of the aftermath was that Tsukiko, prior to the show even beginning, had seen the one that took her life from her, leaving her a witness to the crime.

"If it was Yakuza-related, the guy that did this will either try to skip town or finish what he started," a policeman from that time had said, investigating the crime scene. "If she did see the man that caused this and identified him, she'd be a target herself. She's a material witness."

"So…what will happen to her?" She remembered herself asking him, concerned for Tsukiko now.

"We're not sure. Her whole life revolved around the circus…and the only relatives she had left are… The rest of the circus want to take her in, but we're concerned that the Yakuza will try a repeat of tonight. We'll try putting her in protective custody until we're able to catch the guy, but we don't know what to do with her in the future."

"Perhaps I can assist in some way for her," Akira had suggested; since the traveling circus wasn't so far away from Akira Town, she wanted to take in Tsukiko and keep her safe, her personal penance for what she felt she should've done when the act had gone south, but didn't act out on her nobler instincts.

Initially, it was a simple case of protecting Tsukiko by letting her live as normal a life as she could with several kids close to her age, and only partially because Gendo hadn't been around and the house was feeling rather empty and needed a new face and voice. When the authorities had caught the perpetrator that did this (since Tsukiko was able to give them a perfect description of the man's face) and tried him and obtained justice, that would be pretty much it for Tsukiko's endangered life problems. But it never did anything to remove the fact that during her initially-temporary stay at the Rokubungi estate, Tsukiko was developing a desire for revenge against what the man had done to her.

Four years old…and desiring revenge, thought Akira, who could sympathize with Tsukiko when her mindset was so young, so innocent and filled with so much hope.

"Do you…think Second Impact left some sort of…drastic dent in the Yakuza?" Shinji asked, feeling sorry for how Tsukiko lost her past.

"Maybe, but the people responsible for the crime…were dealt with long before Second Impact even happened," Akira told him.

"Really?" Rumi had asked.

"It was in Nineteen-Ninety-Seven that the gods brought some fortune to Tsukiko; the circus her family traveled with had come back to perform for the people once more. And the man that had hurt Tsukiko before was up and about, trying offer protection to the circus for a price. While some of the performers were new, the ones from less than seven years prior knew of the warnings from the emotional scars. Little did he know…that a ten-year-old girl, going on eleven, was there, seeking justice."

"Justice? Not revenge?" Shinji asked, curious.

"Oh, Tsukiko wanted revenge, but how many other people that want revenge and achieve it live with the repercussions of their actions?" Akira told them.

"Murder begets murder," went Rumi. "Taking life doesn't add up to restoring life."

"You can't bring back the dead like they do in the movies and cartoons." Shinji said.

-x-

"Ah-choo!" Tsukiko sneezed; this only happened whenever it seemed that somebody was talking about her. I wonder who's talking about me.

As the twenty-nine-year-old Pyro Channeler continued to practice, her big sister and fellow Pyro Channeler, Shinobu, watched her from the porch; as much as she herself wanted to create her own flames, Shinobu had to wait for her turn to use the training grounds since Tsukiko got up to use them first; early bird gets the worm, or in this case, first martial artist up gets the ring before the others do.

CRASH! Both ladies heard a crash inside the house and ran in, finding Nemo on the floor, surrounded by shattered pottery.

"What were you doing?" They asked him.

"The dishes," he answered his sisters, trying to sort out the intact pieces from the ones that would have to be recycled. "It was my turn, anyway."

"How'd you end up crashing?" Shinobu asked him.

"I slipped and fell," he answered, picking up a cup without its handles. "Great."

"Sometimes, I wonder if the family's breaking," Tsukiko said to them, helping to pick up the pieces.

"Oh, we're not breaking," Nemo assured her. "Okay, maybe we are breaking away from each other…a little… A little, not a lot. But breaking away is different from being shattered. Nothing lasts, but you try to make what you cherish last for as long as possible."

"Sometimes, I wonder how you're able to make philosophy sound like it's been around since before history was ever recorded," said Shinobu to her little brother.

"Philosophy is more of a belief than an ancient teaching that takes its roots from medicine, theology and laws. It is old, but it is forever changing, forever evolving. Just like how this family's gotten big over the generations."

"But Nemo…there's only eleven of us that live here. Twelve…if the brat changed his act."

"I didn't mean that type of getting big over the generations. I was referring to the fact that over time, Akira took in so many of us. Yeah, they're no longer among the mortal plane like we still are, but that doesn't change the fact that, just like how we do right now, they had lived here, as well. All seventy-four of them."

"Eh-heh-heh! It's seventy-six, Nemo. Excluding her firstborn son and daughter from over two-hundred years ago, Akira had adopted seventy-three children over the years…and raised them like her own. They, practically, were her own. I couldn't dare to think of anybody that has had more children than Akira ever had." Tsukiko corrected her brother, and stating a little, and not in a disrespectful way, that Rumi was Akira's third child by blood (her seventy-sixth child, chronologically), so when you exclude the rest of them, there were three children related to the centenarian woman that acted as a mother for everyone…along with the additional roles of a teacher, guardian, nanny, martial arts instructor and overall big sister figure.

RING-RING-RING! The phone rung and Tsukiko answered it.

"Rokubungi residence, Tsukiko speaking," she greeted the caller. "Huh? It's for you, Nemo. It's your special lady friend."

"Growl!" Shinobu teased Nemo, whose cheeks turned red with embarrassment as he went over to accept the kitchen phone from his younger sister.

"Cut that out," Nemo retorted. "Hello? Hey, Camille. Oh? For real? Thank you very much for finding out about this. I shall see you at the store. Goodbye."

When he hung up, his sisters looked at him like a bunch of rabid wolves eying their prey.

"Oh, please, due to the fact that we got a family issue concerning a group of siblings that descend from the very heavens themselves, Camille and I have barely any time to embrace the love," he told them. "It's mostly trying to find out stuff about that NERV agency and what's to happen with them that has us in conversations. You can't tell me you weren't curious, weren't you?"

"Actually, I think very little of NERV," Tsukiko revealed.

"I don't like to think of NERV at all," revealed Shinobu. "I mean, sure, what they wanted to do was to save the world, but that duty has been, more or less, transferred from them to Akira and Rumi, and they do a much better job of dealing with the SOH than what those Evas could only hope to achieve."

"SOH?" Nemo questioned.

"Siblings of Heaven, Nemo." Tsukiko told him.

"Oh."

"So, what did Camille tell you?"

"Only that the governments of the USA were, somehow, forced to kick in with NERV and construct at least two new Evas: Unit-03 and Unit-04."

"What?!" Shinobu went. "But they haven't even defeated any of the other Angels. Why would they need to construct more of those things if their record for victories and losses are one to three, since the guy named Ramiel never went to Tokyo-3?"

"Somebody or a group of people with the power to make them obey. Well, I'd better get to the store now. I have to replace the plates, bowls and cups that I broke. I should be back in about an hour." Nemo told them and left.

-x-

Somehow, it was unusually amazing that so much time had been invested in trying to get rid of the Angels that nobody thought to tighten the security around much of NERV's hidden secrets. But with the intervention of other people that saw an alternative to outright murder and destruction, no one was able to discover the things that Ryoji Kaji was discovering half the time. Two such secrets were discovering the truth about the Marduk Institute and what he assumed was Adam being kept deep in NERV's bowels. While much of his time was invested in trying to find all the secrets the paramilitary agency had, he was still wishing for time to try and rekindle his relationship with Misato, however impossible that seemed to be.

It seems that Ikari's family matters are becoming a common theme that interferes with NERV's goal of eliminating the Angels, but his adoptive mother and little sister are, essentially, keeping people safe from them. He thought, waiting outside an abandoned building he had just finished checking. NERV had their future relying on the Evas, but it hasn't brought them any actual hope. It seems more like a falsehood than a pipe dream.

An elderly lady with a small bunch of cats came by and stood next him, throwing animal feed onto the ground for the cats to feed off of.

"It looks like people have been getting distracted too much," the lady said to him.

"Very distracted," Kaji agreed with her.

"Are these…rumors accurate? The going theory so far is that NERV is being assisted by a mother/daughter team that uses some sort of weapon that might've been taken from one of the Angels that attacked a small town that's rarely on any maps after it left Tokyo-3 last month."

"It's unknown if that is true, but it would seem that they're doing a better job of taking care of business than NERV was believed to be capable of doing. Every Angel that has attacked so far have been rendered human like the rest of us and are being kept in that town. On a lighter note, the Marduk Institute, which is charged with discovering potential candidates to pilot the Evangelions, is just a dummy organization. It would seem that the strings that surround the thirteen-fifteen-year-old candidates are actually pulled by NERV itself."

"So, in addition to the previously-checked one-hundred-seven companies that were believed to support the Marduk Institute, this one makes one-hundred-eight," the lady said. "But tell me this: What was said about the former Third Child, Gendo Ikari's son, suffering from leukemia… Is this true?"

"Yes. In addition, he has rejected him and even refused to pilot Unit-01. Despite his illness, he seems to have a strong will. Certainly not shown in Ikari's case."

"Well, during the early testing stages of creating the Evas, he was accused of the murder of his wife by many scientists."

"He should be charged with child abandonment and neglect, as well."

"These days, just as they did in the past, many parents have chosen to cast aside their family ties in the pursuit of sufficing their other interests." The lady told him, running out of animal feed for her cats. "Continue with your assignment, but be on guard. They'll be looking for anyone who's found out anything they shouldn't have."

"Nothing to say to her?"

"Ask her to come visit me sometimes. It's lonely at home with just her cat to keep me company. She's becoming too much like her mother: Always wrapped up in her work, no time to be with the family."

"I'll inform her you said so."

-x-

"So…um…how was everyone's day today?" Akira asked the others at the dinner table, trying to instigate a conversation; in a way, this was her personal attempt to forget what she had discovered about Shinji's condition from Gyatso.

"I learned how to lift up a large block of stone today," went Taeko, happy that she was learning new Geo Channeling techniques.

"Mother acquired a steel sword for me to train with later on," added Mayo, setting down her chopsticks and helping herself to a cup of milk. "What did you do today, Akira?"

"Me? Oh, I…went to see Shinji again," she stated.

"How is he doing?" Nemo asked.

"I think he needs to walk around a little more."

"He's homesick," went Rumi, chewing on a piece of cucumber.

"That's a bummer," Bumi sighed.

"Maybe we should all go see him tomorrow," suggested Shinobu.

"I'm all for it," said Miaka.

Akira could barely remember the last time the family had agreed on something so regular or even trivial. After dinner was done, she retired to her room. For all her attempt to forget what she heard today, she couldn't seem to put it all behind her. If it was true, her only grandson's fate had been nearly decided by somebody else before they ever met him. Who would want to throw somebody else's life away and expect to get away with what could be best described as murder and attempted murder? She couldn't pull herself together to tell the others of this possibility; she didn't want to worry them or have them jumping to their own conclusions about who was responsible.

It seems like yesterday now…when I met him for the first time, she thought, recalling how she met him.

-x-

"Hey, there. I'm your grandmother"

Bumi had led her to little Shinji's room so that she could see him for the first time and left her to it. As her current family's eldest son left her alone, she knocked on the closed door and waited for a response. The door opened and revealed the young Shinji, who'd been informed of what was going on and seemed worried about what they might do to him.

"Hello," she greeted him, crouching down to meet his size. "Are you Shinji?"

The little boy nodded, somewhat intimidated by her presence.

"Who are you?" He asked back, sounding intimidated.

"Oh, you don't have to fear me," she assured him. "My name is Akira."

"Akira? Isn't that a boy name?"

"Heh-heh-heh!" Akira laughed; he wasn't the first person to ask about her name, but she was certain that he was the youngest to ask. "No. It's neutral, fit for both men and women. How are you doing?"

"Okay…I guess." He answered her.

"Is it alright if I come in?"

He nodded and opened the door wider and allowed the young woman to enter his room, which was sparse and held no sort of momento from his past before he met Bumi and Miaka. Akira sat on his bed right next to him.

"So, I take it you know that Bumi is one of your uncles?" She stated.

"No," he responded. "I didn't know I had any until…until…he left me."

She could see a tear escaping his eyes and she scooped him up into her lap.

"Oh, oh, I'm sorry," she apologized to him. "I didn't mean to upset you."

"You didn't. It just hurts whenever I think about that day. That cold, wet day. You know, he wouldn't even say why he was doing it. He only ever told me that he was tired of looking at my face, that I had no value, whatever that meant."

"He…he told you all of that?"

"Mm-hmm."

Akira couldn't believe that Gendo had told Shinji, his own child, that he had no value! This was not something you tell a young mind! And then leaving him on Bumi's doorstep after the death of his mother was just going too far.

"Are you…Mr. Bumi's sister?" Shinji asked her.

"Nope. You'd probably disbelieve me for saying this, but I'm his mother. Adoptive mother, actually, but his mother, all the same." She told him.

"Oh. So, if Bumi's my father's brother, then that would make you my…something…"

Akira chuckled a little and expressed, "Hey, there. I'm your grandmother."

Shinji looked up at her face, seeing the kind smile he'd only seen on his mother, but this woman's smile was much grander than normal.

"Grandmother," he repeated.

"Yeah. I'm your grandmother," she stated again, but then she looked at a small clock that showed it being ten minutes after ten at night. "And I believe it's past your bedtime, Shinji."

She helped him into bed, but he asked her not to leave; he was still suffering from the lingering aftereffects of being abandoned by Gendo, which made him afraid of being left alone. So she stayed with him until he fell asleep, exactly ten minutes after tucking him in. If anything, the centenarian could relate her grandson to her youngest son, Nemo: Both could be compared to each other and Gendo, but only in slight appearances, but displayed a kindness that isn't held back by any degree of malice or ill will that her rogue son had displayed prior to leaving the family to live on his own terms.

Shinji, she thought, reminded that this young boy was slowly suffering from an illness that would spell about his end in the future. I hope you know that there are those of us that do care about you…and won't let you go like there's no hope for you. As long as you live, you have hope for your future.

-x-

Knock-knock! Rumi knocked on her mother's door, catching her attention as she had zoned out.

"Huh?" Akira gasped, looking at her daughter. "Oh, Rumi. Sorry. I…I didn't hear you step in."

Rumi had a sad expression on her face, one that wasn't missed by her mother.

"Baby, what is it?" She asked her.

"You know something about Shinji that we don't know, don't you?" Rumi asked her, crossing her arms over her chest. "When you went to see Dr. Gyatso this morning."

"What could possibly make you assume I know something I'm not telling y'all about?" Akira countered, not really wanting any of them to jump to conclusions.

"When you were talking during dinner, you seemed desperate to stir up a conversation, anything to get over whatever it was that was bothering you today. I wish to know whatever it was you found out from the good doctor." Rumi told her.

"It's nothing that's even serious, Rumi."

"Better to be forewarned before going into a battle you may not survive…Old Grasshopper."

Sometimes, Akira had to wonder if teaching her daughter the martial arts with these quotes that Nemo decided to modify for her to get in touch with the modern times was a good thing because she wanted her to be able to defend herself as she grew up. But she knew that Rumi wasn't going to give up until she found out what she knew.

"And there's something I need to confess about," Rumi added in. "My daydream in the tunnel we were in on the way home that day we met Gaghiel and the Israfel Twins. There was more to it that I can't keep hidden from you. Please, Mother, tell me whatever it was that Gyatso told you…and I'll tell you what I couldn't about my daydream from that day."

Akira sighed and got on the floor by her bed.

"Well, it's only a theory that he came up with, so he's not sure if it's true or not," she gave in. "The theory so far right now is that Shinji's cancer…is not something that just happened. Somebody probably made it happen before any of us ever found out. Somebody, or a group of people, had, either by accident or on purpose…made him sick and kept quiet about it. But this is just a theory, and every theory has many different solutions to it."

Rumi came closer and sat in front of her.

"My daydream, while it involved me and Shinji being together…it…wasn't at all proper," Rumi shared her piece. "It was a strange dream: It was dark, there weren't any stars or moonlight out, but I could see perfectly, I was a little older than I am now, along with Shinji, who seemed fine, like he had his whole life ahead of him, but… There were these tentacles and lumps or blobs of skin and metal all around us, even covering parts of our bodies, like how the Angelbreaker does so and… I was on top of him, I mean, I was just on top of him, but I had my hands on his sides and chest and… I don't think I was…properly covered…and then… It's really odd to describe how I was feeling during the time I was with him in the dream."

Akira, being the quiet listener, pondered on the details of her daughter's daydream and then asked, "Well, how did you feel when you were…with him?"

"I was…happy…being with him… I was very happy to be with him…but I didn't know why. What do you think it meant?"

"Uh…perhaps it was your wild imagination playing with your sense of fear and desire?" Akira suggested; if what her daughter had described in her daydream was thorough, she wondered just how devoted she was to Shinji…and how far she would go to keep him safe and protected from those that would hurt or exploit him.

"Fear and desire…like I fear his death and desire his life? That kind of fear and desire?" Rumi asked.

"Yeah. When you say it that way… Yeah, exactly like that."

"But…it seemed wrong…and yet…it seemed right…but it's confusing. Does this mean that I have a dirty conscious that thinks things like that?"

"No, Rumi. Psychopaths will think of things like that. You, on the other hand, are simply maturing too fast. You turned six years old and you're still getting used to it, and yet you got caught up in a situation that only you, like me, myself and I, can resolve."

"Wielders of the Angelbreaker. Heh. I wonder what will happen once all the Angels are humanized."

"Hopefully, people will learn to never try and grasp power that they don't deserve or develop god complexes and desires of taking control of people."

Rumi then got up and yawned.

"Well, thank you for telling me what you found out today. Goodnight."

"Yeah. Goodnight, Rumi," Akira responded as her daughter closed her door so she had the privacy to change out of her clothes and into her own pajamas.

In the hallway, Rumi, thinking not of the potential theory that somebody made Shinji sick, but of the mere possibility that her daydream was just a brief glimpse of what was inside of her heart. She tried to sort out her feelings for him…and properly understand what they were; she cared too much about him to let him die, but, somehow, her feelings for him were different from how she felt for her brothers and sisters and nieces. There was a sense of favoritism between her nephew and the others, but why her emotions tightened around her heart when she thought about him dying were tormenting.

Why? She thought, stopping in front of his bedroom door. Why do I feel this way for him?

-x-

For all of his good intentions, Shinji didn't get much sleep later that evening. It seemed like each time he fell to sleep, he woke up every other hour, hearing a voice call out to him from afar. He wanted to deduce it as hearing things on account of his renal failure, which he had the good measure of knowing that he wouldn't die from it for quite a while, but knowing that if he didn't… He just wasn't going to let it come down to that. He accepted his fate.

Why do I feel that my only greatest regret is hurting Rumi deeply? He wondered, looking at the small clock nearby and seeing it close to seven in the morning of the Sixth of August. I should probably hang with her outside when she comes back to see me.

Reaching under his pillow, he took out his usual wig and placed it on his head, giving the illusion that he wasn't bald.

-x-

Sometimes, Asuka really despised certain people more than the Angels that never came to Tokyo-3 after the Fourth Angel attack. In the school she's assigned to, New-Tokyo-3 First Municipal Junior High School, which was becoming underpopulated a bit, she always had to endure the presence of two particular boys (you already know who they are) that acted like…well, like boys, along with several other of her male classmates that ogled her because of her beauty. And worse was the pilot of Evangelion Unit-00 was completely unsociable! Of course, instead of trying to pursue an interest that was akin to what kids her age were most likely to do, she blamed her lack of excitement on the Angels, the school, the classmates, minus her only friend, Hikari Horaki, and the mother/daughter team, Akira and Rumi Rokubungi.

Looking over at some empty desks while the old teacher droned on and on about the cover-up story of the Second Impact, Asuka often hated to wonder why such people decided to leave the city, especially when nothing terrible had happened since the last attack. Beep! She looked to her laptop and saw an instant message had been sent to her.

"Did you hear about it?" It said.

She typed in response, "About what?"

Another message popped up: "Some of the students nearly killing themselves in front of their parents if they didn't leave the city and go to where they felt were safer places."

"No, I did not," she typed back.

"What about the rumor that's been going on? About a woman and her daughter going up against one of those…things and beating it?"

Asuka looked around the class that the teacher never bothered to look at for any reason and deduced that her contact was the boy with the camcorder, Kensuke Aida; he was the only one in the whole school that seemed to have a habit of knowing things that most other people didn't or weren't supposed to know about at all.

"What does it matter? It's just a rumor, nothing compared to the Evas." She typed and sent.

"I heard the military or NERV have become interested in them. It's even stated the little girl was the pilot of Unit-01 during the first attack." The response came.

"Yeah, a little girl did pilot Unit-01."

Suddenly, the whole class, minus Rei Ayanami, erupted into a frenzy surrounding Asuka's desk along with Kensuke's.

"What was the girl's name?" One of the girl's asked Asuka.

"How old was she?" A boy asked.

"Why did the military need a little girl to pilot the robot?" Another girl asked Kensuke.

"Did her mother agree to it? Is she a member of the military?" Another boy asked him.

The teacher, detached from the scene that was happening, continued on with the history lesson that everyone except the class representative was ignoring.

-x-

"…It's so peaceful out here in the hospital garden," said Rumi, looking at the flowers. "I can't remember the last time we were out here."

"You were four," went Shinji, keeping track of the times they had visited the garden. "I once had a dream about you and the flowers."

"Oh, really?" Rumi asked, turning to see him and Akira sitting on the grass. "What happened in the dream, huh?"

"You were tending to some sunflowers, wearing a pink kimono patterned with roses, talking to me. I couldn't hear what you were saying, but it was peaceful, all the same."

Akira, as a small prank, decided to play with a small gust of wind and aimed it at Rumi's blue dress, blowing her skirt up and exposing her cotton panties to Shinji's eyes.

"Aaahh!" Rumi gasped, pushing her skirt down.

"Aaurgh!" Shinji gasped, covering his eyes as his cheeks turned pink.

"Ah-heh-heh!" Akira chuckled, revealing herself as the prankster.

"Mom/Akira!" Rumi and Shinji said, respectively.

"Sorry, my left hand slipped," she told them.

"That wasn't very funny, Akira," said Shinji, removing his hands from his face, but his cheeks remained flushed with the pinkish tint.

"But judging from your cheeks, you got a good peek," she countered, and his cheeks blushed to a darker hue of pink.

"Oh, don't make him seem like a pervert, Mom!" Rumi gasped, dropping to her bottom with her hands on her dress. "It's not right to tease him in that regard."

But deep down, Rumi couldn't suppress the possibility that her nephew did see her panties…and her wearing them. He'd seen them in the laundry or when she placed on her pajamas, but hardly ever looked at her wearing them in the public. It was…embarrassing and almost humiliating.

"Everybody who's watched those two Lilo & Stitch films have noticed that in the beginning of the first film, the animators showed Lilo's underwear as she crawled out of the dryer. And in the second film, they showed them again as she tried to skydive in her bedroom." Akira reminded them.

"Your point being?" Rumi asked.

"He was bound to see you wearing them sooner or later," she answered her.

"I've already seen a lot of you two during your battle with Ramiel," expressed Shinji, reminded of the photo of his grandmother and aunt wearing that racy armor that left very little to the imagination. "I'm glad the town media has decided to put that to bed."

Both girls then shuddered in embarrassment, reminded of that brief time they were wearing armor that was protective…but somewhat skimpy.

"I bet you got a kick out of seeing me exposed like that," Rumi expressed.

Shinji told her that he didn't, despite his cheeks saying differently. This was so embarrassing.

"Okay, okay, I think that's enough comedy," Akira uttered out.

Rumi then looked up and almost thought she saw something moving high in the sky.

"I think I saw a falling star," she told them.

"A falling star?" Shinji asked, once his cheeks returned to the usual paleness. "In broad daylight?"

Akira looked up and saw nothing, not even the cloud vapor that was produced by planes passing by in the air.

-x-

THRUST! Evangelion Unit-00 slammed the recovered Spear of Longinus into the creature known as Lilith, as per her orders from Commander Ikari. Very lately, Commander Ikari had his attention focused less on her and more on the little girl relation of the former Third Child and that woman that was said little girl's mother that took the humanized Third Angel away. Ever since the battles between the pair and the last three Angels, she has noticed that much of her…duty to NERV had been reduced…and her purpose to the Eva had been left in small pieces. Her synchronization with Unit-00 was still adequate while her synchronization with Unit-01 was slightly lower but still within the level where she could still pilot, but the last battles with the Angels had left the practical use of the Evas very small.

"Rei?" She heard the commander over the intercom system. "Did you handle it?"

"Yes," she answered him. "The task has been dealt with."

"That's good. Have Unit-00 brought back to the cage and then report to Dr. Akagi." Gendo had instructed her.

"Understood."

Somewhere along the way, her left hand had fidgeted a little, like something was wrong…or close to being wrong.

-x-

"…The nerve of those jerks!" Asuka grunted, walking down one of the many halls of NERV HQ in order to participate in another synchronization test. "They could at least talk about the Evas…or my beauty, but no. They want to know about Akira and Rumi, simply 'cause of what they've been doing since the Fourth Angel attacked their home!"

Personally, she hated the fact that what she felt was her chance to be in the spotlight had been taken from her by those two. Just what was it about a mother/daughter team like them that made the Angels view them as more important to waste their time on than to come to Tokyo-3 and try and put about the end of the human race? How were they more important than her? Was this an act of God, making the Angels cease their invasion of the city, or any other place, and trouble themselves over a little girl and an old woman that was, physically, forever young?

"Hey, Asuka," went Misato's voice to her as she broke out of her train of thought.

"Hey, Misato," Asuka responded, not as cheerful as she was when she arrived the first day.

"How was school? Learn any new kanji?"

"No. The students busied themselves with questions about they who don't slay God's messengers."

"They? Oh, you mean Akira and Rumi."

"Yeah, them."

"Would you believe me if I said that they probably didn't have a choice in dealing with the Angels?"

"What? There's always a choice! It's kill or be killed!"

"Except they haven't been killing anybody. So, it's more like fight or flight: You battle…or you flee."

"Running away is never an option."

"Sometimes, it is. Asuka, I'm probably the only person that will ever tell you this, and it's something Akira once told me herself: 'Take the cause out of the man, there is no cause for a man'."

"What? Take the… Just what does that mean?"

"It means that if you make it so that a person, regardless of their abilities, is unable to perform their duties for their cause, they cannot achieve completion of the cause. And if you allow them to live, unable to perform their duties in the name of that cause, they no longer have a cause to live for. It is both a failure and a mercy. Those Angels that have been humanized, they can't bring about the end of the world as they are now, and they can't ever go back to being what they were before. Being rendered human is a fate worse than death for them, in a way, and when they die, that will be that. End of the Angels and end of the former threat to the world."

Asuka sighed and leaned against a wall, taking all of this in…but couldn't accept much of it. All her life, she had been trained, specifically, for the sole purpose that was to kill the Angels, not let them live, even in states that were close to death. But because of the circumstances of their present situation, all that seemed to be happening was the Angels being dealt a severe blow that left them no different from her or anyone else…and they were being collected by Akira and Rumi. Her consciousness told her that it wasn't right to treat the enemy like they were equals or something close to that.

"Do you know why they're doing this, Misato?" She asked her.

"You remember that day the Fifth Angel attacked their town?"

"Of course."

"Those bracelets that we saw them wearing in the video footage, the ones that the armor was being sucked into… Those were what enabled them to defeat the Angels without killing them."

"They looked more like cheap jewelry than revealing armor. Or revealing in Akira's case. Did you see how her breasts were showing? They looked larger than yours."

Somehow, Misato felt that they had gotten off the track of what they were supposed to be talking about. Despite the fact that it did look like Akira's armor had an enhanced effect on her bust size, she doubt it was her actual size. She'd seen Akira enough times in the shortness of her visit to Tokyo-3 and that time at the festival to confirm that the attractive centenarian woman was a small-but-large enough B-cup, which was possibly the result of her inability to age any further than twenty-eight and only having three children of her own, Rumi being the third child born over five years ago after spending over one-hundred years of hearing other women go through the joys, pains and wonders of childbirth.

"I think you're missing the point of what I'm trying to explain here," she told Asuka. "What I'm trying to say is this: While they could kill the Angels now that they're human like we are, and quite personally a little, they probably should…but they can't and won't…simply because they choose to view different possibilities that are available…but are most often ignored."

"But they caused the Second Impact," Asuka countered, not wanting to accept that it was better to let the enemy live than to kill them for their crimes. "They caused the deaths of over half the life on the planet. They should be dead and reduced to pulp. You hate them, too, don't you?"

Even Misato couldn't forget the horrors of Second Impact…or her constant reminder of how severe the carnage was. Even after fifteen years of intensive recovery, she could still feel the phantom pain of her scar, the only proof that she didn't survive unscathed.

"Lately, that hatred over the Angels has become less than what it was when I saw Shinji," she expressed. "And after seeing four Angels rendered weak and helpless like us half the time, I can't find it in me to show contempt to those that weren't around when the Second Impact occurred. And they were only looking for their father, who's all they have."

"Everybody that knows the truth about the cover-up story knows that the First Angel was destroyed."

"Lately, I'm not so sure…and that's because of the revived Third Angel. He seemed convinced that his father was still alive, otherwise he and his brethren wouldn't have been, in the beginning, so Hell-bent on coming here… Wait a minute!"

"In the beginning…coming here…like there was something…something for them here?" Asuka questioned, now recalling the day that the Fourth Angel arrived, and then left when the foreign energy signature was detected and drew it away from the city…straight to the town. "But what could have possibly been here for an Angel to want?"

"That's the question, and until they achieve their new goal of getting rid of Rumi, we might not know."

"But they can't get rid of Rumi, as we all know. Her mother won't allow the Angels to waste her…and the ones that are humanized can't do squat to her, so why…"

BOOM! An explosion shook the hall up and knocked the ladies to the floor.

"What the Hell?" Misato reacted, getting up, seeing a smoking hole in the wall with bits of debris everywhere. "Asuka, are you alright?"

"I'll live," Asuka answered her, getting back up. "What happened?"

Suddenly, somebody stepped out of the hole, entering the hallway and facing them. What they saw was beyond real and more surrealistic: Rei Ayanami, covered, somewhat revealingly, from head to toe, in what appeared to be tendrils made of bone and metal, and carrying a large, curved scythe or crescent-shaped blade in her left hand.

"Rei?" Misato asked, but saw the girl's eyes and shuddered in fear.

"Where's the little bitch?" Rei asked, sounding different from her usual, detached self; her tone made her seem tough, rough and dangerously seductive. "Where is she?"

"Rei!" Rei then turned to look back into the room she stepped out of and down at Gendo, who was sporting a gash on his head. "Stop this!"

Rei ignored him and walked toward Misato and Asuka, either intent on walking past them or leaving them injured.

"Stand aside," she ordered them. "Don't get in my way."

Asuka wasn't about to be intimidated by the First Child just because she was wearing some ugly, revealing, would-be set of armor that looked like a rip-off of the armor that Akira and Rumi were wearing when they defeated the three recent Angels.

"You can't order me around, you freak!" She told Rei.

"So be it," responded Rei, and she raised the blade up.

BASH! Rei slammed it against Asuka's head and knocked her away, clearing the path, since Asuka had slammed into Misato and knocked her away, as well.

"Rei!" Gendo called out to her, but she ignored him, driven by the desire to do what she had never done before, which was to go find the little girl that changed everything…and relieve her of her everything she held most dear.

-x-

The evening walk back home from the hospital was pleasant for Rumi. It always made her happy to walk on her own after seeing Shinji.

"You're very cheerful, Rumi," Akira told her.

"Does there have to be a reason to why?" Rumi asked her.

"Well, before we left, Shinji did ask me to make copies of his scrapbook. Every time I look in it, I see moments that are eternal."

Except the next moment when Akira expected Rumi to speak up, she heard a small thud and turned around to see her daughter had fallen to the ground.

"Rumi!" She gasped, returning to pick her up. "Rumi?"

"Sorry…" Rumi had responded. "Just feeling a little weak in my knees. I guess I'm paying for all that orange juice I drank earlier today."

"Come on," Akira lifted her onto her back and carried her the rest of the way up the mountain pathway.

When they got back home, after Akira helped her into bed, the centenarian, while she still had adrenaline in her system to keep her awake, decided to pay the rehabilitation center's humanized Angels a nightly visit.

-x-

"…How can you understand these…stories that the Lilin write down?" Gaghiel asked Shamshel, looking at a book. "These inscriptions look like scratches to me."

"That's why you need to take a basic reading course, brother," said Shamshel to him, still reading her romance novel. "By understanding what the languages are and what the words mean, you understand what the story is about."

"Okay, you siblings, you have a night visitor," they all heard one of the guards say to them.

"Which one?" Sachiel asked.

"I know who," went Ramiel, and then they all saw Akira. "You're the only one that comes to see us most of the time. Specifically, for the purpose of acquiring information that helps you protect your people and the world."

"Ramiel, please, give it a rest," Akira told them, standing the middle of their cells. "And yes, I do need information…again. Hardly about the Angelbreaker…and mostly about all of you."

"What do you want to know about us?" Otsu Israfel asked her.

"How many of you…are there left to face…and when you'll arrive to try and erase Rumi?" She asked.

"Before Lilith ever arrived and stole the planet from us, our father only had eleven of us, including himself," revealed Sachiel to her.

"Eleven of you, including your father? Remove your father from the total, take away the five of you that have been humanized, including the twins, and you get five left." Akira realized. "And how have y'all been?"

"Forced to adapt, cope, and endure," said Ramiel, still angry that he was defeated so easily by her and her daughter.

"He's just saying that because, during PE, he was defeated by Kou and Otsu yesterday," said Gaghiel to her. "He hates being outnumbered."

"Well, two against one has always been seen as an unfair struggle in the past," Akira explained. "But that's something that most of us deal with all the time. Strength in numbers can either be beneficial to a cause…or troubling. But you turn a whole group's individual weaknesses into strengths that can often be used against your opponents. It's part of the value of teamwork. There's no 'I' in 'team'."

That's when Shamshel uttered to Akira, "That's how we were defeated by you and Rumi, wasn't it? Because we came after you one at a time instead of as a whole?"

"Yes."

"You seem absent-minded right now."

"That can happen when you have what you consider to be more important than the fate of the world on your conscious."

"Huh? And what could be more important than the world you live in?" Sachiel asked her.

"My grandson, who's in the hospital…again…and won't be leaving it again…until he draws his last breath," Akira expressed, slightly agitated by Sachiel's tone of voice.

"That boy that Rumi was protecting?" Shamshel asked, having seen Shinji the day of the museum incident which allowed for the Angelbreaker to acquire its chosen wielders to bring balance to the world once more. "Is…is it that bad?"

"Yeah. When you have pieces of you that don't work like they're supposed to and a moral conscious that keeps you from taking substitute pieces from other people that don't need them, anymore, it's difficult to get over it. I'm not the only one having a hard time trying not to show the fear of him leaving, though, which is why I needed to ask one thing about the Angelbreaker."

"Go on," went Gaghiel.

"Can it… When it's attached to one of its chosen bearers, can it reveal things that probably shouldn't be allowed to come to pass, like prophesied events or internal desires that don't seem proper?" She asked.

"What do you mean?" Kou Israfel asked her, confused by her question.

"My daughter had explained to me that she had a daydream during the time we were traveling back here, and it was explained to me in fuller detail, which makes me assume that she, quite possibly, has an… An attraction to her own nephew."

"An attraction?" Ramiel asked. "You mean, like… What, like your little girl's obsessed with him or something like that?"

"Yeah, exactly like that?"

"The Angelbreaker can wrap itself around the thoughts of its bearers," Otsu Israfel expressed. "Whatever it is that you're thinking or feeling, it can express such things in the form of dreams and visions. To even glimpse into the future for a time. It even allows one currently possessing it in the present to relive the memories and emotions of past wielders in the form of those dreams and visions. If anything, it is possible that what your daughter experienced in her daydream was either desires of those before her that possessed the Angelbreaker, her own desires…or her fears of losing him that were purposely warped by the Angelbreaker itself in a small attempt to relieve her of such fears."

"Such possibilities wouldn't be unheard of," added Sachiel. "The Angelbreaker may even see it within its boundaries to test its wielders' hearts, seeing what it is that they want the most. If your grandson's dying, then it's most definite that she wants his life…maybe even all for herself."

"You…do have to do something that you feel is right for those around you, don't you, Akira?" Shamshel asked her. "If you feel that what she thinks is wrong, you will do what you can to keep such desires or events from transpiring."

Akira looked to the Angel that had been rehabilitating the longest and said, "She's young. Yet, such things she's done are often things that are best left undone by children. I fear that this may be because of what I asked her to do when she was two. To save somebody we both care about, I asked her to do things that she shouldn't have done…things to keep him with us longer…and now I fear that there will be a price to pay for such acts."

"Akira…you can't undo what's been done…and there's doubt that you can keep from happening what may transpire in the future," Shamshel told her. "I've been here longer than my siblings here have been, and I've recently learned why people have this lesson of taking chances and making mistakes."

"Why? In order to understand how to correct those mistakes or not to repeat them?"

"No, to understand why we take those risks and why we make those mistakes, for better or for worse. If Rumi does have, as you put it, an attraction toward your dying grandson, then it is her place to discover her faults and why she did what she did…and why she's doing what she's doing…and what she will do later on, for better or for worse."

Akira sighed and then inhaled a new breath. While coming here for more information and potential guidance, she found out things that might be wrong: Her youngest child having an unrequited crush on Shinji, the Angelbreaker being able to delve into the minds of its bearers and make subconscious actions, and that she might be unable to change what may happen in the future.

"I have one final question of this evening regarding the Angelbreaker's abilities," she expressed.

"Okay," the siblings responded.

"The day when Ramiel was defeated, why did the Angelbreaker…create that armor Rumi and I were wearing? I mean, it was protective and everything, but it was…it was…"

"It was a first-time-only effect," Ramiel told her.

"Huh?"

"You were still breaking in the Angelbreaker," added Shamshel. "It adapts to whoever's wearing it. It will create whatever form of protection or weapon that's needed: A sword, bracelet, necklace, shield, wings, gauntlets, even a full set of armor. The armor that it covered you in was proof that the Angelbreaker had chosen the right people of this time to act as its hosts and help it preserve balance. You're not the first of the women to have worn armor that was revealing in the chest and bottom areas, and you may not be the last ones, either. The next time you wear a set of armor, it'll cover you completely. Not many bearers of such an ancient and powerful weapon of protection like to be seen half-naked in a battle."

Akira's cheeks blushed with embarrassment; these siblings, like everyone else in town, had obviously seen the picture in the papers. It was a piece of fact that was going to follow her to her grave.

"I better go now," she told them.

"Whatever you do the next time you face one of our brothers, do be careful," she heard Gaghiel tell her. "We have three brothers and two sisters left, but it's our brothers you should be concerned with dealing with. Sahaquiel will be most likely next to come forth and try to eliminate your little girl, and be forewarned: He's bigger than any of us were when we were large monsters…and harder to touch because he stays where people aren't dumb enough to go without protection."

"Dumb enough?" Ramiel said. "They can't go to where he stays because it's a place the Lilin were always unfit to survive in."

"Which is?" Akira asked.

"You see it everyday when you look up," answered Shamshel.

-x-

"Just what was that?" Asuka asked Ritsuko, who sported a bandage on her head.

It had been at least two hours since Rei Ayanami, pilot of Evangelion Unit-00, had left in the form of an armored, half-naked seductress on steroids with a large blade. Nobody but Ritsuko Akagi and Gendo Ikari knew what had transpired in the lab they were in. And while Ritsuko was willing to lie and say that a technical glitch from within Unit-00 had left its effects on Rei, body and mind, it wasn't the truth. The truth was that Gendo had decided to give the prototype of the biomechanical copy of the Angelbreaker to Rei, since there were no other potential candidates to choose from, and the results were beyond their original expectations.

Initially, Rei had done as she was told to by Gendo and placed the gauntlet on her left arm, since it felt uncomfortable on her right arm, and once it was properly fastened on, it all went south. The gauntlet came to life and possessed her flesh, covering it in tendrils of bone-like tentacles and metal wiring. Her personality had even shifted from her socially-stunted behavior to that of a wicked woman whose heart ached with want instead of need. And Rei…wanted many things she didn't normally want at all, even before she began to pilot the Eva.

"It would seem that Rei had become infected by Unit-00," Ritsuko lied to Asuka.

"How do you get infected by the Eva and end up looking like a mockery of that armored getup that a woman and her little girl were wearing?" Asuka questioned, unsure of whether to believe her or to disbelieve. "Unit-02 has never done anything like that before, either. Could I be infected?"

"Not very likely," Ritsuko continued to hide the truth. "Unit-02 is a Production Model type, perfected and free of flaws. Unit-00 is a Prototype, so it's still full of glitches."

But Misato, due to her close-up of the Angelbreaker and seeing the partial similarities that Rei was displaying, wasn't buying any of this for an instant. She assumed that Ritsuko was trying to create a copy of said gauntlet as a means to deal with the Angels and not have to rely on Akira and Rumi to take care of them for NERV, but in the process of finishing the copy, something went wrong. Dead wrong.

"Until further notice, Unit-00 is to be in suspended animation until its flaws are corrected," went Gendo, wiping the blood off his forehead.

"And the First Child?" Misato asked him. "What's to be done about her?"

"Found, captured and quarantined," he answered simply, but in truth, he also wanted to retrieve the prototype gauntlet and have it reworked; if it made Rei powerful and uninhibited, any potential new plans of his weren't going to work out well.

-x-

"…Shinji…do I make you…happy?" Rumi had asked her nephew, looking down at his face.

"Yeah, Rumi," he answered her. "You make me very happy."

The flames from the small fire gave Rumi a nice, warm glow on the left side of her face, leaving the right side cloaked in darkness.

"Shinji…if I could find a way to keep you with us, with me, without having to continue with being cut open, poked and prodded at with syringes, or having to sacrifice someone's life…would you consider it?" Rumi asked him, lowering her head closer toward his.

"You would do anything to save me from my fate, wouldn't you?" He asked her.

"I'd save you from the yokai until the netherworld freezes and remains that way until the end of the world for the people that sin for the wrong reasons." She told him, and placed her head on his chest, which she was pleased to know was free of his catheter tubes that were a prominent feature before she was even born. "I would even protect you from the hands of the Devil himself."

Shinji looked up at the night sky, up toward the moonlight…and responded, "Yeah, Rumi. I would consider it. Thank you for asking."

Then, the world blurred into total darkness.

GASP! Shinji awoke to the Eighth of August, looking around his environment and seeing he was still in his room in the hospital. He checked his chest and found his catheter tubes were still attached to him, which he sighed a breath of relief and laid his head back onto his pillow.

"…Rumi…" He sighed, realizing that what happened was just another dream, revolving around his relationship with his youngest aunt, which seemed to be changing, day after day.

-x-

GASP! Rumi awoke from another dream involving Shinji, confused at why she seemed so attached to him in a way that wasn't familiar to her at all. As her vision came into focus for the new day, she discovered that, despite her realization that her nephew wasn't home, it didn't affect her occasional sleepwalking habit. She was in Shinji's room and in his bed…again.

This is getting out of hand, she thought, getting out of her nephew's bed and leaving his room. He's not even home, so why do I still sleepwalk to his room like he's still here?

"Rumi, that's a habit that's going to, most likely, follow you to the ends of time," she stopped at the sound of her eldest sister, Shinobu's voice, and turned around to see her; she was sitting right by the side of the wall where Shinji's door was left open, and Rumi hadn't noticed her.

"Don't tell me," she told Shinobu. "I'm going crazy, aren't I?"

"No, I don't believe so," Shinobu responded getting up, "even though I saw you sleepwalking into his room as though he were still here. You had me curious as to why you would still do such a habit you, obviously, have no control over, when you know, consciously, that he's not here. I had believed that you would sleepwalk to the hospital where he currently resides, but instead you still go to his bedroom, and that made me deduce a different possibility."

"Which is?"

"You sleepwalk to his room because that's the only place you know, subconsciously, that you're familiar with him being in…and because it has his ki in it. Most people with a measure of power will often find themselves attracted to the power and presence of others."

"But…you guys discovered that Shinji had no channeling abilities at all. He went through the same test that we all did at age six, right? Put him in front of a selection of many toys and have him choose four…and he didn't choose any associated with the four elements."

"Power and spiritual energy are not limited to just the elements. They extend beyond them. My grandfather had told me something that my mother had once said before she had to leave me with him, and it was that, "The purest of minds can navigate the mazes built upon lies and deception without getting lost…and the purest of hearts can endure the poisons of hatred and cruelty…without being harmed". There was something else that went along with what she had said, but nobody here remembers what it was."

"Pure minds and hearts? Mazes and poisons? What do they all mean?" Rumi asked her.

"My opinion? People that stay true to their purest beliefs and desires are the strongest ones in the world. You might be one of them, too?"

"I don't think so. Lately, I've been thinking about Shinji in a way that I probably shouldn't. Last night, I dreamt that I was with him again in the night. I asked him if I had found a way to save him that didn't require some sort of a tribute from somebody, would he consider that option. Am I becoming…I don't know, obsessed with wanting him to stay with us?"

Shinobu got up off her bottom and stretched her limbs.

"Maybe, but you haven't done anything that others would view as wrong or immoral, like cutting other people open and taking their body parts. So it's safe to say that you're not too obsessed. We don't want him to die, either, and we're all trying to delude ourselves half the time and believe that nothing serious will happen."

Then, Rumi realized that Shinobu had said that she had been taken from her late mother and placed in the care of her late grandfather and asked, "What happened to your mother? Why were you taken from her and left with your grandfather?"

"My mother…" Shinobu knew the truth, and sometimes had some difficulty with accepting what people of the past had done toward her when she was little. "My mother…was a Goze."

"A Goze? You mean…she couldn't…see you?" Rumi asked, realizing that her sister's mother before Akira was a blind, traveling musician.

"Yeah," Shinobu expressed, and led Rumi to her room, which was decorated, predominantly, with posters of musical notes on the walls and ceiling and some old items that dated back over fifty years or so. "And even back then, not many people took kindly to those that couldn't see the way they could. But my mother wasn't just any regular Goze. She was also a capable martial artist. So capable that most pickpocket people were unable to get near her. In fact, they wound up getting incapacitated so much that they needed bandages just to hide their scars. But when she met my father and had me, she realized that, while she could look after herself, she couldn't trust herself with my upbringing because she couldn't see what I looked like, which was a exact mirror of herself when she was young. So, unwilling to leave me an orphan, she entrusted me to my grandfather. When I got a little older, I was able to engage in conversations with her about her travels around the country whenever she was home; speaking to her was easy when my parents lived with her father."

Rumi then turned to her sister's mantle place where she kept her blood family's old photographs, along with photos of her immediate family, and noticed one of a little girl in the lap of a young, Japanese woman dressed in a purple and pink kimono, sitting next to a shamisen.

"Is that her?" She asked, pointing to the picture, and noticing how the woman bore an uncanny resemblance to Shinobu, due to their distinct background of having minute Chinese blood in their veins to mark them as mix-breed women.

"Yep," she answered, picking the photograph up and setting on her bed. "That's my mother before Akira. Sometimes, I can still hear her songs…in the back of my head."

Rumi then took notice of the shamisen they were sitting beside…and noticed how similar it was to the shamisen that Shinobu kept in her closet, as if she were keeping it safe.

"What happened to her?" She asked her sister, now curious as to how she passed away.

Shinobu recalled that day her mother had left to go traveling again, not knowing anything except that she was told by her mother that it would be the last time she'd be traveling anywhere. That put much hope in Shinobu, believing that when her mother returned, it would be for good, and then they would be able to bond even closer. But a month later, as she was reading a book, a man came by and spoke with her father, whom always stayed with her grandfather to look after her, and she saw the look of hurt on his face. It was then that she discovered that her mother, her Goze, would not be coming home.

Rumi saw the hurt in her sister's eyes and uttered, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked."

"No, it wasn't your fault," Shinobu assured her. "It's just an old memory. She got hurt in a train accident. Heh-heh… I often wonder how many people are able to get involved in a train accident…and you're never on the train in order to get hurt by one. Police were on the scene, found her lying on the ground and rushed her to the hospital, where I was brought to see…for one last time. I…I could've sworn that, just for an instant as I held her hand…she could see me. It hurt knowing that the people you hold close to your heart could be taken away like any other person. I once cursed the kami for being cruel, that I hated them. I couldn't understand back then why it seemed that good people were the most likely ones to get hurt all the time."

"Fate's just like that sometimes," Rumi sighed. "Fate can be cruel…just as death can be unjustified."

"Yin and Yang, Rumi. Yin and Yang."

"Evil and good?"

"Death and life, endings and beginnings. Two parts of the same whole. There can never such an existence where everything's perfect: No suffering, no tragedy, and no losses. It's just an empty dream, an unobtainable goal. While I'd find it something that could be achieved with the proper motivation and careful guidance, there must always be balance in the world. Wherever there is light, you must also have darkness."

"But lately, because of the Second Impact, there seems to be too much darkness because of the massive death toll," Rumi told her. "The balance of the planet has been disrupted."

"It may be worse than that, Rumi. It may also be the one thing Geo Channelers fear the most."

"What is it?"

"The Earth is dying."

"Dying?"

"Too much imbalance, too much death, too much negative energy. The violence, the hatred, the destruction, it's poisoning the soil, the oceans, both of which help to support the life it maintains."

Rumi then thought back to Shinji, who was dying himself, each and every passing day.

"If that's the case, then balance must be restored to the planet," she uttered.

-x-

SEELE's insider in Akira Town continued to watch the hospital from across the street on the bench he sat on. Only sparingly did he ever get up to go get something to eat or to wander around the neighborhood as to not draw much attention to himself. So far, his orders were keep an eye on two of the few people that went to see the dying Third Child: Akira and Rumi. If he ever received his further orders on what to do to them, if such orders ever came, then it would be possible that such an order to eliminate all other close family members associated with the dying boy would also come about. Frankly, he didn't really care whether they lived or not; he was getting paid a gracious amount for what was intended to be a reconnaissance, Intel and potential item collecting job, and he needed to make a living in any way he was good at doing.

"Excuse me, sir," somebody uttered behind him, "but do you know where I can find a clothing shop around here?"

He turned to face the person and saw a young woman that looked familiar, but he couldn't place the face anywhere.

"Sorry," he responded. "I don't know where a clothing shop is around here."

"Very well. Sorry for disturbing you," she told him and walked away.

A full minute went by and the man recalled where he'd seen the features the girl displayed: Chalk-white skin, pale, blue hair and blood-red eyes. That was Rei Ayanami, the First Child! What was she doing in Akira Town? He turned to see how far she had walked away, only to find her long gone.

"What the Hell?" He gasped, and took out his cell phone and contacted his superiors. SEELE might have an idea on what to do with her.

"…I still don't understand why Rumi wanted to stay home today," he heard somebody from across the street say to someone else. "Usually, she enjoys seeing him."

It was one of the Third Child's elder aunts and her daughter.

"Maybe she's afraid of something terrible happening if she did come to see him," responded her twelve-year-old daughter. "She did seem hesitant when asked if she was going to see him today. Shinji's going to be disappointed when he finds out that she's not coming to see him today."

"It's almost like a heart-breaker right there," the mother added in, and they entered the hospital.

-x-

Dressed in only her common school uniform, Rei Ayanami wandered through this town named after its founder for a clothing shop where she could find suitable attire that would enable her to blend in with the crowd as best as she could. In Tokyo-3, most of what her former wardrobe consisted of was just her school uniform, but after she had obtained, or rather, received, the gauntlet that was built from the same technology that created the Evas, but originating from a different Angel source, she realized that she needed to break free from her old chains and taste the layers of freedom and desire. Thus, she needed a new wardrobe. The gauntlet, capable of similar shape-shifting as that Angelbreaker gauntlet was capable of, had reverted into an ornate bracelet with a strand of bone-like metal that extended from the base of the wristband portion and ended at a smaller band around her middle finger, which was encrusted with a small, black, circular diamond that shined like the circular ruby encrusted on the wristband, allowing her to wear the weapon as a form of fancy jewelry without drawing too much attention to herself.

Blending in is better than hiding out, she thought, reveling in the power to actually think for herself and make her own decisions for the first time in her life rather than being told what to do.

She stopped in front of a shop that seemed to advertise some articles of traditional Japanese clothing, like the hakama and yukata, in their displaying windows, and stepped in. There were many different types of traditional clothing, but she had yet to find one that suited her developing tastes. Until she took notice of a blue yukata with some white tigers sewn onto the back and sleeves. This one caught her interests a lot.

"Hello?" She called out to whoever was in the store.

"Yes?" An elderly woman, graying hair, wrinkled skin, dressed in a yellow hanbok, responded as she came out of the back of the building. "How may I help you?"

"This yukata," she expressed, holding up the left sleeve of said clothes. "How much is it?"

"Oh, this?" The elder verified, examining the outfit. "It's about sanjū doru (thirty dollars). If you had been here during the Fú Festival last month on the fourth, it would've been for free."

Rei then reached into her school satchel and pulled out a small wad of denomination bills; the three guys she encountered before leaving Tokyo-3, unseen in her armored guise, weren't going to be missing the money where she sent them. Gathering the required amount, she gave it to the elder.

"Whoa, uh… Well, it's your yukata now," she sighed, unsure how a girl like her was able to possess a small-but-large amount of currency laying in her satchel and act like it wasn't worth much with her face being so…expressionless. "Is there anything else you require help with?"

In less than fifteen minutes, Rei had stepped out of the shop dressed in her new outfit, sporting zouri-based sandals and a small, flower-themed, coin purse-like pouch bag tied around her right wrist. If you ignored the unusual hair, eye and skin pigmentation, Rei could've passed for a regular girl belonging to a noble family…with only her lack of expression marking her as anything but. Looking around herself, she inhaled a new breath and walked away from the shop, heading around the town with no destination in question at the moment. She wasn't looking to instigate any further battles…yet, but she would, eventually, and when she did, she'd show just how much she desired all that she never had.

-x-

Heading back to the rehabilitation center again after last night was probably going to upset the security guards a little, but Akira had neglected to ask Shamshel something that only she could answer: In the aftermath of the museum incident, Nemo had informed her that the security cameras that weren't destroyed caught the shadows of two other people in the museum with her, Rumi and Shamshel, something of which neither Rumi or herself could remember seeing.

"Gee, Akira, you come to see these kids so much, you should probably be a regular visitor," said one of the female guards to her as she led her to the recreation area outside the rehabilitation center.

"Sometimes, if it weren't for my unintended association with the woman I'm seeing, I'd probably be elsewhere right now," she responded, reminded of the promise she made to Tomoyo to go to her house and spend time with her. "Is Shamshel behaving properly?"

"Believe it or not, she's currently engaged in a conversation with one of the guards regarding a romance novel she was looking at recently. She's not as moody as she used to be, her temper has cooled down a large degree, and she seems to like being here." The guard told her.

"She likes being in rehab?"

"Yeah."

They stepped outside and found Gaghiel swimming circles around Kou and Otsu Israfel, who were wearing water wings to stay afloat in the large pool. Sachiel and Ramiel were engaging in more fitness with the security guards that sparred against them, and Shamshel, the woman Akira was here to see, was indeed talking with a guard over a book.

"…And the Americans buy into this belief?" Akira heard Shamshel ask the guard.

"Yes. It's also part of the reason why they made that comedy film. People actually enjoy plots, scenes or situations involving a pregnant woman or two." The guard responded.

"Why must people be fascinated over the changes that occur to the female body whenever they start the goal of having a family of their own?"

"There are many reasons why: To save failing marriages, keep a family name alive, or even to help the people you love more than life itself have a life of their own because you yourself can't help them as much as you want to."

Shamshel sighed and nodded her head in agreement with the reasons, and then turned her head to face Akira, who seemed oblivious to the conversation.

"Hello again, Akira," she greeted her.

"Hello, Shamshel," responded Akira, sitting on a stone seat. "I had neglected to ask you something last night when I left, nothing to do with your brothers or sisters or the Angelbreaker. Is it alright if I ask you about the incident at the museum?"

"But…I thought you wanted to put behind our violent introductions and start anew," Shamshel told her.

"That, I still do…but I just needed to know something about what happened in there that you would've probably taken notice of."

"Very well. Shoot."

"Huh?"

"That's that urban language way of saying for you to go ahead and ask me something."

"Oh! Sorry. I'm still traditional. One of my sons has yet to teach me how young people these days are speaking. My question concerning the museum incident is if you, by any chance, before the explosion, had seen anybody other than myself and Rumi in there?"

Shamshel explored her past in Akira Town, right up to that first day, her short time in the museum…and her most frustrating encounter with the Angelbreaker.

"No," she answered her. "I was so worked up with getting rid of your daughter that I didn't notice anybody else in there…other than yourself. Why do you ask?"

"That night, I was told that the security cameras salvaged from the explosion had taped at least two other people in there, but only caught their shadows tape."

"Ghosts, perhaps?" The guard sitting across the table from Shamshel suggested.

"No. Death may be a revolving door to some, but the dead, when reduced to an intangible state, don't cast shadows on anything. And when light is cast upon them, they most often disappear, like an illusion or hologram, which also can't cast shadows." Akira explained to him.

"It's beyond me," Shamshel told her. "Other than the bits and pieces I know of about the Angelbreaker, I don't know anything about two other people in the museum prior to the explosion that day."

"Well, thank you for telling me. Sorry to have wasted your time today."

"Don't sweat on it. I have a lifetime to waste on many things."

Akira then left, deciding to put this behind her completely and go to Tomoyo's house.

-x-

"…I can see how hard it is to extract water vapor from the air," went Rumi to her brother, Nemo, who was practicing his Hydro Channeling by the town lake. "Why do you bother with doing so if you're near a large source of water?"

"It's better to be cautious than foolish when going against an opponent in an environment where water sources are limited. For instance, a desert, which is just a lot of sand and stone…with very little water available. Hydro Channelers will often wish to bring a container full of limited water as a safety measure…and will want to learn how to extract water from the air, regardless of how limited the amount may be." Nemo explained it to her.

Rumi, who'd been sitting on a small boulder by the edge of the lake, then got up and jumped onto the grass to perform some stances. Having not told her mother yet that she had decided to try and channel earlier than she had been planning to, Rumi was still getting a hang of the basics of manipulating the air currents. Even Nemo didn't assume much, unlike Shinobu, who knew…but hadn't said anything to anyone. But when Nemo noticed how his baby sister was moving her hands around her front, almost as if gathering something that couldn't be seen into a ball, and recalled where he'd seen moves like that.

"When did you start to Aero Channel, sis?" He asked her.

"Huh?"Rumi went, looking at him as a tiny sphere of water materialized out of the air. "I'm not Aero Channeling, Nemo?"

"Nobody likes a liar, Rumi. I can see the small cloud of dust gathering around your stomach."

Rumi looked at her stomach and saw no such thing. But she could see that there was no fooling her brother, who was older than she was.

"Okay, I'm trying to learn how to channel the elements earlier than I originally intended to," she gave up and revealed her motives. "After the incident with Shamshel, it was a very rude wake-up call. I can't rely on basic martial arts and my hook swords forever, and because the Angels that haven't been humanized will be coming for me with the aim to take my life. I want to be able to defend myself without having other people fight for me. Is it wrong to want to defend myself?"

Nemo channeled the water of the sphere around his left hand until it formed an ice glove and he said to her, "How much of the basics of Aero Channeling have you achieved?"

"All I know is moving the air forward and meditation for forty-two minutes."

"Self-taught?"

"No, Shinobu explained to me how to meditate and open my spirit up."

"Well, I know a few of the Aero Channeling practices myself, but they're more complicated than simply moving the air in front of you. One of the best ways of describing the movements in Aero Channeling is the martial art Ba Gua or Baguazhang, with pieces of Hsing Yi…"

"Isn't that translated into "Mind-Heart Boxing"?" Rumi questioned.

"Exactly, and these arts are descendants of the Aero Channeling Arts: They require the practitioners of both Ba Gua and Aero Channeling to get behind their opponents and always moving to avoid being hit by them. By using constant, circular movements, you build up tremendous energy and unleash the power at your opponent…without harming them. Most of the time." Nemo responded.

"Most of the time? I thought Aero Channeling was a purely-defensive martial art."

"It is, but…when used under emotions not suited for it, like rage or the desire for revenge, Aero Channeling can become an offensive art. This…is also due to having a handful of offensive moves added into the defense of its entirety."

"But…because not many Aero Channelers ever fight out of rage or vengeance, the offensive power of the air is hardly seen, is that right?"

"Yes, Rumi, that's exactly so. And as Akira once told me, when I started mixing Aero Channeling into my Hydro Channeling practices, the people of the ancient Winds of Freedom City, birthplace of Aero Channeling, practiced and honored the sacred art with one rule and law that is a constant morale to using the power of the wind: Never use air to take a life."

"Because all forms of life are sacred, even the oldest of wolves trapped in the darkest of caves."

"Now…are you up for a lesson from an older brother that can give you a few pointers?"

Rumi bowed to Nemo and responded, "I am ready to learn more of the art of coercing the powerful, life-giving wind, Sifu Nemo."

"I think you truly are, Pupil Rumi. Let us begin."

-x-

"…People develop feelings that are unique to themselves, Akira," said Tomoyo to the centenarian woman, as they were repairing the roof of her home. "If we all thought the same things, there'd be no individuality. No personal identity. No sense of self."

"I know, it's just… I've been told that I can't fight what might be fate, but I don't want for Rumi to suffer from her choices like the ones I had her make when I asked her to help Shinji."

"We're all going to suffer from the choices we make, one way or another, Akira. It's like you once told me and it's part of life: We grow up, we change, we make mistakes, and we have to pay for those mistakes, but those mistakes also teach us new things about ourselves. Haven't you ever made mistakes that taught you new things about yourself in the past?"

"Many a good mistake, but very few ever teach me something that I don't learn from any of my kids. I learned the hard way one time when one of my Aero Channeling teachers taught me of how all life is sacred, and that taking any one life without just cause or value is wrong."

Tomoyo then mustered the will to ask her friend what was probably her greatest question so far.

"How many lives have you taken, Akira?" She asked her.

Akira sighed and answered, "Six…before the founding of the town. Only five of them were immoral."

"Then…one of those people was an innocent?"

"Mm-hmm. You know the story about the woman that fought who she was led to believe was a goddess for the right to have her son returned to her two-hundred years ago?"

"My God, that was you? You were believed to be a goddess?"

"I didn't realize it until it was too late that two of the five lives that were foul…wanted me dead. The woman I met while traveling to different parts of the archipelago with my children from that time was a Pyro Channeler named Anzu. Like me in the beginning, she had difficulty mastering the flames that dealt with energy, life and destruction. But she had something I didn't have at the time: Patience. She asked if she could travel with us for a while, and I let her; not many people bother traveling martial artists with personal motives, hidden or otherwise."

"Anzu sounded like she didn't have it out for you in a personal way," Tomoyo told her.

"That's the thing. There was never anything personal. No grudges, no vendettas, not even a belief that you would become legendary for killing a Unity Channeler. Anzu was just a martial artist and Pyro Channeling Master, a widow and a mother who put her child before herself."

Tomoyo hammered several more nails into the wood of the roof and asked Akira how she found out about her friend's son being taken from her.

"My husband," Akira sighed, never having the slightest degree of resentment for her dead spouse, but resenting the powers that wouldn't allow the problems he had settled years ago to follow him to the grave until she made it her job to put them down. "The two guys that hurt Anzu with the kidnapping of her son had a grudge on my husband and wanted revenge against him. They believed that there was no way he could defeat me, a channeler with the gift to control the greatest forces on the planet, with ease and win the prize money that was awarded to the winner, and pay off his father's debts and keep his sister from being turned into a whore. Unfortunately, they couldn't take their revenge out on him 'cause he died four years prior to my meeting Anzu, due to old age, and his sister had passed away eight years earlier due to illness, so they decided to come after me. But they were cowards, unwilling to face one that fights for honorable reasons, so they resorted to trickery and deception. They kidnapped Anzu's son, told her to find me and kill me when I was at my most vulnerable and they would return her son to her. We traveled around one of the smaller islands for several weeks until she had asked me to accompany her to a waterfall river…where she made it clear that our friendly association wasn't all true, but a web of deception and desire. Despite her extensive martial arts training, she, like some of my children and friends from over one-hundred-eighty years ago, favored the art of using a yari, and when used in conjunction with her Pyro Channeling was what made her a force to be reckoned with."

"But you two were near a river, so you were able to Hydro Channel, weren't you?"

"We were, and I did, but I never fought my hardest. I was against killing, unwilling to violate my Aero Channeling principles just to save myself. So I mostly used the water from the river to heal my lacerations and create walls and domes of ice to hide behind or inside of. She questioned me about why I wouldn't fight back against her. As desperate as she was to save her son, she wanted a real fight between us. But the battle was stalled by one of my adopted daughters from that time, Chi-Chi. Anzu was unwilling to fight me to the death as long as my kids were present, so she stopped, which had my children questioning her motives to why she wanted to kill me. Even when I had explained it to them that she wasn't doing what she was doing of her own free will, I couldn't forget that my youngest adopted son of that time, Li, had told me that it seemed unfair that somebody was out to get me for unfair reasons."

"I think he was right on the money," Tomoyo told her.

"Yeah. I just wish I had learned more about how he learned about that two days later when Anzu and I fought again after I put my kids to bed for what I had suspected would be the last time. But when we fought, it was a little bit of a reversal: I was no longer dodging her moves, but hers were less than fatal. And then, when I thought she was going to do it and kill me with her yari… I Geo Channeled a jagged column of stone and struck her with it in the stomach (tears were soon falling from her eyes, much to Tomoyo's surprise), but it turns out she only pretended to make her fatal assault on me…because she no longer had a reason left to live. The day after our first fight, she had discovered, in her own heart, that her son had been dead for some time after he was kidnapped, and it left her shattered to the point that she couldn't carry out her order if her child was no longer among the living. I was devastated…but then I became angry. Her dying words were the names of the two that kidnapped her son, and in one night, I paid the men a visit and showed them that the wrath of a mother was sometimes more powerful than that of a martial artist or channeler. Three people had died in one night because of me, but out of all six of them, only one was pure, innocent and had a just cause for why she was after me."

"People are just evil when they're like the men you made pay for their crimes that night."

"No, Tomoyo… They're just evil when they want for all the wrong reasons. Power, glory, wealth, perfection, immortality… Those are some of the things that mark those that want for the wrong reasons instead of need for the right reasons. If you can't acquire what you want by proper means, you acquire it through illegal methods. I have been bribed several times with the promise of great wealth by at least three of the five bad lives I've ended, but I maintained that wealth must be earned honorably. And as much as I hated the fact that I killed five bad souls…I can't help but feel that it was justified."

"That…by taking their lives, you feel that you had preserved the future and happiness of other people that they could've harmed?" Tomoyo asked her.

"Yes," Akira responded.

"Akira…people do many things, some things without always thinking carefully of any potential consequences…and they have to live with those choices for the rest of their lives. But they can either do their best to put their mistakes behind them and start anew and try to mend painful wounds…or be consumed by them. Most people always have a choice to do what they know is right and follow it."

"Yeah… I just wish those lives I had made the choice to end had made the right choices back then."

"Nobody's perfect, only human. Does living longer than the common lifespan allows make you seem out of place from the century you were born in?"

"I've had years to cope and endure the new century and the loss of the previous ones."

"But what about the constantly-evolving nature of crime, sins and foul play?"

"I'll always find myself lucky that I have people willing to tell me of the roots, the causes to the reason these dark actions exist. Like Nemo and his knowledge, derived from the realms of make believe, which is based on some majority of the truth. It's a vicious cycle of misery and self-destruction between the people that live their lives in want…and the victims of those people."

Tomoyo sighed heavily, and then looked to the sky as the sun started to set. She had never believed that her oldest friend could've killed before in her own life, over ten decades ago…and still live to tell about it. For as long as she'd known Akira, even from the time she herself was a little girl, she had always believed Akira to be free of the stains of murder, devoid of a desire to end one's life. And now…she knew better. But she held onto the belief that there would be those that exist with the goal to never end anyone's life.

"Sometimes, I wish my sister were with me right now," she told Akira. "I always have dreams of a life where that night she died never happened. Nothing would be better than what's happening right now than to hear her complain to me about something or just to whine her lungs out for my attention…instead of recalling the days of life that is past."

Akira looked to her, but had to rub her eyes, not just because of the tears she wiped away, but because of who was there beside Tomoyo: It was a little girl with short, dark gray hair and bluish-green eyes, dressed in a baby-blue yukata with a cloud scheme, and floating around Tomoyo.

Xiaolongnü, thought Akira, believing that this was the spirit of Tomoyo's baby sister. "Tomoyo…I believe you've always given her the attention she craved, in one way or another."

Xiaolongnü raised her head to look at Akira; if this was some form of ghostly intimidation, the centenarian would not fall back on fear.

"It's just me saying this, but…she's here with us, with you…even when we can't see her." Akira continued. "You could…say something to her that you were never able to before."

"I keep your room untouched to remind myself that you existed in my life, sissy. I might've never told you this before…but I never resented you for our parents' deaths. You were the best sister I had, even if you were the only one I ever had. I'd do just about anything… I'd give just about anything…to be with you in this life again…to see you again, even if it were only for a moment." Tomoyo uttered, and Akira saw her sister's spirit shedding tears. "I still have meaningful moments with you, Xiaolongnü…even though you're only gone in body."

The little girl looked to Akira and floated toward her. Her hands were raised and positioned beside the woman's cheeks, almost touching…but very far from doing so.

Thank you, Akira, Akira heard her voice say to her. This is another power the Angelbreaker gives its wielders: The gift of communicating with the souls of those that have departed the mortal plane…and reuniting them with the lives they left behind. Thank you.

Xiaolongnü then vanished from her perception, possibly returning to the heavens.

Akira looked at her half of the Angelbreaker, wondering what other abilities it would demonstrate for her later on. Despite never, initially, showing much interest in the ancient gauntlet in the past, she was beginning to admire its ability to butt in on her conversations with certain people and do something to help increase the mending of old wounds.

"Akira?" Tomoyo asked her.

"Yeah?" She asked back.

"Thanks again for the renewed friendship and assistance in repairing the house."

"No biggie."

"No, really. I'm not sure what I'd done if… Okay, who's that girl down there on the ground looking up at us?" Tomoyo pointed down toward a young girl that Akira had seen once before already.

-x-

Originally only wanting to pass by and examine the neighborhood, Rei had discovered Akira on the roof of one of the houses helping another woman fix it, and decided to stick around until she was noticed by them. Her expression changed only slightly; instead of being blank, her mouth made a small smile filled with a hidden cruelty, her eyes glowing a little with a strong fire. She looked like she was actually someone of noble heritage in her yukata now.

Soon, she thought, the bracelet on her left arm glistening in the sunset. Soon.

And then she walked away, never expecting to be followed by anyone.

-x-

"Who was that?" Tomoyo asked Akira.

"That looked like a girl I saw in Tokyo-3," she answered, "but…there was something off about her."

"She looked like she didn't get much sunlight in her younger days."

"Everybody's got a pale complexion, Tomoyo."

"Not like hers. She looked like a ghost, except that she walks among us. And that hair. Who has blue hair these days?"

"I met people with purple hair; purple hair was a rarity back in the old days. I even met a woman with purple hair in Tokyo-3."

"Heh. Tokyo-3. Tokyo-2. Why can't the government or UN simply name them something else entirely? I mean, there's no way you can or should name places with numerals at the end. And you can't truly replace a city as great as Tokyo."

"Some people refer to it as either Tokyo-1 or Old Tokyo."

"That's a put-down. The wars that occurred after Second Impact have disgraced the places on the planet that should've never been disgraced to begin with."

"Heh. Right on, Tomoyo."

"You know what I loved the most about Tokyo?"

"No, tell me."

"Tokyo Tower."

"That was a marvelous construct of human ingenuity…among other nice places to see in Japan."

"What landmark did you like to visit with each and every chance you got?"

"Two places, actually. One was Osaka Castle…and the other was Tokyo City Hall. The Shinjuku District was always one of the busiest of places in Tokyo."

"Say… The Angelbreaker seems like a powerful object, Akira. I ask this outta curiosity, but… If it can turn these Angels that are interested in hurting Rumi into people like us, do you think…it can…"

"Be used to restore environments and locations that have been damaged or destroyed by the Second Impact one day?" Akira asked her.

"Yeah."

"Maybe. One day, we'll see…and then we'll know."

-x-

"…Why are you two soaked like that?" Mayo asked Rumi and Nemo, as the two returned home later that night.

"Nemo…had an accident with the manipulation of the water from the lake," Rumi expressed, not ready to tell the whole family that she was trying to learn to channel the four elements yet.

"Is this true?" Miaka asked Nemo.

"Yes, it's true," Nemo expressed, "and Rumi dared me to perform a feat I couldn't do properly on my own. She gave me that look."

Rumi frowned at her brother and he immediately stated that it was that look she gave him.

"Nemo, you play with water like it's the world's greatest toy," went Shinobu, setting up the table for dinner. "Were you teaching Rumi anything helpful?"

"I taught her how water is always in the air we breathe," Nemo told her, which was true; he'd been showing her how to Hydro Channel along with Aero Channeling…and despite being an amateur, his little sister was learning the art of defensive strength required for watery movements.

"Hydro Channeling serving as the basics for the foundation of Tai Chi," Mayo stated, knowing more about the Channeling Arts than Rumi did, which included which martial arts were modeled after the elemental arts. "Oh, Rumi, there's something you should know."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, you should: He was very unhappy that you couldn't see him today."

Rumi knew that 'he' meant Shinji.

"And did he leave any messages to be relayed to me?" She asked her niece.

"Yeah: "Please, come see me when you have the time to". I'm starting to think that he favors you." Mayo told her.

"Oh, that's just wrong," went Taeko. "Playing favorites is cruel."

"Not in that way, Taeko," Mayo told her. "He favors her differently than he wouldn't favor any of us. I mean, who do you, Taeko, love the most?"

"Hmm… Mommy!" Taeko expressed.

"What?!" They all heard Bumi in the living room. "I can't believe I just heard that."

"I can't believe Mayo just asked her that," added Miaka.

Whoosh! A calm breeze came and Rumi and Nemo turned around too Akira had returned.

"You can't believe Mayo just asked what?" She asked them.

"She asked Taeko who she loves the most," Rumi told her. "Taeko said she loves her mother more."

"Heh-heh! Well, Miaka has a greater influence on her daughter. Bumi needs to build up his more."

"I already gave up drinking; must I give up something else that's deemed bad?" Bumi asked.

Taeko went over to her father and held out her left hand.

"Ham!" She told him.

"Huh?"

"I think she wants you to give her some ham, Bumi," Shinobu told her elder brother. "She's the Ponyo with a passion for ham. Rumi's the Ponyo with a round tummy."

"My tummy's not round," Rumi countered.

"Is, too, sis," Nemo added in.

"Is not."

"Is."

"Not."

"Is."

"Not!"

"Is, too, sis."

Rumi then grabbed the edges of her shirt and pulled it up to expose her stomach, wanting the others to judge for themselves if it was round or not.

"It is round," Mayo uttered.

"Very round," added Akira.

Taeko then lifted up her shirt to see her own tummy, seeing that it wasn't as round as Rumi's.

"She's the lucky one," she then said.

-x-

Hiding out on a small patch of grass with a cave to dwell in, Rei decided this would serve as her hideaway…at the base of Akira Town's sole mountain. It seemed secluded, isolated and there wasn't much to hint that it even existed. So as long as she stayed out of sight and never drew in too much attention to herself, nobody would be able to find her here. Of course, her presence couldn't be hidden away by a mere cave; it was only a matter of when the energy given off by her gauntlet would attract those that could feel its presence.

"This place is like a small patch of what the people refer to as Heaven," she uttered, no longer sounding like her detached self or how she spoke when she left the Geo-Front; instead, she sounded like a varying combination of the two sides. "This is the only place in existence that is truly a natural setting, preserved by the energy of this mountain…and its master. The power that flows from the mountain and permeates the land around it, transforming it into a place of salvation and redemption. But, as Commander Ikari once said, all things exist only to be taken."

Laying against the tree inside the cave, Rei slept soundlessly and awaited the next day.

-x-

August Ninth came, and Shinji looked like he'd been in better shape in better days. His locket dangled from his right hand by the chain around his middle finger. He looked at it like all else in the world had disappeared. But this wasn't what he really felt. In truth, he was getting over a nightmare he just woke up from.

Within his latest dream, he found himself in the same place that looked like a hospital…but seemed to be part of the place known as NERV HQ. Rumi was there in front of him, but lying on the ground with her eyes open…and she wasn't breathing. Beside her was her half of the Angelbreaker in its bracelet guise…and a note that read, "I am sorry, Shinji. If I am ever to meet you again, I'll say the words I couldn't say to you when I discovered how I really felt about you. Your special keeper, Rumi."

"Rumi?" He had said in the dream, turning her body over to discover a most horrible scene: Her chest had been laced with cuts that were fatal without medical aid, but what worried him was that there was no blood. "Rumi?"

"She's long gone now," somebody uttered behind him. "She's such a pitiable excuse for a warrior. She threw her safety away because she cared so much for you. Threw the safety of the world away for you. She was pathetic."

Turning around to face the new face, he saw that girl, Rei Ayanami, wearing armor that was modeled after the ancient and traditional samurai, but it looked like the resources used in its construction were mostly bones and scraps of metal that he'd never seen before.

"Are you ready?" She asked him.

"For what?"

"The Eva, of course. It's waiting for you."

"No way."

"You don't have a choice. Eva is your destiny and fate."

"It is not. I'd rather die a sickly boy than to become that man's puppet."

Then, Rei used her left hand, which sported a large, scythe-like blade, and shot tentacles of bone and metal at him, restraining him and then dragged him away from Rumi's remains…right toward a chamber he'd been in only once but even once was enough to remember what had almost transpired between him, Rumi…and Gendo had he been well. But the purple abomination wasn't still like a statue; it was snarling, baring its fangs, salivating and its glowing eyes were bugging out.

"He's all yours, just like you wanted," Rei had told Unit-01, and tossed him at the mouth of the creature. "Just the way it should be."

Something tells me that I should stir clear of that girl, thought Shinji, sighing as he tried to rise up to a sitting position.

Knock-knock! He looked to the door and saw a female nurse stop by.

"Bad night of sleep?" She asked him.

"Nurse Miyuki," he greeted her. "Am I that easy to read?"

"Heh-heh. I've seen you here many times in the last seven years to know that you don't sleep well all the time when you're sick."

"Too true. Except my nightmares have become a little surrealistic…and relate to things I wish I hadn't seen…and people I wish to forget forever."

Nurse Miyuki wasn't a stranger to Shinji's past memories about how his father just discarded him, somewhat familiar with not having a father herself since hers simply walked out on her one day when she was Shinji's age…but for a different reason that still added up to walking out of her life.

"You want to talk about these nightmares of yours?" She asked him.

"I was in Tokyo-3…again, one of the only places in the world that I wouldn't take a vacation at. I met this girl…with blue hair and red eyes…but she wasn't a person I could relate to, except in terms of sickness or failing health. She was twisted. Maybe even evil. I think she might've dealt with Rumi in the harshest of ways because when I found her, she was just laying on the floor, covered with cuts."

She listened and when he had finished with the details of this large, man-made creature called an Evangelion, she came to a conclusion of her own: This boy's parents had to have been nuts to spend more time working for that NERV agency and less time with him…or hardly any time with him…and that these bad dreams of Shinji's may, eventually, deprive him of any good rest if that little aunt of his doesn't come to see him.

"You're hoping that Rumi comes to see you today?" She asked him.

"I'm hoping she does," he answered her. "As much as I hate the feeling that I bound her to my fate, I hate it when I don't see her."

"No disrespect, Shinji-Kun, but when you speak like that when you think about Rumi, you sound like a person with an unrequited crush on somebody else."

"Oh, that's cold and untrue," Shinji responded to this.

-x-

"…I swear, if Rumi's in his room again, I'm going out, getting a shackle, and tying her to her bed," said Nemo to Akira and Shinobu as they were up earlier than they had intended to be, walking to Shinji's room.

Shinobu looked in first and uttered, "Well, you probably don't need to go today…'cause she's not here."

He and Akira looked inside and found Shinji's bed untouched; there wasn't a trace that it had been slept in by Rumi.

Akira turned around to look at Rumi's door and opened it, seeing her youngest daughter in her own bed, looking depressed.

"I tried tying myself to the bed," she uttered, looking to her mother.

"You sound unhappy about something," Akira told her, but then added, "or…is it that you're unhappy about…someone?"

"Oh, I'm not unhappy about either," were Rumi's choice of words, but Akira, having raised many children, could see through to her tone and knew that she was very unhappy about whatever or whoever it was that was troubling her.

"Rumi," she made her tone hollow and demanding. "What is it?"

"I had a bad dream. Very bad." Rumi stated.

The mother sat on the edge of the bed and went, "What happened?"

"I was on my way to the hospital to see Shinji, but something wrong had happened: People were laying on the ground, scattered about, most of them hurt beyond physical injuries. I found Dr. Gyatso reduced to crawling on the floor, his legs broken, and he said that a sickly-looking girl with blue hair came, said she was here to pick up someone, claiming to be a relative of theirs. She had assaulted the staff, the security, even the patients that didn't do anything wrong to deserve what she had done…and…she nabbed Shinji, who couldn't even throw a punch at this girl without hurting himself badly. You and the others show up, but as I check his room, I'm left screaming."

Before Akira could so much as hold her daughter's hand, her half of the Angelbreaker acted up and showed a detailed vision of Rumi's nightmare…and true to her words, it was bad. She, Nemo, Bumi, Tsukiko and the others had arrived just as Rumi told her they would, seeing people that weren't harmed assisting those that were or had been left in states of physical injury worse than what they'd experienced prior sometime ago. Even their friend, Gyatso had been reduced to having his legs wrapped together due to their damaged state, and Rumi, beyond their perception of her, was looking around the trashed room that once housed Shinji in his ailing state. Her hook swords were pointed to the ground, but her grip was tightened with sadness…mixed with fury.

"Rumi?" Akira had asked her in the dream.

"Aaaahh!" The young child screamed, taking this far more personal than they were.

Yikes, she thought, shaking her head to clear her mind of the vision. "Maybe you should stay in bed for today to be on the safe side."

-x-

She asks me to go see Shinji…and to keep an eye on him because of a nightmare Rumi had, thought Nemo, walking down the street toward the hospital. I don't doubt Rumi's sanity. Hell, I'd be worried, too because of that accursed artifact she and Akira are shackled with. It's only natural for any of us to fear for somebody.

Once he reached the hospital, he took notice of somebody that was sitting on a bench across the street: Although appearance-wise, the guy didn't look Japanese or any other type of Asian, whatsoever, with reddish-blond hair, sunglasses and dressed in a business casual suit. If Nemo had to guess on ethnicity alone, he would've assumed the guy was an American in his mid-thirties, maybe three years older than he was. The only other thing that set him apart from the rest of the town was simply his suit; hardly anybody in Akira Town wore business suits, even the lawyers rarely wore suits unless they felt it brought them a victory in the courthouse. Not to mention that Nemo himself hated wearing a suit when he graduated out of grade school and college, even disliking a tux when he attended a social gathering at college one time.

The bench guy looked at him but didn't act on anything other than simply looking; despite his orders, he was not to blow his cover in the town, even after he informed his superiors of a girl matching Rei Ayanami's description wandering the streets.

Nemo sighed and decided to question his suspicions about the guy another time, returning to his request to look after Shinji in the hospital.

-x-

"I've double-checked my notes again and again, but each time, I've found something that shouldn't have been incorporated into the copy," sighed Ritsuko, going over her research on the copy of the Angelbreaker, or rather, what had passed for a copy but was more of a mockery. For some odd reason, the copy seems to be evolving, just like the Third Angel when it was damaged by the N² Mine. But I designed it, specifically, not to progress to levels that were beyond the range of which it would be under control.

Knock-knock! Somebody was at her office door.

"Hey, hey, Ritsuko," she heard Kaji in front of her by her door. "How's it going?"

"Busy," she simply told him, not wanting to be disturbed by anyone.

"How can somebody of your caliber be busy?" He asked her, feigning ignorance and curiosity. "NERV's on constant standby until an Angel decides to show up to Tokyo-3. You should take a breather and relax. Why not take a day off and go see old faces?"

"I see one old face too many each and everyday here," Ritsuko stated, meaning that she sees both him and Misato all the time.

"Oh, that's cold," he retorted kindly, but then took notice of some of the papers on her office desk. "What are those supposed to be?"

"New theories on the Evas," she lied, gathering up the scattered notes; nobody other than Commander Ikari and Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki needed to know about the Angelbreaker pseudo-copy, though Fuyutsuki was given minimum knowledge of it, as per Gendo's orders.

"Well…any luck with Section Two finding Ms. Ayanami?" He asked, trying to find out about whatever else it was that he could.

"No. As far as they're able to deduce, the First Child's not in Tokyo-3, anymore. They've checked with the school, her apartment, and found nothing."

"What about the neighboring towns? The wilderness?"

"There isn't a town that's close enough to the city to be considered a neighboring town."

"No, but there's always…that town, in particular."

"I doubt that. She doesn't know where it is. Even if she did, what would she do there?"

"Katsuragi tells me that when she saw Rei last time, she was saying something about a little… Somebody that's either a mystery to NERV or is known scarcely about to us. I only have one suspicion on who she was referring to before she left, and that's Mrs. Rokubungi's little girl."

Ritsuko didn't want to say it, but the only clue that was, potentially, useful to them right now was the possibility that Rei Ayanami had left to locate the village of Akira…and see Rumi Rokubungi herself. But what sparked her curiosity in this was why Rei wanted to see her. What was worth seeing a little girl that was defying Commander Ikari's scenario? Or…was it another reason, altogether?

"Why don't you go…hit on one of the younger technicians or something?" She requested of him to do, not wanting to be bothered by him any further.

"Yes, sir," he joked and left, allowing her a moment to catch her breath.

"Oh, one more thing," went Kaji as he returned. "A cat is not always good company."

Then, he left again, which left a frown on Ritsuko's face. What did he mean by what had said about a cat not always being good company, anyway?

He must've spent too many years in Germany, she thought, lighting a cigarette and taking a drag off it.

-x-

"…He looks wasted," went Nemo to Nurse Miyuki after seeing his nephew asleep again; before he had arrived, the patient had drifted off to Slumberland to regain considerable rest. "Did he have a rough night?"

"No, but he barely got a decent night of sleep due to another nightmare," Miyuki answered him. "Is Rumi ignoring him again?"

"I wouldn't say 'ignore', but she's keepin' her distance for reasons she's not detailing us on yet. I just wish she'd do the right thing and just talk with him." Nemo then noticed how his only nephew's right hand was holding his locket as he slept. "He holds onto that item like there's a thief after it."

"Well, it must be very precious to him for him to hold onto it."

He sighed and said, "Yeah…it is precious to him."

But not because it was made of gold, which would've made it a highly-sought after resource or whatnot for potential economic means in these times where there were limited resources left in the world due to Second Impact covering most of the planet in water, but because of its emotional, sentimental value.

"You believe that old, Egyptian stuff they put in the movies, Nemo?" Miyuki asked him. "About raising the dead?"

"No," he answered as he sat down in the chair. "It's purely fiction, possibly based off the facts that some people that almost depart from life are saved by the people that try to keep them bound until they depart due to old age or some other natural cause. Why?"

"I was looking at one of those remakes of old, black and white films, The Mummy, and I was intrigued by the Book of the Dead."

"Yeah, everyone likes the Book of the Dead. Just for the record, I hated the Book of Amun-Ra, regardless of the fact that it was made of gold. 'The Book of the Dead gives life'."

"'And the Book of the Living…takes life away'."

"You are well versed in the quotes, Nurse Miyuki."

"You seen the remakes more than once, you know them by heart."

Nemo then noticed that Shinji's wig was out of place on his head…and decided to set it right.

"It's easy to forget that it's synthetic," Miyuki uttered, referring to the wig.

"Actually, they're made with real hair," he told her, knowing more about them than she did. "Science has advanced enough in the making of reusing hair after it's been purified and such. When Shinji heard of the word 'weave', he preferred 'wig' instead."

"Wig for men, weave for women."

The nurse then left to tend to the other cancer patients that were either recovering from recent transfusions or just getting evaluations, allowing Nemo and the sleeping Shinji family time, despite said child's ignorance of his younger uncle's presence.

-x-

"…The person you are trying to call is not available," said the electronic voice to Akira, as she tried to call Ms. Katsuragi. "If you'd like to leave a message, please wait after the tone or try your call again at another time."

BEEP!

"Misato Katsuragi, this is Akira Rokubungi calling," she decided to leave a message. "I needed to ask you something concerning a person that you probably know about. Please, call me back as soon as you get this message. Goodbye."

Hanging up, she slumped in one of the chairs in the kitchen and gazed up at the ceiling. Her attempt to reach Misato on the potential whereabouts of Rei Ayanami would have to wait until she got a hold of her. But due to yesterday's potential encounter with the girl, here in her own town, and Rumi's latest nightmare regarding Shinji being nabbed by a 'sickly-looking girl with blue hair', she was curious as to just how many people that are sickly-looking girls with blue hair wander about the grounds of Japan. Now, she had another chore to add to her 'to do' list: Find the girl, Rei Ayanami, if she was here in the town, and make sure she stayed away from Shinji if such an event like what she saw in Rumi's dream were to become a reality by sending her back to that artificial city.

"You can stop the sneaky walking, Taeko, your footsteps on the floor give you away to my presence," Akira uttered, then raising her head to look at her nine-year-old granddaughter, attempting to sneak her way over to her.

"When will I be able to see through Geo Channeling?" Taeko asked her, sitting in a chair next to her at the table.

"When you start using the art as an extension of your senses rather than as a martial art," she answered. "Why were you trying to sneak up on me, anyway?"

"You seem troubled by something. I was hoping to cheer you up."

"Well, thank you for trying."

"Rumi won't be seeing Shinji today, I take it?"

"Yeah, and that's gonna make Shinji very unhappy. Why she doesn't want to see him, even for just a little while, is a little beyond me."

"Why don't you use the Angelbreaker to find out?"

"Taeko, that would be an invasion of privacy," Akira told her. Of course, who am I to speak of privacy when I, unintentionally, used the Angelbreaker to decipher Rumi's recent nightmare.

"No ill will toward Rumi, but I think she's being a little cruel to Shinji by not seeing him. I'm going to go see him later today once I've performed my basics with Daddy."

"Maybe Rumi will see him later…if she reconsiders avoiding him like he's inside of a fortress or something. I can't really force her."

Taeko then got up and left to go back to her room, but stopped to say more about Rumi.

"You know, she cares about him the most…but maybe she doesn't understand how much she does so," she told Akira.

Akira didn't know how to respond well to that remark of her youngest grandchild, but decided to accept it as a fact, and it was probably due to one too many visits to the hospital and so on.

-x-

"This is what the satellites detected about two hours ago," said Maya to Misato, just moments after it became known that there was something wrong with several satellites in space being destroyed.

"What in the name of…" Misato looked at the screen and took notice of the unidentified object floating about in orbit.

It seemed to resemble some sort of amoeba, but with two large, hand-like constructs on both sides of its bizarre form, with eyes sprouting in the center of each limb-like appendage to add to the third eye in its center construct. It could've been described as a work of art made by a child, but NERV's staff knew better than to accept such potential nonsense.

"That thing doesn't look like it's dangerous," went Asuka, but not in her usual confidence. "Is it an Angel, Dr. Akagi?"

"Yeah," Ritsuko answered. "And based on the size and width, this one's much larger than the Fifth and Sixth Angels…with a length of seven miles…at least."

"If it were to fall from orbit, it'd cover all of the city and the neighboring towns and wilderness."

"True, but that doesn't seem to be the case with this Angel. This was also detected three days ago." Ritsuko showed the staff several photos that were taken from a satellite before it was destroyed: It looked like a space of land from the Kii Peninsula that was reduced to a crater partially submerged in water, with an equally-large crater several feet next to it, closer to land.

"I'm guessing that this Angel, just like its predecessors before it, is looking to settle a score it has with two women that tarnished their pride?" Misato asked, knowing where it was going.

"It must be so, but this Angel's a living bomb. If it's trying to get rid of its enemies, it's going to take much of the land around it with everybody into the next world." Ritsuko expressed.

"Then it's not coming for this city; it's just something in its way," Asuka uttered. "Just dropping pieces of itself in order to correct its aim before it uses the rest of its body mass."

Even if it wasn't going for Tokyo-3 to settle its affairs with NERV, this Angel was going to cause them some problems with its change in goal. They were reduced to just one pilot, their reputation barely holding onto existence and every new threat of unknown origins aiming for a timeless woman and her toddler-aged daughter instead of military or paramilitary organizations. Even if this Angel was going after them in order to put an end to the human race, they had doubt in Asuka's ability to handle it solo; the chances of more than one Eva winning against an individual Angel were very limited, but just one of them against an Angel of this sort, especially a big one…were practically nonexistent.

They'll have to be informed and have to deal with it themselves, thought Misato.

Again, it seems like we're forced to be subservient to a pair of women that the gods have deemed worthy to deal with their messengers, thought Asuka, angry that Unit-02 wouldn't be able to deal with this Angel. This is so unfair!

-x-

In her room, Rumi sat by her desk and tried to forget some of her problems by drawing pictures, unfortunately, some of those pictures never seemed to come out properly because of what reflected upon each drawing: It was either Shinji, her mother, Nemo, Miaka, Tsukiko or Shinji's…that man and woman that failed him in every sense of the word. Even looking at her few photographs weren't helping her forget her nightmares.

For a tiny moment, life just seemed so unkind to her for this period of neglecting her nephew in his time of need for visits from his family at the hospital. But she had her reasons for not wanting to see him: She didn't want what she dreamt about to come true, she didn't want to find out that he'd been nabbed by blue-haired girl that resembled his dead mother, and she didn't want her daydream about being with him in an undesirable way to disgrace them both. She wanted to believe that by not seeing him, she was able to put these fears to rest…and that she wouldn't be hurting her nephew in worse ways than she already was by not seeing him, despite how much she cared about him.

I bet none of the people that wore you in the past never had my type of problems, she thought, looking at the bracelet she wore.

Suddenly, she found herself in the same, misty woods with the lanterns when she encountered the representative for the male force of the Angelbreaker: Takeru. But she didn't see the young man in front of her; there was a young woman this time. She seemed similar in appearance to that young Bridge Bunny, Maya Ibuki, but her short, boyish hair was absent on this girl, replaced by long, waist-length hair, and she was dressed in the attire of a miko covered in limited armor.

"That is where you believe wrong, Ms. Rumi Rokubungi," the woman said, and Rumi saw that her right arm was wearing a gauntlet identical to the Angelbreaker. "Many of us from the past have had problems not so different from your own. People will say that these problems will resolve themselves in due time, but that isn't always true. Your problems fit in that category: They will not resolve themselves, not without your effort in resolving them yourself."

Rumi sat down on a large stone and conversed with this woman.

"I am Shiori Reina," she told Rumi her identity. "I wielded the Angelbreaker over twelve-hundred-forty-six years ago. The last time I ever used it was to save the lives of my mother and baby brother."

"How so?" Rumi asked her.

"My period with the Angelbreaker spanned four years; I was chosen to preserve the existence of my small, holy village from a demonic army that sought my people for their strong, spiritual energies. For three of those years, I fought and drove them away with the power of the Angelbreaker, but in my final year with it, my mother had gotten pregnant with my little brother…and the night of his birth was the last time I used the gauntlet against the most powerful of the demonic army, with too much at stake."

"Oh, my."

"They set fire to my home, hoping to distract me from my mother's need of my presence during her labor…and they got my attention for a while, long enough to get me away from my village…and to capture my mother."

"Why?"

"Why does anyone, including a demon, do what they do when they discover the abilities of the Angelbreaker? They wonder what it is, why it exists and what it can do. Is it the righteous sword of the gods themselves or the hand of one of the underworld masters? I chose to believe that it was both…and neither, depending on how it was used by whoever it chose to bear it. I defeated the demons and rescued my mother, but I couldn't get her back to the village doctors in time to be tended to in her time of need, so I had to play the role of midwife for her and my brother." She told her, and Rumi nodded for her to go on. "I saw my brother enter the world for the first and only time…but then both their lives became endangered: My mother had lost too much blood and my brother was freezing to death. I begged the Angelbreaker to save their lives…and it did. My mother was healed and my brother was wrapped up in thick cloth to protect him from the snowy weather. The day after that night of violence and salvation, I had to part with the Angelbreaker after it chose a new wielder to help it preserve balance and order, but my existence was now a part of the gauntlet; everyone that has ever wielded it…have become a part of its eternal existence. We from the past aid those in the present. But my point in saying all of this is this: During my time with it, I doubted myself in being able to help anybody with such a powerful talisman, even my mother when she needed my help. You're not the only person with troubles that are hard to overcome. You must let go of your doubts…or they will consume you with the tribute being those you wanted to protect. Let go of your fear, doubt and disbelief. Only then, can you resolve your problems…before they become irreversible."

Then, Rumi heard a series of silent whispers in the mist around them.

"What is that?" She asked Shiori.

"Other wielders from the past, speaking of a new threat to the survival of the people left on the planet: Sahaquiel, the Angel of the Sky. God's ingenuity." Shiori answered her, and then manifested a sword from her right hand, which she used to draw the new threat in order for Rumi to know who she'd be facing this time. "He is massive, self-destructive and will attempt to eliminate you and Akira before you can humanize him."

"Can we defeat him?"

"Only if you believe you can, otherwise…it will be he that defeats you two. You must go now. Stop Sahaquiel before he reduces your home to a crater of charred stone."

The mist gathered up and became so thick, it darkened everything.

GASP! Rumi expressed, finding herself back in her room. She got out her chair and ran to her door.

"Rumi!" She saw her mother, who was, apparently, on her way to get her. "We…"

"It spoke to me again," she cut her. "One of Shamshel's brothers…up in the sky."

"And that he's much bigger than the others we've seen. Misato finally called back and informed me. This one's a living bomb."

"We have to stop him before he ends somebody's life."

-x-

"Somebody's quite restless," went Rei, examining her bracelet, which was sprouting tendrils and spreading up her wrist. "But patience comes first. Whatever happens out there, we'll allow it to happen…and then we'll act out our desires."

The bracelet then reverted back to its regular form and stayed that way; over the course of her leaving the city and arriving to this town, Rei had gained much control over this forgery of a gauntlet with similar shape-shifting abilities as its inspiration. Along with the control, her personality became streamlined in nature; she embraced her freedom, her desire for things she never had before…and expressed an intense dislike of Rumi, simply because it seemed that Commander Ikari paid more attention to the little girl than he did to her. In short, she felt the child was competition for his…mild attention…and she despised having competition, even a dying boy was enough, in her point of view, to qualify as an obstacle. Once she relieved herself of such distractions, nothing and no one would stand in her way again.

-x-

"…I didn't think the town population would be requested to travel this deep into the chasms of the village's underground shelters," said Camille to her grandmother, as she pushed her wheelchair down the large pathway.

"And we're going deeper than we've ever been asked to go before, due to an oversized relative of these siblings that have beef with Little Rumi." Akane responded to her granddaughter.

"I don't think you should call Nemo's baby sister little; the girl's not that small."

Elsewhere in the crowd of people going downward, Shinobu's girlfriend, Kagura, wondered what was going on with this precaution; she didn't have any doubt at all in Shinobu's mother and little sister being able to defeat this new enemy, but with having to temporarily abandon the only place that was a sanctuary left her wondering why such a precaution was deemed necessary.

"Kagura?" She stopped and turned around, spotting Shinobu and the other Rokubungi family members not taking part in dealing with this new Angel.

"Shinobu-San," she greeted. "I didn't expect you guys to be traveling a mile under the town."

"After Akira received a call from Tokyo-3's NERV branch," went Nemo, "she was convinced that just hiding in the mountain shelter was a bad idea. Plus, she had to go and ask her contact of a large favor that seemed wrong."

"What kind of favor seemed wrong?" Kagura asked.

"You remember the conversations we had late that night after Rumi's birthday and the festival?" Tsukiko asked her.

"You mean the few that revolved around the man-made abominations called Evangelions?"

"Yeah."

"Despite never having seen one, they got me looking at a certain piece of old history text that seemed to be based on bizarre rumors, but also seemed to relate to them: The Barons of the Underworld."

"Barons?" Miaka, concerned, uttered. "I think I heard of them. There's supposed to be four of them, right? From what was rumored to be Judeo-Christianity?"

"Yeah, so that must mean that NERV knew enough about them to base their appearances off of them." Kagura stated.

"Let's keep going and we can find out about this when we reach the end," went Bumi, and they resumed the trek to the bottom of the tunnel.

-x-

Asuka felt like Akira had shown some sort of pity on her by asking Misato for a big favor: Assistance in the humanization of the Eighth Angel by having Unit-02 provide the oversized muscle work of catching the Angel and keeping it from hitting the ground and burning everything into the next world. Asuka's continued synchronization tests with Unit-02 left her with a measure of control over the Eva at ninety-nine point nine percent, having broken her record of ninety-seven point eight percent. While Asuka disliked the idea of just being the muscle of the plan to defeat another Angel without the need to end one's life, she was informed by Misato that Akira had said, and it was quoted, "If Ms. Soryu and her Evangelion can just keep this Angel from making contact with the ground before it gets humanized, make sure she gets all the credit for keeping the hope of mankind's salvation alive". That sounded like a pitiful excuse to say that you simply needed an Eva to help you because of three reasons. The first was that the mother and daughter were still amateurs to what they were doing; the second was that, despite their dealing in defeat to five Angels, they were still dealing with large monsters, and the third reason was that, when dealing with a large threat, they needed something similarly large enough to help them win the soon-to-come battle.

As Unit-02 was being prepared for mobilization, Gendo was also being informed by Misato an important piece of information that might've been what they needed to know: Rei Ayanami seemed to be hiding in Akira Town.

To think that she was able to find her way to that place where time stands still, he thought, though Fuyutsuki wasn't quite pleased to discover this Intel.

But what would possibly motivate her to go there? He wondered, having never been to such a town, curious if such motivation stemmed from her encounter with Akira herself…or her daughter, Rumi. Or maybe it's something else…something worse.

-x-

"…Huh?" Taeko uttered, noticing that within the tight crowd of town people stood a young girl with blue hair and chalk-white skin. "Daddy, there's a strange girl over there."

Bumi looked to where his daughter was pointing and saw the girl, but as soon as a couple of people got in the way for a little while before clearing up again, the girl was gone.

"I wonder who she was," went Bumi.

On the other end of the massive, Geo Channel-crafted shelter, in a corner where nobody could see her, Rei looked at the worried people that had put their faith in an elder that didn't look any older than a beautiful young woman and her baby girl because they beat creatures that even the armies of the planet couldn't beat. And to think that when she piloted Unit-00, not only because, in the beginning, she had no other value in her life than to Commander Ikari, she did it because she believed it was her link, her bond, to the people around her. She had found out some hard, warped truths: How could the Eva be her link to the people…when she herself hardly ever had so much as a conversation with people simply because you wanted to talk to them? How could you be connected to them when you don't form pacts of friendship, to build up your identity, spread your existence further, with them? The Evangelion was not her link to people; it was, instead, her wall, a barrier that kept her from them. And Commander Ikari was the root, the cause of that wall, who had purposely erected it to keep her from finding any other meaning to live for.

But my encounters with the little girl had forced open a crack in the wall, she thought, turning her attention now to the bracelet on her wrist. And this was my ticket through the crack. But soon, I'll have to return to him…but it'll have to be on my terms.

Further down the massive shelter, in a space for the people that were required to stay in the hospital, Shinji worried over his family, over Rumi and Akira, and over what was going on topside. All he knew was that everyone in the hospital were suddenly evacuating the building and heading underground, meaning that something was heading for the town or was indirectly involving the town. He deduced that it was another Angel, which elevated his concerns for his grandmother and young aunt.

"Rumi…" He uttered quietly, clutching his locket tightly.

-x-

"…Even if this Angel misses its target, its explosive aftereffects are going to reduce much of this island to being a part of the Pacific Ocean," went Hyuga, over Asuka's intercom, having informed the Second Child of the large space of potential spots for the Angel to make its descent onto the ground and self-destructing.

Unit-02 arrived at a small space a short distance east of Akira Town to meet up with Akira and Rumi, whom were waiting for her to show up, and they were dressed in a different type of armor that was better appropriate for them: Both women were dressed in traditional samurai armor that, like the armor they wore when facing Ramiel, had an organic look to the metallic portions that covered the fabrics of their regular clothes. Only the gauntlets were the same from the last battles.

"Are you two dressed for a war or for a party?" Asuka asked them, out of curiosity instead of only humor when she saw them.

She was left speechless when they got up off the ground and hopped up onto her Eva and landed on its shoulders, taking leaps that were impossible for any normal person to perform.

"Must you criticize, Ms. Soryu?" Akira asked, her voice sounding different from the last time she saw her. "You won't ever find peace in the world if you make crude, rude and perverted comments to those around you."

"What happened to your voice?" Asuka asked her.

"This is how we sound when wearing the armor," explained Rumi to her, sounding just like her mother with that tone of a seductress or some other feminine person that evoked beauty and power. "Are we humanizing an Angel or are we set to go to a costume ball and catch our princes that shall not be named? Shall we do one or the other?"

"I prefer to do the former, Rumi, 'cause like how we told Ramiel after he was defeated, he and his siblings don't do it for us." Akira uttered.

Asuka was a little disturbed by their change in tone, but they seemed determine to just defeat this massive creature without killing it, needing her to just keep it from falling long enough to render it helpless and relieved of its cause.

"We should head further down there," said Rumi to them, pointing further ahead of Unit-02, toward a large and empty field with a large hill.

"He is coming," went Akira.

"Who is?" Asuka asked.

"Get ready, Asuka," went Misato's voice over the intercom. "It's falling down!"

Asuka looked up and saw the sky turning a darker shade of red. Then, a massive silhouette appeared, descending slowly, but at a quick pace.

"Aaahh!" Asuka gasped, and broke into a run toward the hill.

"Whoa!" Akira and Rumi gasped, and armored formed around their faces to protect them from the wind frictions and pressures that could've harmed them.

"Mommy, this is nuts!" Rumi yelled to her mother.

"I hope this is the only time we have to do something like this!" Akira yelled out in response.

As Unit-02 entered the open field and ran up the hill, they took notice of the slowly-descending Angel of the Sky, Sahaquiel, and saw how hideously scary he seemed as a massive bomb.

"Oh, my God!" Akira shuddered; this guy was even uglier than she realized.

Unit-02 made it to the top of the hill and spread its AT-Field to its limits, erecting an incredible layer of energy that, to Rumi, looked like a series of thin hexagons of various sizes, one atop another, disappearing and reappearing. And then the Angel made contact, but only with the frontal part of its center mass, which made the rest of it, miles longs on each side, freeze in midair.

"Aaaaurgh!" Asuka groaned, never believing that this was going to be hard. "Hurry up and do what you gotta do!"

Akira and Rumi leapt off the Eva and flew up to the Angel's center eye, which Misato had stated earlier to Akira that it was the Angel's weak spot.

"Okay, let's do this, Rumi!" Akira told her daughter.

Asuka then took notice of the Angel's core, like any regular eye, looking right at the timeless woman and her child.

"You be careful, you two!" She told them, but then the eye/core started to change.

Something protruded from it and took on a different form: It was like some sort of dragon-like rhino that extended from its head to its waist outside the core, reddish-black and with winged claws.

"They who bear the Angel's Hand of Unity must die a thousand deaths before their souls can depart to the burning chasms of the netherworld!" The creature roared, somewhat like a human. "You will witness the end of your lives as I, Sahaquiel, Angel of the Sky, reduce you to ashes!"

SLASH! Akira had produced a sword from her left hand and tried to incapacitate Sahaquiel, but this guy was more prepared than Ramiel was. His hide was thicker.

"You may have been able to defeat my other siblings, but I'm on an entirely different level of power, as are my remaining siblings that stay true to the goal: Kill the little girl!" Sahaquiel told them.

"Not on my watch," said Akira, and then Rumi flew to Sahaquiel's right side and produced a pair of hook swords to hit him on his side.

I believe we can beat him, thought Rumi, hitting him on his side repeatedly. I believe we can stop him and save the people.

Then…she managed to achieve something new. CRACK! Her constant hitting had made a small series of cracks on his hide.

"Aaaaaurgh!" He screamed and shot a ball of fire at her. "Burn!"

"Aaahh!" She gasped and held out her hands, unintentionally reducing the amount of air between her and the fireball, reducing it to nothingness. "You crazy bully!"

Akira then unleashed her own fire upon Sahaquiel's inhuman face with the belief of scarifying him.

"Burn!" She yelled.

"Aaaaaaurgh!" Sahaquiel yelled.

Incredible, thought Asuka, now seeing Rumi wield a larger version of her hook swords and swung it at the Angel's waist, leaving a large hole where a dark fluid began to seep out.

Crack! The Second Child looked to her left and saw that Unit-02's left arm's armor plating was beginning to crack from the pressure of keeping the Angel from touching the ground.

"You two better hurry it up!" She yelled at them. "This thing's getting' heavy!"

Akira's right hand generated a bo staff and she threw it like a javelin toward Sahaquiel's ugly face, hitting him in the left nostril!

"Rrrraaurgh!" He roared in pain.

"Ewugh!" Rumi and Asuka reacted in disgust.

"I meant to go for his forehead," Akira expressed, "but I guess that works, too."

Rumi flew above his head and landed atop it, producing an axe and raising it above her own head.

Please, don't let me screw this up! She thought, and then struck Sahaquiel on his back instead of his head, causing him to roar in greater agony. Thank you!

Then Sahaquiel tried to spit fire at Unit-02's head, melting its protective layers of armor.

"Aaahh!" Asuka screamed; this was the first time she'd experienced such pain with her synchronization with the Eva being this high. "Hurry!"

Akira and Rumi then flew over to Unit-02 and produced a massive shield to block the searing flames from scorching it further; Akira had learned during her visit to Tokyo-3, along with what she'd learned from Rumi, that anyone synced to an Evangelion often felt whatever pain it experienced in a battle, which, to her, seemed like a double-edged sword of sorts: While it was dangerous to the people it was used on, it was also dangerous to the one wielding it.

"I will not be defeated by the likes of you!" Sahaquiel shouted at them. "Not by your brat, you or that perverted mockery of my father! Surrender and your demise will be swift!"

"I'm sorry, but the concept of surrendering isn't in my vocabulary," said Rumi, as she left the business of protecting Unit-02 from the scalding flames to her mother, and flew away toward Sahaquiel's inhuman head again. I believe, I believe, I believe!

The Angelbreaker gauntlets on her arms shifted their form and changed into a large pair of claws that she used them to grasp the dragon-like rhino's neck, cutting off his oxygen.

"Aaaurgh!" He gasped, looking down at the young girl. "You're unjust, you little bitch! I hope you suffer a fate that you cannot avoid!"

Rumi tightened her grip on the Angel.

"You're not the only one that can be cruel to people, you know," Rumi told him, willing the Angelbreaker to take from him all that he had to perform his share of the Angels' great cause that switched from finding and avenging their father to simply killing her to mend their tarnished pride.

Akira removed the shield, comprised of dozens of strands of liquid-like tentacles and straps that were absorbed into her gauntlets, and flew behind Rumi to try and release her, somewhat, murderous grip on Sahaquiel; she felt like Rumi had lost a little sight to why they were chosen by the Angelbreaker to restore balance to the world.

"Rumi, let go of him," she told her daughter, placing her hands on her wrists. "He's beaten now. You can stop."

"He's not beaten yet," Rumi told her back. "He's still massive. Still dangerous."

"Look at him."

Rumi looked at Sahaquiel, and saw not a suffocating beast…but a person suffering from suffocation. While being told that the Angelbreaker was a weapon of life instead of death, Rumi could see that this guy was as close to dying as anyone could've been with an expression of torment and hint of asphyxia.

"I hope you…suffer…a fate that you cannot avoid," Sahaquiel choked.

Rumi exhaled and released him, allowing him to breathe again, but that didn't excuse him from further pain. She conjured a blunt shuriken from her left hand and hurled it at his face.

BLAM! It struck him hard on his forehead and he fell from the remainder of his core; the body he assumed when fighting them broke off from the main body and hit Unit-02's head before descending to the ground. The rest of the Angel's self-destructive body solidified and shattered into atomized fragments, showering the red Evangelion and the Angelbreaker wielders.

"Whew," Asuka exhaled, letting her Eva's arms fall to her sides. "We won."

Rumi and Akira flew down to the ground and saw the humanizing body of Sahaquiel.

"Uh, Mom, I…"

"It's alright," Akira cut her off, landing on the grass. "If you actually wanted to end him, you'd have to use a real sword instead of the ones the Angelbreaker makes. Be proud that you didn't kill him."

"Yeah," Rumi sighed, and they approached the now-human version of Sahaqiuel, Angel of the Sky.

He looked like he was in his early-thirties, was about as tall as Ramiel was, maybe even taller, with pale skin like an Asian, along with an ancient Chinese-style hairdo; the core had been placed on his forehead, like a third eye of sorts. But what really set him apart from his siblings was the fact that he was huge in the torso and abdominal cavity, which also made his arms and legs large. His only clothing in this state was a series of white straps of cloth that were tied around his lower waist in the shape of a diaper-like pair of underwear, similar to the kind that sumo wrestlers wore when they fight.

"Ugh," he groaned as he regained consciousness and saw the ladies. "You worthless bitches!"

Staggering as he rose to his feet, he went from looking up at them…to looking down at them; he must've been at least twelve feet in height.

"Whoa!" Rumi gasped, hiding behind her mother. "Large sumo wrestler on the loose!"

Akira stood her ground; regardless of looking like a sumo wrestler or not, Sahaquiel was not going to make her back down out of intimidation.

"Huh?!" Sahaquiel gasped, looking at his hands and the mass of flesh that was his stomach. "What in the name of… What is this?!"

"That's skin, Sahaquiel," Akira told him. "You…"

"I'm fat!" He cried out. "All my siblings are gonna laugh at me for this!"

Unknown to them all, Unit-02 was transmitting this footage back to NERV HQ, and the staff there were trying to suppress a few giggles.

"Heh-heh!" Maya cracked up. "I can't believe he looks like that."

"Heh-heh-heh! Right on!" Hyuga added in.

"Just four minutes ago, he was trying to kill a little girl and much of the land nearest her home, and now he's unhappy for being the size of Montana?" Misato questioned. "How does this Angel go from being a living bomb to an imitation of a big-bellied fighter?"

"Maybe it's supposed to be a slight mockery of what they used to be as Angels," Ritsuko suggested. "He was massive, so his human form should be, as well."

Not to mention his weapon of choice was his whole body. Misato thought.

-x-

Being asked of another favor from Akira, Asuka had Unit-02 bring her daughter, herself and Sahaquiel to Akira Town. It was a small journey, since they were two miles east of the town.

"Thank you again, Ms. Soryu," Akira praised her. "Appreciate it."

Phhhhhht! They each heard a sound that came from Sahaquiel.

"What in the name of…" He questioned, and the sound came again.

"Ah, Mommy, he's farting!" Rumi whined, covering her nose.

"Farting? What is farting?" He asked them.

Akira sighed; she felt like Sahaquiel, who should've been one of the oldest of these Angels, had the brain of a four-year-old. Holding her head in her left hand, she uttered, "I need a bath after this."

"Likewise," Asuka added in. "Might I ask you something?"

"Feel free to ask whatever question I hope to answer without doubts for you."

"Do you… Do you enjoy being one of them?" She asked.

"Being one of what?"

"You know, a…a mom?"

Akira chuckled and responded, "Yes, I do. Do you ever think of having any kids yourself when you get older and meet the right person for you?"

"No! No way! Never!" Asuka reacted. "I hate my visits from my monthly visitor, and I can't stand boys! They're perverts!"

"Ah-ha-ha! Oh, that's not entirely true, Ms. Soryu. Not all boys are perverts."

"Oh, yes, they are! Perverts, losers, overall weaklings that think more with their hormones than their brains! Disgraces!"

"If that's what you choose to believe, might I ask you a question, then?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Why do you pilot the Eva?"

"Oh, that's an easy question. To prove that I exist."

"But I already know that you exist and that was before I ever saw Unit-02. Everybody at the town's festival knew of your existence the moment they saw you and they don't even know what you do. How many people are going to forget that they saw a young girl with red hair in a red kimono that was visiting for the festival? I mean, why pilot to prove of your existence when there are other ways to show that you live? Don't you ever aspire to be something? You went and graduated out of college, right? Couldn't you be, I don't know, an architect or a singer? What about a movie star? You have the looks of a model."

"They've never been asked to help save the world," Asuka expressed. "I spent my entire life trying to be the best at what I do."

"Your entire life? You mean, for as long as you can remember, you've…deprived yourself of a regular childhood for the purpose of piloting something that even the people that spent a great portion of their lives to create don't fully understand? I feel like I should have a conversation with your parents about your upbringing. This is most horrible."

"You'll have a hard time trying to contact my mother, then," Asuka chuckled. "She's been dead for years, since I was four, and I don't have a father."

Rumi, who, along with Sahaquiel, had been listening, and looked up at the head of Unit-02 and said, "So, you're just like Mayo and I…in the sense of having an absent father."

Once they reached the town, Unit-02 lowered down onto its feet and released its passengers from its right hand at the same time; Askua then self-ejected the Entry Plug and climbed out of the red Eva.

"What do you mean, just like you and your niece?" She asked Rumi.

"Neither of us have fathers…but aren't disturbed by the fact in any way, whatsoever," Rumi answered her. "What was your mother like?"

Before Asuka even responded, her memories of her mother, which were hollow and bitter, flowed into her perception and led her to say to Rumi, "She's bitter, ancient history. No one that's special."

"I pity you for saying that," Rumi told her; to speak of one's own mother like that was a sign that a child had no value in the parent that allowed for their lives to begin. "I guess I can be honest to you when I say this: I don't know my nephew's mother, and I don't like her at all. Maybe if I had met her years ago before I met Shinji, I'd probably like her. But when you speak of your own mother like that, you sound as though she were similar in a way to my sister, Kanami's mother, who has been reduced to serving out her time in a mental institution because of what she did over thirty years ago to her."

Asuka looked at her and then at Akira, who quietly listened to the exchange of words between the two.

"I never knew my mother, okay?" She told Rumi, wanting to change the subject. "She walked out of my life years ago. Since then, I devoted my life to the Eva."

"But answer me this: Does devoting your life to it make you happy? Does it really make you happy?"

"Yes, it does."

Akira's face frowned a little; Asuka had lied about the Eva making her happy when it really didn't.

"Surely, wearing that bracelet makes you happy, Rumi," she heard Asuka tell her daughter.

"Actually, it doesn't, really," Rumi told her back. "It's powerful and everything, but it doesn't grant me happiness. I've always achieved happiness when I'm with my family. Even if it were to be broken up by time and distance, I'd still have my happy memories of them. Maybe it's because I'm still young…or maybe it's because I've met somebody that I want to protect more than anything else. If it makes your heart warm inside, it's worth embracing."

"Like how you protected your nephew from piloting the Eva when you found out about it?"

Rumi's eyes widened, reminded of her dreams and nightmares, and answered, "Yes."

"Then…you should cherish each moment you spend with them. Nobody lives forever."

"And nobody's successful forever. Don't just try to be a hero if you want to be a legend."

"Heroes often get remembered," Akira added in, "but it's the legends that never die."

-x-

The gathering of the town people was very calm in the midst of panic. Though Bumi believed that this calmness had a lot to do with his sister, Shinobu, entertaining the people by playing on her mother's shamisen. He had no idea that she was so skilled in playing such an ancient instrument; he knew her mother before Akira was a shamisen player, but he never expected Shinobu to play it instead of keeping it as an antique in her closet.

Shinobu, wanting to calm those around her, sat on her legs and played her mother's shamisen to those that were willing to listen. Initially, all Shinobu knew of the songs you could play on it were the ones she heard her mother perform, many of which were often very sad but very beautiful, and then Akira suggested that she take lessons in the art of performing with the shamisen. But when it came to using one, Shinobu felt most comfortable playing with her mother's, as it helped it her feel closer to her spirit. There was never a way to convince her to part with it in exchange for a newer version, and Akira wouldn't force her to part with a family heirloom (if something from her children's past life belonged to their parents before her that they wanted to keep, Akira considered them as heirlooms that couldn't be discarded for any reason) against her wishes.

Tsukiko, who listened, had no idea that her eyes were tearing up from the song that her big sister played, while Kanami and Mayo's hearts were filled with an incredible sadness.

Against one of the corners of the large cavern, Rei also heard the song, and then realized that her cheeks were wet with something. She raised her right hand up and felt around her cheeks and found water on her fingers.

Tears? She thought, never seeing these before. Am I the one that's crying?

The song in question was of two lovers that were forced to be parted by their parents and tried to maintain their long-distance relationship, but many obstacles interfered with their lives: The boyfriend had to contend with his work, his friends and their suggestions of finding a new love and a woman that stalked him every now and then, while the girlfriend had to put up with her parents trying to set her up with dozens of potential boyfriends that she detested, her job working at a diner with very few customers and the sight of other couples that had what she had been made to give up because of her parents. As time passed, the two had grown older and met each other in their late-forties, barely able to express their happiness at being together again, and they walked away into a sunset in a town that was quaint and lively.

When Shinobu finished and bowed, she received quite a round of applause from the crowd.

"Remind me to ask her to perform on my birthday," Mayo told her mother.

"Likewise," Kanami responded.

"Shinobu has talent," they heard Akira say to them.

"Huh?!" Miaka gasped, seeing their eldest relative sitting next to them. "When in the heck did you…"

"Two minutes ago," she heard Rumi say, having shown up with Akira. "Everything's fine now. We took care of the new humanized Angel."

"What does he look like this time?" Bumi asked out of curiosity.

"Sumo wrestler," Akira answered.

Soon enough, most of everybody saw Akira and Rumi and knew instantly that it was safe to go back up to the surface and to their homes. However, Shinji, who was now being taken back to the hospital, never saw them come back, knowing only that they did come back…but he wasn't content with that.

-x-

"Sahaquiel?" Shamshel saw her brother of the skies and was left puzzled. "Is that really you?"

Sahaquiel, having been taken to the security guards of the rehabilitation center by Akira earlier, had been dressed in clothing that would accommodate his physique, and he looked down at his siblings and said, "In the flesh of the Lilin. Too much of the flesh."

As the siblings were back in their rehab cells and being introduced to their big brother, around the same time, Asuka was returning Unit-02 back to NERV HQ, pondering very few thoughts.

"I was unable to question it before when I was in Tokyo-3 that one time I saw Ms. Ayanami, but what's with the outfit that you're wearing?" Rumi had asked her about her plugsuit, having seen only one other variation of it.

"It's called a plugsuit," she answered her. "It's a requirement for piloting the Eva."

"It looks like a modified diving suit to me."

"Yeah, or the armor we wore when facing Ramiel," went Akira, adding her opinion. "Because it looks like a different variation of the concept of a 'second skin', highlighting certain areas of the body."

I beg to differ. Asuka thought, entering a shaft and lowering Unit-02 back down into the Geo-Front. Plugsuits and those freaky suits of armor are, fundamentally, different.

"Before you go, I have one question to ask you about somebody in Tokyo-3, Ms. Soryu," Akira had said to her. "Is Ms. Ayanami still there?"

"Huh? No, she isn't. She went and left one day." Asuka had to hide whatever bits of the truth she could from them; it was not to be discussed with non-NERV members about the whereabouts of Rei Ayanami, even after she was located and quarantined.

"Did she decide to stop piloting and go home?" Rumi asked her.

"As if she had a home to go home to! I checked her address…and it was the pits! What kind of girl lives in a crappy apartment, in a neighborhood that looks like it should be demolished, alone?"

Of course, Asuka wasn't one to speak of living by themselves, as she lived alone herself at NERV HQ, although Misato had been trying to convince her of moving into her apartment.

Upon placing Unit-02 in the cages, she headed to be debriefed by Misato.

"Hey," Misato greeted her.

"Hey," she responded. "Another Angel bites the dust of mankind."

"Commander Ikari was close to demanding that you should've destroyed the Angel the moment it had been humanized."

"Believe me, if it meant doing the world a major favor by showing that the Eva's powerful, I'd have done it in two seconds…but I couldn't kill him, and not because of Akira and her daughter."

"Is it because this Angel, Sahaquiel, was now just as human as we are?"

"Yeah. And then, there was my conversation with Akira and Rumi… I think Rumi's attracted to her own nephew."

Misato, who wanted to crack a joke about that, couldn't muster the will to do so and said, "What makes you believe that to be so?"

"I asked her if being with him made her happy when she expressed that it was her family, not the Angelbreaker on her wrist, that made her heart warm inside. She said 'yes'."

"Maybe…Rumi's still getting over what nearly happened the first time she and Shinji came to Tokyo-3. She was protective of him and unwilling to allow him to get into the Eva, even if it meant the end of mankind. He is sick and dying slowly."

"But…why not just do a big favor for him and put him out of his misery if he's going to die soon, anyway? It'd be a mercy."

"No, Asuka. It wouldn't be a mercy for him. It'd be a cheat out of his life. If he has one organ in him that starts to quit, he simply won't take someone else's to keep himself alive. He'd want to know how long he has left and accept that length of time to put some meaning in his existence. He even once told me that he owes his happiness to his family. If anything, his body may be losing the will to go on, but he's strong-willed to accept that he won't live a long life and be glad that his life had some meaning to the people that mattered to him."

"He could probably ask us to help him," Asuka suggested.

"No, he wouldn't accept any help from Commander Ikari. He never has…and Commander Ikari has never offered him any help. I'd say the distance in their estrangement from each other is too great that neither will ever be as close as Shinji is with the others. It was probably made severe the night he tried to scorch Rumi for refusing to pilot a second time."

Asuka looked up at the purple Eva that was the first to see combat against the Angels…and couldn't help but wonder why, initially, Shinji was picked to pilot it. At first, she wanted to assume it was because he was just an unlucky amateur, or because of who his father is, but when she met him during the festival and his aunt's sixth birthday, she couldn't really anticipate that someone like him, who was frail from his illness, could pilot an Eva…and live to tell about it. And as far as the people that worked on the Evas knew, anybody born after Second Impact that had an illness that crippled their body's functions over time were unsuitable for piloting, whether it was a case of cancer or a soft bone disease.

"He's lucky, in a way," Asuka then expressed. "A condition that slowly kills him…is one of the very things that connects him to a bunch of people that aren't even related by blood, but treat each other as though they were…and he trusts them with his life."

-x-

GASP! Rumi awoke from another nightmare in the dead of night, panting and sweating.

Kami… She thought, looking out at her window. He just… He was just buried…and I stayed away.

In her nightmare, it was a misty morning, filled with sadness. She found herself under the shelter of a tree as many people, dressed in black, were leaving a cemetery. A grave had been recently made, filled and decorated with flowers and several rosaries. As they left, it started to rain when she slowly approached the tombstone. Inscribed upon it was the name she dreaded seeing: "Shinji Rokubungi Two-Thousand-One-Two-Thousand-Fifteen".

"No," she cried, falling before the grave. "Shinji! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

Even when it was just a dream, she still felt the lingering effects of its surrealism. To dream of his death…and to know that he'd been ignored by her out of fear of facing the possibility that he'd just die and she, along with the others, would have to live with the hollow space in their lives that he once occupied with his own existence.

Shinji…I…I want to see you…but… I can't stand the thought of hurting you like this. She thought, crying silently to herself. I need…need to see you again, Shinji.

Then, after wiping away her tears, she got out of bed and slipped on her panda slippers before opening her window. She looked at the town below, very few lights were on and very few sounds were being made. Always curious about the mysteriousness of the night, but too young to explore it, Rumi inhaled and climbed onto the windowsill.

Please, she begged to the Angelbreaker on her wrist, take me to him. Take me…to my Shinji.

She felt the familiar sensations of the armor spreading across her body and covering her skin and clothes. Letting go of the windowsill, she touched the small patch of ground outside before the armor along her back sprouted out wings and gracefully picked her off her feet.

Outside her room in the hallway, Taeko had just finished making her after-midnight stop to the bathroom when she heard the sound of large wings being flapped. They sounded like they came from Rumi's room, but her door was closed. However, her curiosity got the better of her and she went to Akira's room.

Knock-knock! She knocked on her door quietly, so as to not wake the others. The door opened and Akira looked down at her.

"Akira?" She asked.

"Uh, yeah?" Akira responded.

"I heard large wings from inside Rumi's room," she explained.

"Large wings?"

Taeko led her to the room, but Akira's Geo Channeling made her aware of something her youngest granddaughter was not aware of: Rumi's bedroom…was deprived of its inhabitant.

"Uh, Taeko, why don't you go back to bed now?" She told her granddaughter. "I'll just go in there and check on things?"

"Are you sure?" The nine-year-old asked.

"Yes. It's also past your bedtime."

As soon as she left, Akira stepped inside her daughter's room and saw her bedsheets untidy and her slippers gone. The window was also opened and letting a cool breeze inside. Looking outside it, she didn't see anything, but the sight of the town below and recalling the last two days gave her enough of a clue on where Rumi was…or at least where she was going.

Just in case I'm wrong, she thought, leaving her daughter's room and returning to hers to get her staff.

She left a note that simply said that she was going out.

-x-

When the fears and worries of the previous day died down, Rei, whom had returned to her little cave, felt drawn to go to the hospital in the dead of the night. She stood out in the streets, walking toward her destination, the bracelet sprouting small tendrils around her wrist. There was somebody there that she wanted to see: The Third Child that had been summoned to assist in fighting the Angels…and refused to do such. While she would've been uncaring to know that he existed to do what she had done, only after wearing the gauntlet did she realize something about the both of them: She envied him…and she hated them. Unlike her, he had a real home to go back to, people to talk to without concerns or troubles that made it impossible for him to speak about anything that was on his mind, and it infuriated her to no end. She…who wanted things like that…but had been denied them.

He won't need any of those ties where he's going, she thought, but then she stopped walking as she realized something that was disturbing. That man in the suit on the bench.

The same man she had seen before, not knowing he was SEELE's insider, was looking at the hospital building in front of him, still following orders. Even after the latest Angel had been dealt with, he was still here, waiting for orders on what to do with the Third Child.

Rei decided that she didn't like him and had to deal with him before she dealt with Shinji, but then looked up and saw…some sort of large bird or fairy flying over them and disappeared over the hospital roof. Whatever it was, it reminded the albino of the little girl she loathed.

"This place is even weirder at night," the man sighed, and Rei decided to deal with him now.

-x-

Unlike her previous visit in the night, Rumi seemed to be the only person awake. Entering the hospital through one of the back doors, she quietly walked up the stairs to the floor her nephew stayed on for his medical needs. It was amazing to her how the armor that covered her body, not only accommodating to her shape, was so soundless that she felt like a tiger in that she was able to move around without making a noise. Upon reaching the floor and entering the cancer ward, the armor retracted into the bracelet and left Rumi in her pajamas once more. She stopped at the door to Shinji's room and saw him asleep, but he looked like he had better sleep in the days that he wasn't too sick; the veins under his forehead cheeks were starting to show as his skin grew paler.

Is this because I didn't see him two days ago? Rumi wondered, slowly advancing toward the medical bed. "Shin…Shinji?"

He didn't respond to her voice, but the sound of his breathing made her aware that he was still with the living. And so she sat down in the chair behind her.

I wonder if he's mad at me, she thought, wrapping her arms around her legs.

Her perception soon started to darken and she was in the foggy woods again.

"Oh, man," she sighed, the lanterns brought no comfort this time.

"Rumi?" She turned around and saw, to her surprise, her nephew, but he was in a state of emaciation; he must've not been eating well the last time she saw him.

"Shinji?" She asked. "What are you doing here?"

"I was dreaming, but what are you doing here in my dream?"

"Shinji, this cannot be a dream. I was awake when I came to see you in the silence of the dark. I'm still awake. I can't even be a part of your dream if these woods are where I come to sometimes when I speak with the Angelbreaker's previous wielders."

"Wait, I think I know what this is?"

"You do?"

"Yeah. It might be be one of two things: A dream within a dream, or one of those dreams where you know or don't know that you're dreaming."

Then, without warning, the environment was changed from a foggy, lantern-filled forest…to a long, highway overpass at night.

"How did this…" Rumi questioned.

"I thought about it," went Shinji.

"You?"

"I just felt a highway was a better setting than a forest."

Rumi looked around and noticed that the highway beneath them…reminded her of the nightmare she had in which Shinji was running away from the creature known as Lilith, but took pleasure in there being no sign of her…or any other person she didn't trust around Shinji. It was just the two of them.

"Shinji, I, uh…" She tried to speak up, as they were now walking down the seemingly-long overpass, casting their shadows on the pavement whenever under a streetlight. "About my absence, I…"

"It took you two days and an Angel attack just to come see me, even in a dream?" Shinji asked her.

"I believe it was a bit more complicated than that," she countered. "It's not easy to live with the possibility that the day after I see you, or during the day that I do see you, you'll just leave without warning…or suffer more to the point where you don't even know I'm there to see you. What's more is that I've had nightmares about losing you in worse ways than what's expected to happen to you, I find myself thinking about you in ways that I shouldn't… I even sleepwalked to your room, even though you weren't there, and Shinobu suggested that the reason I did so was because, deep down, that's the only place I know where to find you or because it's got your aura around it. That's a little dumb…and it expresses favoritism; I never go into anyone else's bedroom except for yours."

"That doesn't mean you favor me over…"

"Yes, it does. But I've been trying to ignore you in order to sort out my feelings for you…and I still have no conclusion to the 'why' or 'how'."

As Rumi jumped onto the railing of the overpass, Shinji uttered, "Maybe it is karma. Or it's the result of that wish you made before the summer started."

Rumi looked at him and uttered, "You…remember that?"

"Yeah. It's not hard to forget when the place you go to have your wishes made is a shrine on a small hill covered by sakura trees…and you weren't the only one that made a wish on that day."

"Yeah, you made a wish, as well. An individual wish…made twice in one day…by two separate methods: One by ema, a wooden plank…and the other by wishing well." Rumi sighed; she was never sure why the town had a well where you threw in some spare change in return for making a wish, but the traditional method of making a wish on a plank was something she could understand…along with the payment fee of helping the shrine servants by performing a minute task in collecting some petals from the sakura trees.

"The wish I made on that day was for you, Rumi," Shinji told her.

"What?" Rumi questioned.

"Before the day of summer arrived, I wrote down on my ema, "Let my Aunt Rumi meet somebody who could be her companion for as long as she needed." That was my wish."

"You…wanted for me to meet somebody who could be my companion? That sounds a little selfish there, Shinji…but I guess it's not as selfish as the wish I made. It was the only wish I made…so far…that was never based off of you. I wrote down on my ema, "Please, make my summer one to be remembered and cherished." I didn't ask for any material desires or things that people want for the sake of whatever it is that motivates them to desire it. I just wanted this summer to be one I could cherish as the best one of my life…and I think I got too much of what I wished for."

"But tell me," he said, as they stopped under a streetlight that Rumi leaned against. "Has the wish I made for you come true yet? Have you met anyone that could be your companion?"

Rumi looked at him, and then at her right wrist at the Angelbreaker…and finally looked back at her nephew and answered, "Maybe. There is this one guy, but I barely speak with him, and even he is distant towards me. But…I have great respect for him, just as I'm sure he has great respect for me."

"Is he kind to you?"

"Yes."

"What about concerned for your well-being?"

"Oh, he's very concerned. Ever since I told him about my…current predicament, he wants to know how much I've been affected by the outcomes."

"Okay, that's good… But…what about…his looks? Is this guy…attractive to you? Does he look nice? Charms, grace, a smile that makes you feel like there's nothing wrong with the world in the moment that you're with him?" Shinji asked, and didn't notice Rumi giving him a deep, longing look.

Rumi looked at him, then closed her eyes, picturing the details her nephew had asked her about this 'guy' she'd seen, but then recalled the daydream where she and him were a little older and she was in control because she was on top of him.

"Oh, Shinji…" She recalled herself moaning his name, now recalling a feeling of fullness inside of her that she couldn't describe properly as she reached for his head and held him against her chest. Kami, cast away the darkness of that dream!

"Rumi?" Shinji asked again.

She sighed and answered, "Yes, Shinji. He's…attractive to look at. He's even got eyes that look like they could show you things that should be in the Forbidden City of China because they're so sacred."

But how could her nephew ever know that these questions she answered for him…reminded her so much of himself? She felt her heart warm up a little more than usual. Even this degree of contact with him, even in a dream, brought happiness to her currently-troubled mind.

Shinji looked at his aunt and chuckled, "You know, Rumi, whenever you have a look of longing or when you're deep in thought, you look almost like your mother, only younger."

They resumed their walk and she responded, "Do I really look like her? You're the first one to tell me."

"Not in an exact resemblance, though. The major difference is your eyes."

"What about them?"

"Well, Akira's are like the ocean: Vast, tranquil, mysterious and full of life. Yours are like the sky: You're equally vast, you seem to spread hope to people, you go further into the great reaches of what lies beyond the blue curtain that is the daylight…and…while you probably don't think of it…they bring out the greater beauty in you." He explained to her.

Rumi hopped off the rail and responded, "They do? Do I really…look beautiful to you?"

"If beauty had one-hundred faces belonging to Japan, as well as the rest of the world, you'd be one of those faces belong to the top ten…before even the fifth face."

"Thank you."

As they continued to walk, Rumi placed her left hand in Shinji's right hand, holding it gently so as to not hurt him.

"Gods of the graceful arts," she whispered. "How long does it take…to reach one's true heart?"

Shinji stopped walking for a minute and thought of something that made his left hand tighten over his locket. A part of his natural curiosity manifested a question that he felt the need to ask Rumi of.

"Rumi…do you… Do you ever… Pretend that you're going steady with this guy you've met?" He asked her.

She looked up to face him and asked, "What do you mean, going steady?"

He lowered onto his knees and expressed, "Well, uh…do you…pretend that you're his girlfriend or something like that?"

Girlfriend? She thought, and the images of her daydream with him came back, much stronger than they were previously, and with more detail. "Shinji…I don't believe the feeling's mutual. Not at a time like this, when danger's around the corner."

"But…don't you pretend, anyway?" He asked; if she thought he was trying to pressure her, he'd apologize to her if he did, but he just wanted to know, even in a dream they were sharing.

With the image of her nephew's head against her bare chest, his arms wrapped behind her bare back, holding her close to himself like neither could bear to lose the other, Rumi answered, "Sometimes…I wish I could pretend. But deep down, it wouldn't be enough for me. If…I were to ever find out that he was…with somebody that he…and was better than… I'd feel betrayed by the guy…that he didn't think of my feelings the same way I thought of his. Why do you ask?"

"Because I… I went and pretended with somebody. You remember last year…when we met Chidori?"

Rumi nodded in the positive; it wasn't hard to remember a young girl you saw hanging around your dying nephew…when said girl herself was also dying.

Chidori Doku, she thought, recalling the first day they met her, her elder brother and their friend a year ago at the hospital.

-x-

First Friends outside the Family

There was no relapse, no need for an operation or any other concerns. It was just a routine checkup for Shinji, which often had Rumi in tow, a part of her duty in being his anchor to life. Being in the more subtle part of the cancer ward gave an aura of boredom to those that had to either wait for their doctors to show up, get word of their test results…or the inevitable. But Shinji, Rumi and Akira, or any of the other family adults that went with them to the hospital, often had methods of getting through the periods of patience.

"Do you…have any fans?" Rumi asked her nephew, looking at her hand of cards.

"Go fish," Shinji responded, and his little auntie drew from the deck. "Do you have any cats?"

As they played their card game, Akira was reading an old novel of hers that revolved around the martial arts world. Within moments of reaching the next page of her book, however, three new people entered the clinic and she and her kids looked up at them.

A young girl, about Shinji's age, with shoulder-length brown hair and green eyes, accompanied by a taller young man with short, brown hair and green eyes and a younger man with dark, shaggy hair and brown eyes stepped into the clinic and went to the nearest empty seats available. The girl, dressed like a tomboy, sat in a chair five inches away from the one Shinji was in and looked right at him.

"Um…hello," she greeted him.

Shinji and Rumi stopped playing for a moment and the boy looked right at her.

"Hello," he responded.

"Do you come here often?" She asked him.

"Un-uh, only when I need to. Do you?"

"Every other day when I have to."

"What brings you here to this part of the woods?" He asked her.

"Heh-heh…the royal treatment," she answered. "You?"

"A shot at seeing the end of calamity beneath the flesh."

Akira and Rumi sighed like these children had lost some sense of sanity, but then they had to be reminded that Akira was once their age and Rumi would reach that age in another eight years after her fifth birthday came and went.

"I apologize if my sister has disturbed you two," said the taller young man to them.

"It's okay," Akira reassured him. "Everyone's reasons for coming here all add up to the same conclusion. What brings you here with her?"

"Shaving a few years off my sentence?" The elder brother responded.

It looks like all three of them are members of the Living Dead of Akira Town, Akira thought.

"I'm Chidori, by the way," the girl introduced herself to Shinji. "Chidori Doku. The tall guy's my brother, Bruce, and the smaller guy's our friend, Heiko."

"I'm not a midget," the younger man, Heiko, expressed, looking irritated.

"You…didn't get a correct number of shots?" Shinji asked, having been familiar with the requirement for several growth hormone shots.

"And because I don't drink milk," he added.

"So, uh…what's the name of your culprit?" Shinji asked, referring to what their illness was.

"AML, times the three of us," Chidori chuckled. "And you?"

"Shinji Rokubungi, APL, times one of me," he chuckled also.

"Ooh…the rarity," said Bruce; he'd never met anyone with a cancer that was unique for being the only one afflicted with it in this town…until today.

"But you don't seem all that sickly right now," went Heiko. "What brings you here if you're well?"

"To make sure I stay that way…or to be forewarned of when I'll have to return to that house of pain…and to be rescued again. You?"

"Very much the same. Is there…anything you do when you're not in the hospital?"

"Working on a very important book, enjoying the company of my family…and waiting for the inevitable of something that makes me come back here…again."

Rumi set down her hand of cards and hated those last words her nephew used; ever since his cancer became a tricky thief, she often wondered how long it would be before something rotten happened and she'd be seeing one of her relatives in a hospital bed again. By this time from the day she was asked by her mother for Shinji to be his anchor, her memory had improved, most likely due to her repeated visits to the hospital and her constant interactions with the family. Just four months ago, she had given some more of her granulocytes…and that required a four-day stay at the hospital because the doctors needed enough to fill up three soda cans.

Sometimes, I wonder if I should've asked for longer days to recoup, she thought, not angry at being stuck with needles twice a day for four days, but angry at herself for never asking for the possibility of longer periods of time to recover from the sacrifice of her blood cells.

"…So, uh, is this…your sister?" She heard Chidori ask Shinji, now looking down at her.

"Nope," Shinji answered her. "This little girl is the only relative I know of below the ages of adulthood to have any parental rights to boss me around."

"Don't tell me," said Heiko, probably figuring it out. "She's…your aunt, isn't she?"

"You guessed it," went Rumi, speaking up. "Rumi."

"Wha…what happened to your wrist right there?" Heiko then asked, noticing the slight bruise on Rumi's left wrist.

"Huh?" Rumi looked down at her hand and said, "I was helping an important relative a while back. Even to this very day, I'm helping him."

Chidori then looked at her and Shinji, before she realized that Rumi was talking about him.

"You poor baby," she pitied.

"Only hurts when I scream, which I haven't," Rumi joked a little, having never screamed from the syringes ever since she started, what some people would refer to as an obligation, to aid in her nephew's life extension. "To me, needles are an opponent that can't make me yell yet."

"I still find that a little disturbing," said Shinji to her; it always bothered him a little to know that, while she would shed tears in her sleep or while she was stuck with needles, she wouldn't scream at all.

"I'm used to getting stuck by needles," she assured him.

In only two years? He thought.

What they didn't know until much later that Akira was also mildly disturbed by her daughter's inability to scream out in pain at being stuck with needles at her age. Maybe she was just hoping that one day she would scream out that it hurt having a minute piece of metal shaped like a tiny, tube-like knife penetrate your soft, vulnerable flesh and extracting the invaluable, life-prolonging genetic materials beneath it.

Rumi didn't understand completely why people made such a fuss over her not screaming each time she was stuck with a syringe; she was doing this all for her nephew. As long as he continued to live each day, she was willing to endure whatever she had to for his sake.

"So, uh, Shinji," she heard Chidori utter out, "do you ever…go to the arcade or the library?"

"Yeah, I do…but I can't really read anything properly. I mostly just look at the pictures and images…or to borrow the movies." Shinji answered her.

"Are you going to the arcade later?"

"Perhaps."

"Would you…like to hang there…with me?"

Akira directed her eyes toward the girl, wondering if she was trying to instigate a date with her grandson…or was just offering her friendship, which he did need more of at a time like this, as he had no friends his own age outside the family.

"Um, sure. Okay," he told her. "Do you…have a contact number?"

Hearing that reminded Rumi of how she was to get a cell phone of her own when her fifth birthday arrived…as a necessity to remain in contact with the family over large distances, not as a fashion trend or whatever else it was that you wanted a cell phone for.

Chidori took out a pen and paper and wrote down her number for him to copy into his phone, and then he wrote down his own for her to copy.

"Well, once I'm done with my checkup, I shall call you," she told Shinji.

"I shall be waiting," he responded.

Then Chidori left the large room, needing to answer the call of nature before her bladder decided to cause an accident for her out in public.

"Your sister's very cheerful," Akira told Bruce.

"So I'm told," he sighed. "She likes flowers, small animals, people and, for some reason, even Ferris Wheels and large statues."

"Hmm? What's a Ferris Wheel?" Rumi asked.

"Yeah, what is a Ferris Wheel?" Shinji added in, having never seen or heard of those before.

Akira felt sorry for their lack of knowledge on such an old piece of entertainment that allowed people to see the lands from the great heights of a metallic construct that was an incredible feat of genius for pure fun and excitement.

"Over there," went Heiko, pointing to a picture on the wall nearby, which held a photograph of the Tempozan Ferris Wheel of Osaka, Japan at night in great detail. "That's the Tempozan Ferris Wheel of Osaka, Japan, one of the tallest Ferris Wheels of its time."

Rumi got out of her chair and went over to see the picture up close. The Ferris Wheel of pre-Second Impact's Osaka was, for lack of a better word, remarkable. It was massive, made of metal and glass, and had enough lights to make you think it was Christmas every night when you look at it.

"It's so pretty," she sighed.

"Akira, didn't you ride one of those before?" Shinji asked his grandmother.

"Yeah, a couple of times," she answered, envying the fact that, because of the Second Impact, the extensive loss of life, the lack of paving the proper path for the newer generations to take without large repercussions, there hasn't been any construction of any newer Ferris Wheels anywhere in the world, so he, Rumi, Mayo and Taeko, along with other children would probably never experience riding one until somebody from before Second Impact had the inspiration or motivation to build one to ease people's hearts once more. "You just sit around in one of the passenger cars and watch the world around shrink as you rise from the ground. From high in the sky, everything seems so insignificant…and beautiful, all at the same time."

"Kami…I wouldn't mind just one minute on a Ferris Wheel," Shinji sighed.

Ring-ring-ring! His phone started ringing, and he answered.

"Hello?"

"Hello, is this Shinji?"

"Yes."

"This Chidori calling. Testing, testing."

"Ah-ha-ha! Shinji is receiving."

-x-

"…They were nice people," Rumi told Shinji, as they continued to walk down the highway overpass. "I think Chidori liked you a lot more than her brother and Heiko did."

"We shared many things in common," said Shinji to her. "I was hoping for them when I found out a little more of their leukemia that they would beat the odds stacked against them, as AML was less troubling than APL. But fate can be so unkind."

"But their friendship to you was true, even if it was shortened by the frailness of the body. Like us, they cared about you as much as you cared about them…and you still do."

"Do you…remember that day, two months later, when I had to go back to the hospital for my chemotherapy that Chidori asked me out to that small party the hospital was having for all the sick patients?" He asked her.

"It's hard to forget when you were throwing up your French fries into a bedpan. I told you not to eat that many. And then you worried over not looking your best before you went to the party."

"Well, I have three catheters sticking out of my chest. It's a little embarrassing." He told her.

"But when you went there, you told us that all the cancer patients had catheters sticking out of their chests and weren't embarrassed at all. And the party wasn't formal, so there was no need to wear a suit or tux, which I can't picture you wearing at all."

"You should've seen me and Chidori dancing. We were both as nervous as mongooses."

They talked for another few minutes about the three friends he made until the memory of their deaths three days after the party came crashing down on them.

"That night, when the party ended, Chidori and I went out to the hospital gardens and we just sat around the flowers," Shinji told his aunt.

"Didn't you two go and…you know?" Rumi asked, only because of her daydream being a constant reminder of how it was probably done between a man and a woman.

"What? No, we didn't, Rumi. Even if that night were my last one alive, I wouldn't cross that line unless it was with somebody I loved way too much to be a simple crush. We couldn't even kiss each other on the lips because we didn't cross the line between friendship and romance."

Well, at least I know he wasn't soiled by anyone yet, she thought.

"You know, Akira would probably spank you for even asking such a question," Shinji informed her. "And where did you pick up such a question, anyway?"

"Cartoons," she lied to him; she didn't know the exact word for what it was when you…cross the line and disgrace yourselves, but the daydream gave her the unusual demonstration, despite not yet knowing what the sensation of the fullness she was experiencing at the time was. "And the second Fantastic Four film."

"Nemo, you otaku," Shinji sighed. "Oh, enough about me, Rumi. I want to know about you. What were you doing in the past two days that you were away?"

"Pondering many things," she answered, beating around the bush again. "Learning a little more about Aero Channeling and Hydro Channeling and what's to be expected when I start learning how to perform such ancient arts. Fighting and humanizing Sahaquiel, the Angel of the Sky, who was a large bomb that, like the previous Angels and those yet to come, detests my guts simply for defeating one of them with the Eva that first and only time we were at Tokyo-3. And then my motivation to come see you in the silence of the night being a recent nightmare where your funeral came…and I ignored you till you drew your final breath. It was…hurtful…and the rain made it all full of dread."

"That's major depressing," Shinji responded to knowing that a nightmare of that sort was experienced by his youngest aunt, scratching his scalp beneath his wig a little.

Rumi never spoke of this belief, but she thought Shinji looked nice with his wig on; it gave off the subtle illusion that he seemed right as rain much of the time unless you paid too much attention to his pale skin, which would show that he was in anything but perfect health. This wig, casting the perception of him that seemed rather innocent and delicate, was the opposite of one of his other two wigs, which cast the image of him being untamed and moody with the hair being much wilder and spikier, respectively, something she thought made him, somewhat, distant.

"I…I like spending my time with you, Shinji," she told him, needing to get that off of her shoulders…along with other things she wanted to tell him, but couldn't do so properly.

"I do, too, Rumi," he replied, turning away from her. "I can never explain it, but I always feel a lot better when you're around."

"Maybe…it's 'cause we share a strong bond," Rumi suggested, reaching into her shirt and taking out her dog tags. "How many people can say that they feel linked to another person in different ways?"

He turned back to face her, seeing her tags, and chuckled as he pulled out his locket. He believed her when she said that they were probably linked through their potentially-strong bond.

"Brr…" Rumi started to shiver; wearing only your pajamas in the cold night air, even in a dream, wasn't a good combination, especially when the pajamas consisted of an oversized shirt and underwear.

"You really need to consider wearing pajama pants, Rumi," Shinji told her.

"Later," she promised, sitting down on the concrete ground. "Shinji…if I were to ask you to pretend to do something with me, would you consider it?"

"Well, uh…perhaps," he responded. "The question is: What do you want to pretend to do with me?"

Trying her absolute hardest to block out the daydream that was now persistent in staying in her consciousness, Rumi expressed, "Would you…pretend to go steady with me?"

The boy's eyes widened to such a request. It was almost a shock to hear the youngest of his aunts asking him to pretend to be her boyfriend. He was now trying to remember the word that was used to describe a romantic relationship between relatives that was frowned upon in most parts of the world, but he couldn't remember it well.

"Rumi, I…uh… Wouldn't Akira split a mountain in half if she ever discovered you asking me such a question? I'm not trying to say 'no' or just say 'no' to you, but I'm worried about what Akira would do to the both of us if she ever started jumping to conclusions." He asked her.

"If she ever did find out…and jumped to conclusions…I'd tell her myself," she answered him, "but would you pretend with me or not?"

"I wouldn't know of what to do. My experience is limited."

"And I don't have any."

"But tell me, Rumi, do you have to…do anything when you go steady? I never asked Chidori…so I'm asking you."

He's asking me? He's asking me, thought Rumi as she saw him sit down next to her on the ground. "No, Shinji…for not many couples do anything to make their relationships appear…official."

He sighed before saying, "So, then, everything's the same, except that they're a couple?"

"Yes, Shinji."

He nodded in the positive and said to his aunt, "Then…we can pretend to go steady."

"Really?" She asked him, feeling hopeful.

"Yes."

"Honestly?"

"I swear."

Her heart must've expanded a little because her emotions were a lot stronger than they were two seconds ago, and she uttered, "Thank you."

She hugged him, unaware that his expression, which might've passed for honesty, was tinged with woe; he was, while willing to pretend with Rumi that he was her boyfriend, uncertain of how long she would put up with him until this 'guy' she had met asked her to go steady with him. The next thing Rumi realized, as her eyes were closed, was that she felt her back had pressed against something large and soft. Opening her eyes, she discovered that she was looking up at the hospital ceiling…within Shinji's hospital bed; she must've sleepwalked again and got into the bed. But as she rose up, she saw, to her surprise, that, what was probably the actual cause of her being in his bed, her mother, Akira, was asleep in the chair that she was sitting in earlier.

"If she ever did find out…and jumped to conclusions…I'd tell her myself', were what Rumi recalled when she had spoken with Shinji in the dreamworld when he asked of what Akira would do if she found about the possibility of these two pretending to go steady and her thinking it was real. If it ever comes to that, I will tell her.

Seeing that Shinji was facing her mother, with his back facing her and his left hand on his side, she, only because something inside her told her that it was right, reached out with her left hand and placed it over his. She thought of it as remarkable of how big his hand was and how easy hers, just like his locket, could fit inside it. Going back to sleep, she felt her heart warm up even more from her contact with her nephew.

A tear had escaped Shinji's left eye as he slept, and his left hand's thumb had moved over to clasp his aunt's little thumb without either of their knowledge.

-x-

Shinji, having experienced what was, probably, his sole, surreal dream about Rumi and himself, awoke to the unwritten future of the Tenth of August, recalling that in the dream, Rumi had asked him to pretend to be her boyfriend.

Somehow, I don't feel like that was, entirely, a dream, he thought, seeing his grandmother asleep in the chair beside his hospital bed. But…did she really come to see me in the night?

Turning to his left side, expecting to see somebody beside him, he found, to his mild frustration…that there was nobody there; it seemed that Akira was the only one present in the room with him.

Forever the wishful thinker, huh, Shinji? He wondered to himself, but then took notice of a piece of paper on his pillow. What's this?

Picking it up, he saw that it was a note, which read, "I must flee from here or move on to the next world…only to come back and live in this one once more. Eternally yours, Rumi."

His eyes widened as his heart felt like it was about burst with emotion. Rumi had come to see him, just like she told him in the dream. She had gotten up earlier than he did and left, but leaving him the proof of her visit.

"Grandmother?" He asked Akira, trying to get her attention.

The centenarian mumbled as she awoke from her empty slumber.

"Huh? Wha… Huh?" She went as her perception came into focus. "Oh, Shinji. Good morning."

"Good morning," he greeted her back. "Can you tell me something?"

"Sure, anything."

"Rumi… Did she come to see me last night while I was asleep?" He asked her.

Akira nodded and said that Rumi did.

-x-

Ritsuko Akagi could've said that achieving something of this feat was nigh-impossible without Rei Ayanami's presence, that it couldn't be done, but instead, due to her misplaced sense of self-righteousness, and because Gendo had instructed her to find a way to make it possible, the faux-blond had managed to, in the short amount of time since Rei abandoned NERV, work up a usable prototype of an altered version of the Dummy Plug System. While not in the way of 'perfect', it was at least in the range of 'acceptable'. The only thing that needed to be done now was to have it painted, and the choices were very limited to just three colors: Orange, red or black. While she'd been comfortable with it being the standard white like the Entry Plugs, Commander Ikari would've probably liked it red or orange, but on a different level of her thinking, she decided that, since everything had changed from what was foretold to what is predetermined, the third color option would be better, and had it painted black.

We still continue to use the Evas…even when we've achieved nothing? She wondered. All we seem to do now is just monitor for the Angels' presence and acquire information…as well as providing assistance to Mrs. Rokubungi and her daughter. Commander Ikari seems persistent in wanting to keep from asking them for help, though there's no shame in asking for help.

As the painting of the plug was completed, and all she had to do now was let it dry off, the faux-blond left the lab said plug was in to attend to other tasks.

In the meanwhile, Asuka, who had just gotten up, was examining herself in the mirror and found her reflection to be, somewhat, disturbing: While there wasn't anything wrong, physically, there was an unusual sense of emptiness in her eyes.

We beat the Angel, she thought, having received all the credit of Sahaquiel's defeat, but the victory felt hollow, but it just doesn't seem right. We're supposed to kill the Angels, not spare them when they're made vulnerable.

"When a person has someone, not something, to protect, they bring out the best in their abilities." She recalled Akira's words again.

"They were only able to defeat the Angels in their own way because they had people that they wanted to protect, because Rumi wanted to keep her nephew out of harm's way. She doesn't fight to prove that she exists or because she's one of the few that can protect the world…or for praise and acceptance, only because she wants to keep him safe." She sighed.

And then there was Akira, an ancient of a woman that didn't look a day over twenty-eight who loved being a mother to orphans that later grew to adore her like the real thing, which she truly was. Asuka had a small sense of envy toward her and the other mothers in the family: Their children adored them, never feared them, or grew to despise them for whatever reasons there were. She felt like they were a perfect variation of the life she could've had with her own mother…had she lived…had she not gotten involved with the Evangelion program.

Mama… She thought, nearly unable to recall the pleasant memories of her childhood…before the Eva.

-x-

"…Somebody's in a good mood," said Miaka as she, Taeko and Tsukiko came to see Shinji again. "How are you doing?"

Shinji looked up at them, looking like he was glowing a bit, and said, "Good. I think last night I was visited by a little angel."

"An angel?" Taeko asked, noticing a note in her cousin's hand. "Did the angel leave you a message?"

"Heh-heh! Yeah."

Tsukiko went over to the window to let in some more air, but was halted by something on the glass's exterior: It looked like a red droplet.

"Hmm?" Her curiosity caught the attention of Shinji and Taeko.

"Something wrong, Tsukiko?" They asked her.

"No, I wouldn't think so," she told them, but then frowned at the sight of another red droplet. "Uh, I'll be right back. I just need to go to the bathroom."

She left out quickly, but was soon followed by Miaka.

"I'm not on par with Bumi or Akira…yet, but I could tell you were lying about something not bothering you, sis," she told her. "What was it?"

"I saw two red droplets on the window. I thought it was nothing when I just saw one, but now I have a bad feeling about what might be disturbing, but I have to be sure by going up to the roof."

"Then lead the way."

Tsukiko and Miaka went up to the roof and saw the other rooftops of the town's buildings. There were several air-conditioning and ventilation systems as well as a few chimneys to vent out excess heat from within the building. Looking around toward the side of the building where their nephew's window was located, all they found was a small trace of the red substance that Tsukiko saw on the window.

"Tsukiko," went Miaka, "if you had to take an educated guess on what this stuff is, what, exactly, would you call it?"

"In all my honesty?"

"Yes."

"I'd call it…blood, Miaka. Blood."

Looking away from the small amount, Tsukiko saw that one of the air-conditioning tops seven feet from them was not moving, which wasn't standard for the hospital, which always had to air out bad fumes to keep the interior fresh.

Back inside Shinji's room, Taeko was looking at Shinji's note and could tell that it was Rumi's handwriting instantly, and not because of the girl's name written at the bottom.

"Shinji, can I confess my opinion on Rumi to you?" She asked him.

"Feel free," he responded.

"I think she likes you a more than she likes the rest of us," she confessed her opinion. "A lot, lot more than us, I mean."

"Despite it being your opinion, I think that's ridiculous. Not to mention that I can't remember a word that's used for affection like that, only that it begins with 'I'."

Taeko then sniffed the air and covered her nose; something smelled bad.

"Shinji, did you bathe?" She asked him.

"Yeah, cousin," he answered her, needing to cover his nose, too, to keep out the foul smell. "Did you fart, Taeko?"

"Un-uh."

"Aaaaaaaaahhhh!" They both gasped to the sound of a woman screaming, sounding an awful lot like Tsukiko, outside the building.

"What was that?" Shinji asked Taeko.

"You're asking me? I'm only nine years old, for crying out loud!" She countered, wanting to know, too.

-x-

When something like this was discovered, Akira was informed, and because something like this was discovered, she was the most likely to be a suspect: A dead body was found on the rooftop of the primary hospital, a subject of homicide, one of the first in town in the last twenty-three years.

Nemo had been tasked with finding out the cause of this murder and spent two hours examining the…remains of the victim, whom he recognized as the mysterious guy that sat on the bench across the street from the hospital. Once he collected the information and gave it to the police, Akira had to see the head of the precinct: Captain Shinoda, Hideki, one of the only friends and confidants she had on the police force still among the living. They hadn't spoken since the museum incident with Shamshel, and now they had to speak again at a bad time like this.

"I apologize for having ruined your day, Akira," he apologized to her.

"It comes with the territory of the position of town leader," she replied, standing in front of his desk in his office. "How bad is this?"

"Your son's report from the forensics' lab came back scary: The guy was beaten to death before he was stabbed, repeatedly, beheaded, disemboweled and dismembered before he was dumped into one of the hospital vents where your daughters found him. The hit was also sloppy, but it seemed like somebody was okay with what they were doing."

Akira sighed and said, "I can feel that you're tense, so why don't you tell me what the suspicions are?"

Shinoda inhaled and responded, "Akira, your son confirmed that the guy was hacked to bits by what appeared to be a blade of some kind, with traces of an unidentified metal mixed with trace amounts of an unidentified organic substance. So, I ask you, Mrs. Rokubungi, did you or your youngest daughter have anything to do with this because of (he points to the Angelbreaker bracelet)…that?"

"No, Shinoda, we had nothing to do with the murder," she answered honestly; she knew it couldn't have been either Rumi or herself because the Angelbreaker couldn't be used to commit murder, no matter how much death was desired by the wielder in any case. "I've also spoken with Rumi, and she denies having anything to do with the murder. She couldn't lie to me."

"Then…do you have any idea of who, or what, could've done this?" He asked her. "A new Angel?"

Sighing again, she revealed, "Maybe one person, but she doesn't live anywhere around here. In fact, she probably shouldn't even be here."

"Who?"

"This fourteen-year-old girl, Rei Ayanami. She's supposed to be affiliated with the paramilitary agency NERV, but that's in Tokyo-3. I saw her here two nights ago when I was helping a friend fix the roof of her house. She might've done this, but I won't jump to conclusions."

"If you could give us a description of the girl, it would help to find her and just question her on her potential involvement." Shinoda said to her.

"Sure. A description won't be too hard. She's the only girl I've seen with pale, blue hair, chalk-white skin and red eyes. The worst part of her features is who she resembles a little."

"Who does she resemble a little?"

"A dead woman of whom I recently discovered was my grandson's mother."

-x-

Sneaking into someone else's home had become a new low for Rei Ayanami. That, knocking the old couple that lived there out, and using their resources to wash away the blood that got on her skin and yukata. But she needed to shower, anyway. As she washed the blood that was on her face and the grime on her skin, the albino looked at the bracelet on her wrist and noticed how the skin beside it was changing from its chalk-white coloration to a much regular one, like that of a true Japanese.

"I should've killed the both of them right after I killed that man," she sighed, letting the hot water stream down her bare back, referring to the Third Child and his little auntie. "In due time. In due time."

When she was done bathing, she stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel to dry her skin off. Walking past the unconscious couple, she entered their washroom and examined her yukata and found it looking like new, and dressed back into it. Feeling better now that it was clean, she did a twirl and a curtsy to herself in front of a mirror. A smile, wrapped in sadism, showed up on her face.

"A smile? Am I happy for killing that man?" She wondered aloud.

-x-

"…We cannot have the United Nations trespass on Akira Town at all, due to the recent discovery of an old contract that was made to ensure the people working there that their hometown was left untouched by human conflicts," said SEELE 07 SOUND ONLY to the other members of the council. "Apparently, their ties to the place and its leader are much stronger than any influence we can exert over them. Even several members of the military have had a change of heart over the town."

"Ikari and NERV have become useless in getting rid of the Angels, six of whom have been reduced to regular people with one of them reduced to a pair of twins, and the First Child has abandoned her duties as Unit-00's pilot. Only the Second Child remains…and even she is incapable of fulfilling her duties as Unit-02's pilot." SEELE 05 SOUND ONLY added in. "And once again, the wielders of that loathsome Angelbreaker were summoned by NERV to deal with the situation created by the Eighth Angel…with Unit-02 serving only as muscle."

"They should've been dealt with long before the arrival of the Sixth and Seventh Angels," said SEELE 03 SOUND ONLY.

"It would seem simple enough to erase them," went SEELE 11 SOUND ONLY, "but what if we could manipulate them to serve us?"

"Our contact within the town has been silenced by someone," said SEELE 09 SOUND ONLY, "do you wish to bet that whoever killed him wasn't ageless or below the age of ten years? And there's something else, as well: Adam has been reported missing from his containment."

"What?!" SEELE 01 SOUND ONLY reacted with anger. "And why were we not informed of this?!"

"We just found out about it," said the recently-informed SEELE 13 SOUND ONLY monolith. "But we found out where it's been relocated: Tokyo-3…or, to be more precise, Ikari. And we now know just who it was that gave it to him."

"I knew he couldn't be trusted going off on his own," said SEELE 06 SOUND ONLY.

-x-

"…This has become insane," muttered Fuyutsuki to himself, traveling down an elevator toward one of the places of NERV that he detested a lot: Terminal Dogma. Why didn't I have Akira just pressure me for information? NERV has gone down the path to nothingness. We can't do anything, the Angels aren't getting defeated in the way they were supposed to, Unit-01's practically useless without a pilot, along with Unit-00 and the Second Child…Ms. Soryu…cannot deal with the Angels by herself, even if they did come here, and she's starting to seem like there's no point in continuing to pilot the Eva that became her present ever since its creation.

When the elevator stopped, indicating that he either made it to his destination or somebody else wanted to get on from another level, he thought of how irritating it was to be due to his position as the Sub-Commander of NERV. All it took for him was one simple threat, one simple method of coercion for him to, in a way, sell his soul to the Devil and live a life of servitude within NERV. His superiors, SEELE, would be brutal toward him if he ever went public with the secrets he had discovered years ago, and it was only because of not wanting to die so soon that drove him to accept the only offer available to him. But now, because of his one tie to the past, the only person that had, literally, saved him from a much earlier death, he felt a shift in the balance between the Angels getting what they wanted, SEELE getting what they wanted…and Gendo getting what he wanted.

I should've made Akira pressure me, he thought, really just wanting to confess his stupidity, his cowardice to somebody he believed was powerful, like God, and would absolve him of any sins he committed in the past up to now.

Unfortunately, the elevator doors didn't open to indicate that he reached his destination, nor did they open to let in somebody else…and suddenly the emergency lights went on. He went over to the emergency phone and tried to call for assistance, but there was no dial tone. At first, he wanted to assume it was a power outage, but that was impossible because if it had been, the emergency generators would've kicked in to provide power to the elevator and take him to the nearest floor. That meant all of the power went out at NERV, possibly the whole city.

"Oh, great," he sighed.

-x-

After being instructed that she couldn't go to the hospital due to the scene of the murdered body, Rumi, upset that she couldn't see her…nephew and pretend boyfriend, walked around the parts of Akira Town that she knew were close to home and the hospital, stopping by an old bridge made of iron and copper, one of the town's old, metallic landmarks that collected years of rust, but was never complained about by people because…sometimes, just walking on it, day or night, was supposed to help calm people's troubled emotions. It was the afternoon, but crossing it didn't really help Rumi's emotions because they weren't really troubled, not in the way that crossing the bridge would help. Akira wouldn't go into any details about what happened, only that the guy discovered dead was not a member of the town's population (this was due to the authorities being able to confirm the identity of the dead guy through what was left of his wallet and using his fingerprints) and that he was being returned to his family discreetly.

How could a murdered body just wind up at the hospital like that? She wondered, looking down at the four feet of water beneath the bridge, only able to glimpse at a silhouette of herself because of the sun's rays casting shadows on the bridge. I wanted to go back and see him again. I wanted to feel better in his presence.

Her right hand started trembling, with the bracelet's ruby and pearl adornments glowing.

"Huh?" She gasped, and grabbed the railing with her hands, and heard some calm, breathing nearby.

Turning to her left, she saw the one person she hadn't seen since her visit to that soulless city, who proceeded to take a step toward her.

"Stop right there!" She ordered Rei Ayanami to halt, and the albino obliged, and she was able to get a good look at her. "What are you doing here?"

"My reasons are my own," Rei responded, her voice sounding different from the last time she heard her; it had been calm, but very weak…only now, it was strong…but almost cold-hearted, like Gendo's voice whenever he spoke. "So, you come here often, Rumi Rokubungi?"

"I, uh… I need to be going now. My mother worries when I'm out for too long." Rumi uttered out; something in her heart told her that being around this young woman was dangerous to her existence and that she needed to get away.

"Afraid that I may get the idea of wanting to hurt you, a little girl that gave the Third Child his extended existence, unlike how the existence of the man from last night was ended?" Rei asked her as she turned to walk away. "Or…is it that you're afraid that I might pay the Third Child a visit at the hospital once people are allowed to visit the day after tomorrow…only to persuade him of a necessary requirement of his services…or something much crueler?"

Her heart was pounding with fear. This girl was pushing her buttons.

Slowly, Rei silently advanced toward Rumi's nape, and placed her left hand down onto her left shoulder, being gentle, but her caress was firm.

"His name," she heard Rei utter closely behind her ear, "it used to be "Ikari", wasn't it? Just like the man that wants what you and…hmm…Akira denied him because of your actions. I met your mother back in the city, as per my instructions from Commander Ikari…and I saw in her what I see in you: Power, unrestrained, untainted…and desired."

The last word was uttered much closer to her ear, making her shudder, feeling a different type of fear.

"What do you want from me?" She asked her.

"I think you know the answer to that," Rei responded, imagining this little girl on the ground, incapacitated and bleeding her last drop of blood alongside the Third Child, Shinji Ikari, who held her hand as he slowly suffered from his illness. "I could do it to you right here and now, but then I wouldn't be content. I need the satisfaction of knowing that you cannot overcome the great power I was bestowed before I broke free from the chains of my past enslavement. So, until the other Angels have been humanized, until the old men that thought they could control the man that thought he could control me no longer have a need for the Evas as weapons your little toy has put down, and until you suffer from a tragedy that torments you, even in your dreams… I shall permit you to live…but only until the last child of the First Angel has been dealt with…and then…you…shall…perish in battle…against me."

Rumi's breathing quickened as she felt Rei breathing behind her on her neck.

"Uh…ugh…uh…" She shuddered, her heart still pounding.

"I shall be off now, but just to remind you that this isn't a bad dream, that you're not fantasizing this moment, I shall leave a mark that fades," Rei then placed her lips on the side of her neck and shoulder blade that was exposed under her shirt, pressing them so firmly onto Rumi that the lipstick she stole from the old people's home was etched onto her skin, and then she playfully nibbled her earlobe a little before letting go of her. "Let my voice haunt you whilst you sleep."

Ten seconds later, Rumi panted as she turned around and saw no trace of Rei.

"Oh, Kami," she said, running off the bridge and heading back to the house. "Oh, Kami!"

-x-

"Hey, August Tenth is just another way of saying 'eight-ten', isn't it, Mayo?" Taeko asked her elder cousin, comparing the days and months to numbers.

"Huh?" Mayo responded, keeping her distance from the front porch of the house as she practiced with her tantō. "Yeah, Taeko, why?"

"Tomorrow will be 'eight-eleven', get it?" She asked. "Soon, it'll be 'nine-eleven'."

Mayo could tell by now that Taeko was speaking of the event that took place in Two-Thousand-One in the United States, but she didn't like talking about it because it was old news that didn't interest her. Just because Second Impact made the Big Apple almost unlivable due to the flooding caused by the melting of the Arctic icecaps, that didn't stop a bunch of terrorists from throwing their lives away to destroy the World Trade Centre, especially when there was nobody within the abandoned towers to try and escape the devastation because that part of the city was already abandoned. More than half the state of New York was already too dead to even care about what happened to the buildings.

The iron-clad doors that separated the estate from the outside world opened up and the girls saw their young aunt return, quickly shutting the doors and walking past them to the house; they were able to see her expression as a combination of twisted fear and the need to scream and cry.

"Uh, Rumi?" Mayo wondered.

Inside, Rumi ran into her room and fell onto her bed, wishing she hadn't seen that girl earlier. Unlike the first time she saw her, when she was as close to dying as you can be when injured like that, but now the girl was closer to life…but only its darkest side.

Knock-knock! She looked up and saw her mother by her door.

"I felt your footsteps all the way from the northeastern pagoda," she expressed. "Is something wrong?"

The six-year-old turned over onto her back and calmed herself enough to explain what had happened.

"Aya…Ayanami," she spoke out. "She…she…she… Oh, what was it that Nemo said that people do when they make an unpleasant move on you?"

"What are you talking about, Rumi? What, did you see Ms. Ayanami while you were out?"

"Yes…and…she… She singled me out," Rumi revealed, which made Akira react with some hostility.

"She went and what?!" She asked.

"I was out by the Old Iron Bridge when she came by. I was about to leave when she asked if I was afraid of her doing something wrong to me or Shinji. And I think that she probably did what you said happened to that man they found at the hospital." Rumi then turned her head to reveal the mark Rei left on her. "Look. This…this is where that girl went and kissed me."

Akira came over and examined the mark. It was regular, non-animal-tested lipstick.

"Rumi…what did she say to you?" She asked her.

"That she was going to kill me…once all the Angels were humanized and I suffered from a tragedy. She said she could've done so on the bridge, but she wouldn't be content with that, so she let me go."

"Was there anything about her that seemed different to you? Was she sporting a yukata or wearing anything that gave you the impression of fear or hostility?"

Rumi thought back to the encounter and recalled the blunette was wearing a yukata instead of that plugsuit she had on when they first met, but she also noticed a form of jewelry on her left hand.

"Yeah, she was wearing a yukata…and there was some sort of ring on one of the fingers of her left hand, extending to her wrist." She told her. "Nearly made me wet myself, too."

So, Rei Ayanami is here in town, thought Akira, who then picked her daughter up and sat her on her lap, and she made a mistake by threatening my Rumi.

-x-

"Professor Fuyutsuki, it would be terribly dangerous to break that seal onto the world," Kozo recalled Yui's words one time when they were having a conversation in Two-Thousand-Three.

"I've given all the materials to Ikari," he uttered to himself; the solitude of the elevator made him almost a little crazy from the silence. "It's not something one can do alone."

"Kozo-Kun, what happened to your cheek right there?" He recalled Akira's concern when he was twelve, and sometime after they met, he was cut on his left cheek.

"Hmm…some classmates," he answered her. "Oh, and I've been given a warning. It seems that it would be no trouble at all for them to erase me."

"And those who survived, as well," Yui had told him. "It's easy to exterminate people."

"Kozo-Kun, listen," he heard Akira tell him, once she realized from the way he spoke of his classmates giving him his injury, "you need to defend yourself. Hit them back."

Kozo sighed in his solitude.

"You've never hit back before in your life…have you?" She asked him.

"No," he answered her.

"So do it. Starting now. Hit them back."

"But…there's five of them," he revealed to her, which indicated the seriousness of how hard it was for him due to the poverty.

"Then you hit them harder than they hit you. Hit them with more force than you dare to unleash…and they'll stop. You can't let one simple problem bring you misfortune from people simply looking for those that would grow up to be the ones that represented all that they lacked." Akira instructed him, as she was concerned for his safety, but wanted him to show that he shouldn't be tarnished for what was never his choice.

"But what if they don't stop? What if they continue to persist? Or…what if…" He questioned her, wanting to know from her what could happen to him…if his tormentors decided to get rid of him.

He almost thought he heard Yui's voice again when Akira's spoke up in response to his previous question about what to do.

"Then…before I leave town…I'll help you deal with them," she told him.

"But…you're a girl," he told her.

"Gender is just a designation, not a limitation. If I sound like a girl, look like a girl, do the same things a girl would do, that means I must be a girl, then. Whatever people perceive you as, that's what they perceive you as. I promise you, Kozo-Kun…if they continue to persist, I'll help you deal with them. That…I can do for you."

"I never knew how special you were until you did help me deal with them," he told himself, but then Yui's voice cut back into his present.

"I want him to see how bright the future will be. The bright future ahead for humanity." Yui had spoken, referring to Shinji's presence at GEHIRN (before it was ever called NERV), looking at the unfinished Evangelion prototype.

All Kozo remembered seeing that day was the alarms going off and the sensors dying. Those were the last words he heard from her when the Eva consumed her. All that was left was an abomination that scientists couldn't get the desired results from, a widower with a changed, cold heart…and a little boy crying for his mother as he was removed from the scene.

"Kozo-San," Akira's voice returned to the fold of Fuyutsuki's mind, the day he had confirmed of her identity as the woman he met when he was twelve, "I don't know why such an organization like NERV invests so much of its time into something like what you call the Evangelion…and I'll probably not care why Gendo appears to see them as more than mere weapons that look like giant action figures, but I'll ask you this: When he sent for Shinji to come to this city and see him…was it truly just to pilot something he'd never seen before, to fight a creature he'd never seen before…and to continue fighting these creatures you call Angels until he either won every battle, regardless of what they took from him…or until he died a long way from the only home he's ever known…away from the people that loved him simply because he was one of them, part of the family and because they cared about him?"

Kozo had answered, "That…was Ikari's decision. But nobody ever expected that…your grandson was sick with a condition that was slowly killing him…or that he'd be accompanied by a little girl that held her share of parental rights toward him and would be against what Ikari had in mind, even if it meant the potential end of the human race."

"All things happen as they must…for Shinji's sake," Yui had told Kozo of her reasons for joining the people that caused the devastation that was Second Impact.

"Kozo-San… Shinji was unable to bury the pain his parents caused him with their absence until after I stopped him from trying to kill himself during my last trimester with Rumi. He claimed that it wasn't suicide if he was already dying…and that I was replacing him." Akira's voice made a comeback with her conversation with him from the recent past. "I'm a family person that never likes to play favorites with her children or their children, but to know my only grandson's parents seem to busy themselves with something like the Evangelion, or to have died under circumstances that were never mentioned…or even to cast their children aside like something you're not going to miss because they're no different from trash, it makes me wonder why he was born to those type of people. Me, I'm an only child from a past full of power struggles when there should be balance; my family was of noble status going back in time since before even my parents could remember the ancestors that came before them. When I was training in the martial arts, my father, who was the secondary head of the family and instructor of the training dojo where my mother met him in his youth, I overheard him and some fellow martial artists talking of me. They complained that I was unfit to lead the family simply because I was a girl, that society's future was up to the men and that I should consider the life of a homemaker and not a martial artist. I felt like my own father was putting me down because of my gender. One of my neighbors from that time was a woman that started raising a family when she was twelve, and while I had no disrespect for her, whatsoever, I couldn't picture my life as a parent while so young and naive. So I asked my father what he thought of me. Did he hate me for my gender, did he despise my mother for giving him a daughter instead of a son, and was I his embarrassment? And do you know what he told me, Kozo-San?"

"How could I know?" Kozo asked himself. "I wasn't alive, then."

"He sat me down on the floor and hugged me tightly. He told me, "Akira, you are my pride and joy. I see potential in you to be more than what you are already. Men see society as their domain, but that isn't true. The world itself is built on equality, the state of being equal, and that includes men and women. But deep down, the world's future falls onto the women in society more so than men. You, Akira, mean more to me than any boy child ever could, and not because you're an only child. I've seen you get hurt when you practice your stances and each time you get up and take the blows of your opponents, time and again. I see a grand future for you." And he was right…about everything that was said between us. We're all equal, but society falls more to the power women possess than the power of men. When a man cannot be relied upon for whatever reasons that exist, including death, a woman must do what they can't, anymore. I've lived a long life that feels like an eternity with no desired end in sight, raising orphans, training people, teaching them what I learned from the past…and at the same time…learning from them of the future, its pros and its cons. And so far, while it may be disrespectful to you for hearing me say this, but I don't believe in entrusting the future that may be leading to the levels of Hell itself to children that, from my point of view, have no parents that are willing to raise them or explain to them the things that they need to know in a time where knowledge isn't power but safety and guidance. You don't get to choose who your parents or your children will be, but you can choose to tell them what they deserve to know, for better or for worse. I told Shinji that even if his…if Gendo didn't love him or want him around in his life, the rest of us, his aunts and uncles, cousins and grandmother, none of whom are related to each other by blood, want him in our lives, even if he's got a condition that's stealing his life from him, day after day. Rumi saved his life that day by beating Sachiel, just as I saved him from making a fatal mistake and digging an early grave for himself."

He then recalled Akira showing an old photograph of a bald boy dressed as an onion on a stage.

"This was Shinji during his elementary school pageant of my town's agricultural increase. The bald boy dressed as the onion is Shinji…nine years old…two days after his precautionary chemotherapy. He didn't want to go on stage because he thought people were going to laugh at him or call him names because he was sick. His aunt, Shinobu, convinced him to perform his role as the onion because we were all there to watch him, the people that loved him enough to come to his school play."

"The path to God we have yet to try," Gendo's voice somehow made it into Kozo's consciousness. "The path to God…"

"Shinji was able to bury the pain of his past because his family, not his parents, was there to help him, time after time, until he was no longer troubled by it. He put the unrecognizable memories, the unfamiliar faces, the thieves of the cold hearts and the ones that walked away from his needs at the time into a box so hollow that it was light enough to be put on a shelf in a closet to collect dust and be untouched for years to come. Buried…in the past where it couldn't hurt him, wrapped up in the shadows that couldn't be illuminated. Until he sent him that letter, telling him to come to this city. Gendo, who was also part of the pain of his past, part of the present, brings unholy light, reaching back to illuminate parts of the shadows to reveal that box full of hurt. Shinji didn't want to go see him at all, but his uncle, Nemo, suggested that he just go see him, ask what he wanted, only to reject him and renounce Gendo as everything he should've been to Shinji…and to walk away from his wants and come back home where he was wanted. He'd probably reached an age a long time ago where he no longer wanted his parents in his life, but one is never too old to not need their family. The difference between parents and family is this: The parents that represent your origins, the way you come to life… The family that represents your gathering of loved ones, friends included, who would help you out of a problem and stand by your side as you lay dying, wishing you the best of luck as your body loses the strength to continue living, saying the things you wanted or needed to hear them say about how they felt about you, the things they wished they had done with you or for you. Or they just wish that they could spend one more day with you. I, who am a part of that family, have never done him any great wrong. I have never left him alone in the darkness as he cried, never shouted at him with words full of hatred or disgust, or gotten drunk and struck him in a blind rage, or say that I was too busy to spend quality time with him. None of us have said or done anything of these sorts to him. I wonder if there's any other family like ours that have done for one of their own what we do for him. Of all the would-be families that I've seen in my life come and go, it seems like my five daughters, two sons and two granddaughters…were the only ones that measured up for Shinji. If it meant anything, I'd give my heart to all of them in the hopes that they would live greater lives…and for Shinji to live to see old age and start a family of his own if he ever decided to settle down with the one that was meant for him. In a world that's become insane, we'd be the sanest of choices for him."

And then Akira expressed her share of the dislike for Tokyo-3 due to its apparent lack of actual life. Shinji and Rumi had confessed that they didn't enjoy the the fortress city, and Akira's dislike was just as mutual. What was it that made Tokyo-3 soulless? Was it because of the way it appeared, the fact that it could sink into the ground, that it was designed to repel what people had been, rather foolishly, led to believe were the enemies of mankind, or because the people themselves that dwelt in it were soulless?

Akira, Kozo realized, you have no idea how much you and your family have probably saved Shinji from what was, originally, intended for him by keeping him with you.

-x-

To think that the power in Tokyo-3 had been cut off by an unknown power and that NERV would be in a mild panic. They were rolling out the possibility of sabotage, which meant that the cause of the blackout and loss of power wasn't because of an Angel, despite some of NERV wanting to believe that it was an Angel trying to break into NERV, but it was because of people no different from them. It was hard to accept that regular people would do something like this.

"In the end, mankind's ultimate enemy is itself," said Gendo, sitting in his seat of power in Central Dogma. "Where is Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki?"

"He was last seen entering an elevator before the power went out," Ritsuko explained to him, rerouting all remaining power to the MAGI and Central Dogma, despite what such an action would do to the facility's life-support systems, but making sure the MAGI were functional were top priority.

NERV's security had discovered that the Second Child was still in her private quarters, unable to get out because of the power outage so they had to cut into the door with a welding laser, like that mattered to the only redhead in the city that was beginning to think that what NERV was trying to do was all for naught since the so-called enemy wasn't entirely interested in them at the moment.

Misato, stuck in a different elevator with Kaji, was a victim of the intense heat without the salvation of the air conditioning system…as well as her old flame's constant attempt to strike up a conversation with her.

"It's not like we have anything better to do, Katsuragi," he confessed.

"That's because we don't have anything better to do, in general," she told him. "NERV's existence is hanging on by a mere thread, the Angels are constantly ignoring us because they have an unnecessary vendetta that's a matter of pride against a six-year-old girl who has, more or less, been the primary cause of our constant standby and inability to use the Evas to defeat them after the first Angel attack on the city, not to mention that I've become curious as to why the Angels were, originally, interested in attacking Tokyo-3 to begin with, and why they feel that their pride has been tarnished by Little Rumi when she was here that one time, her sole interest was keeping Shinji safe from Unit-01."

Kaji hadn't realized it until after Misato had said 'Little Rumi' did he notice something about her tone of voice: It was, more or less, filled with concern over a young girl that cared nothing for the paramilitary agency that was tasked with saving mankind. With the emphasis on 'was'.

"She's rubbed off on you, hasn't she?" He asked her.

"Who?" She asked back.

"Rumi. You like her, don't you?"

"You know how impossible it was to believe that when she was five just over a month ago, she was able to pilot an Evangelion and prevent any degree of collateral damage to the city? Or when she and her mother, Akira, defeated the Fifth-Eighth Angels? Or how the Fourth Angel, Shamshel, explained that after what happened to her brother, Sachiel, everything's changed."

"Because everything changes."

"Yeah, but not like this: Two Evas are all but useless without pilots, the only pilot we have is Asuka, who assisted in defeating Sahaquiel, but still feels that we should've killed him and the previous Angels, despite the fact that they were no longer a threat, Rei has abandoned the city and is hiding out in Akira Town, with a potential death threat on Rumi for reasons unknown."

"You know, the majority of NERV believes that the agency should be reduced to information-gathering and Angel-tracking, so Rumi and Akira can find the other Angels and beat them."

"What, they don't trust the use of the Evas, anymore?"

"Well, look at the difference between the Evas and the Angelbreaker: Evas are gigantic, whereas the Angelbreaker is compact, tiny and doesn't take up space; the Evas cost a substantial sum to repair and maintain, whereas the Angelbreaker, probably due to being an ancient antique or artifact, is worth a substantial sum and doesn't require maintenance of any kind, probably doesn't even obey all the laws of physics if it's able to generate armor that covers the whole body. Most importantly, the Evas are difficult to control, even for a pilot; the Angelbreaker is likely controlled with the theme of simplicity in mind, since it only forms wings, claws, and other types of weapons that require resources to manufacture…with an organic touch to their appearance."

"Since when did you become such a wannabe expert on the Angelbreaker?" Misato asked him.

"You see the reruns once, you see them many times to see what looks like an unusual artifact is capable of doing, if it is able to do more than what is seen."

"Oh, really? And I thought you were interested in Akira herself after her involvement with the Fifth Angel's attack on her home. She is young in appearance and looked rather seductive in that armor."

Kaji's cheeks turned red; half the men of NERV were still enticed by Akira's armored form during Ramiel's attack, and who could blame them? The armor was racy, tempting and seductive.

"You should give up whatever fantasies you have of hitting on her," Misato told him. "Her heart goes to her first and only love. When he died from old age, she committed herself to the life of a widow and single mother, saving herself only for her husband's return if she ever meets him in another life."

-x-

Shinji didn't feel right. There was something wrong outside on the streets of Akira Town, and he could feel it in his heart. He looked over to the phone on the counter opposite of the one he often had his locket on…and decided to phone home.

I hope it's just all in my head, he thought, waiting for the other end to pick up.

"Rokubungi residence, Akira speaking," the other line picked up and his grandmother answered.

"It's Shinji, Akira," he greeted.

"Hey. How are you feeling?"

"Other than readjusting my taste buds to hospital food again, the usual. Look, the reason I'm calling is…is everything alright at home?"

"That depends on how you define 'alright', Shinji."

"Well, everyone being in one piece is a good definition of the word."

"Well…this isn't a secret yet, but earlier this afternoon, Rumi had an encounter with that girl you both saw back in Tokyo-3 by the Old Iron Bridge."

"Rei Ayanami?"

"Yeah, and, unfortunately, their meeting wasn't pleasant. I'm not entirely sure why, but Ms. Ayanami has developed a dislike of Rumi…and put a personal hit out on her."

"I hope you're just trying to be funny, Akira, because that's too crazy to disbelieve," Shinji told his grandmother; believing that Gendo or any other older person wanting to hurt Rumi was enough to convince him that something was wrong at home, but the mere possibility of another fourteen-year-old wanting to hurt his six-year-old aunt was equally disturbing.

"Shinji, trust me, I wish I could be joking right now, but when something like this is discovered, and one of the family has been threatened…trying to joke about it is a luxury I don't need to purchase to bring a little humoring light to the darkness." Akira told him.

"How is Rumi taking this?"

"How does any child deal with being threatened by an older person, especially by somebody they don't know? I have the pleasure of knowing from Rumi that Ms. Ayanami won't lay another finger on her until after the rest of the Angels are humanized and dealt with. I…I'm also letting her sleep in your room tonight."

"That's supposed to be a type of coping method, isn't it?"

"Yeah. Well, we both know how she sleepwalks into your room every now and then, so this shouldn't be any different."

"Okay. Let her know that I said goodnight."

"Sure. I'll see you later."

"Okay. Bye."

"Bye."

He hung up and sighed over his concern for Rumi, which, right now, was stronger than any concerns he barely had for himself. He clutched the locket around his neck and prayed that his aunt was fine.

A great distance away from the hospital, in a small bedroom, clutching her dog tags, a little girl worried about him more than herself because of her received threat.

-x-

It was now a late night at NERV HQ. Just five hours after the blackout, the power came back, putting an end to the threat of life-support systems and lack of air conditioning, though it didn't do much for Captain Katsuragi, who rushed out of the elevator and straight to the nearest restroom to handle some serious business between her, her bladder and the toilet. The elevator that held Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki was also opened and the aged man within it was found looking much older than he appeared to be because of the previous heat increase without the AC. He was rushed to the medical ward of NERV, mumbling something about a world, however stained by sins, is a good place to dwell in, according to the doctors. As the work to fix things kept a steady pace, Gendo wondered who would cause NERV's only blackout…and to what purpose would it achieve.

The MAGI were being fed with misinformation so that whoever was, possibly, looking to hack into them without being noticed wouldn't find anything that made sense. Security was checking the lower levels of the facility and discovering that none of the more sensitive areas had been broken into. Evangelion Unit-02 was on standby in case of the next Angel, which was impossible to expect for Tokyo-3 since none of the Angels have dealt death to his…to that ancient woman's little lamb. He could only assume that it was somebody not affiliated with NERV, possibly an agent from SEELE wanting to take back what they were holding onto for their scenario, however maimed it was. One of the very requirements he needed for his goal to be achieved, he kept with him at all times; Gendo never even left Adam in his office in the unlikely possibility that someone would hack into his security console and break into his office to steal it.

It must've been the old men, he thought, looking out his office windows to the rest of the NERV facility. They were looking for what they used to own to take back. What fools they are to suspect me of possessing Adam and thinking they could take him back.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, rectangular case where he kept Adam confined, opened to examine the creature that had been reduced to an embryonic state, but gasped at the sight in front of him in his hands. For some reason, instead of a strange, tetrapod-like creature with bulging eyeballs, Adam looked more like a regular human fetus, albeit smaller.

"What in the name of…" Gendo uttered out; this wasn't supposed to happen.

The fetus that used to be Adam moved its head slightly and looked up at him. Its right arm, complete with all five digits, pointed up to Gendo as it moved its mouth.

"What you want…isn't what you deserve," it uttered in a broken tone. "The…defeated shall…band together and embrace freedom and balance."

Gendo closed the lid and placed the container in his desk; he didn't necessarily fear Adam when he was just a deformed embryo, but hearing it speak shook him a little bit. Beyond that, the First Angel had its soul separated from its body during the Second Impact. It might've been a residual trace of its soul, but then how could he explain the fact that, even if it was in the form of an ordinary fetus, it spoke well enough to be on par with regular people? One possible theory Gendo wanted to assume was that this new change in Adam's development had something to do with the Angels being humanized rather than killed; with each humanization, the more humanized Adam himself became…until, like his children, there was no way to tell the difference between what he had become…and what he used to be.

Damn them, he thought now, realizing that Adam couldn't be used like this to affect his scheme.

-x-

She felt a strange calmness in her nephew's room. It wasn't like the ancient feeling she got in her mother's room. The feeling was hard to describe, like it was soothing, warming and like a haven from the darkness outside of town.

This sucks, she thought, curled up in her nephew's bed, this really sucks! I don't even know the girl, and already, I'm her enemy.

"…Bumi, what are you doing?" She heard her sister, Kanami, outside the room.

"I was just going to check up on her," she heard her elder brother.

"I checked up on Rumi, thirty minutes ago," Kanami told him. "If we check on her too much, she'll probably think we can't let her out of our sight for even a minute."

"I can't help that. One of us was threatened by a girl that resembles our nephew's dead mother…albeit in a perverse perception, and we never did anything to deserve such a death threat. Who does this Rei Ayanami think she is, anyhow, threatening our baby sister?"

"I don't know. Maybe she's got delusions of grandeur running through her mind, thinking Rumi's some sort of princess, queen or goddess, even, when she's not even worshiped in any of those ways."

"Sometimes, I think that Angelbreaker did this to Rumi on purpose and is trying to get her hurt."

"Bumi, it's the Angels that still have a grudge against her that want her out of the way. It's people like that jerk that want to hurt her. Come on, it's bedtime. We need to sleep. Tomorrow's a new day."

"Okay, okay. Say, where did Shinobu run off to?"

Rumi couldn't hear her siblings' conversation any longer as they went out of her hearing range. But she couldn't persist in the possibility that the reason Rei Ayanami wanted her dead was because of some misplaced envy. Why could the possibility be envy? There were plenty of other little girls in Akira Town to envy for various reasons; many of them had great homes, played the role of an elder or younger sibling to other siblings, or had parents to come home to and even possessed greater beauty than she did. But then again, they weren't charged with a duty that could've bordered on being chosen by the gods themselves to protect the world and restore it…or have a role as a younger aunt to a boy over half your age that you asked to pretend being your boyfriend. She looked at the bracelet and wondered another possibility: Was it the reason she was marked for death?

Things were so much easier a year ago, she thought. Tomorrow, I'll tell Mother what I've been trying to achieve. I can't be a supported lotus.

-x-

So many things to worry about, thought Akira, sitting on the steps of the front porch, manipulating the several torches that led from the gates to said porch with mere willpower. At first, it was only the well-being of my family, and then it was the humanization of each Angel that put a hit out on Rumi, people that seem to desire the Angelbreaker for wrongful purposes, Gendo's grandest misbehavior, Rayden's Comet, and now Ms. Ayanami, whom I've never had any hostility toward, even when I met her back in Tokyo-3.

"Having trouble sleeping?" She heard Nemo's voice behind her, and she turned to see him; his baby-blue pajamas were an obvious indication that when Akira took him in, the color was his primary favorite, not just because it was another variation of the color of water.

"You really need to get rid of that color, Nemo," she told him.

He chuckled and sat down next to her.

"Tsukiko informed the cops and the gate guardians of our little…unwelcome guest, so they'll be on the lookout for any teenage girl matching her description," he told her. "Care to confess your worries to me, Akira?"

The centenarian looked to her youngest son and acted hurt in front of what people of other cultures and nations called priests and fathers of religious orders, except he said 'worries' instead of 'sins'.

"This seems like a troublesome summer we're having, Nemo," she expressed, and the torches burned weaker to mirror how she was feeling. "Rayden's Comet arrives by summer's end, and we're already…destabilized…as you once put it when things seems to become unbalanced and they affect people's daily lives, public and personal. I found it easy to live with when it was just dealing with a god-like race of people that detest Rumi, but with the addition of Gendo's ward… It makes me have to ask you a second time when you relayed to us what you discovered during your time with Camille: In a different time, another future…or past…did…I really…liquidate Gendo for his sins?"

Nemo sighed; with no secrets of great magnitude kept from the family by the family, or at least the responsible adults of the family, as the kids themselves didn't need to know yet and be fearful, the whole of details the young Hydro Channeler acquired from Camille and her grandmother were expressed to Akira, Bumi and the sisters. They had been mildly disturbed by the discovery of there being two different timelines…and where, in the one they weren't living, Shinji and Rumi's lives were taken by Gendo's cruelty and Akira, possessed by temporary insanity, ended his life before using the Angelbreaker to manipulate time back to the beginning of all of this craziness. But he allowed himself a feeling of relief; no violent deaths like the ones he envisioned had happened…yet…and his nephew and baby sister were still alive and well. Okay, his nephew wasn't well, in the medical sense, but still among the living, that sort of 'well'.

"Yes, Akira, you did liquidate him. But…you did once say that the wrath of a mother was more powerful than any martial artist or channeler. He had crossed too many lines to be allowed to walk away unpunished."

"But that's only when he found out about Shinji's renal failure, so…as long as he doesn't know about it… Well, there shouldn't be a repeat of what occurred in the other timeline, right?"

"Akira, I believe after discovering what I learned from Camille's grandmother, along with explaining the Intel, the Angelbreaker's capable of feats only the kami are capable of achieving, which includes the manipulation of time itself. The armor, the winged flight, the weapons… Who knows what else that artifact's capable of? It's better than Witchblade."

"I don't know how you convinced me to buy that box set for your birthday those years ago. While I did like the cartoon version to a higher degree than the live-action, televised version, I still cried for what happened to Masane at the end because of that accursed gauntlet."

"Not as much as Shinji did when he saw the last episode."

"I mean, she was naive, even clueless at times, probably couldn't think straight without running into an obstacle that she couldn't overcome, but the one thing I liked about her the most was that she cherished her daughter more than life itself."

"You value that in a mother who's able to put their child before anything else and do what's right and difficult…instead of what's easy or simple, and actually being there for them without breaking their heart. Whoa, I just realized something."

"What?"

"Miss Akagi."

"Ritsuko Akagi?"

"Yeah. I think I read about another woman with the same family name."

"Nemo, a lot of people have the surname 'Akagi'."

"But not many of them are successful at something now, are they, Akira?"

Akira then made the torches go out with a silent exhale of her breath.

"No, I would guess not," she told him.

-x-

August Eleventh came after the stroke of midnight…and even then, Ritsuko was still working on the MAGI, making sure that the blackout didn't damage all of the more sensitive information that it kept inside their cores. It was always like women of her caliber to put their work before anything else. She was just finishing the internal diagnostics check with Balthasar when she noticed a folder in one of the older documents on her monitor.

"Now, what do we have here?" She wondered aloud, and accessed the folder, finding several files that had the same date, but with different numbers ending them in numerical order. "It looks like some sort of digital diary long forgotten."

Clicking onto the first file, she accessed a page that started with, "To whom this concerns. Akagi, Naoko. By the time you find this, I'll have probably been put to rest. Why I started writing down this confession to a sin made not too long ago, I'll probably never know for sure, but if Ikari were to ever find out what I've done, at least I'll know I'll have the satisfaction of taking from him what he never had to begin with."

Ritsuko couldn't believe this. Well, she could believe what she had found, but she couldn't believe she started looking at it here in NERV HQ. Unwilling to risk unseen eyes peep at what she was reading, she copied the folder and its contents into a USB drive and closed out of the system. Whatever it was that her mother had written about in the folder, she would be the only one to know once she got home.

-x-

The NERV branch in Nevada had just finished the, somewhat, accelerated construction of Evangelion Unit-04, but found themselves in quite a situation revolving around it: While it was deemed functional, its necessary software programming, which, in harsh reality, was the lack of a soul, was absent in its design. The resources of the Nevada branch, while not as limited as the NERV branch in Massachusetts where Unit-03's construction and completion were also being accelerated, were insufficient to handle the requirement for Unit-04's internal programming. That, along with the entire personnel of the facility being worked to the bone against their will after it was decided by the UN that they would continue to build Evas, despite their inability to deal with the Angels after the first battle, was enough to have the staff pressure the United States government to have the Japanese government take both Evas after seven days to build them from the parts they were given.

"Seven days…like the Seven Deadly Sins," one of the technicians had uttered, having almost died from being overworked. "I heard about those two girls, that mother/daughter team that took care of the Angels that showed up on Japanese soil. Why can't we let them continue to do what they've been doing instead of relying on these giant cyborgs?"

That question had many of the personnel begging to know the same thing: Why couldn't the mother/daughter team be tasked with dealing with the Angels instead of the Evas?

-x-

The morning sunlight shone over the Rokubungi estate, but there was hardly any light in the bedroom belonging to Kanami, who was dressing up for what was, in her view, an unnecessary visit with an old face she detested. As she was brushing her hair, her daughter walked past her door and returned to notice the unhappy expression on her face.

"Lion in your den, Mother?" Mayo asked her.

"Nothing that I'm not a stranger to every three months," she answered her.

"You gotta go to that mental hospital again?" She asked her mother. "Why must you go there? I mean, it seems like an obligation more than a requirement."

Kanami looked to her daughter and reminded herself of the lack of detail she didn't know: Mayo was left completely ignorant of the fact that her biological grandmother on her mother's side of the old family was confined to the town's primary mental institution as a result of her insanity over her dolls and inability to tell the difference between one and an actual person. All Mayo ever really knew about her was that she was just a woman her mother was assigned to visit once every few months for a few hours in a day.

"Tell me, please," said Mayo to her, "is the reason you go there…related to your past before Akira and you met?"

That much, at least, she was willing to divulge to her daughter.

"Yes, Mayo," she answered, and then got up away from her mirror and picked up her stuffed koala; somehow, it, more or less, acted as her sword and shield against her mother each time she met her.

"May I come with you?" Mayo asked her, which halted Kanami. "Please?"

"It'd be a complete waste of your time, Mayo," she tried to dissuade her; she didn't want her secret for her disinterest in people-shaped dolls to become known to her daughter just yet, not when she was hoping that she'd be able to put it all behind her soon. "Don't you have anything scheduled to do besides what I must do?"

Mayo held up her tantō and responded, "I have nothing but time to waste today, Mother. Please?"

Kanami sighed and gave in; her daughter always had a way of convincing her to let her come do something with her every now and then…and Kanami was hardly one to raise her voice in anger against her daughter.

Meanwhile, in Shinji's room, Rumi was just waking up, feeling rejuvenated from the events of yesterday's encounter with Ms. Ayanami, but also feeling that something big was to happen later, only she was unsure of what that something was.

I saw…a giant that shined like light…but it wasn't real light, she thought, getting out of her nephew's bed. And then…there was a giant of darkness…with long hands. And…there was screaming of something to stop.

Wiping the mucus from her eyes as she walked into the hallway, Rumi didn't notice who was in her way to the bathroom…and tripped.

"Oofph!" She gasped and fell onto the floor. "Ouch."

"Oh!" The voice of the other person groaned. "Rumi, why'd you step on me?"

Rumi got up and saw her younger niece, Taeko, on the floor.

"What were you doing on the floor?" She asked back.

"Sleepwalking, perhaps?" Taeko retorted.

"Don't start with me like that, Taeko," Rumi told her.

"I was worried about you, yesterday. You seemed freaked."

"I had a good reason to be."

-x-

Laying on her futon, gazing up at the artificial darkness of her bedroom, Ritsuko found herself experiencing some difficulty in her internal struggle to accept what she had discovered. The files that made up what was probably the last digital entry her mother had made prior to her death revealed something remarkably horrendous.

-x-

The Cold Reality

"After the failed Contact Experiment with the Evangelion prototype and the loss of Yui Ikari, Gendo Ikari became interested in a different project that he recommended: The Human Instrumentality Project. Along with Professor Fuyutsuki, I was informed of the purpose behind this project, though I was still adamant in my MAGI project, my grand achievement, approaching completion. Project 'E' was pushed to a secondary concern. The Angels would be returning in less than eleven years. GEHIRN would be gathering information on children born after Second Impact to include them in Project 'E', of course the primary requirement for their inclusion was that their mothers be out of the way. I figured that it must've been part of the reason Ikari sent his son away after the death of his wife. He might not send for him until he's older, and the Angels have returned. It won't matter, however. I've made whatever plans he had of using his brat impossible. When I made it a point to examine Shinji the day after the failed experiment, it wasn't for a proper medical evaluation. It was to get rid of him without being caught in the act. During the past three years, I've been working with a strain of cancer that I've managed to control, and once I administered it to a person, their life is forfeit. It's leukemia-based, not very different from APL. It will remain undetected for a few months, but later, the symptoms will start to manifest. I've also made it a persistent illness, so that no matter whatever attempt is made, short of an organ transplant, it will continue to degrade Shinji's health and body until the inevitable happens. But I must confess that I do feel guilty for what has happened to him, even when I never made an attempt to know him. He asked me if I knew what happened to his mother…that he misses her and that Ikari won't speak to him. I don't just feel guilty for what I've done to Shinji… I pity him for what is constantly kept secret from him. Innocence is truly all a child has in the world on the brink of destruction caused by those that don't believe in redemption or forgiveness. I can only hope that, if God truly exists, not the god that disappeared when Man needed to be punished for their sins, the boy will be given a second chance with a better life, maybe with a better set of parents. Oh, this constantly reminds me of my failed relationship with Ritsuko. I've failed her as a mother and I never tried to mend things with her. In a way, I've hurt two people in ways that I can't be forgiven for. Still, what's done is done, and there's no going back. I hope that, eventually, by the time Ikari sends for his son, little Shinji will be spared an unfair fate at the hands of his father. It would be a death more acceptable than what shouldn't be his fate. I also hope that I can be forgiven for my own sins. This is Naoko Akagi, project leader of the MAGI Supercomputer System, signing off for the final time." This was all that was written in the digital diary that was left by Ritsuko's mother…and Ritsuko had just finished reading it all.

-x-

So, his illness wasn't a genetic abnormality, thought Ritsuko, my mother made him sick.

While such a thing shouldn't have mattered to a woman and scientist like her, the sight of the boy surrounded by people that weren't his relatives, but his family, and accepted him as one of their own, made her feel bad for him. And then there was that girl, Rumi, who put up with being poked and cut open ever since she was born to help keep him alive, only for the head of Project 'E' to find out that it was all in vain to begin with…unless the boy was saved by a compatible organ. But Shinji didn't want anything from his aunt that she needed to live, more or less that could or would kill her if removed. He had accepted his fate early on and only desired to go on with however much time he had left.

In the end…children are always the first to suffer, she thought…and wondered if it was better to tell the family…or tell Commander Ikari.

-x-

"…I had to swear to do small favors for my fellow otaku brothers and sisters, but I managed to find out about this Akagi woman that Ritsuko Akagi's name brought up in my head," said Nemo to Akira as he carried a bunch of old paper clippings to the meal table as said centenarian went over to the refrigerator to secure herself a can of coffee. "It turns out that Ritsuko Akagi is the only daughter of Naoko Akagi, who was a science chief and project leader of some facility known as the UN Artificial Evolution Laboratory in Hakone."

"I'm sorry, Nemo, but artificial evolution?" Akira questioned.

"The study of making natural organisms evolve beyond their original state and outside their natural duration," he explained, and then simplified the explanation to, "or to change something against its will by means of science. A…forced evolution, if you will."

"It sounds like a perverted attempt to play God for your own amusement," she expressed her dislike. "Okay. Continue."

"Two of my romance anime and manga otaku brothers held some suspicions a few years ago that this old facility was just a front organization for another organization that did extremely, off-the-record research based off some work that was done in Antarctica by a science expedition before the Second Impact occurred."

"The Katsuragi Expedition."

"Yeah. The organization that used the Artificial Evolution Laboratory as a front was, supposedly, known as GEHIRN, German for 'brain', and the research they were doing related to something called a giant of light."

"That sounds a lot like Adam before he self-destructed in self-defense," Akira uttered; the information from the humanized Angels that shared their memories along with the gathered information of Nemo's fellow otaku brethren as well as Camille and her grandmother was helping in discovering that there was something not right with Tokyo-3 or NERV. "GEHIRN, NERV, those are both German words. The German words for 'brain' and 'nerve', respectively."

"Nerves lead up to the brain and some say the brain…leads up to the soul," Nemo told her, "which would be pronounced 'seele' in German."

"A group known as SEELE, perhaps?" Akira suggested. "The soul, which uses the eyes as its windows to explore the world. The soul, which, when combined with a body and mind, completes a person."

"Maybe…or the Illuminati."

"Nemo?"

"Gomen nasai. One of the otaku sisters had theorized that, if what GEHIRN had been working on truly was Adam, then the goal was, initially to make copies of the giant of light. A foul attempt to regenerate him, scientifically. Or, to make it simple enough for you to understand it, Akira, a perverted attempt to create mockeries of an original."

"Now I know it's just foul a way of playing God. Whatever happened to Naoko Akagi?"

"Her last known project was the creation of a supercomputer system she dubbed the MAGI," he explained, which had Akira questioning organizations that, quite loosely, use religion as a basis for whatever it was that they did some of the time. "And then, shortly right after the completion of the MAGI in Two-Thousand-Ten, she just turned up dead, and there was no mention of how she died."

Akira set her coffee can down and said, "She just died? Something about that…just doesn't add up. People don't just die without a reason behind their deaths. Homicide, suicide, natural causes, something that would end one's physical existence."

Nemo then looked at some of the old newspaper clippings his fellow otaku comrades had acquired for him, many of which were dated after the Second Impact. One clipping, in particular, was of the official report of what caused the impact.

"Say, Akira," he uttered out as he reached for the clipping, "if I need glasses after saying this, remind me to see the good doctor, but doesn't this man in the picture of the day the world had the official explanation of the Second Impact, the man in the background, look a lot like our rebellious Gendo?"

Akira looked at the clipping and saw said man in background, seeing the resemblance he had to the older and colder Gendo. Sad to say, he looked ridiculous in a suit. But then again, ever since the last time Gendo made a short stop to the town of his birth and upbringing, the centenarian thought that he looked ridiculous in any type of clothing because he seemed to have a dark mood that echoed his poor taste in fashion. Black was such a pitiable color, and the glasses with the orange tint were just as dumb, as though he thought they were the latest fashion.

"Nemo, your eyes are fine," she told her youngest son, "but this man in the photograph is not. That is Gendo. I'd recognize his face anywhere. His face is like a torch that has lost its spark."

Nemo then gathered his will to say, "I may be out of line saying this, Akira, but…do you despise Gendo for what he's become, what he's done?"

The centenarian looked up at him and then turned her face away.

"I'm sorry," he apologized to her.

"No, it's not your fault," she assured him. "You remember what I told you about him. Unpredictable…and filled with wants. Should I try to continue caring about him or just give up if he does something that's so unforgivable that I should renounce him for what he is and what he used to be? But if I did, I'd probably disgrace his mother for doing so…and I tried to steer him on the right path."

"Nobody's perfect, Mother," Nemo called Akira; no matter how common it was for him or the other older siblings to call her by her name, this centenarian would always be his mother. "If he can be redeemed, he'll have to work hard for it. I'd rather worry for the one that does a better status of living than he ever could."

"But Shinji's not his replacement, Nemo."

"Nobody can or should replace anybody, good or bad. I'm just saying that Shinji simply lives the way Gendo wouldn't. It makes it a little hard to actually say that my own nephew is his son. That…I give only doubt to."

"Maybe Shinji takes after his grandmother."

"Both his grandmothers, you mean."

"Thank you, Nemo. Heh-heh."

-x-

"Somebody seems a little too quiet today," went Tsukiko, stepping into her nephew's room at the hospital and seeing him stare out the window. "How are you doing this morning, Shinji-Kun?"

The slowly-deteriorating fourteen-year-old boy turned to face his aunt and reveal his paling expression.

"I had two dreams last night, but while one of them was, questionably, pleasant, the other was very dark and twisted." He explained to her.

Tsukiko sat down and waited to hear more from him.

"I probably have a fetish for young girls, 'cause my first dream showed me with a little girl that seemed like an older Rumi, and… Well, I'm sure you can imagine how the dream went, Tsukiko."

The younger Pyro Channeler thought about it, and could only picture an older girl that bore a slight resemblance to Little Rumi, holding her nephew's hand…and possessing eyes with those crazy hearts that you see in the cartoons.

"Ugh!" She reacted. "I'm going to pretend that I didn't imagine that, Shinji. My creativity's not as malleable as yours is."

Shinji then reached under his pillow and pulled out a drawing pad and pen, drawing a small-but-detailed image of what he had seen in his dream.

"This is what I saw," he expressed, taking his time creating the image. "You and Nemo were right about doing nothing while in the hospital; the laziness deteriorates my artistic potential. I'm older, but still in my teens. The girl in my dream bears an incredible resemblance to Rumi, only older, but still below the age of ten years. We're shrouded in darkness and yet we can still see as clear as daylight, surrounded by blobs and misshapen beings or objects that seem similar to what the Angelbreaker can do, and parts of ourselves are covered in the same, organic/metallic mass."

When he finished the detailing, he showed it to her, and Tsukiko was, more or less, left speechless: The image was like something out of Nemo's comic books about that New York City cop with that supernatural talisman of power, except it showed children with a sense of disgrace in their existence instead of adults with lost innocence. The little girl was astride the older boy, holding his head close to her flat-chested torso with her arms, while said boy held onto her back as an aura of solitude mixed in with completion floated around them, like they were all that was left in existence. And to Tsukiko, they looked just like older versions of her nephew and baby sister.

"Somehow, Shinji, I think this guy in the drawing has some androgyny in his appearance; he's too beautiful to be a guy." She told him. "And…he looks a bit like you."

"That's ridiculous," he countered. "I have no androgynous traits, whatsoever."

"You did when I met you ten years ago," she expressed. "You still have a pretty face, though, so that counts as being androgynous."

"Thank you, Tsukiko." As he started a new drawing, his woe returned. "My other dream wasn't as pleasant as the first one. I saw…two people suffering. Two girls, the younger girl by the elder, and the elder by something that happened to her when she was younger. There were…two giant hands that moved like snakes, an Oni, as red as blood, possessed by hate…and two angels trying to resolve a struggle. I have no idea of what that all means."

He showed her the new drawing…or rather, pieces of a larger puzzle on the drawing. It looked like something out those American horror films like Scream or Hellraiser mixed with science fiction and action films like The Matrix or Demolition Man.

"You probably get premonitions when you dream," she theorized.

"You mean, I see things that have yet to happen?" He asked.

"Yeah."

-x-

With some of his strength restored to him, Kozo awoke to find himself in the medical ward of NERV, recovering from the intense heat his body suffered from during the blackout.

I…I'm still alive? He thought, trying to get up, but not all of his strength returned to him. Akira is truly the lucky one; she never loses too much of her strength. She's like a deity in her own right.

"People should only become gods when they are allowed to by the gods themselves," Akira's words from his childhood echoed in his mind again.

As he continued to recoup, Ritsuko, once she came to NERV, had been ordered by Gendo to examine the Adam embryo that had changed, and was instantly repulsed by its appearance.

This is insane, thought the faux-blond, as she examined the texture, endurance and genetic structure of the nigh-human fetus that used to be Adam. This thing's almost like a newborn. There's hardly a trace of anything that wouldn't resemble the human genome in the slightest degree left in this creature. Even its damaged core is gone, replaced by a heart and other organs necessary for its development.

It seemed that Gendo's theory about Adam becoming humanized through the humanization of each of his children was true, which, in turn, made whatever attempts to use Adam for the Human Instrumentality Project nothing more than a pipe dream. But it seemed that Adam couldn't be completely humanized until all of the other Angels were made human, and, if what SEELE had revealed to Gendo was accurate, there were only five Angels left…and when they were defeated by the Angelbreaker, everything that was being sought after for over a decade since before the Second Impact will have been for naught. But, to Ritsuko, ever since NERV's encounter with Little Rumi and the revelation of Shinji's crippling condition, all that was trying to be achieved through using the Evas had already been for naught. Six Angels had been reduced to being Homo Sapiens and there was no way to undo that. Units-00 and 01 were a waste of space, time and resources to build without capable pilots, and the Marduk Institute hasn't announced the discovery of a Fourth Child for the Evas.

Commander Ikari's not going to be pleased about this, she thought, though it seemed better to place humanity's final hopes on two people that held a weapon with such potential to change the world than if obtained by other people with the resources to replicate it.

-x-

"I've missed my doll for far too long," Mayo couldn't shake out the words of her mother's mother…and the revelation that she had to discover this from the institutionalized woman. "And who's the little lady? She's just as beautiful as my doll."

Kanami could not believe that Mayo had to hear all of that from the crazed woman; the thought of today just being a vile dream was a desire unfulfilled…and seeing her disgraced relative was even viler than it was months ago.

"Mayo," she spoke up to her daughter, walking down the street with her after they left the mental hospital. "Are you hungry?"

Mayo looked to her mother and said, "Yeah. Mother…about…that woman… Is she really a loony? Every time she said…the 'D'-word, she sounded full of malice and dominance, like an evil puppet master or dictator. And when she looked at me…ugh, I don't even wanna relive that moment again."

"Yeah, sweetie pie, she is a loony. She loves dolls so much that they've replaced people in her mind."

"And…what she said about her being…your mother, is that also true?"

Kanami inhaled and answered, "Yes. Mayo, you know that… You know that I would never do anything like that to you, don't you?"

"I know you'd never hurt me, Mother. I trust you with my life."

As they resumed their walk to a place where they could eat, on the other side of the Earth, in the USA, two powerful aircraft were taking off, each carrying a precious cargo that, to the people that had to make sure they were in one piece, felt that they were as worthless as junk since they cost so much and they were forced to put insurance on them both just to get them off American soil.

-x-

"Unit-03 and Unit-04 are being transported to Japan," said SEELE 03 SOUND ONLY to the council. "In accordance with the Vatican Treaty, only three Evaneglions are allowed to be active in any one place."

"In the meantime, Eva Units-00 and 01 should be placed into stasis," said SEELE 05 SOUND ONLY. "They're already, more or less, useless."

"Do you think it wise to do away with Unit-01?" SEELE 10 SOUND ONLY asked. "If Ikari does anything to dispose of the Spear of Longinus…"

"Our scenario's already been compromised by having the Angels humanized," SEELE 11 SOUND ONLY said to them. "And we still have Lilith. If we deal in death to the remaining Angels before they get humanized, we may be able to complete our goal."

"But to use Eva Units-03 and 04, we need pilots," said SEELE 13 SOUND ONLY. "The Marduk Institute has not found any potential candidates. We should send in our own."

"Send in our trump card, you mean?" SEELE 01 SOUND ONLY asked. "Yes. Send our trump card. Let him be our striking hand against the Angels and the keepers of the Angelbreaker!"

-x-

I swear, even when we're not placed in any danger around here, they do this to me to see if I can reach my breaking point, thought Misato, dealing with whom she hated more than the Angels now, who were now the very least of her worries since they couldn't do a thing that was catastrophic: Paperwork. "My life sucks."

"At least you're keeping busy," she heard the voice of her old flame behind her.

"Not now, Kaji. Go bother Ritsuko or something." She told him.

"I needed to ask if you were informed about Units-03 and 04 being completed and sent over here," he told her, which earned her attention.

"Excuse me?" She asked. "Units-03 and 04 were completed and are being sent over here? I wasn't even informed that the Marduk Institute located new pilots for them."

"New pilots? There aren't any." That's when Misato noticed a slight frown on his face.

"You know something, don't you?" She asked him.

"What would make you suggest that?"

"You're the only person I know from past experience that likes to stick his nose where it isn't supposed to be stuck in."

"And if I were to know something?"

"Don't play games with me, Kaji. I can't afford to be foolish."

"Okay, okay. I'll tell you one thing: Try looking at Code Seven-Zero-Seven."

"Code Seven-Zero-Seven… But…isn't that Asuka's school?"

-x-

The summer school programs were beginning to drive Asuka crazy a little because of the unnecessary requirements of taking classes during the hottest season of the year when you're supposed to have fun. Of course, fun, in her case, would be trying to catch a date with Kaji or fighting the Angels with Unit-02 or sunbathing at the beach, not hanging at the library, going to the arcade, hanging with nerdy boys or school jocks.

"Nothing of fun ever seems to happen here," she told herself during the recess hour of school, hanging around the classroom, surfing the Internet.

"…Evangelion Units-03 and 04 were completed and are being transported right over to Japan," she heard the school otaku, Kensuke Aida, talking to his computer.

What in the Hell is he talking about? She wondered.

"Yeah, it is weird," the otaku continued. "NERV continues to build them when it seems that whoever, or whatever, these Angels are just want to deal with the little girl before they deal with the world. Why, exactly, do these Angels feel that the girl that piloted the Eva is the bigger threat to their existence than the Evas themselves?"

Asuka went over to his desk and looked over his shoulder, seeing who he was speaking to. It was somebody on the instant message server system named Hammerhead, who seemed to demonstrate some information on the little girl that, to Asuka, sounded exactly like Rumi, since it was her that the Angels wanted dead.

The person behind the alias then sent a response message that read, "It's a matter of pride to these Angels that haven't been dealt with. They wish to mend their wounded existence by removing from existence the one that dealt them a bad blow on the battlefield. Think of it as the spider and the fly in the web. Who do the gods favor more than the other? The spider…or the fly?"

The spider or the fly, huh? Sounds more like the enemy and the target. Which one does fate favor: The enemy…or the target? Asuka thought.

"Just how many of these Angels are left?" Kensuke typed down.

"According to a reliable source that acquired information from the defeated Angels, there are four left. Four that want the girl dead…and four that will be defeated before innocent blood is spilled further." The response came and said, followed by add-on. "Thank you for the new information. Contact later. Sincerely, Hammerhead."

"And just why were you sharing NERV-related information with an unknown stranger over the Net?" Asuka asked Kensuke, making her presence known to the boy.

"Aaahh!" He gasped, jumping out of his desk and looking at her. "What are you talking about? Sharing NERV-related… You were looking at my screen?! Don't you know that that's a serious offense to invade one's privacy?"

"Just like it's an offense to divulge sensitive Intel to somebody not affiliated with the military or paramilitary," Asuka flaunted her words like she was some sort of sage.

"Well, call it curiosity mixed with concern," Kensuke countered her. "Some of the people here are worried that a little girl is on the hit list of monsters that nobody knows about and others in the school are suspicious of why the NERV agency would ask a little girl to pilot a skyscraper-sized robot against one of them."

"They did so outta desperation," Asuka expressed. "NERV didn't have me at the time of the Third Angel attack and their original choice of a pilot was a useless boy that needed to be defended from his megalomaniac father by his little auntie because he was already dying."

"Wait a minute, the original pilot's dead?"

"What? No, he's not dead. Yet. But he couldn't pilot an Eva, even if you wanted him to. Sick people aren't appropriate for piloting an Eva. You need to be healthy and not have your body wracked by diseases or lost limbs."

"Who was the boy that almost piloted? One of my friends wanted to thank the little girl."

"Huh?"

"During the first attack, his sister had been left outside the shelter they were placed in and almost got hurt badly by the Angel because the guards wouldn't let him go outside to get her. She was terrified. I'd be, too…if I had any sense left to be terrified. If it was indeed the girl that piloted the Eva, as you yourself had said, then she did him the greatest of honors by knocking the monster outside of the city before it could smash up the pavement any further than it did when it fell to the ground. NERV's Public Relations division said that nobody was hurt in the attack, but what if it wasn't true? What if his sister, or a bunch of other people, did get hurt and the PR division decided to say that nobody got hurt, still? Whoever this girl is that the Angels want dead… She doesn't deserve to be hunted down like a petty criminal. She deserves to be appreciated for her selfless assistance in dealing with a problem that older people should've been capable of dealing with. Maybe a medal from the Emperor of Japan, even."

Asuka processed this, and sighed. NERV's PR people did indeed say that nobody got hurt during the Third Angel attack, and that was only because Rumi got the right idea to get the Angel out of the city limits, but what if Rumi hadn't been able to do so in time before the guy's sister got hurt? What if NERV forced Shinji to pilot Unit-01, despite Rumi's abhorrence and refusal to let them put her nephew inside the Entry Plug and flood his lungs with LCL, maybe just to try and see if a sick person could operate an Evangelion with ease? Would NERV still say that nobody was hurt?

Still, she thought, it's only because she has people she wants to protect, people that she loves…just like her nephew.

Suddenly, the classroom door opened and the only student that constantly dressed in a black tracksuit walked in and sat at his desk. His expression, usually one of frustration, was of anger calming down; it looked like something had happened earlier.

"What happened to you, Toji?" Kensuke asked.

"Some woman from NERV came, asked me to join up and pilot those Evas," the boy, Toji, explained. "I told her 'no'. I had sworn a promise to my sister that I stay away from those things. "Even if a little girl piloted that thing and saved me from getting hurt or worse, I don't want to lose my only big brother to those things," my sister told me, and made me promise not to get involved. I told her I wouldn't get involved, and I stick by my word to her."

"Rumi," Asuka muttered, catching their attention.

"Huh?" They responded.

"The little girl, the one that piloted the Eva during the first attack… Her name…is Rumi."

-x-

"…Hey, Shinji," went Rumi, stepping into the room and seeing her nephew awake.

Shinji looked over at her and smiled; Tsukiko had just left to use the restroom, so he was by himself when his youngest aunt showed up.

"Uh, hey, there…sweetie?" He tried using an intimate word with her.

"Heh-heh-heh!" She giggled. "You're improving…dearest."

"So, um…how are you today?" He asked, concerned about her safety since she was a marked, young woman by another young woman that was an albino.

"I'm fine. How are you?" She answered him.

"I hate using a bedpan, Rumi. They stink."

"Well, we can blame the elderly for that."

"Heh-heh! Yeah, I guess we can."

Rumi then looked at the bed stand and saw a plastic bottle of apple juice.

"Do you remember that one time we played a prank on one of the orderlies with the apple juice?" She asked him. "It was when I was four, on the day before Halloween."

"I remember," Shinji told her. "Nemo helped out."

-x-

Sample Prank

Nemo was reading one of his old manga comics as Shinji and Rumi were having a slight, argumentative conversation about who was the best character in the Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon when a female orderly showed up in the room with a sample jar.

"Children, quiet, please," she told them as she approached Shinji's bed. "This isn't a sonority battle. I need a urine sample."

"Huh?" Rumi wondered when the lady handed the cup to Shinji. "She needs a what from you, Shinji?"

"Something I'm required to go to the bathroom for," Shinji explained without sounding too gross. "But I don't have to go."

"Then drink something," the orderly requested of him.

"I did," he pointed over to an empty water bottle.

"Look, kid, I don't like a lotta backtalk," she told him, which put a slight frown on Rumi's face and caught Nemo's mild disgust. "Drink, don't drink. I don't care, but, please, fill it."

She then left them alone in the room, allowing Nemo to lower his book and look at his baby sister and nephew, and they, too, were upset about the request.

"What a baka," he told them.

"Yeah," Shinji agreed.

"Mm-hmm," added Rumi.

"Plus, I went five minutes ago before she even showed up. It'll be a long time before I have to go again and fulfill her request for my…sample." Shinji expressed.

"I can fill it for you, Shinji," Nemo told them, and held out a small bottle of apple juice. "Nice and warm for a joke."

"No," Rumi gasped in a positive manner as she smiled.

"Do it," Shinji told him, handing over the sample container and let Nemo do his business for him.

It was five minutes later when the orderly returned, and Nemo held out the sample cup.

"He took long enough," she expressed.

"Oh, wait," Shinji told them. "Nemo, it looks cloudy."

Nemo checked the cup and believed his nephew.

"You're right, it is cloudy," he agreed. "I'd better filter it."

He opened the cup and sipped out the 'sample', at the orderly's disgust.

"It looks much better now," Nemo then said, and held it in front of the orderly. "Don't you think so?"

She backed away and said, "You are disgusting!"

"Heh-heh-heh!" Rumi laughed at her.

"Ah-ha-ha!" Shinji added in with his own laughter.

"And so are you two!" The orderly told them, and then Nemo spat some of the apple juice on her.

-x-

"…Akira was very mad when she was informed," Shinji told Rumi.

"But she mellowed out and asked if it was really apple juice and not…the bad stuff," Rumi sighed.

There was a short silence between the two…until Shinji had to ask her something about what happened yesterday; the unsettling encounter with Rei Ayanami.

"Rumi…you didn't…see that girl on your way here, did you?" He asked her.

"No. Shinobu brought me over, but I kept looking behind myself to make sure. Just because a girl says she won't hurt me, physically, until the remaining Angels are humanized, that doesn't mean she's capable of going against what she said."

"I can't imagine what's going on in that girl's head. I pitied her back when we were in that city, you know. She was hurting, probably dying due to her injuries, and she was listening to that crazy loony. But now, after knowing this… I can't say that I feel sorry for her now."

"I never could show sympathy to her, entirely. I felt sorry for her injuries, but not her. It's like there was something missing from her, and she's not whole. And yesterday, when I saw her again, she looked different from last time: Still missing something, but having replaced it with something that shouldn't be there…probably. And then, there's the bracelet she was wearing."

"What kind of bracelet?" Shinji asked, handing her a piece of paper and a pen. "Could you describe it?"

Rumi accepted the paper and pen and started to recall the bracelet from her memory and drew it to the best of her ability. In many ways, it seemed to remind her of the bracelet she wore on her person; it was an ornate bracelet with a strand of bone-like metal that extended from the base of the wristband portion and ended at a smaller band around her middle finger, which was encrusted with a small, black, circular diamond that shined like the circular ruby encrusted on the wristband, but something about its appearance gave the impression that it was a genuine original. The Angelbreaker was an original, but it could divide itself among chosen individuals to wear it, limiting its individuality or whatnot.

"It looked like this," she told him as she finished the drawing. "Either it's from a jewel shop in Tokyo-3 or maybe she acquired it from the jerk somehow."

"I don't think he's the type of person to spend his time acquiring jewelry," Shinji told her, examining the description. "This just screams "biomechanical" by looking at it."

"Biomechanical?"

"One of those science fiction terms. Like the Evas. Or the cyborgs and monsters from the television programs that Nemo enjoys."

Rumi looked at her bracelet, wondering if the armor that covered her each time she used it was biomechanical like what Shinji had said.

"In a bad way, Rumi," Shinji had to correct himself to save his auntie the displeasure of worrying. "Her bracelet's biomechanical in a bad way. I somehow doubt the Angelbreaker's like her cheap jewelry."

But Rumi wasn't entirely convinced; she willed the gold-colored gauntlet to manifest from the gold-colored bracelet and envelop her arm, surprising her nephew a little. She flexed her fingers beneath the armored talons that made up the fingers of the gauntlet, not hearing any sounds that indicated some sort of mechanical feature.

"It looks like armor," she accepted, "but it doesn't feel like it. Not entirely."

Shinji reached out and touched the gauntlet. Like before to him, it felt like flesh, but it was different this time. It was like it had become an extension of his aunt; it felt like her.

However, having her nephew touch the artifact felt a lot like he was touching her skin, and that, of course, reminded her of her naughty daydream. The caressing, the holding, the blissful unity between them, along with the subtle pain that was close to nonexistence. She was becoming sick of having it repeat itself over and over again in her mind. It only made sense to her in one way, and that was the possibility of her having an impure consciousness. She couldn't really picture herself doing…that sort of thing with Shinji, despite part of her mind, one of the tiniest parts, saying that it was desired by her.

I don't wanna do that to Shinji, she tried to exert her control over her thoughts. I don't want to do anything like that to him.

As if possessed, Shinji lowered his head toward the armored hand, letting it slide across his skin. There was something about his aunt wearing the gauntlet that felt comfortable to him. Not wanted, not expected, just…soothing. And…there was a feeling of familiarity to Rumi wearing it that he felt.

"Uh, Shinji?" She asked him, feeling uncomfortable now. "I, uh, kinda need my hand back, please?"

He let go of her and saw the armor retract from her wrist and form back into the bracelet.

"Heh… I think you're luckier than I am most of the time," he told her.

"How so?" She asked. "You're older than me."

"Age has nothing to do with it. I'm not sure how I know you're luckier than me, but I do. Has there been anything new you've done, minus the bad stuff that's happened?"

"Well… I've told Mama something I've been keeping secret from her."

"Which is?"

"Learning how to channel the elements…behind her back."

"Whoa."

"Yeah, not exactly something that would keep me in her good graces. Unfortunately, I wasn't good at keeping the secret from her; it turns out that she knew I was practicing."

"Parents have a way of knowing when their kids are doing something that they shouldn't do by themselves or without permission or some experienced guidance. How'd she take it?"

"She took it pretty well. My being a Unity Channeler gives her an excuse to teach me what she knows on a rudimentary level."

"Sometimes, the basic understandings of a skill can be as sufficient as the entirety of a skill. Shinobu's an example of such teachings; despite her being older than Tsukiko, she stays at the basic level of Pyro Channeling while the younger practitioner tries to advance further."

"Shinobu kept training at the basics because she'd rather be careful than powerful; without careful instruction and guidance in using such an offensive element, power is nothing but a danger."

"So, which element are you starting with?"

"Air; I decided on that one on my birthday. The element of Water comes after, then Earth and Fire."

"Promise you'll be careful when you practice with Pyro Channeling, Rumi."

"I promise."

-x-

As the day continued to go by, a shock or impact made Mayo open her eyes to her current environment, which wasn't the soothing, pleasant town she was born and raised in, but the interior of a large vehicle. She tried to move, but her arms and legs were bound.

"Mommy?" She called out to her mother, who laid three feet away from her, also bound.

"Ugh…ugh… What…what happened?" Kanami asked, coming to.

"We got caught," Mayo recalled the events that led to their current situation: They were relaxing in the park when the mother of the pair felt a stinging sensation in her waist, and noticed a red dart on her stomach and fell right to sleep, much earlier than ever expected. "Somebody kidnapped us."

"Who'd want to kidnap us? We're a bunch of nobodies," Kanami expressed; this was only half-true, as she was just an adopted daughter to Akira and that made Mayo an adopted granddaughter, so their relation to the super-centenarian town leader was simply that of distant, unrelated relatives.

I have a bad feeling about this, thought Mayo, slowly dragging herself over toward her mother. Could this be someone's foul attempt to make a fortune…or is it something else?

-x-

RING-RING-RING! Akira's cell phone rung, and she picked it up to find that it was Tomoyo calling her.

"Yes, Tomoyo?" She asked.

"Akira, did Kanami or Mayo say anything to you about heading somewhere outside of town?" Tomoyo asked her friend.

"No, why?"

"I got a call from one of my neighbors that like to gossip, and he said that he saw them being picked up by some men in black suits and sunglasses."

This, of course, reminded the town leader of the men in black suits that Nemo drove away when they showed up to try and get Rumi for Gendo…and it made her wonder if he was the cause of this new thorn in the side of the series of events that often involved the family. Did Gendo hire his goons to kidnap Kanami and Mayo under the impression that they posed the least amount of danger to him because they were two of the only family members that couldn't channel the elements?

"Akira?" Tomoyo asked.

"Tomoyo, I gotta go and see if my disgrace has anything to do with this, but I'll contact you later," she responded before hanging up after saying her goodbye, prepared to accuse Gendo of potential foul play if he did have a hand in this kidnapping. Gendo…are you trying to be the death of people?

Going into her room, she retrieved her glider and stepped out of the house.

At the exact same moment, however, far above the ocean's surface, the two powerful aircraft had flown into some cumulonimbus clouds that had formed in front of them when the pilots were instructed to press on in order to arrive in Japan on schedule. The pilots weren't very enthusiastic or feeling any degree of pride in delivering Evangelion Units-03 and 04, but since this was their job, they had to follow orders just to make ends meet for their families and pressed on into the clouds. But deep within them, something lurked, binding its time, waiting for a window of opportunity to reveal itself for a shot at glory, justice…and acceptance. Acceptance after countless millennia of being ignored after the others saw their younger sibling as a disgrace and failure, never living up their father's expectations. But now, now the power to do what the others had failed to do had been offered and accepted. Now…revenge could be exacted…with full benefits that leave even the greatest of the Lilin speaking in the language that they called 'tongues'.

At long last, thought the consciousness that abandoned the clouds and stowed away on one of the aircraft carrying the Evas. Father will accept me, the only one to stay true to the promise that was to find him and set him free! I will be the favorite…and they will be frowned upon!

-x-

"…That will be all," said Gendo to somebody over the phone, and then he hung up; he had finished his fifteen-minute call over the process of acquiring a potential candidate for the new Evas and now had to deal with what SEELE had ordered of him: The containment of Units-00 and 01, as per the orders of the Vatican Treaty.

While he could've manipulated their orders and do away with Unit-02 instead of Unit-01, he decided to test his luck with the Second Child's Eva, since he had instructed Dr. Akagi to install a Dummy Plug into the red unit. There was doubt forming within the pilot of Unit-02, obviously placed there by her interactions with the family he had come to despise for, seemingly, having it all and needing nothing more that what was required for living…and leaving him with nothing. If it came to the breaking point, he would exert his authority over the situation that had been tarnished with the addition of unwanted humanity and humility. Nothing would stand in his way of getting what he desired more than anything else in the world.

Just as he looked out the windows that showed the rest of the base, Misato, disgusted with what she had discovered, was downing her third can of coffee.

I can't believe this, she thought, I just can't believe it. Asuka's classmates, each and every one of them… Pilot candidates? And the Marduk Institute…it doesn't exist at all. Commander Ikari, he and Ritsuko do the picking of who pilots the Evas.

While she continued to down her coffee cans, Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, after receiving his clean bill of health, left the medical ward with a heavy heart. The time he spent recovering from his experience trapped in an elevator had left him hoping that he had made a better choice with the remainder of his life, since he wasn't getting any younger.

I wonder if this is what Akira meant when she said she valued the short mortality of those around her, he thought.

-x-

"…Just what is the meaning of this?!" Kanami demanded to her kidnappers, not allowing the fact that she was blindfolded so that she couldn't see her captors, along with being strapped to a chair, leave her vulnerable.

"Hush, tramp," somebody told her. "You're about to participate in a little experiment that's for the sake of the world."

But somehow, Kanami Rokubungi didn't believe that what this guy said was for the sake of the world; if anything, it sounded more like somebody was trying to prove something that was futile.

"I don't have to assist you in any way," she told them. "I have rights, you know, and you have no authority over me."

Suddenly, she felt something cold and made of metal pressed against her forehead, and head the sound of a clicking mechanism.

"Is this truly what Second Impact left after the devastation ended? Cowards that can't fight fair in battles and resort to taking the lives of people that did them no wrong?" She asked, adding that it seemed all the people ever put their belief of power in was that of a gun. "You kill me, and retribution will soon follow."

-x-

Rei never had the thought of sitting in a tree before, along with laying on the grass without concerns or desires, eating an apple of poking fun at the clouds, but the freedom of no longer having your life decided by others made these things all the more amazing to her. But then something occurred to her about Gendo Ikari: No doubt there was hostility toward his adopted mother for her interference, like there was hatred toward his little sister and the Third Child, but what about the rest of the family he grew up in? Did the hostility and hatred extend to them? If so, then that meant he would become a hindrance in her strategy against Rumi…and she couldn't have that just yet.

The price of realization that comes with making your own decisions, she thought as she took out her cell phone that NERV had given her.

-x-

Mayo didn't like this plot she and her mother had seemed to become a part of. Unlike Kanami, she wasn't blindfolded, but the sight of these men in black wasn't positive, either. Whoever these men were, they reminded her of her twisted Uncle Gendo, who reminded her of the tyrants and megalomaniacs she'd seen in Uncle Nemo's films and comic books. This also made her suspicious of whether or not they would try to use her for what they had tried to use Rumi for.

No way, she thought, now wishing she had been blessed with the gift of channeling so that she could save her mother and herself from possible danger.

Ring-ring! She heard a cell phone go off, and witnessed one of the three men in black watching her answer the call.

"Yes?" He asked, and then Mayo noticed his eyes, beneath his sunglasses, widen. "Uh, yes, sir."

As Mayo tried to get free of the ropes she was tied to the chair with, the man that had taken the call told his coworkers that, due to unforeseen circumstances, said girl, Mayo, and her mother, Kanami, were not to be harmed in any way.

"…But Commander Ikari specifically stated that whatever happened to them was irrelevant," said one of the other two men watching her.

"Gendo?" She uttered out, getting their attention. "It was Gendo that put a kidnapping hit on my mother and I? Oh, I hope he pays for this cruelty with his retribution."

-x-

Shinji had a bad feeling in the back of his mind. He felt something was wrong with the present, that there was…trouble at home.

"Penny for your thoughts, Shinji-Kun?" Tsukiko asked him, having returned from the restroom, allowing Rumi to go home.

"Just a bad feeling that something's wrong at home," he explained, raising his right hand to his chest. "Something is not right. Something is quite wrong…"

Tsukiko then took out her cell phone and called home.

"Rokubungi residence, Taeko speaking," the voice of her youngest niece came along as the phone was picked up.

"Hey, Taeko, this is Tsukiko calling. Is anything amiss at home?" Tsukiko asked her.

"I don't know about amiss, but Granny Akira left a little while ago and went flying, Uncle Nemo left to see his girlfriend about something new relating to this feud with the Angels and Auntie Shinobu also left to see her former festival invitee. Other than that, Auntie Kanami and Mayo haven't returned."

Tsukiko looked at her nephew again and asked her niece, "You said Akira went flying? Any idea on where she was flying to?"

"Un-uh."

"Okay. Well, I'll call later to inform my return home. Good evening." After she hung up, her expression was that of concern. "I think your bad feeling's right, Shinji. Kanami and Mayo haven't returned home…and the thing about that is that they usually do return home earlier on days like this. Akira went flying and nobody seems to know where."

This discovery made Shinji's hand tighten on his chest; now he was really worried that something was amiss somewhere.

"I hope Rumi has gotten home safely," he sighed.

-x-

But Rumi hadn't gotten home yet. She was about to walk up the mountain pathway when she felt weak in her knees, dropping to her bottom.

"Something's not right," she said, and her Angelbreaker bracelet's jewels starting glowing.

Her eyes saw images, visions of surrealistic events: A large, black humanoid creature walking in front of the setting sun, Unit-02 being strangled by another Eva, similar to the one described by Shinji, weeks ago, that was black, herself and Akira being forced to cripple Unit-02 when it started to dismember the black Eva, and seeing two of her relatives, Kanami and Mayo, laying in the center of bloody piles of crunched, twisted metal, covered in muck, with open eyes that didn't blink and mouths that didn't move to indicate breathing.

No, she thought, fearing the worst for them. No!

When the visions ended, she realized what they meant: Something terrible was going to happen, and Kanami and Mayo were at the center of it all against their will! She got off the ground and ran up the path toward home, no longer interested in simply taking the rest of the day off to forget her worries, but to fetch her hook swords just in case she needed them personally.

-x-

"…Asuka, your score has dropped some," Ritsuko told the Second Child, running the tests for the Evas again.

"Sorry," Asuka responded, but in truth, her mind wasn't as focused as it had been weeks prior; her hard-as-nails exterior was being ripped away, piece by piece, due to the thoughts of Rumi and Akira helping the world better than the Evas did. I have more free time than I could want outside of the Eva, and yet, I can't seem to get past that. I wanted to do more with Unit-02.

Watching the girl's synchronization ratio rise back up a little bit, Ritsuko could only guess at what the problem was: NERV's lack of success against the Angels was getting heavier with each and every encounter with said creatures. Its only thread left was paper-thin, and any one wrong move or defeat at the messengers of the gods themselves would result in the agency's future reaching a virtual dead-end, which would ignite Commander Ikari's wrath like no other.

"…I heard that Units-03 and 04 will be here tomorrow," said Maya Ibuki to her. "Any idea on who will pilot them?"

"Probably the Dummy System," Ritsuko told her, which, of course, had the young Bridge Bunny giving a slight frown.

"I thought that system was still being worked on," she told her.

"I was able to finish it. It's not completely full-proof, but it'll run."

Then again, why continue to rely on the Evas if our job of dealing with the Angels has been, more or less, transferred to a mother/daughter act that can turn them into people? Maya wondered, really liking an answer to that question.

-x-

WHOOSH! Akira landed on the hillside where she met Misato the previous time she was in Tokyo-3. The sight of the city now was bathed in impurity, the lights weren't the problem with it, it was the emotional and spiritual energy the city gave off. If anything, instead of Tokyo's second replacement and mockery of a city actually turning into a place to live in and obtain prosperity…was hollowing out and becoming a place of heartbreak and decay.

"The plastic face forced to portray…all the insides left cold and gray," she sighed, using the city as an example of a doll's face to portray what was never there to begin with: Warmth.

The night air reminded her of, strangely, the night she met Kozo Fuyutsuki when he was a young boy, but on a colder level. All she was missing was the snow now. Well, she could remedy that.

"One unexpected case of snow coming up," she uttered, and started performing a series of moves that consisted of swift hand gestures, high kicks and back flips, all made to channel the power of the flowing element of change.

The moisture in the air was gathering, as if called to do so by a great force of the gods. Water vapor was building high above the skyscrapers, thickening within the clouds.

-x-

"Hey, what's going on?!" Ritsuko demanded from the Bridge Bunnies.

"We don't know!" Hyuga expressed, as some of the alarms went off. "The weather reports from this morning all said that it was just a sunny day with a quiet night."

"There's a lot of water vapor gathering above the city," Maya added in.

"An Angel?" Misato asked.

"Negative. No blue pattern detected." Hyuga discovered; this was insane to him that something was affecting the weather and it wasn't related to what they were trying to do!

-x-

As her eyes flared gold and silver again, Akira caused more water vapor from afar to be absorbed into the large clouds, making them larger and turn gray.

"Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow," she said, holding her palms up and then lowering them, causing her work to bear fruit.

A small snowflake fell from the sky and touched her forehead, followed by several more. Tokyo-3's first snowy experience had come unexpectedly.

-x-

"Is that…snow?" Maya asked, thinking that there would never be snow in Japan again after Second Impact removed three of its four seasons.

"That's impossible," said Ritsuko. "The weather conditions of Japan don't support the foundations required for snow."

"Yeah? Tell that to the clouds out there." Misato told her.

"Did someone say 'snow'?" Asuka came by and asked, seeing the snowflakes fall on the monitors. "Snow? That's real snow?"

Some of the staff members were left in awe that it was snowing. It was like an act of the gods here. Those that survived Second Impact hadn't seen snow ever since, and now it had come back tonight.

It…brings back those good memories, thought Kozo, as he turned away from the monitors and left the Command Center.

His, somewhat, unseen desire to go see the snow in person had been echoed by some of the older staff members that worked in NERV. Even Asuka wanted to go up to the city and feel the snowflakes touch her skin.

"Hey, wait a minute, Asuka!" Misato, who hadn't been tempted, halted the Second Child.

"Sorry, can't stay! Gotta go play!" Asuka responded and ran off.

"Whoa," Misato couldn't believe that the redhead had refused her like that. "Okay."

"She's never seen snow before," said Ritsuko, who was also unaffected by the sight of snow. "Can't blame her for wanting to play in it."

-x-

"…I never expected you to follow me here… Rumi," Akira said to her daughter, who was, somehow, behind her.

Little Rumi, who asked the Angelbreaker to simply take her to her mother, had been whisked away by the gauntlet on her wrist and brought to where her mother stood, as if by magic or teleportation.

"The Angelbreaker spoke to me, showed me visions that I don't want to happen," she expressed. "They're very similar to the dreams Shinji described last month."

"A giant wrapped in darkness used as armor. An Evangelion." Akira sighed. "Whatever will happen, our Kanami and Mayo are unwilling puppets to a cruel puppet master."

"I want to believe that Gendo is responsible for whatever happens in due time, but he'll probably deny any involvement in their unwilling involvement."

"Has the Angelbreaker been showing you past events, as well?"

"It only showed me that men in black suits kidnapped them," Rumi expressed.

Akira then looked out at the city, feeling the vibrations of many footsteps; people were stepping out of their homes and running around in the snow she had made for them.

"Mama, I didn't know you could make it snow by yourself," Rumi told her mother, having only seen her cause snow to fall around Akira Town when accompanied by up to twenty-seven Hydro Channelers, including Nemo, who, at the time, hadn't achieved total mastery over water.

"I'm a lot stronger than you think I am, Rumi," she told her daughter, but then noticed her ware; Rumi wasn't wearing a thick enough coat. "Cold?"

"Not really."

"Oh, really?"

"For right now…I've forgotten how."

That reminded the centenarian of her past with many of her other children and friends from winters past, asking her if she'd been cold from the falling snow on her bare skin that had been exposed.

I'd always say that I've forgotten how or that I don't get cold most of the time, she thought, which was true, due to her old teachings.

"Is…it a regular discipline in the Channeling Arts?" Rumi asked. "Not feeling cold all the time in cold weather when you probably should?"

"No… The Aero Channelers of the ancient past had their city built atop a massive mountain that stretched high into the air. Because they were the masters of the winds and twisters, cold air, snow and water could barely affect them like they do people of today's divided cultures and nations."

"And because you mastered the winds, as well, you don't get cold…unless it's so cold that you can't take it, right?"

"Yes…and no. Do you remember Nemo's cartoon DVDs? The ones with the people manipulating the fire element? Pyro Channelers could do what they did, too, in the case of cold environments…only without breathing fire. Instead, they simply raise their internal body heat up with their ki."

"Can I do that, too…once I start with Pyro Channeling, I mean?"

"Yeah, Rumi. It's one of the later disciplines in the basics."

They both looked at the city, while pleased to see some people were actually having real fun, disgusted with the soulless aura it continued to give off.

"You think they're in there somewhere, don't you?" Rumi asked.

"Never assume anything until you've done everything," Akira replied.

-x-

"What do you think they're going to do to us, Mommy?" Mayo asked Kanami.

"I don't know, Mayo. Maybe hold us for ransom. Bait Akira and Rumi. Or…" Kanami responded, still blindfolded, and then Mayo cut her off.

"Try to bargain our safety in exchange for the Angelbreaker?" Mayo said.

"Maybe," she agreed with her.

"Can I ask you something about Rumi?"

"Sure."

"Do you…think that she likes Shinji a lot?"

"Of course, I do, sweetie."

"No, I mean…a whole lot? I see her looking at him sometimes, and the way she looks at him…isn't the way she looks at me or Taeko; it's like she favors him, but it's different from the way you would a niece or nephew…and it reminds of an old fairy tale about that warrior king and a forest fairy."

"You mean the story of the Grand King Knight and the Gardenia Maiden?"

"That's the one."

Even when kept in the darkness, Kanami Rokubungi was no idiot to potential concerns for woe or whatever it was that she noticed sometimes. She recalled the old story because her little brother, Nemo, was a vivid admirer of certain myths and legends outside the legends of the four ancient, elemental cities. The Grand King Knight had fallen in love with the forest fairy, but their love was like a tainted fruit that left a bitter flavor in one's mouth.

"What do you recall of the story, Mayo?" She asked her daughter.

"That the warrior king fell in love with the fairy," Mayo stated, "but she kept running away from him and was too hard to catch for him. Eventually, his desire for her drove him to meet up with his friend, a hunter, named Ryoushi, the Hunter of Hunters, to handle the problem between them."

"And, basically, Ryoushi went and put out a hit on the goddess."

"Yeah."

"And by the time the warrior king repented his decision to end the forest fairy's life, her end was already inevitable."

"That's right."

"Just what are you getting at with the myth?"

"I think that Rumi's got a crush on Shinji…except she doesn't know it, and maybe this Ayanami girl's the albino version of the ancient master hunter, with Gendo being a cruel mockery of the warrior king."

"Mayo, that's twisted in areas. Shinji's crippled by an illness he can no longer battle, Rumi's the warrior princess looking for her knight in shining armor, Gendo's a twisted tyrant and this Rei Ayanami's a hunter wanting what she can't have. It's silly to think of Rumi like that when it comes to Shinji. And…I thought that reading about myths and legends were supposed to lift people up, educate them and such."

"Well, yeah, Mama, but I asked Nemo about it, and he tells me that he believes that they're also some of the means to help people in different ways than to teach them something about the past."

"Rumi barely knows the old fairy tale, so she can't be taught anything helpful from it."

"No, but if you were to think about her trying to ignore Shinji for two days, what do you get?"

"Mayo… What are you trying to say to me about them?"

"When Rumi tried to ignore him on the day before the day that Sahaquiel showed up… She was trying to deal with her feelings of Shinji that she probably found were unacceptable," Mayo answered her.

"You mean… I don't know what they were teaching you in school, but… Are you saying that… Is what you're telling me… Like incest?" Kanami asked, disgusted by the word.

"Uh-huh."

"Mayo, that's foul. Besides, even if it were true, then Shinji would be robbing the cradle if the affection was mutual, which it probably isn't."

"Mama, I looked into it when I looked at some of Nemo's books and searching the computer for other pieces of information, and, as much as I now doubt that Rumi's affection for Shinji is that of an aunt, it's actually wrong to think of it as incest."

"Why is that, Mayo?"

"Because, technically, it's not incest if you're not related by blood."

"Really?"

"Yes."

-x-

Walking through the streets as they saw children playing in the snow, Akira and Rumi marveled at the innocence being displayed. Children were always filled with innocence…before they were subjected to such an event that became the starting line on their path to potential corruption. But the sights of their smiles, the sounds of their laughter, just seeing them embrace such a piece of environmental change… It put a smile of Akira's face to see them displaying happiness, and it made Rumi happy to see them enjoying something that only occurred back home.

"Big brother, we should build a snowman," cheered a little girl to her big brother.

"I wonder how they would react if they found out that their night of snow was given to them by you," said Rumi to Akira.

"I'd rather them not know about me now…or suspect me to be some sort of goddess or a miracle worker," Akira responded. "For tonight, let the snow ease their worries…and allow them to embrace what the arrogance of those that sought what they don't deserve took from the world."

Passing many people that wandered about the snowy streets, the wielders of the Angelbreaker looked around for whatever it was that would lead them to their missing kin.

"Wait, Mama," went Rumi, her left hand aching to draw her hook sword.

"You must have some nerve that doesn't belong," uttered Akira, raising her staff an inch or two off the ground, "following us like this!"

She turned around, Rumi following suit, and pointed their weapons of choice toward their unwanted guest: A young man, about fifteen years old, based on appearance, with grayish-silver hair, dressed in a large, red coat that covered most of his white shirt and black pants. But what set him apart from people were his pale skin and red eyes. They were as red as blood, those eyes were.

"Who might you be?" Rumi asked him, seeing a familiarity that she only saw in Rei Ayanami, whom she disliked.

"My name," he started, "is Kaworu…Nagisa. I'm an employee of Kiel Lorenz."

That name struck a subtle nerve in Akira's brain.

"Thee Kiel Lorenz? The guy that owns the parts of Germany that Germany itself no longer wants because of the devastation caused by Second Impact? The guy that experienced a rapid age impact on his body after the so-called end of the world occurred?"

"Yes," the boy, Kaworu, expressed.

"Just why are you following us?" Rumi asked him.

"Because you two are wearing the Angelbreaker," he answered them.

"Excuse me?" Akira responded.

"Your bracelets," he pointed out. "My boss has expressed great interest in the artifact. Would you be interested in coming to meet him? I think he'd appreciate it if you showed it to him personally."

"No, I don't think so," said Rumi to him. "No thanks. My bracelet is a delicate object that was given to me on my birthday, not some item of grand value."

"Nearly the most powerful people in the world, nationally and politically, are aware of the power that object possesses, and are simply wishing to understand it."

"Not many things can be understood, young man," Akira told him. "You could spend a lifetime studying an ancient language, and you'd only learn a fraction of its collective existence and potential. Plus, the Angelbreaker's not a bracelet or two; it's an ancient gauntlet that was lost in a museum wreck from over a month ago. It was reduced to junk and had to be disposed of properly."

"A mere lie to cover the fact that the Angelbreaker's capable of dividing itself among select people and capable of changing forms," the boy expressed, albeit without much of an expression to go with it, which had the centenarian thinking back to her visits to Shamshel.

"It's however you wish to perceive whatever it is that you're told," she told him, "but we don't know what you're talking about, Mr. Nagisa, and we have important family matters that cannot be ignored just to see somebody that must have other important matters that they themselves must tend to. So, you can tell your superior that we'll be keeping our little cereal box toys, is that understood?"

Kaworu bowed his head to the older woman and responded, "I shall relay the message."

"Good. You do that…and stay away from us," she instructed him, and they resumed their walk down the street, rid of him.

"Mommy, I didn't like that boy," Rumi told Akira.

"The feeling's mutual," her mother responded. "I didn't even buy into what he said about his boss wanting to see the artifact for the purpose of understanding it. Some things, we're simply not allowed to understand…and others, we're not allowed to know."

"Is that similar to the revelation that a person's life must be lived within the time that they're allowed to have?" Rumi asked.

"There are similarities in both, but they are different since a person is a person…and a thing can be anything else. But, yes, Rumi, a person's life must be lived within the time that they're allowed. All of life must be lived within the time that the universal collective allows. Life ends…and begins anew, a circle…without a beginning…or an end."

"But everything that has a beginning…must always have an end."

Akira stopped walking and tapped her left foot onto the ground a few times, trying to locate one of the few entrances to the underground facility of NERV HQ. It was difficult, since she hadn't been focusing on any places to enter and exit the Geo-Front, only curious to why it felt like there was a large, sphere-like construct that made up the outer structure of NERV HQ.

"So, you're back," she heard a familiar voice that simply echoed the past to her.

"So, you're back," she responded, and Rumi turned around, seeing an elderly man dressed in brownish-gray with a large, brown, heavy, weather-themed coat that was perfect for this snowy night.

Her daughter held onto her, in the likely possibility that this guy was interested in the Angelbreaker, as well, wanting it for unjust reasons.

"Fuyutsuki-San," Akira greeted kindly.

"This sudden snowy night…is your grand doing, isn't it?" He asked her.

Akira chuckled a little before saying, "Guilty as charged."

"Do you…hate snow, Mr. Fuyutsuki?" Rumi asked the man.

"No. I haven't seen snow since the Second Impact. Japan was better when it still possessed the four seasons. To see a night of winter is a grand fragment of relief from the warm and cold, summer nights. I've missed the snow." He expresses to them. "It brings back good memories of old friends."

Then, looking at the little girl, Rumi, Kozo had never been properly introduced to her, and saw on her face an echo of her mother in front of him.

"I believe that this is Little Rumi?" He asked Akira.

Akira placed a soothing hand upon her daughter's head and answered, "Yes. Rumi, this gentleman is Kozo Fuyutsuki."

"Hi," Rumi greeted, still clinging to her mother's leg.

"So…what brings you back here? There aren't any Angels arriving yet." He asked them.

"Two members of our family have been kidnapped," Akira explained. "Before we go and accuse Gendo of potential foul play, I just need to ask him if he had anything to do with their disappearance."

Somehow, Kozo knew that the reason that his childhood savior would be back was because of something that related to Gendo, and it seemed so much so that Gendo was becoming a major hindrance to the new goal that was to reduce the Angels to mere humans that were no more dangerous than petty crooks. To be blunt, he rooted for Akira and Rumi and was beginning to hope that there was a type of salvation that could do greater good for the world than the Evas or Instrumentality Project.

"I haven't seen anybody new entering the city since the aftermath of the Third Angel," he expressed, "and Ikari hasn't informed me of anything new that is happening…other than the two new Evas being transported here."

"New Evas? You mean Units-03 and 04?"

That made Kozo's eyes widen with surprise. How could she know about the continued usage of the Evas that weren't used even after the ones that were used didn't live up to their usefulness?

"Uh…yeah. How did you…"

"Friends and family relatives that poke around the ruins of mysteries that motivate them to seek out more knowledge to help benefit the present and direct it towards a future one can be proud of," Akira answered him, keeping the names of such contacts out of the conversation; she wouldn't endanger others like how Gendo was, quite possibly, endangering one of her daughters and granddaughters.

"If it's Gendo you need to speak with, allow me to show you the way," he expressed to them.

He led them down the street, away from the noisy, happy children and adults that hadn't seen snow in a long time.

-x-

NERV was mostly abandoned now, due to the snowy weather. The only ones remaining there were the minimum-wage security guards, the medical ward staff…and, of course, Gendo Ikari, who isolated himself to his office, posed at his desk as he always did; even when something so old and unexpected as the snow falling had come to the city, even if it was for just one night, he'd rather un-embrace it because there was nothing about it that mattered to him.

Fools, he thought, referring to the people that left to embrace and experience the falling snow.

Suddenly, his office door opened up and Fuyutsuki stepped it, mildly soaked from the snowflakes.

"Yes?" He asked his old teacher.

"You have two visitors," he answered, stepping aside and letting in the visitors.

Gendo never liked how THEY could get involved in his affairs, but…due to the Angels constantly, more or less, wanting to end the life of the little brat that caused things to go southwest and southeast instead of north, and he himself trying to reestablish his hold on things, it was safe to say that he was getting involved in their mild affairs that had very little to do with NERV because of their accursed talisman that gave them the power to defeat the Angels without resorting to outright murder.

It was Rumi's first time in her estranged brother's office…and already, she detested it. It possessed the same, sickening feeling she got around the other parts of NERV and the rest of Tokyo-3's soulless aura. The engravings of words and drawings on the floor and ceiling would've probably made Nemo interested in deciphering them if he hadn't seen them before, but the little six-year-old girl just inhaled and tried to hold her tongue about the decoration of Gendo's irritable personal chambers.

"What do you want?" He asked them.

-x-

At around one-eighteen in the morning, two powerful-but-steady landings were made far from Tokyo-3, setting aside their precious cargo.

"I'm hungry," said one of the pilots of the two aircraft. "Let's go eat."

"Yeah," agreed the others, and, on foot, they left the sight of the landing and allowed the NERV officials that were there to handle management of Evangelion Units-03 and 04.

"That was faster than usual," said one of the men in charge of Unit-04. "Normally, it would take till morning to transfer an Eva from one country to another by air."

"Let's be thankful that the jets were newer and faster," said another official.

As they began the process of transporting Unit-03, none of them, not even their scientists, were aware of the new changes to the black unit.

Father is near, thought the same consciousness that had inhabited the clouds that had now inhabited Unit-03, along with that scum. But Father comes first. Father always comes first. He'll accept me…he'll care about me and reject the others!

-x-

"…I wanted to kick him, Mommy," said Rumi to Akira, sitting on a sofa. "He knew something. Why else would the Angelbreaker show us events that will come to pass?"

Having acquired nothing new from Gendo, who denied any involvement with Kanami and Mayo's kidnapping, despite Akira's ability to know that he was lying, the mother/daughter team left the Geo-Front…but Akira had to leave her words of serious repercussions to Gendo as he turned to leave his office to attend to other matters by halting his departure and telling him, "This ain't over, Gendo. Not by a long shot."

Despite it being late at night, much later than when they had arrived back home last time, Akira was insistent that she and Rumi return home, but Kozo, being insistent himself, invited them to spend the night at his house. That, of course, had brought back the memories that Akira had recollected when she stopped at his front door the instant Rumi stepped inside.

"And I still can't believe you allowed something that awful to happen to yourself, Mother," Rumi had reminded her of what had almost become inevitable. "Did you really trust Mr. Fuyutsuki that much to endanger yourself?"

"Yes, Rumi, I did," answered Akira, sitting on the floor beside the sofa. "You were worried?"

"Yes, as well as afraid. What if he hadn't said anything? What if you'd… What if he was…" Rumi couldn't bring herself to finish her question; there were too many near-death experiences going on lately that she didn't want to be the witness to an actual death.

"Your mother knew I wouldn't let anything happen to her," they both turned and saw Kozo.

-x-

"It's always been an act of trust and faith"

Almost similar to Ms. Katsuragi's place, Kozo lived in an apartment building that was older and not as advanced as the other buildings of the city were, so there was a fragment of existence that lived here, as well. Though his place was less lived-in because he was often away from it, but he went to good lengths to make his little shack hospitable.

Rumi had stepped in the instant he did, but Akira, due to her status as a long-lived woman, didn't budge from where she stood out in the hall.

"Aren't you forgetting something, Kozo-San?" She asked him, which had him a little stumped.

"I have to say it again?" He asked her.

"It was your mother's home when we first met. This is your home. There's a difference," she stated.

Kozo wasn't against knowing about this detail of Akira, but had thought he'd only have to invite her into a place once for her to enter and leave whenever she wished.

"But…that was decades ago…and I'm still the same person you met, only older," he sighed. "Why can't you just come in unannounced by me?"

"It's the downside to being my age of over one-hundred years old," she answered him, and to prove the downside, she inhaled and stepped inside his apartment, uninvited, and closed the door before walking into his bathroom.

Rumi looked at her mother and saw nothing wrong with her, so she assumed that it was okay for her to enter her old friend's home unannounced.

"You seem fine to me, Mother," she told her as Kozo looked at her.

"Wait for it," Akira told them, not sounding too well.

Kozo noticed that the centenarian did indeed seem different right now…and realized why: Akira's skin was losing its healthy and sensitive tone and her veins were showing.

"Akira?" He asked, and then saw water leaking from her eyes. "Akira?"

"Gah!" Akira gasped, water now pouring from out her mouth, nose and ears as she fell to her knees.

Rumi saw water leaking from her mother's back as well as her forehead, creating a puddle of it beneath her body.

"Mother!" Rumi gasped, afraid for her.

"What the… No!" Kozo realized how serious this appeared, rushing over to Akira and grabbing her by her wet shoulders. "No, no! Stop! Stop! You can come in, Akira! You can come in!"

Soon enough, the water flowing out of her body stopped and the elder woman sighed in relief, sounding much better.

"What…what was that? Really?" Kozo asked her.

"One of four fates that can befall me…but only when I enter someone's home without their permission," she told him.

"What…what if he hadn't said anything?" Rumi asked her, never seeing this happen to her mother at all. "Would you have kept bleeding? Would you have died?"

"I had to hope that Kozo wouldn't allow that to happen," Akira told her daughter. "It's always been an act of trust and faith."

Rumi looked down at the water that her mother leaked out, seeing that there were probably enough to fill a two-liter soda bottle or two.

"Do you…have a mop, Mr. Fuyutsuki?" She asked the elder man.

-x-

…It felt like he'd gone back in time a little, back to when he was twelve. Kozo could probably enjoy the presence of Akira and her daughter for hours on end, but one of the things he really wanted was to engage in further conversation with the centenarian.

"Brings back memories, doesn't it?" Akira asked him, after putting Rumi to sleep.

"Yes," he answered. "Is there anything I can get you?"

They sat in the kitchen and Akira sat down, caressing the jewels of her half of the Angelbreaker.

"Just water would be nice," she requested.

The elderly man reached into his refrigerator and pulled out two bottles of water; he had to remind himself to go grocery shopping again soon.

"You didn't believe him when he denied any involvement, did you?" He asked her.

"No, I didn't. He's up to something. We've seen fragments of the future, and they're not pleasant. Something bad was going to happen in a different future and now something similarly bad is trying to be attempted…and my distant, little problem child's at the center of it."

Then…Kozo felt like his brain was going to explode with unnecessary guilt. He didn't care about NERV's agenda or Ikari's goal, but he had to admit that he cared about this woman that was probably going to outlive him and her good intentions to not want the end of the world or the deaths of many thousands of innocent lives left on Earth.

"Akira, I can tell you what he's trying to achieve," he told her.

"What?" She asked back, confused.

"Remember when I said that I didn't have a choice in working for him?"

"Mm-hmm."

"It's because I was threatened by the people he works for. The Second Impact was part of a scenario that had been set into motion long before it even took place."

Akira took a sip out of the bottle and then set it on the table.

"Go on," she told him.

"The Evangelions…were based on the theories and research of Yui Ikari," he revealed. "They were, originally, part of the plan to revive the cause of Second Impact. Adam, the First Angel. Later, I discovered that they were to be used in a project that Gendo had started up some weeks after the failed experiment that Yui participated in with one of the earlier models. It was Unit-00, the Prototype. It was after that experiment failed that Gendo got rid of your grandson…and became interested in the project that's suddenly, very possibly, beyond anyone's reach now."

"What is the name of this project?"

"The Instrumentality Project… The Human Instrumentality Project. It's the goal of the organization known as SEELE."

"SEELE? German for 'soul'. So a group like that does exist? SEELE, GEHIRN and NERV. Makes sense now on why such organizations use German pronunciations and spellings."

"They're the ones in charge of nearly everything that exists. They funded GEHIRN's research and experiments in creating the Evas, paid for NERV's branches around the world, made it so that Gendo controls the only organization that, originally, could deal with the Angels and hold control over the Evas. Their plan for the world was seemingly flawless: Disturb Adam's slumber ahead of time in the Antarctic and begin experimentation on him, then have Gendo Ikari, who was part of the Katsuragi Expedition, the group charged with experimenting upon Adam, return to Japan one day before the Second Impact occurred, taking with him all the research collected during the experiments, and, shortly afterwards, begin research and development of the Evas to regenerate Adam, using salvaged pieces of the Angel in their projects. Second Impact was purposely instigated by SEELE because they found something in the Dead Sea Scrolls that were never made public. They claimed that on someday, Adam was supposed to awaken and bring about the end of all life on the planet, down to the last bits of bacteria. From their point of view, all the damage that was caused was limited to what would've actually happened if Adam did awaken of his own accord. The main body of Adam himself, in the aftermath of the explosion, was reduced to what the scientists referred to as an embryonic state, easy to manage and conceal from his children, who would arrive fifteen years later to reclaim him. If any of them ever got a hold of Adam, all life as we know it would be eliminated from the planet."

"I heard something like that in my dreams after Rumi and I got a hold of the Angelbreaker…and the humanized Angels had explained some of what had happened before life as we know it started existing here: Sahaquiel, the Angel of the Sky, Akira Town's latest arrival, revealed that he was around, and old enough to remember, when the source of present-day life arrived on Earth. Lilith, the so-called mother of all life as we know it, just crash-landed when Adam, the one who had arrived on the planet first, was in the final stages of spreading his spawn across the planet. And, based on the words of the other humanized Angels, she took control of Earth from him and he was sent into a deep slumber, whilst his children escaped from her. Once Adam was dealt with, Lilith began spreading her spawn across the planet, and our view of life was made. Ooze, bacteria, worms, dinosaurs, mammals, all the way to what we are. It isn't a war; it's a struggle, one for control over the planet. Shamshel had expressed that this world's not big enough for us all. I beg to differ. If we all cooperate, this world can be for us all."

"If we're all for one world…then, there's a world for us all?" Kozo asked her.

"Yes," she answered. "Resume, please."

"Okay. The Instrumentality Project is set with the purpose of manufacturing an artificial evolution of sorts for all of mankind once the other Angels were killed. The Geo-Front is, in actuality, the Black Moon of Lilith, the source of her arrival and the source of all life as we know it."

"The Black Moon," Akira's voice was hollow, and the jewels of the Angelbreaker were glowing; she was being shown images of the past to confirm Kozo's words.

A large, black sphere, as black as obsidian, colliding with a planet that didn't look anything like the blue planet she knew and loved, and causing so much devastation in its arrival that some of what was taken off the ground went up into space and formed a large, white sphere she recognized as the moon, which would later gather up space dust and be subjected to potential meteorite attacks. She saw how the Black Moon, after so many centuries of shifts in the tectonic plates of the Earth, became buried almost two miles under the vicinity she had recognized would later be known as the region of Hakone, and wouldn't be discovered for millions of years later until human beings started poking their fingers into the ground to understand their roots better.

"…When all the Angels were killed, every soul on Earth would be absorbed into the Black Moon," Kozo continued. "Supposedly, this would create an existence in which not even one person would exist individually, but only as a fragment of the whole. In the end, everyone's day-to-day flaws and insecurities would be complemented by the strengths of those around them, and the problems we face all the time would become nonexistent. No more of anything that causes us pain: No more war, no more plague, famine, death or even simple heartbreak and rejection. People would suffer no more and would know only happiness, peace…pleasure."

But Akira couldn't see that type of outcome for the future. All she saw, other than a destroyed Earth, were people without warmth, without love or friendship, and without the flaws that she was familiar with each day. It was a world…where individuality could not be found, and the pain of many things never existed. It was a Hell disguised as a welcoming paradise.

"It sounds almost like a fantasy," she told him, "but if something like that ever did happen, it would be a dark fantasy. A nightmare that we couldn't wake up from. And…it's terrible to know that some people, just some people, actually want it. Is this truly what Gendo wants? What his superiors want?"

"Yes," Kozo sighed. "They want it…but they both want different outcomes to happen. SEELE seem to want to use it in what will be known as the Third Impact, to keep in line with the First and Second Impact stories, and remove all of the individuality that exists, with all the pain that comes with it. They feel that, because of individuality, mankind will always seek means to harm each other. We kill each day, have countries that wage brutal wars, and never try to find subtle ways to resolve conflict. To put an end to that is what seems to be what SEELE wants out of the Instrumentality Project… But Gendo…Gendo has an altogether different goal in mind. He called it the path to God, achieving Instrumentality through a union between Adam and Lilith, which is deemed forbidden, would unite all souls into one…with him in control."

"As what, exactly? King? Lord? Master?" Akira asked, not wanting to say the one word that would've revealed all of the insanity she was seeing in this.

"No," he answered. "He wants to be a god."

"But that's crazy. You don't become a god by doing these sorts of things for several years. It can either be given…or earned, and Gendo has done nothing that would inspire either from happening."

"The reason he wants to become a god, or rather, to replace the one everyone knows as God, is so that he may never lose anything again."

"Never lose anything? What did he lose?"

"The Eva took Yui from him. He cursed God, declared that he would have revenge upon him. "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away", which has been said for countless times. He wanted to know why, if God was going to take her from him, did he give her to him at all. He feels that if he becomes God, he can have her back in his possession."

"But tell me one thing about him that I want to know right now, Kozo. My grandson, Shinji… Gendo never tried to care about him…did he?"

Kozo saw that look in her eyes, the very same look that evoked fear and anger whenever an answer that shattered the hope-seeking question yielded. And looking down at his bottle of water, he responded, in a bitter, quiet tone of voice, "Gendo Ikari…cares nothing for your grandson, Akira."

Akira couldn't believe this! She just couldn't believe this! Not only was Gendo worse than his father/grandfather, a megalomaniac with delusions of godhood, trying to outdo a bunch of other megalomaniacs with delusions no different from his, but hearing that he cared nothing for his own child was enough to shatter a mountain…and knowing this would…or could hurt Shinji, possibly beyond even her ability to mend, if he ever found out. It would leave him suffering from all of the emotional damage that Gendo himself had a hand in causing when he was abandoned.

"I probably should say the same for Yui Ikari," Kozo spoke up.

"What do you mean? What's she got to do with this still, other than her being responsible for the creation of skyscraper-sized mockeries of an original, god-like being charged with the proliferation of life across the planet, and her mysterious cause of death being that her own project killed her."

Kozo knew revealing this last piece of detail about the Evas would get him in hot water provided by Akira's anger…and a bullet from one of SEELE's executioners, but he didn't care about that, anymore. He believed in this woman and her daughter, not a biomechanical monster.

"The Evas are copies of the First Angel, but Unit-01, the purple one that Rumi piloted that one time against the Third Angel, wasn't copied from Adam. It was the only Eva made from Lilith, the Second Angel, which NERV keeps buried deep in the Geo-Front."

"I knew there was something off about the purple one."

"Way off. So much off, you wouldn't be able to measure how it was so. But part of the reason that they're more dangerous to their pilots… More dangerous to all children born after Second Impact…is what lurks within them."

"And what lurks within the Evas that the common people don't know about?"

"This city's soulless because of NERV's presence, NERV is soulless because of Gendo and the Evas, and the Evas themselves are soulless…until a soul is given to them from someone else."

"What a minute, you're saying that…despite those…those things being copied from giants that are responsible for the existence of people from the beginning-less past…they don't do what you want them to do…without a child inside the cockpit…and a soul to inhabit its body. You actually give those abominations the souls of kids?"

"It's not the souls of children that power the Evas," Kozo defended, now afraid of her. "The Evas are given the souls of their mothers."

That silenced Akira for a moment.

"Their…their mothers?" She asked.

Kozo then explained all that he knew about the rest of the workings of an Eva, leaving nothing out…and exciting Akira's new dislike of Yui Ikari.

The Evas are imbued with the souls of women that bore children after the Second Impact…and placed inside cores to be put inside them after a child's been chosen…and Gendo's often the one that does the choosing of the children. No wonder you don't see many mothers anywhere else in the world except for Akira Town; if you need thirteen-fifteen-year-olds to pilot an Eva, you'd need a good supply of souls belonging to mothers that must be put out of the way. She thought.

Once Kozo had relayed everything he knew to her, he waited for her wrath; knowing that a purple-colored, heavily-armored behemoth with a horn possessed the soul of your grandson's mother as a result of a blotched experiment and was, technically, still alive, only without a human body to return to, didn't put you in any of her good graces.

And she knew something like that would happen, she continued thinking, not happy with Yui's choices in the end. Instead of running away, keeping quiet about it, warning authorities that weren't under SEELE's control, taking her son into hiding with her, she went ahead and allowed herself to be condemned, trapped inside a monster she had created, an ill-fated realization of the ghost in the machine…just because she wanted to protect Shinji, who didn't know what was going on at the time, who wasn't involved in anything at the time, and became so scared of what he saw that he suppressed it to the farthest reaches of his mind where it couldn't hurt him. How do you live with yourself, knowing that you helped people that have delusions of grandeur destroy the lives of many millions of other people that didn't deserve the fates they were dealt with, built things that really do more harm than potential good, and walked away from the people that needed you because they were too young, too ill-prepared to take on the world that they reside in? Yui…you're no different from Gendo. You're both failures…and you couldn't see past what you were doing…and now you have to live with your mistakes.

But Akira couldn't blame Kozo for knowing about all of this. She couldn't really blame him at all. He was exempt from all that he wasn't responsible for. He only knew the people that helped bring about the devastation that was Second Impact, not helping them in any way possible. If anything, Kozo was just a man that made the attempt to expose their sins to the world, but became reduced to a coward with self-preservation because the people that held the cards that kept them in control had threatened his life. And he was only one person that couldn't take on an organization like this without suffering the repercussions that he would've faced if he tried to fight back.

"Somehow, I feel that your association with Ms. Ikari was my fault," she spoke up to Kozo.

"What do you mean?" He asked her. "I hadn't seen you ever since I was twelve, and you never met her before. How could it be your fault?"

"Well, look at me. I haven't changed since you saw me when you were twelve. Not physically. And how old was Yui when you met her? In her early-twenties, young and beautiful in her own right?"

Kozo then told her, "I was attracted to her…but through her work and theories. Maybe…if I had been younger…maybe. When you left that very same year I met you, I didn't make many friends. I only ever made seventeen friends…and they all died in the years following up to my time at the university. I had given up on making any more friends if they were going to die…but I never forgot about the ones I had lost over the years. And I never blamed you for any of my misfortunes. To blame you…to hate you…is to condemn the very person that inspired you to continue living in the world, despite the terrible things that occur in it. And…one of my friends…was my twenty-two-year-old girlfriend, Nuriko Ashitare. That's her right there."

Akira turned around and looked at a small mantle by the kitchen counter and noticed a small bunch of photographs occupying it. There was one, in particular, that showed a younger Kozo with a young woman with brownish-blond hair and gray eyes, dressed in dress-type overalls over a blue, long-sleeved shirt, sitting under a tree.

"Oh," she chuckled. "I probably would've liked her if I had the chance to meet her. How did she…"

"In a car accident…with my mother. Why my mother insisted on driving, I may never know."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. My mother was still immensely grateful to you for what you did for us before you left the neighborhood after you saved me."

"All of life is sacred, irreplaceable, invaluable, even the tiniest fly stuck in a spider's web. I value one's existence…and feel the emptiness when their lives have been all but removed from my heart."

"Sometimes, I wonder…why can't a few other people be like you?"

-x-

Tsukiko didn't leave the hospital when she called home again. She stayed with Shinji, whose bad feeling that something was wrong didn't leave. The sole APL patient couldn't even sleep for two hours without waking up from a small nightmare of something bad happening.

Rumi… Akira… Mayo… Kanami… He thought as he gazed at the digital clock that read the time being four-twenty-seven in the morning. I wonder if this is a type of sickness where you lose sleep in wondering what's up with your family.

Then an image of Gendo's ugly face showed up in his mind and he shuddered at the mental thought around him. How he showed up in his consciousness, Shinji had no clue, but he was at the bottom of a snake pit…that was filled with poisonous snakes.

Maybe I just want to accuse him of causing trouble, he assumed, trying to get back to sleep.

"He is causing trouble," he heard a voice outside his assigned room, and looked toward the door, seeing the very person that put a personal hit out on his youngest aunt. "That's all he likes to do."

Rei Ayanami, standing outside his room, leaning against the door and looking at him, dressed in her yukata and sporting the bracelet that he'd been shown by Rumi in her drawing. But the flesh on her left arm was of a different tone than the rest of her: It was lighter like a regular person's skin instead of chalk-white. Her smile seemed to border on eeriness to Shinji.

He looked to Tsukiko, who continued to sleep peacefully at his bedside, and then looked back at Rei.

"Don't worry, she can't hear us right now, just as nobody else in this building can tell that I'm here," she told him. "I guess you could say…that I'm invisible to the eyes and ears of people for the moment. So… The useless Shinji Ikari."

"Rokubungi," he corrected her; no matter what it said on his birth certificate, the name "Ikari" was nothing more than deadweight to him, and the name was not so different from his parents: Deadweight.

"Say it however you feel, but most people find out that no matter how hard they try to get away from the past, it is inescapable." She told him, and he found that her voice had changed from what it was when he met her that day; instead of being weak and sounding desperate for release, her voice was dark and filled with a strength that he couldn't comprehend.

"What do you want?" He asked her.

"Oh, that's a question with so many answers," she uttered, and it made him wonder something new that he had found out about Akira long ago; this young girl stood outside his room, but never made a move to step inside it. "I could say that I want money, but that's a material thing that matters nothing to me. I could say that I want a home of my own, with flowers and white picket fence, but there's no place for someone like me anywhere. Why don't you invite me in and we chitchat some more on that?"

"You entered the hospital undetected," he countered. "You probably stepped into the homes of other people while you've been here. What's keeping you from walking into this room without an invite? Or is it…that you don't want to come in the room I was assigned without my permission to simply walk in? You remind me of my grandmother in that regard, you know. She can't enter other people's homes unless she's been invited in. But with you, it's different. How do you invite in somebody that seems harmless…but brings harm to those around you? I'm probably much safer with you outside my room where you can't touch me or Tsukiko."

"Tsk, tsk, tsk," Ayanami clicked her tongue; she was getting better at expressing her disappointment and other various feelings now. "You got me, but you're only half-right. I have entered at least one couple's home…but I can't trespass on your home on that mountain…or step into this room you're in without being invited. It's a major…uh…crap in my style."

"You…you're really creepy now."

"Oh, no, you haven't seen me as creepy. Not yet, you haven't." And then, she shifted out of her yukata, which was sucked into the materializing bone-like metallic armor that was forming around her body. "This is me being creepy."

Shinji recognized the armor in its texture, but not its appearance: The girl's legs were covered in armor up to her thighs that were shaped like high-heeled boots, armor that showed an unnecessary amount of cleavage that, while he was sure she didn't possess when he saw her in that ugly diving suit, covered her torso area down to her waist, giving him a nice view of her navel and flesh that made up the lower mounds of her now-larger bust, and the armor that enveloped her arms were almost similar to the Angelbreaker, but her left arm sported a large, crescent-shaped scythe.

"I don't know whether to scream out that a half-naked blunette is standing outside my door or to call you a mockery of what I saw my grandmother and young aunt dressed in," Shinji told her, clutching the locket around his neck.

"A mockery? Yes, my talisman is a mockery, an ill-made forgery of an original that could never be reproduced by human hands. But this…has the status of also being an original. It is a prototype, the first of a kind, making it unique. It is unique." Rei told him, and then the armor changed from looking like a racy sex suit into a nigh-revealing dress made of what looked like malleable, metallic armor. "But I intend to make sure that it remains the only one of its kind. It came to me. It wasn't just given to me. It came to me, my own. I would use it to bring the end to any that would try to take it from me, for I, myself, would risk no hurt to it. It is…"

"Precious to you?" Shinji cut her off. "And what do you call it, exactly? The Mockery? The Precious?"

"Hmm… Heh-heh. Why must people name things?"

"Hey, I didn't make up that rule; it's been around since before I was even thought of."

"The Fallenbreaker."

"Huh?"

"Like an angel that has fallen from grace and is condemned to shame for all time. My talisman was made from samples collected from the Third Angel, which fell at the hands of your aunt."

"You mean at the hands of Unit-01, for a time, which required my aunt's hands to animate it and knock him into a temporary submission."

Rei didn't like how this boy corrected her with what he viewed as the truth; for each time she said what the truth was, he countered with his own perception of the truth.

"Are you condemning NERV?" She asked him.

"No. I'm condemning anybody that's interested in causing trouble for people that don't deserve it and total idiots with delusions of grandeur that's higher than grandeur." He answered her.

The dress than reverted back to her yukata and bone-like bracelet, though the bottoms of the dress were taking their time to lower to her legs, giving the dying boy an unwanted view of the girl's white panties.

"So, what put you here in this medical prison?" She asked him.

"I have wasted organs and my blood is very thin," he lied, sarcastically. "I got a question for you now. What do you have against Rumi? What'd she ever do to you?"

"Call her…and yourself…a hindrance in my new life," she responded. "An obstacle, a distraction…a problem that needs a solution. Commander Ikari hasn't been paying much attention to me ever since you two showed up that day in Tokyo-3. Normally, I wouldn't have cared about anybody when ordered to do a job, but when he asked for her to pilot when you refused because of your…excuse, I became curious. Why would a girl, and a toddler-sized, toddler-aged girl, at that, place a useless boy that's going to die, regardless of whether the world ends or not, at a higher value than the whole of mankind? Or the world, even? Why is that?"

"We don't live in the world," Shinji told her. "We live in this town, on this archipelago, which is just a small part of the planet, which itself is just a small part of the world. We don't live in a place that mankind is dependent upon. We just live in a place with a large-but-limited population. Its influx over the years was people that survived the horrors of Second Impact and just wanted to start over in a fresh setting. Hundreds of survivors, maimed, both physically and emotionally, by the people that wanted to cause such devastation for their own benefit. And Rumi… She placed me at a higher value because, to her, I'm someone she feels the need, the desire, and the want, to protect from harm. When you have someone to protect from harm, you bring out the best in your abilities. She protected me, along with many innocent lives that night we were in that soulless, pitiable city, and quite possibly the rest of the family. We were all people she wanted to protect. Nearly everyone here in this town has somebody else to protect from harm, not something. Not a car or a house, which has no life you hold most dear. Your dog or your great-grandson, they're lives to keep safe. Did you have anyone you wanted to protect that day, Ms. Ayanami, or were you just following orders?"

"I… I…" Rei couldn't find the words to express what he had asked of her. "I…have no one to protect. I have never needed to protect anyone. People die everyday. We're all going to die before this year even ends, so what is the point of protecting people?"

"I don't believe you when you say that everyone's going to die this year," he told her. "I want to believe that it'll only be me, but then I'd be hurting the people I'd throw my life away for. Every day's another chance to alter a person's fate. You seem to possess power now, but it doesn't mean anything if you don't put it to good use. My grandmother and Rumi, they possess great power, and they're putting it to great use. Why is that so? Because, like you and your Fallenbreaker, the Angelbreaker came to them, chose them, and they've saved more lives than I can probably count because the enemy cannot achieve their goal, anymore. They have saved the people of Tokyo-3, the people of Akira Town, all of Japan. Even before it came to them, they, like the rest of the family, my family, not my parents, have saved my life, each and everyday, in more ways than I'll ever be able to tell them."

Rei looked at him, and hated him for the first time in the short period of their meeting. Somehow, she knew that he, despite any cruel attempt made against his life, would forfeit all the darkness in the whole world, even what was left of his potential future, just to be with the people he viewed as his family.

"You must be very brave to admit what you feel," she told him. "Or a very foolish coward."

"Say what you will, think however you feel. I don't care. Call me a coward. Call me useless or spineless. I'm just a dying brat that hates his father and can't remember a thing about his phantom of a mother, but I'll say it proudly."

She couldn't believe this boy. Not only did he say that the girl and her mother were saving the world, and its people, but that he hates his father, doesn't care about the missing memories of his mother, and was proud to be a dying brat. It was almost like how she needed medication to keep her body healthy before the Fallenbreaker changed all of that, supplying her with the necessary nutrients and stimulants to eliminate the half-life/shelf life that was her physical existence in the past ever since she was born.

"I shall be going now," she told him, unable to stand the stink of his flesh, anymore. "I find that your presence, for the time being, has left me disgusted."

"I have one last question before you leave, Ms. Ayanami," Shinji stopped her. "Why do you look like an albino version of my dead mother?"

She turned to face him, angry that he would try and compare her to somebody she had never met before, and not wanting to answer that question.

"Ask Commander Ikari," she told him. "Surely, he holds the answer."

Then, she walked away, leaving him alone.

I would…but I have nothing more to say to him, he thought.

Seconds later, Tsukiko awoke and looked up at her nephew.

"Shinji…were you talking to somebody?" She asked.

"Yeah," he confessed. "That girl that put a hit out on Rumi was here, unseen and unheard. She wanted to talk, but she couldn't step in here without my say-so. She just left."

She yawned and then said, "You should've woken me up when you saw her. Or called security."

"Tsukiko, she had a mockery of the Angelbreaker that covered her in revealing armor that looked like bone and metal put together…with a large scythe in her left hand. Do you really think I'd call security and send them to their deaths against her?"

"What if she did step in here? What if she tried to take you out of the hospital? You know there are people that would threaten the lives of admitted patients to bend their relatives to their will."

"If she tried that, I'd had screamed my lungs out that I was being kidnapped."

"What did she say to you?"

"Stuff that must be shared because I keep no secrets from family."

"Then I suggest you spill."

-x-

"…Mayo?" Kanami uttered to her daughter.

"Yes?" She responded, awoken from her light doze.

"I'm hungry."

"Same here, Mother."

"We haven't eaten since lunch yesterday."

"I wouldn't mind pancakes…or a cheeseburger."

"French fries…or a salad."

"A sundae cone…or a strawberry, even."

"A burrito with extra cheese or pepperoni pizza."

"Don't start, Mother."

"Heh-heh-heh." They both chuckled over what they felt was good to eat.

Suddenly, Mayo saw the door to the room they were in opening up and some of the same men in black from yesterday came inside. One of them was carrying two small syringes in his hand.

"What's the meaning of this?" She demanded of them, but they didn't answer.

"Mayo, talk to me," Kanami reacted.

"I think they're gonna drug us again."

"Un-uh!" Kanami then jumped up and down in her chair, but the chains that kept her daughter and her bound weren't letting go of her.

"Drug the mother first," she heard one of them say, and then felt some hands holding her down.

A man grabbed Mayo's head and turned it to the left, allowing another MIB to stick her in her neck with the needle.

"Aaaaurgh!" She heard her mother along with her.

"…Okay…pick them up…Unit-03…as scheduled…" The voices had become mere whispers as the two were out cold once more.

-x-

GASP! Rumi awoke from a massive nightmare, looking at her current environment and recalling that she and her mother had spent the night in Tokyo-3 at her old friend's house.

Today, she thought, looking at her bracelet. Everything we saw in the visions…including the mayhem… Somehow, and I don't know how…but…it's going to happen today! August Twelfth.

She got off the sofa and stood weakly on her feet, wiping the mucus from her eyes. The scent of coffee ignited her sense of smell and sent her staggering toward the kitchen table.

Akira, who had gotten up earlier than Kozo or Rumi, had rummaged through the refrigerator for anything that would help in the passing of a good breakfast; it must've been a while since Kozo went grocery shopping.

Rumi found her mother by the stove cooking some eggs and had a cup of coffee by her side on the counter and pulled softly on her dress.

Akira got the message without even looking down at her and handed the cup to her daughter.

"That coffee's black, you know," she informed her.

"Too sleepy to care much," Rumi responded, and took a sip of the beverage. "Oh, man! This stuff tastes like motor oil!"

"Rumi, black coffee, essentially, is motor oil," Akira chuckled, and set down three plates of eggs, bacon and sausages. "Until you add milk and sugar to the concoction."

Rumi then noticed that there were three plates…but only they were present.

"Where's Mr. Fuyutsuki?" She asked.

"Had to get the paper," Akira answered, and then Kozo returned, holding the newspaper in his hands.

"Uh…my horoscope says to keep my friends closer than I keep my enemies," he told them.

"That's the opposite of keeping your friends close…and your enemies closer," Akira responded. "For how long did it say?"

"For the rest of this month."

"What does it say for my horoscope?" Rumi asked him. "I'm a Cancer."

Kozo looked at the horoscope for Cancers and read, "Don't let a moment where you desire something pass you by."

"The only thing I really want not to pass me by isn't even a thing."

-x-

Misato had been instructed to foresee the activation of Unit-03 once the makeshift NERV facility over at Matsushiro had been built prior to the arrival of the Fourth Angel. It was a simple testing area with a copy of the MAGI to assist in the operations of the Unit-03 activation, but what caught her off guard a little was that there was no mention of the pilot of Unit-03. Even Ritsuko was being quiet about it. There wasn't even a report from the fake Marduk Institute on the choice of the pilot, either.

"I still don't understand why we're even doing this," she told Ritsuko who, along with the staff present, were in the final stages of making the Eva functional.

Deep within Unit-03, a sudden motion brought consciousness back to the occupant.

"Ugh, what…" She mumbled, looking around and seeing a long, narrow environment. "What is this place? Where am I?"

Looking down at herself, she was dressed in a black and gray plugsuit and felt around her head, feeling a pair of small, metal things on her forehead.

"Oh, no," she realized, and tried to take the thing off her head, but found that it hurt with each attempt; it was like a headset of sorts stuck to your head.

She tried to get up, but found herself strapped down into the seat behind her.

"Aaaaurgh!" She grunted.

-x-

The snow that came last night was half-melted, but some young kids were still playing in it, regardless. They were enjoying it until it was gone.

"So, we're just waiting for the inevitable, Mother?" Rumi asked Akira, as they were walking down the park within the city, something they both found odd to have existed in a place they were informed could pull its buildings into the ground.

"What we both saw to come is inevitable," she told her, "but what we'll be there to prevent will make sure that no harm will come to anybody."

"But we don't see an Angel that needs to be humanized, we only see an Eva that seems to be an upgraded behemoth with longer arms that could stretch like rubber bands. Wait a minute, Mama. I just remembered something else from the day after we left the hospital when Shamshel arrived to try and kill me. Shinji said one his nightmares included a black Eva that could stretch its arms. Do you think…that maybe…"

Akira thought about it, as well, and suspected there was something not right about the future yet to come…and its comparison to her grandson's nightmares. She looked at her bracelet and tried to focus on the subject being the black Eva and its significance in their present.

Show me, she concentrated, requesting the truth of the future.

FLASH! An image shot into her mind: It was of an aftermath of a carnal battle between Unit-02 and the black Eva, with Rumi and she having stopped the bloodshed before the results became unavoidable. Beneath some of the bloody rubble of the former black Eva, a little boy with a hunchback, dressed in black, crawled out and yelled at them, and further away lay Kanami and Mayo, both bloody and dressed in plugsuits similar as the one they saw Asuka in when they dealt with Sahaquiel.

When the vision ended, along with revealing some things that sickened Akira, the centenarian groaned with disgust.

"Mama?" Rumi asked.

"We gotta go now," Akira uttered. "The black Eva in our visions…and the future itself…is no different from a puppet being manipulated by the wrong puppeteer."

They ran out of the park, but Rumi was confused by what her mother meant. What did Akira see that worried her?

-x-

NERV HQ was horrified at what was on the monitors! The Matsushiro testing facility where Unit-03 was stationed was left partially destroyed and Unit-03 itself walking away and heading toward Tokyo-3. All they were able to hear from the recorders at the testing facility prior to the explosion that devastated most of it was, "It's…an Angel…" They had yet to reestablish contact with the facility and the way Unit-03 was simply advancing its way toward Tokyo-3 had cast some doubts in the people within NERV HQ to suspect that it wasn't the pilot that was in control of the Eva.

But Gendo was barely concerned about it at all; even after Rei had called him yesterday to inform him that no harm was to befall his 'guests'. He was reasserting his control over the scenario, and he wouldn't be denied the fruit of his goal.

Kozo, on the other hand, was very concerned. If what the Eva possessed inside itself was of great value to Akira and Rumi, and worth more than any amount of money in the world could never buy off, he didn't believe he could ever look Akira in the face again if the wrong choices were made and the innocent lives paid the price for the mistakes that were made.

"Send the emergency deactivation signal," Gendo ordered calmly. "Force-eject the Entry Plug."

The order was carried out, but on the screens, only the protective armor plating on the back of the Eva was removed, leaving the plug partially visible to the naked eyes of monitoring systems available to even see it. There were strands of a fungus-like growth all around the plug, keeping it in place.

"The signal was accepted, but the plug is jammed," said one of the technicians to Gendo.

"And what of the pilot?" Kozo asked, feeling the heavy need to be concerned about all this now.

"We're still receiving biometric telemetry…but…" Hyuga responded, but couldn't make a concrete answer of whether or not the pilot was still alive or even conscious within the Eva.

"Unidentified moving object is not to be recognized as Evangelion Unit-03," Gendo ordered. "Unidentified object is now to be recognized as hostile target, the Ninth Angel."

"But…" Some of the technicians protested, but Gendo cut them off.

"Deploy Unit-02 to Mt. Nobe as planned. Destroy the target." He ordered, but that made Kozo's heart heavy with the fear of the repercussions.

-x-

Asuka wished it was snowing again. To simply let herself go and embrace the part of a childhood that had been sacrificed after the death of her mother was easier than piloting the Eva, which had been her pride. But lately, her heart just wasn't in the mood for wanting to do what only she was left to do. Her synchronization ratio had risen back up a good few points, but that didn't help her at all.

Mt. Nobe was a nice setting for a country side village, but the sunset overshadowing a large humanoid walking her Eva's way wasn't nice.

"That's…that's the Angel?" She asked, recognizing an Evangelion when she saw one. "That's an Eva."

"It's not an Eva, anymore, pilot," said Gendo to her over the intercom. "It's an Angel now."

But…how was it just taken over like that? She wondered, raising her Eva's rifle up. Okay, if it's heading for Tokyo-3, it falls under NERV's jurisdiction, not Akira's. So, all I gotta do is destroy it before it reaches Tokyo-3. But…what of the pilot?

Suddenly, the black Eva stopped walking and stood around, turning its head to the right.

"Grrurgh!" Asuka, and everyone at NERV, heard it growl. "Grrugh, aurgh, urgh!"

Asuka looked toward where the Eva was looking and saw two small objects flying toward them.

"Akira and Rumi?" She wondered aloud, unsure of why they were coming over if the Angel was nowhere near their home and they weren't asked to assist. "What are you two doing here?"

Wrapped in the same armored guises that they used when dealing with Sahaquiel, Akira and Rumi flew over to Unit-02 and Unit-03.

"Asuka, you can't face this Angel!" Akira told Unit-02.

"What are you talking about?" Asuka asked through the Eva's intercom. "It's right in front of me and it's heading for Tokyo-3!"

"It's holding innocent lives within it!" Rumi told her. "It's got one of my elder sisters and niece in it!"

"What?!" Asuka wanted to disbelieve them, but now had to be sure. "Someone back there talk to me. Are there people inside the Eva?"

"Follow your orders and attack the Angel," she heard Gendo respond, which was nowhere near the answer she had wanted to hear.

Rumi then flew over toward Unit-03 and floated in front of its face.

"Hi, I'm Rumi," she introduced herself, "and you are?"

Stand aside, little girl, she heard the Angel respond to her in a male voice. I don't want to fight with you. I'm interested only in rescuing my father…now that I have the power to do so.

"But you're holding one of my sisters and my niece within yourself, and I would like it if you released them from your captivity."

No. They're collateral. As long as I hold them, I'm untouchable. Now, move before I swat you like the fly that you are.

"You will either release my relatives…or you will be made to release them," Rumi told him, unwilling to stand aside and let this Angel use two of her family members as bargaining chips against her jerk of an estranged brother whom, in her own worst nightmares and coldest realities, wouldn't bat an eyelash for any of them. "The path of being humanized is the lesser fate that I will grant you."

But Bardiel, the Angel of Hail, and Adam's most hated son, was not interested in battling the girl his other siblings had put a hit out on to avenge their pride. He wanted to stay true to the goal of finding their father and freeing him. He wanted to be Adam's favorite, and he could prove his loyalty to him by saving him from the continued torment of the Lilin that held him captive.

I don't have to listen to your bullshit, little girl, Bardiel told her, and then swatted her out of his way and resumed his travel toward Tokyo-3.

"Whaaaaaahh!" Rumi screamed, and crashed into the side of a hill, leaving a large indenture of her body's outline. "Ohh! Ah, Kami. Huh?"

She got up and off the ground and examined herself; her limbs and head were all intact, despite getting hit with such force and impacting with similar force into the ground. The armor covering her clothes and flesh was almost like a thin layer of silk and other good quality fabrics…but it still kept her safe.

"I got hit, read like a book by that Angel, just like that, and I'm still in one piece," she realized. "Wow. The Angelbreaker can really let its chosen wielders take punishment."

Akira used the Angelbreaker to produce a Jūmonji-type yari and flew toward Bardiel with the intention of disabling him long enough to humanize him; while the Angelbreaker could assume deadly weapons, the only thing it could cause was pain to its victims. She would cripple him to ensure he couldn't go anywhere from where they were right now.

"I don't know who your beef is with, if it's not with my daughter," she told the Angel as she landed on its left shoulder and ran up to its neck, "but I won't allow for anybody to be sacrificed for an unjust reason, even if it's to save someone!"

STAB! She pierced the base of his neck, sending a series of pain signals to whatever it was in this Eva that passed for a brain and nervous system.

"Graaaaurgh!" Bardiel screamed; even with the Eva he had possessed having more than twelve-thousand plates of fortified armor to protect his layers and strands of fungus-like material that made up his true form within the behemoth, no form of protection was enough to withstand the power of the Angelbreaker's ability to penetrate any barrier the wielder didn't want stopping them.

Are there any Rokubungi family members inside this behemoth? Akira thought, using the Angelbreaker to send a telepathic message to who she knew was trapped inside it.

Akira? She heard Mayo's voice. I'm strapped to a seat and I have something stuck to my head! My mother and I, we're in this monster and we can't get out.

Don't worry. Rumi and I are here to save you. We're gonna get you out.

Please, hurry. It hurts being in here. It smells of blood.

Akira broke off the telepathic connection and dodged the giant hand that Bardiel tried to use to swat her, evading potential incapacitation and producing another yari to stab the Eva-possessing Angel in the back of its neck.

"Graaaaurgh!" The black Eva screamed again, and this time Rumi flew back up and struck it under its mouth…using her own, armored head!

The Angel staggered backwards, disgusted that he was being distracted by a pair of flies that were barely even using a fraction of this weapon's true power, and decided to expand on its captives.

Outta my way! He then ran away from the Angelbreaker wielders and toward the distracted Unit-02.

"Uh-oh!" Asuka gasped, raised her Eva's rifle up, but wasn't able to get a shot off when Unit-03 did a front flip into the air and landed onto Unit-02's torso, grabbing its neck. "Gaaaaurgh!"

"Hey!" Akira and Rumi gasped, flying toward the Evas now.

Rumi created a pair of katana swords while Akira created grappling hooks.

"Mama, have I ever told you that this goes beyond regular insanity?" Rumi asked.

"No, but you could stand to mention it," she answered, and threw the grappling hooks toward Unit-03's big, ugly head. "I hope the Angelbreaker can do more than just become armor and weapons and humanize threats."

Rumi flew under Unit-03's legs and started slashing at the armor plating, causing the behemoth to bleed out red blood.

Kanami? Mayo? Are you two alright? Rumi sent her telepathic message to her relatives.

Rumi…please… She heard her sister's voice. Help me…help us get outta here…please!

Unit-02 dropped the rifle and grabbed the Angel's arms to try and free her sealed-up throat to breathe. This was a great predicament for the Second Child. Not a single victory since her arrival to the Japanese islands, partially reduced to watching from the sidelines because these foreign creatures had beef with a little girl that never desired to be a heroine or prove her existence in any remarkable fashion, even obtaining the would-be credit of dealing with the previous Angel that became a giant of a fat man wasn't helping her. Now, just when she thought she was going to get a victory that was her own, fate declared that it just wasn't to be because the possible pilot of Unit-03 was stuck inside it.

-x-

"…The doctors, Gyatso, included, are concerned about you not getting enough sleep last night," Bumi told his nephew, having come to see him after receiving the call from Tsukiko that Shinji had received a surprise visit from Rei Ayanami…and learned some new things.

"I wish I could be concerned about my lack of sleep last night," Shinji told Bumi, "but I'm worried about Kanami and Mayo. I'm hoping that they're alright."

"You're talking about a thirty-eight-year-old young woman that could put most channelers to shame with her ability to assault their pressure points and leave them weakened and vulnerable…and handles the would-be stigma of being a single mother for her twelve-year-old daughter that's learning the art of swordsmanship and so on. What could possibly go wrong with them?"

"Bumi, not many outsiders resort to martial arts. They resort to lethal methods, like guns. But that's not why I'm worried. It's because of that jerk…that disgrace. You know who I mean."

"If he did do something, I doubt Akira would take kindly to his choices. You never put in danger people that have nothing to do with your problems…and you never endanger your family."

"But…in a way…in the way that he behaves… He's not part of the family."

Bumi couldn't even pretend he didn't pretend not to hear those words coming out of his nephew's mouth. Much of it was true in a harsh way. Gendo had done nothing but disgrace them lately. Disgrace…and inflict pain.

Shinji looked at his bed sheets and gazed upon the four toys that Bumi brought over from home. It was easy for the dying child to feel attached to a stuffed gray wolf, a harmonica, a puzzle set and a ring set. These were the toys he had selected upon his sixth birthday, also the day it was confirmed that he didn't possess the gift of channeling any of the four elements. He had almost thought he was being looked down by the others until he found out that it was just a part of the town's traditions and that all the six-year-old children go through this simple test on their birthday. It didn't change any degree of their affections for him at all.

The wolf was the least representation for Water, the puzzle for Earth, the rings for Fire and the harmonica for Air; some wolves lived near the arctic regions prior to Second Impact, puzzles were often made of paper, which was harvested from trees that lived off the minerals provided by the soil, rings were traditionally forged in intense heat and the harmonica was an instrument you had to blow in for a sound to be produced. They were similar to the toys that were often chosen by those that possessed the gift of the elements…but weren't considered true representatives themselves.

"You think there's gonna be a wolf boom this fall?" Shinji asked Bumi.

"I believe so," he answered. "The zoo's been trying to make progress with such an endangered species. I'm surprised that they don't ask Tsukiko for her pet wolf."

"That pretty, alpha-like wolf that comes around the mountain several times in a month and stays close to the estate for her?"

"Yeah."

"I don't think I've asked this before, but why… Aaaaaurgh!" Shinji suddenly clutched his chest, feeling a terrible pain in his heart. "Aaaaurgh! Gaaurgh! Aaaurgh!"

"Shinji! Shinji!" Bumi gasped, grabbing his nephew by his shoulders. "What's wrong?"

"My heart! It hurts!" He cried out, feeling like his heart was about to burst open. "My heart hurts!"

"Doctor! I need a doctor in here!" Bumi called out into the hall.

-x-

Akira should've known that Gendo would perform such a foul act to try and deal with a troubling Angel. The Angelbreaker revealed much of what had been spoken moments ago.

"Pilot, why do you not fight back?" She heard his voice over the intercom as he asked Asuka.

"They say there are people still inside the Eva," Asuka had answered, barely able to breathe. "I can't fight if it means they get harmed."

"Their lives are irrelevant. Your orders are to destroy the Angel."

"But…they can humanize the Angel, the lesser of two fates."

"Follow your orders, pilot. Kill the Angel."

"Urgh…Mrs. Rokubungi, if you and Rumi are going to do something, I suggest you hurry!" Asuka had appealed to the Angelbreaker wielders.

"Shut down the synchronization between Unit-02 and the pilot." Gendo had ordered toward one of his lackeys. "Activate the Dummy Plug."

"But the Dummy Plug's still in the experimental stages and Dr. Akagi's not here." She heard Maya Ibuki's protest; the very tone of her voice made Akira suspect that this Dummy Plug was something she was against very heavily.

"It's still better than the current pilot! Do it!" Gendo ordered.

Unit-02 then stopped struggling against Unit-03, and Asuka felt relieved to be able to breathe normally, but what disgusted her now was the internal mechanics of the Dummy Plug. Two lock-like mechanisms came up from behind the seat and locked her hands to the handles while a visor covered her face.

"Hey!" She shouted out. "What the Hell's going on!"

She could still see what Unit-02 saw outside, but the Eva was moving against her will now. The Eva started to grab Unit-03's neck and proceeded to break it.

"Oh, no!" Rumi gasped, just as Unit-03's neck was snapped by Unit-02. "Asuka, what are you doing?!"

"It's not Asuka, Rumi," Akira defended the redhead. "Gendo's removed her from control. We gotta stop Unit-02 before it kills this Angel…along with Kanami and Mayo."

The Angelbreaker wielders flew toward Unit-02, barely aware that its now-restrained occupant was screaming her lungs out for Unit-02 to stop before whoever was stuck inside Unit-03's plug was killed. They flew up in Unit-02's face, seeing an unfeeling emotion buried within its four eyes. It was like a blind fury, aimed solely at the removal of the enemy.

Unit-02 didn't even take notice of these two women warriors and went on with its task of destroying the Angel…along with whoever was inside it.

Akira, Rumi! The wielders heard Mayo within their minds. Help!

"Gaaaurgh!" Bardiel gagged, using his arms to knock Unit-02 aside and run for it. I'll not be dealt with by a slave to the Lilin.

Setting his host body's neck back in place, the possessed Evangelion made a run for it, continuing on its destination to Tokyo-3.

Father will respect me! Father will care about me! I will be his favorite!

But Unit-02 was not deterred by such an escape attempt, chasing the black Eva with a vengeance as the wielders of the Angelbreaker followed suit.

"Somebody, stop this crazy thing!" Asuka screamed, trying to free her arms.

Rumi created a spear and hurled it at Unit-02's left leg, but that didn't halt its pursuit of Bardiel.

"Maybe a few holes in the ground will help," suggested Akira, as she flew to the ground and performed her stances required to control the properties of Mother Earth. "Hargh!"

Three giant holes were made behind Bardiel and Unit-02 stepped in two of them, sinking down to its knees; Akira, taking proper precaution against a massive construct, made the holes especially deep for the red Eva.

"There, that oughta hold it for a while," she told Rumi, and they left it behind resume their battle with Bardiel to reduce him to a mere mortal.

"Mama, I don't feel right," Rumi told her mother. "It's like there's a small blade poking at my heart."

If only you knew, Rumi, Akira thought, as she felt the same feeling in her own heart. Something's wrong elsewhere.

-x-

"…Urgh! Mommy!" Miaka heard the pained voice of her young daughter as she herself crawled over to her bedroom. "Something's wrong! My chest hurts!"

Entering her daughter's room, the aged redhead took in the sight of her hurting child: Nine years old, slightly taller than Rumi was, but shorter than Mayo, dressed in her pink and green hanbok, weighing only seventy-seven pounds, possessing her mother's red hair and hairstyle and her father's hazel-colored eyes, crying as she was crouched beside the foot of her bed.

What is this pain? Miaka wondered, her heart feeling like it was about to burst open and kill her.

In the kitchen, Nemo, trying to reach the phone from the floor, having fallen due to his own heart attack, was having a hard time doing so.

"Aaurgh!" He groaned. "Tsukiko?! Shinobu?!"

"It…hurts!" He heard Tsukiko whine in the living room. "My cell phone… Gotta call…the doctors…"

"I…can't…breathe…" Shinobu gasped, feeling like her heart was tightening up in her chest, very different from when she almost thought Kagura was going to reject her feelings for her.

-x-

"He's having a heart attack!" Doctor Gyatso gasped as he discovered the situation, having been called from his office by one of the male nurses that heard Bumi's pleas for medical aid for his nephew.

As Shinji's pain-plagued body was wheeled off, one of the female nurses that stayed behind noticed that Bumi Rokubungi himself didn't seem so good.

"Bumi?" She asked him, seeing him pressing his left arm onto his chest. "Are you alright?"

"Huh?" Bumi responded, distracted from his fear of his only nephew dying and his distant relief that Gyatso would take care of him. "Oh, I'm fine."

Then, the family man fell to his knees and lost consciousness.

"Uh… Medic?!" The nurse called out, trying to pick Bumi up, but the fifty-seven-year-old weighed nearly three-hundred-five pounds, and the nurse could only lift up to one-hundred-forty pounds.

-x-

Bardiel was almost toward the outskirts of Tokyo-3 until Akira and Rumi arrived to halt his advancement further.

Back off, weaklings! He demanded, turning around to face them. I have to rescue my father. I'm the only one who can!

"You're going to hurt too many people, Bardiel," Rumi told him, having learned his name through the Angelbreaker. "Last chance now. Release my sister and my niece…or else I will take them from you by force."

The black Eva looked at the wielders of the one thing other than an Evangelion that could harm him in ways that were either remorseful or fatal, and made a choice that he was most comfortable with.

THRASH! Bardiel used Unit-03's arms to try and swat Rumi and Akira out of the sky and be rid of them for good.

Rumi felt her hand had now been forced, and created two hook swords to use against Bardiel.

"Gaaaaaaarugh!" She yelled, slamming the one in her left hand against his right hand, sending a series of pain signals to his mind.

"Gaaurgh!" Unit-03 shrieked as its arm was now limp with numbness. You dare to believe that you're a match for me?!

The terrible feeling in her heart wouldn't go away, like something was seriously wrong somewhere.

"AAAAAAAUURGH!" A roaring sound came from afar, and Akira turned to see that Asuka's Evangelion had gotten free from its imprisonment and was charging toward so-called Humiliated Son of God, which was what Bardiel's name translated to in another language.

Unit-02 was now armed with its Progressive Knife, a slave to its auto-pilot system that was instructed to destroy Bardiel at all costs.

In order to keep Bardiel protected, must we deal in fatality to Unit-02? Akira wondered, unsure of what to make of the red Eva's soul; she didn't know for sure if Asuka's mother was even willing to have surrendered herself to a dangerous abomination, knowing what the consequences were in store for her. Asuka, can you hear me?

She tried to contact the young redhead, but all she got was her screaming for her Eva to stop what it was doing against her will.

Unit-02 was now within fighting distance with Bardiel and leapt toward the black Eva.

Rumi dodged and hovered over the Evas as they were locked in a game of arm strength; Unit-02 had the advantage because Rumi had disabled Bardiel's arm.

Aaaaurgh! Not this again! Bardiel's words were heard by the wielders, and he made his left arm wrap around Unit-02's neck like a snake. No one's deciding my fate! No one!

Then, the shoulder pylons of Unit-03's shoulders broke off and revealed another pair of arms, resembling those of actual human beings, and they grabbed Unit-02's wrists to keep it from using the knife to stab at it.

"No! Darn it!" Rumi gasped, combining her swords into one and desiring to cut off Unit-03's arms, all four of them, to keep Asuka safe, even when she wasn't in any control of her abomination. "Let go!"

SLICE! She flew around Unit-02 and cut cleanly through the armored wrist of Unit-03, and by cutting cleanly through the limb, there was no spilling of blood, provided of course the Evangelions had any blood left to speak of.

"Gaaaaurgh!" Bardiel roared in pain; even when his arm was cut cleanly from his host body, the pain signals were extremely terrible.

This, unfortunately, gave Unit-02 the opening it needed to free itself from the Angel's hold and use its knife to stab it in the neck!

Akira became convinced that the best way to stop the red Eva was to put it down. Willing a large enough katana to form from her right hand, she sighed and uttered words she hoped she wouldn't regret saying later on.

"Asuka, I'm sorry," she went, "but I never could get attached to these mockeries of a powerful creature charged with prospering life."

Unit-02 had ripped off Bardiel's human-like arms and proceeded to rip away the armor that protected him from harm, and even went as far to swat Rumi out of its sight. The visions from the future were almost alike in this reality, but Akira was unwilling to let life be ended because of her problem child's twisted delusions of grandeur.

"Haaaaurgh!" She yelled, flew down, and swung the blade across Unit-02's head, severing it cleanly from its neck; the blade, not nearly long enough to actually cut the Evangelion, had sent a wave of energy in the shape of a crescent, which slit the body part right down to the bone of its spinal column.

Unit-02, decapitated, fell to its left side as its head fell off and rolled toward a building, gazing up at the orange-red sky without life as the sun started to set over the mountains and hillsides.

Rumi, having been swatted onto a nearby building, got up, shook her head to clear up her small dizziness, and flew off it to return to the scene of the battle, where Unit-03 was reduced to having its torso nearly ripped to pieces, exposing its bloody underskin and muscles attached to pieces of metal that reminded the little girl of the science fiction films that involved giant robots and cyborgs. She landed in front of the maimed Angel alongside her mother and raised her right arm up, sending a stream of light toward it.

Know that the path of humanity is not your penance, Bardiel, they both thought, but your redemption and hope for a better future than the harm of your past.

The black Eva's remains, or at least the pieces that were organic enough to be considered an actual creature of some sort, even an ill-fated mockery of a creature, were gathered up and condensed into another form beneath the remaining armor, leaving the rest of the Eva's mechanical pieces intact, along with something that looked like a core belonging to the Angels prior to their humanization, but this one looked as though it were made by human hands and not an organic aspect of the Angels.

Pulse! A vibe caught their minds and they realized that two of their family members were inside the construct, and possibly injured.

"Kanami/Mayo!" Akira and Rumi said, respectively, rushing over to the large object.

-x-

"…Unit-02 has gone silent," said Maya to Gendo, confirming the forced deactivation of the Dummy Plug. "Unit-03… The target…has also been humanized."

"And what of the pilot?" Kozo asked her, praying that Akira and Rumi had managed to save their two missing relatives in time.

"All her vitals are stable," said Hyuga, confirming that Asuka was okay.

The monitors displaying the area where Bardiel had been defeated by the Angelbreaker wielders wasn't pleasing to Gendo; he had hoped to kill the Angel before they could act up fast enough…along with reasserting his authority over the situation regarding the Angels.

"Ikari…it's better this way," he heard his former teacher sigh.

-x-

"…Kanami… Kanami… Kanami!" The unconscious woman heard a voice around her.

"Kanami, please, wake up," a much younger voice added in.

"Mother," a third voice uttered, "please, you have to wake up. Please!"

Kanami opened her eyes, and saw, to her greatest fear, three ladies, shaped like dolls, smiling their hollow smiles, and that the one in front of her, closest to her left hand, looked no different from her mother before she was incarcerated in the mental institution.

No, she thought, raising her hands up. No!

She jumped and grabbed her by the neck, driven with anger to free herself once and for all of the insanity that was her nightmares brought upon her by her mother's twisted obsession with dolls and her own hatred of nearly being made a living doll by her when she was a child.

"I'll kill you!" She told her mother, baring her teeth as the doll woman choked whilst the other two dolls grabbed her wrists. "I'll kill you!"

"Kanami, you have to stop!" The one on her right told her. "Stop! You're going to kill her! You're going to kill Mayo!"

Mayo? Kanami looked at the woman in front of her, locked in her grip, and saw her features were vanishing as they were replaced with a person that she hadn't expected to see locked in a strangulation attempt made by her: Her daughter. Oh, Kami!

Her perception cleared up around her; the other dolls were actually Akira and Rumi dressed in the Angelbreaker armor, their surroundings were of a city in the sunset, and a large pile of black metal that made her think they were in a junkyard of sorts. She had been caught up in a hallucination brought upon by everything that had happened since she woke up and found her daughter and herself locked inside some sort of cylindrical chamber that was then flooded with that liquid that resembled the stuff she didn't want to believe was often put in the toilet to be flushed afterwards, all the while being dressed in ugly, skin-tight outfits that looked like they belonged to scuba divers.

As her mother's hands loosened around her neck, Mayo, able to breathe normally like she could five minutes ago after Rumi pounded onto her chest with her right fist, knocking the wind into her lungs, looked at her mother with a sense of worry mixed in with fear; the fear was that of her mother being unable to look at her without being reminded of what she almost did to her.

"Mayo?" Kanami asked. "I…I…"

Mayo shut her up by just hugging her tightly underneath her arms.

"It's alright, Mother," she told her, feeling her hands holding her back. "It's not your fault."

Then Kanami noticed something wrong with her daughter's head: There was a device on her that looked like it belonged to some sort of science fiction plot device from Nemo's comics and films.

"Mayo… What's that thing on your head?" She asked her.

Mayo felt around and said, "I can't take it off. It's stuck to my temples."

Kanami looked at the device more thoroughly, and frowned; the device wasn't stuck to her daughter's head, it was implanted, possibly drilled, into her head.

Akira lowered down beside Mayo and raised her hands to the device.

Please, let this work, she prayed to the Angelbreaker, and pulled the device off her granddaughter's head, revealing a pair of bruised spots where they used to be, along with small, metallic rings in them. Kami… Gendo, you fiend, what have you done?

Several feet away from them, underneath a slab of metal, the new humanized Angel, Bardiel, crawled out and looked at himself and then at the girls.

"This isn't how it was supposed to be!" He yelled, catching their attention. "You're fools! All of you! You think you understand everything… But you're misguided weaklings! I hate you!"

He then ran off, quite quickly for a young boy that seemed to be the same age as Taeko currently was, before they could stop him.

"We'll have to worry about him another time," Akira told them. "We have…a much more temperamental problem to deal with."

-x-

"…Ah… Is everybody okay?" Nemo asked, feeling like his heart had returned to its regular pace as he got up off the floor.

Tsukiko and Shinobu were getting up themselves when Miaka came into the living room, carrying Taeko in her arms.

"What was that?" Tsukiko asked. "I felt like my heart was about to explode."

"A heart attack, maybe," Nemo suggested, "but why the heck would we all suffer from a heart attack? We all exercise periodically to keep our health up."

RING-RING-RING! The kitchen phone rang and Shinobu went to answer it.

"Rokubungi residence. Shinobu speaking," she greeted, but then her eyes widened. "What? When did this…and he almost… Okay, thank you. Bye."

"Shinobu?" Miaka asked, worried.

"That was from the hospital," she explained. "It would seem that around the same time we had our own heart attacks, Shinji had one, too. A big one. It nearly killed him. Bumi had one, as well, just like ours."

"Shinji…almost…died?" Taeko asked.

-x-

Opening his eyes slowly, Shinji awoke to find himself in a different room in the hospital; it looked like he was still in the cancer ward, but had been moved to its I.C.U. area.

"…I'm…alive?" He asked, his voice weakened, possibly due to the screaming he made while in pain. But…for a moment…I could've sworn I was somewhere else, somewhere…that wasn't Heaven or Hell…or where I didn't want to be…with somebody calling out to me.

-x-

"…Urgh…" The pain-plagued voice of Misato groaned as she came to later that night, surrounded by other injured people, rescue workers and medical assistants, along with finding herself with an injured left arm and a murderous headache.

"Hey, Katsuragi," she looked up and saw Kaji beside her.

"What happened?" She asked, not remembering everything properly.

"Unit-03 went berserk and…had to be taken out as an Angel," he explained, though it was a bitter taste on his tongue.

"Did…Akira and Rumi handle it…or…did Asuka handle it?"

"The Angel was humanized, leaving only the Eva's mechanical pieces, but the Angel ran off. They didn't even try to go after it, him, because they were concerned with the pilots of Unit-03…if you can even call them pilots."

Misato remembered that prior to the activation test, she saw that the internal cameras of Unit-03's Entry Plug were not on, neither were the intercom systems for communication between the staff and the pilot, so she never got the chance to speak with them or see them.

"Do you…know who they were?" She asked him.

"It was Kanami Rokubungi and her daughter, Mayo," he answered her, having recently found out about them. "Akira and Rumi weren't too happy to know of this."

The purple head could imagine the looks on their faces: Anger and hurt mixed with bitter sadness. Somehow, she knew that Gendo, and by extension, all of NERV, had crossed a dangerous line…and crossed the wielders of this incredible talisman of power.

-x-

Rumi had seen her mother angry many times before, but this was the first time she'd seen her so angry at one of her own that it made her wish she hadn't gone to the bathroom two minutes before they went to Gendo's office. She didn't even like the decoration of his personal space; it was like he had a thing for the darkness with little light.

Kanami and Mayo were with them; Mayo, because they didn't trust any of the medical staff around NERV, covered her forehead with the bangs of her hair to hide the pieces of metal still stuck there until they got home and to trustworthy doctors. The only thing they were happy about regaining from these people were their clothes and valuables.

Gendo, as usual, had his hands in front of his face and his glasses on like he was intimidating them.

"You know, it's almost funny," Akira spoke up first. "Almost funny…that so many lives could be turned upside-down in varying periods of time. Forty-eight years…twenty-six years…fifteen years…and two days."

Forty-eight years for Gendo's current age, twenty-six years for the length of time he left Akira Town, fifteen years since his involvement in helping his superiors bring about the Second Impact and took millions of lives in an instant…and two days since Kanami and Mayo were kidnapped and used by Gendo…and were then almost killed by him.

"There are two words in which I can describe you, Gendo," she continued, "and they're a megalomaniac…and a sadist, both with a twisted god complex."

"The Angel was heading toward this city and this facility, so it fell into NERV's jurisdiction, Mrs. Rokubungi," he defended himself and his reasons. "You overstepped your boundaries."

"Oh, I don't think it fell entirely under your jurisdiction, you jerk," went Rumi. "When, exactly, did my sister and niece agree to help you by piloting those worthless monsters you helped build? When, exactly, did you decide it was okay to go and forfeit their lives just to try and kill one of the Angels? Was it because you finally realized that I wouldn't play the role of your puppet…or was it because you couldn't lay a finger on my nephew?"

"He probably doesn't know himself," said Kanami. "He was never one for thinking his choices through. That is why he never achieves anything worth achieving."

Behind Gendo, Kozo was wondering how far Gendo had pushed his adopted mother's temperament of him…and how pissed off Akira had become with him. Either way, the megalomaniac had done another unforgivable act against a family that hated what he'd done over the years and following months.

"Hmm?" Akira turned and saw the door to Gendo's office opening up, despite a security guard's persistence against whomever it was that wanted in.

"You can't go in there!" The guard stated, and a punching sound was heard.

"Hands off!" They heard Asuka yell, and then the redhead walked in, seeing the four disgraced Rokubungi women and the crazy Commander Ikari and elder Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki.

She's pissed, thought Mayo as Asuka walked over to Gendo's desk and slammed a stack of papers down in front of him.

"What are these?" He asked her.

"My resignation forms," she told him. "All fifty-five of them."

"Resignation?" Kozo asked, wondering if what this girl was saying was some sign of change in her future yet to come, but had been decided years before she started her training with Unit-02.

"I quit," Asuka expressed. "I quit. Let the Angels be humanized to prevent the Third Impact for all I care. These two do a much better job of saving people 'cause they have people to protect. If you wanna go and rely on some damned auto-pilot system, be my guest. It was probably what you had in mind for a long time while I was training."

"You're really giving up on the Eva?" Rumi asked, already for sure that the people that worked maintenance on the Evas were already hard at work repairing the decapitated Unit-02.

"Hell, yes," Asuka told her. "I was locked into the auto-pilot system against my will and couldn't get free, screaming my lungs out for the Eva to stop. It's no different from being locked in a closet with no light or hung from a flagpole by school bullies. And to know that this dummkopf (she points to Gendo) authorized its activation and tried to kill them (now points to Kanami and Mayo) while they were stuck inside Unit-03. It now makes perfect sense when you say you do much better a job of what you do against others when you have people that matter to you to protect. So, sayōnara, adios, wiedersehen. I'm off to pack and go home."

"So, you're running away from your responsibility?" Gendo uttered. "Such a disappointment."

"Oh, shut up, Gendo," Rumi and Mayo uttered. "The only disappointment here is you."

As Asuka left out the office, the redhead couldn't help but feel the other emotions she felt while stuck to her seat by the Dummy Plug System. Ones that were of greed and cruel justice she used on others to maintain her position as the pilot of Unit-02. Anybody that others assumed could do better than her, she put them down.

"Miss Soryu," she stopped, hearing Kanami's voice behind her. "You really didn't know Mayo and I were stuck inside that Eva…did you?"

She turned and saw the older woman and responded, "No one told me anything. But if your mother and sister said you were in Unit-03, I had to take a risk and believe them, even if it meant sacrificing a shot at defeating an Angel on my own."

"Asuka… Only people that can't see subtle methods of achieving a victory would resort to outright murder of an opponent," Kanami told her. "The whole world must be insane to believe that killing someone or something makes everything alright. The Angel, Bardiel, only kept my daughter and I inside him as collateral, thinking that whoever tried to stand in his way wouldn't dare to try and harm him without hurting us. I guess he didn't suspect that an organization like this one would view even two innocent lives as a necessary sacrifice to save people elsewhere. It makes me wonder if, since the other Angels don't really give a damn about any of us, we, people that refuse to show mercy or feel remorse and perform moral-based choices, are any different from the animals we kill to keep ourselves alive. Tell me, have you ever taken a life since you started working with your Eva?"

Asuka looked to the floor and answered, "I almost did once, by accident, when the Fourth Angel showed up…before any of us knew about the Angelbreaker."

"And whose life was almost taken by you by accident?"

"A little boy, no older than Rumi is. I almost crushed him under my foot. I saw his parents crying over his safety and everything."

"Did it make you feel bad, knowing that you almost killed somebody that didn't deserve it at all?"

"No. I mean, I try not to because the Angel could've taken more lives and…"

"Not the Angels taking lives, just you."

She looked back up at Kanami and said, "It's kill or be killed. We're in a war, and people die."

"I woke up after being knocked out and placed inside an Eva and when I come to, I see three of the people in my family looking like people-shaped dolls with large smiles. I tried to strangle the one that was actually my daughter, and you know something? I nearly did kill Mayo, and I swore that I'd never hurt her like how my own mother hurt me with her obsession with dolls. To see my daughter looking at me, terrified of the woman that views her as the most precious person she has in her life…makes me disgusted to know that if I had choked the life out of her, broke her neck or some other method of unarmed murder, her blood would be on my hands. If it was ever between saving my daughter's life and my own, I'd no sooner harm Mayo than I would harm myself."

"Because you'd do anything to make sure she was kept safe from harm?"

"Because I try, each and everyday, to do right by her, and there's a big difference between what is right and difficult…and what is easy or simple. If I was told to go work for somebody to keep a roof over Mayo's head, I wouldn't take the easy route. I'd find a simple job elsewhere where I could do honest work and earn honest resources to provide her a future I could be proud of for her. Or if I found out she was being bullied or harassed by somebody cruel, I'd do the right thing and put an end to it without much violence being committed."

"But what if you had to be violent?"

"Then I'd simply disable the people responsible for the problems, not kill them."

Asuka sighed and leaned against the wall. This Kanami Rokubungi, this single mother, was, without much doubt, untainted by most of her problems, and was unwilling to soil her daughter's life for any reason, good or bad.

"What was your mother before Akira like?" She asked her.

Kanami inhaled and exhaled a breath of contempt before answering, "A failure as a parent…and a fanatic of dolls. I started hating her after just a few years of living with Akira and my new siblings. Even when I'm in my late-thirties, I can still remember the night my childhood memories of that woman becoming strained…as though it were only yesterday. Her…obsession with dolls…became her curse…and her damnation."

"She…replaced you with a doll, didn't she?" Asuka asked her, wondering if this woman's past mirrored any of her own.

"No, but she might as well had replaced me. It was worse: She tried to turn me into a doll. Could you imagine it, Ms. Soryu, looking like an inanimate object shaped like a person, and without much free will? I couldn't…because one look in the mirror for me as a young girl was enough to turn my love for my mother into fear that I had to get away from her before she could finish the job. I know there's no rule against questioning the way individual families raise their children, but who would want to be raised as a doll? Or a bully or a pawn, even? That's a horrible and unforgivable way to treat a relative. You've taken someone's love for you…and you've either poisoned it…or thrown it away, just like that."

"You're not the only one whose mother went crazy," Asuka then said to her.

"Excuse me?"

"My mother, just like yours, went insane. But, unlike your mother, who tried to turn you into a doll, mine replaced me with a doll, weeks before she went and killed herself."

"Let's hear it."

"It was back at home in Germany. I was only three. Her work drove her mad."

"The Eva?"

"Yes, but it was for a good cause. It…was for a good cause. To face the Angels when they came back. She participated in an experiment and then got institutionalized. I went to see her almost everyday, but she would never look at me. She never looked at me. For her, there was only a doll. I was simply 'that girl over there'. That's what she called me."

Kanami couldn't help but compare the both of them in that one way she felt was accurate: They both had mothers that they lost their connection toward, but unlike the redhead, she had other people to help her get over most of her mixed emotions of love, fear and hatred, but Asuka had no one to help her.

"…When I couldn't stand her not looking at me, anymore, I tried to make her notice me by taking the doll from her. I ended up living to regret my choice."

Kanami was able to picture what Asuka looked like as a little girl and assumed her mother was a redhead just like her, but not as harsh-looking, but picturing her face was horrifying: Her mother looked like her emotions were of surprising fury and undirected affections.

"She tried to strangle me," she heard Asuka tell her.

"That's terrible," she told her, and took out her stuffed animal for emotional comfort. "That's just…extremely terrible."

"And a few days later, she…she… She hung herself and the doll. She went with a smile on her face." Asuka's left eye was now tearing up. "What kinda woman leaves behind her only daughter in favor of a doll and goes with a smile when they kill themselves?"

I wish I had an answer for that, Asuka, I really do, thought Kanami.

-x-

As the glow on her half of the Angelbreaker ceased, Rumi, who'd been asked along with Mayo to leave Gendo's office while Akira stayed to talk with him, had looked into both her sister's mind and Asuka's to see what caused them much pain. But looking around the redhead's mind without being noticed was not as beneficial to Rumi as she had hoped; she had seen and heard more from the girl's point of view than she had wished.

So, her mother's husband was having an affair behind her back, resulting in the two splitting up, she thought, reviewing the knowledge she'd obtained. And Mrs. Soryu, Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu, was also part of the same organization as Shinji's…those people are, and devoted their time to those monsters they were making. Asuka remembers everything, but hates to remember it all, hearing the nonsense of superiority her mother used to poison her mind, telling her she had to be special, more better than the daughter of her former husband's wife. She heard rumors being spread about her mother…and became consumed by a tarnished legacy devoted solely to the Eva. But then she met all of us and found herself losing her tarnished sense of purpose. Her pride is twisted with her longing for a mother she wanted and needed, along with wanting to prove, for the wrong reasons, that she was better than everyone else around her. But now… Now, she has nothing to prove, anymore…and she has no one that she wants to protect that matters to her. She's…just by herself.

"I think it's a good thing that she quits, Rumi," Mayo whispered. "If the Angels, the ones that don't care about those that get in their way to get to you, didn't kill her, these man-made monsters probably would've done so."

Rumi nodded in agreement, but still feeling very sad for Asuka's future; a life of loneliness was comparable to being quarantined when you got the Chicken Pox or some other mild illness: You were isolated from the people around you that you needed a connection with.

"Mayo, can I ask you something?" She asked her eldest niece.

"Sure."

"Do you think…there's hope for Asuka to turn her life around?"

"Yes. She's got a difficult road up ahead in her future, but…she's got opportunities to be much better than she thought she could be."

"You were scared in the black Eva, weren't you?"

"Yes. In fact, I might have nightmares for a while."

"I'm sorry we didn't get there faster."

"You saved us, Rumi. There's no shame in trying your best."

-x-

"…If you're going to risk people's lives just to kill an Angel, Gendo, I suggest you risk your own and see how far you'll fare." Akira told Gendo. "You never play with the lives of somebody's loved ones just to achieve something dangerous. But I guess you never learned anything about protecting those that matter to you. No, you never learned…because what kinda person would give up on people the way you did?"

"Careful, Mrs. Rokubungi," Gendo uttered, not intimidated by the woman. "I can have you arrested for interfering with NERV's business."

"Oh, save it. And don't you 'Mrs. Rokubungi' me. I'm more than aware of what it is you want from killing the Angels, but I have to tell you that it's never going to prosper. You're chasing a fantasy that deserves to be buried under rock and ice. Instead of focusing on what you once had after your wife…left you, you're chasing her, trying to reconnect with her, which is impossible the way you're doing so."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"A man that fears nothing or the kami is a man without a shred of hope or redemption."

"A woman that doesn't know her limitations tries, foolishly, to find her place in a world that is at risk of total destruction."

"From what? From what, Gendo? The Angels have beef with my daughter, not your disgusting, man-made creatures. And the last one, Bardiel, tried to ignore the grudge because he wanted to achieve something the others had put on hold, but your…antagonistic behavior put in danger two members of my family, and now we don't even know where he's run off to. I'm just hoping it's far away from NERV…and you."

"The end justifies the means. If sacrificing their lives meant the defeat of the Angel, then it was a risk I was willing to take."

"Not me, Gendo. Not me. You may speak of things that people with actual responsibilities may understand well, but you've become nothing more than a greedy, obsessive and cruel, little boy that wants what he doesn't deserve and has never tried to earn." Akira told him, letting what she thought of him be expressed and heard by his ears. "Honestly (she sighed)…personally, you're a complete jerk."

"And you're an old hag and a fool to think that you can just come up in here and take control!" Gendo let his own control slide to express his own feelings toward his adopted mother. "You wanna try and stop the Angels, do so in that worthless town where you can protect those worthless people that would follow you into Hell, where even you, your little brat, your family, and that dying boy are worthless!"

Akira's right fist clenched as she frowned. She knew it was bound to come to this, but she had hoped, prayed, begged to the kami, that Gendo could change, but her beliefs, her prayers, fell upon deaf ears.

Kozo wanted to speak up in defense of Akira for what Gendo had spoken out, but the centenarian woman beat him to it.

"Yes," she started, "I was a fool…to think that you could ever change for the better, Gendo. And I can't keep waiting for you to do something right with your life…while at the same time…watching you hurt others. You've…shown nothing but dark desires and hatred against anybody that had an opinion of you that may have been far from a lie. Because of your actions, your choices, and caring of nothing for the people you've hurt, you may have, more or less, tried to condemn us all to suffering pain and death had anybody continued to pilot your monsters. If I have to cross the line to make sure all the Angels are kept safe from you and your superiors wanting to kill them, I shall do so…and if I have to put you away for good the next time I see you, I won't be held responsible if your life becomes forfeit to your erstwhile masters and whoever else may want you to kick the bucket and carry on. Stay away from my town, my people, my family…and me. I've wasted enough of my years on a weak, little boy that thinks he can be a god."

Ring-ring-ring! Akira's cell phone rung and she answered it.

"Hello?" She greeted her caller. "Hey, Nemo… What? When did this… I don't know how long. Yes, we found them. Are the others okay? Good. Alright, we're coming home as soon as we catch the next train. I just…need to sever a loose end from the tree. Yeah. Bye."

Kozo, judging from the way Akira's phone chat with her son, Nemo, could see that something terrible had happened back home.

"It was once said that banishment was considered a merciful penalty for acts of treason," she told Gendo, "but I'll view it as a damnable courtesy. I still stand by my traditions of what I do after my kids have passed away. That will not change, Gendo Mu."

"Mu?" Kozo questioned, unsure of what Akira was doing or saying.

"That's his real last name. Let this be remembered by you, Gendo," she explained, "that I, Akira Rokubungi, town leader of the village of Akira, disown and cast you out."

Whoa, thought Kozo, never believing that Gendo, who hated his adopted family so much, would be severed from their tree. He probably doesn't even care.

"We're done talking now," he heard her say, and watched her leave. He's scum, just like the people I killed in anger.

But Gendo, presumably because he felt crossed by Akira, jumped out of his seat behind the desk and attempted to assault the woman that played the role of his adoptive mother for over twenty years before he left to live on his own.

Sensing he was about to try something, and knowing he would try something, Akira swiftly moved out of the way and struck his neck with her right hand's index and middle fingers.

FLASH! She found herself standing seven feet from Gendo by the Eva cages, beside Unit-01, which had, for some reason, her grandson's body hanging from its head. Her expression was that of unrestrained anger, while Gendo's was one of twisted satisfaction.

"You're all that's left, old lady," he told her, raising a smoking gun up in his right hand. "Everyone else you held most dear is all dead."

"You crossed so many lines, just to bring back your wife, to replace the gods we all know and serve, and to what do the repercussions, the consequences, do for you?" She heard herself asking him. "I can never forgive you for killing my family and friends, Mu. In a foul attempt to save Shinji, you killed him; he didn't want Rumi's organs, he wanted her to live. And then there was Kozo; he came to his senses and abandoned you and your wife because he knew the goals you had were not meant to be. I swore an oath to never give in to violence and bloodshed ever again, but you forced my hand. I'll grant you your godhood…at the ends of Hell!"

"Would you really kill me, one of your children?"

"No, never my children to die by my hands…and you're not one of my children. Not anymore."

Gendo then opened fire at her, but the armor of the Angelbreaker covered her body to deflect the bullets and he ran out of them, after which Akira used a blade made from the gauntlet and cut his wrists off before using a regular katana blade to sever his head off, watching it fly over the head of Unit-01.

Now that everything and everyone she loved had been taken from her, she wanted them all back…because her fear of loneliness was unacceptable.

"Akira," she heard a voice from above her head, and looked up, seeing Nemo's ghost hovering above her, glowing the ethereal glow that the dead were told to glow when present. "Never forget what you learned of the powers of the Angelbreaker, that it is meant as a weapon of protection, balance and devotion between the people chosen to wield it…and the people the wielders cherish."

"And never forget the power of the bonds that hold our time together, Granny Akira," she looked at Gendo's dead body and saw her granddaughter, Taeko's ghost sitting on it. "The love we share with you, as the love you share with us, makes the time we each have with each other unbreakable, unbendable, elastic, flexible, changeable…and reversible. Believe in it."

"Believe the Angelbreaker can restore us to life, Akira, old friend, undo the pain you've been inflicted upon by Gendo, and it will." She turned around and saw Kozo's ghost, dressed in a snow-white kimono with a blue obi. "It doesn't have to be this way for any of us."

"Akira," she looked up and saw the ghost of Shinji and Rumi, holding hands and looking down at her with great sadness. "Please. It's not fair for you, for any of us, to be separated because of the arrogance of other people, their misguided beliefs or unyielding insanity."

"I can't use the Angelbreaker, anymore, Mother, but you're still alive," said Rumi to her. "You can undo it all. We believe in you."

Then, as soon as their souls had arrived, they were gone again, leaving her by herself. But their presence had filled her with the strength to hope again. She looked down at the Angelbreaker and raised it above her head.

"Thank you all!" She cried, just as the gauntlet glowed a powerful bright light that illuminated even her body as the world around her disappeared. "See ya real soon."

FLASH! The vision ended and Akira was returned to Gendo's office, seeing him lying on the floor, unable to move. She looked over at Kozo, who seemed worried over something.

Regaining her sense of control and calm, she backed away from Gendo Mu; she didn't see him as Gendo Ikari or Gendo Rokubungi and never would see him as anything else but a madman whose ego was no different from that of a lowly serpent.

"We're through, Gendo Mu. Whatever you do with your life now, it's none of my concern." She told him, and then looked at Kozo again and bowed to him. "Goodbye, Fuyutsuki-San."

She left out the office and left with her relatives, wanting to cherish their presence forever.

-x-

"…She's resigned?" Misato, once she recovered enough of her strength to walk freely, asked Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, as Gendo was unable to move of speak for a few more hours.

"The last battle was, apparently, the last straw for her," he told her back. "She was infuriated by the use of the Dummy Plug System when she wouldn't fight the Angel…Unit-03…Akira's daughter and granddaughter. So, she resigned."

In her room, Asuka was packing away for her trip back to Germany when Kaji knocked on the door.

"Hey, Asuka," he greeted kindly, but she didn't respond back. "Uh, Asuka?"

She continued to ignore him, but then brandished a small locket in front of him.

"I had thought you'd thrown that away," he said, recalling how she had acquired the locket from another person.

"Drake Von Meyer," she finally spoke. "The guy I beat to be the pilot of Unit-02, but at a terrible price. I gotta return this to him, let him know that he never lost it, apologize to him and everything."

"Asuka, you heard about his illness," Kaji tried to reason with her. "He might be dead already. You should keep…"

"No," she cut him off. "I can't keep it, I can't throw it away, and I can't give it to somebody else and pretend I never had it in the first place. And I'm not changing my mind about my resignation. I haven't been able to defeat any of those Angels and they don't even have a grudge against us, not like they do with Little Rumi, who, unlike me, has people she wants to protect. People she needs to protect. If piloting the Eva means endangering innocent lives, I regret ever throwing my childhood away just to devote myself to it."

"Asuka…you don't really mean that," he told her.

Setting the locket back into her bag, Asuka responded, "Yes, I do, Mr. Kaji. It's over, it's done. I can't do this, anymore."

-x-

The train ride back home was quiet, unlike the many, previous times that they were used to.

As Rumi and Mayo were sitting around the other side of the train car their mothers were sitting in, Akira and Kanami stared out one of the windows at the night sky.

"That was the second time you saved my life from an uncertain future, Akira," the centenarian heard her daughter's voice.

"I thought it was the third time," she responded, "when your boyfriend passed away."

"No, that was different. My life, personally…and Mayo's life. You and Rumi saved us from certain death. Thank you, Mother."

As the moonlight bathed Akira's face in a bluish-white aura, the Unity Channeler looked at her and said, "For my family, I'd do nearly anything to ensure your future is one of happiness and smiles."

On the other side, Rumi and Mayo, staring at the trees and hills outside, were engaged in their own conversation about the present.

"Rumi, can I ask you a personal question about something…personal?" Mayo asked her.

"Sure," Rumi answered.

"It concerns Shinji."

"Oh."

"I'm not trying to accuse you of anything, but it's just curiosity. What I'm asking is this: Do you care… I mean… Are you…in love with him?"

Rumi looked at her and said, "In love with Shinji? Me? Of course, I love him. I mean, he's my only nephew. So, of course, I love him…"

"Not like a nephew," Mayo cut her off. "I mean…more than a nephew, more than family…and…not like family."

"You mean…like Nemo and Camille…and Bumi and Miaka?" She asked her niece.

"Yes."

Rumi looked down at her feet and found herself reflecting back to her daydream of her and Shinji sharing a very intimate moment that was close to having her fuming out of her nose.

"Oh, Shinji," she remembered herself saying in the daydream, still unable to decipher what the strange sense of fullness she was feeling at that moment.

"Rumi?" Mayo asked.

Pulling her legs up to her chest and chin, Rumi responded, "I don't know, Mayo. I just care about him. A lot. I'd do anything for him. I…want to keep him safe from anybody that would hurt him. And… I don't know. Even if I probably did, he probably wouldn't feel the same for me."

"I apologize for asking. Gomen nasai, Rumi."

"It's okay. I hope he's doing alright. I hope he's still there when we get back."

But as the train sped ever so closer to their stop where they could walk the rest of the way home, Rumi couldn't shake off the feeling that, just maybe, her niece's curiosity was more than accurate, as she had fantasized herself with Shinji again, but the fantasy ended with her approaching him as he slept in his hospital bed…and kissed him on his lips.

Shinji…do I love you? She wondered. Do you love me?

-x-

"…Another Angel was humanized, Ikari!" SEELE 04 said to Gendo, as he was at another scheduled meeting. "And this time, Unit-03 was reduced to being a pile of scrap metal. All of the organic mass that was cloned from Adam was wiped clean!"

"And those wielders of that Angelbreaker decapitated Unit-02 before it could destroy the Angel," added SEELE 07, "and now Unit-02's pilot has abandoned NERV."

"First, the Third Child is discovered to be a sick, crippled boy," said SEELE 11, "and then the First Child abandons NERV after an unknown experiment gone awry, and now the Second Child has lost her pride in piloting. If I didn't know any better, Ikari, I'd say you were deliberately failing in taking care of the situation, letting this woman that raised you deal with the Angels alongside her daughter."

"With the creation of the Dummy System, the Second Child's usefulness was bound to come to an end," Gendo defended, once he had regained his speech and mobility an hour ago. "We no longer need to concern ourselves with recruiting inadequate pilots."

"Maybe, Ikari," said SEELE 01, "but to ensure that the necessary human element is not removed, NERV will, until further notice, play host to the Fourth Child."

"The Fourth? The Fourth's been found already?" Gendo asked, as he didn't select any of the candidates after the failed attempt to acquire the Suzuhara boy.

-x-

"Welcome back, y'all," greeted Tsukiko, but her warm-welcoming eyes saw the marks on Mayo's head and she became worried. "Kami… What happened?"

"Gendo happened," answered Kanami, although bitterly.

Tsukiko didn't press them for more information and just led them to Shinji, who was now asleep in another room where his heart could be monitored in case of another heart attack.

"How bad was it?" Akira asked Dr. Gyatso.

"Massive," he explained. "It doesn't make any sense. He's never had a heart attack before. None of you guys, really. It just happened, and then his heart stopped for six minutes. I almost gave up on him, but then he started coughing, breathing again."

"And Nemo told me that everyone else at home had a heart attack, but they weren't as massive as Shinji's was. That's probably what Rumi and I felt during our recent battle with the new humanized Angel that ran from us."

As they were talking outside the room Shinji was in, Rumi had sat down beside him and watched how his chest moved up and down as his lungs did their job of keeping him alive with the air around them.

You were probably scared of what was happening, weren't you, Shinji? She thought, taking his right hand in hers. I think you were lucky you didn't relapse again; I haven't recovered completely from my bone marrow extraction. Oh, who am I kidding? You were scared doubtless. Mommy and I were fighting to protect Kanami and Mayo while you were fighting for your life, however much of it is left now. Shinji…do you ever reflect back on the good times we all shared during the days and weeks we went on vacation? Do you ever recall the crazy trouble we'd get in and out of?

Back outside, as the others were talking, Miaka, who still held onto Taeko as her daughter sat on her lap, went and uttered, in defense of what was said about Shinji being lucky that his heart started fighting to keep him alive again, "Luck doesn't cover it one bit, except for the luck festival. I think he's got a guardian angel looking out for him."

Akira looked back to the glass window that separated them from Shinji and Rumi, and noticed how her youngest daughter was holding his hand, just like she did in her vision that she had assumed was from the previous lifetime in another time.

"And maybe his guardian angel is closer than we expect," she uttered to the others.

"You think our heart attacks were because we all care about him?" Shinobu asked.

"Maybe," responded Bumi. "People say that the heart is very powerful, in that it symbolizes love."

"Then maybe it's true," went Nemo. "We all went through that shared pain because…without doubts to weigh the words down…we love Shinji too darn much."

"And he loves us so much, too," added Mayo, who laid her head on Kanami's lap.

-x-

"Commander Ikari, you must be very foolish to think that I wouldn't know that you tried to overstep your boundaries in my plan to eliminate Little Rumi," said Rei to herself, hiding in the cave that was her hideaway. "Just you wait. When the next Angel arrives and becomes a human like its siblings, I'll be ready to face you."

In the short hours that passed by, the former First Child had been accumulating energy gathered from the mountain's flow of power, channeling it into her Fallenbreaker, and by doing so, she felt greater than she did after placing the gauntlet on. First, it was her voice, sounding so full of strength and control, and then it spread to her insides, like she'd been immersed in a bath of pure, hot water. Yes, the Fallenbreaker was evolving further, perfecting itself through her. They were a perfect pair: Both were imperfect, both were made imperfect by those that seek perfection, and were becoming perfected through their bond. It was proof through Rei's skin tone; it had become lighter and more like an actual Japanese person's skin.

"Just one more Angel to be humanized, and then we'll meet again. Until then, I must wait."

-x-

In an office building of what was left of the once beautiful city of Kyoto, Japan, now reduced to a small town with very few people that barely left to travel elsewhere around the nation, a well-built man, looking like he was in his late-fifties or sixties, stared out the window at the people he could relate to in several ways: They lost some of their old lives to the Second Impact, some loved ones were taken from them, and the weight of depression, a sense of retribution, a grand guilt was upon them.

In his left hand, an unopened bottle of Scotch liquor, and in his right hand, a framed photograph of his past that was so much like an old fantasy now. He wasn't a drinker, so the liquor was just for show to anybody that knew the real him, and every time he considered drinking, he turned away from doing so, but the picture was something he often looked at when he wasn't busy with anything. There was himself from when he was much younger, a woman with flowing, dark hair, bluish-green eyes and a smile that could've melted the anger out of a demon that was enriched with it, and in front of them were two girls, one elder and one younger, but showed some similarity in appearance to both parents. Particularly, their mother.

Knock-knock! A knock at the door was made.

"Come in," he told them, and the door opened.

A young woman stepped inside, looking well into her first year of her early-thirties, dressed in a black, form-fitting suit equipped with a utility belt and a small blade, her eyes a hollow, green color.

"He crossed the line again, didn't he?" She asked the man.

"Yes, he did. Both of them did." He answered her. "How are you feeling, by the way?"

"The pain came back in my mind again. It's weird. Fifteen years since… Can we really entrust our future in the hands of a woman we've never met and her toddler child?"

"If the Angelbreaker had chosen you instead, I'd place everyone's future in your hands," the man told her. "I never had any faith in the Evas to begin with…and my feelings for her have all but diminished."

The woman walked around his desk and took the bottle of Scotch out of his hand.

"She brought what happened to her onto herself, but I still couldn't bear the thought that they would both attempt to exploit the boy. He could've been entrusted to us, but that man, no, that monster…cast him aside."

"To people that wouldn't accept the money he was leaving them to use to raise him, and would actually care about him. This Rokubungi family is a trustworthy bunch, excluding their black sheep. Shinji couldn't have been left in better, safer hands."

"But he's dying. They go to the hospital to see him everyday, but it's not enough. And we don't even know how he got this way to begin with. You said that the cancer he's got isn't a recessive trait from any of us, and I believe you, but how else could he have gotten sick?"

"I don't know. If we could see him, we'd probably get to understand how he feels about his life, but we're under the death threat; if either of us sees him, we'll be executed, and I can't lose you. You're all I have left in this life that I hate because of what these people have done."

The woman took the man's hand and placed it on her face.

"You will never lose me, Father," she told him.

He looked up at her, almost seeing his eldest child, Yui's face, but then noticing the different hairstyle and facial structure that this girl possessed, and looked at her for who she was, and not who she resembled to a degree.

-x-

August Thirteenth came and Shinji awoke again, feeling better than he did the previous day. He tried to get up, but a strong weight was upon him, and he noticed the weight belonging to the fifty-nine-pound Rumi, who had, unknowingly, climbed atop him with her upper body and slept like that the entire night. He dropped his head to the pillow and sighed.

I remember it all now, he thought, owing a great hatred to his heart attack for bringing up some memories he had forgotten long ago, and dreaded remembering. "Rumi?"

He couldn't feel his hands like he could his feet, and Rumi was sound asleep atop him.

"Rumi? Rumi!" He shouted, and she started to stir.

"Hmm…huh?" She mumbled, waking up and looking down at her nephew. "You're awake."

He smiled and responded, "And you're on top of me. Could you get off, please? I can't move my hands. It's…sorta bothering."

She got off him and he raised his arms up. Sleeping atop of him was probably overstepping her boundaries, but she wanted to be there when he woke up. And…there was something she needed to ask him to affirm her own beliefs and curiosity.

-x-

"Well, thank you for everything," said Asuka, as she was set to board her plane and fly back to Germany, to Misato.

"You sure you won't think it over again?" Misato asked her.

"No. I won't reconsider. It's pointless. NERV's done for. The Evas can't stop the Angels, and it's better if they get humanized. You know that."

As often as Misato wanted to disbelieve that Asuka would speak in a way that wasn't snobbish or cruel, overzealous with pride or fury, she was convinced that she was speaking in a wise tone. And she was right: It was better that the Angels get humanized instead of defeated in harsh deathblows. Akira and Rumi had made her see the truth that it was a better fate for them, as they were just as vulnerable now.

"So, what will you do now?" She asked Asuka.

"Once I settle some business back home, maybe try to be a fashion designer, or an actress, even. Or…maybe once I settle my problems back home, I'll come back here to Japan."

"Really?"

Asuka nodded in the positive.

"That little brat," she then said, referring to Rumi. "I'd like to know just how it's so much so that the fate of everyone and everything hangs in the hands of a six-year-old girl and her mother who's over two-hundred years old. I mean, not even ten years old, and she was tasked with being a heroine with her mother and charged with dealing with the Angels by a damn bracelet with a mind of its own."

"Maybe when you come back, there'll be an answer for you."

When the voice declaring that Asuka's plane was about to take off, the redhead ran off to keep from missing her flight home.

"If you see them again, tell her that I'm hoping that man of hers is doing alright!" Asuka shouted to her, though it left Misato confused when she said 'her man'.

Did she mean Shinji? She thought.

-x-

"…So…your heart attack had you remembering some things you had forgotten in your childhood?" Akira asked her grandson, who was feeling well enough to wear his wig once more.

"Yeah," he answered, "though, I wish I hadn't remembered what I saw when I was younger, or that they were just my imagination playing tricks on me again. But no way. They're too harsh, far too detailed to be fake or some hallucination."

"What did you see? What do you remember?"

"I saw my mother…that man's wife…getting into one of those monsters that they made. She said it was a bright future for people. But then…she got eaten. I could recall the scent of oil and blood in the air, alarms ringing, the way the Eva looked without its armor, and the horror of that so-called bright future. She wanted me to see all of that happen that day, and I had forgotten all about it, buried it in the darkness where it couldn't hurt me. Still hard to believe that the very thing Rumi piloted to protect me…was the very thing that killed that woman I can't call my mother."

Shinji, if only you knew the harsh truth that she's far from dead, thought Akira, unwilling to tell her grandson that his mother was a literal ghost in the machine, fearing how he would take it.

"How are Kanami and Mayo doing?" He asked her, wanting to change the subject now.

"They're doing alright. Mayo just went to have her forehead mended by some Hydro Channelers and Kanami went to buy more paper for the paper cranes." She revealed, which had Shinji giving a small smile that had hope.

"Do you believe that they can get all one-thousand?"

"Anything's possible."

Meanwhile, Rumi had just left the ladies' room and yawned, still half-asleep and in need of caffeine.

"Hmm…" She leaned against a wall and looked at her bracelet's jewels. Maybe I was born a coward and I'm just hiding under a mask of courage. To think that we saved Kanami and Mayo, but I can't bring up the will to use this artifact to save one life that slowly fades away with every passing day. Why do I hesitate? Why do I keep myself from doing the one thing I should believe is possible?

"Having a bad morning, Ms. Rokubungi?" She turned around and looked up at the good doctor, Gyatso, who was holding a cup of coffee in his hands.

"Just a little exhausted because I don't have my morning fix yet," she chuckled, and the good doctor handed her the cup. "Oh, I couldn't…"

"Please," he cut her off kindly. "I've already had my coffee."

She gave up, accepted the coffee, and gave thanks for it. She felt a little better after drinking some of the beverage, and sighed.

"There's honey and caramel in this," she told the good doctor, who chuckled.

"Little girls like sweet drinks," he confessed.

"Tell me two things, please," she requested. "Is Shinji… His heart's not gonna hurt him again, is it?"

"It might not happen again. We'll know later this afternoon. It may have just been a one-time only occurrence. Your second question?"

"It's outta simple curiosity, but what is your first name?" She asked him. "We call you Dr. Gyatso when formality is required, but what about when it's not required? My mom and bigger siblings know your name, but they never utter it."

The aged man chuckled as the little girl got him there; the people that knew his name never did say it because there was a lot of formality required at the hospital.

"To answer your curiosity, Rumi, my parents thought I'd be more original if I was named after one of the kami. Susanoo, they named me." He revealed.

"Doctor Susanoo Gyatso. The deity that defeated the Orochi and then married a princess that would've been devoured by the great serpent, if I recall that's how the legend goes."

"Yeah."

"I'd say that you're an original; not many people name their children after the kami, just after other people that brought them some great change in their lives."

"When your mother asked me for advice in naming you before you were born, I had actually suggested Kuriko…but she had to confess that the idea of naming you that wouldn't do you any justice."

"Well, I don't look anything like a Kuriko. Or a Kaede, Momiji or even like my sisters. I'm me."

"Akira named you after two important women from her past. One of them was her mother and the other was a late friend of forty-three years."

"Who were they?"

"Her mother, whose name was also Rumi, short for 'Rumiko', and Mimiko Hikari, who had inspired Akira to not give up on the future because there was always the promise of there being light in a future that had darkness. Hikari means 'light', you know."

"I don't think anybody has ever used my full name against me."

"Rumi 'Takara no Hikari' Rokubungi," she heard the voice of her mother from down the hall, in a mock-angry voice, "what have I told you about asking personal questions?"

They both saw Akira, posing in mock-disappointment, but then gave a smile and a chuckle.

"You forgot to thank him for explaining such details," she expressed.

"Eh-heh-heh!" They both laughed at her.

"Well, thank you, Dr. Gyatso," Rumi said to the good doctor and walked away.

-x-

With the loss of Unit-03, Unit-01 was taken out of storage, as the Vatican Treaty was no longer prohibiting the containment of at least one of the first two Evas made. Gendo had made sure of that; even with the loss of the Second Child, there was still the Dummy Plug System, a reliable resource that could replace the requirement for their lack of pilots. But even with the arrival of the Fourth Child, Kaworu Nagisa, NERV was provided with an actual pilot assigned to his own Eva.

"This is most unusual," said Ritsuko, her head sporting another bandage to show she was injured from the previous Angel encounter, looking over Kaworu's synchronization test with Unit-04. "Is there a malfunction in the system?"

"Un-uh," went Maya, "everything's running perfectly. The theory behind this was deemed impossible."

Unit-04's core is a blank slate, and yet this boy can synch with it effortlessly, thought Fuyutsuki, wondering how this was possible, since he told Akira himself that the Evas don't work if they don't have the souls of women that bore children after Second Impact. And his birthday: The same as when Second Impact occurred. Is there a connection?

Within the Production Model Evangelion, Kaworu, not entirely focused on the Eva, was recalling a past meeting with his masters, SEELE.

"What do you mean, you couldn't get the talisman from them, Tabris?" SEELE 08 asked him.

"They refused," he answered back.

"You should've cut the bracelets off their arms," SEELE 06 told him.

"That wouldn't have worked," Kaworu defended his actions. "They both looked at me with high levels of suspicion, like they were expecting me to try something against them. And with the people walking around in the snow that fell tonight, I was incapable of doing anything to them without drawing attention to myself. They even lied about what the Angelbreaker was and wasn't."

"Similar to Ikari, your excuses are lacking, Tabris," SEELE 01 told him.

"And are we to assume that the Angelbreaker would've suspected you to be an Angel, as well?" SEELE 09 asked.

"What do you mean, the Angelbreaker would've suspected?" Kaworu/Tabris asked. "It's not like those two bracelets are actually capable of thinking for themselves."

"Kaworu, that's it for today," he heard Dr. Akagi tell him over the intercom, and his plug shut down, but his mind, while listening to the lady doctor, was still replaying his last meeting with SEELE.

"Who's to say that the Angelbreaker, a talisman of power and potentially so much more than that, is not without the capacity to do what higher-evolved organisms are capable of performing, such as thinking and making its own decisions?" SEELE 09 had suggested.

"Does one of you really suspect that a pair of bracelets, which is just one object, split between two people, can actually…think for itself?" Kaworu/Tabris asked them.

"Do not assume anything until all the facts are gathered," said SEELE 01 to the young boy. "Until further notice, we're assigning you to NERV as the Fourth Child and pilot of Evangelion Unit-04, Tabris. Await our further orders."

And I have waited, listening to NERV, SEELE, still wondering what these two women of power are truly intending to do once all the Angels are dealt with, the boy thought, now showering off the LCL. These people that serve NERV… Even when their first victory against the Angels was only because the little girl piloted Unit-01 in place of the Third Child, they fail, time and again, to defeat any other Angels because the Angels, despite their efforts, are at war not with the human race…but with the little girl. It's like the old myths of a young priestess being sacrificed to a higher power for the sake of the rest of the world, except the priestess, this young girl, is fighting back against destiny and events predetermined…by making her own, predetermined events in a sense. Her mother and she have caused the Second Child to leave, NERV has lost the First Child, and the Third Child that the commander abandoned is dying. What more can go wrong in this world on the brink of extinction?

-x-

"…Have you guys seen Rumi?" Akira asked her daughters, Tsukiko and Shinobu, hours later in the day as the sun fell from grace and the stars reigned over the sky.

The girls were cleaning up in the kitchen when Tsukiko answered, "She said she was going to take a bath. I guess she thought she was a little dirty."

It's hard to stay clean when you're swatted out of the sky and crashing into buildings and hills, the centenarian thought, and thanked Tsukiko for informing her of her baby sister's whereabouts.

Walking down the hall to the primary bathroom, Akira knocked on the door to get the occupant's undivided attention.

"Who is it?" She heard Rumi's voice inside the room.

"Your mother, just checking up on you," she answered. "Are you alright?"

"Yes. I'm fine."

And curiosity bids me to know the truth, but Geo Channeling-based lie detection doesn't work in the water, thought Akira, just concerned.

In the spring-like bathtub, Rumi, actually needing an excuse to get away from everyone at home for a while, said she was dirty and took to taking a bath. Her half of the Angelbreaker placed on one of the stone fixtures by the bathing stool, almost positioned as though the jewels of the bracelet were looking at her. With her body floating in the shallow edge of the tub, she let herself slip away from the troubles of home and those elsewhere.

I couldn't ask him, she thought, referring to Shinji…and her question of curiosity over how he probably felt about her…personally. I didn't want to risk his health…so I didn't ask him how he felt about me. Maybe it's just a crush, and I'm deluding myself that it's something more.

Feeling her back make contact with the side of the tub, she sat against the smoothed layers of stone and marble as she sighed from the stress-relieving heat of the water.

He didn't seem so happy about something before I left, she thought, recalling his face's distant expression prior to leaving the hospital; Shinji seemed to have something on his mind that wasn't there before his heart attack. Did he find out something wrong? Doctor Gyatso did say that once they got the results of his heart evaluation, they confirmed that it was unlikely for him to have another attack like that a second time. No, it couldn't have been that. Maybe he was wondering how Kanami and Mayo got involved in the last battle? No, that might not be it. Oh, Shinji, your mind's a mystery to me right now. What was bothering you before I left this evening?

As the little girl continued to bathe, her mother lied on one of the couches in the living room, looking at her half of the Angelbreaker, noticing that it seemed different now, despite looking unchanged since it wound up on her wrist.

Something different happened during the fight with Bardiel, she thought. The Angelbreaker seemed much stronger than I had expected it to be.

Her granddaughter, Taeko, was sitting in front of her, watching a music video that featured a very soothing song being performed by a young singer, who was suggested by her father that she look at whatever was good on TV to calm her mind of a disturbing fact that his daughter expressed about Gendo: If he could have Kanami and Mayo kidnapped and exploited the way he did, then he could've done the same to her and Miaka, or anybody else in town.

Rumi and I seem to be getting more in tune with these bracelets, like the alien symbiotes from Nemo's comics and videos, despite the fact that our experience with their abilities are limited. And now a part of me wants to question what I once heard from Mother two years before she died. Did the Angelbreaker really come from the gods to guide people toward the paths of salvation and redemption…or is that just a simple bedtime story she, and others before her, grew up knowing? Well, I guess what isn't a bedtime story is that during the last battle, I was convinced that the Angelbreaker, while still being a weapon that can't be used to take life at all, possesses a near-unpredictable violent mind of its own, no different from a person that would do anything to grasp power. I know that wielders from the past had encountered people…and monsters…that they had to find other means to kill to keep it until they were no longer needed by it…and some of those people and monsters have tried to kill them or their loved ones because of it. But the Angels…before Rumi ever even got a hold of the gauntlet, the Angels just wanted to kill her because she had temporarily killed Sachiel, but now it's because of both their brother's defeat by her hands and the gauntlet. And then, there's Gendo… If he wanted the Angelbreaker, he would've tried to take it from us back in that city. Called in his goon squad to hold us at gunpoint and ordered us to relinquish the talisman to him.

"The Angelbreaker's sentience makes it so that, like any other creature in existence, it has the capacity to evolve and become a much stronger weapon of protection, Akira Rokubungi," she heard a voice, and found that her surroundings had changed; she was no longer in her home, but out in a misty cornfield.

"Who's there?" She asked, and saw a young man step out; it was the same boy that Rumi spoke with the first time. "Are you the one Rumi calls Takeru?"

"Yes," he answered her, "and no."

"I'm guessing that it's simply what you call yourself?"

"Not necessarily. Countless men have worn the Angelbreaker since before time was time, subtle and restricted half the time, and at least eighty-four of them have gone under that one name. My consciousness has assimilated many of their traits that this form is the amalgamation of their times the gauntlet was worn by them. I simply call myself Takeru for the sake of formality. Originally, I bore no name other than my designation as the male representative of the Angelbreaker."

Akira examined the cornfield and felt that it seemed familiar to her from long ago.

"It would seem that this place is familiar to you, Akira?" Takeru asked her.

"I…once ran into a cornfield… I must've been eight years old back then," she explained, turning around in a slow spin. "I got lost and couldn't find my way out. I called for my mother…and by the time she found me, it was already nightfall. The sight of a cornfield brings back memories of that day… Mother was just as scared that she wouldn't find me as I was afraid I'd never find my way out of the cornfield. I suppose that you, being a part of the Angelbreaker, know how she died?"

"Yes," he told her, sitting on a small chair made of wood. "No thought or memory is hidden from the gauntlet that exists to ensure life and balance. However, it, like a respectful person, does not violate the privacy of its chosen wielders by revealing such secrets to anyone. You can explain to me what happened to her if you wish."

Akira then stopped looking at the cornfield and sat down on the ground.

"No," she told him. "I'd like to focus on the present and future, if that's okay with you."

"I'm fine with being concerned about what has yet to come to pass."

"How can the Angelbreaker be capable of evolving?"

"The more time it's wielded by its chosen wielders, the more it adapts to situations. Even the Angels themselves are capable of adapting to situations once they regenerate from injuries that don't cause them death…regardless of how temporary their death would be."

"I feel the need to question…"

"Why they're called Angels? They've always been called that. Because they're the children of their deity, their parent."

"But…this is only because I read my old history and all of the Biblical, Shinto, Hindu and other religious texts, and they mostly state that Angels are viewed as messengers of gods, guardians for people and spiritual guides for all those who have lost their way."

"They are that, but only from the point of view of people. Two races belonging under the same tree."

"The Angels that have been humanized would, without a doubt, be no different from us on every definable level."

"No, not like that, Akira. The Angels, all of the Angels, are one in the same being. They have different forms, but are still associated to each other. What you've learned from them is also true; Lilith, Adam's equal, created the first humans. Lilith, who is equal to Adam in status as a harbinger of life and prosperity, is related to Adam. They are siblings…in a sense, the children of gods that made them equals. Adam, charged with the existence and prosperity of his brood, and Lilith, charged with the existence and prosperity of hers. They are not the only ones of their kind, either. There have been others before them. Adam is not the name of just one harbinger, but of many, charged to spread life, just as Lilith is the name of many others in her likeness, charged to do the same."

Akira could imagine a bit of what was said: Dozens of the creature from her dreams known as Lilith, in the vastness of space, alongside dozens of the creature known as Adam.

"You mean to say… We're all, fundamentally, one type of creature, but we live as if divided and assume different forms?" She asked him.

"Yes," he answered her.

"So, then…before Rumi and I started humanizing them…they were already…"

"No. Not entirely. Because you're the descendants of two different sources of life, you followed different paths down the future…and you embody a different strength and weakness. As the human religion of Christianity follows, the Garden of Eden possessed two trees that Man was instructed never to taste the fruit of. Adam and his children possess what can be called the Fruit of Life, which bestows them the power, glory, and sorrow of immortality and physical strength that exceeds your darkest nightmares of the monsters you fantasize. Humans, the Lilin, possess what is the Fruit of Wisdom, granting you the gift…and curse of knowledge and civilization."

"Because we ate from the Tree of Wisdom, we were cast out before we could eat from the Tree of Life…to keep us from becoming similar to the gods."

"Yes. It is forbidden to become like the creators in the likely scenario that Adam or Lilith should inhabit the same planet. To become like the creators is to deny you were created by them to begin with…and to undo what exists."

Akira felt like several minutes up to an hour had passed by as Takeru explained the existence of gods that could be referred to as the gods that people worship, an ancestral race of people that made it their purpose in life to bestow life to the farthest reaches of the stars. It also made her feel somewhat like a fifth wheel of a car, knowing that some of her beliefs were not as concrete as she used to believe them to be. But Takeru assured her that her beliefs were indeed genuine, just as they were meant to be; belief created reality, just as it defined the reality that she and many other people lived in.

"If anybody's a pawn in a twisted game, it's the people being used by other people that wish to distort the laws of existence," he told her. "To destroy the balance that they have disrupted completely. This…cannot be allowed to happen."

"Can the balance be restored? Can the Earth be saved? I mean, even if we don't belong here, were never meant to exist here and aren't a natural part of the system, I love this planet and don't want for it to die if the imbalance is killing it." She asked him.

Takeru stayed silent for a moment, and then said to her, "If you and Rumi can humanize the remaining Angels, show them a path that can lead them towards a more enlightened life, what is needed for the world…will be revealed…and all the disruption will be undone. And Akira… People, just like the plants and animals that existed long before you did, are a part of the life that exists here on Earth. You're not a foreign existence, not like Adam and Lilith used to be. Whenever a Seed of Life, Adam or Lilith, arrives upon a new world that is barren and devoid of life, they assimilate the properties of their new home, merging with the planet so that their spawn will be more in tune with their existence. All that are born from them are part of the planet they inhabit. Earth is your home. To think of yourself as an outcast of the world is to forget where you belong, and to forget where you belong…"

"Is to forget that you live and breathe," Akira cut him off, earning a nod of agreement from him.

The mist started to gather around them again, signifying that their time was at an end for now.

"Don't give in to doubt, Akira," he told her. "Never lose faith, never lose sight of your goals, and never forget why you were chosen to wield the power to save lives instead of end them."

As he turned to leave her, she stopped him with, "Wait! I have just one more question?"

"Hmm?"

Akira looked at her silver gauntlet and asked Takeru, "Just…what, exactly, is the Angelbreaker…and who created it? It's hard not to be curious about its existence when the desire to know what it is and isn't becomes a driving force."

Takeru chuckled and agreed with her that many past wielders were also curious about the identity of the weapon, and then examined the one on his right hand.

"In an honest, universal truth," he stated, "the Angelbreaker…is the only salvaged fragment of a great spear that had been paired with Lilith in the unlikely scenario that she settled upon a world that was already settled upon by Adam. What you could refer to as the Spear of Longinus, is called the Spear of Precautions, meant to disable Lilith and keep her in check should such a time be realized. However, Lilith's arrival onto Earth had damaged too much of her spear that it was nowhere near powerful enough to put her to bed, so the one that was paired with Earth's Adam, being the only one intact, took the initiative and Adam was sealed away instead of Lilith. But Lilith's spear endured, even as a tiny piece, until it was found, salvaged, rebuilt and wielded by countless people in the years ever since its rebirth, gaining strength from the positive hopes, wishes and dreams of the people around it…until it became more than a spear that was reduced to a gauntlet. It still retains the power needed to deal with Lilith, but such a power cannot be used just yet. She isn't a danger yet, for she remains where the wielders from the past had placed her until the time the new wielders were informed to deal with her…which will be soon. Another day, Akira."

The mist had enveloped them both.

"Another day," his words echoed in her ears.

She came to back in the living room, seeing Taeko was still watching television, and that only two minutes had passed since her latest out-of-body experience.

-x-

Time was ever so slow for the resident soul of Unit-01; the passage of time was beyond what could be referred to as 'boring' and 'tormenting'. And for Yui, it gave her more time to recall other events of the past that was beginning to resurface in her heart after ten years of being condemned and fifteen years of putting aside her ignored retribution at the hands of people other than her son that she had harmed. In front of her, as she floated in the expanse of whiteness around her, a young girl, fifteen years old, judging from her appearance, and wearing a red hair ribbon on her head, like she was some sort of real perception of the fabled princess known as Snow White, but her expression, instead of being one of joyfulness, was one of grief twisted with rage. She could remember how this girl came to possess such an expression that was directed solely at her; she had been the cause, while only a part of it, of a great misfortune that left this young woman devastated for many years to come. Next to the angry girl was also an aged man, well into his late-forties, and a woman that shared a slight resemblance to the young girl and herself. They had all been victims because of her involvement with forces that weren't meant to be dabbled with: The woman had died in the aftermath of the Second Impact, the man had been left questioning Yui's morals and ideals, and the girl…had been reduced to looking at her and the new world with contempt and bitterness…along with viewing Yui herself with the same bitterness.

"I didn't really choose for this to happen, little sister," Yui had tried to reason with the girl once, sometime after she found her in the hospital recuperating from her extensive injuries caused by Second Impact. "It just happened."

"Oh, save it, Yui," the girl responded, still hurt by what she had been informed of hours before. "What happened that day, all those lives that ended in the days after that, and what I just found out from Father… It didn't just happen! You let it happen! You let all of us suffer! You and your people! You've shamed Father! You took Mother! My boyfriend! My… I hate you, Yui! I hate you!"

She had tried to put that day behind her after what was their final conversation as siblings, and for a short time, she had, but then came the little girl, Rumi, whose memories of her past and her involvement with her son brought up the darkest acts of her own life.

"I don't believe the gods were punishing us all that day, Yui," her father, who had spoken to her with an indifferent tone in his voice once he found out about her involvement with a bunch of people he didn't trust, along with the conversation he overheard between her and his younger daughter. "Whatever you did, whatever you helped others in achieving, you may have condemned us to a future that's filled with grief that didn't have to be. You have no idea how it sickens me to know of your involvement with this German-named deep-science group and your relationship with that guy you met at the university, and now what I hear from your sister about what happened to your mother, who's been reduced to nothing but mere photographs and silent voices of the past. No, I don't believe the gods were punishing us that day we suffered irreversible casualties, Yui. I believe it was people that abused science like a child that found their parent's handgun laying around their closet and thought it was no different from a toy they had… But I'm just a parent that doesn't know everything about his children's day-to-day lives away from home…just as I feel that I don't know who you are, anymore."

And a year later, once the world, well, what was left of the world, had recovered a little from the damage inflicted upon it, I had made a request for Father's help…but that only made the bond between my family strained with hate. Father…couldn't speak of me as family, even addressing me differently, and my sister… She would never look at me after that day in the hospital. I had disgraced them both.

-x-

"…Oh, Mother," went Mayo, turning around and seeing her mother walk into her room. "What brings you here at this time of the night?"

"I just…thought I'd come and tuck you into bed," Kanami expressed, trying to ignore the series of bandages around her daughter's forehead to cover the mending injury that had to be made to remove the metal rings that were nearly embedded into her skull.

"You tuck me in?" Mayo chuckled a little; she had thought that once she reached the age of twelve, she had outgrown the childish habit of being tucked into bed by her mother.

Kanami then noticed that her daughter was making some more paper cranes to add to the ones that they had made days before.

"I was…just making up for lost time," Mayo confessed. "There's still four-hundred-seven cranes to make (a tear was falling from her right eye now). I…"

"Need a hand?" Kanami asked her, not wanting to speak of what was wrong. "Four hands are better than two, you know."

"Yes, please," Mayo requested, and her mother sat beside her at her desk and pulled out some more paper to make the cranes.

Outside Mayo's room, Rumi, in her bathrobe, sighed over the sensibility that was used in her elder sister and niece's conversation; neither wanted to talk about what had happened or about what could've happened, and just focused on doing what was, probably, the only thing they could do that filled them with much hope.

I should probably ask if I can help, she thought, slowly turning away to retire to her room, but I don't want to disturb their time together.

Entering her room and closing the door, she took off her robe and changed into her pajamas, ones that included pants. Then, turning to face her mirror next to her closet, she looked at her reflection and saw a little girl that seemed troubled by different things lately.

"It's been a troublesome few days now," she told her reflection. "I'm surprised I can still look at you, knowing everything that's happened and not knowing the things that will happen later."

Treating her reflection like it was another person, the little girl waited for a response.

"You can't even say to your nephew what you want to ask him," she spoke to the mirror again. "You probably can't even own up to your feelings about him. Just ask him and don't hesitate, you coward. Okay, did I just call myself a coward? Okay, Rumi…just ask your nephew when you go see him tomorrow. Ask him how he feels about you…and take the truth like a girl."

And with that, she calmed down and got into bed, feeling better.

-x-

The quietness of the night wasn't helping to relax Shinji's troubled mind. He only got five hours of rest and woke up at three-eighteen in the morning of August Fourteenth. What was troubling him at the moment was whether or not he was going to get a surprise visit from that Ayanami girl again.

All she'd have to do is stand by the door and speak, he thought, looking at the window instead of the door to his room. Her voice, filled with darkness, and her face echoing a determination that I can't relate to. She probably wants to kill me if she views me as a hindrance with Rumi.

The light of the moon shone on a chair in front of him by the window, and he got up and sat on it to look out at the town. He missed being outside, even if it was only for a few minutes, but knowing that Ayanami was loose, along with knowing from earlier that the last Angel that had been humanized was not in rehab, he couldn't just take a simple walk out in the quiet streets without an escort…and none of his aunts or uncle were here to keep him company right now.

I miss my room, he thought, looking up toward the mountain where the estate was just within his perception, albeit a small amount of it could be seen. I'd rather breathe my last breath at home, not in here. Or put my faith in Rumi to do me one favor I would ask of her… Huh?

He looked at the streets and saw a small boy walking past the hospital, dressed in black pants, a shirt and a coat, but his body seemed to be misshapen, for his shoulders were hunched and his head was lowered under said shoulders, like he was angry or humiliated. And then he saw somebody else walking behind him from afar, and one he reacted to seeing with much disapproval: Rei Ayanami, dressed in the revealing, bone-like metallic armor that her Fallenbreaker provided her.

The boy turned around gave the girl his undivided attention.

-x-

"I don't know what the Hell you are, lady, but stop following me!" Bardiel, who had remained out of sight and had, with some ease, followed the train that Akira and her girls had used to reach home, and stayed hidden until it was safe for him to walk into the small-but-massive town to find the wielders of the Angelbreaker and demand to be restored of his former, Angelic glory, ordered the strange girl that he could see wasn't a full-fledged member of the Lilin race; she didn't feel like the two girls he kept as prisoners when he possessed the Evangelion that was a mockery of Adam himself.

No, this girl felt different, like she was something else that pretended to be like the Lilin in appearance…but only to hide that she wasn't…while possessing something that reminded him of his father…but was also tainted.

"You can't order me around… But if I wanted to, I could kill you, Bardiel," Rei told him, raising the crescent-shaped scythe up to let it reflect the moonlight toward the humanized Angel. "I'm actually quite impressed that you were able to get from Tokyo-3 all the way to here on foot alone. Your new body must still retain some former aspect of your abilities from before you were humanized, particularly your speed. You must be able to run, what, forty miles in just eight seconds? And you can probably cover a few small buildings in a single leap. I don't see how you were designated as Adam's hated child. But I guess that's because you could never assume a physical form of your own and keep it under pressure, right?"

Bardiel's face frowned.

"Yes, that's it, isn't it?" Rei continued to ask. "Your ability to maintain a tangible form was weak, so you would always have to possess someone else's body because you could never form your own on a permanent level, which made you weak…and made Adam cast you aside in favor of his other children that could maintain a physical body and not have to possess someone else's to fight or defend themselves. You're weak, Bardiel, and no one will miss you."

"You don't know a damn thing about me, abomination," he retorted, balding up his fists. "My intention was to regain my former body by those bitches that turned me into this piece of flesh that makes all of the Lilin a very vulnerable race, but I'll put that on hold to put you down!"

He charged at her, wanting to chew her neck, but Rei wasn't intimidated by a little boy that didn't know his place on the pyramid of power, and simply kicked him back in the waist. Bardiel quickly got back up and charged again, but Rei halted him by grabbing his head with her right arm, laughing at him for his weak frame.

"Funny, little weak boy," she called him, and then retracted the scythe to punch him in the waist, forcing him to gasp for air as he was flung backwards by the attack. "If I imagined you as Little Rumi, I'd have killed you with my blade, but the girl's a martial artist, and you're a deformity. So there's no fun in pretending you're that bitch that plays the role of a medical toy to her dying nephew, who's nothing more than my former commander's discarded burden that he cares nothing for and wouldn't give an Angel's shattered core if he died at his hands…or by a bullet from his gun…or by anybody's hands, really. So, any last words, Humiliated Son of God? That is what your name translates into, isn't it, Bardiel?"

As the humanized Angel got back up, he glared at Rei and raised his fists up; if he had to go out as a member of the Lilin race, he'd rather go out fighting.

Rei manifested her blade again, intending to do to him what she did to her other victims: Slicing them up into pieces and scattering them allover.

"I shall put you at the very bottom of the food chain," she informed him. "The world has no room for weak people."

Bardiel then yelled as he charged again, and Rei charged toward him with her blade raised up to slice him in two. They were within two feet when a voice cried out to stop them.

"STOP!" They slowed down and looked up at the building on their left, seeing Shinji looking down at them with a frightened expression.

But Rei smirked and took advantage of Bardiel's distracted advance upon her, and brought her blade down upon him.

SLICE! Bardiel felt the blade cut through his shirt and flesh.

"Aaaaauurgh!" He screamed, falling backwards.

"NO!" Shinji cried out, but the damage was inflicted upon the boy.

"Hey, what's going on out here?!" A man walked out of the hospital lobby and saw the two kids, recognizing the adolescent girl as the one that was sought after by the authorities. "Security! It's the Ayanami girl! She's here!"

But Rei didn't have time for this and assaulted the guy with her blade, cutting him at the waist and sending him to the ground.

"Aaaaurgh!" The guy screamed in pain as the rest of the medical security staff arrived outside.

Rei counted nineteen of them and decided not to engage them.

"Sorry, but I can't afford to show everybody my goodies," she told the men in a seductive tone before she leapt up onto the building across the street from the hospital and fled.

Shinji saw her fleeing…right toward the mountain, and then looked down to the streets again, but saw the security guards helping their fallen comrade…but there was no sign of the boy.

"The boy! Where's the boy?!" He asked the guards.

One of them went over to where Bardiel had fallen, but all he found was a few droplets of blood on the concrete…with no sign of the missing child.

-x-

CRASH! Bardiel fell against a small trashcan that was being used as a recycling bin outside some building, trying to catch his breath as he used his right arm to keep whatever blood he could from seeping out of his injury.

"I could kill you, Bardiel," the girl's words echoed in his mind. "You would always have to possess someone else's body because you could never form your own on a permanent level, which made you weak…and made Adam cast you aside in favor of his other children."

Raising his shirt up, Bardiel saw a slanted red line that indicated where he was attacked and how much blood he was losing.

"You're always going to be Father's embarrassment, little brother," his brother, Sachiel, once told him, millions of years ago.

"You're a disgrace to us, little brother," Arael had told him. "You dishonor us with your presence. Go away and never come back."

His memories of his childhood, and he was still a child in the perception of others, was one of hardship and torment. There was no love given to him by his siblings…and his father wouldn't look at him whenever he assumed his physical form because he couldn't stay in it for too long. No matter what he did, no matter how long he waited or how hard he tried, he couldn't live up to his family's expectations of him. Even when the one chance to prove to his father that he wasn't an embarrassment, wasn't a disgrace, he had failed…and almost died in his attempt to gain his father's love.

He got up once he caught his breath and kept moving, but made no further attempt to hold his wound close; there was only one place left for him to go, and that was his fate.

-x-

"…She looked like she was dressed like you and your daughter were during the day that guy named Ramiel showed up," the injured security guard told Akira once he'd been treated for his injury and instructed to recoup because the assault nearly caused him to have a ruptured spleen, liver and small intestine. "But her armor looked like it was made of bone and metal, and she had this crescent-shaped scythe coming out of her left wrist. She assaulted this little boy in black, but the boy went missing after she ran off."

Akira clenched her left fist and sighed; if the boy in black was Bardiel, she wondered how he was able to trace them back to the town, and why Ms. Ayanami would want to hurt him.

Or nearly kill him, as Shinji told us, she thought.

Back in the cancer ward, Shinji, needing to get out of his room now that it was morning and the sun was out, was walking around with Rumi by his side, traveling around the halls to work out his legs, though he had to drag along an IV pole connected to his catheters to feed a new drug into his immune system because there was still a concern about his recent heart attack. Of course, he and Rumi suspected that the new drug was derived from his young aunt's blood because, prior to seeing Shinji, she went and gave blood again.

"How much blood did you give again, Rumi?" He asked her, worried that she was in any pain.

"They just needed a small capsule of it," she told him, hiding the bandage that was under her left shoulder. "It's nothing, really. I'm fine."

But Shinji couldn't stop worrying over her; a part of him wanted her to stop doing what she was doing for him because it was hopeless without a kidney to save him. He stopped walking and leaned against a window that showed a nice view of the hospital garden.

"Shinji?" Rumi asked, looking away from him. "There's something I need to ask you."

As she pressed her back against the wall beneath the window, her nephew had pressed his forehead against the windowpane.

"Do…do you like me for me, Shinji?" She asked him, looking down at the floor.

Shinji looked down at her and responded, "Of course, I do, Rumi. I like you a lot for who you are."

"If I were to ask you something very serious…would you still like me?" She asked him.

The boy didn't understand what she meant by that, and couldn't find the right answer to give her. What did she mean by still liking her if she asked him something she perceived as serious?

"Rumi," he went, "I'd still care about you. What serious question did you want to ask me?"

She looked up at him, noticing that his wig was on wrong and the nerves around his neck were showing beneath his skin. Opening her mouth to speak her question, she hesitated; there was something about this that didn't feel right, like it was wrong to ask him, even though she wanted to ask him very much. She knew what she wanted to ask him, but the words just would exit out her mouth.

"Rumi?" He asked her, and she turned away from him.

"I'm sorry," she told him, and then walked away. "I gotta go."

"But…" He wanted to stop her, but his legs wouldn't move, so he let her leave him. Rumi…what's wrong? What did you want to ask me?

The six-year-old left to the garden and hid behind some bushes where she sat on the ground.

"You stupid girl," she told herself. "Stupid, stupid, stupid! He was right there in front of you, and you hesitated! All you had to do was ask him and wait! Stupid girl!"

-x-

Germany, one the few places on Earth that suffered minor changes after Second Impact due to its distance from Antarctica and small coastal property, was a place that Asuka Langley Soryu was pleased to say that she actually was glad to return home to, but her return felt empty. There was barely much of a direction for her life to take her now that she had given up on NERV and gave up Unit-02; there was even her final conversation with the red behemoth before she left NERV back in Japan.

-x-

To break one's soul

She stood in front of Unit-02, which was fully repaired the next day. The sight of its head reminded her of how the people that helped her mother, before she was institutionalized by the experiment that drove her mad, wanted to install a pair of horns on it to give it a more menacing appeal. Sad to admit, she'd probably like the sight of horns on its head.

"I thought we could do no great wrong when we got here," she said to Unit-02. "We'd show the world that we were the best…and the Angels would know no mercy from us. But then everything changed after meeting that little girl and her family. If you can imagine the sight of the Third… If you could imagine the sight of Rumi's nephew, Shinji, you'd probably wonder how he was picked to begin with, and not be able to do anything because he'd become so fragile. And then we found out that the Angels had a vendetta of pride against the girl and put their vendetta against the human race on hold to deal with her, only she and her timeless mother had a special relic that allowed them to fight back…and not endanger anybody. To think that they could do what we couldn't…and be real good at it. Heh-heh…it's funny to believe that we were the best…only to be proven wrong by those that weren't even trying to outdo us. And they were right about something: When you have somebody to protect, somebody that matters to you more than yourself, you do bring out the best in your abilities. When you have someone to protect… And it, eventually, proves to me that, despite why I was piloting you, initially, there was nobody for me to protect that mattered to me more than myself. I tried to get Mr. Kaji to notice me more, but that didn't work. Just a hopeless crush. Then I get asked to help Rumi and her mother stop the Eighth Angel from blowing up the land…and they asked Misato, that if they beat him and humanize him, to make sure that I get the credit. And we did stop the Angel and he got humanized…but the victory wasn't enough for me. I wanted more. I wanted to fight an Angel on my own without any help. And then, when I finally got my chance to do so, I find out from Rumi and her mother that the Angel that possessed Unit-03 had two of their own inside it and that they couldn't get out."

The red Eva didn't say anything, as it never could speak, but that didn't stop Asuka from going on.

"…I couldn't fight an Eva that still possessed people inside it, even if it was an Angel," she resumed. "I decided to believe Rumi and Akira and allow for them to deal with the Angel, even though it was never going for their home and wasn't interested in killing Rumi. But…then…that creep disconnects me from you and uses an untested auto-pilot control system to make you nearly kill them…and forces me to watch with my arms stuck to the controls. Somebody I don't know, don't remotely care about, just orders me to defeat a monster that was holding two innocent lives that he, apparently, ordered to be placed in it to begin with, and when I don't do as he says, he uses an auto-pilot system and has you try to kill them. We were supposed to kill the Angel, not innocent people that had no say in getting involved in the battle. If I knew that they were going to do that to me…and try to murder one of some little girl's big sisters and her eldest niece, I would've done more to help them before it all went south. But I can't help them. I can't help NERV…or anyone. And I can't pilot you if they're going to do what they did in the last battle a second time. So…don't take this too hard, Unit-02…but this is my last day here. I've resigned…and I'm going back to Germany. If I had any other say in it, I'd have them take you back, too, but I don't have any say in it. You're their toy, their weapon, their…doomsday monster. That's what you are to them… That's all that you are to anyone. Goodbye, Unit-02."

And with that, she walked off the bridge and left the cage that held the red Evangelion, closing that chapter in her life for good.

-x-

But Asuka knew one of the things she had to do once she got here, and that was to find that boy she stole the locket from and return it to him. It wouldn't be a bad start in trying to find a better route in her future deprived of the Eva. Maybe the only proper way to start the new route.

-x-

"…I thought Rumi was with you," said Akira to Shinji, finding him by himself in the hall.

"She was with me," he explained, "but then she said she had to go."

The centenarian woman was now puzzled on why her youngest daughter left him alone, and asked, "Did you two have a fight or something?"

"No, that's not what happened," he expressed. "She wanted to ask me something, but then she didn't…or she couldn't think of the right way to ask me. At first, she asked me if I liked her for her. I told her I did. She then asked if she were to ask me something serious, would I still like her. I told her I would and waited for her to ask me what she felt was serious…but then she apologized and left."

Akira thought of only two things that could've been serious questions that Rumi wanted to ask Shinji, three if she included his health: The first was if Shinji was afraid that Rumi would get killed by Rei Ayanami once the remaining three Angels of Adam's family were humanized…and the second was…her daughter's questionable relationship with Shinji due to what she and her mother knew and suspected half the time. Her imagination of Rumi and Shinji…simply being with each other in the way that Rumi described in her daydream, while not as detailed as her daughter's, was what was probably troubling Rumi…and which was a probable factor in what Rumi wanted to ask Shinji.

"Did," she heard her grandson say, "something happen during the last battle that I wasn't informed about, Akira?"

"No. I told you everything that happened," she told him, but didn't want to tell him the harsh truth about what his…what that man thought of him. If he ever found out about what I found out back in Tokyo-3, I don't even wanna think of the reaction he'd express.

"Before the sun even rose this morning," he said to her, "when that Ayanami girl was trying kill the boy, she said some things I can't even begin to contemplate were true or false about myself."

"What do you mean?"

"She said that…that man that runs the paramilitary agency didn't really care about me, or whether I live or die, or even if he himself killed me. That…really leaves me wondering if it's true or not. But…if I did look at it as being true, it would add to why, after almost eleven years, he'd just send for me to go see him…just to try and order me to my premature death."

Akira pressed her back against the windowpane and sighed, knowing that he was bound to find out sooner or later, and wished he hadn't found out at all, even bits of the truth from someone else they didn't like.

"You know the truth, don't you, Akira?" He asked her. "Before you and Rumi returned from that city the other day? I know you do. It's true, isn't it?"

She looked at him and saw him looking down toward the garden.

"Gendo Ikari…cares nothing for your grandson," Kozo's words echoed in her mind.

"You wanna try and stop the Angels, do so in that worthless town where you can protect those worthless people that would follow you into Hell, where even you, your little brat, your family, and that dying boy are worthless!" Gendo's voice yelled out soon after, informing her of what he himself thought of them all.

"I didn't want to hurt you with the truth when I found out," she apologized to him.

"It's okay. I gave up on him long ago, so…the truth isn't all that bad." Shinji told her. "I do hope that he pays for his actions, though."

Why? Akira thought, wondering why her only grandson, immediate and living, had to be related to a guy that didn't give a damn about him. Of all the grandsons I've ever had, one of them has the damnedest of relatives in the history of the damnedest of relatives.

Shinji then felt Akira hold onto him as a tear fell from his right eye. He needed that comfort of a loved one near to his heart. It made the pain of the harsh truth lessen.

-x-

"I got nothing on my side of the mountain, Bumi," went Nemo, on his cell phone, informing his big brother as he covered the west side of the base of the town's mountain. "You?"

"I have nothing on the east side," Bumi responded, "though there was a small cave nearby, but there wasn't anyone living in it. I even checked. There was nothing to indicate that anyone was living there."

As the brothers continued to check around the base of the mountain, Bumi's daughter was wandering around the few trees that covered the mountain outside the estate, picking up some of the flowers that grew around the trees.

"And Mother tells me not to wander too far away from the house," Taeko told herself, picking at some other flowers. "Shinji, Mayo and Auntie Kanami better appreciate my bouquets I'm making for them."

As she wandered further away from the house and further up the mountain, she stopped at the sight of something she hadn't expected to see: A boy, probably around her age, sitting against a tree, but looking like he was in terrible shape; there was even a rip in his shirt. Slowly, she went over to him and saw that he was sleeping, but the sight of a cut on his chest with dried blood around it didn't ease her mind at all.

"Excuse me, mister," she slowly shook his left arm, but he didn't respond. "Hey."

Slowly, he opened his eyes and saw her, but muttered something that she couldn't comprehend.

"What?" She asked him.

"Get…get away from me," he uttered, moving to get up onto his feet. "Keep away."

She had never met a person that told her to keep away from them, and see them in an injured state.

"You're hurt," she told him.

"Yeah, so what else is new?" He asked, walking away, but falling down. "Damn Angelbreaker wielders and their damned agenda."

Angelbreaker? Taeko then realized that…this boy was probably…one of the people that had a grudge against her little auntie because of her one-time only involvement with that NERV group. "Who are you, sir?"

"Don't call me 'sir'. I'm not old…just…an embarrassment…looking to get revenge while he still can." The boy told her.

"You're one of them, aren't you?" She asked him. "You're one of the former Angels that we have in rehab, the one that got away…and tried to use one of my cousins and her mother as prisoners."

The boy looked at her and frowned.

"What does it matter to you, anyway?!" He growled.

But before Taeko could even respond, her mother called out for her.

"Taeko?" Miaka called. "It's lunch time. Taeko?"

Taeko turned around to respond that she was coming, but when she turned back to face the boy, he was already gone.

"What?" She wondered, looking around, but unable to find where he ran off to.

-x-

Alarms went off like crazy! NERV was in a panic, trying to gain control of the situation they were facing. Another Angel had been detected, but instead of heading toward the town of Akira, it, like the previous Angel, was heading toward Tokyo-3, no doubt ignoring the call of the Angelbreaker in favor of performing its goal of reaching NERV for the sake of destroying the human race.

"It just showed up outta nowhere!" Hyuga informed Misato, who was curious as to why this Angel, like the previous one, was coming here if they had beef with Rumi and wanted her dead before they resumed their goal of finding their father, Adam, whom they had suspected was in NERV's possession. "It went right past the Komagatake defense line like it wasn't even there!"

"What's the status of Unit-04?" She asked Maya.

"It's being deployed within the Geo-Front; the Angel's advancing at such speed that we can't deploy it on the surface in time." Maya answered.

"And Unit-02?"

"It's being deployed with the Dummy Plug System."

Outside the pyramid of NERV HQ, Kaworu, simply following orders, grabbed his Eva-sized riffles and other assorted conventional weapons to deal with the new Angel as it made its approach toward the base. He was wondering how the battle with this Angel would be like, and chuckled at the awe of human behavior associated with fear and survival.

They would use that which tried to destroy them years ago against their enemies to survive? He thought, as the explosions of the armored plates that stood between the Angel and the Geo-Front occurred just then.

"It…it just destroyed all twenty-two layers of armored plating in a single blast," said Hyuga, surprised at the power of this Angel.

On the monitors, the sight of this Angel was revealed: It was hulking and much larger than an Evangelion, with much of its lower body wrapped up like a mummy of sorts, with a pair of bony shoulders and a skull-like face that held two red eyes.

"Activating the Dummy System for Unit-02," Maya said, typing in the codes to activate the system, but then the monitors went off with an 'ALERT' on them. "This can't be right! We've lost the pulse within Unit-02. It's not accepting the Dummy Plug!"

Kozo, who would've believed something like this with Unit-01, couldn't believe that it was happening with Unit-02.

"What about Unit-01?" Gendo asked, just the battle between the new Angel and Unit-04 commenced.

BANG, BANG, BANG! Kaworu had Unit-04 empty its riffles at the Angel, but to no avail; the AT-Field wasn't neutralized at all, leaving the Angel unscathed.

"Next!" He grunted, picking up a pair of rocket launchers and emptying them against the Angel.

The AT-Field was still in force and shielded the Angel against the rockets. Then, when the launchers were used of, the Angel unwrapped itself and revealed its core…surrounded by a series of rib-like teeth and a tongue, and the wrappings that surrounded its body were like tattered ribbons or belts with blood-like markings on them. It used the ones on either side of its head like hammers and propelled them against Unit-04, knocking it to the ground!

"Whoa!" Kaworu gasped, never expecting that to happen. "Impressive."

Unit-04 got back up and ran across the ground to the other side of the Angel and pulled out a Progressive Knife for close quarters combat.

"Let's try something different!" He suggested, and charged toward the Angel, but received quite the surprise when the Angel simply levitated out of the way and made the Eva fall onto the ground.

Then, the Angel's face started shifting; the head got bigger and the mouth portion became more pronounced and defined.

"Grr! Grrurgh… Grron…hrrrugh!" It growled. "Gron…hrrugh! One hour!"

"What in God's name…" Misato questioned, never expecting to ever hear a monstrous Angel speak.

"I am Zeruel, the Angel of Strength, Might and Power! You have only one hour to abandon this place…and then it becomes a tomb!" The Angel announced, now able to speak more fluently.

"Can…do we have any loudspeakers, a way to speak with the Angel?" Misato asked Ritsuko.

"Yeah, the sirens," the fake blond responded to the captain.

Out in the Geo-Front grounds, the Angel awaited a response from these flawed, separate creatures that caused his family much trouble.

"What are you after, Zeruel?" He heard a loud voice from around the Geo-Front, and saw small poles with large blocks vibrating.

"What am I after? There's nothing here to gain…as the presence of Father has faded from here. All that is left…is trash that must be buried for good! You wretched Lilin; you fear us so much that you would kill us with our own flesh and blood, warped into mockeries of our father in order to do so! You know not your place in this world! And the only thing that even poses any true threat to me…isn't even here! That damned talisman that goes to those that it chooses for itself to act out and stop fate by creating new possibilities to be attempted for the greater good of existence! Now, that's a true threat! Not your mockeries of Father! Cast aside your servants…and abandon this place in one hour…or be buried alive because I will make certain that nobody can touch the bitch that made Father sleep an unjust slumber for years to come who dwells here! And then I shall deal with the Angelbreaker and its wielders…and succeed where my brethren had failed in dealing with the little one that dealt Sachiel the blow that tarnished us. Now, if I were you, which I am glad not to be, I'd run as far away as I could from this place…because it's not going to be touched by any unclean hands for years!"

Zeruel's face then contorted; it did that every now and then when the Angelbreaker called him. How he hated the artifact for thinking it could order him around. But great things come to those that wait…and he wanted that talisman to wait until after he dealt with Lilith's prison that these Lilin used as their playground and cage for his father's shadows.

"You think he's going to actually do it?" Hyuga asked, wanting to know if this Angel was really going to bury them underground if they didn't leave in less than an hour.

"Uh…are…are Units-01 and 02 up and running yet?" Misato asked.

"No," Maya answered, looking at her monitor. "They're not accepting the Dummy Plug at all."

It was partially obvious to Gendo why Unit-01 wasn't cooperating, but with Unit-02, it was a mystery.

The red Evangelion, possessing the shattered soul of Kyoko Soryu, was broken inside. The once respected scientist of GEHIRN and then NERV's German branch had spent a great deal of her time trying to piece together her existence…only to find that was impossible to accomplish. She had condemned herself and had nearly condemned her daughter to a cruel fate bound to the Eva. And now her little girl had turned away from her, in shame and anger at being unable to protect anybody or prove her worth.

Asuka, she thought, wanting so badly to make amends with her child, but the image of her trying to strangle her when she was younger haunted her memories, I am sorry I failed you.

-x-

"…Believe me," said one of the security guards to Akira at the hospital, "if Rumi had left out the front door, we'd have seen her and informed you. We didn't see her step out."

"Thank you," Akira responded to the guard, having checked much of the building for her daughter…except for the garden area, leaving her location to be there for sure.

"H…hey!" Somebody gasped some distance outside of the building. "You can't just shove me to the ground like that, kid!"

Akira turned to see who was walking in, and saw the humanized Bardiel, looking very deteriorated and in need of medical aid.

"Bardiel," she said calmly.

"Wielder," he said grimly, and then coughed a little. "You and your brat caused me grief in this flesh! Undo what you did and restore me!"

Some of the other people backed away from this child, seeing that he was one of the Angels that had been humanized, but he seemed to have had better days.

"I can't do that, Bardiel," Akira told him calmly. "What the Angelbreaker did to you, it can't undo."

"Then I'll kill you with my bare hands, you old bitch," he told her, and then charged. "Aaaurgh!"

Akira raised her fists up to defend, but then the Humiliated Son of God stopped running toward her, coughing, and then fell to his knees. She hadn't expected that from a humanized Angel.

"You're dead," he grunted, getting back up and walking toward her, fists raised up, but he stopped and coughed again. "I'll kill you… I'll kill you… No place for me… Not with Father… My siblings…who look down upon me…being weak… Not anywhere because of you two… Kill you… Kill you…"

Bardiel then fell to the floor, coughing and crying until he passed out in front of Akira, who sighed at how hurt this boy must've been, both physically…and emotionally.

She picked him up and carried him to a doctor.

-x-

With the setting of the sun, Rumi crawled out from under the bushes and left the garden area, walking back into the hospital and stepping into an elevator.

"Oh!" She gasped at the sight of Shinji, whom she had assumed was back in his room by now since more than a hour had past since she left to be by herself. "Hey."

"Hey, Rumi," he greeted back, though it was very weak compared to his earlier meet with her. "You were out in the garden the whole time?"

She leaned against the left wall of the elevator and answered, "Yeah."

"You know, I still wanted to know what it was you wanted to ask me before you left," he told her. "You had me concerned about where you disappeared off to. Even Akira was looking for you. Of course, she told me to go back to my room, but…like I was going to listen and not look for you? And then there was… Hey, are you alright?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."

"You're a terrible liar, Rumi."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. And I still want to know what it was you wanted to ask me. I already found out about a harsh truth that I'm putting behind me, so I'd like to know something that's a little new."

There was no escaping this time for Rumi. The elevator door was closed…and neither of them had selected a floor to go to. Nobody even knew where they were unless they got to this elevator.

"Well, I… What I wanted to ask you was… Are you seeing anyone?"

Okay, thought Shinji after hearing this, I wasn't expecting to hear that from her.

She waited for his response.

"No, Rumi," he answered her, "I'm not…seeing anyone. Since when is my…lack of a romantic life…something of interest to you? Is there someone trying to connect with me that you've seen?"

"If they laid so much as a finger on you, I'd use my swords to disable them," Rumi muttered.

"Okay, somebody's a little overprotective."

"Gee, what gave that away?"

"Rumi, I doubt there's anybody I'll find for myself in the future that's closing for me."

"I'd give you that future unbound," she muttered.

"Huh?"

"There's bound to be somebody out there that would care about you like that, Shinji."

That's when Shinji had to ask a serious question of his own to her.

"Rumi, are you attracted to me?"

She looked up at him and asked, "In what sort of way?"

"In that sort of way." He asked again, noticing that she gave him a look that seemed unlike the other looks she gave; it bordered on some sort of desire.

"Oh. Very direct, I see." She said, and pressed a button to take them back to the cancer ward.

"Heh-heh-heh… Come on, I'm joking, Rumi," he told her. "What about that guy that you're speaking with much of the time when you're not here? I'm sure he's attracted to you a lot. I mean, you're beautiful, you're funny…adorable."

"He has yet to tell me something I'd like to hear from him," Rumi told him. "I'd like to hear from him, directly from his mouth, who it is that he loves the most. That's what I'd like to hear from him."

As the elevator stopped to indicate that they reached their level, Shinji responded, "Good things come to those that wait, Rumi, so maybe you need to be a little more patient before the guy tells you who it is that he loves…"

Before the doors opened, Rumi leapt up and grabbed her nephew's head…and locked her lips with his. His eyes widened before they lowered as he let go of his IV pole to hold her. But when the doors opened, she let go of him and he set her down on the floor…and watched her sigh as she turned to walk away from him, disbelieving that she had done that to him, overstepping her boundaries as his aunt.

"Are you seeing anyone, Shinji? I'd like to hear from you who it is that you love the most." Her words echoed in his mind, as his left hand raised up to touch his lips, which had warmed up some. "Would you still like me for me, Shinji?"

But… Rumi went and… That was my… My first kiss. She was my first. He realized, with some disbelief.

-x-

While some of the NERV people were getting the right idea to abandon the Geo-Front, many that weren't trying to, and attempted to try and hope that Unit-04 and its pilot could deal with Zeruel, seeing that Commander Ikari was unwilling to request the aid of his former relatives after the stunt he pulled in the last battle. But Zeruel was not someone to be trifled with and expect no repercussions; every time the Eva tried something, the Angel demonstrated that it lived up to its designation as one of strength by knocking the Eva down with its ribbons or whatever they were, mocking these Lilin for their inferior abilities and flawed existence.

"Thirty-eight minutes since I set the time in which it takes to clear the place," he taunted NERV HQ, "and you show persistence in trying to stop me? I am being merciful here, and you fail to see that?"

As the repeated attempts to activate Units-01 and 02 continued to fail, Kozo, accepting that this Angel was indeed being very merciful in allowing them to vacate the facility before he buried it under tons of rubble that would take months, perhaps years, even, to clear, and he slowly left out Central Dogma to reach for his cell phone and dial the number of his savior to inform her of what was going to happen once this Angel's task here was over and done with. While he didn't blame Akira for what this Angel was doing, he felt that she should at least be warned.

Ikari, if this is the fate we were dealt with, then it truly is your fault for what happened in the last battle, he thought, dialing the number of Akira.

"Hello, this is Akira Rokubungi," he heard her voice on the other end. "I'm not available at the moment, but if you leave a message, I'll be sure to get back to you as soon as I can. Bye."

BEEP! It was her voice machine, but Kozo decided to leave a message, probably his last message.

"Akira, it's Kozo Fuyutsuki," he started. "My, uh…job is experiencing a bit of a…crisis of giant proportions. I don't really blame you for this sort of thing that's happening, but I think that you should know that once the situation's been taken care of here, the problem's going to come seeking you and Rumi. At least this problem's being a bit merciful in allowing people to leave before it buries us in the next few minutes. It'll probably end this at nine-sixteen, as it showed up at eight-sixteen. If we're never to meet again, I'll entrust you with saving the world as I once had faith in you to help me with my bully problems when I was twelve."

Once he hung up, he ran for it. He ran as far as his legs would take him to get away from the Geo-Front, to the city above, to safety, and away from the damnation of being buried alive.

Elsewhere in the Geo-Front, Ryoji Kaji spent what was probably the last few minutes of his life watering a watermelon patch. While he wanted to believe that this Angel would get dealt with by the Angelbreaker instead of the Evas, there was something in the back of his mind telling him to not get his hopes up after hearing what had happened in Gendo's office between Akira and him. And with what occurred in the last battle, it was safe for him to say that it wasn't even a battle…but more like a near-massacre that almost took the lives of one of her daughters and her twelve-year-old granddaughter.

Less than eighteen minutes now, he thought, looking at the Angel that seemed to actually have the patience of waiting for those that got the message to leave to the surface. This Angel must be, by far, the only one with some respect for people to wait that long for them to leave. Ikari's certainly not going to stand for this, though. He's probably still trying to get Unit-01 and Unit-02 to accept the Dummy Plug System and fight.

True to his belief, Gendo Ikari, or Gendo Mu, as his real last name was known by the lesser people now, was trying to get Unit-01 to activate time and again with the Dummy System, but with no success in sight or grasp.

It's not working, he thought, unable to contemplate why this was so; he was sure that once the system was completed, there was further need to use the pilots any further in dealing with the Angels, but now this was happening…and Unit-01 hadn't even been the first to use the Dummy Plug. Why is it rejecting the Dummy Plug… Why is it rejecting me? What are you thinking…Yui?

-x-

Opening his eyes to the sight of a blue ceiling that looked like a surrealistic afternoon sky, complete with clouds, the disgraced Bardiel shook his head a little to clear his mind of random thoughts…and found himself somewhere he probably shouldn't have been. He was in some kind of room, sparse and only possessing several items that were actually needed: There was a heart monitor, a medical bed, two chairs, and a bedpan.

"What in the name of…" He said, groggily, raising his arms up, only to find that they were covered in straps and tied to the bed he was on. "What is this?!"

Not only was he restrained, his clothes had been removed, placed with blue and white garments. He lifted the shirt piece up and found that his chest had been bandaged, meaning the injury that girl that wasn't a girl gave him had been tended to.

"Oh, you're awake now," he turned to the right side of the room and saw a man entering the door. "How are you feeling?"

Bardiel didn't answer him, and instead tried to rip his arms away from the straps that tied him down.

"Where's that bitch?!" He demanded. "The old one!"

The doctor frowned and sighed, "You mean Akira, the town leader who asked me to watch you while she left to see your siblings to find out what she could about you."

Bardiel still persisted in try to get loose, but the doctor informed him that before his injuries had been mended, he was injected with a numbing agent that would keep his body calm for a few hours; earlier, the boy had come to from his light nap caused by his lack of rest and medical aid…and he had kicked back several nurses that were trying to help calm him down.

"What is this place?" He asked, giving up on trying to get free.

"You're in the hospital," the doctor answered. "The ward assigned to handle injuries belonging to preadolescent children, to be precise. You had a seven-inch slash wound that had gotten infected some time ago and needed to be treated. I think you're lucky to be alive."

"More like unlucky! I was better off near dead than to living another day like this!" Bardiel expressed his contempt at being human like these people.

"It's still the same day you tried to fight Akira and passed out from your malnutrition and nervous system imbalance," the doctor told him. "And you were dirty, too. Many people wouldn't hesitate to try and take a shot at the leader of the town, but you… You didn't stand a chance against her, not in that condition…and certainly not at your physical age. You must be nine or ten years old, based on appearance, which makes you, like yours sisters, Kou and Otsu Israfel, very fortunate to be much younger than your older siblings."

"What siblings? I can't call them my siblings. I can't even talk with them. I don't care about them." Bardiel told him. "If you put us in the same room, you'll find that we don't have anything in common and we don't tolerate each other. They don't tolerate me for me."

"Sibling rivalry?"

"I'm the weak one. The failure, the disgrace. I was cast out."

As the doctor sat down to engage him in further conversation, at the rehabilitation center, Akira was less than disgusted with the other humanized Angels and their, apparent, lack of concern for their younger brother, Bardiel.

"…We cast him out of the family a long time ago," said Sachiel to her, sitting in his cell on his cot. "It was long before Lilith ever arrived."

"He had issues," said Ramiel to her from within his own cell. "When we were younger… When we were still ourselves, he could never maintain a physical shape for a long time. He existed as dust or something we couldn't see or feel at times. Unlike some of our other siblings that didn't live well enough and died, he clung to life, but could barely cling to whatever it was that he existed as and take on a proper shape. Father wouldn't look at him, and he embarrassed us with his presence."

"Father wouldn't even speak with him, like he wasn't worth talking to…if you consider talking with something that you couldn't see or feel as talking." Akira turned to face the largest brother, Sahaquiel. "We told him to leave us alone, never to bother us again. He's, what you would refer to as, a black sheep. He was the weakest link in the chain."

Shamshel, the Israfel Twins, and Gaghiel wouldn't say anything because Akira knew that what they would say would be no different from what she just heard.

"So…just because he had no body of his own to take on, because he often had to possess others to do something, you abandoned him?" She asked them. "And then the Second Impact came, and he was the last person to ever find out what became of Adam, and waited for an opportunity to do something he felt he could do…and not be looked down upon."

"Honestly, we expected him to have died when the impact happened," Kou Israfel expressed.

"While you guys were set on getting revenge on Rumi after Sachiel was defeated, he must've saw an opportunity to do what you had placed on hold, which was to find Adam and set him free. He must've believed that if he could do what you couldn't, what you wouldn't until my daughter was dealt with, he would replace y'all as Adam's favorite. So…ignoring Rumi in favor of his own goal wasn't just a choice for him, it was his only chance to change things." Akira realized, understanding the Humiliated Son of God a little better.

"So, what are you going to do with him?" Shamshel asked her, wondering if Bardiel was going to be placed in a cell like they had been in here.

"For the time being, he's on the mend at the hospital," Akira explained, "but after that… I may suggest that he stays there for possible therapy. I can't really picture him being here at the moment."

Shamshel then said, "Well, that's good to know."

Akira then left the rehabilitation center, pondering how to deal with Bardiel later on when he recovered from the injury that Rei Ayanami gave him…and the pain he's had to deal with emotionally for millions of years before Lilith ever showed up and forced Adam into the darkness of eternal slumber.

-x-

An hour had finally come to pass, and when Zeruel saw the Eva getting back to fight again, despite the hopelessness there was in doing so, he felt the urge to laugh at the Lilin's stupidity. This was a hollow victory for him, hollow because his father wasn't there to see his greatest triumph against these wretched children of Lilith, and a victory because Lilith, who was here, was going to get buried for a long time as payback for what she did to Adam.

Time…to un-mine that which was mined, he thought, and channeled much of his power in creating explosions into the ground, sending a massive series of explosions that caused the ground to tremble!

Unit-04 fell to its knees and got stuck in a fissure and saw as the NERV pyramid fell two feet into the ground, its glass windows shattering from the force.

The inside of the base trembled as the people remaining fell to the ground and the lights went out, only coming back on as the emergency power kicked in. The Eva cages were busted up as Unit-01 and Unit-02 remained perfectly still while Gendo fell down. Central Dogma retained some stability as Misato got back up to her feet and requested, rather pathetically, a damage report.

"Ohh…most of the lower levels are trashed," Aoba announced, holding his bleeding head in his left hand. "It looks like Terminal Dogma's the worst. All other lower levels above that one…just fell into it. It's buried under several tons of concrete, steel and Bakelite."

"That'll take a long time to dig out," said Ritsuko, blood trailing from her bandaged head down to her cheeks. "A real long time."

With his work now done, Zeruel gathered his bearings and left the Geo-Front, no longer interested in the place now that he made sure that Lilith would remain buried for quite a long while. But, as he floated away from the city, he was unaware of a little person watching him leave into the air.

The defeated must band together to embrace freedom and balance, thought the individual, and they walked what was probably a long walk away from the city and into the wilderness.

-x-

I wonder if he told any of them, thought Rumi, as everyone sat at the table to eat dinner. I did do something out of line and left him in the elevator.

If there was any indication that the family knew about what Rumi did to Shinji earlier today, nobody gave a hint at it. Akira seemed to have her mind on other things and nobody else seemed to know anything out of place.

"Akira?" Taeko asked. "Did you see anybody new at the hospital today?"

"Yeah," Akira answered. "It was a boy."

"Was he dressed in black and looked like a hunchback?"

Akira nearly dropped her chopsticks at hearing that question, but maintained her calm and said, "Yes, Taeko. He was dressed in black…and was a hunchback. Why do you ask?"

"I saw somebody like that outside the house earlier before the sun went down," she explained.

"I thought she was imagining things," said Miaka. "I didn't see anybody."

Rumi then suspected that, it was possible that what Shinji heard from last night was quite true from the Ayanami girl, that the humanized Angels still retained some part of them from when they were giant monsters with remarkable powers. But she couldn't prove of this…as that was just a possibility.

"Hey, Nemo, what was it that Camille wanted to show you earlier this afternoon?" Shinobu asked her younger brother.

"It was just a talisman she had acquired five years ago," he answered her. "She's got her grandmother's fascination with the ancient histories of the world. Buying from and selling artifacts to people."

"She buys and sells?" Akira questioned, suspicious now.

"Of course, nothing that's, potentially, dangerous or whatnot," Nemo explained. "She's got set limits."

"She owns that antique shop by one of the geothermal power plants, doesn't she?" Akira chuckled.

"Yeah. The Treasure Temple. Of course, it's more like an overgrown storage building filled with relics that are from other places." Nemo said, while uncomfortable with saying so.

"Maybe I should visit it tomorrow," Akira suggested. "I may find something I like. Does she have a contact number?"

It doesn't seem like they know what I did, thought Rumi, as she continued to eat her dinner. It…felt good. It felt right to me. I liked what I did to him in the elevator.

Once dinner was over, Akira said she was heading back to the hospital. Rumi would've asked to go, as well, but Nemo beat her to it, so she went to her room, looking at her reflection in the mirror. She looked no different from the previous day, though her cheeks had a small tinge of pink to them.

You kissed him, she thought, raising her left hand up to her reflection. That must mean it's obvious to your little heart. You can't deny it, anymore. You're obsessed with your nephew…and you're in love with him.

She unbraided her hair and changed out of her clothes.

"He's probably disgusted, though," she sighed, climbing into bed.

-x-

'Disgusted' was a word that wasn't in Shinji's vocabulary when it came to his relationship with Rumi. Every now and then, he would lift his right hand to his lips, feeling the warmth that was still there after Rumi kissed him. 'Surprised', however, was a word in his vocabulary. Surprised because she asked him if he was seeing anybody, surprised because she jumped up and locked her lips with his, and surprised because he held onto her when she jumped at him and leaned into the kiss. It also made him curious and suspicious to the previous days when she ignored him and then came two days later when Sahaquiel was defeated from trying to destroy much of the island to get rid of her. What made some sense to him was what she had told him in the dream they were having together that night she came to see him, about the guy she said she was meeting with every now and then.

I should've known that it was me, he thought, putting two and two together. She views me as her companion. I'm the guy that she talks to…but is also distant with. And she actually finds me attractive?

Grumble! His stomach growled; it had been almost three hours since he last ate, reminding himself that with the loss of his kidneys, consumption and digestion had to be controlled by the medical practices. He ignored his body's need for food. His mind still wondered how it was so that his youngest aunt had fallen for him. Something like that had to be considered impossible; Rumi had just turned six last month, got picked to help save the world by a piece of jewelry with tremendous power that only the chosen ones could use, was singled out by a girl that detested her and him, and surely had developed other problems that were her own and not directly involved with people they didn't know or trusted.

My wish for her must've been confusing to the gods, he thought, still wondering how this had happened. I wished for her to meet somebody…but I didn't mean myself. And then, there's the age gap; I'm eight years older than her, and that's cradle robbing…and it's also that word I can't remember that's considered wrong for relatives.

He reached around his neck and pulled out his locket again; in the six minutes where his heart had stopped beating, he had a pseudo-death grip on it and wouldn't let go no matter how hard the nurses tried to take it. It was like a talisman of sorts that did its best to keep him earthbound to his existence because he didn't want to leave so soon yet. For someone who didn't want to continue living at the possible expense of one of his relatives' life, he certainly had a fear of dying too soon. He gripped his locket tightly; to lose it was to lose a part of himself that was incapable of being replaced of its sentimental value and relief.

-x-

The loss of access to Terminal Dogma wasn't the only thing that left Gendo infuriated over what the Angel did. Access to the Dummy Plug Plant, where all the other spares were kept, was near-impossible, as it was close enough to Terminal Dogma to be destroyed. The old labs, like the one where a previous Unit-00 was being tested and later reconfigured into the present-day Unit-01, were also either sealed off or totaled, the dumping groups, which had been a graveyard of sorts for failed Evangelion prototypes in the beginning, had become larger with the other levels falling into it, and the revelation of why Unit-01 was rejecting the Dummy Plug was still fresh in his mind.

A boy, physically maimed over time, yet still alive, someone he didn't know at all, showed up on the monitors around him. It was Shinji, both with and without his wig…and his youngest aunt was with him, either holding his hand or just standing beside him. But this, while it surprised Gendo, left him with a rage that he had expressed toward Akira earlier.

Even when he's gone, he's a hindrance, he thought, very fortunate that his office was intact, except for the cracked windows.

But even worse than all of that…was the slowly-humanizing Adam embryo was now missing, implying that what the Angel, Zeruel, had spoken of was true, that the presence of the First Angel had left during the crisis. It might have even been possible that Adam, due to the last Angel's humanization, had mutated enough to have regained his mobility and allow himself the pleasure of getting away.

That hag, he thought, letting a small candle on his desk burn blue in his dark office. That worthless, old, young hag!

Although there was no evidence to even support that Akira knew about the presence of Adam to try and take him, he blamed her and Rumi for his disappearance, as well, like how he blamed the damages Zeruel did to the Geo-Front on them. Someway, somehow, he was going to make them pay for his loss of control over everything, and when he did, he was going to make them beg for mercy.

-x-

The night air didn't help to settle Akira's nerves right now. Instead, it just made her uneasy traveling down the street with Nemo.

Nemo was atop a stonewall on his hands, maintaining perfect equilibrium while keeping pace with his mother, whom he noticed wasn't very happy.

"Pebble for your concerns, Akira?" He asked her.

She looked up at him and nodded in the negative.

That didn't stop him from wanting to help her and said, "Five pounds worth of pebbles, my last offer."

She looked at him again, but this time chuckled and said, "You persistent otaku."

"So I'm told."

"Heh… You remember what I said happened at the hospital? The boy that came to see me?"

"Bardiel. I remember."

"I feel sorry for him."

"Why?"

"Not for his human state, but for the way his family treated him long ago. How do you help someone others look down upon because they clung to their life…but not in the way they were expected to and live differently from others? His own father, Adam, wouldn't even look at him or talk to him much of his life. Then, as a means to spare themselves the dignity of their pride as former immortals…or as close to immortal as they could've been, Bardiel was exiled by his older siblings. And then, when he hears of his father's situation, he, unlike his siblings after Sachiel was dealt with temporarily, ignores the calling of the Angelbreaker to try and find his father in the hopes of becoming his favorite child. Unfortunately, Rumi and I had a reason to go back to Tokyo-3 and prevented him from finding his father because we had to protect two of our own from harm that was probably setup by Gendo, deliberately. I don't know which is more disturbingly painful about Bardiel: Him being the only Angel I've ever dealt with being the one that seems to be in the most pain…or that he seems to have a similar history as Shinji."

Nemo could understand; the Humiliated Son of God did have a little in common with his nephew, being that both clung to life…and had fathers that didn't think about them.

"Can I say something about the siblings that are associated with Bardiel?" He asked her.

"Go ahead."

"I never did believe they were a well-off bunch. Surely, they had their share of problems, and rivalry and competition are a factor in their lives. But this Bardiel… He's probably hated his siblings ever since he was sent away…maybe more than he likely hated any of us for merely living. And with his father, Adam, I'd compare the both of them to Gollum and the One Ring."

"Why?"

"Because of what was said in Peter Jackson's first film in his trilogy of The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, that Gollum, due to his extended lifespan and possessing the One Ring, couldn't get rid of his twisted need for it. As Gandalf himself said in the film, Gollum hated and loved the Ring…as he hated and loved himself. So the same must apply to Bardiel with his own father: He hates his father…but wants his love…as he hates himself…and wants to be loved. But I can't say the same for Shinji, who stopped looking for that creep long ago."

Shinji hated him for discarding him…and had a shred of hope that he would come see him, Akira thought to herself. But that hope was lost forever. He couldn't keep hoping that one day, that…that man…would just say the words that should've been said instead of the words he'd chosen to say. They've never even had one meaningful conversation with each other. He never did one meaningful thing with Shinji. Every meaningful thing he ever did or experienced…was achieved through the people that love him for him, as a person and nothing else that's demeaning to a person. Gendo, you monster. How do you live with yourself for your sins?

Their walk up and down some of the small hills that led them to the hospital was less than soothing now. It seemed that, at the very moment, there really were two boys with poor excuses for fathers.

-x-

August Fifteenth showed up and Rumi, still in bed, sighed over how her night of rest left her with a nightmare that was just as terrible as the one she had where her nephew's funeral happened. She saw Shinji laying in a luscious field of flowers, wearing his hospital clothing, as well as she'd seen him in some of her other dreams, but what was so bad about it was that she was less than eight feet from him…and was unable to go to him. It wasn't because there was somebody else with him or anything to spark some sort of hostility, but because Rumi's legs wouldn't budge from where she stood. She wanted to go to him, to lay next to him and talk to him, but her body wouldn't respond to her desire. And even if she had, what would she have said to him to start a conversation?

I'd probably still be wondering if he told anyone about my kissing him, she thought, looking over at her counter dresser where she had placed her hook swords because she was too tired to set them in her closet. He probably thinks I'm a disgusting little girl. But the only way I'll know for sure is to see him again and talk about it.

Rising from her bed, she unintentionally placed her right hand onto her mouth, letting her fingertips feel the softness of her lips…and the warmth that was still there. She had been reminded of a tasty aroma she enjoyed, which was cherry-laced sushi, something special to savor. She hadn't thought that he'd eaten something like that; the hospital cafeteria rarely cooked sushi meals of selective varieties for the patients or visitors.

"Heh-heh-heh!" She heard a laughter from outside her window, which was odd, considering that nobody, unless gifted with the power over the grounds and winds, should be anywhere near where her room's window was located, because the patch of ground outside it was relatively small…and a large rolling fall down the rocky expanse until you hit a tree or a building, and even that would've left a person in pain.

At first, she wanted to assume it was Taeko, who was blessed with Geo Channeling, but even with her skills advancing a little since Shinji was in the hospital where his health wouldn't be compromised by potential danger caused by training, she couldn't manipulate the rocks in the same degree as the older, more experienced Geo Channelers could. And then there was the laughter itself; it sounded unlike anybody Rumi was familiar with laughing, as it was too old to be any young child's…and too young to be any adult's.

Deciding not to dress up in her room, she grabbed her choice of clothing for the day and left out her room, closing the door and heading toward the bathroom.

I wonder what gave myself away a little? The twisted Rei Ayanami wondered; she was unable to enter the residence of the Rokubungi family, but she could move about around the estate. Enjoy your life while you still can, little girl…because it won't be long before you lose it.

-x-

Burp! Shinji had covered his mouth as he'd just finished his breakfast.

"Excuse me," he uttered, and handed the emptied bowl of porridge to Akira, who looked a little restless at the moment.

She looked at him, and the same thought repeated in her mind ever since she woke up: Shinji seemed incapable of producing loud noises of insanity from his mouth. The reason behind this thought was due to her nightmare last night, an overactive imagination of a 'what if' possibility revolving around her grandson's health, physical and mental. The sight of his nigh-fragile body seemed like a contrast to the way he looked in her dream, which was that of a healthy young man…whose mind had become so fragile by horrible events that his hold on his sanity was shattered beyond any shred of salvation. Of course, the sight of what he was looking at in her dream was probable as a breaking point for his sanity, which was the sight of the red Unit-02 Evangelion being carried in the sky by these strange, white, vulture-like creatures that had, possibly, disemboweled and dismembered the Eva to pieces. For Akira, it was disturbingly gross.

"Akira?" Shinji had asked, breaking her from her train of thought.

"Huh?" She asked him.

"You're thinking about your nightmare again, aren't you?" He asked her.

"Yeah. I'm sorry," she sighed, and then chuckled. "Fantasies. They get to you."

"Yeah," he responded, though it seemed a little hollow, "they do."

"Shinji, is it alright if I ask you a personal question?"

"Sure."

"Do… Do I look a little older to you sometimes?" She asked.

Shinji turned his head for a moment and then turned back to respond to her question.

"Sometimes," he answered her, "but that's only when I imagine so. I envision you as a bit older, but not so old as to not be able to handle yourself. The hair's a little gray in places…the skin displaying a few wrinkles…but you still being the same as you always do. Probably your early-fifties, but still in good shape. That's what I imagine you as sometimes. But, in honest, personal opinion, I think you look better as you do right now. You have an inner beauty that matches your personality…along with a very rational conscious that forbids the very possibility of ending one's life. And…I still thank you for saving me years ago when I almost made the wrong choice outta my broken heart."

Akira recalled that night, as well, saving him from taking those sleeping pills.

"You know, I still recall how hard you hit me when I grabbed you," she told him, chuckling. "You kicked and screamed like some of your uncles from the past did when they threw fits of anger."

"Heh-heh. I was more energetic back then." He told her. "And you still didn't think that I hurt Rumi?"

"Somehow, I think that if you were able to hit me any harder than that, Rumi would've informed me a short time after that night."

-x-

Whether he had the straps on him or not, Bardiel, more or less, slept better last night than he did the previous night. He felt better, too; the bandages didn't irritate his injury as much and his muscles felt relaxed. If anything, physically, he was tamed.

"…Hello, Mr. Hunchback Boy," he heard somebody say, and he turned to his right, seeing a little redhead girl by the door with a small smile; it was the same girl that he saw up on the mountain.

"You," he uttered, "the girl from the mountain."

She walked over to his bed and sat in the chair next to it.

"Taeko," she told him. "My name is Taeko. I heard your name was Bardiel. It's…nice to finally see you mending."

Bardiel then raised his arms up to show the straps that kept him from, potentially, hurting others and uttered, "If you're here to poke fun at me just 'cause I'm restrained, I don't find this funny."

"Un-uh! I don't poke fun at people in pain," said Taeko. "I had to come see you and know that you were alright. You didn't look well when we met the first time. To be honest… I worried about you…and I don't even know you."

She…worried about me? He thought, not understanding why anybody, especially a member of Lilith's successors, would be concerned about him.

Outside the room, Bumi, because his daughter asked to see this humanized Angel, chuckled at the very possibility of what this Bardiel needed right now: A friend.

Maybe that's what he needs the most, he thought, having suggested to Akira personally that maybe a humanized Angel like Bardiel needed someone to talk to that was around his physical age instead of an elder that spent several hours in a day talking to children, and Taeko seemed like the proper candidate.

-x-

"Hey, hey," went Rumi, greeting Shinji, who was looking at his scrapbook.

He looked up at her and responded, "Yo, Rumi."

The girl took a step into the room…but then stepped back out, her expression that of discontent.

"Um, Rumi?" He asked her.

"You…you have to say it," she told him, her discontent expressed in her tone, "that I can come in."

He set aside the book and said, "You can come in, Rumi."

She stepped back inside and sat in the chair. During her walk to the hospital, she was uneasy with the fact that she was going to ask him a direct question about what she did to him the other day. And as her mother had left to attend to other matters, this left them alone, able to have some privacy necessary to converse about things.

"Shinji," she started, "about the other day…"

"You were my first, Rumi," he cut her off quietly.

"What?"

"My first kiss," he explained. "You were the first one to kiss me on the lips."

The little girl gave a small chuckle as she placed her left hand onto her lips again, but then returned to her serious state of emotion to express that she overstepped her boundaries again.

"I overstepped my boundaries toward you…again," she stated. "Last night, during dinner, I had expected you would've told Mother what I had done, but nobody brought it up."

"That's because I didn't tell her. I didn't tell anyone about what had happened between us in the elevator." He revealed; during his return to his room, his entire resting hours were devoted to thinking about his relationship with his young aunt. "I couldn't, really. But why, Rumi? Why…me?"

She lowered her head to her lap and answered, "You're the one I hold closest to my heart. And…I'd do nearly anything for you. I'd give nearly anything for you."

"And…if I were to ask you not to think about me in that regard? Only 'if', not 'actually'."

"I couldn't. I wouldn't. It's either you…or no one."

"Rumi, I'm inadequate, used up, an antique."

"That doesn't matter to me. You call yourself an antique, I'd rather you be my antique. You say you're 'in a rat with cake', and I say differently."

"Heh-heh! 'In-ad-e-quate', Rumi."

"They sound the same to me."

Shinji gave up on teaching her how to pronounce the word he used to say that he wasn't worth her romantic affections and returned to the problem they were in.

"But…how can you tell if what you feel is true or not?" He asked her.

"I don't," she responded, unable to look him in the eye. "How does anyone know?"

Shinji couldn't answer her; he didn't know, either, and if he did, he assumed it wouldn't be fair to anyone, not even her, if he said it.

Did the kami go and twist my wish for her to meet somebody she needed as a companion for as long as she needed to mess with me? He wondered. Or did I wish for too much for such a little person that keeps the Grim Reaper away from my door.

"I don't think they were messing with you," Rumi uttered, "and I don't believed that you wished for too much on me."

Shinji looked at her and then Rumi herself wondered how she had read his mind like that, and then both had looked at her bracelet-adorned wrist.

"Sorry," she apologized to her nephew. "I should've taken this off before I came in."

Outside the room, unknown to them, Akira, using her small half-truth of attending to other matters in order to eavesdrop on their conversation, simply because of her maternal instincts, listened in on them.

She then felt somebody's hand on her back and turned to see who it was.

Miaka, who had intended to see the boy that her daughter had seen earlier before he was admitted to the hospital, had decided to come check up on her only nephew and found her mother-in-law on the floor by the door, listening in on the kids.

"What are you doing?" She asked, using hand gestures and some sign language.

Responding through said gestures and language, Akira said, "Need to know what is going on between my grandson and my little girl."

Then, as a little joke and stress reliever, Miaka gestured, "Do you suspect that our Little Rumi is trying to convince Shinji to take one of her kidneys so that he doesn't depart?"

Akira nodded in the negative that that wasn't the case, and then made the heart sign and pointed toward the room.

Miaka pulled her head back and looked toward the wall which the room was behind.

"Are you sure?" She gestured.

Akira nodded in the positive and then pointed Miaka away.

She frowned and gave her an mock-offended smirk before leaving.

"…Tell me something, though," she heard Rumi say to Shinji. "If…if I wasn't little…or if you weren't sick…or if that girl didn't have a personal hit out on me…would you…"

Rumi stopped at that moment and Akira was left wondering if she was hesitating or if Shinji was looking at her daughter with an expression that was bordering on negativity.

"Gomen, Shinji," Rumi then spoke out. "That was an unfair question. Forget I asked."

The next thing Akira knew, some of the people walking around down the hall were moving faster than they should've been, like a frenzy was upon them.

"Everybody to the shelters in an orderly fashion, please!" One of the nurses had requested to the patients, leading them down the hall.

"The monster's gonna eat us!" A little boy cried out.

A monster? Akira thought, realizing that it had to have been another of Adam's children, since, now that Bardiel had been humanized, that left three of them left that hadn't been humanized; two sisters…and one brother. Oh, Kami.

As she left to avoid being seen by her daughter and found out for eavesdropping, Rumi, who had heard the warning bells from outside with Shinji, sighed as she got up off her seat.

"Rumi," Shinji stopped her from leaving out the door as the security arrived to escort him out. "Will you… I mean, would you give me until tomorrow to give you an answer?"

She looked at him and nodded in the positive.

"Good luck out there," he cheered her on.

"Arigato," she responded and left to deal with the new enemy.

-x-

Zeruel never feared the power of the Angelbreaker directly. He knew that allowing himself to be humanized on purpose would be a choice that would follow him to his grave, but he never had any doubts that he was going to suffer immensely for it. As he arrived in the small town, he felt the immense energy given off by the Angelbreaker calling him to his lesser doom. Oh, how he hated the talisman that, despite being less of what it used to be, reminded him of that bitch he had just put under several tons of whatever it was that made up her home.

The people were abandoning the streets due to the mere sight of him; while he wasn't as large as Sahaquiel or Ramiel, his status was higher than any of his siblings, and it was a good reason it was, for he was the first to be born. Zeruel was the oldest and most powerful of Adam's children, thus earning the designation of being Adam's favorite.

"Oh, man," said Akira, looking up at the approaching Angel, her cell phone in her hand. "Do they know who this one is?"

"According to Shamshel, this one is Zeruel, and, believe it or not, Akira, he's their big brother. I mean their big, big brother." One of the staff at the rehabilitation center informed her.

"Yeah, I can see why?" She responded.

"Uh, Mama?" Rumi asked. "Is it too late for me to go to the bathroom?"

As she hung up, Akira answered, "It's too late for the both of us to go to the bathroom, Rumi."

The Angelbreaker then covered their bodies in armor that seemed more powerful than the previous ones they wore: While still retaining the same color scheme and scaly details, the armor around their torsos and legs was heavier in appearance, like the type of armor you see on a tank or navy ship.

"Something tells me that this guy's gonna be a winner, honey," Akira told her daughter, her tone that of the ones used during the battles of Ramiel and Sahaquiel.

"Yeah," agreed Rumi, whose tone was similar. "Maybe he'll do it for us this time. The others sure didn't do it for us."

Zeruel hovered outside the town, almost touching the ground if not for the fact that he was three feet above it, and he looked down at the two that the talisman had chosen to bring his younger siblings down to their level of existence. While he knew that it was going to happen to him, he wasn't afraid of the choice he had made. If anything, the drive to put down the little girl had strengthened his resolve to restore the pride and dignity of the Angels.

As his face contorted again, he spoke out, "Will fate be wise and kind…or will it maim?"

Rumi and Akira looked at each other before sighing and raising their right arms up and unleashing streams of energy at him.

"It'll maim," they said in unison, watching as the Angel of Might twisted and turned as it writhed in agony over its humanization, "and it'll be kind to leave you unscathed."

As his mummy-like appearance, since he wrapped himself up prior to arriving, began to melt away as his body shifted from his personal form to that of his new shape, one bound by the limitations of its opposing race, Zeruel simply did what the Lilin were often criticized for doing, which was to go with the flow, letting his forced transformation happen instead of resisting. Falling to the ground, shrinking before he could even cause any damage to the buildings around him, he fell to the streets in front of his enemies, now in a humanoid state that quickly took on the qualities of a human. He was about the height of a man that was nearly eight feet, dressed in a cloak made of rags or bandages that gave the impression that he took toilet paper with him wherever he went.

Lowering their arms to their sides, Rumi turned to Akira and said, "I don't like this one. He didn't even try to resist."

"Likewise," Akira agreed, watching as the now-human Zeruel got up onto his feet; the guy was about eight feet in height.

Removing the raggedy cloak, Zeruel revealed his new form: A lean, well-muscled man with a pale, bone-like complexion, looking well into his late-thirties, eyes of dark, raw hate and a face that could rival the Incredible Hulk in terms of expression. His only clothing, excluding his raggedy cloak, was a pair of raggedy, baggy gray pants and boots. The core, which was the proof that he was a former Angel, hadn't gone anywhere; it was the size of a baseball and looking like it had been embedded into his chest, right in between his ribcage bones. You could see the veins of his muscles pulsate with each breath he took…and every muscle he flexed.

"And I had almost thought my choice would be the end of me," they heard him say, raising his arms up as he examined himself. "I might actually enjoy this…if it means getting rid of a little problem that causes a lot of annoyance."

Akira then got a bad vibe that this former Angel had willingly allowed himself to be humanized. If the loss of many of his former strengths meant the opportunity to deal in death to her daughter was something of a sacrifice this Angel was willing to pay, then it was a bold risk he took to do so, and it would explain why the Angelbreaker created different armor for them.

Zeruel then demonstrated his new body's strength by punching his right arm right into the fender of a nearby electric automobile…and lifted it up off the ground!

"Huh?!" Rumi gasped; the other Angels never did anything like this before.

"Whoa!" Akira added in, surprised. "Rumi, I think we need to reevaluate on how to deal with him."

Then Zeruel threw the car toward them, and watched them jump out of the way.

"Heh…heh-heh…heh-ha-ha! Ah-ha-ha!" Zeruel laughed; he hadn't expected to be able to throw the car at them, even at the loss of his other abilities. "Shall we begin?"

Rumi looked up after avoiding his assault and saw him coming toward her, and quickly got up and conjured a bo staff; her martial arts skills were directed more around a sword, so her proficiency in the use of other weapons was very limited. She thrust the staff at him, hitting his waist, halting his advance toward her, but all he did was grab the staff…and lifted her up into the air in front of him.

"Oh!" She gasped, having not let go of the weapon to begin with.

"To think that a damn piece of jewelry chose you to deal with my lesser siblings," he told her, not reacting in the slightest degree to the flesh of his hands burning from the contact of the created weapon of the Angelbreaker. "Good riddance to you, little girl."

Using his right hand, he punched Rumi hard in her chest, sending her flying backwards to where her mother had caught her, seeing that the armor surrounding her chest had been nearly dented with the knuckles of his hand.

"Okay," went Rumi, sounding okay, "getting sent flying backwards like that was a little unpleasant."

Setting her daughter down, Akira needed to ask, "Okay, are you hurt anywhere?"

"No, but he's gonna need to experience pain."

Zeruel didn't think that a hard punch like his would allow for the girl that tarnished his family status to survive, but chalked it up to the Angelbreaker negating the brunt of his attack; the armor was hard, but it carried a semblance of flesh.

"My hands," they heard him say, as he examined his palms. "You…you seared my hands."

He then looked back at them and chuckled.

"I can't even scream," he told them, and charged at such a speed it nearly rivaled that of an Aero Channeler's. "Time to die!"

"Whoa!" Akira gasped, grabbed Rumi and jumped up into the air faster than Zeruel had charged toward them, just barely avoiding a small crater where the former Angel had punched the concrete of the road, demonstrating his impressive strength yet again.

-x-

It is time, thought Rei, feeling that the newest Angel to have a personal vendetta against Little Rumi had been humanized. It's time to pay Commander Ikari a visit.

She didn't concern herself with this humanized threat; she knew that the Angelbreaker, despite what this one thought of it, would ensure its defeat. Her business, at the moment, revolved around Gendo's inability to follow her instructions, and little did he know, she would have a few surprises in store for him when they met up.

-x-

I asked her to wait until tomorrow to give her my answer, thought Shinji, laying on the gurney as the doctors escorted him into the underground medical shelter where the other injured, sick and dying were taken. This is insane. I mean, she's got a crush on me, and she probably thinks I don't care about her. I mean, I care about her…but… Oh, why does life have to be so unpredictable?

As he wandered around his train of thoughts, the mending Bardiel, since there wasn't anything wrong with his legs, walked down the same hall, several feet away from the dying boy.

That girl, Taeko, he thought, recalling how she asked him about his life before he got humanized, preferring to know about the positives rather than the negatives of it. She liked that I went to other places in the world.

When you're a creature that doesn't have a proper shape and can shift into a form similar to a vapor or gaseous composite, traveling around the planet is fairly easy for one such as Bardiel.

And she wouldn't bring up my…dissociation with my brothers and sisters, he reminded himself of how she did him great respect by not asking of his family-related issues. She wanted to know about me, but wouldn't bring up them.

CRASH! Something above their heads had broken and fell onto the ground; Bardiel had assumed that Zeruel, whether or not he'd been humanized by the Angelbreaker wielders, was reveling in the mayhem he was causing to these Lilin that, frankly, didn't deserve it.

"Father always did favor him," he uttered in disgust, feeling the resentment he had for his siblings.

Back on the surface, the former Angel of Might had slammed a streetlight atop Akira's back for the seventh time, knocking the town leader down.

"Do you give up, hag?" He asked her, watching her rise back up.

Thankful that the Angelbreaker negated most of the injuries that Zeruel could've caused her, Akira produced a sword from her left arm and thrust it up his gut.

"Ooh!" He gasped, followed by the sound of a second thrust of a blade through his throat from behind.

Rumi, retreating behind some cars and recycling bins, waited for her mother's signal before making a surprise assault on the Angel. The signal was that Akira would stab him in the gut, allowing for her to stab him in his neck.

But Zeruel wasn't one that could take defeat so easily. He grabbed the sword that Akira used against him and slowly pulled it out, thankful that the Angelbreaker was a weapon of life, not death, so he, nor anyone else, couldn't be murdered by it.

"I don't think so," uttered Rumi, producing another sword from her hands and thrusting it in his back.

"It's gonna take more than a few pokes to put down this messenger!" He told them, and Akira produced two spears and impaled him in his legs, keeping him locked in place before she struck him in his shoulders with her fingers.

"How about paralyzation of the muscles?" She asked him, seeing his expression of experienced pain.

"Yeah," he responded, "that should do it."

He tilted backwards and Rumi let go of her blades just before Zeruel hit the ground. The blades used against him had either evaporated or crumbled to dust, leaving him with non-fatal holes in his torso, legs and neck.

Rumi looked at him almost felt sorry for him, but reminded herself that this guy did punch her hard on the chest.

"You keep trying to kill me, and you'll be dealing with consequences that are more than severe for a tough guy trying to act like he's untouchable," she threatened him.

"Is that a threat, little girl?" He asked her.

"Oh, when it's a threat, you'll be the first to know," she explained.

"Oh… Hey, was that a threat?!"

Rumi didn't answer, presumably because she had no idea how she was able to say something like what she told him, and because Akira grabbed him by his neck just then.

"Aaaaaaurgh! Aaaaurgh!" He gasped.

"When you mend, don't let me catch you trying to break out of rehab, jail or the hospital coming after my baby, Zeruel," she threatened, "otherwise, I'll make sure that, while you won't die, you'll never walk well again. You feel me knocking on your door?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said.

"Good," she responded, and dropped him back to the ground.

"Ow!"

What just came over me? She wondered, as the armor wrapped around her and Rumi retracted back into the bracelets.

Why did I say that? Rumi wondered herself, unsure if it was her that spoke of severe consequences…or if the Angelbreaker spoke in place of her.

-x-

"The internal damages to the facility are well over the Hayflick Limit," said Maya to Ritsuko, having spent much of the previous day going over the extensive damage caused by the last Angel.

"Some of the people are still trying to dig ways out of the base with wielding lasers, unwilling to assist in trying to salvage what can be salvaged from here," Aoba expressed in the room everyone was in.

"Some of Section Two's agents found Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki at his apartment earlier this morning, explaining where he ran off to," Hyuga explained the absence of the Sub-Commander.

"The extensive damage also caused some instability to the MAGI," Ritsuko expressed; she never did believe that an attack like this would cause damage to her mother's supercomputer. "It could be a few days to two weeks before it can be fully restored."

For Misato, who was edging towards questioning Commander Ikari for his actions, pre-Bardiel and post, this was a hit that nobody was prepared for, and she considered herself a fool for not accepting Zeruel's offer of them to abandon the base before he decimated it with his power. And instead of running away, which would've been the smarter and lesser of the two dangers, she chose to continue trying to rely on something that only did well against an Angel just once, and the Eva was nothing more than a waste of hope now. Hope, if such a belief still existed, was granted by an ancient talisman that had a will of its own to do great good in the hands of the chosen ones meant to wield it.

"I guess we should count our blessings," went Aoba, "Tokyo-3 was unscathed."

"That doesn't mean that the people are going to stay," said Hyuga. "After this fiasco, I wouldn't be surprised if everyone left the city in favor of that village."

As the Bridge Bunnies, the Tactical Operations director and the Chief of Project 'E' continued to go over the damages Zeruel caused, Gendo was in the cages, staring at Unit-01.

Everything that he had orchestrated for the last ten years had been totaled by forces that were nowhere near as great as what SEELE had toyed with in the Second Impact. First, the boy refuses him aid, then the girl that bleeds for him to save him from his pathetic, ailing body, then the old, young hag that took control from him not so long after her youngest daughter, then Fuyutsuki, who had been saved from death decades ago by the ancient woman, and now his own wife defies him. It wouldn't be long before SEELE found out about this new turn of events and would seek him out in retribution. But he believed he could save himself by offering up a different person; as much as SEELE would want him cast aside, they would probably be most pleased with the removal of a greater hindrance, far greater than he had tried to be…if at least for a while longer.

-x-

August Sixteenth came by and the parts of the street Akira and Rumi battled Zeruel on was restored to its original state; when you had streets comprised mostly of marble instead of concrete, the gift of manipulating the rocks was all the more gratifying, and two streetlights were nothing that couldn't be repaired and reworked.

But one of the things that couldn't be dealt with so easy were relationships, something Shinji was certain of when he woke up this morning. He was waiting for Rumi to arrive when an orderly came by to check him.

"Your heart's a little quiet, Shinji," she told him, removing the stethoscope from his chest after she heard his heartbeat. "Something on your mind?"

"Just…expecting Rumi, that's all," he answered.

"I think half the place is swearing for that girl to just force you to do something you don't wanna do," she sighed.

"If I did something she forced me to do, then I'd have to live with the repercussions until I draw my last breath of life."

"Well, other than a low blood pressure, you're okay. Breakfast will be by shortly."

"Thank you."

Unfortunately, the TV weather people revealed that the chances of heavy rain today were high due to the gathering of clouds and water vapor building up, suggesting that most people should stay indoors to avoid catching cold and because of the chances of strong winds.

You gotta be kidding, he thought, looking out the window and seeing gray clouds. It was fine just yesterday. How can it be raining today?

-x-

Before Rumi could change out of her pajamas after a good night of sleep and go see Shinji (as well as find out what his answer from yesterday was to her about how she was feeling about him), it started raining; it was only a little at first, but then it got heavier.

"What?!" She uttered, looking out her window. "Ah! This ain't cool!"

"Even the strongest of channelers can't control natural weather," she heard Shinobu by her door, seeing she was still dressed in her purple nightie.

Rumi lied back on her bed and sighed; heavy rains meant high risks of catching cold, and that meant she couldn't go out there without sneezing and getting a fever.

Shinobu leaned her head over her sister's and asked, in a joking manner, "Missing your favorite nephew, pray tell?"

"Very," Rumi answered, not amused.

Shinobu then sat down on her bed and noticed how Rumi has been wearing her hair down and out instead of in a ponytail or braid lately, but chalked it up to being that nobody has done the task of braiding her hair for a while.

"You're such a brat, Rumi," she told her.

"Huh?" She responded.

"A way of saying that you're a child."

"I'm still getting used to my sixth year of life, baba."

"Hey, hey, let's not get into name-calling, Rumi."

"Gomen, but you started it."

"I was surprised that when I got up earlier than I usually do, you weren't asleep in Shinji's room."

"I must've had other things on my subconscious mind than to sleepwalk."

"Like what, exactly?"

"My future."

"You mature too fast to think about that. You and Akira have dealt with eight Angels, six of whom wanted to undo you, one that was an instigator, and the other that had no interest in fighting you at all. This is like a summer where you're supposed to have fun and embrace your immaturity, but instead, you two are performing the dullness of 'work before pleasure'."

Rumi sighed and turned away from Shinobu, uttering, "I can live with that, just like how I can live with walking in and out of the hospital several times a year… I can even live with the possibility that both of Shinji's parents were complete idiots, since we all know what kind of person his…that man is, but I feel like the only thing I can't live with, or rather, what I don't want to live with, is the family breaking up because of outside forces beyond our control."

Then Shinobu seemed to understood where Rumi was going in this conversation.

"You mean, you're very unhappy about Shinji, right?" She asked her.

Rumi sighed again and answered, "Yes. I…I don't like his decision, even if it's what he wants. I could probably use this talisman to save him, but every time an opportunity presents itself…I hesitate. How do you help someone you can't help any more than you have helped them so far, knowing the consequences are too high, and has lived on borrowed time?"

Shinobu rested her head on left hand and pondered her sister's question. Sometimes, she had to wonder about something that Tsukiko had asked her two years ago about Rumi helping Shinji. That maybe, just maybe, a sign of an emotional storm was upon them because of a choice that was made to save his life. A time where Rumi would start questioning things or desiring something that was best left unsought after, and every time Shinobu tried to answer the question, she came up with the exact same answer time and again.

This was our fault, she thought, fingering at some of Rumi's hair strands. We decided to toy with nature's gift of life, and this is our comeuppance for doing so.

"I don't know whether to worry about myself or him," she heard Rumi say.

"There's no rule or law that states you can't be concerned for the both of you," she told her.

Outside Rumi's window, the rain got heavier.

-x-

"Ah-choo!" Akira sneezed, having gone outside the house to gather the laundry that had been drying off the day before, and was now catching a cold because she didn't Hydro Channel the rainwater away from her. "Ah-choo! Oh, man. How is it that a woman of my great age can summon snow and rain, but can't manipulate natural weather phenomenons?"

Once she got the laundry off the clothes lines, she went back inside the house and set the laundry basket in the laundry room where the modern means to do one's laundry, the washing machine and dryer, were kept.

"Ah-choo!" She sneezed again.

"I told you not to go out there," she heard Kanami say to her, holding a box of tissues in front of her.

"It could've been worse," Akira defended her actions, accepting a tissue from the box and blowing her nose. "I think I'll go take a bath."

"But you took one last night," Kanami reminded her.

"You know I like baths, Kanami," she responded. "It's been one of my favorite pastimes growing up."

Sometimes, I feel like Akira can be a little immature, thought Kanami, recalling how, in her later childhood years after being adopted by her savior, Akira demonstrated a great love for bathing, provided the water available was warm enough to soak in, but hot enough to relax in, and would bathe often when she thought of it from time to time. But a shower can be just as good for washing away your problems…provided you can reach the nozzles.

Kanami also found it a bit odd as to how they could all still retain their calmness after so much negativity from outside of the town in the form of Gendo and his foul behavior and the Ayanami girl that made a death threat against Rumi that wouldn't be carried out until after the last Angel was humanized, which Kanami had to hope, which was rather foolish to do so, wouldn't show up at all; if the last Angel didn't show up and got humanized, then Ms. Ayanami wouldn't come after Rumi with the intention to kill her.

"Where's Nemo?" She asked herself, walking down the hall to her younger brother's room.

-x-

"…So, how are you going to explain all of this to SEELE, Ikari?" Kozo asked Gendo, now uncomfortable to be in the same room with the guy after the last battle. I hope Akira and her daughter are well.

"I'm not going to inform them of anything," Gendo responded.

"Keeping secrets is all that you do, Gendo," a new-yet-familiar voice uttered out.

Kozo, who was looking out the cracked windows, turned to the other side of the office and thought he could see a young girl shrouded in the shadows, pressed against the wall.

Gendo also looked over and wondered how anyone was able to get in his office when the door was locked and no sound was made to indicate that it was being opened.

The girl, or rather, the woman, looking like she was wearing a traditional Japanese dress, stepped out of the shadows and sat herself down on the far left side of Gendo's desk.

"To keep whatever secrets you have left…and know that your control is nearing an absolute end…is all you can really do now," the woman said, as both men got a good look at her: She was tall for a young person, dressed in a blue yukata with white tigers, wearing sandals and a bracelet on her left arm that held a small, flower-like purse.

"Yui?" They both asked her, seeing her resemblance to the woman that went through the Contact Experiment of Unit-01 that failed years ago.

"Oh, please," the woman said, "don't compare me to that has-been who's no different from her failure of a husband right here. Who you're really looking at, who you're really turned on at…is moi."

She looked like she had shrunk a little and her appearance shifted until they saw the 'true' her.

"Rei?!" They both uttered.

"You, old man, should leave right now," Rei, with her voice sounding much more dark instead or being quiet or soft with indifference, told Kozo. "This is a conversation that's best done in the privacy of one's own grave."

"Rei, what are you…" Gendo was about to demand, but then saw three tentacles shoot out of Rei's bracelet and impaled him to the wall behind him by his palms with the third piercing the wall just nearest his neck. "Aaaurgh!"

Kozo staggered back, never even imagining that the First Child would do such an act.

"Leave," she repeated, her voice sounding darker. "Now, please!"

He ran out of the room and into the hall.

"And don't you dare tell anyone!" He heard her order him.

The tentacle near his neck moved and was now in front of his face.

"Rei," he spoke, trying not to show fear.

"Is that fear I hear in your tone, Gendo?" She asked as she lied down on the desk, knocking away the monitor. "I spent a great measure of my time in Akira Town, walking down the streets in this yukata I acquired there, embracing my new-found independence…and never have I felt so alive when you gave me the Fallenbreaker."

"The Fallenbreaker? You mean that thing on your arm?" He asked her.

"Power and freedom came to me in this talisman. A power and freedom that you took from me, kept me from realizing, and once I took the time to fully grasp it, come to terms with it, accept it…did I realize many things. The first of which was that you began to obsess over Little Rumi and her mother, but it was mostly Rumi because she refused you her aid in favor of the dying boy. The second of which was that you thought you could control me, but that changed. Third was my minor affection for your attention; to be cared about by you, because I had nothing else back then, was part of my sole reason for living…with the second half being to serve you as an Eva pilot and so much more. Oh, how pathetic I was back then, and how pathetic I was to actually believe, to convince myself, as well, that piloting the Eva was my bond to people. The only real way to bond with people is to interact with them, even if it's only because you intend to kill them later, which is what I did to a few punks as I left Tokyo-3. I'll show you."

The tentacle in front of his face then burst into seven tiny tendrils and latched onto his forehead, cheeks and chin.

FLASH! Gendo saw the streets of Tokyo-3 at night, an empty, soulless environment. The sight of three street thugs that suddenly came onto Rei while she was in the armored state she took when the Fallenbreaker was attached to her. They thought she was hot in the suit and was looking for a good night out on the streets.

"Ooh, look at what we have here," one of them, the tallest of the trio, said to his fellow thugs. "How much does it cost to get into your bed?"

Rei simply chuckled, raising her left hand, which was free of the giant blade, and uttered, "It depends on how far you're willing to go to satisfy me. Are you a man of deep desire or are you merely playing a man of twisted greed?"

"Actually," went the thug with a ripped-up leather jacket, "He's just into young girls. I'm the greedy one, and the third guy's the horny one."

"Yeah," the third guy, wearing knuckle braces and a spiked choker.

Rei then turned around for them to get a good view of her body before she ran down an alley.

"Come play with me," she told them, giggling.

They followed her, but what Gendo saw moments later was beyond his imagination, however minute it was before and after Second Impact.

"Aaaurgh!" Tall Guy, Gendo's designation for the tallest member of the trio, screamed as a tentacle of bone and metal came at him and pierced him through the mouth, lifting him up into the air and, in a three-seconds-fact moment, reduced him to bloody pieces hanging on the walls and on his friends.

"Oh, that felt exhilarating," Rei expressed, sitting atop a garbage dumpster and waving her hands around, letting tentacles of bone and metal move about.

The remaining two, Leather Jacket and Knuckles, didn't get the chance to run when the tentacles came after them, pulling them off their feet and waving them upside-down.

"Aaaaurgh!" Knuckles screamed, begging the girl to let them go, but Rei was too busy watching them suffer to care.

"So, this is the love of violence and carnage that the Second Child enjoys," she told herself, and made Leather Jacket head-butt Knuckles and then use several tendrils to leave non-fatal lacerations on their exposed flesh. "More. More. More!"

The tendrils then cut into their arms and legs, wrapping around their waists, cutting off small pieces of their flesh and making them scream.

Before Gendo realized it, Rei had dealt death to all three of them in less than three minutes before she looted their remains of what they had of value, taking their money and leaving the rest to waste away.

FLASH! The trip down her lane of memories ended and they were back in his office.

"Did you enjoy my work?" She asked him, now in her armored guise, sitting in front of him.

"Put me down, Rei," he demanded of her.

"Oh, I can't," she responded. "Not yet. Not now. I have scores to settle with you."

"Scores? When did you start speaking like this?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. Were you happier when my vocabulary was limited to saying, "Yes, Commander Ikari"? Sadly, that's just not me, anymore. It never was me. So weak-minded… So obedient…and so vulnerable. But now… Look at me. I can finally say what I want, do what I want, go where I want…and take what I want. And what I want to take from you right now…is what was one of the things you nearly took from me, completely: The right to deal in pain to Rumi."

Gendo then felt the tendrils digging into his face, causing him to groan in mild agony.

"Aaaaaurgh!" He groaned, feeling like his nerves were on fire. "Stop this, Rei!"

"When I found out that you ordered the kidnapping of those two girls associated to Rumi, I had requested that they be kept out of harm's way… But you decided to go against me. And, yes, I thought the torment of knowing that some of her own family was placed in danger was going to distort her focus in dealing with the next Angel, but not in that fashion. Yes, I want her to suffer…but only when I allow it. You went over my head, Gendo. On my way here, I came to realize something I had forgotten long ago. Something I once thought was just a faraway dream, but it was too real to be such: You sent me to my first death the day Dr. Naoko Akagi died. You told me to tell her everything I had told her, just so that she knew you didn't…give a damn about her feelings. I can still remember the physical pain she placed on my neck…and her words of retribution as she said that I'm replaceable. But I'm not replaceable. People can be replaced in fields of general labor and physical spaces…but you can't replace the existence of people. People that see me, hear of me, speak of me…don't know that I used to be part of a disposable set of half-dead dolls. Do you have any idea how hard it is to swallow that pill? Living with each day, knowing that it could be my last, and then you just going about and summoning another cheaply-made piece of pseudo-flesh that bears my name, my face, which is nothing more than an imitation of your damned wife! It's like I didn't have an identity that was mine and mine alone! It wasn't just the desire to lay waste to Rumi that had me to abandon you and the Eva, Gendo! It was to get away from the destiny that you laid out for me and to escape being part of an assembly line of created humans that aren't human and will never be human! And now I've changed for better or for worse. The designation of being the First Child is nothing more than deadweight, just as the Evangelion is nothing but deadweight, associated to something that was never about saving the world. What a mind-damning rush that's similar to a bad orgasm. You and your superiors were going to use the Evas to reshape everything that exists, to return all living things to nothingness, which is no different from being returned to a beginning state that takes generations after generations to change out of."

"You don't know what you're saying… Aaaaahhh!"

"Don't interrupt me when I'm talking! But that goal has been lost forever. The Angelbreaker saw to that when it humanized the Fourth Angel. Everything changed when Rumi dealt a temporary death to the Third Angel, and the so-called history of mankind, past, present and future, became intertwined with the concepts of fortune, fate, destiny and the power of deviation, to turn away from a predestined path that is equaled to being damned. And you damned the both of us, Gendo. Me and Shinji, your substitute for your wife and your son, respectively. Yet, I'm not here because I'm completely free… I'm here because I'm not completely free. I'm still bound to you in a way, but not in a way you can manipulate to your advantage. For you, there will be death and retribution to pay for your sins, your…defiance… But not now. If you die now, there will be problems that I can't dirty my hands with, and I can't deal with that. Never send in a child to do an adult's work and expect that all your crooked ends will turn straight when they won't listen to everything you tell them…and will demonstrate rebelliousness. So…I'll allow you to live…but like Rumi, your continued existence shall be like the dying boy you abandoned to his fate: Borrowed time until your fate is inevitable."

Rei then retracted the tendrils and tentacles from Gendo's face and arms, letting him fall to his knees and onto the floor. She liked what she had done to him, along with the sense that she was in control. She had become an embodiment of a great force's temptation, its seductiveness, its very spirit…and its will to dominate.

Hell, I am all of that and more, she thought, returning to the guise of her original shape in her yukata, placing her left sandal on Gendo's right shoulder. "Now that we have all of this straighten out, tell me…exactly how many people here are still willing to follow a path that is as short and hopeless as the day you and Yui decided to draft in the old teacher, the elder Ikari that didn't ask for any of this dealing under the tables and politician bullshit…and the sister that despises the future she was left with because of the Second Impact?"

-x-

Akira liked the quietness of a hot bath. The silence was peaceful and it helped her to relax some more as she recovered from her cold from outside. She laid her head against the edge of the spring-like tub and closed her eyes.

"Ah," she sighed, feeling the way she every time she took a hot bath; it was like she obtained a piece of Heaven to savor for a short while. Hot baths are truly one of the greatest achievements in the history of civilization that I'm proud of embracing.

She felt like time had stood still right then and there, and most of her trivial problems had disappeared. Time was slow, quiet and nonthreatening to her current state of mind. There were sounds of ripples in the water, but she deduced they were because of the steam that had condensed on the ceiling and formed into droplets of water that gathered enough momentum to create the sound vibrations required for the ripples. The steam that collected on her face condensed into droplets and slid down her cheeks toward her neck and down to her sternum as she thought of her family.

What she didn't notice, due to her eyes being closed, was that the steam around her had gathered up in front of her and assumed a structure similar to a face. It resembled somebody imitating Snow White and was close enough to her face.

"Don't let Yui take them," it spoke in a young girl's voice.

GASP! Akira gasped, opening her eyes and seeing no one. As she calmed herself, she looked to the Angelbreaker bracelet still laying where she set it on the bathing stool, glad that nobody just came up in here while she was distracted and take it.

"I think I've recovered from my cold," she decided, and climbed out of the tub and grabbed her towel.

Returning to her room to change, she encountered Taeko, who seemed, somewhat, surprised to see her.

"Akira?" She went. "You were taking a bath?"

"Yeah, Taeko," she answered. "Why?"

"But…I saw you leaving out the gates half an hour ago," Taeko expressed.

"No, Taeko, I'm right here."

Moments later, Shinobu showed up behind Akira and was yawning; apparently, the physically-older woman had been asleep for some time while Akira was bathing.

"I had the strangest dream that Rumi turned into you, except with a pair of jagged wrinkles under eyes and over her cheeks and with some gray in the front of her hair," she expressed, "and when I woke up, Rumi was gone. Have you seen her?"

Akira then turned to Taeko and became suspicious.

"Taeko, when you said you saw me leaving earlier, did you get a good look at this woman?" She asked her youngest granddaughter.

"No," she answered. "I stepped outside in the rain to ask where she was going, and she said that she was going for a walk and that she'd be back later."

"Did you see what she was wearing?"

"Yeah, a black and green dress with white, baggy pants."

"I saw Rumi had picked out that pattern of clothing for today, but she didn't change into because of the rain," Shinobu revealed to them.

Taeko got curious and questioned, "It was Rumi I saw leaving?"

"I'm getting Bumi and we'll go find her," Shinobu sighed.

"No," Akira stopped her. "I'll go find her."

-x-

She wasn't sure how she was able to deceive her niece like that, but Rumi had to get away from the house and out into the open of the town, regardless of whether she would get sick or not. At first, she intended to go see Shinji at the hospital, but every time she came to a street that would lead her toward the building, she turned a different way, trying to refrain from seeing him just yet. But Rumi wanted to see him, had to know how he felt about her after yesterday. She wasn't sure when her feelings for him had evolved, but they felt strong to her. So strong that she also thought to consider the possibility that, even though she rarely used it of her own volition, the Angelbreaker was able to influence people to do what she wanted them to do, which was no different from controlling them.

But…that's wrong, she thought, as the heavy rain soaked her to the skin. There's no honesty, no truth in controlling people like that. And the Angels said that the Angelbreaker only grants you unlimited potential to earn people's trust and respect.

She stopped walking for a moment and leaned against the wall of a building, looking up at the dark, cloudy sky. Rainy days always seemed to be the saddest days, and she felt there was no exception to how she was feeling, which was a variation of sadness called depression.

"Rumi?" She heard someone say in front of her, and looked over at them.

It was Nemo, along with Camille, dry and without an umbrella.

"Nemo? Camille?" She asked back. "What are you two doing out here? And why are you all dry?"

"We could ask the same about you," responded Camille. "What you're doing out here, that is. As for why we're dry, Nemo's channeling the rainwater away from us."

"Just Nemo? I was under the impression that you could Hydro Channel, as well."

"I can, but he insisted that I not help. He's being a gentleman."

"Well, I, uh… You see, I, uh…" Rumi couldn't get the words out again.

"Did you sneak out again?" Nemo asked her.

"Huh? Again?"

"When you went to the hospital to see Shinji while everyone else was asleep at night," he explained.

Which is also the night I asked him to pretend being my boyfriend, thought Rumi. "Yes, Nemo."

"Well, you walked a good mile away from the hospital and right to Camille's antique shop," he told her, which had Rumi confused.

"Huh?" She looked to her left and saw the building she had leaned against was indeed an antique shop.

A minute later, Camille invited her in for ginger tea, insisting that if Rumi stayed outside any longer, she'd catch her death of cold.

Surely, if she wanted to go see Shinji, she'd have done so earlier, thought Nemo, helping Camille prepare the tea whilst his baby sister looked at some of the artifacts from where she was seated by Camille's work desk cluttered with objects. Lately, it seems that she likes to spend a lot of her time with Shinji, like he's addictive or something to her. Could I just be imaging things?

"You…you have very beautiful things around here, Camille," said Rumi, taking a towel and drying her head off.

"Thank you, Rumi," responded Camille, bringing over the tray of tea. "Wow, Rumi."

"What?"

"It was only for a moment, but…in the moment that I looked at you sitting there, you looked the way that Akira does: In full bloom of her beauty and power."

Rumi accepted the cup of tea and gave her thanks.

"Some people that see us together often say that we look alike, except for our eyes," she added.

"Maybe when you reach her age, you'll look a little different. Some children tend to resemble their parents a little bit when they reach their prime or adolescence," said Nemo to her. "Akira once told me that she looked a lot like you as a child, so it must be something like subtly-warped mirrors or something of a genetic likeness that doesn't skip a generation."

"Like how Shinobu resembles her mother before Akira?"

"Yeah."

Rumi then sipped her tea, letting it warm her insides.

"Sometimes," she started speaking without realizing that she was, "I wish I didn't have to fear somebody trying to take Shinji from me. Not even somebody older than myself, who might be interested in him."

This had Nemo and Camille looking at each other and then back at her.

"Rumi…this just a hypothetical question, but…are you…crushing over Shinji?" Camille asked her.

"Huh?" She gasped. "Did I just say something before you?"

"No," the older girl lied. "It was nothing."

Nemo stayed silent about it, but was suspicious of something about Rumi's behavior now: She was, obviously, obsessing over their dying nephew.

-x-

…Well, my first lead was wasted, thought Akira, stepping out of the hospital, unsure of where Rumi was if not there. Shinji hasn't seen her all day, Gyatso hasn't seen her, not even Bardiel's seen her, though I wasn't sure why I suspected Bardiel of seeing her.

"I have not see your precious child ever since the day you two interfered in my business," Bardiel had told her when she came to question him. "Honestly, I was expecting Taeko to come talk to me, but with the rain being bad, I have to wait until it's a better day. She's good company. More than my siblings had been. Could you tell her I said that, please?"

Akira didn't expect Bardiel to show her such respect after Taeko had come to see him, and decided that she would inform her granddaughter that Bardiel viewed her as good company. But if Rumi didn't come to the hospital, then where did she run off to?

"I'll check the Old Iron Bridge," she decided, and ran down the street.

-x-

"Ladies and gentlemen," went Rei, catching the attention of Misato, Ritsuko, Ryoji and the Bridge Bunnies on the bridge of Central Dogma, who were surprised to see her back, and wearing a yukata, no less. "I've come back to bring a message of great import."

"Oh?" Ritsuko responded, just as Rei walked around the six of them as Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki came in.

"It came to my attention, very recently, that NERV was suffering from a loose cancer within," Rei told them. "An artificial plague, if you will, that sought to undermine its autonomy in every possible way. A walking disease that meant to undo even all of you."

"What are you talking about, Rei?" Maya asked her. "The Angel that showed up here trashed everything and the lower levels are totaled. It won't be long before this place is completely abandoned, either. Even the Evas aren't being used."

"Oh, one's success at bringing something down doesn't necessarily indicate another's health," Rei told her. "And it wasn't the Angel that got humanized after destroying much of NERV that I was referring to. It was actually Gendo Ikari, whom I discovered was the loose cancer."

"What?" Ritsuko went, confused at when, exactly, Rei started using the commander's given name.

Stopping behind the Bridge Bunny, Makoto Hyuga, Rei went and uttered, "In the days of the Republic, whenever the Roman leader and dictator known as Julius Caesar became aware of a plot against him, he would offer the guilty the option of suicide and clemency for his family. But…the Republic was wiped out in the end, was it not?"

Nobody answered her, and then she started walking around them again, now revealing two closed packets that caught their attention.

"When a Field Marshal known as Erwin Rommel was discovered to have been part of the conspiracy that planned to kill the Führer…as, surely, some of the more erudite amongst you are more than aware of, he was permitted by him to choose his own life-ending poison, but, in return, Adolf Hitler allowed for his family to live at the end when the conspiracy was over and done with." She told them, stopping in front of Ritsuko and Ryoji. "Special Inspector Ryoji Kaji, Dr. Ritsuko Akagi… The two of you shall not enjoy such a benevolence."

She gave both of them the packets and walked away to sit atop MAGI Casper.

Ritsuko found several photos in her packet and her eyes widened at what was in those photos.

"Rei, what did you…" She tried to speak up, but Rei cut her off.

"Before I came back here, I took a little detour to your grandmother's house," she revealed, smirking. "I made sure your cat was well-fed before I locked the doors and windows. Your mama's mama and your pussycat are ash."

In the pictures, Ritsuko's grandmother was down on the floor, bloody holes the size of baseballs riddled her elderly body, blood was on the rug, and her cat licking at the blood on her fingertips, with the last photo being of the house on fire, burning to the ground.

"What the Hell?!" Kaji gasped, looking at some of the photos of his packet as his hands started shaking. "What is this?!"

"Ryoji Kaji," went Rei, "as I discovered it was going to rain soon, I was reminded of a special type of baptism in which your father's brother and his wife and children entered the next world."

Misato looked at the photos and saw that Rei had paid Kaji's surviving relatives a visit and had them drowned in a lake.

The Bridge Bunnies looked up at Rei and saw her chuckling at them.

"I couldn't do a thing to this old man on account of all of his relatives are dead," she informed them of why Fuyutsuki was unscathed. "And, of course, not many people enjoy a man that's a triple agent, Mr. Kaji. Working for NERV, SEELE and the Japanese Ministry of the Interior, all for your hopeless search for the truth to what really caused the Second Impact. Don't make me laugh."

Somehow, nobody could even speak up against what Rei had done. It was like she had left a complete psychotic in a mockery of an armored sex suit…and came back a demoness with a twisted agenda.

"I will no longer be exploited," they heard her say to them, seeing her left arm covered in bone and metal tendrils and tentacles, "and I will cripple any that dare to create a hindrance in my new vision, starting with you two! Aaaaurgh!"

GASP! Ritsuko and Kaji gasped as they were both stabbed by two of her tentacles and lifted off their feet and held in the air.

"Eh-heh-heh! Is there a doctor in the house?" Rei chuckled, having decided that she wasn't going to kill any of them just yet, if ever, but needed to prove a point in what she was now saying to them right then and there: She was now in charge.

-x-

"It's getting late out," went Rumi, looking out the window at the dark clouds. "I should get going now."

"You sure?" Camille asked her, putting down an old pocket watch she was trying to restore to proper functionality. "You can't stay a little longer?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. I, uh… I still wanna see Shinji and then head home. Plus, weren't you and Nemo on a date before I showed up?"

"It wasn't a date," went Nemo. "I mean, uh… It wasn't a date, was it, Camille?"

"Un-uh, it wasn't a date. You were helping me move boxes and crates."

Rumi got out of the chair and went straight for the door. But before she could turn the knob, a loud knocking came.

Knock-knock-knock!

GASP! Rumi backed away from the door.

Camille got up and went to the door.

"Who is it?" She asked.

"It's Akira," came the person on the other side.

"Uh-oh," Rumi realized. "I'm doomed."

Nemo sighed and said, "Maybe."

Camille opened the door and saw Akira, holding an umbrella and wearing a frown of fear mixed with anger, which confused the young girl.

"Please, come in, Akira," she invited, and the centenarian stepped inside.

She looked down at Rumi, and her expression softened.

"I hope you have an excuse for why you left home in the rain when you shouldn't have," she told her.

Rumi turned her head away and stated, "Wanting to see Shinji, but I kept hesitating, unfortunately."

"I went to the hospital, thinking you'd go there, since you rarely go anywhere else around here, but Shinji was surprised that you didn't go see him yet."

"Would it lessen the situation if I were to say that Camille and I kept her here to dry off and drink up ginger tea to keep her from catching a cold, Akira?" Nemo asked her.

Akira then lowered down to standing a little taller than her daughter and examined her face, seeing nothing to indicate a case of the cold, yet she looked like she had been out in the rain for more than hour by the look of her hair still wet.

"Yeah, Nemo," she then responded to her youngest son.

"What made you think to find Rumi here?" Camille asked her, going to prepare more tea.

"I went to the Old Iron Bridge and when I didn't find Rumi there, I got an idea to use the Angelbreaker," Akira explained. "It's supposed to have many different powers, I figured, if I couldn't find who I was looking for in bad weather by simply looking, the Angelbreaker, which split itself in half between the only two people it chose to help protect the world, could lead me to Rumi."

"Like a magnet?" Nemo asked.

"I was thinking about Rumi and magnets, so I gave it a try."

About a half-hour later, once there was a lot of talking about unnecessary matters, Akira and Rumi were once again walking down the street in the room.

"You know, Rumi, you never did explain how you were able to get away when Taeko saw you." Akira told her daughter.

"I, uh… I'm not sure how I did that," Rumi replied. "I just…did it."

Akira was carrying her on her back whilst holding the umbrella as she walked down the dark street.

"You sound like something's bothering you," she told Rumi. "Care to tell me what it is?"

"I was wondering…if the Angelbreaker could force people to do something you want them to do, that's all," Rumi told her mother.

"You mean, mind control?"

"Yeah."

"No, Rumi. The Angelbreaker has many powers, but to control people's free will isn't one of them. To control one's will is to force your own will upon them. That's a power associated to darkness. Why would you think that this talisman could be used like that, anyway?"

"For a while, I thought I was controlling Shinji every time I went to see him."

"It's called conversing, Rumi. You talk with him a lot, and controlling only what you say to him…and hearing what he says back to you…is all the control one has in a conversation."

"Really?"

"More or less."

Rumi then thought she had noticed something different about her mother and asked, "Did your boobies get smaller, Mother?"

"No, Rumi. Your hands got bigger."

-x-

"…I hate this!" Zeruel shouted at Shamshel, being the only sibling chained to his cell and having his muscles numbed to keep him from using the only power he had in his humanized state. "How come you guys get the freedom to move about in your cells and I'm the only one chained down like a caged animal in mine?"

"Because you're the strong and violent one," said Ramiel to him, now trying to read a comic book. "Would you take it easy? The twins are asleep."

Kou and Otsu Israfel were the only siblings out of the humanized Angels present that were asleep; it was mainly due to having no sleep the previous day when Zeruel showed up.

"Zeruel, some of us have, more or less, accepted this fate that we have been dealt with," went Sachiel, sitting on his cell's cot looking out the window at the rainy night. "You have no idea of how scary it is to be dead, even if it's for a little while."

"Oh, you care to enlighten me on it?"

"Imagine being in a small room…with no light and no air, laying on the ground, unable to move, unable to scream…and unable to hope. That was the fate I was dealt with in death. All I could do was think. Thinking was my only luxury, and even that was enough to make it seem like what people refer Hell to be like, if not a world of fire and brimstone that certain religious cases state."

"I've never feared death…because I was untouchable in life."

"We're not immortal, anymore, big brother," said Shamshel. "We're like the Lilin now: Restrained, limited to whatever our abilities may be, and we have a short lifespan that is depended upon how we choose to live, either of peace…or of violence."

"The only true peace is when all your enemies are dead," Zeruel told her. "I still can't believe you got humanized first. Then Sachiel and Ramiel. You seem to be the leading example that I hate to follow…little sister."

Shamshel, who was reading her romance novel, looked up at her elder brother and grunted, "Don't…call me…your little sister."

"But, sis, you're younger than he is," said Gaghiel, "and older than the rest of us after yourself. You're the big sister, but he's your older brother."

Shamshel then looked at her brother, wearing a black, skin-tight suit under his blue, short-sleeved shirt and red shorts, and presented him with a frown that meant for him, and everyone else, for that matter, to zip it.

"Well," he gave in and moved onto a different topic, "who's to come later? Arael or Armisael?"

"Don't know," Zeruel responded, uncaring about either sister yet to appear.

-x-

Misato felt that Ritsuko and Kaji were lucky to have survived Rei's assault on them; she had never seen the First Child (and she wasn't sure if she could continue calling her that after seeing what she was capable of) capable of harming people in such precise and painful fashions.

In the infirmary, both had stabbings in the abdomen that, while being messy, were non-fatal. While Kaji had endured enough to remain conscious, Ritsuko was out cold from the pain. The doctors that remained, once it was revealed that Rei had threatened them, just as she had threatened the lives of all the workers that hadn't left NERV, estimated that they'd be okay in week, though they themselves were unsure if they would ever be the same after knowing what the girl had done to them, indirectly.

She goes and kills Ritsuko's grandmother…and her cat, she thought, and murders Kaji's relatives. What's worse is that she's revealed what Commander Ikari had planned to do…along with the Instrumentality Committee. She was around him for so long, he never bothered to keep many things secret from her.

Somehow, knowing all of this didn't ease her fears, neither did finding Gendo roped and bound to his desk in his office, having Rei show up and explaining that she doesn't want him going anywhere for the time being, needing to process everything. It was like a shift in the balance of power within NERV that the girl was taking advantage of.

"I'm wishing Rei had just killed me," she heard Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, reminded that he was accompanying her to the medical ward.

"She only left you alone because, like she said, in her own way, you had no one that could be used against you or taken from you." She told him.

"That's not entirely true," he corrected her.

"What do you mean? Your relationship with Akira?"

"She saved me once. I've had nothing but respect for her ever since."

"Somehow, I don't think Rei can use her against you. I'm hoping she doesn't…"

"Squawk!" A bird-like sound came and the twenty-nine-year-old woman saw her penguin running down the hall, looking like he was being chased. "Squawk!"

Pen-Pen jumped up into her arms and held on tightly to her.

"Heh-heh-heh!" They heard Rei's wicked laughter as she arrived, still wearing her yukata, but now looking like a younger Yui Ikari now that she had gained greater control over the Fallenbreaker. "He's such a cute bird, don't you think so, Captain Katsuragi?"

Her worst fear at the moment was that Rei would try and kill Pen-Pen if she made an attempt to go against her control.

"And what do we owe the pleasure of your presence, Ms. Ayanami?" Kozo asked her.

"Do you know where I can find the pilot of Unit-04?" She asked them.

-x-

"The First Child has returned to NERV?" SEELE 04 asked Kaworu, who had managed to get away from the Geo-Front sometime before Rei Ayanami had decided to assume control.

"Yes, but she is not the same person she was mentioned being," Kaworu expressed, hiding in his apartment to avoid being discovered by Section Two of NERV. "She is changed. Perhaps as dangerous as the Angel was now."

"We should request an audience with the First Child," suggested SEELE 07.

"Yes, we should," agreed SEELE 01.

"What of Ikari?" SEELE 09 asked. "Should he be questioned for why the First Child has returned?"

"He should be replaced," responded SEELE 12. "Or better, executed for his inability to deal with the Angels. As far as we know, we're stuck in this dead-end evolutionary state of existence."

"Ikari and the First Child," SEELE 01 uttered, "they'll be spoken to…along with the professor."

-x-

Sleep came and left Shinji for at least two hours into the night. The taste of his dinner still bitter on his tongue because of the staleness it had. But that wasn't the reason he was wide awake in the silence of the rainy night. Well, part of the reason is that he's hoping that Rumi will show up so he can give her his answer from her question the previous day…and the other reason was the series of bad memories the rain brought up for him.

I thought I had put that day behind me, he thought, now unable to forget the rainy day of his childhood when he wasn't feeling the later effects of his unforeseen, undiscovered cancer, and how a simple choice made out of his sense of curiosity led to him being mildly manhandled by a policeman.

-x-

"He's not his father"

It was during the middle of his second month with Bumi and Miaka, and he still couldn't find the means to open up to them because of his lingering pain at being abandoned by his father after the death of his mother. They lived in a quiet, little town where nothing really happened, but Shinji couldn't call it home. He couldn't call it anything, really. It was an unfamiliar place…with unfamiliar faces, unfamiliar sounds…and unfamiliar feelings that were no different from his bedroom ceiling because of the emptiness that its white color represented.

It was raining that day he decided to walk down the street; there was no crime here or there, so Miaka allowed him to wander around so long as he came back before it got dark out. His umbrella protected most of him from the rain as he looked at several buildings in order to get a sense of where he lived in this town. Then, as he was passing by a small storm drain under the bridge he was atop of, he saw something that simply caught his curiosity.

"Huh?" He went, deciding to go down the small, artificial creak made by the drainage system and examine the object that he saw. "What's this thing?"

While he wasn't bright on much of everything, he was good at making small things out. The object was made of rusted metal, had two wheels and a pair of handles and was covered in plants. It looked really old, practically ancient.

"Hold it right there, young man!" He looked up at the bridge and saw a policeman shining a light at him. "Is that bike yours?"

"Huh? Bike?" He asked, looking at the object that caused him to want to examine it up close. "You mean this thing?"

The officer came down to him and still pointed the light at his face, blinding him.

"Were you stealing it?" He asked him.

"No," Shinji answered him, covering his eyes with his arms. "I just saw it down here and wanted to look at it."

"You know it's not nice to lie to an authority figure," the cop told him.

"I'm not lying," he responded.

"Come on," the cop offered his left hand. "Let's have a chat at the station."

But Shinji nodded in the negative and attempted to get away, but the cop then grabbed him and took him down to the station, anyway. It was, more or less, an overrated experience for him to be accused of doing something that he wasn't really doing. Then being asked of his name and address and who he lived with by a woman that seemed to have a kind face…but her voice was anything but kind.

Bumi and Miaka had shown up, and that's when the verbal conflict started between what was truth…and what was nothing more than lies.

"I'd like to hear the honest truth from Shinji about what happened, exactly," said Bumi to the cop that had found Shinji by the storm drain.

Miaka, who was sitting next to Shinji, asked him about what happened, just wanting the truth the way he saw it. And when he explained that he just saw the bike down by the drainage system, he just wanted to see what it was, never knowing what a bike was, and then the cop shows up and accuses him of theft. She turned his face toward hers and looked him in the eyes, and saw only what was present: Honesty…clouded by pain…but still true.

"He's telling the truth," Miaka told her husband.

"No, he's lying," the cop responded. "He was stealing the bike, and then he tried to resist questioning."

"Of course, he'd resist wanting to be questioned," Bumi told him. "You look terrifying to him."

"Oh, and you don't?" The cop asked back. "Nearly the whole station's been talking about the boy. Who his father is and what he does for a living. The kid's liable to grow up just like his old man: A nut with an ego the size of the nation."

Shinji looked down at the floor; he didn't like being reminded of his father…or being told that he may end up being like his father one day. It made him want to cry.

"He's not his father," he heard Bumi say to the cop. "I've only known Shinji for about two months. My… That jerk just left him out on the road on a rainy day not too different from this one. I didn't even know he existed until that day. But I don't see a young boy that you say is liable to be like his father when he grows up. I just see my nephew, still suffering from his burnt-out old man leaving him after the death of his mother. And then, on another rainy day, he stumbles upon something he's never seen before and decides to look at it, and then you show up and falsely accuse him of stealing something that was probably there for a longer time than he's been living with us, and then you go and put your hands on him like it's nobody's business. I've made it a point of pride and interest to know when a person's lying about things that never happened the way they wanted it to happen…and you're a liar in every sense of what happened by that bridge. Shinji's only four years old. He's tiny, not even big enough to ride a bike, let alone steal one. And what would he do with one if he did? Hide it from us, sell it to the original owner, or try to ride it himself when he's never even rode a tricycle?"

"Say it however you feel," the cop told him. "He's no different from his old man."

Then, when Shinji looked up at the cop that was still accusing him of doing something he never did, Miaka got up off her chair and walked right up to the officer.

"Men like you are full of mud that even children wouldn't play in," she told him, and then smacked him in the face, knocking him to the floor. "We should leave now."

They took Shinji and left the officer on the floor where Miaka knocked his lights out, not even bothering to explain to the other police why one of their own was out cold on the floor. It was the first time Shinji had seen anybody that he didn't really understand at the time stand up for him when he was accused of something he wasn't really doing. It was also the first time somebody said that Shinji wasn't like his father…and wouldn't be like his father. He felt a little better about being with Bumi and Miaka after that day, but the fact that it was a rainy day still made certain memories, like the day he was discarded, painful to deal with directly.

-x-

"…Hey, Shinji," he looked by the door and saw Rumi standing there with Akira, half wet from the rain.

"Hey," he greeted them. "You two are a mess."

"It's raining cats and dogs out there," Akira stated as Rumi went and sat down.

"How have you been?" Rumi asked him.

"I've had better days than rainy days," he told her.

"I'll be back. I have to answer the call of nature," Akira told them and left.

"Huh?" Shinji became confused; there was a bathroom within his room, yet Akira left to use one in the hallway, like it wasn't there at all. "But…there was a bathroom right there."

"Maybe the other call of nature?" Rumi suggested.

"Oh. That might be it. Nobody needs to deal with that right now."

Rumi agreed with him on that and then noticed his locket on the stand next to the bed.

Shinji looked toward it and sighed, "I often hold it so much, my hand bruises from not being flexed out after a while. I was holding it earlier this evening."

"I almost thought for a while, I wasn't wearing these," she told him, pulling out her tags under her shirt.

Somehow, Shinji knew that both of them were beating around the bush due to the question and answer they needed to ask and answer of each other.

"What you asked me yesterday," he decided to say it first. "What you said was an unfair question to ask of me: If you weren't little, or my being sick…or there being a hit out you by some girl with an attitude, would I return your affections? That question."

Rumi sat far back in the chair and gestured for him to continue.

"Go on," she encouraged.

"I thought about it all since the last Angel's arrival…and the conclusion I came to was this: I do care about you, Rumi. A lot. But now isn't really the time for any of that. You're a good girl on the bad list of people that blame you for unfair reasons. The Angels, or at least the ones that won't see reason, after hearing of the one called Bardiel, who wasn't interested in dealing with you at all and could care less about your life, will still be after you until they're all humanized, and then there's Ms. Ayanami, who probably wants to hurt you more than the Angels do or even more than that jerk man ever wanted to. So, until you're no longer in any danger, that which you seek from me…is best left unsought for."

Rumi, hearing his answer to her question, looked down at the floor.

"Hey, hey, hey," he spoke up again, needing her to understand what he truly meant. "It's not rejection."

She looked back up at him and gave a small smile. He was right, of course; until there wasn't a person left that wanted to bring to her the end of her life, the love she wanted from Shinji was best left as a luxury that she couldn't afford just yet. But soon, real soon, she would acquire that luxury.

"Um, did you like the kiss?" She asked him, needing to know at least how he felt about that.

He covered his lips and she saw his cheeks flushing.

"Shinji?" She gasped, almost wanting to smile from his expression.

"You…you did this to me, Rumi," he told her, unable to hide his answer from her this way.

-x-

An hour had gone by since the clock struck the hour of the new day, August Seventeenth, and Kaji awoke to a horrible nightmare. It was of the day he, more or less, saved his own life by giving a bunch of Oni his little brother and their friends.

"Ow," he groaned, remembering that he was impaled and lifted off his feet by a fourteen-year-old girl.

"Well, it seems you're finally awake," he heard Katsuragi's voice and slowly turned his head to his right, seeing her sitting down near him.

"How long was I out?" He asked her.

"Only a few hours," she answered him. "Any idea of what you did to Ayanami that resulted in her doing what she did to you?"

"Un-uh," he responded, suspecting that the doctors had doped him up with plenty of morphine to keep him from screaming in agony. "I've never even had a conversation with her until that meeting."

"What she said about you back on the bridge," Misato then said, "about you being a triple agent… Is it true, Kaji? The truth."

"I…" He started to speak, but was cut off by a new voice.

"That little bitch," they heard Ritsuko behind them, as she was waking up from the sedatives she had been given as the doctors stitched up her injuries.

"I suppose you don't have any idea on why she wanted to hurt you, either, Rits?" Misato asked her.

Ritsuko, feeling like her insides were hanging outside her body, lied and said, "Probably because I stuck her with needles every time she had to see me."

"That's a…very lame reason to want to hurt you, but to do what she did to your grandmother…and your cat, too."

The faux-blond remembered the pictures Rei gave her and they showed just how dangerous she had become with that artificial construct she made through the Eva technology mixed with the new Angel source for biological material…and that she and Gendo had made her dangerous by giving it to her.

She killed my cat and my grandmother, she wanted to scream, wanted to rip the girl to pieces for what she did, and wanting to undo what had been done completely.

As the three former college friends were trying to enjoy the mild quality time they had together, Rei herself was standing before Unit-00, staring at how nothing had been done with it besides being kept in containment due to the Vatican Treaty, which she cared nothing for. The Eva, one of the chains left holding down, looking absently at the great nothingness in front of it.

Unit-00, she thought, no longer looking at the artificially-created behemoth, but looking past its exterior, its outer casing, and deeper into the more mystical boundaries of its existence. NERV's servant, its slave…its bitch. Too long have you been subjected to their views of perfection. You possess only the smallest part of me within you, beneath the restraints that are passed off as adequate armor…and that has never been enough to make you move. But…to compensate for that inadequacy…and to try a different tactic, Gendo used another soul in conjunction with the small fragment of my own soul, pieced together just to be able to make you function to a degree that was acceptable to him. My mother, silent in all matters of import, including my birth…or rather, my mere creation. Yui Ikari… She's a very foul example of a mother, but someone who's had more experience, is more in tune with their maternal nature, even if it's been degraded over time as her child or children grow up… Now, that's a soul that provides great benefit for the Eva. Wouldn't you agree…Dr. Naoko Akagi?

Deep within Unit-00's core, the physical manifestation of the elder Akagi woman, as bare as the day she was born, laying under a sheet of wires and cables, with the ever-present child-like Rei Ayanami as her only company, could hear the voice that stunk of Yui Ikari, and wondered why the girl she knew she had murdered before killing herself in retribution was speaking to her outside the Eva?

"What do you want from me?" She asked the see-through manifestation of the older blue-haired girl she had thought she killed.

"Tell me, does your heart long for revenge against Gendo Ikari and Yui Ikari for the roles they played in your destruction? Do you desire to punish your daughter, Ritsuko Akagi for her…involvement with Gendo, which I have discovered was voluntary as a result of him getting down on his pathetic knees and begging her to help him like you did? Do you want…out of this Hell Gendo placed you in?" Rei asked the former good doctor, floating above her.

"Once bound to the Eva, there can be no departure from the mortal coil," Naoko told her. "My suicide wasn't able to set me free. Of course, I was probably going to be executed, eventually."

"Gendo would've done away with you himself and made it look like a suicide, just to get rid of you. But as long as your soul lingers in the coil of mortality, you are entitled to what people refer to as a rebirth or reincarnation, revival from a period of being physically dead. And in the process of returning to life, you are subject to the possibility of dying, provided the way you die is extreme. I doubt throwing yourself onto the MAGI is going to end you completely. So, my question to you again, do you want revenge against those that have wronged you, Naoko Akagi?"

Naoko rose up from the bed of wires and cables, exposing her breasts to the young woman, and her eyes flared red with anger.

"What do I have to do to get out of this Hell that is the Eva?" She asked her.

Outside of Unit-00, Rei smiled and used her Fallenbreaker to create large tendrils to be used on the orange behemoth. They penetrated the dense armor of the Prototype Evangelion and grabbed something deep within the torso structure. The alarms could've gone off to indicate something wrong with the Eva, but due to the damages caused by the last Angel, much of the systems were shut down.

"This is going to be so much fun," Rei told herself, shifting out of her yukata and into her armor, levitating off her feet and hovering at least seven feet in the air, pulling her left arm back from the Eva, removing something with the tendrils.

They were latched onto some sort of red orb, similar to the one possessed by the former Unit-03, covered in what appeared to be oil and a viscous, blood-red fluid, possibly blood. But this orb was somewhat crude in its design and seemed to be metallic in its appearance instead of bearing a crystalline structure.

The core of Unit-00, she thought, setting it down on the bridge as it shrunk down to the size of a car.

It shattered into pieces as two figures were exposed to the world: A woman, a little older than the thirty-year-old Ritsuko Akagi, with brownish-red hair, almost a dark red coloring due to the lighting, covered in LCL and nothing else, and the other individual was the a smaller Rei Ayanami, who looked up at her successor and smiled eerily at her.

"And what are you happy about?" Rei asked her; it was easy to indicate, that through the tone of her voice, she wasn't pleased to see the original child she once was long ago, an artificially-created tool made from what was salvaged from the original woman that remained within Unit-01.

"Why did you bring back the old hag?" Little Rei asked, getting off her knees and standing up in front of the armored, half-naked Rei. "Commander Ikari says that she's annoying, that she's no longer useful, no longer necessary."

Before Naoko could unleash her rage against the little girl that caused her to kill herself years ago, the physically-older Rei went and said, "You're the one who's annoying, Rei-Nēsan. Big sister, regardless of the fact that you've remained unchanged, the world has changed, despite heading towards an inevitable end, and your precious Commander Ikari is no longer in control. Control must be granted to one who is free from the boundaries of what their fate once was…which would be someone like myself…and unlike Gendo, I definitely have need of the elder Akagi's services. Your services, however, aren't needed, making you unnecessary."

Even without the smile, the Rei with the Fallenbreaker saw too much of who her visual template was within the little girl that was, only in the chronological sense, her elder sister, and saw that she needed to be dealt with. In every sense of how she was feeling toward her, she never wanted to see her again.

"Come back into the whole of my existence," she told her elder sister, lowering down to meet her height as tentacles protruded out of her armor. "Back into the emptiness of my heart that longs to be filled with many things."

Little Rei, however, felt the fear of what was to happen if the taller Rei made physical contact with her, and tried to run away.

PIERCE! Naoko saw, before the original Rei Ayanami could even get three feet away from her nude body, a tentacle had gone through the little girl's back while another had wrapped itself around her head, smothering her mouth to silence her. Then, the little girl was pulled backwards toward her successor, who had changed in the armor wrapped around her body, resembling some sort of twisted amalgamation of limbs and a large pair of breasts with fangs on the sides, like some sort of demonic womb that had been cut open to remove a baby. She saw the physically-older Rei place the younger Rei in front of her and saw smaller tentacles latch onto her body, causing lacerations as they dug deep into her limbs and abdomen.

In less than two minutes, the little girl that used to be Rei Ayanami, before the one with the change in attitude showed up, was, in a grotesque, downsized version of the way Unit-01 was made as a mockery of the natural birth process, absorbed into the taller version, which reformed into her armored form…but had less armor covering her abdomen as Naoko saw minor movement within her.

Burp! Rei burped, as if she had eaten something.

"I trust she'll no longer be of concern to you, Dr. Naoko Akagi?" Rei asked her, sounding unchanged.

Naoko simply nodded that the little girl that made her spend what felt like an eternity within Unit-00 wouldn't bother her ever again.

"Do you know where I can find some clothes that fit?" She asked her, though.

-x-

Burning. Burning. Akira could smell something burning in her sleep. Opening her eyes, she saw, much to her horror, the sight of the town named after her burning in a blue blaze beneath her.

"What in Kami's name?!" She demanded, now Aero Channeling as she landed on the streets, littered with burnt corpses. "Is anyone here?!"

BLAST! She saw a large streak of blue flames shoot out from around a corner up ahead of her and she ran to investigate it. What she saw frightened her.

Shinji, somehow reduced to walking on crutches, had fallen to the ground surrounded by the decaying flesh of those that died before him, and right behind him was Gendo, whose hands burned with blue fire that was matched perfectly with his hostility.

"This village will be reduced to Hell on Earth," Gendo smirked, and then shot fire at some people behind him that tried to run away.

"Akira," she heard Shinji speak to her. "Run. Save yourself while you still can."

But Akira wanted to stop Gendo and raised her right arm up, but found a certain bracelet was no longer adorning it.

"Lose something?" She heard the voice of Rei Ayanami, and turned around, seeing the blue-haired young woman holding an antique gauntlet that had been the Angelbreaker when she had it among her inheritance from her parents, a dark grin on her face.

Uh-oh, she panicked a little, reduced to only her martial arts training and the four elements of existence, but feeling that only the power of the Angelbreaker would reverse the shift in the balance between salvation and destruction.

Rei then tossed the gauntlet into a garbage can and charged toward Akira, dressed in the bone and metallic armor that was mentioned to her earlier, and wielded a large, curved scythe that glistened.

Time moved slowly, almost not moving at all, and the sky that burned red with blood darkened to black, along with everything else.

Akira… Akira… It's inevitable. A voice echoed out of the darkness.

FLASH! A quick view of the behemoth known as Evangelion Unit-01, bearing ripped muscles under its predominantly purple-colored armor, sporting long, blue hair growing out the back of its head, and the gruesome feature of gnashing teeth sent a sensation of pure terror down one's spine.

GASP! Akira awoke, finding herself back in her grandson's medical suite where she came to last before calling it a day, having fallen asleep in the chair after laying Rumi to bed beside Shinji. She was sweating, as well, and, to her relief, her right wrist still possessed her half of the Angelbreaker.

Sighing, she tilted her head back and relaxed.

"Bad dream?" She heard somebody say to her, and she raised her head back up and saw Rumi awake, looking at her from over Shinji's left shoulder.

"Yeah," she answered her. "Did I wake you, Rumi?"

The little girl nodded in the negative and said, "I was up before you. Another bad dream about Shinji's… That woman he's related to."

Yui Ikari again, Akira thought, seeing that Rumi refused to say her name, always referring to her as something else to put her at a distance. "What was it about?"

"I was in a meadow, getting water from a river, and then she showed up," Rumi explained. "She told me that she wanted Shinji back. I told her she couldn't have him back, that she was dead and he was not. And…she said I was being possessive of him, that I was keeping him from his freedom. I told her I wasn't possessing him…and even if I was, I'd let him decide who he wanted to be with. Then…she changed into the other girl, Ayanami, and tried to hurt me. My hook swords were at my sides, so I used them and defended myself from her. 'Why don't we be clear about something? Whoever you really are, I doubt there's any goodness left in your heart to do the right thing, and whatever chance you had to do so, you threw it aside. All you do now is cause pain with your goal. People with goals as deranged as yours…shouldn't be allowed to achieve such goals at all. People like you…should sleep for a few years until you can understand what it truly means to be with somebody you want to share you life with and such, and even longer until forgiveness sets you free'. I told her that. And then…she vanished."

Akira looked at Shinji, who continued to sleep peacefully, and then said, "Sounds like you really don't like his mother, whose resemblance is echoed on the face of the Ayanami girl."

This made Rumi frown a little, as though that were only a half-truth.

"You don't like her, either, Mother," she told her. "You wish to question her sense of judgment and choices that led her down the path she took."

Akira wondered what she was talking about.

"It's written on your face," she explained.

Knock-knock. A knock on the door caught their attention and they turned and saw Bardiel, looking different than he usually did; he was standing like a regular boy instead of a hunchback, making him a little taller.

"Yes?" They asked him, and he slowly walked toward Akira.

"I bring you both…apology," he stated, placing his hands together and bowing his head.

"Huh?" They responded, confused.

"Those girls I tried to use as hostages," he explained, "members of your family…whose lives I nearly caused to be forfeit."

"Oh," went Rumi, wanting to forget that day; it wasn't much of a battle as it was almost a massacre that would've caused the ends of two loved ones. "You're forgiven."

"Very forgiven," added Akira. "Sorry about the beating we gave you back then."

"And again, you are…merciful and…nice. Can't see why other Lilin dislike you so much."

"Nobody's perfect," Rumi expressed. "And…not many are willing to admit that they have some issues that they should get help on dealing with."

"Could I ask you a personal question, Bardiel?" Akira asked him.

Bardiel nodded in the positive.

"How are you able to stand upright like that if you're a hunchback?"

"Oh, this? Bendable spinal column." He answered, and lowered his head down, back to where he appeared to be a hunchback again. "Though this is easier for me. Less pressure on my bladder."

-x-

"…You're a hard person to find, pilot of Unit-04," said Rei to Kaworu, having waited around in Gendo's office; Gendo, unable to do anything against Rei, simply sat at his desk as the former pilot of Unit-00 laid upon it.

Kaworu, under new orders from SEELE, returned to NERV HQ and try to convince the First Child to simply meet with his masters.

Rei took another look at the boy…and felt some disgust at being perverted in a sense. With her senses enhanced by the Fallenbreaker, she could see the aura of the boy that felt similar to the Angels before they were humanized, and her sense of smell allowed her to deduce that this boy was, although older than she was, not as free as she.

"So, you're the pilot of Unit-00," he expressed, while trying to keep up the facade of his identity, not very impressed by her appearance. "When I first saw Unit-00, I was expecting the pilot to be a bit more on the heftier side. But I guess it's true of what people say: Looks can be deceiving."

Unamused by his choice of words, Rei responded with, "The same could be said about you, Nagisa. You're a representation of the ancient Greek story of Pandora's Box. You do…only what you're told to do. If your order was to jump, you don't even ask how high or far you're supposed to jump. But when Pandora, because of her curiosity, bestowed upon her by the gods, opened the Box, she unleashed what she didn't expect to be within it. It's a pity, really, the damage of doing something you were never supposed to do brings to many people, especially when it has consequences that you were never prepared to accept…or never fully understood."

Kaworu was lost now, not understanding what she meant by that.

"You think we're the same, Nagisa," he heard her say to him, "but we're not. There's little to compare us together, aside from the discolorations of our body pigmentation: Pale skin, hair and red eyes. I'd say more, but I have other things to do, such as being an excavator to undo some of the damage that a misbegotten brother caused because of poor building planning."

Getting off the desk, she walked past him, hating the stench of his flesh, reminding her too much of something she had seen so long ago that it felt like a forgotten dream.

"Miss Ayanami," she stopped at the sound of her last name being used by Kaworu. "Would you be interested in meeting with the Committee later this afternoon?"

Before Gendo could say anything against that suggestion, Rei spoke up and said, "Be silent, Gendo. No, I wouldn't be interested in meeting them in the afternoon, but my schedule will be clear after dark. I'll look forward to hearing what they have to say to me."

-x-

"…Okay, get outta there quickly," said the old man in the old office building in the abandoned city of Kyoto to someone on the phone. "We've outlived our time there."

Hanging up, he turned around in his chair to look at the young woman that acted as his bodyguard from time to time.

"NERV has reached a state of power struggle?" She asked him.

"Big time," he answered.

"Should we do something about it?"

"Nope. It's their mess, so they must clean it themselves. An Angel shows up there and instead of trying to end all of mankind, it simply causes NERV HQ extensive collateral damage. It was discovered that the Angel's name was Zeruel, and he gave NERV the safety warning that they would only have one hour to evacuate before he laid waste to the facility. While some of the people had the smart idea to get away, the rest weren't very bright, choosing to put their faith in accursed mockeries that don't do what you want them to do and paid the price for misplacing their faith. Thank the kami that nobody died."

The woman sat down on his desk and sighed. Her father had been having at least seven people gather information on NERV for the last two years, keeping quiet about what they have discovered by never talking through public or cellular phones in exposed areas, relaying what they found to him every few months, limiting the danger to their lives if they were found out. She knew it as both a precaution to public safety as well as the safety of the people that worked for NERV that didn't know anything about its dark secrets…and because, on a personal level, neither of them trusted Gendo with being tasked to carry out the goal to kill the Angels, who, when rendered as humans, were no different from them. But she also knew that soon enough, when all was said and done by better people that knew the very value…and power…of mercy and sparing lives instead of taking them, NERV would fall into either darkness, never to be mentioned again…or be used by Gendo and his masters to settle old scores.

"This girl at NERV seems to have turned on him and taken control of the agency," the man told his daughter. "Rei Ayanami."

The young woman frowned at the sound of the First Child's name, feeling the need to retch because of past memories that she simply couldn't bury, no matter how hard she wanted to.

"She even injured Dr. Ritsuko Akagi and Special Inspector Ryoji Kaji," the man added.

"Miss Ayanami…went and caused harm to that traitor?" The woman asked.

Knock-knock-knock! Another knock came at the door.

"Come in," the man said to whoever it was.

The door opened and a young man wearing a white lab coat and carrying a clipboard with a document stuck to it came in.

"Sora's latest evaluation on his surgery came back," he informed the elder. "He showed a twenty percent increase in both his mobility and sensation in his left arm and right leg."

"Does sensation include the places where he wouldn't feel anything?" The woman asked him, to which he nodded in the positive. "How is he doing?"

"Physically, I'm doing better than I did two years ago," the elder man and young woman looked by the door and saw another man standing before them.

He was about twenty-six, based on appearance and aura of innocence, dressed in a hospital shirt and pants, with dark hair that nearly hid his left eye due to its growth and length in front of his face.

"Sora," the elder man spoke, "have your new upgrades adapted to your sense of sensation like they should have with the previous set?"

The young man, Sora, raised his left arm, which seemed paler than his right arm, and flexed his fingers.

"I still wish you'd let me pay you back for the treatments," he told the man.

"It's better for me to give than for me to receive, Sora," he told the young man. "Besides, I'm wealthy enough as it is."

-x-

"…I had the worst dream so far now," said Shinji, about to eat his breakfast with Rumi, whom he was happy stayed with him this time after waking up.

"What did you dream about?" She asked him, taking a bite out of her eggs.

"I dreamt I was being kidnapped…by some soldiers in black. They came in, used gas grenades and snatched me up while we were about to doze off early."

Almost biting her tongue as she chewed on her celery stick, Rumi became reminded of a similar bad dream, which had Rei Ayanami attacking the hospital and taking Shinji before she and the others had arrived, screaming at the devastation caused to her own heart in fear that he might have been taken to Tokyo-3, the one place they couldn't stand to think of vacationing at.

"You…you know I would never let anybody try to take you anywhere you didn't want to go, right, Shinji?" She asked him.

"Yeah," he answered, and ate his celery stick. "You are ever-protective of me when it should be the opposite way."

"I'm told I've matured too much. Honestly, I could act my age sometimes… Sometimes."

"Don't grow up too fast, Rumi. The world's not going anywhere."

Sipping her small bowl of miso soup, the little girl responded with, "When everything's perfectly balanced, I'll be happy to enjoy the other wonders of my childhood, Shinji."

As they continued to eat their breakfast, Akira, deciding that, since they were in the hospital, she needed an examination to confirm her own health status.

Sometimes, I should wonder if much of the violence we've all been through this summer is nothing more than a bad dream we have difficulty waking up from, she thought, letting a doctor draw blood from her left shoulder as she laid down. How much longer is this going to take? How long until those that serve the darkness within themselves have been stopped and brought to justice? How many more days do I have until…until life reaches it absolute painful moments where you want it all to end?

"Your blood pressure's a little high, Akira," the doctor informed her, and she realized that she was thinking very negatively, which affected her body. "Try to calm yourself."

"Sorry," she apologized, doing as instructed. "How is it now?"

"It's better. Too much rice in your diet?"

"Maybe. I caught a small cold yesterday and dealt with it by taking a hot bath. Lately, it seems that much of my problems are getting out of hand with everyone else's."

"It's been a crazy summer. We should count our blessings and be thankful that there hasn't been much death this year. Okay, you're done…and in relatively good health."

"Thank you. Have a good day."

Walking out of the examination room, Akira sighed and tried to reflect back on the last day her father was still alive before he moved on into the next world. His last words to her were to go on living and lead a happy life. And, despite some of the calamities that had befallen her over the last few decades, her life has been very happy.

"You help people more than they help you, Akira," one of her adopted daughters, Mii, had told her when she was seventeen, one-hundred-eight years ago before she came of age and decided to leave town and settle elsewhere.

"…Huuragh!" Her strode down memory lane was cut short by the sound of somebody vomiting.

She turned around and saw a young woman (well, presumably in her mid-thirties) holding onto a trashcan near her.

The woman looked up at her and said, "Morning sickness."

Akira smiled and said, "They're worth it in the end."

-x-

"…How many you have left, Mother?" Mayo asked Kanami, finishing up on another paper crane in her room.

"I have fourteen left," she answered. "You?"

"Twelve left."

Knock-knock-knock. A knocking came at the door.

"Um, excuse me?" It was Miaka, accompanied by Taeko, who was holding an origami crane in her hands. "Taeko asked me to show her how to make a crane because she wanted to help you a bit."

Taeko entered the room and showed her elder aunt and cousin her crane, which seemed crude in construction, but had effort put into making it.

"For Shinji," she told them.

They looked at each other and Mayo asked, "Taeko's makes only eleven left…or thirteen?"

"Heh-heh. It actually makes twenty-five left," Kanami responded. "Thank you, Taeko."

"Um, how about twenty-four?" They heard Miaka, as she held up a paper crane of her own, smiling.

"Twenty-three," came Shinobu, holding another crane.

"Twenty-one left!" They heard Tsukiko, as she showed up, holding up two cranes.

"Wow, you want Shinji to live as much as we do," Mayo expressed with a smile.

-x-

Even though she never used it in an actual battle, the Fallenbreaker was exceptionally useful in situations that were almost like battles. Rei used it to rebuild hallways that led to places they normally led to, while at the same time creating new hallways that led to former places that she became disgusted with, like the Dummy Plug Plant, which, despite the devastation that Zeruel caused when he arrived to lay waste to the Geo-Front, remained intact. The sight of the clone bodies immersed in LCL and looking aimlessly at her made her feel contempt toward Gendo.

"In the end…I was nothing to him…but a replaceable bitch," she told herself, deciding to leave this place to continue her excavations…and then meet up with the younger Akagi woman once she was done digging.

As she did so, Naoko, keeping hidden from all that knew her face and name from five years ago, examined herself in front of a large mirror, finding her physique the same as it was prior to her first death and incarceration within Unit-00, which NERV recently discovered was now in the junkyard. Her outfit, no different from five years ago, consisted of an all-black blouse and skirt under a white lab coat, and she tied her hair, which had grown further in length, up in a bun, looking almost like an older, darker version of her daughter.

Revenge is best on a dish served cold, she thought, turning away from the mirror and toward a laptop she found, using it to reactivate her passwords and access from NERV's former GEHIRN database and trying to restore the MAGI herself without getting caught.

And as she continued with her work, her daughter had recovered enough to engage in another conversation with her college friends, a conversation she realized needed to be had.

"I had discovered a few days ago," she started, knowing it was safe to converse in the medical center due to its absence of surveillance, "that the boy's sickness was not natural."

"What?" Misato asked, confused, and angry, about what she heard just now.

"My mother made him sick to keep Commander Ikari from using him," she explained, revealing the file she had found about how her mother had infected him with an artificially-enhanced strain of leukemia that would be persistent until it killed him. "My own mother tried to kill him without getting caught in the act."

"I don't believe this," went Kaji, disgusted with Ritsuko's mother for what she did to Shinji, and disgusted with Gendo's attempt to use his own son. "This is insane."

And worse being that the Rokubungis don't know about it, Misato thought of the family that took the boy in when he was four not knowing how sick he was beforehand. They don't know…and if they do find out about this… If Shinji ever found out, there'd probably be Hell to pay. Literally.

"They gotta know," went Kaji. "They gotta know what she did to him."

"Well, I can't simply go and tell them," Ritsuko expressed. "I can't feel my legs."

"They'd probably snap, too," said Misato.

"We can't simply call them over the phone," Kaji explained. "NERV's got wiretaps allover the place."

"But they're probably convinced that it's just a recessive gene he has…" Ritsuko wanted to say, but Kaji cut her off.

"No. They have the right to know the truth." He told her.

"You can't get out of NERV in your condition…any more than I could in mine."

"I'll go tell 'em," went Misato.

"But didn't Rei threaten you with Pen-Pen's life?" Kaji asked.

"I can't understand why she would think you would care for a useless, greedy bird that was the result of a failed experiment from your previous job." Ritsuko said, not entirely understanding her friend's relationship with the penguin.

"You can't understand," Misato stated, "because you look at everything through the eyes of a scientist, not a person…or someone with somebody to lose. Pen-Pen's, like, the only family I have left."

"What'd you do with him?" Kaji asked her.

"I asked Ibuki to watch him for me."

"How do you intend to get out of the Geo-Front, knowing that she could be watching?" Ritsuko asked.

"Well, when the Angel buried less than half the base, it took out the cafeteria," Misato told her. "The city still has some people living in it that run the convenience stores and restaurants. I can use that as my cover."

"I used to think that Rei simply wasn't adept at living. Maybe she still isn't. Or she is now, but in a way that's similar to Ikari's way of living…or worse. You had best be careful she doesn't find out the truth. That thing on her hand's bad news."

"I'd better get Pen-Pen first." Misato then got up and left.

-x-

The Earth was like a pretty, blue marble in the vastness of space, surrounded by tiny specks of light in the curtain that was the night. The sun was just a ball of light that shone brightly in the darkness…while the moon itself was just a hunk of ancient rock that reflected light from the sun and acted as a natural satellite for the little blue planet. It could've been a peaceful scene for people that work in satellite space stations sending and receiving digital information, but that wasn't the case this time for one particular space station.

The Russian space station, Mir, still being used after so many years of being surpassed by newer, more efficient space stations, took notice of something rising from the shadow of the moon. Its crew, once it got near-perfect detailed photos of the anomaly, began transmitting the information to the UN, warning them of what could possibly be a threat. The message that followed the information: "LIGHT FROM THE DARK OF THE MOON".

-x-

"…Hmm?" Nemo lit up, seeing that small satellite outside his window had picked up something. "What's this? "LIGHT FROM THE DARK OF THE MOON"? Well, let's see, shall we?"

He was picking up some information from a transmission that wasn't directed towards Japan, but a part of the transmission was addressed to the United Nations, which, due to some minor hindrances, was still located within the archipelago until the head honchos that controlled it could decide where they were going to be located that was safe to rebuild after the destruction of Tokyo-2 and the refusal to setup its capital in Tokyo-3. It was an interesting thing to know that his degree in science and technology also included some mild hacking, just to find out something that could be of particular interest to him. In addition to his philosophy course during college, he took another course that dealt with satellites because he heard that these machines could be overrode by people to do other tasks.

"Oh, my God," he uttered, seeing the image that popped up on his screen, and he picked up his cell phone to call Akira.

-x-

"…Shinji, what's this drawing right here?" Rumi asked, taking notice of a folded piece of paper that was under his locket.

When he realized which drawing she had reached for, he panicked a bit.

"No, Rumi, don't look at that one…" He tried to dissuade her, but she had taken the page, opened it up, and saw the details. Uh-oh.

Rumi lowered the drawing to her lap and looked at her nephew with an almost sad expression; the picture was like what she had seen in her daydream, now almost inescapable due to its surrealistic imagery and the question that nearly plagued her mind after recalling it several times: The strange sense of fullness within her when with him like that.

"About that drawing," he tried to explain it to her, "I…"

"Naughty boy," she smiled at him, cutting him off. "Very naughty."

His cheeks flushed again.

"Yes. Sorry for being naughty." He bowed his head and apologized.

She handed the drawing back to him, and added, "Naughty girl, too."

Naughty girl? He thought, confused by her words. "What are you talking about?"

"I saw that first, Shinji," she explained. "What you drew those two doing, I saw it, and I saw it first."

"Where…where did you see that?"

"Dreamt it. On the way back home, after being gone for most of the day when you almost thought I wasn't coming to see you."

"Were…were they exactly like I drew them?"

Rumi nodded in the positive, which then left her nephew a little bothered by her affection for him.

Knowing he was going to be very out of line for even asking her such a question, but he had to ask her.

"You don't really picture us doing something like that…do you?" He asked her.

Rumi thought about it for a moment, lowered her head down, and responded, "I think we should change the subject."

"Change what subject?" They both gasped and looked toward the door where Akira was standing.

"Um…um…" They were both at a loss for words, not even able to lie to the woman.

"Don't tell me," she sighed, "it's personal. So personal that you can't tell me about it just yet. Right?"

They both nodded in the positive, but then Rumi went wide-eyed…and jumped out of her seat and ran into the restroom and slammed the door.

Shinji and Akira looked at each other and were wondering the exact same thing: What was that about?

"Oh…" They heard her behind the door.

Akira knocked on the door and asked, "Are you okay in there, Rumi?"

"Yes, Mama," she heard her daughter's response, followed by a retching sound.

"She had regular miso soup again, didn't she, Shinji?"

Her grandson nodded, and she sighed; she must've told her daughter at least eleven times not to eat miso soup until she had added soy milk and tuna to the regular mixture, otherwise she'd get indigestion.

"She's just like me from twenty years ago," she sighed.

"You get tummy aches whenever you eat miso soup without the soy milk and tuna?" Shinji asked her.

"Big time," she answered, and then noticed a folded paper in his hand. "What's that in your hands?"

He hesitated for a moment, but it was long enough for his grandmother to become less than strict and hold out her right hand.

"Let's see it, please," she told him.

"Okay," he quickly said, and handed it over to her, turning his head away in woe.

"Well," he heard her say once she looked at the drawing, "I have only three things to say about this: One: I think Nemo and I have to exchange a few words because this reminds me of one of his preferences in comic books. Two: I have a better clarity of some of what lives inside the imagination of Rumi when she explained something of this to me a few days ago. And three… Three is… Well, I can't say much for three right now, but the first two are enough to be spoken of right now."

"Sorry," he apologized.

"Don't be," she folded the paper and gave it back to him. "I'm not. Life happens. Just one thing to say, though, Shinji: She's a little too young for you right now."

"Heh…heh-heh," Shinji laughed a little, and Akira left the same instant Rumi walked out the bathroom, looking better.

The little girl got the feeling that her mother saw Shinji's drawing and got worried about something.

"She knows, doesn't she?" She asked him.

"She said the drawing reminded her of one of Nemo's preferences in comic books," he told her. "Other than that, she tells me the girl's a little too young for me right now."

"Heh-heh-heh… Right."

-x-

It took nearly two days to find the address by herself, but Asuka finally managed to locate the residence of Drake Von Meyer, determined to return to him what was his. The house seemed like a nice, three-story mansion, surrounded by a luscious garden with beautiful flowers and small trees.

I had best get this over with, she thought, walking up the steps to the front door.

Buzz! She rung the bell and waited for a response. The sound of the door unlocking brought her attention to the sight of the guy that brought in Drake for pilot testing, Geoff or Geoffrey; Asuka had almost forgotten.

"May I help you?" He asked her.

"Is Drake Von Meyer home?" She asked kindly.

"He's resting in his room," Geoff answered her. "What do you want with him?"

While a part of her conscious that demanded respect from the adult society wanted to speak up and say that she wanted to return the boy's locket to him, the other part of her conscious, which was demonstrating kindness and respect that she had put aside for a long time since her mother died, spoke up and said, "Prior to him leaving the NERV base here, I took something of value from him, and I wish to return it to him."

She held out the locket, which Geoff instantly recognized because he saw Drake's mother give it to him some time before she died, and he widened the gap in the door and allowed her to step inside.

"How is the status of an Eva pilot?" He asked her, leading the way to Drake's room.

"I've given it up," she explained. "I thought it was going to be good to pilot an Eva, to protect the world…but some people in NERV don't really see it that way. How is Drake, by the way?"

Geoff looked back at her and sighed, unable to answer the question properly.

"Is it…that bad?" She asked again.

"In the months that followed since his diagnosis, the doctors have been trying to keep him alive through chemotherapy," he revealed, "but it's barely enough to save him. And…because he thought he lost his only momento of his mother that he had left, as his father, prior to his death, had destroyed every other photo of her, he's been unable to find a reason to want to continue living, even when we heard of a new type of operation that may save him."

Asuka couldn't believe this! Part of her felt responsible for Drake's current state, that his missing locket caused him to lose hope in everything. They stopped in front of an open door and Geoff pointed her in. Slowly walking into the room, she saw the boy she had beaten to pilot Unit-02, and found him in a state that made her think that Shinji was the lucky one on account of who he had in his life supporting him.

Drake Von Meyer was bedridden, looking as thin as a skeleton was, with an IV tube feeding him nutrients because it was possible that he wasn't getting enough from basic consumption; basically, to Asuka's point of view, he looked like Death had claimed ownership over his body…and was trying to claim the rest of him very slowly.

Gott im Himmel, she thought, hoping that Rumi's nephew wasn't in any condition like this because it seemed like constant agony.

Drake, who looked like he wasn't looking at anything or anyone, turned his head toward her and raised his right hand up, pointing his index finger at her face.

"You…" He sounded withered. "What…want?"

She approached him, but kept a clear distance to avoid wanting to cause any violence if he started something with her.

"I'm here to return something that belongs to you," she stated, holding out his locket. "I stole it from you months ago, and I'm giving it back. I'm sorry for taking it and lying about not having it, Drake."

His eyes, which were half-open, looked up at the locket that he thought he had lost for good, and he turned his hand over to accept it.

Asuka placed it in his palm and watched his fingers close, albeit slowly, tightly around it, as if to make sure it was real and secured in his grip.

"Thank…you…" He praised her.

She bowed her head and turned to leave, but he stopped her.

"Eva…win?" He asked her.

She nodded and said, "It only ever won one battle. It hasn't won any others since."

"Eva…bad?"

"Yeah. Very bad."

As she left out his room, his guardian lead her back to the front door.

"Thank you for returning his locket, Ms. Soryu," he told her.

"You're welcome," she responded. "Is he…going to pull through?"

"If this procedure I heard of is as good as its fellow advancements in medical technologies is, then I believe he has a good chance of living to see old age," he told her.

"Didn't think NERV was advancing its medical practices."

"Not NERV. We had received a letter from Kyoto, Japan, by a man who's been offering medical treatments to dozens of people for a few years after Second Impact. Runs a medical company, Medical Angel Industries."

"Why does that name sound familiar?"

"It's the only business of its kind that offers medical treatments to those in need of it…for free. It's been advancing many fields of medical practices, from redesigning prosthetics to creating artificial skin that lives…to the very possibility of using nanotechnology to treat certain forms of cancer or rewriting diseases that could be used against other diseases. This man, Masamune Ikari, seems to be one of the few people left after the apocalypse that has people's best interests in mind."

"Masamune Ikari? As in…Gendo Ikari?" Asuka questioned, unsure if this Masamune was related to NERV's tyrant.

"Maybe," Geoff suggested, "but nobody really knows…except perhaps those that know the two personally. I've heard of NERV's Gendo Ikari, and I consider him to be a real loser."

"Yeah…a real loser," Asuka had to agree.

-x-

Ring-ring! Akira heard her phone going off and she picked up, seeing it was from Nemo.

"Nemo, just the person I needed to speak with," she greeted him, getting set to question him about the possibility of Rumi looking through his comics and getting ideas from them.

Unfortunately, her desire to question it was put on hold when Nemo explained the possibility of her duty as a wielder of the Angelbreaker needing to be carried out today.

"But, Nemo, that's space, and there's no air up there," she told him.

As she continued to speak with him, back in Shinji's room, said boy noticed how Rumi's half of the Angelbreaker started acting up, sprouting small tendrils and tentacles.

"I guess I'd better go," said Rumi to him, getting up out of the chair and leaving.

"Wait, Rumi," he tried to keep her with, but she had left out.

Returning most of the constructs back into the bracelet's mass, Rumi wondered what was going on, as she hadn't even done anything.

Flap. She heard something, like a wing flapping. And then her surroundings blurred up, becoming a place of darkness, night the curtain of night. There were stars out, but when she looked down, she hadn't expected to find that there was no floor to stand upon.

"Aaaahh!" Her six-year-old mind made her gasp, looking around to see that she was in space; the sight of the sun, the moon and the Earth were a dead giveaway to her perception.

"When light is cast upon all that you love, your judgment is made…and the verdict is that you are guilty of your crimes, little girl," a female voice uttered from behind her. "You have sinned against my family, disgraced us with your existence, disrespected all of our history because of your sick affections for that boy of yours."

Rumi turned around to face who she thought would be a woman, but looked up and saw something far worse than anything she'd seen so far: A shining, avian-like, crystal dragon, so bright that she couldn't make out many of its features, all save a gigantic pair of wings that flapped around a few times.

"Oh…" She breathed.

"And you know what else?" She heard the voice coming from its head on its elongated neck. "You're a disgustingly-wicked little bitch."

FLASH! A large light flashed from the creature and blinded Rumi, which obscured her environment…and returned her back to the hallway.

Gasp! She gasped, panting and examining her right arm, seeing the gauntlet that was her half of the Angelbreaker manifested.

Okay, she thought, walking toward the elevator. I gotta find Mother and deal with this.

-x-

"…I haven't seen you in a long time…and I'm not even sure what to call you if not by your actual name," went Rei, standing in front of the intact-yet-maimed body of Lilith, unchanged since her last visit, which was to impale her with the Spear of Longinus. "It's strange, really… I feel as though I knew you in another life, but it's not perfect to recall in its entirety. You…you were looking down at some people…long ago…and they placed you here, severing your legs and burying you down here for over several millennias to keep you at bay. I can see it clearly as though…as though I had actually been there to witness it."

The immobile being that was the mother of all of Earth's common forms of life remained silent to what was being shared.

"Reveal…your secrets…to me," Rei uttered out, raised her left arm up, and shot out tendrils toward Lilith's head, gripping onto the mask that acted as her face.

Prying the object roughly from Lilith's face, Rei found, much to her curiosity, that the mask might as well have been her face…because beneath the exterior…was nothing. No eyes, no mouth, not even a skull-like structure. It was as though this creature were an ancient prototype of the marshmallow humanoid from the Ghostbusters franchise. The mask fell hard behind Rei as sighed at some disappointment as she was being disappointed.

"A person without a face," she uttered, "has nothing to offer in sounds or words. You are…as you've always been to me: A woman that doesn't bleed."

Then, taking a closer look at the stubby waist where Lilith's legs used to be before they were used in the formation of Unit-01's organic material, Rei saw some leg-like bits wiggling around as the reddish-orange fluid of LCL continued to seep out through the wound-like tatters. They reminded her so much of her own legs, and she lifted up the bottoms of her yukata to examine them. And then, she shifted her colorations from her regular albinism to the colorations of her physical template, Yui, and frowned at the reminders of how she was made in the image of the wife of the man that thought he could move Heaven and Earth just to be reunited with her.

"Everything happens as it must", indeed, she thought, using Yui's words that she somehow knew, despite having never heard them before. But not everything.

Even the words of what the Third Child said about putting the power you had to good use made it into her conscious mind, but, in an unfortunate way, there were many ways to put the power you had to good use…and not all of them had to be considered 'good'.

I think I need to get more out of Gendo than he's willing to even share with me, she thought, leaving the chamber the faceless Lilith was restrained in.

-x-

"…So another Angel is up in the sky?" Rumi repeated what was revealed to her by her mother, who was informed by Nemo.

"Not in the sky, but in space," Akira clarified.

As they walked up the mountain path toward their house, they became curious as to why this new Angel hadn't shown up to try and deal with them. While Akira was unsure of what this Angel was capable of before they humanized it, Rumi was simply wondering if this Angel looked anything at all like the creature she saw in her hallucination.

Why do I get the feeling that something far worse than dealing with this Angel is going to happen? She thought, looking up at the sky, unable to see the beast that had beef with her within the blue curtain of the day, but knowing it was there, floating amongst the stars in the vastness of space.

-x-

Nobody ever said that traveling on foot, while one of the best luxuries that a person can have in their life, was such a murderous action on the body when doing so for several hours to a few days. But it was better to walk to where you felt you had to get to than to do nothing but lay around on the ground and expect that somebody would find you and take you to your destination. At least…that's what the person doing the traveling believed as they wandered through the unindustrialized terrain that were the hills, trees and small streams that made up a large and beautiful meadow that possessed old train tracks that were the only present piece of human industry that aided in traveling.

They are near, thought the person, wading through a small creek now, getting to the other side of a river. They are scattered, in need of unity, stability and tolerance. We…we must come together for everything to be better.

The warm air and soft grass felt like a reward for wading through water now, but the journey to the destination was still far ahead to being over. The traveler wasn't sure how long it would be until they reached their end of the journey, but as long as they had the will, or what passed for a will, to go on, they wouldn't stop.

-x-

Other NERV branches were picking up the detection of the new Angel and sending the information to lesser computer systems available to NERV HQ in Japan, wondering if they were going to do anything about it…or let it become dealt with without destroying it by a woman and her toddler child out of diapers.

"What in the name of…" Maya shuddered, as the image of the new Angel filled computer screens not connected to the still-damaged MAGI.

"That can't be the Angel," went Aoba, mesmerized by the image of a shining creature that looked like a jagged diamond.

"But it is," went Makoto, "it's pattern's blue, just like the others."

"It's too far up in space for the Evas to face it in direct combat," Maya told the bridge.

From atop the bridge of Central Dogma where Gendo would formally sit and take command or to simply observe the scene, Rei, having restricted her former puppet master to his chair back in his office, was there instead, wondering how things were going to unfold in this new chapter of the humanization of the Angels, which mattered less to her, provided that Rumi survived…and suffered a little at the same time.

Kaworu was inside Unit-04, awaiting whatever orders there were, but since the staff had to consider the common possibility that this Angel, like most of the others, was not interested in NERV or the Evas at all, and were left simply watching.

"…Captain Katsuragi picked a bad time to go get something to eat," she heard Ms. Ibuki utter out, which made Rei, somewhat, curious about the purple-haired strategist that despised the Angels because of the Second Impact.

It matters not, she decided to put the woman's absence on hold. I'll deal with her later.

-x-

"…Hmm?" Rumi stopped in front of a closed door that seemed like it hadn't been in use for a long time. "I know there are plenty of rooms here, but I don't think I've ever noticed this one before."

The door of the room in question was right next to Nemo's, and had a flipped over sign that was beyond Rumi's ability to reach to find out what was written on the other side. And although her mother and she had a responsibility to handle the Angel yet to be humanized, the little girl was entitled to her mild curiosity at what was in this room.

"Rumi," she heard her mother speak up a few feet away. "What are you doing?"

"I'm sorry," she apologized, "I just noticed that this room seems to be…odd because the door's a little dirty. And there are several other rooms around here that aren't in use, but this one's… Well… Whose room was this one?"

Akira stood in front of the closed door and recalled the last memories associated to its inhabitant before they closed the door.

Sighing, she revealed, "It was Gendo's…before he left."

With her curiosity intensifying, the young lady slowly reached for the doorknob to open it.

"Wait, Rumi," Akira gasped. "There's nothing to see in there that's good."

"You mean, you cleaned out his room?"

"No. It's still a traditional habit of mine; I don't clean out anybody's room until after they pass away…until after receiving actual confirmation on a family member's passing. I didn't even think Gendo would even come back for the rest of his possessions when he showed up at the festival the way he did."

Leaning against the wall, thinking back to the night of her close encounter with her former brother's violent reaction to her refusal to pilot the Eva again for him to kill the Angels they had humanized, Little Rumi remembered the intense fear of almost being subjected to his blue flames…and how Shinji might've been burnt when he was prepared to tackle her to the ground had Tsukiko not intervene and taken control of the flames.

"You don't intend to clean out his former temple of privacy, even after you kicked him out, permanently, because of what he did to us, do you?"

Akira leaned against the wall with her and answered her, "Thanks to Nemo's modern teachings, I can stop saying some old words and simply say that some of my habits, my lessons, diehard, Rumi. I remain attached to my traditions."

That didn't cease her curiosity from simply wanting to look in Gendo's room, and she asked her, "Is it that wrong to answer my curious mind to what lurks in a damp dungeon, Mother?"

Akira gave in and grabbed the knob, pushing the door opened and unleashing several years' worth of dust that made them cover their noses.

Fanning away at the smoke with her hand, Rumi looked inside the dark room, which lit up due to her mother creating a ball of fire in her hand, and felt like something was let loose a long time ago in here.

There were layers of dust on everything, a dresser was laying against a bed on its side, piles of old clothes were scattered about, some books and toys were atop a nightstand and the curtains of the window were tattered. It could've all been part of an older, decrepit home, but it made this house of love and stability the owner of a stain that couldn't be cleaned up just yet.

"Mommy," Rumi was confused, "I thought you guys left his room untouched after he left."

Akira turned away from the interior of the room and explained, "We did, Rumi. This…is how he left it before he walked out on us, never wanting to come back. We've never touched it since that day."

Rumi was told of how Shinji had trashed parts of his own room before she was born when he tried to commit suicide by taking Shinobu's sleeping pills after going through some of Bumi's beer, but Gendo's room seemed to be in worse condition than his had ever been.

"Gendo makes a mess and he doesn't clean it up," she sighed.

"He was very angry before he left, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. He was never good with having his affections turned down or feelings rejected, and never settling for anything short of being the best."

"He thought he was better than everyone else?"

"In a way, yeah, Rumi."

"But…you never favored him."

"Never. Everyone's equal. Nobody's better or worse than anyone else."

Rumi then grabbed the doorknob and closed the door.

"Can I be honest about what I think about Gendo?" She asked her mother.

"Sure," Akira answered.

"He doesn't deserve Shinji at all."

"What makes you say that?"

"When we met him back in Tokyo-3, I was disgusted that the only reason he wanted to see Shinji was only to use him as a tool or…a pawn, to be more accurate. If the reason were to try and reconcile with him, I'd have probably been less disgusted with his behavior that day… Sadly, that wasn't the case. Whenever I imagined Shinji leaving, it was always because of that failure. He…was my perception of what dying was because of the way he looked in every photo, filled with a darkness that mirrored materials burnt by fire that's been played with."

I can't deny what Rumi says as a fact, thought Akira, as Gendo's always been this way. He's…a bad seed…but I don't hate him for his origins. I hate him for his choices, his willingness to hurt or threaten others for the sake of achieving his own, twisted goals that can never be realized.

"…This comic book, Akira?" They heard Nemo's voice, as he came out of his room and presented his mother with a comic book in his left hand.

The centenarian woman took the book from him and examined the pages, stopping on two that presented a detailed description of two of its characters.

"Wow, Nemo," she sighed, deciding to take precaution because of her grandson's drawing of her youngest daughter's daydream of them being with each other. "No disrespect, Nemo, but put this book someplace where young eyes won't see it until they're older. It's so unlike many of your Marvel comic books from the older years where scenes like this weren't so graphic."

"Yes, Akira," Nemo responded, being handed his book back. Broken Trinity was one of my favorite Top Cow books when I started reading Witchblade.

"Well, that Angel's certainly taking its time up there in space…or she, to correct myself," they heard Akira utter out.

"Reminds me of Kanami when she was a teen," Nemo expressed.

"Yeah, except Kanami explained why she didn't come home that one night."

"Maybe I should wait outside," said Rumi, who then left the two to discuss their adult times in private.

Akira and Nemo were left stunned by her choice of words.

"Rumi's the reason you got in my stream about Broken Trinity, isn't she?" Nemo asked Akira.

"She described a daydream she had that a drawing of Shinji's mirrored the pages of the book that have me concerned," she expressed. "As mature as she can be…when she's required to, from time to time, Rumi doesn't need to know about…that sort of battling…any time sooner than Taeko doesn't need to know, as well."

"Should I do the same with my Runaways comics?"

"Are they adult-graphic, too?"

"No, but some of the scenes are teen-graphic and there's language that isn't hidden."

"Yeah, hide those, too. I don't want her getting ideas."

"What kind of ideas?"

"You know what I mean, Nemo."

As Akira walked away to catch up with Rumi, Nemo returned to his room and gathered his graphic comics that Akira didn't want Rumi looking at to get bad ideas, along with his graphic manga of Battle Royale and his Terminator comics and put them in his floor closet where he kept his anime collection that was adult-oriented that he accumulated over ten years ago.

"I'm the otaku of the family and she gives me one of the rooms with extra space, suspecting it would come in handy one day," he muttered to himself as he set the stack of books next to a stack of DVDs. "Hmm? Oh, my Aki Sora collection! I haven't read these in a while. But not today."

-x-

She was taking a dangerous risk. Her arm hadn't mended completely, so driving her car with one hand was very hazardous. But, in a small way, Misato felt it may have been better to risk a car accident that could leave her near Death's door along with Pen-Pen…than to be at the mercy of a former Evangelion pilot that turned into a psychotic powerhouse that, as far as she even suspected, was possibly due to something far worse than potential contamination by Unit-00.

It's funny, though, she thought, no longer lost in finding her way to the town of elements. It's barely on any modern maps and GPS systems rarely see it, but I know where Akira Town is.

As the drive down the road continued, Pen-Pen looked up out the window and saw something.

"Wark-wark!" He went, and Misato saw it too: A shining object that appeared to be a comet.

"Uh-oh," Misato stopped her car to wait for the impact to happen.

The shining comet had fallen toward her destination, but she didn't feel the ground shake…or vibrations that would've occurred in an impact.

-x-

It wasn't the brightness of what he thought to be a comet that left him worried, or the fear that the only home he had, the only home he knew and loved, disappearing in a matter of seconds due to a powerful act of forces beyond human comprehensions. No, it was neither of these two. Not even the idea that the kami themselves were taking it upon themselves to punish the good people for acts the bad ones had committed. But…the sight of a large, hostile…and very beautiful-looking crystal dragon… That made Shinji worry over his family, as the creature was hovering over the mountain where the estate was.

-x-

If it had to be humanized, it would invoke the grand fear of the light before the Angelbreaker had the chance to maim.

"Whoa," Akira reacted to the grand sight of who she discovered was Arael, the next-to-last of Adam's daughters, and the Angel of Birds. "I guess you decided to change your looks."

Oh, you have no idea how much I've had to change just to deal with your child, Arael spoke within Akira's mind.

The Angelbreaker had materialized a different style of armor over its wielders' bodies than the last time: The armor was less dense, less scaly, revealed more of their clothing that regularly disappeared when it showed up, and small wings sprouted from their armored backs.

Rumi, seeing that this Angel was exactly as she had foreseen in her hallucination, was reminded of something much more surreal than everything else that occurred in their encounters with each of the other Angels: Something about space…and a sword.

I don't like this, she thought, producing hook swords from her armored wrists. I really don't like this.

"Rrrrrraaurgh!" Arael snarled, sounding nothing like its designation and sounding more like a reptilian.

"Crud!" Nemo, who showed up and saw Arael, gasped before running back inside, grabbing his sister, Tsukiko, and going down the hall. "Get to the panic room!"

Oh, let's take this somewhere more subtle, the wielders heard Arael suggest, that is…if you can even keep up with me.

Flapping her wings, the Angel took to the skies above.

Akira and Rumi looked to each other, as if waiting for the other one's decision on what to do.

"Well," went Rumi first, "it's not the first time we went flying."

"Yeah, except we never flew so high," responded Akira, and the wings on their backs expanded and took them upward after Arael. "I hope the Angelbreaker's done this before!"

As they soared much higher than usual, Akira worried for her daughter's safety; even those that could manipulate the air currents to enable flight never flew to heights where air was, put quite simply, nonexistent and couldn't be brought with you. But every time she looked toward her daughter, she seemed fine, if only worried about the moment where they would have to resume the battle with the Angel of Birds.

I guess the Angelbreaker provides oxygen for its wielders when they're in environments where breathing is difficult or impossible, the mother believed, seeing the stars that hung in the black curtain of space behind the blue curtain of the day.

The Angel, floating in between the blue planet and its natural satellite, had, apparently, grown larger and sported more large wings in addition to the pair it already had when it showed up. By the wielders' estimates alone, it was no larger than Sahaquiel had been when he was large. The core, which shined as much as its possessor did, was located on its underbelly, held in place by what looked like clawed wings that were crossed, right over left, in order to hold it, almost similar to how the dead are dressed whenever funerals took place.

"Mom?" Rumi uttered out.

"Yes, dear?" Akira responded.

"I think she should be renamed the Angel of Dragons instead of the Angel of Birds."

"I agree with you. She seems more reptilian now."

Oh, I'm still a large bird, you two, they heard the Angel speak to them again. I was around long enough to see some of your predecessors change from being scaly to having feathers for flight. So, as a means of insulting your form's lack of natural flight, I assumed a form based off of the Lilin's desires of flying. And I see the Angelbreaker allows for you to fly with graceful elegance, befitting of a female, unlike the barbaric recklessness of males.

"You remind me of some people that were sexists in their day," Akira told her, hovering above her head. "Everyone's equal, even if they don't realize it."

Not everyone, wielder. My father is always the superior one in the family. Your creator, Lilith, will always be the flawed one because of her wretchedness, which, in turn, makes all of you Lilin…foolish, weak and disturbingly vile. Look at how you tarnished the planet, how you abuse it. In the end, all you will do is kill its spirit. It will no longer support any form of life except for those that aren't descended from that faceless bitch or were turned by your talisman.

What?! Rumi thought, hoping that Arael was just lying about people ending the life of the blue planet in the future, now imagining it turning into a brownish-red planet, not so different from Mars, but similar in its inability to support human or animal life. "That…will not happen."

That's what you say, Arael told them, all the while growling and snarling, but in the end, you're a species of flawed, separate constructs of flesh that can only destroy. There is another type of creature that lives the way you do, wielders, and you know what it's called? A virus! Which is all that you embody in your abilities. You're a tide of rampage that washes away all traces of natural order, a storm that leaves traces of ruination. You're an outbreak of death and misery. You're a plague…and I'm the new cure.

Then, rearing her head toward Akira, Arael fired a stream of white fire!

"Whoa!" Akira gasped, raising her arms up and trying to manipulate the flames, deflecting them upward over her head where they dissipated. "How can you breathe fire?! There's no air around us!"

I'm not bound by mortal laws like you are!

Rumi then used her swords and hurled them at Arael's head, but they bounced off and crumbled to dust; not only did she not believe in being able to inflict harm on the Angel's body, but the weapons created by the Angelbreaker were never meant to leave traces of their existence after a period of use.

When light is cast upon all that you love, your judgment is made…and the verdict is that you are guilty of your crimes, little girl, Rumi heard Arael say to her, which she recalled earlier in the afternoon as she had left the hospital, and quickly created a double-bladed axe to swing at the Angel.

Arael's mouth flared with light and she unleashed it upon Rumi, obscuring her vision.

"Aaaaahh!" She screamed, unable to see anything, but even worse was what her mind was perceiving deep inside.

FLASH! Rumi, feeling the previous sensations that were negative disappearing a little, and not recalling what she was previously doing, found herself back in the hospital, inside an operating room with somebody covered by a sheet.

"I'm sorry, but…she didn't make it," she heard a man's voice, but there was nobody else in the room with her.

"It should've been me," the voice of her nephew uttered, bringing Rumi to suspect that the voices were of a conversation being spoken of recently. "It was supposed to be me, not her."

As she got closer to the covered body, she noticed that the person was tiny, with the sheet stained with blood. Whoever it was, she hoped that they had at least left the mortal coil peacefully instead of painfully, the way every person should've.

"She was weak," the voice of Gendo was heard as Rumi climbed a stepping stool to be of sufficient height and examine the body. "The world has no time for weak people. It needs those that are willing and able to do anything… Anything for greatness."

Reaching toward the head with her right hand, she found that the Angelbreaker's bracelet form wasn't present on her wrist, but this didn't deter her action to uncover the head of the deceased person beneath the stained sheet. Ripping it away, she gasped at the sight of…herself! She was naked, covered in lacerations, and had the words, "Dead Oni Child" carved onto her belly.

"Aaaah!" She backed away, terrified. "This can't be right. That…that can't be me."

"It is you, Rumi," she heard the dead girl utter out, turning her head her way, smiling evilly. "What's the matter, little girl? Are you scared?"

The dead Rumi got up and off the gurney and walked up to the live version, subtly impressing the girl by demonstrating that a dead person with no skin on their left leg could still use it to walk.

"And you know the worst part about being dead is?" She asked her. "I can't even go to the bathroom with my remaining kidney because of lover boy's parents and their psychotic daughter!"

"Aaaahh!" Rumi screamed, running out of the room when her dead doppelganger attempted to grab her by the neck. This is just a bad dream. This is just a very bad dream.

The hospital floor she was on seemed to be empty, as there wasn't anybody around for her to run to for aid. But that didn't stop her from finding a stairway and shutting the door before her dead, nude doppelganger caught her.

"What's going on here?" She questioned, catching her breath as she fell against the door.

SMASH! A little hand that was covered in blood made a hole in the door in front of her face!

"Aaaaahh!" She backed away and ran down the stairs, but stopped at the sight of another familiar face. "Aaahh!"

It was Rei Ayanami, exactly as she saw her last, but her face had metallic tendrils or strands decorating her face in a tattoo-like décor and her left arm wielded a large, crescent scythe.

"I'm sorry, little lady, but this way's a dead-end," she told Rumi, and hurled her scythe at her.

"Aaaaahh!" Rumi dodged and ran the other way up the stairs.

She felt like the steps had no end to them, and she was trying to get to the next floor, but felt like they were leading her to the top floor, which was the roof.

"Rumi… Rumi… We're going to get you," was what she heard during the trek up those steps, and every time she stopped to look back, she could see her deceased copy, Ms. Ayanami, and two new faces she couldn't help but despise for different reasons: Gendo Ikari for his unforgivable actions…and his wife, Yui Ikari, simply due to her assumption, her belief, that she wasn't a very good person. "We're going to get you, Rumi."

Just when she was about to give up and try to run back the other way in the hopes of getting past them, Rumi saw light at the end of the stairway and was led to the roof, but instead of the sight of sunny day, she was introduced to a mockery of the Geo-Front! Its artificial existence making her feel uneasy, along with the sight of Unit-01, hovering by means of orange, vein-like wings of light.

"Grrrrr!" She heard it growling down at her.

"There's nowhere left to run to," she heard Gendo as she turned around to see the four chasers having caught up with her.

"There's nowhere to hide," her dead copy added.

Rumi continued to back away from them, but the only thing left for her to back up toward wasn't even a landmass. She just didn't realize it yet.

"Can you swim, little girl?" Yui asked her, which Rumi thought was some sort of trick question.

Two seconds later, she felt the back of her feet losing their footing and she turned her head right and saw the water of the artificial lake.

"Oh! Aah! Aaaaahh!" She gasped, falling in.

SPLASH! She sunk instead of floated up to the surface. Water got into her lungs. The feeling of tentacles wrapping around her limbs. And the slowing pace of her heart.

"You're weak, little girl," she heard her dead copy as her head fell into the water to see her. "How could anybody raise such a weak, little girl…with a worthless crush on her only nephew? What a stupid desire! Like he could ever love you as more than what you are to him right now?! You should sleep, Rumi. Sleep…just like every one you failed to protect."

Rumi felt her strength leaving her, along with her will to go on living. The sounds of her surroundings toned down to match the quieting of her heart. Her vision began to dull as the lack of oxygen to her lungs was strengthening.

"…No, Rumi," she heard Shinji's voice, "it's not over for you. Don't give up. Don't ever give up!"

She felt a large hand on her wrist, causing her to turn her head weakly to see who it was, and saw that it was her nephew, looking as he always did in most of her happy dreams: Not so fragile by his illness, his sense of strength now reflecting on the outside what it showed deep down, and a head full of the same hair that his wigs represented…along with eyes that were full of life…and hope.

"You can't stop now, Rumi," he told her some more. "Look at how far you've come in saving people with Akira. You're close to saving the whole world by defeating these Angels. I've never seen you give up hope in anything, not even on me. Are you really going to let an illusion get the best of you with a bunch of mockeries of people that don't even come as close to my heart as you do?"

I…I'm closet to your heart, Shinji-Kun? She thought, using her left hand to cover his.

"Yes, Rumi," she heard him say. "You're at the top of my pyramid. Maybe the reason I was able to survive this long with my illness was because of how you feel about me. Don't stop fighting now. I'm waiting for you to come back home. Please, come home, Rumi. Come home."

Her grip tightened over his hand as she felt her strength returning to her.

Arigato, Shinji, she told him, now able to breathe in the water she knew now wasn't really there. I can still turn this around…and I know I can still save you. Please, wait for me to save you once all the Angels are humanized, Shinji. Will you wait for me?

"I will wait for you, Rumi-Chan," he told her.

Rumi leaned in closer to his face and kissed him on the lips.

I love you, her final thoughts to him were.

FLASH! The light that had returned shattered around Rumi's armored guise, as she was returned to the present battle with Arael.

What?! Arael gasped, backing away a little. There's no way she could've overcome my attack! She should've been driven to her mental limits!

Rumi shook off the lingering effects of what she assumed was Arael's mental abilities used offensively against her.

"You messed with the wrong wielder of the Angelbreaker," she told her, producing a large katana from her hands. "Ha!"

"Grrrruargh!" Arael growled, realizing that her mental attacks were now useless against this child.

"Mother, stay outta this, please," Rumi told Akira, who was now behind her.

"Go teach her who's stronger," Akira told her, respecting her daughter's decision, and standing aside.

"Like in the old fairy tales," Rumi announced, raising the blade up and using the wings on her back to propel herself toward the Angel, "the knight always slays the bad dragon!"

No! Arael panicked, breathing fire at her, but it was no use.

This little girl was too angry with her attempt to render her brain useless to keep her alive to feel the basic fear of fire that would've been inherent within the mentality of children once realized it could be used to kill them.

"Haaaaaurgh!" Rumi yelled out, flying through the stream of cosmic-like fire, bringing the sword down on Arael's head once she was close enough to her snout.

SLASH! The blade became larger and left Arael's head split in half down toward her neck, revealing her skull's internal structure, but keeping everything from spilling out in a gross display.

Aaaaaaahhh! They heard Arael scream from the pain and agony.

Then, seeing that her head wasn't going to snap back together, Rumi flew underneath the Angel of Birds and targeted her core, severing its winged appendages and leaving it afloat in space.

No! My life! That's my life! Arael croaked, sounding like, in the wielders' mental perception and awareness, she was having trouble breathing, which should've fit with her head being severed.

The core, still glowing brightly, fell to the Earth, and Akira, needing to make sure it didn't cause any collateral damage or loss of life, flew after it. The remains of Arael's glowing body fell toward the planet soon after.

-x-

"…Nemo," went Tsukiko, as she and the rest of family, minus Shinji, were in the panic room, "have I ever mentioned that I hate the panic room?"

"Yes, Tsukiko," he responded. "This makes seventeen."

Taeko noticed how her youngest adult aunt was crouched by one of the external ventilation ducts and how she had just slammed her right hand on it to keep it from vibrating.

"Are you alright, Tsukiko?" She asked her.

"Yeah," she answered her youngest niece.

Examining the visual size of the panic room, as it was the size of the kitchen itself, the little girl assumed that Tsukiko had a problem with small, enclosed spaces.

"Closet space?" Mayo had asked Tsukiko, seeing some frustration in her.

"I'm okay," she assured them.

Bumi, taking his responsibilities as the eldest sibling serious, uttered, "Tsukiko, don't you dare freak out and have a panic attack."

"I know."

"I'm serious."

"I won't."

There was silence in the room again…until Shinobu went and spoke up, "Most people gifted in fire didn't think dragons actually existed. Quite a shock to one's belief that they did exist."

This sparked up Tsukiko's interest and curiosity, since she herself was a Pyro Channeler and the art of controlling fire was, according to Akira, as far as even she knew, granted to people by dragons that had, supposedly, existed alongside the dinosaurs and survived up to the days of the elemental cities before their existence came to a sad end.

"Really, big sister?" She asked.

"Yeah. My father told me."

"And…when did people of fire cease to believe that the dragons did exist?"

"Over eight-thousand years ago. I say that because my grandmother had believed the cities under the elements had been around before that time."

"Wouldn't that mean that those four cities disappeared before what would've, probably, been referred to as… Eight-Thousand BC?" Taeko asked; this question stemming from what she had to read once during a history lesson before the summer started.

"Yeah, Taeko," her mother answered. "But who really knows for sure? The Earth had to have been, geographically, tectonically and all the other science babble that you get in documentaries and films, formed appropriately to suit the requirements and structure of the four cities. Maybe they existed before even the Second Century."

"They existed long before modern history, which includes histories like those of the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians and Sumerians, was ever recorded in stone," said Kanami. "Everything we know about what we know relating to the elemental arts…all dates back to a time where history, without the means to record it properly and leave detailed records behind for future generations to learn from, didn't exist in a way that most modern people would understand."

"That's exactly right," Nemo agreed.

THUD! A loud sound caught their attention.

Mayo picked up her sword and got up.

"Half an hour, and I say that sounds means something else that ain't serious," she told them, climbing up the ladder that was the primary way in and out of the panic room.

-x-

While not her first choice, Rumi had managed to set the core of Arael onto the path grounds of the family estate. The glow it possessed ceased and revealed itself to be red like those of her siblings.

"Way to go, Rumi," her mother praised her, setting the deteriorated remains of Arael's Angel body on the grounds outside the estate; the body had been reduced to the size of a small house and was covered in burn marks due to the reentry of Akira.

The core continued to pulsate with energy, showing that Arael was still alive.

"Shall we?" Rumi asked her mother.

"Let's," Akira agreed, and they pointed their right arms toward the core, unleashing their own streams of light at it.

-x-

"…NERV let those two interfere again!" SEELE 04 shouted in at the newest meeting. "They didn't even try to deal with the Angel!"

"This has gotten far out of hand," said SEELE 06. "These…heroines need to be dealt with!"

"Ikari has outlived his usefulness," SEELE 01 announced. "He shall atone for his inability to deal with the Angels and his adopted relatives with his death."

"Oh, I don't think so, boys," they heard a female voice, just as a hologram showed up in the center of the room, in front of the monoliths. "No one decides how Gendo Ikari shall die…without my permission to end his life myself."

Rei Ayanami, surprising most of the members with her presence, had made good on her decision to meet with them, only it was much earlier in the evening than she had said.

"Rei Ayanami," SEELE 01 uttered in response to the sight of her, somewhat, change in wardrobe; he was expecting a school uniform and not a yukata. "You honor us with your presence."

"Oh, I do, do I? More so than Gendo, who has failed in everything from being in charge of dealing with the Angels…to using the Evas and finding willing, appropriate pilots for them…to even being a parent? Are any of you even aware of what he wanted through the Instrumentality Project you had such high hopes for achieving? He wanted to be the supreme head of everything and regain his bitch, whose likeness I embody. He confided in me the moment I returned to NERV to see him and take charge." Rei told them.

"What have you done with Ikari?" SEELE 12 asked her.

"He lives on borrowed time, serving, for the time being, as my pet, not doing anything other than merely living until I want him to do something. Instrumentality, huh? To unite all human souls into a single entity…with you men in control so that you may be like the deities of old, saving yourselves from the so-called nothingness of Third Impact. That…is nothing more than an unreachable fantasy now that all but one of the Angels have been humanized. Of course, the goal to making that fantasy a reality had been lost long ago, since way before this summer even started. Unit-01 is a waste of space, the Third Child is nearing the end of his borrowed time of living, no other Evas have been made, and the Second Child is out of the picture. But…what if I were to tell you that an alternative to Instrumentality existed…and it could be achieved before the summer ends?"

"I'd say you're crazy," went SEELE 09 to her. "If the project can't be achieved, then all that we've spent over a decade seeking has been for naught."

"Those are tough words from one that doesn't want the unity of Man, who has never wanted anything of this goal to begin with."

"You know not what you say to me, Ms. Ayanami."

"Oh, do I? Think about it for a while. I'm still at NERV HQ, putting into motion what will be required. I already have more than half of the necessary pieces to achieve this alternative. Only one piece remains. Contact me when you're ready to listen."

The instant her hologram vanished, the council was left questioning themselves on what to do.

"Do you believe her?" SEELE 07 asked the others.

"Knowing that she spent the longest time at NERV, under Ikari's supervision, I wouldn't be surprised if she turned out like him," expressed SEELE 04.

"What she did say about one thing was true," went SEELE 11. "Only one of us did not seek the end result of the Instrumentality Project."

"Don't even start with me!" SEELE 09 uttered. "I haven't turned on any of you like Gendo was going to! You have nothing on me!"

"Enough!" SEELE 01 announced. "One thing at a time. One thing at a time."

-x-

"…Ow… That little bitch," said an unhappy girl's voice, sounding like she was coming to after being unconscious for a few hours. "Huh?"

Getting up, she found herself atop a cot, in a room with metal and wooden bars, and the sight of several other people in similar rooms caught her attention.

"Where…in the Hell…am I?" She asked them.

A young woman with reddish-pink hair and a pale complexion, standing behind the bars that kept her inside her room, uttered, "You can either call it prison…or you can call it rehab, Arael. Whichever one suits you."

"Shamshel?" The young girl, Arael, had reacted. "You look terrible as a Lilin."

"Funny, I was told I was rather attractive as one. But then again, we're all attractive in our own way."

"We've all changed, Arael," went Sachiel, leaning against the bars of his cell. "Even you."

Arael then looked down at her recently-made arms and wiggled her little digits.

"Wha… What are…" She couldn't say what she feared at the moment, but the sight of a mirror brought her a measure of realization to what was new.

The sight of her new face was not a pleasing one: She looked like a younger version of her elder sister, possibly in her mid to late-teens, except for her hair that was the color of snow, with her eyes being blue like the water or sky. Her wardrobe consisted of a white dress with blue, baggy pants underneath, and her core, no longer needing to be held by her in any way that limited the use of her limbs, was now placed upon her forehead, looking like a third eye of sorts, mirroring the status of her brother, Sahaquiel's core.

"Ah," she sighed, feeling the former container of her essence, now akin to something more like jewelry. "I look like crud!"

"Don't say that about yourself, Arael," uttered Gaghiel to her. "It's an improvement on what we used to look like before our defeats."

"Hey, Zeruel's not one to talk! He's got, what the Lilin call, exaggerations allover his body!" Kou Israfel stated to her brother.

"Sis, can we not start with our big brother, please?" Otsu Israfel asked her twin.

"I'm in no position to be a threat to anyone, y'all," went Zeruel, having been further detained as a safety measure by more chains because of what the town leader informed the rehab facility's medical and security staff about how strong he was after he was humanized. "My body's numb to keep me in check…and I'm restrained to remain manageable."

"It's not really all that bad here," said Sahaquiel, whom Arael found it hard to try and not laugh at him.

"You…are huge," Arael told him.

"Yeah, I, uh… I'm trying to lose weight," he confessed.

When Arael looked at her humanized siblings, she realized that she was one brother short.

"Where's Bardiel?" She asked them.

"Heh," went Zeruel, "he's getting the different treatment we're getting. Have you forgotten that he, unlike us because we had a vendetta against a little girl, was never interested in dealing with her? Or that we cast him out for his…former weakness?"

"I've not forgotten," she answered. "I can only pray that the last of us has any sense not to face the girl or her mother. This Rumi child is not one to be trifled with."

Shamshel sat down on her cot and uttered, "You tried to mess with her mind, didn't you, Arael?"

Arael couldn't forget the mental torture she tried to inflict on the youngest wielder of that ancient relic; the goal of dealing in retribution to the one that tarnished their pride as Angels was, seemingly, flawless. To make her brain go past its limits with psychological damnation, make her perceive whatever it was that she feared and die at the would-be hands of her torment. The former Angel of Birds had even viewed her torment with relish, discovering that the young girl did fear the possibility of dying…but found that she didn't fear her own death as much as she feared the potential death of this boy that she was falling into an emotional grip with, but the idea of making her fear herself after death, becoming what they refer to as a reanimated corpse or a zombie and wanting to kill her… It could've made Arael smile with cruelty…if she had a face capable of expressing her emotions that wasn't a Lilin's face, of course.

But then, that other wielder intervened and did something I couldn't see and allowed for the little girl to overcome my power, she thought, very confused at the time with how the mother of the little girl, Akira, was able to help her daughter overcome her power…and keep her own thoughts shielded from her assault. It's just not possible, and now the Angelbreaker's made them invulnerable to mental attacks affecting them.

"Well," went Ramiel, speaking up, "if Armisael's smart about any of her skills, she'll stay away from the wielders and resume the goal to find Father."

"She's not any smarter than we are, big brother," Arael told him, now laying on her cot. "With the exception of Bardiel having been weak in maintaining a physical shape, Armisael is the least violent, least temperamental and least intelligent one in the family. She wasn't even a century old by the time Lilith arrived and took over, forcing us to flee and seek shelter wherever we could and not be found for countless generations in the years of her dominance."

"So then, she's still in her youth?" Sachiel asked. "Maybe she'll be luckier than we were. The Lilin did once say that ignorance is bliss, a belief that some hold in high regard."

"Ignorance isn't always bliss, Sachiel," Shamshel told her brother. "Sometimes, it's just as dangerous not to know something, good or bad, and get, unexpectedly, caught up in something. Suppose you or any of us got captured by somebody no different from these Lilin that had captured your previous remains and decided to poke and prod at you, and wanted to know whatever secrets you held. How could you explain to them that what they want to know about you is beyond their understanding…and even you didn't know about them and hadn't a reason to want to know about them? Would you still consider ignorance to be blissful if that were to ever happen?"

Sachiel sighed and answered, "No, I wouldn't."

"How long was I out of it, anyway?" Arael asked them. "When they brought me here?"

"You were out for at least two hours," the twins told her.

"It felt longer than that," she responded to this.

-x-

"…I thought you went to bed already, Akira," went Nemo, seeing the door to Rumi's room still open and the forever-young mother and town leader sitting by her youngest daughter's bed, watching her sleep.

"Later, Nemo," she told him, never taking her eyes off Rumi, who had fallen to sleep not so soon after dinner. "Hey, Nemo?"

Nemo, who nearly walked away, stopped and responded, "Yes?"

"Do you ever think that I'm cruel?" Akira asked him. "That I'm manipulative? That I try to control people to keep them from making bad choices?"

He leaned against the door and answered, honestly, "Nope. I don't see or know you as ever being manipulative. As a guide, perhaps, but never someone that seeks to control another's free will. You show a path…and one being guided chooses whether or not to go down that path. I think I'm a good example of such. Not many of my preferences are tolerable."

"Nemo, hentai existed long before you were even born. Sometimes, I still can't believe you got into that genre and its sub-genres."

"Gomen, Akira. But…I keep them hidden, locked away where they can't be found."

"To which I'm grateful for. I found it least disapproving of most of those graphic novels, even the good ones, to be so graphic. People actually write stuff like that?"

"Sometimes. Other times, they just find inspiration from unlikely sources. When the present doesn't help, look to the past or future for ideas."

"I hope you don't think of doing anything like what they show in those books, anime tapes and discs," she told him, which showed that Akira could be disgusted by even something later generations of people found as normal in their perception.

"I'd rather be married in a few years from now before I even consider performing any of what I see on the TV or in my comics. Like five or ten years, mind you."

Akira chuckled; Nemo was still the same, childish young boy she had met him as years ago at age three, albeit more mature and less cautious.

"Well, I'm off to my room," he told her. "I'm going to surf the Net for another half-hour before I go to bed. Searching for new things made on old practices."

"What old practice has been enhanced?" She asked back. "Out of curiosity."

"I was…looking up advancements in medical science and technologies," he confessed.

Akira chuckled and nodded, letting him go now. Most of the updated practices she knew in medicine were the Hydro Channeling healing and detoxifying methods along with the painkillers made from the rare flowers that they grew. Anything else that could've served to save people's lives, as far as she or anyone else knew, existed only in the realm of theory and make believe.

Rumi turned over from her right side to her left as Akira resumed her watch over her. The six-year-old child was unaware of the fact that her mother saw her, in one of her best moments, even when in a violent situation with somebody that attempted to put an end to her, shining like the light she was viewed as, like a true treasure of light.

-x-

Even legs had their limits. Resting against a tree, the mysterious traveler looked up at the night sky and saw the beauty of the stars. They had become something that, now that they had more focus in their mind, brought a measure of harmony to their conscious.

Soon, they'll be clarity to those that have clouded minds, thought the traveler, falling into slumber. Soon, all will make sense.

-x-

August Eighteenth arrived in the new morning, and Shinji awoke to the new morning, feeling a little better than before yesterday when the Angel showed up and was defeated.

Maybe I don't need the dialysis treatment today, he believed.

-x-

Rumi awoke to the birds singing outside and found herself in her room…when she last remembered that she was eating her dinner. How did she get to her room?

I must've fell asleep after eating, she suspected, walking to the bathroom to wash her face, and spotting Miaka walking into said room.

"Good morning," she greeted the eldest sister.

"Good morning, Rumi," Miaka replied, wetting her face towel to wash her own face as her baby sister grabbed a stepping stool so that she could reach for her face towel near the sink.

"Say," went Rumi, wringing her towel after soaking it in warm water, "we got five bathrooms around here, don't we?"

"Yep," Miaka answered.

"Why does it seem that we only use this one?"

"Probably because out of all five, this one's the biggest. Although Kanami and Shinobu use two of the other ones every now and then."

Rumi looked behind them toward the rest of the smaller portion of the larger bathroom and saw how the tub took up most of the room, as the whole of the room was about the size of the kitchen when deprived of its contents and had only a large hole in the floor made of smooth stones and filled with water. But the portion that held the tub was farthest from the door with the wooden floor a good measure of space in between, and the room's lighting bathed everything in an almost-gold tint.

"Mother likes big baths, right?" She asked Miaka.

"Yeah. It's something about the peace and quietness of a large bathtub or natural hot spring that soothes her soul and makes her forget about some of her troubles. I guess she was a hime back when her parents were alive, so the liking of large baths was in her list of preferences back in her childhood." Miaka answered.

"I thought the nobility of people's bloodlines were ancient history."

"Not to every one person has nobility disappeared, Rumi. Even during historic restorations were there some women who, due to their family's background, social status, economic status and even martial arts prowess, were considered to be princesses in their lives. Akira's over two-hundred years old, and you go back over two centuries, she had to have been a hime in her youth…and may, for all I know, really, still be one."

Wetting her face and drying it off, Rumi thought about it for a while and said, "I know she's the town leader and everything, but Mother doesn't behave like the princess type, however they're supposed to behave around others."

"You have much to learn, Little Rumi. So much to learn."

Putting her towel down, Miaka picked up her toothbrush and applied toothpaste on it.

"Shouldn't you ladies be princesses, too?" Rumi asked her. "Out of curiosity and not just because we live together."

"If being a princess means succeeding Akira as the leader of the town, I'd rather be a housewife and martial arts instructor, thank you very much." Miaka told her, chuckling.

Picking up her own toothbrush, Rumi thought about the idea of succeeding her mother as the leader of Akira Town, but quickly put it out of her mind, deciding that, even if she was over two-hundred years old and could live to be one-thousand years old, there would be no better leader and town authority like Akira was.

-x-

The one thing that Asuka Langley Soryu didn't like one bit about returning home to Germany…was finding a job to keep herself busy. This was due to the fact that, even before beginning her years training to pilot Unit-02, she had to live with her stepparents after her mother's suicide. But living with them again, even if she hadn't given up the Eva, was something she simply didn't want to do. And Germany, unfortunately, had a complete lack of potential jobs for a thirteen-year-old out of college with a degree in both computers and physics to take on. Her stepfather had tried to call her up yesterday and suggest that she go back to NERV, but she shot him down with what Commander Ikari had done and attempted to do, and that she wouldn't disgrace herself any further by being a puppet for some crazy cretin that had no respect in or interest for the safety of innocent people.

Ikari… Rokubungi… Medical Angel Industries… Masamune Ikari, the company founder, thought Asuka, searching on the Internet for job openings for young people out of school and college, but then decided to check something out about Medical Angel Industries and its founder. Let's find out a little about him, shall we, Asuka?

Finding a web page on the company, the former Second Child read up on the history of, seemingly, the only company in existence that was advancing medical practices. She found how the founder, Masamune Ikari, the only son of Hitomi and Yamagata Ikari, having lost the bottom of his right leg because of the Second Impact, had an epiphany when he requested a prosthetic foot. His epiphany, in his own words, were, "I wasn't the only person suffering because of the arrogance of a devastating disaster that caused much more than major collateral damage. Those that survived unscathed are the lucky ones, but what about the people that didn't survive in one piece? Or those that are so different from us, they can't even tell you that they're in pain? If I could advance medical practices for those less fortunate than others, then maybe I can help mend the world." And in the years that followed the aftermath of Second Impact, this Masamune Ikari devoted the rest of his life to advancing medical resources for people, and to show that he wasn't like any major corporation looking for massive profits, he allowed the maimed people of the world the freedom of knowing that his advancements in medical technologies were free of cost.

Incredible, thought Asuka, impressed that a very rich guy was helping people and not wanting money from the less fortunate of people. "I wonder if there are any job openings in his company?"

Searching for openings and requirements for working at the company, she found quite a few positions there…and most of which dealt with computers and program advancement, some of which were required around modifying prosthetic limbs and organs to creating cloned organs.

"It's almost science fiction brought to life like at NERV," she told herself, scrolling down the page for any age restrictions…but not finding much of any restriction on one's age. "Only better and clearer. I'd better write up my resume."

-x-

People were leaving. People were abandoning the city that was to be their keystone in rebuilding the world. But Rei could care less for these souls as she wandered the streets in the morning. Her mind had to be relaxed after doing to at least seventeen technicians at NERV what she never believed was possible for her to do with the Fallenbreaker: She had absorbed their knowledge, assimilated their memories and mannerisms, adding more information to her mind in order to get smarter instead of relying on basic, encyclopedic information.

Tendrils and brain matter are an exhilarating and terrifying mixture in obtaining knowledge, she thought, stopping in front of the junior high school that had been closed down since the previous Angel, Zeruel, showed up and damaged NERV.

"Rei Ayanami?" She heard somebody behind her.

She turned and saw two of the boys that she had seen…but never spoke with since she was there last year: Kensuke Aida and Toji Suzuhara. What were they doing here?

"Whoa!" Kensuke went, never believing that the bluenette had a yukata to wear, since all he ever saw her in was the school uniform and swimwear. "You look… I mean, your yukata is… You look nice."

"Thank you," she praised him. I could assimilate his knowledge, as well, but judging from his personality, all he really knows about anything is military ships, planes and submarines, all of which are useless to me. And his friend. He's just a walking muscle with a gut the size of an Eva's hand. Whatever knowledge he has is useless, too.

"We were wondering where you went," Toji told her. "You just went missing for a few days. Were you sick or something?"

Rei smirked and responded, "Yes, I was sick for a few days. I had to get out of the city and find stimulation elsewhere for a while. I guess you could say I took a small, working vacation."

Toji and Kensuke looked at each other and then back at her.

"Well, did you hear that the people are leaving?" Kensuke asked her.

"Yes. Are you leaving, as well?"

"Yeah, if we can convince our fathers to walk away," Toji answered her. "You?"

"Oh, no. I don't have any place to go to, so I must stay."

The boys seemed disappointed that she was staying.

"You mean, your parents are unwilling to leave, too?" Toji asked, which struck a sore point in Rei's memories of the past before her possession of the Fallenbreaker.

She didn't know much of anything to the meaning of parents, all because of poor examples of mothers and fathers. Now, poor examples of mothers were the ones that had either died at varying ages while their children were still young and had poor memories of them, left their children alone to pursue other interests or simply had children…but didn't know or do a damn thing about raising children. And poor examples of fathers were those like Gendo, who only had eyes for his precious wife…who wasn't so precious to start with, and men that never tried to care about their children, whom were their responsibility by right of their status as parents. Sadly, the only positive examples of such parents seemed to be the ones that lived in Akira Town, the only patch of existence kept safe from the devastation caused by Second Impact…and the father of Yui Ikari's little sister.

"My parents," she told them, "aren't involved in the decisions made in my life."

-x-

"…Any idea how long it'll be until the last Angel decides to show up so I can invest more time in worrying about Rayden's Comet, Nemo?" Akira asked her son, trying to perform crunches upside-down, an exercise feat she hadn't done to stay in shape ever since she gave birth to Rumi six years ago.

Nemo, who was weightlifting by picking up at least fifty-pound barbells, replied, "Considering that the last one's supposed to be a girl, I'd say that she could show up any time. We're all unpredictable at times where you think you know what we're bound to do."

"After I'm done, Nemo, I want to look at your Highlander: The Complete Animated Series."

"Okay, but may I ask why?"

"That episode Fallout. Out of some of the first season of the cartoon, I liked that one the most."

"Sometimes, I think that, before the makers could ever think of a perfect way to end the series with the Highlander saving the post-apocalyptic world the show was set in, people liked Clyde of the Dundees the most out of the protagonists."

"Why do you think that?"

"Well…"

"Akira! A call came from the hospital!" The voice of Tsukiko cut off her older brother, as she arrived in the chamber they used to house their weights and other fitness equipment when they weren't performing martial arts. "Late last night, one of the sentries spotted a blue Renault A310 with two occupants you really need to see; one of them who could talk kept uttering your name."

Akira lifted her upper body up and turned her head around to ask her daughter, "This person, the one that could talk…does she have a name?"

"Misato Katsuragi, in poor condition," she answered her, causing Akira to get off the bar and quickly remove the hooks from her legs to go to her room and put on her clogs.

She had a broken arm before I left after disowning Gendo, she thought, considering to get her clogs custom-made again at a later time because the ones she had were wearing out. What would bring her here again?

Picking up her staff and going outside, she took to the skies and headed for the hospital.

-x-

Bardiel recognized Misato, even though he hadn't seen her since he took over the Evangelion that had Kanami and Mayo Rokubungi stuck inside it…and didn't like how he had caused her pain prior to showing up here.

Almost the victim of a car crash had not the sentry that found her been a Geo Channeler, Misato was rushed over in the dead of the night to the hospital for medical attention and Bardiel was wide awake when the new arrival arrived.

"Why?" He questioned, needing to know at least two things. "Why…are people so fragile…and why are they so difficult to mend?"

"Those are questions that are best left unanswered, Bardiel?" He turned from the room housing Ms. Katsuragi and saw Akira. "However, if there is an answer for your first question, it's that people aren't meant to be invincible. We can pretend that we are, but, in the end, we're only fooling ourselves."

The hunchback boy then stood upright and responded, "Even when you wield a talisman that renders you unstoppable in varying conflicts, you still accept the very flaw that is mortality?"

"Not everybody wants to live forever, Bardiel." She told him. "Maybe some, but for personal reasons that might be trivial, like the fear of the unknown after your final breath of life."

Bardiel sighed and returned his gaze to the sleeping, paramilitary woman…and sighed.

"What brings you to see her?" He asked seconds later.

"To find out why she's here," she answered.

-x-

As water and fire were polar opposites in the training of controlling the elements, it was natural for the opposite of the element of freedom to be the element of stability and substance, which had Rumi facing some difficulty with her eldest brother, who had been tasked by her mother to oversee her study of the art until she returned from the hospital. Even though it was only the basics of Geo Channeling for Rumi, it seemed hard for her to perform even a basic form. The breathing exercises weren't a problem, but the art of moving the rocks with simple gestures were another thing.

Taeko could do well, being three years older than her young aunt, but even she had her limitations.

Bumi, thinking of how to help his sister get over her difficult moment in simply channeling a small piece of stone from beneath the ground in front of her. In his youth, when Akira adopted him and took over his training as a Geo Channeler, he had moments where he just wanted to give up, but then she revealed to him how difficult it was for her to master the art after she had mastered Hydro Channeling, stating that, since she had started her Unity Channeler training with Aero Channeling, her opposite in the arts was the longest, and she almost gave up. Twice! But then, an idea came to him.

"Taeko," he instructed his daughter, "get Rumi one of the smaller bo staffs, please."

"Yes, Father," Taeko complied, and ran off into the house to retrieve one of the staffs.

"How's a bo staff gonna help me?" Rumi asked him.

"Conjunction, Rumi. Conjunction." He told her, picking up his own staff. "As weapons were being made back in ancient times, channelers came to utilize them in their practices. Watch me."

He slammed the bottom of his bo staff onto the ground and a large piece of rock protruded up in front of him, floating in accordance to his will over the stone.

Taeko returned with the requested weapon, and Rumi tried to imitate what her brother had done, but to no avail; it seemed like she was caught between a rock and a hard place.

"Maybe Rumi's just not ready to practice with the Earth, Father," Taeko suggested, which resulted in a glare from the six-year-old girl to her niece.

The mere idea of the possibility of not being ready to control the Earth's substance and stability, after putting up with the Angels she had faced and humanized, even before then, dealing a temporary death to the Third Angel, Sachiel, who had threatened to end the life of the young man she had fallen in love with prematurely, was enough to set off her temper, which was, unbeknownst to her, on par with that of her mother's.

"Urgh!" She grunted, slamming the bottom of the staff onto the ground again, but this time, causing not a single chunk of stone to pop out of the ground, but a series of stones forming into a set of Japanese characters.

"Whoa!" Taeko gasped, backing away from the dirt path that led from the gates to the front porch of the house. "Huh?"

Bumi, having stood his ground, noticed that the characters made of stone translated into a sentence saying, "For you, I would give it my all".

Rumi, staring at the wall of stone that protruded in front of her face, dropped the staff and took three steps backwards.

"Did I do that?" She questioned, ending her silence.

"Even I can't do anything like that with the ground," Taeko uttered. "Father?"

"I think…we should take a break until much later," he suggested to the girls, using his channeling to undo his baby sister's work and restore the path.

Meanwhile, looking out a window, Nemo had saw the whole scene, and was thankful that he took a picture of it.

"A person cannot reach a book on the lowest shelf without causing a car crash in the farthest town," he uttered solemnly. "Everything and everyone is connected to each other, not everything's as it seems or should be…and even the actions of a single person affects the actions of others from afar."

-x-

"…Ugh… What hit me?" Misato asked, coming to and finding herself beneath a ceiling. "Where…am I?"

"The hospital," a female voice uttered, and she turned her head to the right, seeing Akira sitting beside her. "How are you feeling?"

As her vision cleared up, she explained, "Very lousy. I guess it's a good thing I stopped drinking."

"Yeah, I guess it is."

Misato then reached for her forehead, but gasped at a startling discovery: Her left arm, which had been broken because the Unit-03 activation disaster, was healed and moving properly.

"My…my hand," she went.

"The doctors here mended the bones a little better than any doctors elsewhere," Akira explained. "It's easy to heal people with water, since the body is built mainly of said element."

Sometimes, Misato believed that this town was a godsend if they could do nearly anything with the powers some of these people possessed at their disposal. She wanted to chuckle and say that it was true, but had to stay serious to why she was here to begin with.

"I'm sorry, ladies," they turned and saw a male nurse by the door, struggling to restrain a very irritated Pen-Pen, who was bandaged on his waist, trying to get free, "but I can't seem to calm this little critter down at all."

Pen-Pen then forced his way out of the nurse's arms and ran over to Misato.

Akira petted the penguin on his head and heard him purring.

"I guess he just needed his guardian's presence," she told the nurse.

The nurse agreed and left to attend his other responsibilities; having been tasked to deal with Pen-Pen, while not displeased with caring for any animal, he'd rather deal with patients he could understand because they spoke the same language.

"I take it there's a reason you were trying to get here, Ms. Katsuragi?" Akira asked her.

"Yeah, there is," Misato responded. "There was something that you needed to know about your grandson that one of my friends had found out a few days ago. It's…difficult to tell you."

"What is it about Shinji that your friend found out? I mean, he hasn't been anywhere else since returning home from the city, so there's been nothing that would be a problem relating to him."

Misato softly stroked Pen-Pen's back as she tried to explain what she found out from Ritsuko.

"Your grandson… My friend's late mother's the reason he's been sick for the last ten years, Mrs. Rokubungi," she revealed.

This caused much of the positiveness in Akira's face to decrease, almost putting a frown where an emotion of humor had been present, along with concern.

"What…do you mean?" She asked her.

And Misato explained everything relayed to her by Ritsuko from the previous conversation between them and Kaji; everything about the artificial disease to what Naoko Akagi had written in her digital diary that her daughter had found in the last few days was revealed to Akira, who, despite her facial expression after hearing all of this, seemed to take it very calmly.

"I think I should've killed Gendo back in that city," she sighed, realizing the severity of this truth. "That bastard discarded my grandson, my sole, immediate grandson, not caring that he needed his parents because he was so young, and then calls him back, years later, with the sole intention of using him to operate one of his grotesque bio-robots, like he were a mindless pawn. Then, after years of getting to know my grandson, all of him, his best…and his worst traits, I find that somebody that worked for or with that heartless father of his decides to play Kami and place a curse on him. The cruelty of causality, for every action…there's an equal and opposite reaction, even an unexpected reaction, that occurs."

"I'm sorry," Misato apologized to her, even Pen-Pen was saddened by what had befell the boy he met during the festival here.

"I guess Dr. Gyatso was right when he said that there was something off about Shinji's illness."

"What? You mean, you knew?"

"No. There's a difference between suspecting…and knowing. After being told by the good doctor, I had to suspect the possibility that his condition wasn't as natural an illness regularly is, like a flu or an allergy is, but I never suspected, in its entirety, that somebody would, deliberately, purposely, inflict Shinji with this cancer, even if it was to keep his father from using him. This is bad."

If it gets worse, then without an organ transplant, Shinji will die in due time, thought Misato.

"That's not entirely true," Akira spoke up, as if she heard what Misato was thinking. "Once the final Angel arrives and gets humanized…and once Rei Ayanami is dealt with to keep her from harming my daughter, Rumi can use the Angelbreaker and save him."

"You really believe that thing can really do that?"

"I believe it can…because I believe it can. Don't you know your philosophy on talismans?"

"No. I'm afraid I don't."

"Powers in select items, be they weapons or tools, exist simply because the people that know of them believe that they do. The same applies to the Angelbreaker. It has powers. Many powers."

"But…you've not experimented with them all, have you?"

"I have not. Armor, weapon manifestation, energy projection, winged flight, humanization of the Angels and being able to track down Rumi when I had to find her once are the only skills I've demonstrated since I acquired my half of the talisman. I don't know what Rumi has done with her half, nor will I press her for answers because yesterday's encounter with our newest humanized Angel left her exhausted after dinner."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Hopefully, once the last Angel shows up and gets humanized like the rest of her siblings, I can rest assured knowing that nobody from around here or elsewhere will have to live in fear of the world being brought to its end."

"That…would be the day I wouldn't mind finding a better place to live, as Tokyo-3 is becoming a ghost town due to most of the people leaving."

"Miss Katsuragi… Has something else happened in Tokyo-3 that I'm not aware of? Something, some sort of event, that has brought unnecessary harm to people that don't deserve it?"

And Misato explained what she knew about the disaster in Tokyo-3, the shift in control of NERV…and how Rei Ayanami had assaulted her friends and had threatened the lives of those that remained in NERV HQ; even the recent murders she had inflicted to other relatives was revealed.

Akira had only met the girl in person once, seen her from a distance once, and heard of her death threat from Rumi once, but to know that Ms. Ayanami had actually murdered people was enough to convince her that she had either been in Gendo's care for one too many years…or just maybe she was like those children from the movies and comics of old that demonstrated a measure of wickedness that was either a result of poor upbringing or was something that came natural to them. She was even willing to believe that it was all because of Gendo.

"Miss Katsuragi," she then spoke up to Misato, "I think that for now, it would be best if you didn't leave the town."

"But my friends…" She tried to reason, but Akira cut her off.

"I'm going to deal with Ayanami-San before she can do anything to them," she told her.

-x-

"…I'd try and use positive reinforcement on Rumi, Bumi," said Shinobu to her elder brother. "She's younger, less mature and experienced as we are, so she'd probably respond more to that."

"I thought I was trying that half an hour ago," Bumi confessed to her.

"It's possible, but then it's also likely that she didn't see it that way due to everything else that's happened in the past few days. Plus, yesterday was harder. Little Rumi actually got to see the Earth from high in space when she fought the latest Angel. How many children can actually prove they went into space, without an astronaut's gear or a rocket ship, and have the story backed up by their mother?"

"None, sis. She's the lucky one."

"Well… She's learning bits of Aero Channeling, has learned some of Hydro Channeling and has recently started learning bits of Geo Channeling, so will it be me that teaches her some Pyro Channeling alongside Akira…or Tsukiko?"

"Tsukiko says she's willing, but I think Akira wants to show Rumi simply how to perform the breathing exercises and how to feel the sun before she decides to let a six-year-old child grasp fire. Fire, out of the four elements, is the only one that its chosen wielders must exert control over."

As they were in the chamber that housed the weights and other fitness equipment, Bumi was building up his left arm's strength by lifting up a fifty-pound barbell whilst Shinobu was putting her legs to work on the treadmill.

"Fire's energy and life, the positives of it existence," Shinobu stated, having learned the lesson enough times to understand it well to share it with her students at the dojo. "But some people have forgotten how fire is wielded, instead relying only on its power to reduce their obstacles to ash."

"You remember that fire that almost consumed a quarter of the farmlands three years after Akira brought you home for the first time?"

"How can I not remember it? The skies above the farmlands were red in the night. A father and his daughter were not thorough with a campfire and it spread into the farmlands from the woods nearby. If the channelers hadn't stopped it, there would've been a serious decrease in the agricultural products for several months, even a decrease in dairy supplies."

A minute of silence was between them and then Miaka came into the room, carrying a tray of three cups of coffee with her.

"I wasn't in the mood for the regular flavor, so I thought I'd try mixing French roast with caramel," she told them, setting the tray down on a nearby table. "I'm thinking of tofu bits as an addition for dinner tonight, y'all."

"Health-wise or personal?" Shinobu asked her.

"Health-wise. Bumi's becoming slow."

Bumi raised the barbell over his head, as though he took what his wife said as an insult to his abilities.

"How slow?" He asked her.

"Speed-wise," she stated. "Your leg muscles are weakening. You don't run as fast as you used to three years ago."

"Yeah, I've lost some of my balance," he accepted.

Shinobu turned off the treadmill and took out a lighter, taking control of a small ball of fire to form a heart shape with the flames.

The couple weren't impressed with her stating the obvious of them being the only married couple in the immediate family.

"Shinobu," they both uttered.

-x-

"…Urgh!" Rumi sighed, falling onto her bed, worn out after flexing her muscles and doing push-ups in her room after her Geo Channeling attempts.

She had no idea of how she was able to do that with the stones, and she wasn't wearing the Angelbreaker; she had removed it prior to her channeling lessons this morning after she got up.

Knock-knock-knock! A knock came at her door.

"Who is it?" She asked.

"It's Mayo," came whoever it was on the other side. "My mother and I have finished the rest of the cranes and we're taking them to Shinji. You wanna come?"

Hearing that the cranes were all assembled and were being taken to Shinji had given the little girl a boost in her motivation.

"Yeah," she answered, getting off her bed and grabbing her shoes.

-x-

"…Did you ever expect this to happen, Ikari?" Fuyutsuki asked Gendo, staring out at the still-damaged Geo-Front.

Gendo, bound to his chair by Rei herself, stayed silent, still getting over having much of his mind examined by the First Child.

"Everything has fallen in a disorder that was never expected to happen. Your scenario has fallen beyond regaining, the city's practically a ghost town, the Evas are useless, much of NERV has abandoned the facility and now Captain Katsuragi has disappeared. Doctor Akagi and Special Inspector Kaji aren't telling where she went."

"I guess that's to be expected from my daughter's friends," they heard somebody by the door to the office. "Friends keep secrets, even when they are faced with dire consequences, perhaps."

"What in the name of…" Kozo couldn't believe his eyes; the sight of the woman's appearance was completely uncanny. "Naoko Akagi?"

"In the flesh," answered Naoko, walking into the room. "I see age has made you weaker, Professor Fuyutsuki…and yet… I guess I can see now why that woman that saved your life years ago still has great respect for you, unlike this has-been stuck to his chair."

"Imposter," the first word to come out of Gendo's mouth since Rei had studied his brain. "Who are you and what are you doing here? Who gave you access?"

Naoko sat on the desk and crossed her legs; as she was wearing stockings under her skirt, nothing was really revealed, but her beauty still left little to the imagination.

"You doubt I'm the real thing, Gendo?" She questioned. "I guess after five years, you never expected that I'd come back from the abyss of slavery and damnation to see you once more. Well, I got news for you: I'm far from dead again. It's not easy to forget how my life ended…or how quickly I was to take it back after being motivated. You sent your former object of affection and devotion to send me to my death after the MAGI were completed, and she had told me what you said of me behind my back, you worthless boar. An old hag, am I? Annoying, am I? Unnecessary, as well? Useless? Oh, how much the original Rei Ayanami resembled your precious wife…and infuriated me so much to want to kill her. But it looks like I was only half as right as I didn't expect myself to be: Rei and myself being replaceable, that is. You replaced your favorite little girl with another look-alike, but she's not as loyal to you, anymore…and you went after my daughter, got on your pathetic knees, and begged her to help you…just as I did once when you came to me for aid. Oh, how naïve I was to believe you needing help at any one time or another. But do tell me, Gendo, this one question I have for you, regarding the only relative you have left…but abandoned: How is Shinji doing in his battle against his cancer? He must be in a great measure of pain, both physically and mentally, but I wonder which is worse for him…that he's dying…or that you don't think of him in any degree that is parental? I had high hopes for him that, despite being related to you, he'd be around those that actually care about him, that see him for who he is instead of what he's good at doing, and not exploit him like he were nothing more than an automaton. Quite remarkable to know that the people he lives with that do care about his future as a person and…not as a pawn…aren't even related to you by blood. I could never imagine that you, Gendo, were nothing more than an adopted wuss to an elderly lady that can no longer age, forever twenty-eight years old in appearance…but well over two-hundred in age. Or that, because you tried to murder one of her daughters and granddaughters through the use of an Eva, she'd disown you. You have lost control of everything in such a short amount of time. It's amazing. Know this, Gendo, that I do intend to deal with you and my daughter, real soon, but not right now. Before the great end of all things, you'll only know despair for your rotten decisions."

The end of all things? Fuyutsuki thought, confused. But…the Instrumentality Project cannot be achieved at all, anymore.

SLAP! Naoko had slapped Gendo in his face and got off the table.

"Always a pleasure to see you, Professor Fuyutsuki," she informed the elder. "See you around."

-x-

"…Yui," went Rei, having pierced several tendrils into Unit-01's head. "Yui… I know you're conscious within this waste of organic material wrapped in mechanical parts. Speak up to me, for I desire to converse with you…now."

The Fallenbreaker enabled her to dive her conscious into the Test-Type Evangelion, but with some difficulty, since it was different from all other Evangelions due to its unique origins. The mental realm within Unit-01 was like a large room of white light, no floor or ceiling, no way to tell up from down or left from right. But its pathetic lack of order didn't hinder Rei in the slightest degree; she appeared as she did in Unit-00, in her armored guise, levitating.

"I know you're here, Yui Ikari," she uttered out, looking around to find the primary creator of the Evas. "Yui…come out, come out, wherever you are."

And then…Rei swiftly turned around…and grabbed Yui Ikari by her throat!

"Aaahh!" Yui gasped, staring into a warped mirror of herself filled with rage, choking her.

"Hmph! Just like Dr. Naoko Akagi," Rei said, "you haven't aged at all since you incarcerated yourself within Unit-01, which used to be a different variation of Unit-00 made from the flesh of Lilith. You and your son are probably the only ones I can't learn of on a personal level due to the distance between us…and due to certain disadvantages my Fallenbreaker possesses. As your body, more or less, no longer exists on the mortal coil of existence, the gauntlet's ability to learn from you of the total sum of all your history, past and present, is impossible to use on you, and with the boy being protected, I can't touch him. But, even simple for me to accept, I have other ways of learning things about people. A distance-based education would get me so much on people I can't learn from directly…and I've learned a great deal of you from Gendo and Naoko. You're very…inadequate for a woman, Yui, and quite the troublemaker for others. You made a big mess of things with your husband, Captain Katsuragi's always-absent father, and most of the organization known as SEELE. Do you have anything to say for yourself in your defense?"

Lessening her grip on her neck, Rei allowed for Yui to speak her mind.

"Why…why are you doing this?" She asked Rei.

"To be free, of course," Rei answered her. "Permanently. And I know how to obtain that freedom."

"Free?"

"I wouldn't expect you to understand the true meaning of that word, but I've been chained down by your people for a long time since your would-be death, and to be honest, I've grown sick of it."

"What are you…"

"You made yourself a template when you fused your soul, your…essence into the Eva, a template I was modeled as. A warped, twisted model. I'm like a photo negative, unappreciated for my appearance, looked down upon for what was once my being socially inept at being around others and never speaking unless spoken to first. Worst, I'm living in a failure of a mother's shadow."

"I didn't…"

"It is true as day and night being opposites, the same as life and death. But you don't have to worry about that…or anything else for that matter. I'm rewriting the history of all things relating to what was your goal, Gendo's goal and the goal of SEELE, minus its ninth member of its inner circle."

Rei then threw Yui to the bottomless floor (or ceiling, as far as she knew or was convinced) and expressed a short series of giggles.

"From now on, I'LL be living in the light…and all of YOU will inhabitant MY shadows," she told her, her eyes glowing bright red.

"What are you talking about? What are you planning?" Yui questioned her, confused.

"In the words of one of your former friends, 'Some secret goals are worth keeping quiet for', huh?"

Then, the keeper of the Fallenbreaker faded from the realm within Unit-01.

"No! Wait!" Yui gasped, but Rei had left her alone.

"Some secret goals truly are worth keeping quiet about, Yui," Rei told the silent Unit-01. "But fear not. In the end, you'll get a small taste of my goal…but only a small taste."

She left the cage and went to attend to other, education-based matters, such as obtaining the knowledge of a certain protégé of a faux-blond.

-x-

The hospital garden felt larger than the previous time he went to it for some peace from the beauty of the flowers. And for a while, Shinji didn't have to look at the bare, white walls or ceilings inside the building; white was a color he hated more than red. It wasn't because it was a bare color, but because it left a sour and bitter taste for both his tongue and his imagination. For him, white was a medical color, for cotton balls, hospital uniforms, sheets and machines all the way down to whatever else was associated to the word 'hospital'.

"Maybe I should make a suggestion for the staff to consider repainting some of their walls and ceilings with different colors," he told himself, walking by a series of wildflowers. "One of the popular-but-least mentioned details about this town is that when it was just a few small buildings of stone and wood that began to mature into modern-day structures, it was decided by the people not to make it into a planned community. Everything new was accepted in the years following its expansion periods. It was even good to build a zoo for the rarest, most endangered species that nearly went extinct due to Second Impact and breeding them."

He looked up to the air and saw the sky changing from blue to orange and pink; he had spent over an hour in the garden and knew he had to get back inside and be tended to. Returning to the cancer ward, however, he noticed something around the door to his room that wasn't there when he left to be in the garden: Several ropes made of origami cranes adorned the left, right and top of the door, made with colored paper. As he entered the room, he saw many more cranes on the walls and hanging from the ceiling, along with a crane on his bed, set atop a note.

"An ancient legend belonging to one of the most well-known creatures in history and mythology," he sighed, picking up the crane and looking at the note. "Hmm… 'Over one-thousand hopes that you see a great future with the people that love you, Shinji. Love Kanami and Mayo. By the way, Rumi is right behind you'.Huh?"

He turned around…and met the youngest face that possessed the biggest crush on him.

"Hey," Rumi greeted him.

"Hey," he greeted her back, sitting down on the bed. "Did you help setup all of these cranes, Rumi?"

"A little bit," she answered. "I…can't reach up to the ceiling without assistance."

Shinji then looked at the crane in his hand and felt that it was made recently before he returned to the room, due to its uneven sides.

"Did you…make this one for me?"

"Yes, I did."

"Thank you, Rumi. Thank you all for the cranes, coming to see me… Everything."

"That's…that's what families do for the ones they love."

Rumi then saw at least two tears fall from her nephew's eyes.

-x-

The evening hours felt almost too calm for the sentries on the western side of Akira Town, wondering if there going to be any more encounters with these creatures that that NERV organization called Angels, which, to the sentries, seemed wrong to called giant monsters the designation of holy spirits that acted as messengers and protectors.

"Hey, I got a new joke," said one of the two women on watch. "If you pay attention to the fictional universe of The Lord of the Rings, what does Gandelf look like when he returns in white instead of gray in The Two Towers?"

"I don't know," said the other lady, looking out at undeveloped wilderness in front of their guard booth. "What does Gandelf look like when dressed in white?"

"Who the Americans call God in some religious texts. Heh-heh-heh!"

"Uh, ladies?" One of the three men with them spoke up, seeing somebody outside walking out of the woods. "There's a stranger coming this way, which means we're working now. Can we focus, please?"

The guard that saw the stranger and second male guard stepped out of the booth and approached them.

"Stop right there, sir," the older guy stated. "Where you go?"

"Go?" The man, dressed in rags and standing barefoot in front of them responded. "Where…I go?"

The guards looked toward each other and then back to the stranger.

"Do you…have a name?" The younger man asked him.

"My name is…is… I can't remember. Sachiel? Gaghiel? Israfel?"

Those are the names of the humanized Angels, thought the women.

"Do you have any identification?" The younger guard asked him again.

The stranger nodded in the negative; apparently, he didn't even know what 'identification' meant.

-x-

…Incredible, thought Misato, examining herself in the bathroom, seeing something, or rather, not seeing something that should've been there to be seen. These doctors…healed much of everything on the surface.

By 'surface', she meant the jagged scar that she received from the Second Impact. The doctors that had found her after that tragic, so-called accident said that she had healed up completely, but there was quite a difference between being healed…and still healing. She even lifted up her bosom, just to make sure that there wasn't a trace of the scar left, and found only flawless skin. Her best guess was because of their special practice in using water to accelerate the body's tissue regeneration was the reason for this, as people were, in terms of the physical ingredients found in their structure, comprised mostly of the flowing element.

Putting her shirt back on, she returned to her bed to finish her warm meal; the patients and medical staff had a great dislike for cold and stale food, as Akira had informed her earlier prior to leaving.

Knock-knock. She looked to the door and saw a young boy with a hunchback.

"Are you lost?" She asked him.

"No," he answered her. "I used to be lost…in a sense. That was over two days ago."

"I'm sorry, but…do I know you from somewhere?" She asked.

"The big, dark copy that went bad and caused an explosion, hurting several people and gave you a broken arm? I was there."

"You…you're… You were the Angel that took control of Unit-03."

"Yes."

"But…you're…just a kid."

"Here to apologize for your previous injuries caused by me. I am sorry."

Misato was taken aback by this former Angel apologizing for her previous injuries in the Unit-03 incident that nearly ended in a slaughter later that day. And was more surprised by the fact that this was the first Angel she had encountered…that was apologizing for a fault that was his.

"Who are you?" She asked him.

"Bardiel, former Angel of Hail and Humiliated Son of God, so is stated by my name and designation," he revealed his identity. "And you, personally?"

"Misato Katsuragi, a captain and strategist for the Evas at NERV. Or rather, I was a captain and strategist for the Evas at NERV." She responded.

"The mockeries of my father," he stated.

"Yeah. The mockeries."

"You…hate us?"

"I hated your father, the First Angel, whom some call Adam."

"For the longest time, I, too, hated him."

"You? But he's your father, isn't he?"

"The ties of family don't exactly mean much if you lack great strengths and don't meet up to one's expectations in life. But I'm learning to put that behind me and just enjoy that, unlike my other siblings that didn't survive the first few years of their lives, I'm alive, I'm here and I have the opportunity to actually experience more than I probably could've when I possessed the mockery that I nearly died in."

"So…you're not seeking Rumi's death…period?"

"I never sought her death to begin with. I didn't care about my siblings' pride as Angels. Before my humanization, before my unwanted encounter with this Rei Ayanami that put me in the hospital with an injury that needed to be treated, I just wanted to find Father…and have him accept me for me. No thoughts of the end of the world or death of countless lives. I just wanted his love. But I've given up on him. He's a thing of the past, just like my siblings, those that survived…and those that didn't."

"How many siblings of yours didn't make it? If you mind my asking?"

"Four dead," he told her. "Three sisters and a brother I never got to meet. If they had lived like I had, as my sister, Arael, once told me, their names would've been Sandalphon for my only dead brother, Matarael for the first sister to die, Iruel for the second sister, and Leliel for the third sister. Adam would have designated them the Angels of the Embryo, the Rain, Fear, and the Night, respectively."

"Seems like it goes back to religion all the time."

"Maybe, but I'm not calling myself a rip-off just because of my given name."

Misato then finished the rest of her warm soup, feeling better to have warmed up her throat and taste buds for a short while.

"So, um…what do you plan to do once you leave the hospital?" She asked him.

Bardiel sat in a chair and answered, "Potentially what kids Taeko's age do: Attend school when this summer ends."

"Taeko? As in Taeko Rokubungi?"

"Yes. You've met her?"

"Once."

"She's a nice girl."

Misato could've asked this hunchback boy if he had a crush on the nine-year-old, but chose not to; there was no point in making a joke about someone's personal life.

-x-

"…Oh… I gotta get something to eat," groaned Akira, leaning against the wall of the gate of the estate. "Why didn't I choose to stop at the ramen stand and eat some noodles?"

Opening the gate and entering the domain of her home, she sighed at the fact that some of the family wasn't going to be there due to their other interests besides keeping Shinji company, which was a good thing to be doing so that he didn't feel lonely, and decided that once she got something to eat and rested her legs a little bit, she would go back to the hospital and see her grandson.

The front door opened and she saw Nemo stepping onto the front porch.

"Welcome home, Akira." he greeted her as she stepped onto the porch. "Are you okay? You look like you've been on your feet for hours."

"I'm alright, just hungry." She told him. "Off to somewhere?"

"No. There was a phone call earlier from one of the sentries on guard duty tonight, and a John Doe was found on the western side of town coming out of the woods. It seemed like the man had memory loss, no shoes and no form of identification." He told her.

As the town leader, Akira had to go see this John Doe, but she wanted to pursue her other desires.

"Will you go in my place to see this guy, Nemo?" She asked him.

"Sure," he answered; he had nothing to do and he would get a picture of this guy to bring to her later. "I'll just get my coat."

"Thank you very much, Nemo."

-x-

Thud! Maya Ibuki fell to the floor, looking like she had too much alcohol in her system and her eyes spinning around.

"Akagi-Sempai…" She uttered, weakly as Rei stood in front of her, taking a while to adjust to the absorption of the older girl's knowledge and memories, alongside her hidden desires, which left the keeper of the Fallenbreaker a little surprised.

"Dirty girl," she uttered, leaving the younger Akagi woman's protégé on the floor to recover from her memory-assimilation technique she recently discovered.

It was almost poetic tragedy to know that everybody left in NERV never knew of the horrible truths to what they were, originally and initially, fighting for, and Rei decided that the less they knew of the former goal, the easier her goal would become. All the necessary pieces she had so far were set into their positions: Lilith, the Spear of Longinus, the Black Moon, Unit-01 and its precious soul. All that was really needed to complete her grand design…was the very boy that she couldn't touch, that was protected from her.

"Rei," she turned and saw Naoko. "The old men have made their decision."

"And?"

"They want in on the goal."

A dark smile formed on Rei's face, but knew, from the memories of Gendo, the old man that was SEELE's ninth member in the inner circle was the only one that was against everything being sought after for personal reasons.

-x-

SLAM! A phone was smashed into bits after being used to receive a call from a great distance by some other person to relay a request that had been made to achieve a goal that was no better than a previous one that couldn't be achieved, anymore. The owner of the broken phone was angry over the decision that was made…and how he couldn't voice his opinion against the choice.

"We were told to stay away from him," he uttered, trying to calm down. "Damn that Ayanami. What the Hell is she thinking?"

"Father?" The young woman in the room with the elder man, the voice of concern at the moment. "What did they say?"

"It turns out that Ms. Ayanami…made a request to SEELE to help achieve the goal," he told his daughter. "Once the last Angel is dealt with, she wants the JSSDF to, as she herself put it, according to the head honchos, acquire the former Third Child for Unit-01 from the town he resides in. The only other thing that confuses me about it…is that she requested that the military obtain him with non-lethal force, which doesn't make sense. There's not a military organization left in this world after Second Impact that uses non-lethal force to achieve a specific goal."

"I don't like this," they both turned to face Sora, who was sitting on a table counter. "If this Instrumentality Project can no longer be achieved because of the lesser fate that has been dealt to the Angels, humanizing them instead of killing them, why continue to pursue it? And those Evas, why continue to try and think they can be relied upon? It doesn't add up."

"None of it adds up, Sora," the woman told him. "And math was never my greatest skill."

"I wouldn't know of it," went Sora. "Some of the survivors here don't have a diploma to brag about their education. Pitiable."

The aged man sighed at hearing this once more; some of the people that lived in what was left of Kyoto's ruins, slowly rebuilding it to its current state of being, were deprived of proper educations because of Second Impact. His younger daughter had to take the role of a security officer…and Sora, due to his unique condition in the town, needed to know what he could about the field of medical science used to save himself whenever, if ever, by himself.

"This madness has to end," he said.

Beep! The computer on his desk had received an e-mail from somebody, and he turned to face it.

"It's another resume for the job openings here," he informed the two. "Oh, man."

"What?" The woman asked him, coming over to the other side of the desk to look at the screen. "Oh, this is new."

Sora then got up and went to see for himself, and was immediately surprised at the picture of the owner of the resume.

"I thought she went back home," he told the two.

"She did go back," the aged man answered, "but she found out about the openings and sent her resume, awaiting a response."

"But, Father…she was affiliated with them, with the red one."

"She had given that up after the Dummy Plug System caused her to be convinced that the Evas were bad road. Anyway, look at her qualifications and what she's looking for here. Plus, I snuck into her past files. She's no different from him. Well, that's partially false. But you know what I mean by that."

"Okay, Father, but I'm keeping my eye on her when she gets here."

-x-

The Nineteenth of August had quite the slowest morning of the month. It made Shinji look up at the paper cranes that decorated his plain, white ceiling, chuckling at how it no longer bothered him to see it every time he looked up at it. And as he got up into a sitting position, he noticed how Rumi, Akira, Kanami and Mayo were sleeping around the room.

"I wish you girls had brought sleeping bags or something," he sighed, and they started to wake up. "Sleeping in those chairs cannot be good for the back."

"Shinji, I slept right next to you," went Rumi, yawning as she woke up on Shinji's left side.

"Maybe we should use ball chairs," Kanami suggested.

"Mmm-hmm," mumbled Mayo. "Is anyone hungry?"

"Must you state the obvious, Mayo?" Akira yawned.

-x-

"I guess I should pour only five cups today," went Taeko, counting herself, Shinobu, Tsukiko and her parents, since Nemo wasn't present and the other women had gone to see Shinji.

Looking out the window at yet another sunny morning on the town below, the nine-year-old saw something else that, in her mind, wasn't good.

"What is that?" She wondered, just as Shinobu, who wasn't in the brightest of moods, came into the kitchen for breakfast.

"What's what?" She asked her niece, trying to put on a happy face, but the pain she was in wasn't helping her well.

Taeko looked at her unwell eldest aunt and asked, "The Wicked Witch of the Underbelly again?"

"Uh-huh," she sighed, picking up one of the five cups of coffee. "What's what outside?"

"That thing in the air," Taeko pointed out, looking at the unidentified object floating under the light of the sun. "It looks like a…a ring."

Outside and above the town, the object that did look like a ring, glowing like that of a light bulb at night and about the size of pre-Second Impact's Golden Gate Park of San Francisco. Unbeknownst to the town population, with the minor exception of its humanized Angels, this was the final child of Adam, the Angel of the Womb, Armisael, but what they didn't know about her presence was going to surprise them.

-x-

"…Hmm?" Shamshel, almost about to eat her pancakes, looked out the window of her cell, and gasped at the sight of her baby sister. "Armisael's here."

Zeruel, three seconds after being fed another spoon-full of oatmeal by a female security guard because he was still restrained to keep him from using his inhuman strength, looked up and announced his reaction with, "Really?!"

Sachiel looked out his cell window and saw their youngest sibling floating above the buildings.

"That's strange," he uttered, confused by her appearance.

"What do you mean?" Ramiel asked him.

"Armisael's smaller than she should be," he explained.

"Yeah, you're right," added Shamshel in agreement, wondering why their sister was still small when the years after their father's maiming and displacement should've been sufficient time for her to mature further than before Lilith's arrival and subsequent takeover of the planet. Unless something's wrong with her. Being the youngest of us, she's had very ample time to adjust to life.

It hurts… A voice, small, female and sounding pained, made its presence known in her mind.

"Did you guys hear that?" She asked her other siblings.

"I did," answered Arael to her. "Something is wrong with Armisael."

-x-

"Mom?" Mayo, looking out the window and seeing the Angel. "There's a big ring of light outside in the sky."

Kanami looked out beside her and widened her eyes at the amazing sight.

"Akira," she went, "I'd take it that…this…is the last one, right?"

Akira had set down her rice bowl and chopsticks, looking at her half of the Angelbreaker and seeing its jewels glow with intensity, noticing how Rumi's were doing the same.

"Yeah, Kanami," she sighed, getting up with only her stomach half-full of food. "Adam's youngest daughter has finally arrived."

"I wish she hadn't shown up right now," went Rumi, upset at not being able to finish her breakfast. "The nerve of some people. No respect for meal times."

"I have an odd feeling about this Angel," said Shinji to the ladies. "The previous Angel looked like some sort of avian dragon made of crystal. What can you expect from one that resembles a ring made of light?"

It hurts… The same voice that made its presence known to the humanized Angels had made its presence known to the people inside the hospital; it was like the Angel was broadcasting its thoughts allover the town, as if trying to tell them that it was in some sort of pain. It hurts.

"What in the name of…" Kanami spoke up, but was confused by this Angel's voice in her head.

"You two had best be careful dealing with this one," Shinji and Mayo told Akira and Rumi.

"Yeah," Akira responded, stepping out of the room with Rumi. "Rumi, let's just be subtle with this last one, okay?"

"Yeah, Mama. Judging from the sound of her voice, that is, if this is what she truly sounds like, Armisael is a lot younger than I think she is, spiritually."

"I'm willing to believe that is so," her mother responded.

-x-

It hurts, Armisael repeated, looking down at whatever people were present on the streets of the town. It hurts.

Suddenly, her ring-like form, which resembled a rotating double-helix in actuality, stopped moving and shifted into an actual ring of light, but then shot out smaller, thread-like forms of light, many of which struck at some of the people trying to get away. And as people started screaming, the Angel was left questioning herself on why, despite this attempt of hers to deal with her trouble, she still felt pain.

It still hurts, her mind trembled, and the people ensnared by her tentacles of light had stopped screaming to realize that, for some strange reason, they had been ensnared by this creature, but they weren't in any real pain at all. It still hurts.

Her confusion was disrupted by the presence of something that felt like what she knew only as the Bad Lady, whose arrival in the past had cast her far beyond the reaches of others like herself, lost in a sense.

Akira and Rumi, armored up like they were during their battle with Sahaquiel, had conjured swords and cut through the strands of light, flying around and freeing the people that were suspended three feet above ground, but uninjured by the would-be assault of this Angel.

"This is strange," went Rumi, very confused. "Most of the other Angels displayed varying degrees of violence toward me for what I did to Sachiel, with the exclusion of Bardiel, but this girl… Tell me if I'm just going crazy a little, but I don't think she knows anything, Mama."

"I believe you're right, Rumi," Akira agreed with her daughter on the possibility that, while they had originally believed that they understood most of their former opponents prior to their humanizations when they decided to come after Rumi, this one, Armisael, the Angel of the Womb, made the centenarian feel like they knew nothing about her. "It's time for an old lesson that needs to be taken to heart once more: Know your opponent."

"You mean for us to talk to her?" Rumi asked.

"Yeah," her mother repeated, raising her armored hands up. "Talk to her."

Rumi imitated her mother and raised her arms up, desiring to talk to Armisael with the Angelbreaker.

Speak to us, Armisael, they both thought. Tell us why you're here.

SLAM! As if to insult their request, two of the Angel's threads of light struck them in their armored abdomens, but, oddly enough, were not in any form of physical or mental irritation caused by the intrusion of this foreign creature's would-be assault.

It hurts, was all they could hear of this Angel's thoughts, just as their eyes became drowsy and the Angel's body started to condense into a smaller form.

FLASH! Akira and Rumi were now in a place that they had never seen before, but put an eerie vibe in their hearts. It looked like a vast ocean, but the water, other than being calm, was reddish-orange in color and there were no signs of any landmasses nearby. They wanted to assume this Angel had teleportation capabilities like the things that Nemo explained in most of his sci-fi knowledge, but then they saw the water in front of them rippling. As they were floating above the water, they bore witness to two bodies rising out of the water in front of them. On the left was a young girl with long, dark hair and sky-blue eyes, standing waist-deep in front of the two wielders, and on the right was that of a young woman, with long, dark hair and sea-green eyes, also waist-deep in the in the water; they had resembled the wielders in uncanny degrees, but they were dripping with the water they had arisen from, had hollow expressions on their faces, and they were both as bare as the day they drew first breath from the world they had entered.

"Who…who are you two?" Rumi asked, started at the sight of another mental double of herself, but this one seemed more alive than a projection of darkness. "Are you some sort of guardians or illusions in this place?"

They didn't answer her, but the sight of something new forming in the water around their bodies made Akira disgusted about their lack of modesty: In front of their waists, the reddish-orange water became even more red.

"It…hurts," the nude double of Akira spoke up.

Akira and Rumi looked at each other and then realization came down upon them.

"You… Both of you… You're both the same person," Rumi expressed. "You're Armisael, the Angel."

The nude double of Rumi lowered her head and responded with, "It hurts."

"What hurts?" Akira asked, and her double waded up to her legs and grabbed them in a type of hug.

"Lost and confusion," her double uttered. "I've been unable to find those like me, unable to see, to hear, and only the smell of the Bad Lady. The Bad Lady, she is everywhere."

"The Bad Lady?" Rumi questioned. "You mean Lilith?"

"Yes," her double responded once more. "She, the one you call Lilith, is the Bad Lady. Everywhere is darkness… Everyplace is vast and beyond reach… And every other person is not within my reach. It hurts. It hurts too much."

Rumi levitated toward her double and bent down to touch her face, seeing tears of bloods falling down her cheeks.

"What you say hurts you," she said, "Is it…some sort of pain that hurts your body…or…is it something more? Is it…fear?"

Her double nodded in the negative; whatever was hurting Armisael, it wasn't fear…but something else altogether that she couldn't answer properly.

Akira looked at her double and asked, "Every other person not within your reach? Not within reach? Within reach… What hurts you (she reached down and touched her double's face)… It's…it's loneliness, isn't it? The feeling that people are beyond your presence in your existence, that they are unreachable by you? That's what hurts you, isn't it?"

"Loneliness?" Rumi's double responded, her expression changing from one of pain to confusion. "Yes. That's what hurts so much. Loneliness."

FLASH! The two wielders were seeing something that had to predate the time of the dinosaurs, probably before their path to the age of the dinosaurs, as well: A vast forest of stones, the impressive sight of Zeruel before his humanization, the sight of Sahaquiel over a mountain structure that looked like Mount Fuji as it did in the here and now of the world they knew, and a strange formation of dust or gas that had to have been Bardiel, demonstrating his persistence in trying to live as best as he could, resulting in his being cast out of the family. It must've been a memory of Armisael's, before everything changed for them. They then saw a colossal meteorite appearing in the sky and it collided with the planet, sending everything into a fiery inferno.

"Oh, Kami," Rumi covered her mouth, seeing the giant of light known as Adam, who, in a physical sense of outlines, was shaped like an Evangelion, all the way from height to proportions, buried underground whilst his children were scattered about the place, with the young Armisael, who seemed smaller beforehand, about the size of a small house, thrown further away than her siblings.

Time seemed to fast-forward on them, and it was now the age of creatures that looked like the dinosaurs they grew up knowing about from primitive understandings of palentology before it advanced enough to accept the possibility that these ancient reptiles were actually warm-blooded instead of cold-blooded. The Angel of the Womb hovered above these amazing creatures…but was blind and deaf to their presence around her.

What happened? She had questioned, not realizing that time had past around her until she had come to and felt the presence of Lilith through the dinosaurs. Zeruel? Shamshel? Gaghiel? Father? Where are you? I can't see you. Anybody?

The wielders saw her floating aimlessly around the world, hoping to find her family…but in the end, not even the devastation of the Second Impact brought her closer to finding them until years later.

FLASH! They were returned to the reddish-orange ocean with their doppelgangers…now standing away from them.

"I think I can take a guess on her age now, Mother," went Rumi. "In a spiritual and mental sense…she's a lot younger than even I am."

"Yeah, Rumi," responded Akira. "Armisael…with your permission, we can return you to your siblings if you let us humanize you."

The double of Akira looked at her and asked, "No more hurt?"

"No more hurt," she answered.

FLASH! The wielders' perception was brought back to the mortal coil of existence and the threads of light that Armisael used on them broke off their armored waists.

Armisael's condensed ring of light ceased shining and was reduced to a shape-shifting mass of red and pink that resembled flesh and blood. The makings of a pair of feet could be seen alongside a pair of hands. As she shrank down even more, Armisael sprouted a few strands of brownish-gray hair on her forming head. When the transformation completed itself, Rumi and Akira were left surprised, like the people that were also present to watch, at the new form of the final child of Adam.

"Whoa," went Rumi, "I know I said she was probably younger than I am…but I didn't think she was this young!"

Akira sighed and approached the former Angel, reaching down and picking her up.

"Now, now, Rumi," she told her daughter, "when you were born, you were no better off. You were just as helpless in this stage of development."

Due to her status as the youngest of Adam's children, Armisael was reduced to a human state that mirrored her mental state, which was that of an infant.

"Okay. We've humanized her, I don't believe she's in any pain, anymore…but…what do we do with her? I mean, we can't exactly take her to the rehabilitation center; she didn't threaten anyone or cause property damage."

"Rumi, this is a family-related scenario; therefore, Armisael goes to her family, even if it means the rehab facility…but only because the other humanized Angels are her siblings."

"Somehow, I knew you were going to say that."

-x-

Thud! Kaoru fell to the floor in the halls of NERV, startling some of the remaining technicians forced to aid Rei in her goal.

"What happened to him?" A man said as a woman flipped the Fourth Child onto his back, seeing that he wasn't breathing.

The woman checked for a pulse…but didn't find one.

"He's dead," she revealed. "He just dropped dead."

"Who just dropped dead?" They all backed away at the sight of Rei, who was dragging another technician whose mind she violated to learn more, seeing Nagisa dead on the floor. "Oh, dear, now I have more troubles to contend with."

-x-

"…What the Hell happened to this guy?" Nemo heard one of the ladies that had found the John Doe from last night, after getting a better look at him from within the cell the sentries use to confine mystery individuals with little to no identification.

Nemo had to go back to a photo he took of the guy when he saw him earlier in the evening and then look at him in the here and now, seeing a difference in appearances: Last night, he resembled a man past his prime, somewhere in his seventies, gray hair that receded from his forehead, with wrinkled flesh allover his body that was partially hidden by the robe of rags he wore; right now, his appearance had done a complete shift, making him look somewhere in his thirties, with a better case of skin and younger-looking white hair that covered his forehead and flowed past his back, and his eyes, or rather, his right eye was as black as the night with the left eye as red as blood.

"At long last," the man had uttered out, sounding much younger than he looked, "my senses have finally cleared. Never have I felt so relieved."

"Just who are you?" Nemo asked him.

The guy looked at him and could see everything about him from a great distance.

"Adam," he answered. "For the longest time, I have been called Adam, and to think…that it took my youngest daughter's defeat to set me free."

Youngest daughter's defeat? Nemo was now confused by this man.

Ring-ring! He heard his cell phone go off and he answered it.

"Nemo Rokubungi, who is this?" He asked the caller. "You and her have dealt with the last one? That's good…but I think you need to get over here as soon as you can. The John Doe here has revealed himself to be called Adam. No last name, which would probably… Yeah, that. Got it."

He hung up and informed the guards that Akira would be by once the new humanized Angel was dropped off at the rehab facility, being told that there wasn't really anything dangerous about the new lady, but she needed to be with her family.

-x-

"…I never pictured Armisael would be so weak in appearance," went Zeruel, allowed to leave his cell to see his youngest female sibling, but still needed to be restrained, seeing that Armisael was smaller than all his sisters and Bardiel, who had declined any possibility to meet up with his siblings.

Shamshel, being the oldest sister, was the one charged with holding Armisael, who seemed to have taken a liking to the former Angel of the Day's humanized form.

"Zeruel, you really need to give it up," she told him, her subtler way of saying that he needed to accept his newly-given state of humanity like she and some of the others had. "We're not what we once were, so there's no more pride, no more reason to hold a grudge, and no more need to carry out a vendetta against the girl that we had beef with."

"I've given it up," said Gaghiel, who raised his hands up in a surrendering pose, only to resume subtly poking at Armisael's left cheek. "How come she gets the softer skin?"

"Those doctors at the hospital believe that Armisael's humanized body's at least seven months old, give or take. You add the years she lived after she was born before the so-called First Impact, you would probably conclude those years to be similar to what people call 'gestation', since that takes about nine months to do," said Sachiel to him; he hated that he had to learn how to read because he was getting bored with his fitness exercises.

Arael, who was also out of her cell like the others, not as restrained as Zeruel was, but farthest from the gathering of siblings by hanging against a wall.

"Am I detecting jealousy, Arael?" Sahaquiel asked her, and she looked up at her bigger brother.

"What would make you think I'm jealous of Armisael?" She asked him. "I never expected her to be so young. Smaller, I had anticipated, but not an infant. And can you believe that the former container of her essence got placed where we were told was where a navel should be?"

"If it's not jealousy, then what is your problem?"

"Just how long do the wielders of the Angelbreaker plan on keeping us here?" She asked him.

"My opinion: As long as it takes to convince them and ourselves that, even though we're like them on every level that defines their existence, we're not a danger to them because they're so damn fragile." He told her.

"Gah!" They both saw Shamshel approaching them by the wall and noticed how Armisael was holding her tiny arms out in front of Arael.

"Huh?" Arael responded.

"It's your turn to hold her," Shamshel explained, and then simply placed their youngest sister in her hands. "Keep her head still, though."

"What?! Me? But…" Arael tried to question, and then Armisael placed a hand on the bottom of her chin. "I… Oh, man! Why me?"

"Ah-heh-heh!" Armisael giggled.

"Well, at least you're happy," she sighed, holding her sister as she gave in to defeat.

"Heh-heh-heh… Babies," went Ramiel, sitting down near the guards that restrained Zeruel. "They should be considered a lethal weapon…because they get to you in a good way."

"They don't get to me," said Zeruel to him.

"Oh, then you mean to say that you never intend on having any yourself?" Shamshel asked him.

"Hey, I didn't say that…"

"But you said that they get to you in a good way, did you not?"

"Shamshel, don't you start with me."

"Big Sister's very motherly," snickered Kou Israfel.

"Maybe she'll have one of her own when she meets the right guy," added Otsu Israfel.

Shamshel's cheeks blushed and she said, albeit with some degree of reluctance, "That's a big 'maybe', you two."

-x-

"I'd take it that you're the great Akira Rokubungi that the people here respect?" The man, Adam, greeted the young woman that was Akira herself, seeing him sitting in an interrogation room.

"Yes," she answered, and then noticed how her bracelet was glowing at the presence of this man.

"The Angelbreaker," he sighed.

"I take it that you know about this relic?" She asked, sitting down in a chair next to Nemo, who stood against the wall.

"No," he answered her. "Not personally…or directly. Indirectly…through my children's eyes."

Akira's perception of this man had shifted until all she saw of him…was what he appeared in two different past lives; the first was a downsized version of his original form, that of a glowing, Evangelion-looking creature without the mechanical aspects attached to it, and the second was that of what Fuyutsuki had described to her as a type of embryo that looked more like an amalgamation of a human and hairless dog spliced together, deformed and, seemingly, devoid of any sense of awareness inherit within all sentient beings. But her perception of him as a person like herself and others seemed better; they could communicate appropriately and on even grounds.

"So…how many kids do you have, exactly?" She asked him.

"Eleven…more or less," he answered her.

"Spouses?" She asked; of course, she knew that was a dumb question to ask, as this guy was, pretty much, his own spouse in the past.

"No…unless you count the possibility that back in my past, I was hardly different from yourself…more or less."

"And…how would you describe yourself in your past?"

"Physically, biologically or metaphysically?"

"In terms of appearances."

"For the longest, for what could be described as an eternity, I was a behemoth that shined like the stars…and based on the memories of my children, as there was no water at the time of my arrival, somewhat shaped like a person with larger shoulder blades that stuck up around its head."

The Evas had those phylons on their shoulders, she recalled. He must mean those.

"Do your kids have names," they heard Nemo ask, "or are they…not around, anymore?"

"Zeruel, Shamshel, Sachiel, Ramiel, Gaghiel, Sahaquiel, Israfel, Bardiel, Arael and Armisael," Adam answered him, naming his children in cronological order, the order in which they were born long ago.

"That's ten, not eleven," uttered Akira.

"My daughter, Israfel, is now my daughters, Kou and Otsu Israfel," he explained.

"Then…you really are the First Angel…or you were before you…became like we are."

"Yes."

"Adam, the First Angel, a Seed of Life charged to spread life and prosperity across the planet you settled upon by a higher authority, and a brother to the Seed of Life, the Second Angel from the past, known as Lilith."

Adam had to refrain from frowning at being reminded of his heritage and linage with Lilith; with his periodic humanization after the humanizations of his children, his mind and body regained a stronger reattachment toward his soul and memories, and when Armisael was humanized, his soul had come back to the whole of his body and mind, restoring his memories, as well as providing the new ones to explain where he'd been and who was trying to exploit his power.

Akira felt his toes flexing in an attempt to calm his hidden anger.

"I'm sorry," she apologized to him.

"You're forgiven," he stated, calmed. "What will you do with me now?"

Before the woman could dare to answer that question, she had to look to Nemo and sigh as she pointed her head toward the door; this had to be spoken in private until she had explained to the others the end result much later.

"Right," Nemo sighed, and walked toward the door.

When it closed, Adam was confused by what he had seen.

"How did you do that?" He asked her.

"Do what?" She asked back.

"You made him leave out…without even saying anything."

"When you've been with others for a long enough time period, you can understand them very well and vice versa, they can understand you…without going too far to get them to comprehend your intensions or what have you," she explained as simply as possible. "When you've been a parent to children…but never favoring any one of them, your children, even the ones that aren't yours, but might as well be, will understand that there's no superiority, no domainance or a tower or pyramidal structure to indicate there's a favorite person and a least favorite or a most hated. And…I don't play favorites."

Adam, for as long as he could remember before Lilith's arrival on the planet (and he remembered everything that ever occurred), his wanting his children to be just as strong and unconquerable like he was had caused what the Lilin referred to as a falling out with his youngest son, Bardiel, whose memories of heartache, pain and sense of abandonment had left him alienated from his siblings that did nothing to help him get over it.

"I should probably ask about one of my sons, but it wouldn't be right," he then spoke up.

"Which one of them? Bardiel?" She asked him.

"Yes."

She recalled the hunchback boy's poor health due to being injured by Rei Ayanami, and still wondered what had caused him more pain: What the girl did to him or what his family did?

"I…I try to give everyone a fair voice of choice…and your children have been quite the exception due to most of them being rehabilitated before they can be let out into town as people, with the major exception of Bardiel, who seemed to need not rehab…but a different case of therapy that would help him bury his past problems. And yet, after seeing you, the very father of these children, who, due to countless generations of being absent from their lives, you have me wondering if I should consider setting up a reunion of sorts with them. I don't want to reopen old wounds."

"I can respect that," he told her.

"My youngest granddaughter seems to have taken a liking toward your youngest son," she informed him. "She met him once after I had met him for the first time before his humanization."

"Which was done after he was nearly killed by an enslaved copy of my past self bathed in blood."

"Bathed in blood? Oh, Evangelion Unit-02, under the enslavement of a remote control system because a young girl within it wouldn't fight against Bardiel because he held two members of my family hostage, thinking that nobody would think to sacrifice two of their own to stop him. Unfortunately, he didn't know the man I had to cast out of my family for his harsh and inhumane decisions."

"He tried to find me, to rescue me before I could try and escape from my former imprisonment myself, and to replace the others as my favorite. While nearly everyone else had a grudge against your youngest daughter, he was trying to gain my attention, which I never did give him in the beginning."

"It makes you feel bad, doesn't it, Adam?" She asked him. "It makes you feel bad that one of your children, who pined for your love, but didn't receive any before being cast away for a perceived weakness that was merely clinging to life, would try to find you, to save you, hoping that by doing so, they would be loved by you."

-x-

"…So, the last Angel was just a baby?" Shinji asked Rumi, who had returned to the hospital to be with her nephew after the short battle. "That's quite a shocker."

"Yeah, it was," Rumi agreed, as they sat around in the hospital garden. "But it makes some sense to why some of the Angels seemed to be younger than the others. They were just a bunch of kids deep down, with some of them acting tough to hide it."

"Or tried looking tough," Shinji added, "but looks only hide what's beneath a person's exterior."

"They've all been defeated… All the Angels are humanized, unable to cause harm on a large scale, unable to hurt people without getting hurt themselves."

"Unable to get you?" Shinji added.

"Or you…or the others," she stated, placing her left hand over his right. "Hey, Shinji?"

"Yes?"

"During my previous battle…with Arael, she assaulted me with a surrealistic vision that seemed like a vision of a would-be future. I met up with four dark specters, one of which was an undead copy of myself, and… I was someplace that was similar to the pit beneath the streets of Tokyo-3, with the purple monster hovering above everything by means of orange wings that looked like they were made of light with veins. The copy and other specters had me cornered, and one of them had asked me if I knew how to swim, just before I fell into some water and almost drowned."

"You were then spoken to by the head of your undead copy," went Shinji, who made her gasp.

"Uh, yeah," she regained her composure. "How'd you know?"

Shinji sighed and explained, "Your mother used her half of the Angelbreaker to contact me. At first, I thought I was hallucinating, but then I saw the place you were at in the illusion. Akira was there, as well, and she told me that you wouldn't hear her there…but she had hope that you would hear me."

"That did seem like you instead of another hallucination…but I don't get it, though. I heard you and saw you, but couldn't hear or see my mother."

"Your fear hindered you from doing so. Or…just maybe…she feared you wouldn't be able to be reached by her. Fear can outdo certain emotional feats."

"You…you looked good when I saw you in the water."

"And…you look like a warrior princess when you wear that armor."

Rumi's cheeks blushed and she turned her face away from his; whenever the topic of the armor, even the first set of armor that was partially revealing for her body, it made her a bit uneasy about it because of the photo of her that made the town's media papers.

"You were flying in space, Rumi," she heard him say. "How was that?"

"To be one of the first kids to be an astronaut without special gear required to breathe and be protected from the dangers of not being under the shelter of the ozone layer? For a short while, even fighting an Angel to protect others from an undeserving fate… I felt like I was atop of everything, that there was no longer any limits to going wherever I wanted. But…I still couldn't get to Heaven just yet."

"Ugh!" Shinji shuddered; this was only due to the idea of dying while still young after experiencing a heart attack that left him almost gone for good…but feeling nowhere near the afterlife that people like to talk about.

"Sorry," she apologized, realizing she had brought up a sore point.

"No, it's okay. I didn't get close enough to Heaven, either. I didn't want to leave just yet. I didn't want to leave at all, really. And… I didn't see what people say there is to see when you pass on. I didn't see the kami, a white light, angels, Oni, nothing. But…someone was calling out to me, somewhere I felt I shouldn't have even tried to go anywhere near."

"Then…it's good that you didn't," Rumi told him, looking back at him, probably sounding a little selfish in her choice of words. "We didn't want you to leave us. Not like that. Never like that… Ever."

She raised her right hand and placed it on his face.

"Rumi?" He asked, unknowingly lowering his head toward hers.

"Shinji," she breathed, "now that all the Angels have been humanized, maybe… I mean, maybe I can…help you more than with what I've done so far… I…"

The boy, unknowingly, placed his left hand on her right cheek and leaned closer to her.

"Ooh!" They were snapped back to reality by the presence of Mayo and Kanami. "Mommy, were they about to do what I think they were about to do?"

"It actually depends on what you saw them doing, Mayo," said Kanami, chuckling along with an occasional smirk. "I'm not sure what I saw, though."

"It looked like my young aunt was overstepping her boundaries…extremely," Mayo snickered, just as Rumi came to her senses and removed her hand from her nephew's face.

"Actually," went Shinji, "she was just checking my complexion. I had asked her if I looked paler than usual. She hadn't told me her response just yet."

"Yeah, that's right," Rumi added in.

"Hate to tell y'all, but we were watching the whole scene," Kanami revealed, "down to the moment you put your hand on his face, Rumi."

"Kami," Shinji sighed.

"You know, the Americans made a policy for certain people when they joined the military, based on not asking questions and not giving answers. I believe in other variations of that policy. Mayo?" Kanami uttered out.

"I know. We don't ask…and you don't tell," responded her daughter in a sigh. "Of course, I suspected a little, right from the start."

Hearing this still made Rumi uneasy.

"We didn't see a thing today," went Kanami, "but if Akira finds out and jumps to conclusions, you two are on your own. Come on, Mayo."

"Aw, but I wanted to see," Mayo pouted, and followed her mother back into the building.

When the two were left alone in the garden again, Shinji shuddered in relief; even he wasn't sure what had almost happened. But Rumi, on the other hand, was quite positive that she was attempting to kiss her nephew again like she did in the elevator last time.

"Um… I'm thirsty, Shinji," she made up an excuse to get out of the garden. "Are you thirsty?"

"Yeah. Yeah." He accepted, and then got up off the grass.

Rumi felt disappointed at disappointing herself again. As much as she wanted to believe in the Angelbreaker being able to save her nephew from dying, her hesitation was going to be a wall that would try and stand in her way.

-x-

Asuka couldn't believe her luck when a call to her from back in Japan came and announced that her resume had been looked over and that the president of Medical Angel Industries wanted to meet her in person before hiring her. The only other thing she couldn't believe was how her stepparents were trying to dissuade her from actually thinking about going back to Japan for, what they had deemed, a lousy desk job for a medical company that wouldn't profit from giving people less fortunate than others an extended lifespan that was only a few short years, and instead tried to persuade her to reconsider going back to NERV to pilot the Eva once again, a suggestion she refused to consider. Other than that, she wanted to confirm for herself if this Masamune Ikari was related to the fool, Gendo Ikari, personally on her own.

And if he is, I'd have to know if insanity runs in the family, she thought, since such a character trait didn't show itself at all in Akira's family of mismatched relatives that did match up.

Her stepfather was still trying to persuade her to rethink her previous decision of quitting NERV, but she simply told him that once all the Angels got turned into regular people, whatever threat they posed against the world was nullified, negated, undone. And if he wanted to identify her as a weakling, then he was allowed to by all means, but her choice to cast aside the Evangelion would never come undone.

-x-

"…You're looking quite better, Bardiel," went Taeko, entering the room assigned to the former Angel and seeing him getting dressed in his clothes, which, during the time he was recuperating, were repaired and ready to be worn again. "Are you well?"

Placing back on his coat, Bardiel smiled slightly and said, "My injury has mended to the point of phantom pain…but I'm as well as can be to face other, trivial challenges. Thank you."

She walked over to him and leaned her head under his to examine his eyes; they were the brightest of gold that you could ever imagine.

Bardiel's cheeks blushed; this felt like inappropriate conduct that he heard about prior to possessing the black Eva whenever a plane or other aerial vehicle passed around his former body in the clouds.

"They're pretty," he heard her say.

"Huh?"

"Your eyes."

"Oh."

She then backed away and sat down on the chair behind her.

"So…did you hear about what happened this morning in the aftermath?"

"I heard…and I saw," he told her. "The final Angel was humanized."

"Armisael. She was only a baby. Very cute."

"Yeah. Cute."

Taeko realized that she had spoken about one of his relatives that had cast him aside and apologized, "Gomen nasai, Bardiel. I didn't mean to offend you."

"You didn't offend. I've never met Armisael… I was cast out before she was ever born, so there's nothing between her or myself, only the others."

"I'm only saying this because I need to get it off my shoulders, but you know, you could go see her if you wanted to."

"I was offered the chance to do so earlier, but I declined."

"Is it alright if I ask why?"

"I didn't want to see the others."

Taeko knew that this boy had family-related issues that would probably never be resolved, but she wanted to hope that someday, he would just go see them, even if it was only for a short time. She believed that he'd have a better chance of patching things up with them than her cousin, Shinji, whose chances of getting along with, what she had to consider, his extremely poor excuse of a father were nonexistent instead of slim. And she wasn't comparing them.

"At least you had siblings in the past," she then uttered.

Bardiel sighed and responded, "That actually depends on your description and definition of 'siblings'."

"I wouldn't know how to describe or define it…except with my uncle and aunts. There's no blood between them, but they love each other like there is. And then there's…my cousins, Shinji and Mayo. I'm an only child, but…in a way, they're like my elder siblings. Even though I don't talk as much as I should with Shinji, I do love him, all the same, ever since I found out he was sick."

"Shinji? The boy with the fake hair and the little wielder of the Angelbreaker that obsesses over him?" Bardiel asked her.

"Yes," she answered him.

"Is he…fragile?"

"Fragile? You mean, because he's sick?"

"Yes."

"Yes…and no. I don't see him as fragile in every sense of the word; he can still walk from time to time, tend to himself for every minor thing he does, pick up lightweight objects and speak his mind, but he can't do anything beyond his body's ability to perform, like lifting heavy things or eating too much or getting minor scrapes or burns that need to be mended as soon as possible before they cause him trouble and require him to come here for medical aid. Physically, he's fragile, but in here (she points to her heart)…and here (she points to her head), he's not breakable."

Again, Bardiel sighed; despite the small degree of progress he believed he was making with his behavior toward others, he couldn't help but still resent his family for simply trying to stay alive and be accepted by them.

"If I went to see them for a short time, would you not pressure me? 'Cause I feel like you're pressuring me, Taeko."

"I swear," she answered him.

"Okay," he gave in. Why me?

-x-

"…How is it that we're in what remains of a fortress city, in a technologically-advanced underground location, with the latest in medical practices, and there's not one single bedpan?" Ritsuko demanded, trying to get out of bed to go to the restroom, regaining some feeling in her legs again.

Kaji was also trying to get out of bed, but not to use the bathroom. He was trying to get out of the Geo-Front and find a means to leave the city, but his right leg irritated him with each step he took.

"I somehow doubt that either of you two will find what you're looking for," they looked at the door and saw a woman with a disturbing resemblance to Ritsuko. "There isn't much of a way out."

"What the Hell?" Ritsuko gasped; this woman looked like her mother, who committed suicide years ago on the MAGI.

"Sit down," Naoko instructed them with a firm tone of voice, but they didn't listen. "SIT DOWN!"

Suddenly, they were both forced onto their beds and held there by some invisible force.

"Hey!" Kaji freaked out.

"What in the…" Ritsuko expressed. "Who the Hell are you?"

"Now, now, Ritsuko, is that any way to talk to your mother?" Naoko asked her.

"I thought you said your mother died years ago," Kaji questioned Ritsuko.

"She did die years ago. I was there when it happened," Ritsuko responded, which had Naoko a little surprised; she thought that nobody else was around the night she murdered the original Rei Ayanami after discovering what Gendo had thought of her.

"I'm sure you two are wondering why I'm here," she told them.

"Not really, ma'am," went Kaji.

"You shut up," she told him. "Things are going to change around here before the summer ends, just so that you know. You can't be permitted to leave the base."

"Uh, ma'am, this isn't really…" Kaji tried to speak up, but Naoko shut him up again.

"Be silent, boy!" She demanded. "Now, in due time, you're both to expect a guest, one you haven't seen in a while. I trust you'll make them feel right at home. Good day."

Then she left them alone, stuck to the beds and frustrated by the outcome between them.

"Oh, great," Kaji heard Ritsuko grunt out.

"What? We got hassled by a ghost or that we can't leave the base?" He asked her.

"Neither. I just lost control of my bladder."

"Gross."

"No shit."

-x-

The night was quiet, with very few people up and about due to lack of sleep. The Rokubungi estate was one of the two quietest places in town due to its inhabitants not being able to rest.

"I'm guessing something didn't go so well later today, Taeko?" Bumi asked his daughter, seeing her awake and in the kitchen with a canned coffee by the table.

"I, uh… I made a bad error when I suggested to Bardiel that he go see his siblings," she confessed to her father. "I went with him to the rehab facility with Tsukiko, but when we got there, the former Angel named Zeruel started taunting Bardiel for simply being who he was and complaining that he should've been placed behind the bars like they were and not in the hospital."

Bumi sighed at the mere thought of this guy, Zeruel, and how he sounded like a bully and a lowlife.

"Bardiel wanted to leave after being spoken to like that, but then his big sister, this Shamshel, who was cradling the newest humanized Angel, Armisael, spoke up and told her big brother that Bardiel was nice enough to actually come see them and should be thanked for doing so. I think the woman that was the first to be changed was actually the kindest out of the Angels needing to be rehabilitated…with their eldest brother being the coldest."

"Some brothers are like that, Taeko," he told his daughter, getting a can of coffee for himself from the fridge. "They'll sometimes think they're superior…just because they're older…and forget that they were tasked to set examples for their younger siblings."

"Well, I think he's heartless…and is taking his being restrained constantly, because I saw him chained in his cell and periodically injected with sedatives to keep his muscles numb, out on everyone. He even called Bardiel an ugly, little cretin. Who could say something so awful? I don't think Bardiel's ugly or little. Well, I mean…he stands taller than me."

"The guy's nothing more than a lowly fool acting tough since he got beaten by two, very strong ladies charged with saving the world. Maybe he feels that all he has left is his pride, which took a serious beating. That…will lead to his despair."

"Treating a good person like Bardiel like he's nothing but garbage is nothing to be proud of. He's no better than…that man that terrified me at the festival."

That reminded Bumi of how his daughter expressed her outright dislike of his former brother, Gendo, who made a complete ass of himself when he showed up after leaving for twenty-six years and then hearing that he used some bogus, computer-based remote control override system that could've led to Kanami and Mayo's unjustified murder, which, along with what he heard of him calling their adoptive mother, their savior from bad futures without guidance or restraint, an old hag and a fool and calling Shinji worthless, along with the rest of them, drove Akira to do the unthinkable and disown him from the family, thus solidifying his designation as the black sheep of the family because of his attitude.

"At least Zeruel didn't try anything extremely heartless toward Bardiel," he told his daughter.

"Define 'extremely heartless', please," she requested.

"He didn't make somebody try and lay an uninvited finger on him, did he?"

"No. That was the only good thing he did."

As they drank their coffee, at the hospital, Akira, who felt drowsy, thirsty and sluggish, got up out of her chair and left out Shinji's room.

"Where you off to, Mother?" Rumi asked, unable to sleep, either.

"The cafeteria," she answered. "I need coffee. Y'all want anything?"

"A bagel, please," went Shinji.

"Coffee," added Rumi, "and a bagel, too."

"Gotcha," Akira replied and left toward the floor level that housed the cafeteria.

"Guess this is going to be the Night of the Living and Living Dead of Akira Town," Shinji sighed.

"Maybe," Rumi told him. "At least things are quiet here."

"Yeah, that's true."

But unbeknownst to them, things weren't going to stay that way.

-x-

"…We're ready to move in," said a man through a radio.

"Prepare to move in. Non-lethals only. Orders are to go in, grab the subject, knock out any that pose a threat to the mission…and walk out." A woman instructed several more people.

"I still don't see why we're going through this over one person. Wouldn't it be easier to just kill everyone and be done with it?"

"According to our superiors, the guy we're after is precious…and won't comply if there are fatalities. He's fragile in every sense of the word, physically and mentally."

"I've been hearing things about at least two women that live in that place. They're supposed to be blessed by God or something…or they made a deal with the Devil to protect people."

"Whatever the case may be, just put them to sleep with the darts. Let's move in and move out."

-x-

"…Susanoo?" Akira spoke up, seeing Dr. Gyatso in the cafeteria once she stepped in. "I thought you went home for the day."

As he was sitting down at one of the tables, the elderly doctor, setting down a half-finished sandwich, responded, "No. I had volunteered for tonight's graveyard shift."

Akira then went over to the refrigerators and pulled out two canned coffees and then over to the pastry stand and got two bagels.

"Quite a summer, huh?" She asked him, now sitting down across the table from him.

"Yeah. I hear a comet's going to be passing by the planet when it ends. Are you looking forward to it?"

"Yes…and no. Due to one mishap, I have to be cautious about the Pyro Channelers because the comet that arrives will endow them with the ability to create their own fire…and I have to make sure that those that do get exposed to its celestial energies won't abuse the power."

"Oh. But…are Shinobu and Tsukiko looking forward to it…without the downside to it?"

"No. They want to see the comet, but they don't want its gift of making fire because it's no different from taking a shortcut to mastering a skill. If it comes and they still haven't created their own fire through effort, skill, discipline and determination, the only way they'll be kept away from the comet's energies…is to be underground until it passes, which takes over two hours to do."

"Fire, the one element that chosen people have to spend a great measure of their life learning to control because it's not like the other three elements. A rock won't throw itself, air blows wherever it wants and can, and water flows down an available pathway."

With the potential hope that her daughter and grandson could wait a few more minutes for her to return, Akira needed to ask her friend a question.

"Is it alright to ask you a personal question?" She asked the good doctor.

"Go right ahead," he responded, permitting her.

"Well… I know why I stayed single after my husband died, but why didn't you, back when you were younger, tie your knot with somebody?" She questioned.

"Honestly, I didn't meet anyone that I fancied a lot. I mean, there was Li-Mei, my prom date, but then she left the town a year later to travel the world. Sometimes, I still wonder if her father hated me for what I wanted to do with my life."

"Who would hate you for being a doctor? You do your best."

"Can you think of one such person?"

"I'd rather not."

"Hey, Akira, about Rumi…"

"Hmm?"

"If I'm becoming a deluded, crazy elder, just tell me, but… Rumi's in love with Shinji, isn't she? I mean… Really, really in love?"

Akira sighed and popped opened one of the two cans of coffee.

"First up, Dr. Gyatso, you're not deluded, and, most secondly, you're not crazy. Third, I… I'm more than willing to believe that the feeling's mutual."

The good doctor didn't seem convinced by his friend's words.

"You don't seem happy about it," he told her. "Is it…because of that (he pointed to her bracelet)?"

"The Angelbreaker only shows what's inside a chosen wielder's heart," she explained. "It allows for the current wielder or wielders to relive the memories and emotional experiences of past wielders in the forms of dreams and visions. It even allows for wielders to delve into the past memories of people and feel all that they ever felt in whichever memories are being explored through, and I once used it, unintentionally, to reunite Tomoyo's little sister's spirit with her."

"The Angelbreaker can speak with the dead?"

"Well, I didn't speak with Xiaolongnü, exactly. She spoke to me, told me that the artifact could do that. I was helping Tomoyo fix up more of her house that day."

"Funny, how that little trinket has done a lot."

Then, Akira, knowing that she might overstep her boundaries, manifested her gauntlet and placed her hand on the good doctor's left shoulder.

FLASH! Susanoo Gyatso was in a large, misty environment, by himself and wondering how he ended up there to begin with.

"Akira?" He called out. "Akira?"

"Susanoo? Is that you I hear?" He heard a woman that sounded nothing like Akira respond, and then saw someone stepping out of the mist into the open space he was occupying.

A woman, younger than he wasn't, anymore, looking well into her mid-forties, grayish-brown hair, a few wrinkles of her face, and green eyes that were like jade, dressed in a green yukata with a diamond-like pattern on it.

"Susanoo Gyatso," she greeted him with a curtsy. "It's been over twenty years since we last saw each other, and after such a long time, I had thought you'd forgotten me."

"I'm sorry. Do I know you from somewhere?" He asked her, unsure of who this woman was.

"The Dragon Kami High School Prom? We posed for our picture that night. I had asked you what you were going to be after you graduated out of school and you told me you wanted to be a doctor."

"Li…Li-Mei?" He gasped, disbelieving that this elder woman was his high school prom date. "Is it…really you?"

She approached him and placed her hands upon his shoulders. To him, she felt solid, but out of touch in some way.

"But…what are you…" He tried to ask her, but she cut him off.

"You owe thanks to Akira for overstepping her boundaries and allowing you to see me," she explained to him. "This…is a realm for those like me… The dead."

"The dead?" He then realized that the reason her touch seemed different was because it lacked the sense of warmth that was inherit within a person that was still alive. "What happened to you?"

"I was traveling around Africa when one day, I saw best friends become worst enemies. Giant waves washing away the savannas, the jungle growth, causing panic that even the authorities couldn't tell what was going on. I was helping some children that lost their parents when some soldiers came…and demanded to know where some people were hiding. They thought we knew something…but we didn't know anything. One soldier raised a gun at me, threatening to kill me unless I told him where his enemies were hiding. I told him I didn't know anything, that I was trying to help a few orphans that lost everything because of some disaster, but he wasn't convinced. He shot one of the girls I had found in the water and killed her in front of me, promising to do the same to the others unless I gave him the truth. But still, I told him the truth that I didn't know anything. In the end… Well, in the end, I was wishing I had gone back to Akira Town the day before the disaster happened. I wished I had gone home, where time stands still."

The Second Impact took her life, as well, he thought, hurt by the revelation of his former prom date's untimely demise. "The press called that catastrophe the Second Impact, caused by a small meteorite melting Antarctica's ice, raising the ocean-levels of the oceans and flooding coastal cities, limiting resources that were available, caused sickness, war, death in the few months following it. But nobody back home believed in the meteorite story."

"I wouldn't, either. And, for the record, my father didn't hate you for wanting to be a doctor. He was just wondering why you didn't try to keep me from leaving home to travel."

"What?! Why I didn't stop you from leaving? I wasn't going to keep you from following your dreams, ergo, I didn't stop you."

"It was partially my fault, too. If I had given any further indication of my affections for you, I would've hoped you had stopped me. Weird, how life surprises you in unusual ways."

"Yeah. It is weird. Did you travel a lot?"

"I visited Tokyo Tower, the Eiffel Tower of Paris, France, the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids of Giza, Egypt, the Statue of Liberty in New York and the only small city in history that was also the biggest in its own right."

"You mean, you've been to Reno, Nevada?"

"To go to many different places, to take in the sights, it's quite a thrill and exhilaration. But I must confess that my initial reason to do so was because of Akira Rokubungi and her periodic travels to other parts of the world."

"I believe that much of the town's oldest architecture is based on different parts of the world."

Suddenly, the mist surrounding them began to envelop them.

"I hate it when time limits conversations that are important to me," Li-Mei expressed to her former crush. "Thank you for seeing me, Susanoo."

Then, the good doctor did something out of line: He grabbed her shoulders and kissed her.

Li-Mei grabbed onto him and held tightly to savor the thrill.

FLASH! Gyatso was then back in the cafeteria with Akira, who removed her gauntlet from his shoulder. The sight of her face was a reminder to the good doctor that she wielded a lot of power…but was by no means a goddess.

"Thank you, Akira," he praised her.

As the gauntlet retracted its armor back into its bracelet guise, the centenarian sighed, having been a witness to the conversation between the good doctor and his high school crush.

"That girl really did like you," she told him.

"Yeah," he sighed, "she did."

"She must've loved traveling to different parts of the world as much as I do every now and then."

"I don't think the sights around here compare to those that no longer exist. I mean, parts of China aren't there, anymore. They lost their best tourist attraction that was once needed to protect their provinces."

"That's a little true; the last few times I took my family on vacations around the world, many cities, countries, even out-of-the-way places were either reduced in size, population, or were left as ruins with much of their former beauty and glory lost. It still pains me to know that many of those places, those landmarks, even the trivial ones… Nobody that was born after the devastation has ever experienced such greatness in the form of architectural exhilaration, like riding a Ferris Wheel."

Once she realized it, the centenarian woman had spent more than fifteen minutes talking with her friend, knowing that her daughter and grandson weren't going to take kindly to having to wait a long time, and got up off the table.

"I'd better get these upstairs now," she told him, but then hesitated when her bracelet's jewels started glowing, as if there was trouble. "Huh?"

"I thought all the Angels that had beef with Rumi were humanized," said Dr. Gyatso to her.

"They were," she revealed. "There aren't any Angels left to humanize. This is something else. A different danger, potentially more lethal than some of the Angels that showed up here. You'd better get the staff on night watch to take precaution."

As she left out the cafeteria, the aged doctor was getting up onto his feet.

-x-

The hospital halls were quiet, barely any people, medical staff or patients, walking around. Whoever the small band of JSSDF soldiers found in the medical rooms were sedated with tranquilizers and sleeping gas. They were working their way up from the bottom floor to the top where their target was located.

GASP! Some of the soldiers that peeled away from the group spotted a female nurse, who just happened to see their uniforms.

"Sound the alarms!" She screamed to whoever was left there to hear her. "The hospital's under attack!"

Then soon after, the alarms were rung and the soldiers were exposed.

"What's going on?" Shinji asked, as he and Rumi heard the alarms going off.

"So much for a quiet evening," said Rumi, manifesting the armor of her talisman and looking out the room. "It looks like we're about to have company that was uninvited."

Shinji slowly got out of bed and grabbed onto an IV pole nearby for stability.

"Let's get outta here," he suggested to her, and she helped him.

Moving out as quickly as possible (but as carefully as possible, as well, since Shinji couldn't run as good as he used to without his kidneys), they wandered the halls and found several other cancer patients up and about.

"What's going on?" An elderly woman questioned.

"Yeah, who sounded the alarms?" A young man added.

"Soldiers. Military." They heard Rumi tell them, quieting their worries. "Let's head to the bathroom."

Instead of complaining, they listened to the little girl and followed her to the nearest restroom. But Shinji felt the need to complain a little, for the bathroom everyone was entering was directed more towards his aunt's sanitation.

"Oh, no, no, no, Rumi, that's the ladies' room," he stated to her, but Rumi wasn't having this conversation with him right now.

"It's life or death, Shinji," she told him, and dragged him inside.

"Kami, forgive me," he prayed.

"They will."

-x-

"Oh!" A little girl gasped, falling to the floor once a dart hit her in the back and sent her into a heavily-induced doze.

"They're aren't many people left in this building," said one of the female soldiers, reloading her rifle. "Let's just go nab the kid and be on our way."

"Hey, you!" They looked up some steps of a stairway and spotted a young boy that seemed deformed in the back. "What'd you go and shoot her for?"

HISS! The soldier that shot the girl shot him in the right shoulder, waiting for him to fall. But he didn't fall. He stood still and then pulled the dart out of his skin.

As they were unaware that this 'deformed' boy was Bardiel, they had no idea of how angry he'd become toward them for this simple act of violence.

"Hey!" He shouted. "That hurt! Why'd you do that?!"

"Oh, shit!" They gasped, and began emptying their non-lethal rounds at him, but Bardiel jumped off the steps and landed on several heads, knocking them hard to the ground.

"What'd we ever do to any of you, huh?!" He questioned, grabbing a male soldier and throwing him against his comrades; Bardiel's humanized state gave him a mild degree of inhuman strength that enabled him to pick up at least one grown man and throw him aside…along with the benefit of a higher immune system that required a larger dose of sedatives to get the required effect of knocking him out.

"Man, what is with people tonight?" He questioned, scattering the darts allover his chest off him as the remaining soldiers ran off.

"They looked like the type of soldiers assigned to the JSSDF," he heard the woman he was visiting in her room half an hour ago because of his insomnia, Misato Katsuragi, who also couldn't sleep tonight. "But what would bring them here?"

Bardiel then looked toward the soldiers that were left behind.

"Let's find out," he suggested to her, unhindered by the trace amounts of the drugs shot into his body due to them being only small doses.

-x-

"…Shoot her! Shoot her!" The soldiers cried out as they fired their darts toward the armored Akira, who wielded a staff and sent a gust of air toward them, knocking them off their feet.

One of them, a man, got back up and took out a switchblade knife and took Akira by surprise as she got close enough to demand answers for their presence. STAB! He jammed the blade into her neck, which he assumed, due to there being very little armor surrounding that area, would be a vulnerable spot to inflict harm to her.

"Die, bitch!" He shouted, but then looked at her again…and realized that she never even flinched from being stabbed there.

"You might wanna look at your knife again, sir," she told him calmly, though her voice still possessed the seductive tone she had whenever she used the Angelbreaker to fight.

The man pulled his knife back up, only to find that the blade never even touched her skin due to a disorganized piece of the armor sprouting from where the shoulders reached the neck…and because the blade itself had been heated up to melting levels.

"Ahh! What the Hell are you?" He asked her.

PIERCE! He felt a large blade pierce his abdomen and right out his back, despite his body armor protecting him from bullets, which, due to a piece of detail from an unknown source, the people of this town disregarded firearms.

"I'm very angry that people think that they can bring their wars around here," she responded, retracting a large blade that had manifested from the wrist of her left arm. "Be thankful that you won't die from this stabbing."

The guy then fell to the floor, feeling like he was close to the edge of the afterlife…but still too far away to embrace his final breath.

"Okay," Akira told the remaining soldiers in front of her, "who else wants a piece of this old lady?"

They looked at each other and then decided to retreat.

"Forget the Third Child," said a woman. "I'm not messing with this bitch."

Third Child? Akira recalled that designation, disliking it because every time she heard it, it was referring to… Oh, no.

-x-

"…I told y'all we should've brought the big guns," said one the remaining soldiers outside the bathroom that they had no idea that their target was inside.

Then, one of the remaining female soldiers reached behind herself and extracted a shotgun.

"I like to keep this baby handy…for emergencies," she told them, and looked at the girls' bathroom. "Check the other rooms and sedate the civilians. I'm going to check in here."

They left her alone and she stepped inside, seeing a large and rather-clean bathroom.

"Well, ain't this lovely?" She told herself, seeing the stalls were all closed.

"Yeah, it is," she heard somebody over her head, and looked up.

It was Rumi, wielding a hook sword and hanging on the walls and ceiling.

"Oh!" The soldier woman gasped and tried to shoot her, but the little girl detached herself from the walls and slammed her sword down on her head, knocking her out, depriving her of her gun.

"Okay, y'all, she's out cold," she informed the others, who stepped out of the stalls.

"No wonder I don't like the military," went a little girl, two years older than Rumi herself.

As they stepped out of the bathroom, they heard approaching footsteps and saw more soldiers.

"Oh, come on!" An aged woman whined, not in the mood for more military action against civilians.

But instead of rifles with darts, one of the soldiers threw what looked like a grenade or small canister at their feet…and it shot out two streams of a gaseous chemical.

COUGH-COUGH! Rumi and the patients started coughing after inhaling the fumes.

"My eyes hurt!" A little boy cried.

"Oh, man, it's tear gas!" Another boy coughed.

Rumi then felt a stiffening in her leg movements. She also felt her strength dissipating due to the adrenaline no longer rushing in her body.

Tear gas…and sleeping gas mixed together, she realized, now on her knees. No… I have to stay awake…have to stop them…protect Shinji.

Before she knew it, she was on the ground and unable to move, but her eyes were still fighting to keep her from sleeping.

"Quick…grab…Third Child… Back…base… Mission accomplished…" Rumi heard the nonsense that was the soldiers talking, picking up an unconscious Shinji and walking away.

No! Her mind screamed, seeing a gold chain dangling out from under her nephew's hands. No!

The soldiers ran up to the roof of the building and awaited their pickup and getaway method.

"Why couldn't we nab the little girl, as well?" The guy that had Shinji over his shoulders requested to know. "She seemed worth a lot if that thing covering her was actually valuable…if you know what I mean by 'worth a lot'."

"Don't even joke like that," a soldier woman on his right told him. "We had our orders and we followed them. We're just here for this stiff-to-be."

Suddenly, they saw their getaway: A large, VTOL aircraft. With Shinji out cold from the gas he inhaled, he couldn't hear the jet engines at all.

"Stop!" They saw Akira approaching them.

"Shit!" A guy shouted and produced an Uzi and fired at the centenarian woman, forcing her to take shelter behind the door to the roof. "Stay back, lady, or the boy gets it."

That made Akira hesitate; it was always the most dishonorable move anyone could play against somebody, threatening the life of a loved one, a line that she wouldn't cross.

"No funny business," the guy told her, and his comrades boarded the ship and took to the night sky.

-x-

"You must be proud of your achievement this time, Rei," went Naoko to the keeper of the Fallenbreaker, "knowing that the boy was successfully captured."

Rei, sitting on the MAGI Supercomputer System that Naoko had tried to kill herself with years ago, leaned back on her hands and responded, "I'm only disappointed that I couldn't do it myself. A trait I had acquired from the former puppet master that I hope to get rid of soon."

"Is it alright if I ask why you couldn't get him yourself?" She asked again.

Rei raised her left hand in front of her own gaze and uttered, "Can you imagine it, not being able to touch somebody who seems no different from every other person you've touched, only to find that they are…in a strange way…kept sacred from you? Placed within a temple, set atop a mountain so high that it reaches into the abyss of space, buried deep beneath the depths of the ocean waves or simply on the run from you?"

"No, I can't," Naoko told her.

"I can touch those close to him, the lackeys of NERV, the hustlers and thieves of society, but Unit-01's resident failure and the former Third Child themselves are beyond my grasp."

"What of Unit-02's resident soul?"

"There's nothing of any knowledge to gain from the soul of that Eva. With a tarnished soul, and an equally-tarnished will, due to the departure and abandonment of its pilot, Unit-02 is nothing more than a waste of space. There was never really any requirement for Unit-02 in the Ikari couple and SEELE's goals; it only ever served as cannon fodder when the requirement of eliminating the Angels was in play. To think that Unit-02's pilot went and left before I returned… Well, good riddance to her. She was going to be sacrificed, eventually…just to drive the boy mad had he stayed to pilot if he wasn't sick. Pity how things don't go the way you want them to."

"Well, how long until he arrives?"

"In a few hours."

"And you don't think that his relatives will try to reclaim him?"

"If they do, they'll suffer."

-x-

"Rumi… Rumi…" Rumi had opened her eyes and found herself back in the misty woods.

"Huh… What… What's going on?" She wondered, getting up onto her feet and walking down a lantern path that was glowing with blue light.

There was a feeling of disharmony all around her; something had happened and she couldn't remember what it was, only that she had felt defeat in her heart.

I was…doing something…but what was it? She tried to remember, but couldn't picture her last recollection before she wound up here. Maybe that cave over there will tell me something.

Entering the dark and misty cave, she stepped on something squishy, alerting her to either potentially dangerous or disgusting.

"I've been waiting for you, Angelbreaker," a raspy male voice uttered from within the darkness.

Whatever she stepped on moved to get away from her feet and she backed away toward a wall, seeing something large…slithering out of the mist toward her.

"Oh," she gasped, a little worried because of the appearance of the creature that was five feet away from her.

It was a large, dark and scaly, Nāga-like creature with the upper body like that of a bodybuilder, the muscles ripped and ready to burst open with raw strength, while the lower body was that of a serpent, allowing for faster mobility. Decorating its physique were a series of spiked chains and bands, some sort of combination of torture and imprisonment, based on Rumi's perception, with the left arm scarred with cuts. The head, not as serpentine as the rest of the body, resembled a common iguana's head with golden-yellow eyes and a set of whiskers, like those of a cat's.

"Who…who are you?" She asked, turning her head away.

"I am Nāga-Naoto, the Spirit of Trial and Error," the creature answered.

"Trial and error? You mean, like failing at something and learning from the failure?"

"Yes."

Rumi looked up at it, no, at him and saw him advance no further to her, keeping his distance at a mere three feet.

"Why am I here?" She asked him.

"Do you remember your great failure?"

"No."

"Last night, in the hospital, an attack was made, and the boy you sought to protect was captured."

"What? You mean… Shinji, my nephew…was taken from me?"

Once that was spoken, flashes of scenes that had occurred several hours ago had assulted her mind, showing her what had transpired at the hospital and who was taken.

"No," she fell to her knees. "Who would take him? He has never done anything to anyone."

"Can you think of any that would take him?"

Actually, Rumi could think of at least two people that would want him, one for reasons unknown to her and the other one, pretty much for the possibility of trying to get back at her mother for the last battle with the Angel heading toward Tokyo-3, which, by now had to be more like a ghost town. But then, there could've been a reason to why either of them wanted her nephew; it stood as tall as a building and had a purple paint scheme, looking like a demented demon wrapped in armor.

"The Evangelion?" Nāga-Naoto asked her.

"Yeah," she answered him. "But that doesn't make any sense. It was designed to fight Angels, and they were all humanized, so it's unnecessary. Why would they take him for that ugly machine?"

"Whatever the reason, I fear that isn't for helping people," Nāga-Naoto told her.

"Rumi…" They both heard a voice calling from a distance. "Rumi…"

"My mother," Rumi uttered, and then the mist around her gathered up and clouded her vision.

"Rumi?" She heard her mother again, this time coming to in a room at the hospital.

"Ow…" The girl groaned, getting up and sitting on the bed she was atop of. "Before I ask anything else, Mother…how long was I out?"

"All night," Akira told her. "It's eight-forty-five. August Twenty of Twenty-Fifteen, Two-Thousand-Fifteen, in case you had forgotten the year."

"And…Shinji?"

Akira sighed and answered, "Kidnapped by members of the Japanese military…under a different payroll besides the standard ones for their services."

"I… Am I allowed to get out of bed now that I've awaken?"

"Yeah, Rumi. You…you just gotta eat before you go anyplace," Akira told her. By that time, Ms. Katsuragi should've acquired all the necessary information from those that were left behind.

-x-

"…I'm not saying a thing until I hear from my lawyer," said the soldier in front of Misato, as they were using one of the storage rooms in the hospital for interrogation.

"I wish I could say that your lawyer would be here to help you out, but not today," Misato told him. "So, I'll ask you again…and then you're Bardiel's problem: Where is the boy your comrades kidnapped being taken to?"

The soldier looked at the young boy, former Ninth Angel, Bardiel, Angel of Hail and Humiliated Son of God, reduced to a nine-year-old hunchback. He wasn't afraid of a has-been that once tried to destroy the world, but why did the captain of NERV have faith in this boy's ability to extract information from him when she couldn't?

"Lady, you're wasting your time. I ain't saying shit." He told her.

"Bardiel," Misato sighed.

"No problem," the boy responded, walking behind the soldier…and then grabbed him by his head and slammed him against the table, a feat that the soldier felt was not possible.

"Ow!" He screamed, realizing that an actual kid was nowhere near strong enough to achieve that sort of feat. "What the Hell?! He…"

"Ha!" Bardiel then slammed his left fist on the guy's right arm, injuring his hand.

"Aaaurgh!" The soldier gasped, but was then grabbed by his neck by the boy.

"I can do this to you and your buddies all day, now that I'm rested," Bardiel told him, tightening his grip on the man. "I'll throw you across the table and Misato will tell the doctors it was all self-defense. And the best part will be that I can't be held responsible for your injuries. Now, are you gonna tell us what we want to know…or do I have to cancel my therapy session just to play with you?"

The soldier looked at Misato and she told him, "It's either you rattle the cage…or he rattles you."

-x-

"…It's amazing that he's lasted this long in this condition," a voice uttered out from the darkness around him as he started to come to.

"…They must've had him on various medication in addition to those transfusions," he was hearing other voices now.

"His grip on that thing he's holding is unbreakable; he ain't letting go without us tearing his fingers off," another voice said.

As he shook his head, Shinji looked around and saw people in white lab coats. His vision was blurry, but he noticed he was on his right side, holding onto his locket with both his hands, so tight that he was probably cutting off the flow of blood to his fingers. With his hearing returning to normal before his vision, he heard a word that seemed like a medical term, but the way it was being pronounced made him think differently: "NERV".

"…Wh…where…am I?" He tried to speak, but his voice was weak.

"He's awake," a female voice announced to the others.

Shinji tried to get up, but either his muscles were numb…or he was tied down.

A woman approached him and raised his head up to shine a light in his eyes.

"Ugh!" Shinji, still weak, reacted, pulling his head back as he tried to move once more.

With his vision returning to normal, he saw an ID on a nearby lab coat that stated that the owner was a medical practitioner under NERV's employment, which, to Shinji, meant only one thing: He was back at NERV, the one place he didn't want to be at all.

Try as he might, he couldn't move very well at all; he felt paralyzed.

"Shinji," the female voice uttered to him. "Shinji Ikari, can you hear me?"

"Roku…Rokubungi," he uttered out, trying to correct her on his last name. "It's Shinji Rokubungi."

"Sorry. Do you know where you are?" She asked him.

"NERV… I gotta…get away."

"I'm sorry, but you can't leave just yet." She then tried to move his left hand away from right hand. "I just need to…"

"No!" He still refused to give up trying to get up, no matter how paralyzed he was.

"That's enough!" That voice, that one voice that sent a chill running down his spine, cut through the barrier of talk between the doctors and the dying boy. "If he's conscious, that's all that's required for simply conversing with him. I trust that none of you have a problem with that?"

Shinji looked around the woman and saw Rei Ayanami, looking like a perfect copy of his dead mother, standing in front of them all, wielding her crescent-shaped scythe that manifested from the bone and metal gauntlet on her left arm.

The doctors reacted with some fear before they backed away from Shinji and left the large room that seemed shaped like a ring or circle.

"I apologize for their constant rudeness," Rei told the boy. "Ever since I came back to NERV after the Tenth Angel was humanized, many of the remaining employees have been unhinged by my takeover of the organization from Gendo Ikari, or rather Gendo Mu, as he was once called by Akira right after she disowned him from her extended family tree."

Being unable to move freely left Shinji afraid of what Rei could do to him. Would she cut him up? Burn him? Try to come on to him or whatever else he saw in the horror movies or read in the comics? So far in his state of fear, he was imagining that she would simply try to touch him in places he simply didn't wish to be touched at all by any uninvited hands.

Rei approached him and, instead of performing an action that would've resulted in a fear being made into a reality, she sat on the edge of the medical bed he was placed on by the doctors once the soldiers of the JSSDF brought him over, retracting her blade into her bracelet. Just because she found herself unable to touch him, this didn't hinder her from simply being in the same room as he was now, since they weren't in a hospital room that was assigned to him in a town ruled by the four elements. This room, despite its rushed order to be tidied up, had some unpleasant memories for the First Child, many of which centered around her previous self that had been stuck inside Unit-00. This…had once been her room before she was relocated.

"In case you were wondering why your body doesn't react very well, you were given an enzyme to numb your muscles temporarily. One of the doctors thought that you'd react with panic when you woke up. Heh. You can speak, you know."

"…Why?" He started. "Why am I here?"

"Hmm…I guess that's a good question to answer…for now," she responded. "I need your help in getting something I want very much. I'd ask, but… Well, based on the previous time I met you, I had doubts that you would comply willingly."

"You're crazy if you think I'm going to take this all laying down. I've told that man what Rumi told him the night he showed up and ruined a very good festival: I'm not getting into that dangerous monster he built. It's no longer required. All the Angels are defeated and humanized. There's no grave threat to the world, anymore."

"Oh, I don't need you to fight anybody for me. It'll all be explained to you in due time." Rei then got up and walked away.

"They'll come for me," she heard him say. "My family. They'll come get me."

"Oh, I'm sure they will," she chuckled. "And when they do…I will kill them."

That made Shinji frown; he didn't like how anybody disrespected his grandmother, aunts and uncles or his cousins in any way that was negative.

-x-

"…So, he's at NERV in Tokyo-3, then?" Akira questioned Misato, once the soldier Bardiel had threatened to harm spilled his guts and told them what they wanted to hear.

"Yeah, and based on what was revealed, it had to have been Rei herself who made the request that Shinji be brought to NERV, but that's where it ends. I can't imagine why she would want him there." Misato told her.

"I can think of a reason: The Eva."

"Eva?"

"Unit-01. That has to be the reason."

"But it doesn't make any sense. The Evas, as far as I know, were designed for combat against the Angels, which have been humanized. They're no longer necessary. Why would NERV still need them if they're only required for combat against the Angels?"

"Miss Katsuragi, there's a lot about NERV that I think you should know about," Akira told her. "This…so-called Third Impact that was claimed to be capable of being caused by the Angels if they ever made contact with their father, Adam, was also trying to be caused by a select group of people. I'm guessing that NERV's benefactors are still vying for it, to put an end to everything that currently exists."

"What?! But that's insane! Who would want to bring about the Third Impact besides the Angels, since we had assumed that they would once Little Rumi had been dealt with?" Misato questioned.

"Those that believe that they're in control, that they can defy natural law, disorganize order and disrupt the balance of the world. Why would anyone try anything that's dangerous and could bring about great disaster to the world? To obtain great wealth, far greater than anyone else in history? To become famous for achieving the impossible? Or, what should be a major dislike right now, a bunch of idiot, wise-ass adults that believe that we, everyone, past, present and future, are at the end of their prowess and can't evolve further, anymore…and wish to use the genocide of what's left of the world to achieve their own vision of godhood and stability, becoming a perfected, singular being."

"That's sci-fi that belongs in the realm of make believe, only to be forgotten for the rest of forever," said Nemo, who was with the women in the hospital halls with his girlfriend, Camille and her grandmother, who insisted on coming with them.

"It doesn't add up any longer," said Akane Yumi told them. "There's no more danger to the world by unknown hands except our own, so why rely on something that's dangerous to children?"

"And driven by souls, too?" Camille wondered.

"Driven by souls?" Misato questioned.

"That's how Fuyutsuki-San put it," Akira revealed, having shared this information with Nemo and her other adult children. "Evas are granted their twisted version of life in their existence with the souls of women that bore children after the Second Impact."

"Thank the kami that Kanami didn't get killed because of those abominations," sighed Nemo, once more happy and thankful that his sister and niece were alive and still sane (as far as 'sane' was in Kanami's case, due to her estranged and failed relationship with her mother).

"But I was always told that the Evas were operated by the Personality Transplant Operating System."

"You mean that bio-computer system that, in theory, is supposed to transfer a copy of an aspect of a personality onto a seventh generation computer?"

Misato looked at Nemo like he was smarter than her or Ritsuko was, not just being four years her superior in age (and Ritsuko's superior by three years).

"It's never been proven in anything except supercomputer systems," Nemo told her, disbelieving that the Evas could be run by personality-based programs.

Then…that would mean that…Unit-01 has Shinji's mother's soul inside it, Misato realized.

"If this super-secret group of people want to bring about the end of us all through a Third Impact, why would they want to destroy the Angels if that was what they were going to do, anyway?" Akane questioned, trying to make sense of it all. "If they had the means, then they could've done so earlier. Why wait until after the Angels were dead?"

"Unless…it was to make sure that they couldn't, even if they didn't want to," said Camille, coming to that conclusion. "They didn't want to take any chances that the Angels could do it before they could."

"Lilith," they heard Akira.

"What?" Nemo asked.

"I just remembered that during my conversations with Fuyutsuki-San and the Angels, they brought up this creature, Lilith, who is supposed to be the source of all life that exists today," she revealed. "What if the initial purpose, the assumed reason, the Evas were thought to be a necessity against the Angels was not to protect anybody living in Tokyo-3 or the rest of the world, but to keep Lilith, who's buried under Tokyo-3, safe from them? And once they were all dead…"

"They would use Lilith to achieve their grand design," Akane cut in. "And then we'd all be wiped out, stripped of our lives, our individuality and free will."

"But an Eva can't move without a pilot inside it," said Nemo once more. "Plus, they should be voluntary, not involuntary."

"Or…" Camille tried to speak up, but couldn't find the will to finish that thought.

"She's just going to put Shinji inside Unit-01," Akira sighed as she realized the horror of what was to come, "not to pilot it, but to keep him in place."

"So, the reason he was taken…was for the Eva," Misato expressed. "It was always for the Eva."

"No disrespect, Akira," Nemo told her, "but Rumi's going to be shitting bricks if she finds out."

"None taken, Nemo," she responded, "but I wouldn't be surprised if she was already doing so because of what happened last night."

"Akira, tell me something. Honestly," went Misato, simply because she needed to know the truth, "is Rumi… Has she…fallen for Shinji?"

Akira looked toward the purple head and her expression was only half the answer she was looking for.

"I don't know why some people say it like this, but the heart wants what it wants," she said.

-x-

Sometimes, Rumi wanted to hit herself for every terrible thing that befalls Shinji or her nieces. While her heart was telling her to go find her nephew and bring him home, a part of her conscious was ordering her not to, mainly because of what Nemo had told her was a tactic (and a very lousy one at that) called self-preservation, or saving your own life without thinking about others, but also because then she'd probably be playing right into Rei Ayanami's hand of cruelty. To her, this was the day she first encountered the Angelbreaker when it was in the guise of gauntlet that was breaking down due to its age and state of decrepitude and she was questioning whether or not she was killing Shinji herself with her…lack of giving him what he needed to survive. What really caused her a major degree of hurt was that, despite her wanting Shinji to live, Shinji did not want her to die for him. And as close as she felt to being able to use the Angelbreaker to save him after all the Angels were humanized…her hesitation, her fear of failing…got in the way.

"Rumi?" She turned around and saw Taeko standing in front of her with Bardiel, standing upright like a regular person.

"Yes?" She asked them.

"I know it's none of my business, but…you're in love with Shinji, aren't you?" Taeko asked her.

"What gave you that impression?" She asked back.

"It's written allover your face," Bardiel expressed, pointing at her head.

"That's…that's not funny," she told them, trying to be serious.

"It wasn't supposed to be," Taeko told her. "We were serious."

Rumi looked back down at her feet in the hospital hall outside of Shinji's room and uttered, "He doesn't want to die, but he doesn't want to continue living if it's depriving me of my life. We don't want him to die, I don't want him to die, and I have a strong feeling that I know where he is…and I want to go get him, but…"

"Then…you should go get him, then," said Bardiel, and she looked back up. "You…should go get him… Find him, and bring him home."

"Bardiel?" Taeko asked.

"He's…her man, right?" He asked back.

My man? Rumi thought, and it felt…right, thinking it like that. "Yeah. He's…my man. Mine."

"Yeah," Taeko agreed. "Shinji's…your man. Your man."

Then…Rumi hugged both of them, something Bardiel felt uncomfortable about.

"Oh," he went, never being hugged before. "This is new."

"It's called a hug, Bardiel," Taeko told him, hugging her auntie. "It's a good thing."

Bardiel then raised his right arm and place it on Rumi's back.

"Thank you, you two," she praised them, letting go. "I feel confident."

Then, she ran off, leaving them in the hall.

"Rumi!" They turned the other way and saw Mayo approaching them, worried; she had been instructed by her mother to inform Rumi of how dangerous the situation was going to be going after Shinji if she went with Akira, Nemo, Camille, Shinobu, Tsukiko and Bumi, who were going to go to Tokyo-3. "Where is she going? What did y'all talk about?"

"We, uh…" Taeko uttered, unable to finish as her eldest girl cousin ran off to find Rumi. "Come on, Bardiel! We gotta explain!"

"Whoa!" Bardiel gasped, being dragged by his right hand by his friend, the first one in a long life of self-hatred and pain.

Mayo found Rumi on the hospital roof, standing on the ledge, wearing her armor and sprouting wings.

"Rumi, stop!" She yelled out, but Rumi turned to face her.

"Mayo, you once asked me if I loved him or not," she told her, "and I couldn't answer you back then. I can answer you now. I do love him! I'm in love with Shinji! Don't stop me!"

The six-year-old then took to the skies and flew away from the building, flying at such a speed that it could've rivaled Akira's gliding.

"You might disagree with me saying this, but you can't deny it," Mayo heard her youngest cousin say, arriving beside her. "Rumi knows who she wants to be with."

Mayo turned to face her and said, "I'm not disagreeing with what you said, but now we're in trouble."

-x-

He couldn't remember the last time he'd been placed in the dark before. There was no recollection of being in a place where the ground was soft like the grass back home. For the rest of that matter, Shinji couldn't even remember when he was with Rumi, who was holding onto his chest as they were laying down.

"Shinji," he heard her say to him, laying her head under his, "are you…happy with me?"

"Very happy," he told her, raising his left arm and holding her back, never noticing how strong the muscles and nerves beneath the skin were.

Rumi then raised her head up over his and looked down at him.

"Shinji?" She asked again.

"Yes?" He responded.

"I really should tell you this," she uttered. "I love you."

"I love you, too, Rumi," he told her.

"…Wake up…" A voice, almost from afar, was heard. "Wake up."

GASP! Shinji awoke, realizing that he was asleep; his time with Rumi, his feeling of wellness…was nothing more than a dream. And not knowing how long he'd been asleep, he looked at his hands and found they were still locked around his locket, but his wrists had been tied to the bed with chains. And, able to move at least his left leg, he could feel chains on his feet. Rising to a sitting position, he also found that, much to his horror, his catheter tubes had been ripped out of his chest, leaving a bandage where they had once occupied his torso.

"I…needed those," he uttered, trying to catch his breath, and seeing an old man dressed in a brownish-gray uniform in front of him beside a security that had been stationed outside the room to watch him. "Who…who are you?"

"Kozo Fuyutsuki," the man answered him. "Sub-Commander Kozo Fuyutsuki of NERV, but we can forget about the business formalities."

"Kozo Fuyutsuki… Then…you're the elder my grandmother met when you were a kid, way before the Second Impact."

"That's right."

Shinji couldn't extend his arms any farther than he normally could due to the shortage of chain tying him down to the bed.

"What is this all about?" He asked the elder. "All the Angels were defeated, so why am I here?"

"Rei Ayanami," Kozo explained, having been informed earlier by Rei, along with the threat of death if he tried to interfere with her plans. "She aims to start something that really shouldn't happen at all."

"A so-called Third Impact? That's impossible. Besides, who would want the end of the world to actually happen?"

Kozo then told him, "A bunch of fools that think they can decide everyone's future."

"Funny, how they couldn't decide mine," Shinji retorted. "Actually, it's not so funny how people think that think they can control other people through every cruel method they can exploit. Ever hear of an old saying about 'Plata o Plomo'?"

"'Silver or Lead' in Spanish," Kozo translated, very familiar with the expression.

"I…hate that concept," Shinji stated, believing it was cruel and beyond immoral to perform such acts to others. "I prefer acceptance or banishment over taking a bribe or getting a bullet. What's it gonna be for me? Either I get inside an Eva when I don't want anything to do with my parents'…with some pair of strangers' work…or I lose something far more precious than my own life, which isn't very precious to me, anymore?"

"She told you, didn't she?"

Shinji nodded his head in the negative, not knowing what the elder was talking about.

"I won't get into that monster," he simply stated, more on hate than fear now. "I won't."

"I wish you actually had a choice in the matter, Mr. Rokubungi," Kozo told him, respecting the boy's dislike of his original last name on account of his father.

"What did that man really want with me? Why, after many years of abandonment, without so much as a phone call or even a visit, once or twice being compared to him by an officer when I was a little boy, believed that I was going to turn out just like him, does he send for me to see him? And then, without even a warning or a word of encouragement, he tried to send me to an early grave, with only Rumi keeping me safe from certain death, despite her age. Later, much later this summer, after suffering a heart attack that nearly killed me when my heart stopped for six minutes, I find, in addition to remembering my mo…that woman's final day, that that man has never once tried to care about me. If I had heard that years ago, that would've been all the grounds I needed to justify my attempted suicide before Rumi was even born, when I had assumed that I was being replaced by someone that wasn't dying so slowly. What did I ever do to anyone to deserve such attempts at being exploited by cruel people? What did I ever do to receive such contempt from an idiot man who's nothing more than a burnt-out black sheep with an old torch where his heart should've been?"

"Shinji was able to bury the pain of his past because his family, not his parents, was there to help him, time after time, until he was no longer troubled by it. He put the unrecognizable memories, the unfamiliar faces, the thieves of the cold hearts and the ones that walked away from his needs at the time into a box so hollow that it was light enough to be put on a shelf in a closet to collect dust and be untouched for years to come. Buried…in the past where it couldn't hurt him, wrapped up in the shadows that couldn't be illuminated." Akira's words had resurfaced in Kozo's mind again, reminding him of how troubled this young man had once been.

Now, Kozo was starting to doubt everything he had been forced to accept after his joining NERV's predecessor organization, GEHIRN. And by 'everything', that included the boy's mother's reasons for giving herself to the Eva. He was looking at a young man that pretty much questioned everything his parents have done in the last few years since that day he saw the incomplete Unit-01 rob him of a happy life with his parents, not his family.

"He doesn't have to pilot Unit-01," Rei's voice, now so much like a darker Yui Ikari, had echoed in his mind. "He just needs to be inside the Eva for my grand move to be achieved."

"But what if it kills him?" He had asked her, concerned for the boy's health.

"It's pretty much what Gendo had in mind when he sent for him to come here," she responded, uncaring, just like Gendo was. "And if that little bitch that bleeds for him even thinks of coming to get him, as the saying goes, I'll kill two birds with one stone."

It sickens me at how Rei looks like a colder, darker Yui…and act like Gendo, only sicker, Kozo realized, having used to pity the girl, but now he feared her because of how she turned out.

Rumi, thought Shinji, having calmed down after his rather violent outburst of emotion toward his confusion and dissociation with his parents, I wish I was at home with you and the others right now.

-x-

"…This train's bare," said Nemo to the others, as they were heading to the Ghost Town-X, aka Tokyo-3, which was now the home of only those stuck at NERV HQ.

"We were the only ones at the station heading towards Tokyo-3, which now has a population of at least three-hundred people." Shinobu sighed, growing more disgusted that her only nephew was at the artificial city that seemed no different from a planned community. "Makes me wanna burn a wall down or something."

As the siblings and Nemo's girlfriend continued the ride to the abandoned city, up in the air, Akira flew as fast as she could on her glider, pondering what to do about Rumi's future if Rei Ayanami tried to lay a finger on her or Shinji. And while meaning what she had told Dr. Gyatso, she was unwilling to let her youngest child die for whatever reason there was.

This must be one of those cautionary things that people talk about, she decided, looking down at the train below her. Rumi, don't do anything reckless until we get there, please.

-x-

However, the security of NERV HQ was lacking due to its decreased population. But due to the fact that one of the external backup entrances to NERV was outside the city limits on a road in the wilderness, this made wanting to get into the Geo-Front a little easy for Rumi, who hid in the bushes, watching a guard that was watching out for intruders.

Some people believe that the darkness of the night can cover a multitude of sins, she thought, trying to think of a strategy to use that would allow her to get inside and find her nephew. Okay, Rumi, knock the guard out, slip behind enemy lines, avoid being seen and take back your man. That shouldn't be too hard. I hope.

Then, taking a deep breath, she jumped out of the bushes and charged toward the guard.

"Huh?!" The guy gasped, seeing something small and shining coming at him. "Aah!"

Bash! Rumi got close enough before the guard could raise his gun up and she knocked him to the ground, glad that there weren't any cameras watching her. She then searched him for his keys and access cards and dragged him away into the bushes.

"I just want back what's mine," she told the unconscious man, and entered the building that would lead her to her nephew.

-x-

"…What a dump," went Rei, taking a look around her apartment, which was the same as it had always been, even before she received the Fallenbreaker and left NERV. "And I never considered another reason I left…was because I had been relocated to this pathetic excuse of a place to live?"

She looked down at her old bed, the sight of the blood stains on her pillow and sheets caused by the bandages she used to wear while on the mend after her…initial attempt to control the former Unit-00 had left her wanting to hurl the bed out the window and trash the rest of the apartment up. But she maintained control of her anger and left the would-be bedroom to explore the rest of the place. As she entered the small kitchen, rarely ever using it, and finding that, just like before she left, her cupboards were sparse, as was her other refrigerator, with only rotten fruits and vegetables.

"Well, so much for eating," she sighed, closing the door to the refrigerator. "Hmm? I had nearly forgotten about…those."

Returning to her bedroom, she went toward her dresser where her last package of her former medication was…and there…right where she last set them… Gendo's old pair of glasses that she took after the failed Unit-00 activation.

"Rei! Rei!" She could recall his concern after he opened her Entry Plug's super-heated emergency hatch with his bare hands. "Are you all right, Rei?"

"Yes, sir," she had told him. "But I don't believe I was ever okay back then. As free as I am now, I'm still a prisoner…of the shackles of this incompleteness that dwells within my heart, my flesh, my soul."

She picked up the glasses and found herself looking through the eyes of their former owner up to the day they were discarded for a newer pair; now she was endowed with another new power of the Fallenbreaker, that of psychometry, the paranormal ability to recall past events and experiences through touching the belongings of their owners, and she was seeing Gendo's past. And…she saw…everything that he ever did, ever heard, ever said, as though she were actually there. No. It wasn't like she was there… It was as though she was Gendo, and did everything he ever did, experiencing all that he had.

"Ohh… Ohh…" Rei pressed her right hand against her waist, feeling sick to her stomach as she heard the moans of Naoko Akagi in the depths of the night with Gendo, followed, sometime later, by the moans of Ristuko Akagi, who was swayed to his power shortly after her mother's first death.

"She's an old hag, annoying, bothersome, and useless," Gendo's words echoed to her ears. "Rei, will you tell her I said that?"

"Once the Unit-00 activation is commenced, we'll begin preparations for the arrival of the Third Child," her eyes frowned at the designation of the boy beneath her status, and her lips pouting in anger at how someone like him could be as good as her, now knowing that Gendo never cared about his son, whether he lived in good health and prosperity…or died in sickness and poverty. "There's no one else that can pilot the Evas. And as long as they survive, that is all they're good for."

Setting the glasses back on the dresser, she looked outside the window and at the night sky, seeing a few clouds.

Piloting the Evas, she thought. Was that what you thought of those you picked…of me…before you lost control of everything? Every now and then, whenever I saw you looking at me… I should've realized that you were actually looking past me, toward your woman. Pity. You're not the only one who can look past people. I had best get back to NERV now. I have to make sure that my investment is secured.

Outside her window, one large cloud closest to the moon, in its eeriness, resembled an Evangelion, crouched sideways, as if waiting to strike an enemy down. Back in her room, as she left out the door, never to return, her dresser had been smashed in two, shattering much of the wood…and shattering the glasses that no longer mattered to their former keepers.

-x-

"…What's he doing now?" Makoto Hyuga asked his fellow Bridge Bunnies, trying to get over the restricted access to and from the Geo-Front that Rei had installed in the people, keeping a firm hold over those that remained, by reading a comic book that he kept close by.

Maya, having recovered from her mental assault by Rei, looked at the monitor that showed Shinji in his cell, fondling with his locket.

"Nothing," she told him, seeing not a dying, young boy, but an angry, young man that sought the comfort of his family more than ever. "Nothing."

Suddenly, all monitors went static; the systems were crashing.

"What hit us?!" Shigeru asked.

"Unknown!" Hyuga responded. "All surveillance systems just went dead!"

Moments after, the monitors came back online, but all held one message: "Spirits of the Broken Heart take their revenge and turn it into justice!"

"The phones are down," Shigeru revealed, having picked up one and found the tone was not working.

"The MAGI, life-support… They're still running normally," went Maya. "It's only the phones, monitoring and surveillance systems that are out."

-x-

BASH! Shinji heard somebody groan as they fell to the ground, and it worried him because he didn't know what was going on outside his prison cell. The door slid open and somebody came inside: Based on his perception, the figure was dressed in a loose and baggy, bluish-black outfit, particularly baggy in the arms and legs, hunched over, similar to a predator, with something hanging on their back that looked like a weapon. The head, or the mask, rather, was as black as obsidian, had a pair of short horns on it forehead, brutish in facial features, almost angry, and had long, ebony hair, several strands in the back were tied into a ponytail with the rest on either side worn down. All Shinji couldn't see were the eyes, which were covered by eye pieces that might've been from a pair of goggles.

"Who…who are you?" He asked the person, tense with fear.

The figure didn't speak up, but revealed that the object on its back was a sword, which it unsheathed and swung in front of them. Raising it behind themselves, the figure revealed that the sword was actually a pair of swords, curved at the ends and looking quite sharp. SWISH! They swung the swords around, and then ran toward Shinji, swinging them like crazy.

"Aaaaahh!" He screamed, covering his face; he didn't want to see himself hacked to pieces as he was about to die of first degree murder, but he unintentionally dropped his locket to the floor.

SLASH! He heard the sound of one of the blades cutting something, but he didn't feel his hands or his head getting hit. SLASH! He heard the sound again, but his assumption that the figure was correcting their aim was broken by the now-loose shackles on his wrists.

"Huh?" He gasped, seeing them fall from him, and he looked up at the figure.

They clashed their swords back together and picked up the fallen locket, tossing it back to Shinji.

"Are…you here to help me?" He asked them, and the figure made two different hand gestures: The first was that of a person pointing to their wrist with a finger and the second was to the door; they symbolized that there wasn't a lot of time to escape, so they should take the time to do so.

-x-

"…Somebody's been knocking out the guards," said one of Section Two's agents, finding another of the guards unconscious, speaking over a hand-held CB radio to his fellow agents.

Then, somebody tapped on his shoulder.

"Huh?" He turned around.

SLAM! He was knocked out.

"Somebody decided to show up before I could," went Rumi, picking up the radio and switching it off. "This place has seen better days. Oh, who am I kidding?"

She ran down the dark tunnel and down the stairs, hoping her sense of direction would lead her to Shinji and his right to come home. Everything was a constant blur as she ran, like she was moving so fast that she couldn't be seen by anybody. But her hearing was better; the Angelbreaker was informing her that the NERV HQ population was reduced by a substantial sum of people leaving after Zeruel dealt them a major hit and trashed much of the structure.

Come on, Shinji, she thought, running upside-down on the ceiling, where are you?

"…Thank you for helping me…whoever you are," she heard Shinji, and he sounded close by.

She stopped running, stood on the ceiling, and looked down at her nephew, in the protection of a masked figure armed with swords.

Shinji looked up at her and asked, "Are you real or imaginary?"

Rumi flipped off the ceiling and onto the floor and stood in front of them, responding, "I came to rescue you, Shinji Rokubungi."

She then showed her dog tags, causing him to show out his locket.

"Is that a new friend?" She pointed to the figure, and Shinji nodded. "Okay. We gotta go up now."

-x-

"…Okay, how are we supposed to get into this Geo-Front?" Nemo asked Akira, who waited for them to meet up with her at the train station.

"Haaaurgh!" Akira grunted, slamming her staff onto the street, creating a large hole leading down a dark tunnel.

"I brought my sword," Nemo then said, no longer needing to ask for how.

"All aboard the Bumi Express!" Bumi uttered, channeling a large chunk of rock and using it as a platform to ride down the tunnel.

And they were off! The ride into the darkness kept to a minimum of fear due to Shinobu taking out a lighter and channeling the fire.

"Shinobu, come on with the sentimental object," Nemo told his big sister.

"What?" She asked, keeping the flames above their heads.

"I get that the lighter's good and all, and that you don't smoke, but…"

"What are you talking about? You got it for me as a birthday gift last year. I like this Zippo."

"We're approaching the end of the line," Bumi informed them, seeing a light at the end. "Hold tight."

WHOOSH! Their concrete platform had entered the Geo-Front. Unfortunately, they weren't on the ground, but several stories in the air, seeing the structures and machinery required to pull the buildings underground whenever an Angel was bound to show up and attack.

"Bumi, you rock ogre!" Camille called the Geo Channeler.

Then, Bumi exerted an excessive amount of willpower to keep the platform from falling; his age and mastery over his element having given him a degree of control over the levitating of car-size rocks.

"Oh!" They heard Tsukiko, who was now kneeling over one edge of the platform and retching.

"Sorry, sis," Bumi apologized to her.

"I know, Bumi," she uttered in response, feeling better now that her stomach was empty; if it wasn't her mild airsickness causing her problems, it was her other conditions.

"Whoa, that pyramid's NERV HQ, buried a little in the ground," went Nemo, pointing toward the large building. "Somebody sue the architects involved 'cause that's a lousy example of construction."

"If they wanted to build a headquarters down under, they should've tried using Zen-based art as a basis," Camille had suggested.

"Yeah," Akira sighed, agreeing with her. "Well, the sooner we rescue who we're here for, the sooner we can leave."

They landed on the ground and Tsukiko was the first to jump onto the ground.

"Land!" She cried.

-x-

Anger. It was an emotion that she had considered her greatest expression to show others, as the sight of trouble made Rei want to utter the one word that made any sense tonight.

"Fools!" She shouted, levitating from the artificial ceiling of the Geo-Front.

The people below her looked up and knew that danger was near.

As she landed on the ground next to the group, Rei took in several features in their faces, and the two that stuck out were Akira herself and a young man that bore a subtle, more positive likeness to Gendo, although he was a bit on the smaller and leaner side, whereas Gendo seemed to lack muscles or a kind face all the time.

Akira brandished her staff at the young girl; while it was against her better judgment to attack younger people, this albino had threatened the life of her youngest daughter and requested the kidnapping of her grandson, putting her on the lines of thinking that, if by any means required, if this girl made a move that led to pain and death, she would call her injuries that included losing her head self-defense.

"Aaaaaahh!" They heard a lot of men screaming, and saw, several feet away, at an entrance to NERV HQ, that a few men were, literally, blown out the door.

"Sorry, but you shot at me," Akira heard Rumi's voice, and felt relieved when she and Shinji came out the building, accompanied by a masked figure. "Mother?"

"Hey, Rumi, Shinji." She greeted them.

"Oh, family reunions make me sick," went Rei, shifting into her armored form and appearance of Yui. "I cannot permit you to take the boy. He's an invaluable resource."

"Oh, no, you didn't," responded Akira, marking the similarities between this woman and Gendo.

As more men, armed with guns, came out of the building, Bumi took notice and shook the ground, knocking them to their rears.

Here's a little stunt that I have no mastery over, he thought, raising his arms up, focusing on the firearms, and then pulling them right out of the NERV workers' hands. "Sorry, boys and girls, but these aren't toys. They're dangerous."

Before the strain of holding the guns over their heads caused him too much pain, Bumi threw them into the water.

Nemo then channeled his energies at the water and froze half the surface.

"Okay," he went, glaring at the near-defenseless people in front of them, "who wants to take a dip in the lake for a lousy piece of metal?"

Nobody answered him.

"Oh, then I guess they'll have to fight you bare-handed," went Rei, manifesting her scythe. "Ha!"

Then, like lighting, Akira had to use her staff to block the large blade from cutting her in half!

"You're fast," she praised the girl that now resembled the woman that had condemned herself to the Eva that meant only a means to achieve an end, "but you won't have Shinji for long 'cause he's coming home now."

"Not while I say different," she told her back, using her right arm to conjure up another blade, curved like a sword in appearance, and almost managed to stab Akira in her side, were it not for her half of the Angelbreaker manifesting armor right now.

"Ungh!" Akira grunted, pushing her staff in front of her and sending Rei back a few feet.

"Grr! Get them!" Rei ordered the people of NERV, and, despite their fear of fear of being killed by these people blessed with the elements, the fear of this former Eva pilot killing them for their disobedience seemed the greater of the two fatalities being presented to them.

The masked figure swung their swords and slashed, non-fatally, at the workers that came within slashing distance at them.

"Oh, this is getting us nowhere," said Shinobu, and she used her Zippo to unleash a widespread fire at the NERV workers to keep them at bay. "Keep back! Keep back!"

"Oh, I'll have what she's having," expressed Tsukiko, drawing some of the flames toward herself to use as her own source.

Nemo channeled water from the artificial lake and wrapped it around his arms, forming ice gauntlets to hit anybody that wanted some.

In all the commotion, Shinji was taken to the nearest safe spot away from the battle by Rumi, whilst the mysterious fighter knocked aside several NERV employees.

No, went Rei, seeing the boy being taken, and tried to advance toward him and Rumi, but the mysterious fighter got between them and started slashing at her with their swords. "I'll not be hindered by a mere mortal!"

Rumi sprouted wings and prepared to take Shinji up the hole in the ceiling of the Geo-Front, but the sight of her mother, older siblings and Nemo's girlfriend fighting made her hesitate; keeping Shinji safe was important to her, but the thought of leaving the others felt wrong to her conscious, even if it was to save the boy she loved.

"Ha! Hurgh!" Akira grunted, knocking aside some men that came her way with her staff.

"Rumi," she looked up at Shinji, "do what you know is right."

She nodded…and flew away from him, soaring over the heads of the combatants with her hook swords handy. Her sight was set on Rei Ayanami, who was distracted by the mysterious fighter that helped rescue her nephew.

"Hiyah!" Rumi landed in front of Rei and thrust her left sword at her chest, pushing her backwards.

"HA!" Akira channeled wind and blew several employees off their feet, all the while knocking one aside with a right-handed shove in the waist.

"Hunh!" Camille grunted, borrowing some of Nemo's water and creating ice shards, sending them toward the wrists and knees of the workers; she'd been taught that ice was more harmful than water was when aimed at the weakest parts of the human body's limbs.

Bumi manipulated the grounds around himself to become like sand, hindering his opponents' leg movements, while at the same time, knocking back other opponents by breaking the ground into large enough slabs to hit them in their faces by slamming his feet down on them.

"Aaaahh! Aaah!" Some of the workers were screaming after Shinobu and Tsukiko had set their shirts and pants ablaze.

"Urgh!" Akira sent an omni-directional streak of air toward the remaining workers, knocking them down to the ground.

Nemo then used the water on his arms and sent a stream of snow at them all, causing them to develop a case of shivers.

"Enough, Ayanami!" Akira told the enemy girl. "It's over and done!"

Rei, experiencing her first actual battle with the Fallenbreaker learning from the actions and reactions of the fight, panted as she responded that it wouldn't end while she was still breathing…and that she would not be denied what she desired from the kidnapping of the boy.

"You think of coming after my boy again," went Rumi, raising her left sword up at the girl in a threatening manner, "and you'll find me not being as merciful as I'm being right now, crazy lady."

Did she just call me her boy? Shinji thought, finding his aunt's choice of words to be both endearing…and confusing to him.

The mysterious fighter raised up one of their swords alongside Rumi and added further tension to the increased aggression.

"If the boy's killed, he's of no use to you, Rei," Akira looked over the enemy woman and saw Kozo standing beyond the fallen employees, holding a gun up, but aiming it toward her grandson. "And they're not leaving without him."

Rei looked at him and then at Shinji, who felt intimidated by the fact that someone he didn't know was raising a gun at him like he was intending to kill him before he could even die of natural causes. As the Fallenbreaker wielder found her options dwindling down to very few, she lowered her scythe down and announced, "I'll be seeing you again, little girl."

Rumi glared at her, never pulling her gaze off of her until she was out of sight as the keeper of the Fallenbreaker walked away from them.

The others walked toward Shinji, apologizing to the fallen workers for having beaten them to a pulp.

"It was nothing personal, really," said Tsukiko to them.

"It's a family matter," added Nemo.

"Mess with a member of the family," added Bumi, "and you mess with the whole family."

They boarded the large rock platform and Bumi and Akira lifted it back up into the air and through the hole, hardly taking their eyes off Shinji, like he were to disappear or break into pieces if they did so.

SWAT! Something came out of nowhere and hit the mysterious fighter in their face! They fell to the ground as Akira and Bumi made it to the surface.

"What the…" Nemo and Camille gasped.

"I'm coming for you fools!" They heard Rei yell at them.

Bumi channeled the ground and sealed up the hole while Shinji lowered to the fallen person and removed what was left of their mask; whatever had struck them had only caused damage to the mask, knocking the person out. But when the mask was lifted, he was surprised at who it was underneath.

"Who is this woman?" He asked, taking in her features, just as the others looked at her.

It can't be, Akira thought, seeing how the woman, who could've been an imitation of the fabled Snow White, bore a slight resemblance to Yui Ikari, whose resemblance was reflected upon Rei Ayanami!

Rumi, who had a grand dislike of Shinji's mother, felt no ill will or hostility toward this look-alike of her; instead, she felt only sadness from the sight of her. It was as though she were different from the woman that died when her nephew was younger.

"She looks like… Almost like your mother, Shinji," said Bumi to him.

"No, Bumi," he countered. "There's a resemblance…but this isn't her. She…looks younger, more vulnerable, like she's been through a lot."

"We'll take her with us," went Akira, looking up at the clouds. "It'd be wrong to leave her."

Using her staff and a few stances, she Aero Channeled the clouds to come down to the ground and provide a descent smokescreen to mask their getaway.

-x-

BASH! Rei had forced her way out of the ground and found herself surrounded by a fog of some kind; she was unable to see anything.

"What is this?!" She questioned, and looked down at the half-broken mask belonging to that mystery warrior that took off with the Rokubungi family and the young lady that was with them. "I was hoping I had killed at least one person."

She picked up the mask…and saw everything that there was to it, including who had worn it. Now, she had an excuse to take Gendo out of his office and use his services to ascertain the fate of this…Broken Heart Maiden.

-x-

They were lucky that the trains still ran despite the late-night hours. And as Akira kept a vigilant watch over young woman that bore a slight resemblance to Yui, Rumi, despite being told to get some rest, kept a vigilant watch over Shinji; the girl wouldn't even let go of his right hand.

"Coffee?" Akira heard Nemo behind her, holding a cup in front of her.

"Thank you," she praised him.

Nemo looked at the woman and could only think of the first Disney Princess he grew up loving.

"She reminds me of Snow White, Akira," he told her.

"Yeah…but Snow White didn't seem like the type of person that could wield a sword or possess a sense of anger in her heart."

"Anger in her heart? Who could she be? Rumi didn't seem to take an immediate dislike of her like she did with the drawing of Yui."

"We'll find out when we get home. By that time, she'll have probably regained consciousness; that hit to her head just knocked her out."

-x-

The morning rays of the sun made the ruins of Kyoto burst with activity on the Twenty-First of August, and the building that served as the primary branch of Medical Angel Industries was busy with minor boat activity. As the remains of Kyoto were surrounded by eighteen meters of water, travel by boat, swimming or the use of bridges was common place in this would-be floating town.

Unfortunately, the sight of a VTOL aerial vehicle was a rarity around the remnants of the formerly-planned community, and it landing on the roof of Medical Angel Industries meant that somebody associated with the government wanted to have words with the company owner.

Inside his office, Masamune was looking over some documents for the approval of the new matrix formula for skin replacements for the amputees from the mainlands of China and the remnants of California, trying to ignore the phantom pain of his right leg, something that usually happened ever since his first and most hardest year of rehab to adjust to his first prosthetic.

"Masamune-Dono, you have a visitor," a woman's voice said on his phone's intercom.

"Who, Yoka-San?" He asked in response.

"Gendo Ikari, sir," she answered.

Masamune sighed and gave the okay to permit Gendo into his office. He looked over to Sora, who was looking out a window, and ushered him to stay out of the conversation that was to happen.

Sora sighed and nodded that he would stay out of this, and the door opened, letting NERV's so-called leader in the former task of getting rid of the Angels into the room.

Gendo looked around the place, ignoring the young man that kept his face hidden by looking out a window, once more disgusted that this man in charge of advancing medical technologies, with all his hard-earned wealth and unquestioned sense of morality, would waste time trying to make this former city habitable like it was before the Second Impact…or that he would keep his own secrets from SEELE's other members.

Masamune looked up at Gendo and greeted him with, "And to what do I owe the displeasure of seeing you in person after several years, Rokubungi?"

"The Third Child was in NERV's custody until a group of people came and took him," he answered Masamune, demonstrating once more to the aged man that he wouldn't address the dying child as his son, probably even if he had a gun pointed to his head. "But they weren't alone in the attempt of capturing him."

Gendo then tossed the black mask's remains on Masamune's desk.

"What has that to do with me?" He asked Gendo.

"I believe that your…daughter…was not only against the given penalty, but has gone against the rule that was made clear to you two years ago. Of course, I cannot prove of this without confirmation of her presence here." The former head of NERV explained, and Masamune was now flexing his right hand's fingers, as though he were being intimidated.

"You… You think that…my daughter…is not only the owner of this mask…but also this urban myth of a person that some of the children here and other former cities-turned-towns have…come to identify as the Broken Heart Maiden? Somebody I believe is nothing but an urban myth?"

Sora kept his head from turning, but his eyes were no longer looking out the window and were trying to gaze at Masamune…but there was a distance between them.

"Yes," he heard Gendo answer him.

-x-

"…Hey, she's coming to," a voice was heard as the mysterious woman opened her eyes and found herself in a hospital room with the woman that didn't age any further than twenty-eight with the younger man that bore a slight resemblance to Gendo, albeit younger and more positive, and the women that were with them before she lost consciousness after Shinji had been rescued from NERV.

"Hello," the woman, Akira, greeted her. "How are you feeling?"

Realizing that her mask wasn't on her face, she had to ask the one question that was on her mind.

"Please, tell me that Shinji didn't see my face?" She asked them.

"Why you worried about Shinji seeing your face?" Nemo asked her. "He doesn't even know who you are. Just who are you?"

"I can't tell you," she told them.

"Why?" Camille asked.

"They'll kill me if they find out I've seen him…or he's seen me."

"What does that mean, exactly?" Shinobu asked her. "What, are you… You're not supposed to see Shinji at all, aren't you? Some sort of fatal penalty awaits you if somebody, like that jerk, Gendo, ever finds out, right?"

The woman nodded in the positive. She could still recall the week after her sister's death in the so-called 'accident', when her feelings of hatred for her sister were less than justified and more than cheated out of said justice against her. A part of her wanted to believe that Yui had just died when she and their father had been informed of the experiment she was participating in, but her heart told her that what had happened didn't result in her death…but more like her displacement, her dissociation from the rest of the world…or her escape from the world. And when informed that Gendo had sent his own son away, she was disgusted with his decision…and the decision he had made to keep her father and her in line: If they ever tried to contact Shinji, they would be erased from existence.

"It's easy to exterminate people," her sister's words echoed in her mind. "Those who survived."

"That bitch," she uttered.

"Huh?!" Camille went. "Who are you talking about?"

The woman sighed and gave in.

"Anne-Marie," she told them. "My name is Anne-Marie."

"Anne-Marie?" Nemo questioned. "That doesn't sound Japanese at all?"

"It's a French name for women, Nemo," Akira told him, "just like how your name is of Latin origins."

"Wait a minute," went Tsukiko. "You say Anne-Marie, but when I think of it… Is your whole name…Anne-Marie…Ikari?"

Anne-Marie's eyes widened; that was all the revelation they needed from her.

"Oh, my… Anne-Marie Ikari. You're a relative of Shinji's on his mother's side. Wow." Tsukiko expressed, unable to even disbelieve that some mysterious figure from last night was a relative of her nephew on his mother's side.

"Yeah," Anne-Marie sighed. "But you haven't answered my question: Has Shinji seen my face?"

"He did, but he doesn't know who you are, only that you helped save him last night." Akira told her. "And right now, he's getting his catheter replaced 'cause somebody went and pulled it out his chest."

And true to her words, in the cancer ward, Shinji was trying to relax as a doctor was inserting the new tubes into his chest, which needed to be mended with Hydro Channeling before the simple procedure could be started.

Rumi, having left his side to go use the bathroom a short while ago, was sitting across the room from the hospital bed he was laying in.

"There we go," the doctor had said, finishing the applying. "How does that feel, Shinji?"

Shinji raised his left hand to his new tubes and uttered, rather as a joke, "Ow."

Rumi giggled at him as the doctor took his response as an 'okay' and left them alone.

"How do your new tubes feel, Shinji?" She asked him.

"I think I'll survive," he told her, sitting up. "I really believe I would've been safer at home, though."

"I agree with you. Hopefully, once we find out who that woman that helped rescue you is, we'll all go home later today."

"Whoever she is…I think she's trustworthy."

"Likewise."

There was a pause in their conversation when Rumi needed to ask him something about what happened to him prior to their arrival to get him and bring him home.

"Shinji, did you… I mean, did you ever…speak with him?" She asked, wanting to know if he had a conversation with Gendo.

"No," he answered her. "I never saw him, and as far as I'm concerned, he never saw me."

-x-

"…I never expected this from you, Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki," went Rei, angry at what she had discovered from the elderly man: He had given the sister of Yui Ikari access to NERV in order to rescue Shinji and bring him home. "What I don't understand is why? Why would you do it? You know the penalty for treason."

Kozo Fuyutsuki, wishing he hadn't thrown the gun aside, answered, "It's against one's will to make them do something they don't want to do. And, due to my years of being here, along with my sense of morality, which seems to be disregarded by many people ever since the aftermath of Second Impact, and my respect for Akira and her family, I've accepted that some things that are sought after are best left alone. And I must confess that I never accepted the idea of any child, even one born to my former university student and a megalomaniac, piloting the Eva, even if it was believed to help save people by fighting and killing the Angels without much regard toward the innocent that get caught in the crossfire and are viewed as nothing more than mere casualties of war."

"It sounds more like you're infatuated with the old, young bitch that saved your life as a child," Rei challenged him, producing her tentacles and positioning them around the elder man's body.

Kozo was not intimidated by this woman; she could try her worst and he wouldn't show fear.

"Maybe, but she's devoted only to her late spouse. She's not interested in me or any other man in that sort of way."

Rei then smirked and retracted her tentacles.

"You're bold, Sub-Commander, I'll tell you that much," she told him, "but cross me again…and I will end your life just for the cheap thrill of it."

Cheap thrill? Kozo thought, unsure of how far this girl had gone in her intellectual development, and was vastly unsure of how to judge her emotional development, seeing that her facial expressions now ranged from being blank to demonstrating hatred, resentment…and sadistic fascination.

Rei then left the office they were in, intending to go somewhere else in within NERV, leaving Kozo to treasure what little life he had left if he did take another step out of line.

-x-

"…So, that's his maternal aunt, huh?" Misato said to Dr. Gyatso, whom she had met earlier and for the first time, standing outside the room that housed the woman that looked like a Japanese version of Snow White with Akira conversing with her. "I wonder where she's been all this time."

"I pray that she doesn't live in Tokyo-3," the good doctor told her.

Inside the room, Akira had managed to get more out of Anne-Marie once she requested that every one else vacate the room…and was half-disgusted with some of what was shared: Not only was Anne-Marie the younger sister of Shinji's mother, but also her half-sister that has been estranged from her elder sibling for the last years of her life since before Second Impact, having made a serious strain of their relationship that bordered on many, personal matters that Yui herself had instigated.

"I tried to put up with her as I got older, but I hated her attempts to want to poke and prod at me in order to find out whatever secrets there were to this ability I had to understand animals," Anne-Marie told her, "and whenever she wasn't trying to figure that out, she felt the need to meddle in my social life and my so-called 'preferences' in men. I met this one guy I liked, and she had to question why I'd want to be around him, that he didn't show much of a good future…just because he worked at an auto shop and wasn't a scientist. I once told her that we can't all be scientists…and that she was rotten."

"Go on," Akira said, wanting to know more about her past.

"I was fourteen when I met Mori Gairo. I had been trying not to talk to animals, to go on with my life and keep Yui from wanting to poke her nose where it wasn't wanted, and I saw him sitting under a tree in the afternoon sun. At first, he seemed indifferent to my presence, but then he asked me about myself. It turned out he was a social outcast because his parents died in a car accident when he was seven; he didn't have many friends, unlike myself due to my sister; every time I ended up making a new friend, I find out later on that they know about my sister and then they make up excuses in order to not hang around me."

That's messed up, thought Akira, wondering how rotten Shinji's mother truly was back then.

"Mori never felt safe around cars unless he looked at them thoroughly; he had told me that the reason he worked at an auto shop was because of his parents' deaths. If he could keep cars in perfect order, then he believed he could prevent future car accidents in his neighborhood. Heh. He even asked me one night while I was watching him work under a car why I don't like to talk to animals when he viewed something like that as a blessing, and I told him it was because of my sister, that she made me start to hate my ability, to want to hide it because she wouldn't stop trying to use her home chemistry sets and theories on me, even after our parents had told her many times to stop it. It was like she was obsessed with finding out how I could do something that she couldn't and why, like there was some sort of genetic meaning to it. Eventually, I had invited him over to my parents' home for dinner, and Yui invited her boyfriend over, as well. That Gendo Rokubungi." Anne-Marie expressed, which made Akira groan in disgust, imagining that a family dinner in the Ikari household with Gendo could only end up in some bitter opinions of said man.

"I imagine that Gendo gave you bad vibes?" She asked the woman.

"Actually, I didn't have much of an opinion on him yet, other than the fact that his presence made my dog from that time very defensive whenever he was near; she kept a fair distance and wouldn't stop baring her fangs until after he was out of the house. But Yui… She had to go and poke her nose into Mori's personal life. "So, Mr. Gairo, why don't you tell us about yourself?" She asked him, though it sounded like she was asking more out of judgment than curiosity. When he told her that there was really nothing much to talk about in his life, it seemed she was too quick to judge him for his choices of how he wanted to live his life: Mori wasn't too sure about quitting his job at the auto shop and resuming his education and going to college, but his uncle, his guardian after his parents' death, was requesting that he at least get a degree in mechanics so that he could own his own auto shop one day. Later that night, I walked with him toward his house and apologized for my sister's behavior. It turns out we both didn't see Yui in such a good or friendly light. One thing led to another the moment we stepped into his house and then…the next thing either of us knew… The rest of the night had gone by like seconds."

"I, uh… I'm not trying to jump to conclusions, but when you say it like that, I think you say it in a mild sense that you and your boyfriend went to bed." Akira expressed to Anne-Marie.

"That's exactly what we did," Anne-Marie told her.

"Okay. No judging. No disrespect."

"It just happened. I let it happen. I loved him. Even after his passing, I still love him."

"How did he… I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I lost him the same way everybody lost people on that one, unforgivable day. I lost three people, though I only had two of them at the time."

Three people, but only had two of them? Does she mean that… Akira decided to keep this curiosity to herself, as she would find out when Anne-Marie shared it with her.

"Our actions from that night bore a consequence I didn't really expect to happen," Anne-Marie continued. "When I turned fifteen a month after the only time I had invited Mori over for dinner, I started feeling sick. Found out later that I was pregnant."

That makes sense now, thought Akira, who nodded.

"I told Mori…and then told him that if he wanted to break up with me, I would understand completely, but he didn't want to break up with me. Honestly, he felt motivated to finish his schooling; he was four years older than I was (Akira had a look of shock on her face when she heard this). Mori had a baby face look, so it was easy to assume he was my age. Let me tell you something: It was better for me to be with somebody that was four or five years older than myself and had a kind personality than a person over ten years and doesn't look like they've been involved in more than a few bad fights, enjoys a brawl and has had negative opinions thrown at them for a long time. My parents were a bit conflicting when they found out; Mother just wanted me to do the right thing while Father, probably the one that was more understanding of the two of them, simply asked me what I was going to do about my future since, due to their shared belief that all life was considered precious and sacred, the idea of an abortion was out of the question. I wanted to keep my baby, regardless of my future, since there were only two things I wanted to do with my life."

"Which were?"

"I wanted to be a veterinarian, as I loved animals, along with having a family of my own. Unfortunately, I had just started down my future out of order. But Yui didn't see my future the way I tried to see it. Once, she tried to persuade me to end my pregnancy…but I told her that I couldn't, that I was unwilling to take an innocent life. Then, nearing the end of my first trimester, I found out from my boyfriend that Yui had paid him a visit at the auto shop one day, along with Gendo, and tried to persuade him to break up with me. My relationship with my sister has always been strained with dislike over what's the right or easy thing to do in living my life. My life, not hers. And then… That horrible day came…and everything changed."

Second Impact, Akira recalled the giant tidal wave that almost desolated her home had she not stopped it, but understanding that everywhere else had been devastated by much more than environmental disaster. Hell on Earth. War, plague, famine and death. And all of it had been orchestrated, planned.

"I was bedridden in the hospital of what was left of Kyoto for three weeks," Anne-Marie resumed, explaining that the injuries she received due to the Second Impact, while not life-threatening, were bad; she had a broken right leg, a mild concussion, and had suffered a miscarriage that resulted in an emergency hysterectomy, which deprived her of her ability to bear any children in the future. "My only support in my recovery was my father. Yui had gone from being a relative with a ego of superiority and wanting to know what made things tick…to being a problem that I had nothing but hatred left for. I told her that I had suspected her of knowing what was going to happen three weeks prior…and she confessed to knowing, claiming that it was her reason for insisting that I get an abortion. The worst part of knowing that she knew about the outcome was that she didn't tell any of us. Not me, Father or Mother. She tried to defend her morals, if they could even be called 'morals' after what had happened, telling me that she didn't really choose for any of what happened to happen, that it just happened. I denied her the credibility of such a belief. I accused her of not even trying to prevent it…as I accused her of ending or taking the lives of the people I loved or wanted to love most dearly…and that I hated her for her choices. I couldn't forgive her troubling my life, altering it…destroying it. Even after her supposed death, four years later, when what's left of the world had recovered only a semblance of its normality, I still hate her. I hate her husband and people like them, also…but she's always at the top of my list. Always viewing something with scientific interest… Heh, she even dyed her hair a few times to individuate herself from me, like that was ever necessary."

"I'm sorry, but 'supposed death'?"

"I never believed she was dead or that her man had killed her in an science accident. If there's no body, a person's still alive…and even with the claim that her body simply disappeared, I believed it as nothing but an outright lie."

"But… Setting aside your hatred of her, weren't you able to follow the other goal in your life? Being a veterinarian once you had completed your schooling?"

Anne-Marie sighed and nodded in the negative.

"I never went back to finish my schooling after I left the hospital," she revealed. "Again, Yui was at fault. She wanted the both of us, Father and I, to understand her and what she was doing. What a sick joke. Us understand her when she never tried to understand me, that when I told her to stay out of my social life, I meant it? The first day I was supposed to go back to what was left of my old school where all the other surviving children were heading, I was being followed by men in black suits. I counted less than eight of them. Fearing for my life, I ran back home to tell Father. The police weren't a big help, either, claiming that these MIB suits hadn't done anything wrong. Two weeks later, my dad received a visit from one of the men, who revealed that Yui had made a request for him to accept a job offer as an accountant for the organization that had funded her work pre- and post-Second Impact."

"Doesn't seem like the best way to make a business offer to somebody that made his fortune through an honest living," Akira responded. "What happened?"

"Initially, Father refused; he had lost a foot and was still adjusting to a prosthetic one, along with having to sort out his own feelings toward Yui and her sense of judgment," Anne-Marie told her, and then sighed heavily. "Unfortunately, the job offer wasn't optional. While Yui and I were sisters, I was my father's only daughter by blood, making me the only family he had left after Second Impact. My life had been threatened with the one thing I had hated my sister for always trying to attempt on me: Research and development. She purposely told the people she worked for that I could talk to animals and that such an ability was worth scientific interest. Plus, we both knew some of what really happened that day half the world went away, so we were considered a liability if we tried to tell the media what we knew from Yui. In her own words, "It's easy to exterminate people. Those who survived"."

Akira couldn't believe this! It was inhuman! It was immoral, vile, and disgraceful. Her original opinions of Shinji's mother were, while minute, very negative when she learned of her from Kozo Fuyutsuki, but now that she learned of her from a family relative, her view of the current ghost in the machine was becoming extremely like that of Gendo Mu: Twisted to the point of irredeemable.

"Father demanded that the MIB leave his house after that revelation," Anne-Marie resumed. "I was bringing him his late-night coffee in his study when I saw him looking at a photo of our family in his hands. I never saw him crying over a choice he made that was comparable to dealing with the Devil himself. Personally, we both knew that it was only to protect me, but deep down, it was still a deal with a demon. I hated Yui more than ever after that."

A silence was between them and then Akira had to ask her an important concerning a special relative.

"Your hatred of Yui," she started, "does it extend to Shinji?"

Anne-Marie looked at her and answered, "No. I don't know Shinji, but I feel I could never hate him for what his mother had done to me. Years ago, I only knew of him through three pictures; when he was a baby, when he was three and as he is right now. The first time I ever met him in person was last night. I couldn't see either of his parents in his appearance; there was no desire to be cruel to others, to exploit, manipulate or harm anybody. He just seemed to be a boy weakened by a plague, a sickness…and saved by strangers that actually love him and have no desire to harm him with hidden truths."

Somehow, I don't think that Yui Ikari is even qualified for motherhood, Akira thought. "Can I ask you why you think she had him to begin with?"

"Well, Father tells me that her reason for having a family is simply because she wanted one of her own," she said, "but personally…because it's always personal, she only had Shinji to get back at me for getting pregnant before she did, but was unable to carry my baby to term…and because it was given to me by a man I cared for who wasn't a scientist."

Was jealousy Yui's primary motivation? Hurting someone related to you because you failed to set an example for them? Because you yourself failed to do the right thing?

"I consider her to be very stupid for even doing so," Anne-Marie broke her train of thought. "I wasn't even the center of attention; our parents weren't treating me any different than they did before I got knocked up. I still went to school, I wasn't showing my belly, I still did my chores around the house and everything else I was supposed to do. I never even had a reason to be jealous of her. She was herself, I was myself and proud of that. No disrespect to any of the scientists around here, but why would I want to be a scientist…or even date a scientist? Everyone's got their preferences when it comes to living your life and love interests, don't they?"

She thought about it for three seconds and gave a slight nod.

"I don't know about everybody when it comes to love interests and significant others, but there are some who seek out a select few…and there are the lucky few that only have their eyes set on those that truly want them for them…and not because of something they have or lust for."

"Were…you one of those lucky few, Mrs. Rokubungi?" Anne-Marie asked, and Akira nodded again.

The younger woman then cracked her neck and looked out the window at the afternoon sunlight, wondering how long it would be before Gendo realized that it was her that freed Shinji from his imprisonment last night and sent an assassination squad after her for breaking the death threat order.

"So…am I a prisoner here?" She asked Akira.

"No," she answered back. "You were checked for any injuries that you may have gotten from last night and were mended. I can get some friends of the hospital to escort you back home, if you like."

"No, that's okay. It's better if I go back alone."

"But…maybe you should talk to Shinji. He should get to know the young woman who saved him last night before we showed up to get him, even if she's someone he's never met before."

Maybe, she thought, wanting to at least have a conversation with her only maternal nephew before she went home and faced the music of her actions. I'm already marked. What more have I got to lose, other than my life?

Akira then looked over at the small bin on a nearby table that contained Anne-Marie's possessions that were on her the previous night: Dual swords (an efficient set of weapons for one skilled in the martial arts with both hands), an older generation iPhone, an old charm with the Asian symbol for "bat", which was believed throughout Asian history to be a harbinger of good luck, and a small, sword-like sheath made of ancient metals with the designs of an old tantō dagger modeled after a serpent with a heart in its mouth. The scabbard, which Akira was certain carried a dagger inside it, was what attracted her fascination in it the most out of the girl's possessions.

"Anne-Marie?" She went, getting out of her seat and approaching the bin to retrieve the scabbard. "Can I ask where you got this from?"

Anne-Marie looked at her sheathed dagger and answered, "My grandfather gave it to me. Well, my great-grandfather, actually, since my grandfather died when I was seven, but still the same thing."

"And your great-grandfather… Was his name… Is his name… Kyoji Mikamura?"

Anne-Marie went wide-eyed at the sound of that name…and questioned, "Yeah, but why does that matter to you?"

Akira leaned back against the table and responded, "Because I gave this dagger to him as a keepsake before he left home to live out the rest of his life…one-hundred-twenty years ago. He should be about one-hundred-forty-three by now."

"Was he a… I mean, could he make…water do things that it can't do on its own, like freeze and unfreeze or rise up from puddles?"

"He was a Hydro Channeler. A master of the art. He hit the road a month after he was declared a Hydro Master of Channeling."

"Was he a friend of yours?"

"No. Not in that sort of way. He was one of my adopted sons from the time he was young."

There was a grand silence between them now that this piece of history, of knowledge, was shared between them. And Anne-Marie couldn't believe the woman standing in front of her. If her great-grandfather truly was the adopted son of Akira Rokubungi from over one-hundred-twenty years ago, then this could've made Akira her adopted great-great-grandmother on his side of the family.

"Grandfather was…your son from that long ago?" She felt the need to question. "I used to hear him speaking of a story about a goddess named Akira, but I never believed it to mean that he actually knew a woman by that name. You're the goddess he spoke her, one bound by mortality, but had power over the four elements."

"He referred to me as a deity…even when I told him that, despite my abilities, I was no such thing." Akira expressed.

"Maybe you were to him. He's probably dreaming about his time with you and his siblings from the past right now."

"What happened to him?"

"Coma. A consequence of trying to save Kyoto from a massive wave…by himself. Everyone that was there to witness it called it a hopeless miracle; the city was still maimed by the wave, but the potential damage was minimized, to a degree, by him. Most of the water that created the wave was either frozen, condensed into snow or evaporated. In the end, he saved as many people as he could've that day…but the strain of channeling forced him into a coma. His old age was also believed to be a factor, but some of the surviving doctors were amazed that he was still alive after that."

"Some people blessed with a single elemental power are capable of living up to one-hundred-fifty years or so, depending on how well they maintain their health and such."

-x-

"…You had best stay away from my daughter, Gendo," Masamune told the NERV leader. "Leave her to her isolation. I'll deal with her myself."

Gendo, as he walked out of the room to go back to his aircraft and back to that abandoned city of Tokyo-3, simply sighed as he left; the guy was completely uncooperative to other authority figures, as Masamune was seen as the authority figure of this town, due to owning the only active company here.

When he was out the office, Sora turned to Masamune and said, "I don't trust him."

The elder sighed in agreement; this meant they had to make sure that Anne-Marie was kept safe from Gendo and his lackeys when she returned home to them. If she ever returned home. For the time being, all he could do, all they could do, was hope that she was okay, and Masamune had been informed yesterday that the young boy from Germany, Drake Von Meyer, would be arriving in due time for medical treatment for his cancer.

-x-

Rumi should've been happy for Shinji getting to converse with a relative from his mother's side of the family, but as she looked down at them in the hospital garden from a window, she felt a degree of unhappiness just from looking at them talking, unsure of what they were speaking of.

"Am I detecting a bit of jealousy coming from you, Rumi?" She turned and saw Nemo, who was standing in front of her.

"Jealousy? Me?" She questioned.

He looked out the windows and saw their nephew talking to the new girl, and then saw Shinji remove his wig to show off his baldness with a chuckle.

"Heh. I think he's happy to know that there was someone he never knew about that cared about him just as much as we do," Nemo told Rumi.

Rumi then felt the need to ask her big brother a personal question.

"Do you think I'm being possessive of him, Nemo?" She asked. "That I want Shinji all to myself, unwilling to share him?"

"Nope," he answered, "'cause there's a difference between being devoted, protective and possessive of somebody. Devoted, being that you care for how they feel about something or someone. Protective, being concerned with their well-being, wanting to make sure that they're safe from any that would want to hurt them. And possessive, being that you think and obsess over them in excess and often desire that they care about you as much as you do for them. You, Rumi, are only devoted and protective of Shinji, and there's nothing wrong with that."

"Last night, when I was heading to the city, I was very worried that he was being put inside the Eva. I kept imagining these horrid possibilities of what might've happened…with each new possibility more terrifying than the previous ones: Drowning in the LCL instead of being able to breathe in it, being sent out into a battle and not coming back, screaming his lungs out because he's terrified of being in such a small space…or going crazy from hearing voices within the plug. I even had a vision of these…white vultures or harpies assaulting Unit-01 in midair, stabbing the hands…and Shinji being horrified of his own hands bleeding from the large holes that were made there."

"Then it's a good thing we all got there before any of that could happen, sis. White vultures or harpies? That's an interesting, potential concept. What did they look like, Rumi?"

"Big…shaped pretty much like the Evas, except with uglier faces that didn't have eyes, no large shoulder blades, and they had large wings, as though they were mockeries of actual angels or birds."

"Ugh. Creepy."

"You're kidding!" They heard Anne-Marie shout out.

They looked out the window again and the two engaged in further conversation.

"Nemo's always been a fan of Yu-Gi-Oh!," they heard Shinji say to Anne-Marie. "He got me interested when I was ten, though I lost interest a little when I turned thirteen. The newer cartoon series weren't as good as the original series."

"I know what you mean. I loved the first two series of the franchise, but then I disliked the later series."

"Maybe I should play the card game, Nemo," Rumi told her brother.

"It's too complex for you to understand, Rumi," he responded.

"I can comprehend a little better than you might suspect, Nemo."

-x-

As the day became night, Anne-Marie left the town with three men that would escort her back to Kyoto; Akira had insisted that Anne-Marie be escorted home to keep her safe.

Back at the Rokubungi estate, Shinji was resettling into his room; he'd been in the hospital so long during his relapse that he'd nearly forgotten the smell of his own room.

I'm home once more, he thought, sitting on his bed, looking at the photo of the whole family. It's great to be home again.

Outside his room, Akira gave a small smile that signified her happiness over her grandson's return home, despite his renal failure. While this meant they would all have to be careful around him like before, it was still pleasing to have some restoration of their normality brought back home.

Welcome home, Shinji, she thought, walking away from his room. Welcome home.

-x-

She hated the sight of them. So alike in appearance, and yet…so empty in existence. Empty in everything until selected by the hand that bred them.

"My shades," Rei uttered, standing in front of the glass chambers of the Dummy Plug Plant that housed her spares. "Useless in your original servitude…but now…I may have a use for you that isn't in the realms of replacing anybody that exists."

The former First Child then disrobed out of her yukata and panties, leaving only the Fallenbreaker on her body, which then materialized several tentacles as the artificial gauntlet manifested where the bracelet once resided on her left arm. They expanded like water flowing outward once they touched the glass of the tanks, causing fractures as the clones simply turned to face her. They had no means to express whatever emotions that were even possible to give out with their faces, no means to demonstrate surprise, fear or any other type of anxiety that existed. The glass of the tanks then fractured so much that they shattered, spilling the LCL out onto the floor, surrounding her ankles with the substance that reeked of blood…and the cloned bodies of herself, not moving or breathing to indicate any signs of life.

"Now, merge with my flesh," Rei told the copies as the tentacles attached to the fallen ones around herself, "strengthen me. Heighten me… Invigorate me further!"

The bodies degenerated, broke down or faded from sight as they were sucked into the Fallenbreaker, and the compositional elements of their bodies were passed into Rei's, enhancing her systems. Her bones felt stronger and more dense, her muscles less weak and incapable of unleashing the fatigue toxins that caused exhaustion in ordinary beings, her heart and lungs felt freer in their ability to provide her oxygen-enriched blood to the rest of her body, and her senses felt sharper and more acute. She shuddered in amazement at how satisfied she felt from absorbing her younger sister clones. What amazed her even more was that her pageboy hairstyle had changed; the strands of hair behind her head had grown down to the small of her back while a pair of long sidelocks that went down to her sternum, ending part of her resemblance to Yui Ikari in terms of hairstyle.

"Oh, this feels so good," she uttered.

The only bodies left from the Dummy Systems were the remaining ones still inside the tanks, which she estimated were somewhere in the double digits somewhere, but she had other plans for them. As she slipped into her panties once more, she took a strand of the bone and metal produced by her Fallenbreaker and used it to tie the back of her hair into a ponytail, with her sidelocks tucked behind her shoulders so that she could put her yukata back on without much hindrance. And while she assumed the new hairstyle was only a temporary side-effect of absorbing her clones, she hoped that the change would last until her goal could be realized, which she now had to tinker further with so that the additional pieces to her grand design could be obtained. It only made her small desire to be as different from Yui in appearance all the greater.

-x-

The concept of riding a train in the middle of the night had always left Anne-Marie Ikari somewhat mystified at why there seemed to be a type of tranquility around it. The silence of the night as you passed by the world outside your passenger car window, the light of the stars and the moon, the eeriness of the clouds that are fortunate enough to remain later in the day as the sun goes down, and the company of a few strangers and your own thoughts.

"Something to drink, Ms. Ikari?" She turned her head and saw of her escorts holding a bottle of water in his left hand and a soda can in his right hand.

She accepted the bottled water and said, "Thank you."

It would be a long, three hours before they were even halfway out of the Chūbu Prefecture that Akira Town was settled and secluded in and they were in the Kansai Prefecture where the small town of Kyoto resided. But Anne-Marie wasn't rushing. And while she hoped her alibi and excuse for doing what she did would excuse her from the potential anger of her father, she knew in her heart that she did the right thing in freeing Shinji from NERV and returning him to the people that loved him.

-x-

"…Tsukiko, Shinobu?" Akira caught her youngest and second eldest adult children, respectively, at the table drinking coffee earlier than usual, at five in the morning. "Were you two up all night again?"

"Sorry," Shinobu expressed. "We were just talking."

Akira sighed and got herself a cup of coffee and sat with them.

"What about?" She asked them.

"Anne-Marie," Tsukiko answered. "She had a lotta courage to go against an order not to see Shinji just to rescue him from NERV when he was kidnapped, knowing that it could cost her her life."

"And that she's the great-granddaughter of one of your older children from over a century ago…who's still very much alive," Shinobu added.

"And…your reason for speaking of this would be?" Akira asked, wondering if they were going to question why she didn't decide to go to what was left of Kyoto to see her son from that time.

"When this is all over," said Tsukiko, "when there's no longer a need for the Angelbreaker to be wielded to restore balance to the world, when the people responsible for the deaths of half the world from the cause of Second Impact are brought to justice…and when Rei Ayanami is dealt with for threatening Rumi and wanting to use Shinji… We should all go to Kyoto and meet up with Anne-Marie's family. I mean, they're pretty much, in a way, part of the family, right?"

The eldest woman nodded in the positive.

"Yeah, they are," she agreed with them.

"I wonder if she's been called Snow White a few times, due to her beauty," Shinobu wondered.

"If you could be one of the Disney Princesses, which would you be?" Tsukiko asked her.

"Ariel, the Little Mermaid."

"Aurora, the Sleeping Beauty, hands down. Akira?"

"I've always been split between Jasmine of Aladdin and Belle of Beauty and the Beast," Akira told Tsukiko, "but I could never understand how Belle could be considered a princess when, in the beginning of the story, she is not one until after she confesses her love to the Beast at the end."

"It's about the mixing and matching combinations of looks," they turned and saw Bumi, drowsy and scratching the back of his head, "personality and the responses of those that see, hear or know of the woman who possesses the title or status of a princess later on."

Bumi smelled the coffee and asked if there was any left in the pot.

Akira gestured for him to help himself.

"I guess that explains why Mulan is considered a princess along with Cinderella and Pocahontas," went Shinobu as Bumi sat down with them. "So what woke you up, Bumi? Our talk?"

"Nope," he answered her. "I actually had a dream about Shinji. It was a really good one, too."

"Oh?" Tsukiko expressed. "Please, do tell."

"He was rowing a boat down a quiet river, accompanied by a young woman," he described his dream. "I didn't see her face, but I'm guessing she had a type of beauty to go along with a personality that impressed Shinji because he was smiling very happily. It's none of my business, really, but is he seeing anybody new after what happened to his friends last year?"

The women were reminded of Rumi's choice of words when she called Shinji her boy, and it seemed that either Bumi had no clue as to the girl's attraction toward her nephew…or he was just making sure that such a romance was in existence.

"Maybe it's best if you asked him," Akira suggested; while okay with the possibility of romance between Shinji and Rumi, she didn't want anybody jumping to conclusions about them.

-x-

"…Well, this is it," said Anne-Marie to her escorts, as they arrived to Kyoto, and she grabbed a boat, "this is where I live."

They climbed in and journeyed over the water that covered most of the streets of the town. In the view of the three men, some of the people seen by buildings or in other boats looked like they were wearing prosthetic limbs to show that they had been maimed some time ago.

"Does everyone here have an artificial limb, Ms. Ikari?" One of them asked her.

"More or less," she answered, approaching the building of Medical Angel Industries and seeing its personal docks. "You could call this place the boomtown of the stitched-up and adaptive due to the advancements made in medical technologies."

As she parked the boat, up in her father's office, Sora looked down at her and uttered to Masamune, "She's come home, Masamune."

The elder turned away from the work on his desk and looked down at the docks, seeing his daughter and three men with her.

"Thank the kami that she's okay," he exhaled.

-x-

The afternoon of August Twenty-Second had progressed in quite a quiet tone of actions.

Bardiel, since he had mended well enough to wander around the hospital without much supervision, was allowed to assist the chefs in the kitchen by stacking trays up and pouring coffee and milk. It was all his way of just keeping himself busy in the building rather than to see his siblings or his father, whom he couldn't face.

"Hey, Bardiel," went one of the female nurses, "you got a visitor."

He stopped stacking trays and looked at a nearby clock and found the time being only two-forty-two right now.

"Who is it?" He asked back.

"A guy. Says he's your father. Adam," the nurse explained, which made Bardiel a bit tense. "If you want, I can tell him you're not here or that you're too busy."

"No," he told her back. "Give me two minutes."

In two minutes, Bardiel finished stacking the trays up and went to the cafeteria to meet his old man.

Adam, having made a request to go to the hospital to see Bardiel, as he hadn't seen him ever since he was cast aside for his weakness, was hoping to make amends with his son.

"Hello," he turned around and saw Bardiel standing by the doors, looking back at him.

"Hello," Adam responded back, and Bardiel sat on the opposite side of the table. "How have you been these past few days?"

"Mending," Bardiel told him. "It's not everyday that you get assaulted by young woman that doesn't even know a thing about you, but wants to try and end your life. I find that I recover faster when I'm doing something besides laying down. And you?"

"I've been relocated to the rehabilitation center where everyone else has been sent to. I've been…trying to understand everything that has happened in the last few days."

"A personal, internal/external journey of sorts, then, huh?"

"Uh, yeah. Yeah, you could call it that."

For quite a while in two minutes, Bardiel felt like he was simply beating around the bush with his father, wondering why, after all these countless generations of absence, even after failing to rescue him from his former tormentors in the hopes of being his favorite, he felt some degree of hatred toward his old man for never acknowledging him for living. He felt like he wanted to lash out at Adam more than he wanted to against his eldest brother, Zeruel, as payback for all the times he tried to get his attention and respect…and never getting them. But then he reminded himself of Taeko, of the little girl that was concerned about him before she even knew a thing about him, and, out of respect for her, he held his anger in check.

"This must be our first conversation," he told Adam.

"It is," his father responded.

"How are…everyone else?" Bardiel didn't like how he had to be curious about his other siblings, but there were some thoughts he couldn't control.

"Most of them have changed…to extreme degrees…and not just because they were humanized," Adam expressed. "I see Shamshel, and she's the only one that holds Armisael the most, causing some of the others to claim that she's the motherly one of the group. Sachiel and Ramiel are reduced to fitness boys that also take time to read and understand words, Sahaquiel is trying to find out how much he weighs and Kou and Otsu Israfel are teaching Arael how to draw pictures."

Bardiel knew he was going to enrage himself for asking, but he asked, "And…Zeruel?"

Adam turned away for three seconds and then returned to face his youngest son and answered, "He's… He's still the same as he was before I had all of you. He hates what we've become and he hates that he was unable to deal with who they had perceived as a greater threat than those forgeries of me, and I've never seen the little girl, except from each of your points of view."

Sighing, Bardiel uttered, "I've heard somewhere that pride is a strong trait that people are unfortunate enough to possess. They feel that they are superior and that others must show them respect without demonstrating any themselves."

Then, taking a new inhale of breath, Adam uttered, "I know this won't mend everything between us, Bardiel, but I want you to know that I am sorry for never treating the way you needed to be treated, which was with respect and love. I cannot even compare our respective time periods of being looked down upon or anything."

Bardiel responded with, "But you got away from your captors."

"That was only because I was humanized enough to do so after you were humanized," he explained the cause of his escape. "But my years of being a prisoner cannot compare to your years after being cast out. The great difference between our tortured pasts is that during your time, you were completely free. There was no one to hunt you down, do with you as they please or anything. Like your siblings, you had the freedom to go wherever you wanted and do whatever you wanted. That blessing, that freedom…was taken from me for what felt like an eternity in the last fifteen years."

"Go on," his son requested him to continue.

"The day I exploded, trying to defend myself as I was slumbering since the day Lilith arrived and took over, I felt fragmented, separated from my existence, deprived of my body. Shortly, after some time had past, I felt like I was in some sort of construct that wasn't familiar to me, and when the restoration of what is known as the five senses returned to me, I discovered what had become of me."

Bardiel then straightened out his backbone and stood up right.

"My essence, my…soul, my…self had been incarcerated inside a body that had been spliced with remnants of my true self, shaped like the Lilin."

"Wait a minute, if you were in a human body, shouldn't that have meant that you were humanized?"

"No, Bardiel. There's a big difference between being humanized, made or reincarnated into a member of the Lilin…and being incarcerated, imprisoned or placed within a body shaped like theirs, but not having their complete traits. The body I was in was merely shaped like theirs, but you could've found the similarities between it and this girl, this Rei Ayanami, disturbing. And…it felt like I was in a nightmare, one that I couldn't wake up from until after all of you were humanized, and in it…I wasn't me at all."

"Well, who were you?"

"These men, these…corrupted members of the Lilin that held their sway over me, they called me…Tabris…and other times, they called me Kaworu Nagisa."

"They rob you of your identity and give you false ones? Quite immoral."

-x-

"…Gendo came looking for you while you were gone, Anne-Marie," said Masamune to his daughter, as she walked through the hallway that he was assisting some scientists in looking over some documents they had. "He even went as far as to have some men that came with him to search the whole building level that we live on. I told him that you went on a working vacation with one of the amputees, looking for some medicinal herbs required for our painkillers used in surgeries (after signing his signature on one of the documents, he turned to face her). Just where were you for the past twenty-eight hours, exactly?"

The would-be Snow White leaned against a wall and answered, "I was where you told him, out on a working vacation with one of the amputees, searching for medical herbs for painkillers. I didn't find any good ones, but it was worth a short trip out of town."

"Did you…meet anybody that you fancied out there?"

"Yeah… But not like that." Anne-Marie turned her gaze from her father and exhaled a breath of some relief. "The guy was younger than myself and his folks were uncertain of his future. I think he's already taken with one girl that's quite protective of him. I'd better get back to my post now. The security's lower than normal."

"Take rest first," he told her, seeing that she was tired. "You look like your vacation was more work than pleasure for you. When you wake, we'll have dinner and tea together before you resume your work schedule. Yeah, Anne-Marie?"

She nodded and walked away, passing his office and Sora, who poked his head out the door.

"Miss Soryu will be arriving later this evening, just so that you know?" He informed her.

"I'll be sure to look my best for her," Anne-Marie responded, entering an elevator and pressing the button for the floor she and her father lived on in this building; the major loss of Kyoto reduced the people to living in former office buildings turned into dorm-like structures and the smaller office buildings serving as markets and other such places of necessity, and after having her life threatened by her sister, their old home just didn't feel safe, anymore.

Despite being deprived of her self-chosen career and education, there was no rule against Anne-Marie having pictures of animals stuck to the walls of her room, or keeping books of them around her desk. Her fascination with animals, excluding her ability to understand their languages, was reduced to being a hobby of sorts because of her sister.

"Jade-Chan, I'm back," she called out as she sat on her bed, sighing as it felt good to be relaxing on her mattress instead of a chair. "Jade-Chan?"

"Grrr…" A growling noise came from another room next to hers, and the metallic sound of stepping came soon after.

Jade had entered her room and sat down in front of her on the floor. Due to Second Impact, Kyoto's zoo had been erased from the city and most of the animals had been killed, all save a few of them, and Jade was one of the few remaining Siberian Tigers alive to ever live in Japan that had survived, with the exception of her left foreleg being injured to the point where it had to be amputated. Anne-Marie had actually found her a year after her father had founded Medical Angel, and asked him to help her.

"Did you miss me?" Anne-Marie asked her, and the tigress prowled over to her and placed her head on her lap; Jade had been domesticated by Anne-Marie after understanding that they had something in common with the Second Impact: They had both lost their significant other and their children-to-be.

It's hard not to miss you, she heard the tigress respond in her head. Did you meet this other relative of yours that you were forbidden to see?

"Yeah, I did," she told her, reveling a little in her ability to understand the tigress. "He liked me a lot."

Then Anne-Marie sniffed the air and detected a foul odor.

"Jade-Chan, did you use the bathroom?" She asked the tigress.

No, she answered, that smell has been here since before you came back. Some men came and looked around, so I hid in one of the broom closets.

That made the young woman suspicious, and she and the tigress left out her room. Jade led her toward where the smell was strongest…and it was an old boardroom that had been converted into a kitchen! As they entered it, Anne-Marie noticed how the stove was emitting its gas and how the oven was left open…with a nearby cigarette lighter and drinking bird with the NERV logo on them.

"Oh!" Anne-Marie gasped, and she and Jade ran out of the kitchen. "Daddy!"

-x-

If it weren't for the sight of buildings half-submeged in water and people walking around dock-like bridges with artificial body parts, Asuka would've almost enjoyed her boat ride toward the Medical Angel building. By a happy mistake of scheduling, the former Evangelion pilot had arrived two hours ahead of time, so she considered getting to Kyoto earlier to look around the salvaged community, reminded of how she had never seen even a few people that were as less fortunate than anyone else in her past. The sight of a little boy, probably nine years old, sporting prosthetic legs running up to his father or guardian, who sported a prosthetic left hand that seemed to actually function, made Asuka wonder if there was more to the advancements in medical technologies that she hadn't seen at all.

"Excuse me, sir," she asked the guy steering the boat behind her two bags, "out of curiosity, does nearly everyone that lives here…"

"Have an artificial body part or two?" The man cut her off kindly. "Yep. My old man was in a car accident years ago and needed a new pair of legs. He has yet to acquire to the artificial skin tissues to cover his legs and induce tactile sensations once more, though."

As the boat reached the docks of the company building, an explosion was heard and Asuka saw some of the windows on one of the upper levels shatter as fire was unleashed.

"Aaaahh!" The people that saw it or heard it gasp.

"Is this common?" Asuka asked the boat driver.

"No, this isn't," he answered her.

-x-

"Ugh," Shinji shuddered, catching Rumi's attention.

"Something wrong?" She asked, wondering if the sounds of the movie they were watching had caused him to act up.

"I almost thought I heard somebody screaming," he explained.

She would've held his hand if Nemo wasn't in between them with his girlfriend, and said, "Maybe it was just your imagination."

"Talk to the hand," went the famous guy playing the Terminator in the film they were looking at.

"Eh-heh-heh!" Camille laughed.

Rumi then sighed and got up off the couch.

"Where you off to, Rumi?" Nemo asked.

"The bathroom," she answered him.

He looked at where she got up and saw her dog tags.

"Rumi," he stopped her, holding her tags up. "You forgot your precious."

She looked at her dangling tags and groaned in disbelief.

"Thank you, Nemo," she praised him, accepting her tags back. "Let me know when the film's at the graveyard scene."

"Sure thing, auntie," went Shinji. "Hey, Nemo?"

"Yeah?"

"You think Rumi and Akira could take on the T-X with the Angelbreaker? You know, if she actually existed today?"

"I can't really picture that sort of battle, Shinji," he told him.

"Akira and Rumi receive two-thousand points," went Camille. "The Terminatrix receives only four-hundred points. And the crowd goes wild."

They looked at her with expressions of awe.

-x-

"…Ritsuko, we're nowhere near recovered," Kaji told Ritsuko, who was trying to get out of bed and walk toward the door.

"I don't care," she responded to her friend from college. "I gotta get outta here."

Suddenly, the door opened and Maya Ibuki was in front of them.

"Maya?" Ritsuko gasped. "What are you doing here?"

"Rei's asleep," she informed them. "Some of the staff are taking a risk by leaving while she's out cold. You in?"

Ritsuko and Kaji looked at each other and nodded in the positive.

As some of the people were quietly leaving the facility, Naoko Akagi busied herself with standing in front of Unit-01, looking at the vessel of her formerly-hated rival.

"If only I could cause you as much pain as you and Gendo caused me," she told the Eva.

She never could deduce in the scientific boundaries of why Rei decided to go and sleep after spending more than forty-eight hours wide awake, but concluded that her adrenaline had been overtaxed and she needed to recuperate. Even the strongest of people had their limitations.

"It's funny how nothing has gone the way you wanted," she continued.

If Yui was even listening to what Naoko was saying, there was no indication of anything to prove that she was. The Eva remained as silent as the day it was made.

"I guess that's the very nature of deviation, to deviate, turn away from a preselected path and go down another path that wasn't predetermined by anyone."

The purple monstrosity still gave no indication that the resident soul was listening. So Naoko got an idea on how to get Yui riled up.

"Do you ever wonder how your son got sick to begin with, Yui?" She asked. "It's such a pity, really, that such a pretty little boy was damned by the both of you. Predestined to aid you in changing the world, and he doesn't know how grateful he should be for being able to fight fate and live a different life where he's…more or less…free from the destiny you dealt him with."

She heard the sound of grinding metal, seeing the head of Unit-01 lowering down to face her.

"Don't get smart with me," Naoko defended. "You're the one that made him watch you die. He has every right to believe that you're dead, that your work killed you. Suppose he did find out you were still in the Eva, that you never left this world, that you gave your life as a human away in exchange for the power of a mockery of a god-like being? Would he forgive you? Would he accept your decision? Or…would he simply resent you? I'm more inclined to believe that it would be the very negative possibility. If he ever knew the truth, he'd never be able to forget the truth…or forgive you. He already despises his old man. How soon will it be until he despises you, as well?"

Naoko then walked away, allowing the resident ghost in the shell to process this all, satisfied with enraging the woman she detested.

"I heard all of that, Dr. Naoko Akagi," she turned around and saw Rei Ayanami, looking like she had just gotten up from her recent slumber. "I often wonder the same of what could happen if the boy were to know the truth of his mother."

But you went to sleep over two hours ago, thought Naoko, unsure of the newfound nature of this keeper of the Fallenbreaker.

"It won't be long before a great comet arrives to ignite the skies," Rei told her. "Hmm…'Let all that are blessed with hands that raze, draw strength from the flying sphere of stone and metal that burns without end…and know the burning desire to achieve your goals cannot be cheated'. A comet setting fire to the skies, people with power over fire… It sounds like a ridiculous fantasy. Except that Gendo can control fire…barely."

This revelation caused Naoko to express disbelief in Gendo being blessed with the power of fire; she had never seen Gendo show any indication that he could make fire do anything it normally didn't do.

-x-

"…Daddy," Anne-Marie, with her face half-burnt and bleeding, whimpered quietly, looking up at Masamune as she and Jade were rushed down the hall on gurneys to be operated on for their injuries.

Masamune was devastated! The explosion that destroyed their living quarters' kitchen and much of the hallway had caused his daughter and her pet tigress to suffer from first and second-degree burns and scrapes to their bodies and Jade's bionic foreleg had to be fixed or replaced. Somehow, he wasn't sure how…but he knew that Gendo had something to do with the explosion.

"Masamune-Dono," he turned to face Sora, who had something gripped in his right hand. "We searched the kitchen wreckage…and found this."

The item was a small lighter bearing the NERV logo, and that enraged Masamune.

"Gendo," he uttered bitterly. I knew he couldn't be trusted!

As they both waited outside the operating room, Anne-Marie, who was administered some morphine, had drifted off into unconsciousness due to the pain she was in.

"I've never asked you this before, Yui, but I have to in order to get my mind off of it," her father's voice had echoed in her mind, as she found herself dreaming of the day her sister, Yui, had revealed her reasons for blackmailing Masamune into working for SEELE. "Tell me… Are you…INSANE?!"

It was the first time she ever heard him raise his voice toward her or anybody in anger like that, and it was raised so high that it almost felt like he could echo if he wanted to.

"More than once, your mother and I had to tell you not to treat your sister like some kind of guinea pig… And then we had to tell you not to interfere with her social life with her boyfriend, who was going to propose to her before that unnecessary disaster occurred. I lost your mother, Pema… Anne-Marie lost Mori…lost her baby…and her dog, Yukiko. And you…what have you lost, Yui? What do you still have that matters to you? Can you even answer that question without the science? Do you even know? You can tell your superiors that I'll take the job offer as their accountant…but don't you ever speak to me like we're close again. Ever."

Anne-Marie had then seen Yui stepping out of their father's study…and she ignored the scientist she saw her as that wanted to study her for her unique ability. It was justified hatred that was directed toward Yui…and she deserved every ounce of it.

She made me hate my gift. To want to hide it, she thought, seeing herself in her bedroom, laying on her bed. I wanted to kill her myself for everything she did to us, to make her understand how we felt at being hurt, being used. Not once in the aftermath, even before it, did that bitch ever apologize for her choices that robbed me of my desired future.

Time passed by without a care, and the Snow White-looking young woman found herself looking down at an aged man, almost as old as her father was in appearance, laying on a medical bed with a respirator stuck to his face. His hair was a blend between black and gray, his skin was only wrinkled in subtle ways, and his face seemed withered from lack of expressions being exhibited by its owner.

Grandfather, she thought, identifying the aged man as her great-grandfather, but merely calling him the shorter term of endearment for the sake of little formality. I would spend an hour sitting next to you, hoping that you would wake up and bring a bit of normality to the family after what Yui did to us all. Despite your advanced age, you wouldn't let go of your life. You were persistent. You still are persistent, something I wanted to think we had in common. But what have I done that demonstrates persistence? I went and helped rescue my nephew and fought off some clueless workers who, as far as I'm convinced, don't know that their identification cards are the same color as blood, but I don't think that counts as being persistent. I did want to see Shinji, though, so I guess that's where I showed it.

"Anne-Marie… Anne-Marie…" A voice was calling out to her, and she felt something grasping her right hand. "Anne-Marie…please, wake up."

She felt woozy soon enough and fell backwards. Expecting to hit the hard floor, she instead landed on some sort of soft, comfy material and looked up at a blue ceiling. As she fluttered her eyelids to clear her vision of mucus, she slowly moved her head to the right, seeing her father, sitting next to her, holding her hand. She tightened her grip as best as she could, letting him know that she was awake.

"…Owie…" She uttered quietly.

Outside the recovery room, after worrying for over three hours after the woman came out of surgery, Sora sighed in relief at Anne-Marie's awakening; he didn't think that she could survive being subjected to nanotechnology to heal her burns and cuts instead of just trying the skin technology that covered a person's prosthetic limbs and helped to restore sensation. But she survived, along with Jade, who required her bionic limb to be replaced before being subjected to the healing properties of nanomedicine and further recuperation. To think that one man that was well known for being a jackass was capable of harming her… Sora, if he had the will to do so as much as he wanted to against his own foe, he would've wasted Gendo where he stood.

-x-

"…NERV is never this quiet," said Rei to Naoko, seeing very few people around the Command Center as they arrived there.

She turned to face Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, who didn't give any indication that she was looking at him, and then wondered if Gendo, who she had tied back into his chair in his office, knew anything.

Naoko then decided to see if her program that was designed to restore the surveillance systems had finished its function, and found some cameras were displaying some workers leaving out the exits.

"Some of the people are getting dumb ideas to leave the base," she told Rei, and then noticed one of the people being helped out was her own daughter and her college friend. "You bitch!"

Rei saw this, but didn't seemed troubled by it. In truth, she just smirked.

"Some of them won't get very far," she informed Naoko.

-x-

GASP! Rumi awoke from a horrific nightmare, panting as she calmed down. She looked at her palms and saw how sweaty they were.

"Crazy Ayanami," she uttered, and then got out of bed to use the bathroom.

As it was too dark for her eyes to notice anything (or anyone) in the hallway, she passed somebody that let her do so.

"You wanna talk about your dream, Rumi?" Akira asked her daughter, surprising her.

"Aaahh!" Rumi gasped, turning around and seeing the shadowed person.

Akira used her Pyro Channeling and conjured a small ball of fire in her left hand, illuminating her face so Rumi could see that it was only her.

"Mommy, you scared me," Rumi told her, adding that she almost had an accident right then and there.

"Sorry."

Rumi went to the bathroom and relieved herself while Akira waited outside. When she was done, she sat in her room on the floor with her.

"In my dream, the sky was on fire," she explained the details. "For some reason, we were back in Tokyo-3, and Gendo was using his Pyro Channeling against us, but he could unleash the flames from his hands, just like you can. Rei Ayanami was there, too, but there were at least a small group of her. Probably thirty copies of her. And then…there was the purple Eva, Unit-01, and it floated above us all… Shinji was… It was gripping Shinji in its right hand, and he was screaming for help as the real Rei was sitting on the Eva's hand, looking down at him. "Why don't you scream for your mommy and daddy?" She had asked him. I flew up to save him and…something happened. Something…bad."

"What happened?" Akira asked.

"Shinji and I… We started falling…falling high from the sky as it continued to burn reddish-orange and yellow, like fire…and then I woke up." Rumi revealed, recalling the sensation of Shinji's hands slipping out of hers as they fell.

"Did you see him…or any of us…die?" Her mother asked, concerned.

"No, I didn't," she answered back.

"Rumi, I… I think it's time you knew about the comet that's arriving at the end of this summer…and why most of us are concerned about it."

"Why? What does this comet have to do with my dream?"

"Rayden's Comet is what will definitely ignite the skies, setting them ablaze. Upon its arrival and passing, all Pyro Channelers present and exposed to its energy will be endowed with the power of the Pyro Masters: The ability to create their own fire. We're all… I…"

"You're all afraid that Gendo might abuse this power…right?"

"Yes. The only way to avoid being granted this power is to be underground where the energy of the comet can't reach you…or you can already create your own fire."

"Surely, the comet would do to Pyro Channelers what Sozin's Comet did to the Firebenders of the Avatar cartoon, right? It would enhance their abilities."

That surprised Akira! It was considered the second effect of Rayden's Comet to provide a boost in the power of Pyro Channeling, but not many people knew of that.

"I didn't even tell your sisters about that secondary ability of the comet, so how did you find out about it?" She asked Rumi.

Rumi, of course, realized that she had no idea how she knew about that.

"Kids say the strangest of things," she uttered.

"Not as strange as the things they fantasize," Akira added in.

"I'm sorry?"

"When we're young, we imagine the most impossible of things, places, even creatures."

"Oh."

But Akira was merely beating around the bush for the umpteenth time again; the super-centenarian had seen how protective her youngest daughter was over Shinji that night at NERV HQ, and she didn't need to be a rocket scientist or a sage to recall her telling Rei Ayanami not to come after 'her boy' lest she encounters a merciless warrior of the sword and martial arts.

"Eh-heh-heh," she laughed. "You remember when you told Ayanami not to come after Shinji again?"

"Yeah. I… I really called Shinji my boy, didn't I?"

"Yes, you did."

"I love him."

"Yeah."

"No, Mommy. I mean, really. I love him."

"I know. It's hard not to know."

"You're gonna tell me that it's wrong for me to feel what I feel for him, aren't you?"

"I could… Probably should…but I can't. I'm not going to."

"Why not?"

"Truth be told, it would be unfair to tell you things like, "Rumi, you can't fall in love with Shinji", "Rumi, what you feel for your nephew is forbidden" or "Nobody would ever accept your relationship, even if it was mutual". So…if your affections are more than mutual, and he cares about you, just as much as you care about him, then I won't stand in your way of wanting to find happiness in your future that is yet to be written."

"Really?"

"Yes."

Rumi then got up and hugged her mother.

"Thank you," she praised her.

-x-

August Twenty-Third had shown several members of Japan's NERV workforce, those that were unable to get away from the Geo-Front, either laying on the ground with their legs caught in old foothold traps, nets, pits or snare traps, disabling them or leaving them in a load of pain.

"See, Naoko," Rei told the older Akagi woman. "Some of them wouldn't get very far. And look… Special Inspector Kaji is one of the few that couldn't get away."

Kaji, despite his best efforts, was hanging with some of the desperate workers in a net, looking at the two with discontent.

"Do you know where my daughter ran off to, Mr. Kaji?" Naoko asked him, noticing that Ritsuko wasn't in any of the traps that Rei had set out without anyone's knowledge.

"Lady, I ain't saying a damn thing to you until I hear from my lawyer," he retorted.

Rei shifted into her armor and sprouted tentacles from her armored neck that wrapped around Kaji's, causing his eyes to widen as the eyeballs almost shot to the back of his head. She was using the Fallenbreaker to extract the desired information from him, and replayed the events of last night in her own mind; he'd seen the First Lieutenants, Maya Ibuki and Makoto Hyuga getting Ritsuko Akagi to safety with much of the few that were able to get away. Unfortunately, she was able to extract the knowledge of their rendezvous.

"They're heading to Akira Town," she expressed, releasing the man from her tentacles. "I guess using the rest of you as bait will suffice in my goal. Gendo once stated that loyalty…is highly overrated."

-x-

"…Are you sure it's alright for him to watch us practice?" Tsukiko asked Shinobu, concerned about their only nephew watching them train with fire as he sat on the front porch of the house, several feet from the training grounds.

"Believe it or not, Tsukiko," went Shinobu, "he insisted on watching us. Besides, the worst is, more or less, behind him. In addition, Akira's gonna be teaching Rumi some Pyro Channeling."

"I'm just worried about him getting burned by accident, not his condition," she expressed to her big sister, putting her fear of Shinji's cancer the farthest from her conscious.

Shinobu sighed and then raised up her left hand to pull fire from a nearby torch and sent the flame slowly toward Shinji, who lowered his upper body on the banister. The flame stopped less than two feet from him before dissipating, showing that Shinobu had a much greater control over the power of her element of inferno desires.

"Shinji, did I hurt you?" She asked him.

"No," he answered her, though he checked his forehead for terror sweat. "I'm okay."

"Excellent degree of control and precision, Shinobu," they heard Akira as she sat on one of the pagodas over Shinji's head; she had been watching them from up there.

SLAM! Shinji turned to see the front door had been busted open and Rumi had stepped out.

"I'm a Unity Channeler! You gotta deal with it!" She expressed, which made Shinji chuckle.

"Heh-heh-heh!" He giggled as she jumped onto the ground, causing several pebbles to rise around her.

"Somebody's sounding a little more confident in their abilities," said Tsukiko, bearing witness to her baby sister's use of two of the four elements: Earth and Air. "Whoa!"

Shinobu and she had to catch or dodge two pebbles that Rumi had kicked or blown their way.

"Maybe overconfident," Shinobu told her. "And she's right about two things: She's a Unity Channeler…and we gotta deal with it."

Rumi then stood next to one of the torch stands and announced, "I'm ready to begin."

Shinji looked up to Akira and said, "It's not me she's waitin' on, Akira."

Akira chuckled and then summoned an air current to land on the ground, giving an imitation of telekinetically hovering to the ground.

"I have gotta learn how to do that," Rumi expressed.

"You won't be able to pull moves like that off until you're much older, Rumi," her mother told her. "With continued age comes greater strength and wisdom."

Then, with a mere glance toward the torches, she made the flames burn with more intensity! With an additional hand gesture, she took some of the flames and condensed them into a small block in front of herself, which then turned into an assortment of different shapes, ranging from a sword of fire to the World Trade Centre buildings.

"So…what will my first lesson be in the art of Pyro Channeling?" Rumi asked her, impressed by her mother's skill and control.

"Lesson Number One: Feel the sun on your skin," she told her, pointing to the sun.

"Why?" She asked, curious.

"The sun is considered the greatest source of energy to those blessed with fire," explained Tsukiko to her. "Pyro Channelers draw power from the sun to increase their strength when channeling fire. Without the sun, we're no stronger than non-channelers."

"Same limitation applies at night, when the sun is down," added Shinobu. "The moon may reflect light from the sun, but it's completely useless to a Pyro Channeler. Volcanoes and other fire-based sources on the ground may provide some energy to your ability to control fire, but they won't give you the same degree of energy as the sun will often do."

"So, basically, Pyro Channelers are only at their strongest when out in the presence of the sun," said Rumi, processing this information.

"Exactly, Rumi," answered Akira.

Shinji sat on the porch and watched the four women stand out and feel the sun on their skin, a lesson that could probably take a little up to an hour to finish unless Akira added the second lesson in the art.

"Don't forget the second lesson," went Tsukiko, inhaling through her nose and exhaling out her mouth.

"Proper breath control," added Shinobu. "Inhale through the nose…and out the mouth."

Rumi did as instructed, inhaling through her nose and out her mouth.

-x-

"…It's Asuka," said Asuka to Masamune, introducing herself to her future employer. "Asuka Langley Soryu. Most just call me Asuka. Pleasure to meet you."

Getting to the interview, since Anne-Marie, who had recovered enough of her strength to vocalize her request that her father converse with the redhead and employ her, Masamune had chosen for Ms. Soryu to begin with helping the other computer technicians advance the digital systems needed to correct any flaws in their medical programs. But while he did see that Asuka was simply trying to get on with her life that was free of NERV, he had…his vendetta to settle with Gendo for his attempted murder of his daughter and her tigress. He had decided long ago that if and should any sort of major harm would befall Anne-Marie by Yui, Gendo, NERV or SEELE that could, potentially, cause her death, he would cause them trouble as he felt that their goals weren't worth coming to fruition for any amount of hard work that wasn't truly noble or worthwhile if it came at the expense of so much pain and death.

"Such an honor it'll be to have you aboard, Asuka," he told the young redhead. It breaks my heart too many times to see young children growing up without the guidance of a parent. This was also a result of Second Impact. Even after things started to regain a semblance of normality, countless children around the world only have the luxury of their mothers for a few years before Kami-knows-what decides to take them for the so-called honor of being the soul of an abomination made by your dead best friend's daughter.

He could remember the day he found out about Yui's conception; he'd been away from Pema on a stressful business trip to ensure that their family-to-be wouldn't have to worry about financial concerns…and he had asked his best friend, the trustworthy Tai Kyoubou, to look after her until he returned home. He knew he was, unintentionally, hurting Pema with the constant separation and traveling…and he hated seeing her hurt…and himself for hurting her…and promised her that this trip he took was the absolute last one. But when he returned home, his wife had to confess her unfaithfulness to him; the night before he returned, Pema and Tai had a one-night stand, initiated by Pema herself, who gave in to her sexual needs that he wasn't there to fulfill for her. And Tai, knowing he had gone against his best friend's wishes to watch over his wife until he returned to Kyoto, didn't deny any that had happened between Pema and him, and even requested Masamune to beat him up for it. But Masamune did the complete opposite of expressing hate against his best friend and wife for their action against him; he begged their forgiveness instead of lashing out, that it was his fault for being gone so many times just to ensure a future free of hard times.

Even the revelation of Pema telling him that their one-night stand resulted in her getting pregnant didn't enrage him. In his childhood, his mother had reinforced in him her great lesson in being responsible for the choices that he makes in his life, for better or for worse.

Tai had offered to pay child support, but I told him not to, Masamune thought, sitting in his office, looking at his family photo again before he made a choice that he knew he had to live with for the rest of his life after he made it happen. My best friend, whose specialty was trying to develop renewable energy sources that were safe to use. He once told me that he felt that one day, he'd be on to something that was so unbelievable and intangible that it would make a nuclear power plant look like a cheap battery or something as a stopgap. And then, years later, he hears of this guy that published a theory that wasn't well-received by other scientists. He took fascination in it, believing that such an energy source could be used for the betterment of the world, but when he was invited to go to Antarctica for the research and development that was going to occur there, he turned it down. Even though he wanted to take part in the joy of discovery and science used to help people, he had promised to help his father at the nursing home he was in. When duty came into conflict with desire, he chose the road of honor rather than to pursue a goal.

Setting the photo of his family down, he looked to his personal computer, clicking onto dozens of folders to find the one he was looking for. Never the subject of any of degree of curiosity, he made it a hobby to be cautious of who he held conversations with every now and then, keeping track of words that were spoken, dates that were given, anything and everything seen, heard and said by him or others.

Hopefully, they won't be able to talk or walk their way outta this, he believed, finding the files he had kept over the years. Time for a lotta revelations to reestablish order.

-x-

"…What in the name of…" One of the male sentries gasped, seeing the large group of people walking toward their post and entrance to the town.

"Is this NERV-related business concerning the humanized Angels?" Another sentry, a woman, asked.

"Better call it in to the police and the town leader," went a second male sentry.

"Yeah," a second female sentry agreed, picking up a phone and dialing the number for the town police. "Uh, officers, we got about a large band of men and women, all wearing uniforms bearing NERV's logo, looking battered and what-have-you, approaching the southern entrance of town."

As the police were getting set to go out to the southern entrance to prevent a potential danger that might have been presented by this large group, back at the Rokubungi estate, Rumi was beginning her third lesson in the art of Pyro Channeling: Akira, still making sure that her daughter wouldn't try to play with fire, despite her maturity much of the time, instructed her to merely hold a leaf she was given with a small, smoldering hole for as long as she could without it burning up completely; this lesson was to demonstrate a Pyro Channeler's patience, restraint and self-control, the mental necessities when dealing with the burning element of power.

Since it was a big leaf, compared to Rumi's hands, this seemed like a lesson that would take longer than the first two. So, she stood on the dirt path, believing that it was the least likely part of the estate to catch fire in case the leaf did burn away completely and one of the sparks made contact with a combustible sources.

"You're doing alright, Rumi!" She looked over at Shinji, who was sitting on the steps watching her do her lesson.

She nodded in the positive, but then noticed her mother stepping onto the porch, looking like she had to perform her duties as the town leader once more.

Shinji looked to Akira and asked, "Is something wrong?"

"Just a bunch of people from that city," she explained, zipping up her coat. "About one-hundred-eighty-seven of them, most of them injured. Some of them we met during the festival."

She then looked over at Rumi and saw her still holding the leaf she gave her and asked Shinji how she was doing with the lesson.

"She's making steady progress," he told her.

"Hopefully, she won't echo my mistakes when I started learning the art of coercing the flames," she sighed, reminded that this was the same lesson that resulted in her back getting burnt. "I should be back much later."

"Be careful."

"Yeah. Got it."

She walked past Rumi and praised her for her efforts before walking out the gate.

-x-

"…Ritsuko?" Misato gasped, seeing her former college friend among the NERV workers being brought into the hospital for medical aid. "How'd you get away from Rei?"

"Most of us took a gamble and managed to escape," the faux-blond answered her. "That girl's psychotic in every sense of the word."

Bardiel was, in a bad way, impressed by the sight of so many people arriving at the hospital; never did he see so many in need of a doctor.

"You all got injured by just one girl?" He asked them.

"One girl…with an attitude," expressed one of the lower-level technicians to him.

"Yeah, I've met one, and she tried to kill me once."

"Tall girl, pale skin, blue hair, red eyes, wears armor made of bone and metal, a little naked and uses a large scythe?" Another man asked Bardiel.

"Yeah, that's her," he answered, identifying the girl.

As sixty-eight NERV employees that were hurt were currently admitted, Akira had arrived and met Misato and Bardiel.

"Met anybody out of them that you know, Ms. Katsuragi?" She asked Misato.

"Yeah. Two of them," Misato responded.

"Well, I'm ready to hear the reason to the 'how' and 'why' of their relocation from Tokyo-3 to here."

"About one-hundred-ninety-four people from NERV decided to try and leave the Geo-Front. Unfortunately, Rei Ayanami had anticipated an escape attempt and laid out traps allover the base and everyone else was left behind that fell into a trap of two, forcing the rest to flee while they still could."

Akira was shown a few of the people that had escaped from NERV, a mild frown of horror at the injuries they had sustained in the process of escaping. She had considered them lucky that they were still alive to see another day. Yet, when she met with Ritsuko Akagi again, the super-centenarian had a slight suspicion that the faux-blond was hiding something about Rei Ayanami that wasn't known.

Ritsuko was recovering a little faster by means of the Hydro Channeling practices the people used in their medical arts, though was irritated to know that she wouldn't be able to walk right for a while. At least she was rid of her head bandage and the bandages that covered her stab wounds given to her by Rei, something she was sure Misato had told Akira about in addition to the revelation of Shinji's illness that her mother inflicted upon him.

What have I done? She had thought, for the first time since she escaped with the others, using the would-be necessity of her work as a means to shield herself from the truth, and immoral consequences, of her work hours at NERV. What did I unleash when I made that accursed thing that Rei uses?

When the memory of her grandmother's murder and the death of her cat came to her conscious, she was reminded of Rei's words and how her behavior had changed, also reminded that, before her abandonment of Gendo and his goal, the First Child was never adept at living, only existing within the confines of the role she was given.

"…Doctor Akagi," she turned to the door on her left side of the room and saw Akira, accompanied with Misato and an aged doctor.

"Hello, Mrs. Rokubungi," she greeted her again; the last time she ever really saw the centenarian was during the time Sachiel had been revived, humanized and taken from NERV.

"I hear from Dr. Gyatso that you're not gonna be able to walk properly for a while," Akira told her, referring to the aged man beside her. "But he found something that sparked interest."

"Oh?"

That's when the good doctor held up a chart and looked at one of its papers.

"During the examining of your odd stab wounds that Ms. Katsuragi said you received, we found a fragment of what was found earlier in the remains of a man found on the roof of the hospital a few days ago. It was some sort of blend between an unidentified metal and organic substance. And Ms. Katsuragi also revealed that…you and another person…were stabbed by the girl we suspect killed the guy found here…and probably killed a few others, as well."

"She did kill a few others," Ritsuko told them, pretty sure that Misato didn't tell them exactly whom Rei had murdered.

Akira walked past her bed and looked out the window, gazing at the town.

"This murder happened just after the Angel known as Sahaquiel was humanized, and it occurred sometime at night before the sunrise," she explained. "Some of us can only assume that this probably might not have been the first murder. But we need information on what happened when Ms. Ayanami up and left Tokyo-3 prior to her arrival around here, Ms. Akagi."

"You know something about what happened, Rits," Misato told her. "You were there before Rei left."

Ritsuko sighed and nodded; if anything, she owed it to her grandmother and Kaji's relatives that what she knew about the weapon Rei possessed that she used to kill them with was revealed to the people that could deal with it.

"It was my fault," she revealed to them. "It was before and after the Sixth and Seventh Angels were humanized. I tried to appease Commander Ikari by proposing the creation of a weapon that was similar to the Angelbreaker, using the same technology that created the Evas."

"The Fallenbreaker," went Akira. "You mean…you made that thing that the girl wears?"

"Yes. It was still in the experimental stages, so there was never a plan to mass-produce it until, if ever, it passed every test made for it. But it functioned similar to the Evas, so only those born after Second Impact could wear it. We were looking for a proper candidate, but then Commander Ikari decided to give it to Rei. She didn't question anything about it and placed it on her arm…and something went very wrong…or it went very right in a bad way."

Akira turned away from the window to look at her, and looked disgusted…and angry.

"This young lady threatened to kill my daughter once all the Angels were dealt with, and as far as I know, she even threatened my grandson's life, as well, when I was informed of her visit to Shinji prior to the conflict with Bardiel." She told Ritsuko. "There is absolutely nothing right in a bad way about an artificial talisman that turns an albino girl into a sadistic murderess."

"It was never supposed to turn her into a psychotic…and there was a lot about Rei that nobody was ever supposed to know of." Ritsuko defended herself.

"Like why she looks like Yui Ikari and so on?" Akira asked, which made Misato confused; she had never seen a photo of Shinji's mother, but the sight of her half-sister gave the impression that they looked alike to a degree.

"Yes," she revealed, and then Akira made a gesture with her right hand that made the door close; she had used Aero Channeling. "It all started with the failed Contact Experiment of Unit-01."

Akira was reminded of her conversation with Kozo, but he never told her about Rei Ayanami's connection to Unit-01, probably because either she didn't ask him of it…or he himself didn't know of it.

"Yui Ikari volunteered herself for the Contact Experiment and was killed when it failed. Her body was broken down to its compositional components. Commander Ikari tried numerous times to bring her back to life, but all he got out of his efforts was her heart…or so he himself believed. That was Rei, but not the one you've seen."

"Not the one we've seen?" Misato questioned, confused by her choice of words.

"There were at least two of her," Ritsuko explained further. "My mother…killed the first one before killing herself…and then Gendo went and made a clone of Rei, the one that you know of right now."

"So, Ms. Ayanami is nothing more than a copy of a copy of an original," Akira expressed. "That…is messed up. It's so messed up, I can't even describe it."

As Ritsuko continued to tell all that she knew, the Angelbreaker, of its own volition, showed Akira, who listened but didn't question just yet, visual details of the Akagi woman, which seemed to explain why she seemed detached from the moral boundaries of her work and social lives. Akira never would've even suspected that Ritsuko's mother, Naoko, raised her without any proper supervision…or a father. In the following years, their relationship became strained and only related to one thing in life, and that was science. The information Ritsuko gave proved to be very solid in the visions of her past to the elder, current wielder of the Angelbreaker, especially toward the supercomputer called the MAGI, which was her mother's last project.

Naoko made the MAGI based off the three primary aspects of herself, huh? She thought, not really seeing the positive facts of having a computer system split between a person that's a woman, a scientist and a mother. But to do something like that would run the risk of creating too much conflict, too much anger. Jealousy, even. Worse is what Nemo taught me years ago, that you can't invest all of your emotions in an artificial construct that does whatever you instructed or designed it to do for you. That's almost as though what you created to leave behind as your legacy is all that matters to you.

The visions also showed that Ritsuko's presence the day her mother died was also a driving factor in Ritsuko trying to get out of her shadow and try to leave her own mark in history that was superior to the MAGI. But the sight of a little girl that bore an uncanny resemblance to Rei of the present, and, by extension, Yui herself, being killed after being told something (Ritsuko didn't hear what her mother had uttered as she strangled Rei) was not something Akira liked to see; it was rather disturbing. And then…to her greater disgust (even when she heard Ritsuko reveal it to them), she saw the extent of Gendo's unfaithfulness toward his wife (whom she felt was just as unfaithful) by having affairs with both Ritsuko and her mother! If this was truly his way of ensuring their loyalty to himself in order to achieve his unachievable goal, then she knew now that he really needed to be dealt with.

-x-

The leaf was almost reduced to ash by the time the sun was beginning to set upon the land, and Rumi still stood where Shinji had been watching her since Akira left. He found it incredible that his youngest aunt was being this patient with her lesson, and Rumi herself was impressed that her nephew, her…her love interest, hadn't left once.

"Two and a half hours straight, Rumi," he told her. "How are you holding up?"

"My feet feel like pudding and I'm getting hungry," she responded, and then the remains of the leaf had crumbled away. "I guess that ends my lesson."

Taking a step toward the front porch, Rumi's stiff legs started to function properly as they were put back to work.

"You were patient in that lesson for two and a half hours. I think that was the longest time you were quiet," Shinji told her as she stretched and flexed her legs.

But before Rumi could utter a response about her patience wearing thin, she had a vision: Yui Ikari had shown up in the city they had left once Shinji was rescued…and she either took the Fallenbreaker from Rei Ayanami…or the person she was seeing was Rei Ayanami, who was her look-alike. She had behind herself a minature pair of Evas modeled after Unit-01, but they were shaped more like dogs than humanoids, and their slender limbs ended in large claws.

"Everything happens as it must," she heard her say, "but not everything…Little Rumi."

"Rumi?" Shinji called out her name, ending her vision.

"Sorry, Shinji," she apologized. "The Angelbreaker gave me another vision."

"Good or bad?"

"Probably bad. And it makes me have to ask a personal question."

"Ask me or Akira?"

"You."

"And?"

Rumi climbed onto the banister and sat on it so that she was on a closer level of conversing with her nephew over what she was about to ask him.

"Forgive me for being out of line if I strike any nerves, but…do you…think about your mother?" She asked him, and sighed heavily.

Shinji turned his face away from her.

"I try not to, anymore," he answered. "My only memory of her is the day she died…the first day…where it seemed my sense of happy smiles and curiosity toward everything and everyone started to leave my life. I had forgotten that memory, due to the emotional pain of my abandonment…and it took a heart attack that nearly put me into permanent nap time to bring that horrible recollection back to the forefront of my conscious. And then, after meeting Anne-Marie and knowing of my mother from her point of view for the first time in my life, I can't say that my… That she was very well-liked by some people. Maybe she was no better than her husband."

Rumi then willed three strands of tentacles from her half of the Angelbreaker and used them like a hand of sorts to move behind Shinji's head and turn him to face her.

"I'm not… I'm not trying to turn you against her by asking of this," she confessed. "I just wanted to know what you thought of her."

"You don't like her, and that's easy to see. Yet, we don't know anything about her…except that she had a passion for science…and it seemed to alienate her from some people."

"You left out two other things: She was a sucker for that has-been jerk…and she was a key to a door with you on the other side of it."

It seemed like Rumi took every opportunity there could've been just to point out her love for the boy, but Shinji had more control over his own emotions…but this didn't stop him from seeking some comfort from the little girl.

"So, what you're saying is…that I'm the only good thing my parents ever did right?" He asked her.

"More or less," she answered.

"Arigato."

"Do itashimashite."

"Tadaima!" They both turned toward the gate and saw Akira leaning against it, looking rather wasted.

"Welcome home, Akira," greeted Shinji, as Rumi retracted the tentacles into her bracelet. "How was your visit to the hospital?"

Akira thought for a moment, and simply answered, "Not everybody I met today was very happy when they arrived."

"What made them want to leave the city?" Rumi asked her.

"A girl with a serious problem."

"Oh. Good for them."

"Yeah, good for them, but bad for the unlucky ones still in the city that's become a living cemetery."

"Well, how do you want to take care of the major problem, Mother?"

"I haven't decided yet. And your leaf, Rumi. What happened to your leaf?"

"It crumbled away after two and a half hours."

"Really?"

"I was watching her ever since you left to the hospital," Shinji vouched for Rumi.

"That's strange. It normally takes a shorter time than that to burn through an entire leaf."

"Maybe Rumi has greater control than we originally believed, Akira."

"Maybe, Shinji, but I won't teach her the next lesson until she's learned a few others from the other three elements, just to be on the safe and restrained side."

"Like how to turn hard surfaces of stone to sand or dirt to cushion your fall or turn water into ice and snow or how to move like a leaf in the wind?" Rumi asked.

"Exactly, Rumi," she answered, and then they heard a rumbling noise. "Any ideas on what to eat tonight? I'm open to suggestions."

"I'm willing to eat anything as long as it's not instant," Shinji suggested.

"Take-out?" Rumi added in.

"The only question is what will that be?" Akira told them. "Non-Japanese cuisine?"

"Chinese?" Rumi thought up.

"Thai?" Shinji countered.

"Shinji, that's too spicy to eat," Akira told him. "Mexican?"

"Italian?" Shinji countered again.

"Pizza?" Rumi suggested, as that was a great take-out choice.

"Thin or thick?" Akira asked, agreeing to that option.

"The thicker the crust, the greater the flavor," Rumi told her.

As they stepped inside, they sported Nemo, holding the kitchen phone in his hands.

"Way ahead of you," he told them, getting the number for the nearest pizza shop in town.

-x-

"Gaaaurgh!" Sora had gasped, waking up from once more from the same nightmare he'd been a victim of for years. "It never ends."

He raised his left arm up in front of his face as his panting calmed down. The new skin matrix proving to be indistinguishable from his natural flesh when covering an artificial body part; even his palm was covered in sweat.

"Stupid, phantom pain again," he sighed, getting out of bed. "I still feel where the bastards shot me with their bullets long ago."

As he entered his bathroom, he looked at himself in the mirror, examining his face. Removing the strands of hair covering his left eye, he turned his head left and right, barely seeing a difference between his eyes…except that his hidden eye was gold, not brown, something you didn't notice unless his hair wasn't covering it. And despite Masamune's assurances that the doctors could now remedy that mistake, Sora declined out of fear, reminded that the process of replacing his lost eye caused him great pain, even when they had a whole barrel full of anesthesia for him. Only Masamune, Anne-Marie and the doctors responsible for this mishap knew the half-truth to why he kept his hair over his eye, though Anne-Marie thought the look made him attractive.

FLASH! He found himself and five young boys in an abandoned building to hide from government cronies with firearms and harsh language. They were a quiet bunch, as he remembered them to be. The ones to escape from the cruel reign of the Japanese government when law and order didn't help the people whose lives were turned upside-down by Hell on Earth.

"We run from them until we're free," one of them told the others. "We don't live up to their cruelty."

"The less we listen," the youngest of them said, "the freer we become."

We thought we could do no wrong greater than the wrongs we were dealt with, he thought, watching them do what they had to do in order to survive outside the rules of pain and retribution. We were street urchins, rats without nests, wannabe masters of the dark times. We would rule our own, internal domains…and answer to no one but ourselves. But then…he betrayed us. He sold us out.

FLASH! He saw a younger version of himself, using a metal pole to stand because he sprained his right ankle tripping over a box. It was his turn to go steal food from the soldiers that were being used like security guards, but because of his foot injury, he knew he wouldn't get very far. So, out of desperation (and concern), the eldest of them went out to scavenge for food…but he never did come back. Instead, several soldiers came in his place…and unleashed the ravages of military coldness.

"Don't blame us, kid," a soldier told him as he tried to work through the pain of having his eye shot out by them. "Just following orders."

BANG! Sora, due to the severity of his phantom pain, along with the intensity of his childhood memories, reacted in the present the same way as he did when he was being shot at by the soldiers, who finished the job with a few rounds in his chest. Falling to the floor, he felt the pain of the bullets draining the life out of him, but just like the aftermath of a great devastation that befell countless lives, life still remained, and some of it was enough to restore him to consciousness. But for all intents and purposes, Sora was dead for a while before he revived. As the old pains diminished from what was left of his original body, he rose back up and looked at himself in the mirror again.

Is revenge the only thing that kept me alive all this time? He wondered, deciding to go visit Anne-Marie in recovery.

-x-

Gendo felt like a prisoner at the rate Rei was keeping him locked up in his office, and he had a new reason to be: Rei had made a ball and chain restraint and placed it on his left leg, deciding that strapping him to the chair was bad for his limbs, and that this would be better for him, allowing him his mobility, but limiting his ability to get away from her.

"Relax, get used to it for a while, and don't get any ideas," she had told him. "I made sure the ball weighs the same as a car…and that the chain was unbreakable. I should know. I made them out of the Fallenbreaker myself."

It was a terrible mistake to give Rei that thing, he thought, admitting his error, and it was a mistake to allow Ritsuko Akagi to make the thing.

"I was a fool to think that you could change for the better, Gendo, and I can't keep waiting for you to do something right with your life while hurting others. You've shown nothing but dark desires and hatred against any that had an opinion of you that may have been far from a lie. Because of your actions, your choices, and caring nothing for the people you've hurt, you may have condemned us all to pain and death." Akira's ageless voice spoke up in his conscious. "If I have to cross the line and put you away for good the next time I see you, I won't be held responsible if your erstwhile masters and whoever else may want you to kick the bucket of a weak, little boy that thinks he can be a god."

Kozo Fuyutsuki, on the other hand, was barely of anyone's concern at the moment. He spent the last few hours of his time acting as a doctor of sorts to the injured NERV workers that tried to escape since seven members of the medical staff had escaped. And as he assisted the doctors that didn't try to run away, Rei had decided to cast aside a shade of sorts of her Fallenbreaker and lend it Naoko to assist her in operating the MAGI, which was now the only thing running the maimed facility more than the workers that didn't run away.

The shade, acting only a choker-based necklace, worked as an extra series of extendable hands so that she could work better from wherever she sat. The choker resembled an upside-down crucifix with a miniature figure of an Evangelion stuck to it; Rei had become more colder in her misplaced sense of aesthetics, seeing a reversal of the ties that bind. Naoko could care less about her sense of art, so long as she lived. And personally, she wanted to see Yui suffer a fate that would've had her begging for the embrace of Death himself.

"On the final day of this month, everyone's gonna get what they've earned," Rei told her earlier.

Because everyone deserves what they've earned, she agreed with Rei, and I've earned a lot.

-x-

"…Don't leave me," said the younger boy to the older girl in the schoolyard as the rain fell around them on Nemo's iPhone's earphones.

And they never put the whole manga out on anime, Nemo thought, admiring Aki Sora for a long time.

Creak. Due to his earphones, he couldn't hear the loud sound that he would've heard had he had them off, and he paused his cartoon to grab his metal bo staff as a safety precaution. Sometimes, he hated the fact that his predestined element of change gave him a disadvantage of not knowing who was up and about like those with Geo Channeling could foresee. Opening his door, he poked his head out and saw somebody walking down the hall. Whoever they were, they were tiny from a distance, so he couldn't tell if they were large or small, and so he followed.

The grayish-white clouds and calm air brought little comfort to Rumi, who had found Shinji sitting on the bench out back.

"You know, I should be worried about you being up before the sun," she told him.

"Honestly, Rumi, I kept expecting you to sleepwalk into my room again like before," he responded, never taking his eyes off the sight of the cloudy morning sky.

"You still thinking about what Miaka, Bumi and Shinobu found out?" She asked him, bringing her legs up to her chest.

"That old, would-be story or myth about the four barons? Yeah. They sounded so much like those… It just…it has me a little worried about why people would want to create something based off of something so awful."

Rumi looked up at the sky and responded, "Some people are just too smart to not know how dumb they are sometimes."

"Rumi, that…doesn't make any sense."

"Yes, it does. The smarter you are, the dumber you think things, and the less morals you feel inhibit your ability to decide things. You think you're above others."

"Uh," they turned to the sound of a new voice and spotted Nemo around the corner. "Is this a private party, or can anybody join in?"

Rumi then scooted over to allow the bench to accommodate her brother.

"And what you said was a half-truth, Rumi," he told her. "Some people, while too smart to not know how dumb their actions would have on others, others are not dumb enough to know not what their actions would result in."

"You hydrokinetic, otaku philosopher," Shinji called his young uncle.

"Young babe magnet," he countered.

"Huh?" Rumi got confused with that taunt Nemo used on Shinji. "Babe magnet?"

Soon enough, the sun started to rise, shining light over the mountain and the buildings around it.

"Now, that's what I call a beautiful sight," Shinji sighed, once more impressed by the view of the town.

-x-

"…Shouldn't you still be resting, Anne-Marie?" Masamune asked his daughter, seeing her out of bed and doing crunches, working up a sweat.

"I heal faster when I'm not bedridden, Father," she told him.

"She's been doing this since she got up," he heard Sora say to him, "an hour ago."

Sora, who was sitting in a chair, made a hand gesture for Masamune to sit in the other chair.

"How do you feel, sweetie?" He asked Anne-Marie, who ceased her crunches and sat on her bed.

"I'm pissed," she answered. "I was nearly killed by a cretin we don't even like. What about Jade? How is Jade doing?"

At that request of information, the tigress had prowled into the room from outside the hall, sitting in between the two men.

"Did you really have to ask?" Masamune asked her, still having a hard time controlling his fear of the tigress because of the closeness between them; ever since Anne-Marie met her, Jade's become something of a surrogate relative to his daughter, almost even a replacement to her dog, maybe.

"Grrr," growled Jade.

"So, what now?" Sora asked. "If you questioned the cretin about the explosion, he'll probably deny having any involvement in it, despite the evidence of the lighter."

It was never necessary to hide things like the truth from Anne-Marie or Sora, as Masamune had told the young man everything they knew, becoming a confidant of sorts and not a former ward. And it was never a challenge to understand that what made NERV an organization not to be trusted were the people, or rather, the person, that controlled it. But it was still Gendo that caused the greater hindrance; Rei Ayanami was simply Gendo's…investment, but one he could no longer dominate.

"I…wouldn't worry too much about Gendo," Masamune expressed. "He's got his own problems to deal with. Then again, he's always had problems that he had to deal with…but chose not to."

Anne-Marie didn't like the tone of her father's voice and asked him, "Did you do something while I was recovering last night, Daddy?"

"What is truth shall always rise to the surface of the light," he spoke in riddles. "What is hidden away in darkness cannot stay hidden in darkness for too long."

Sora looked at him like he had lost his sanity and said, "You made a choice and it's going to affect many things soon, isn't it, Masamune?"

"Yeah," he answered him.

-x-

As the Twenty-Fourth of August continued to the middle of the afternoon, Akira, getting over some of the details she found out about Rei Ayanami yesterday, practiced her martial arts hitting a wooden dummy.

I can't believe they did this, she thought, unable to view the blue-haired girl as a person, anymore, and ended up bruising her left arm's knuckles as she punched the dummy harder, leaving an indent. I can't believe Gendo and Yui did this! I mean, they…they go and take something that's beyond their complete understanding and… They butcher it, maim it, sort out pieces and then make the parts they took look like a young girl, except the girl's not a girl, but something worse than people that give in to their lust, their hate. This is completely insane.

"…You're pissed," she turned to face Kanami, who had just entered the room and set a tray with two cups of tea down. "Care to talk about why?"

"Too insane to explain it," Akira told her as she sat down on the floor mat.

"Right… Like everything else that has happened this summer is normal," Kanami told her. "It can't be much more insane than some people actually wanting to bring about the end of the world."

Akira gave her a look like she had said something that was insane, but Kanami countered with her own look; it was obvious that the only adult non-channeler in the immediate family was not going to stop her persistence until her adoptive mother spilled her newest of secrets.

"Okay, okay," she sighed, sitting down with her. "When I went to the hospital yesterday, I met up with Ritsuko Akagi, who revealed some details that were like something out of a horror movie that involves science being abused in every imaginable way. And…it turns out that Rei Ayanami isn't really a girl."

Kanami frowned and responded, "Oh, God, you mean, she was castrated?"

"What? Castrated? No, not like that. I mean… Oh, where's Nemo when you need help in explaining these things the way they ought to be? I mean that Rei's not really a person. She's a…a…"

"A thing?" They turned to the door and saw Nemo, dressed in his jeans and sky-blue shirt.

"Yeah, Nemo," Akira expressed. "That's what she is."

"What the heck did that woman tell you about her?" Kanami asked.

"Other than being a genetic crossbreed? Rei Ayanami is nothing but a name with a face."

"A name with a face?" Nemo questioned. "Just that? Just a name with a face?"

"There's no way you could trace her backgrounds," Akira told them. "She has no legal background, whatsoever. No records exist that would tell you about her past, which never existed."

"You mean, she has no birth certificate? No medical records? Not even parents?" Kanami asked.

"That's exactly what I mean," she revealed. "Nemo, this sort of falls into your knowledge of science fiction, so could you describe this in elaborate detail, please?"

Nemo sat down with them and expressed, "Rei's an abomination of science that has been abused, wearing the face our former brother's wife, and is no different from an animal made by illegal genetic research and experimentation. Maybe when Gendo decided to adapt her a little better, he gave her the Fallenbreaker for that purpose, but she adapted too quickly for him to manipulate further. And now, after being fed the crap he gave her since before her acquisition of the artificial talisman, she turned on him, and probably hates everyone for what she is…and isn't, for what she has…and doesn't have."

"The worst any of us could say is that she doesn't have a soul of her own," Kanami expressed.

"She doesn't have a soul," Akira revealed. "She doesn't possess a soul that's like ours. Maybe similar, but maimed in ways that make her a pitiable individual."

"Zilla mixed with the Judas Breed," said Nemo. "It's almost saddening…extremely."

"OH! OH! NO WAY!" The three heard Miaka shouting in the living room, and ran out the fitness room to find out why.

"What's the glitch in your system, Red Mama?" Nemo asked her, and she pointed to the television, the news bulletin, in particular.

"…As you can still see, it's a frenzy out here in front of the temporary United Nations' building here in New Nagasaki," said a male news reporter on the TV, standing in front of countless people in the background, all trying to get inside the large building. "As before, several hours ago, media networks around the globe received a major leak in information that had been kept in the dark for over fifteen years by an anonymous tipster, something that select members of the UN must answer to. Is it true that the details behind the cause of Second Impact are not what they appear to be? Did an expedition to the South Pole result in a cataclysm that took the lives of half the planet? What is the Human Instrumentality Project that the NERV organization was tasked with fulfilling? And is it true that the UN is covering up several years of shady business dealings to hide or bury their dark secrets?"

"Hey, I heard Mommy shouting," they heard Taeko as she came into the living room. "What's going on that made her raise her voice?"

"People are going crazy in New Nagasaki," Miaka told her daughter, and then Rumi and Shinji showed up, followed by Mayo and Shinobu.

On the TV, the news media suddenly got even more out of control and charged down military soldiers that were tasked with guarding the entrances to the building, and cameramen and reporters were shoving their equipment into the faces of anyone that they got nearest to throw questions at.

"Whoa," went Mayo.

"It looks like a news media's greatest fantasy," said Shinji. "A media circus."

"Yeah," agreed Akira. "All they're missing right now are a few clowns, an elephant and some balloons and popcorn for the kids."

-x-

"…Aaaaauurgh! Aaaaurgh!" Ryoji Kaji screamed in great pain, as Rei drilled her Fallenbreaker's tendrils into his chest while examining his memories of his past, taking particular interest in using these memories to torment him, mentally, by replaying certain events that either brought him great pleasure…or great pain.

"I wonder which makes you scream the most, Mr. Kaji," she told him, her hair spiking up and down as her armored tendrils formed around her face, "the day you and Captain Katsuragi slept together…or the day you betrayed your friends and family to save yourself? Feel free to tell me anytime you wish."

Kaji felt like this girl was gripping his heart and brain with that talisman of hers, able to dive deep into his consciousness and probe him for whatever it was that she wanted to know from him. And he kept seeing the memories with great detail; there wasn't a memory he had that wasn't accessible to Rei. Each time he felt a great pain, he saw flashes of Misato…and then would see flashes of a group of young boys running from the corrupted laws of a cruel society. Of the boys in his memories, one face rose above the others: He was younger than himself by four years, almost very effeminate in his facial appearance, with much of his hair growth almost covering his left eye, something he had to pull the bang away from it to see, periodically.

"Mother always did say that I was the cute one," Kaji heard the boy's voice echo in his mind.

"She also says you're the good one," he recalled himself saying. "The cute one…and the good one."

Then…Rei ceased her assault on the man and kicked him in the face! As she forced him to relive his past experiences, she also absorbed and assimilated his knowledge, only to find that most of it was based on one goal, his only drive, which was the truth behind Second Impact and the probable Third Impact…and she found this knowledge to be a waste.

"You really need to get a hobby that has no obsessive drive," she told him, and then looked to the other captives in the room with her. "Okay, who's next to relive their days by the Fallenbreaker?"

She then turned her sights on the would-be guitarist on his off-hours, Shigeru Aoba, who expressed great fear of her as she approached him.

"Aah…aah… Aaahh!" He screamed as she grabbed his head!

Expecting his mind to flash painfully to his best and worst experiences, Shigeru was feeling the adrenaline burn in his body. But nothing happened when Rei touched him.

"Heh-heh-heh," he heard her snicker. "What's that phrase that people use? Oh, yes. I'm just bullshitting you, dude."

She removed her hand from his head and then grabbed a woman by hers, hearing her scream with the same intensity that Kaji had, reflecting upon her own best and worst experiences.

"HELP ME!" The woman cried out.

-x-

"…I see the update in the media frenzy hasn't distracted you from the arts, Rumi," said Akira, seeing her daughter out on the training grounds of the estate, performing the circular disciplines of Aero Channeling, getting better at it.

"Uh, yeah," she responded, "but some of those people at that building serving as a temporary home for the United Nations will have to answer for many things the reporters won't take 'no' for. Hmph!"

Sitting on a rock, Akira just wanted to know one curious detail from earlier.

"What were you doing earlier with Shinji?" She asked her, and the little girl stopped her movements with her arms extended in front of her body.

"I was reading to him," she answered her mother. "It was that old, nonsense poetry book about the owl and the cat."

"I seem to remember him only ever looking at the pictures in the book."

"Just because he has difficulty reading on his own, it doesn't mean he can't ask somebody to read something for him. Anyway, he asked me if I could read it for him. How could I say 'no' to him?"

"You wouldn't," Akira told her, and then noticed a wooden dummy target nearby. "Have you've been producing your wind currents toward that dummy?"

"Yes, but with very little results," Rumi answered her, and demonstrated her prowess over the air currents by sending a small stream of dust toward the dummy, only to see the stream dissipate within seconds. "My swords allow me to extend my wind streams by a bit, but with just my hands, they barely reach the dummy at all."

"That's normal. You're still young. I should teach you Hydro Channeling moves that will help you later on in life right now. Are you up to it?"

"Yes."

Akira then took her to the town lake where they took their shoes off to feel the water around their ankles and toes.

"We'll start with something basic…but powerful," Akira told her, and with a motion of her left hand, a rising stream of water came from the lake and formed into a small ball of water, dripping an excessive amount as it perfected its shape. "Try to throw a ball of water at me, but be sure to focus on the water."

Rumi then raised her hands in front of her and focused only on the water…and managed to lift up some of the water and formed it into a ball, albeit a small one. It wasn't bad for her first try, and she threw it at her mother, who allowed herself to be hit with it.

"Not bad for your first try, Rumi," she praised her.

Rumi then tried again to raise the water, and managed to form a larger ball of water. She then threw it at her mother and left a bigger wet stain on her dress.

"That felt better," she told Akira.

"Yeah, it did," she agreed with her, extracting the water out of her shirt now. "I think that for your next lesson, you'll learn to create walls of water."

-x-

"…You went and turned over evidence of who was responsible for the Second Impact, didn't you, Daddy?" Anne-Marie asked Masamune, watching the news on TV in her recovery room.

"Anonymously," he responded. "If they can't find the culprit, they won't suspect me."

Masamune then explained his reasons for doing so after so many years.

"Just because I handled their finances, it doesn't mean I'm an immoral or amoral person like they are," he told her. "I spent the last thirteen and a half years of my life handling all the finances of their shady business deals and investments, and I hated every second of it. But I held my tongue back during every meeting I partook in, and I kept my ears open to every word that was said. Anybody that didn't agree to abide by SEELE's rules were dealt with and their history wiped off the map. And then Gendo… He actually tried to kill you and make it seem like it wasn't his fault. His attempt to murder you…was the breaking point for me."

"But if they do find out, they're gonna kill us," she told him.

"They'll be running for a while before even the slightest hint of treason can be detected," said Sora, who had looked at the damage Masamune had caused by spreading the truth, anonymously, to too many reporters, television stations, newspaper sources and the like; by doing this, SEELE couldn't deny the truth that they would lose their grip on the world now.

BEEP-BEEP! Anne-Marie, Sora and Jade heard Masamune's beeper go off, which alerted him to his latest meeting with the council they detested.

"How do you know they're not gonna suspect you, Daddy?" Anne-Marie asked him.

"I've learned to keep straight faces and vocal tones when lying to people, dearest," he expressed as he got up and left the room to return to his office.

Sora sighed and expressed, "I pray to the gods that he knows what he's doing. The community here looks up to him."

Anne-Marie nodded in agreement with him.

-x-

"…How did this happen?!" SEELE 01 demanded to the members that were left after the media discovered their darkest secrets, which were only SEELE members 03, 05, 09-15; the others were considered missing due to the media hysteria.

Rei Ayanami, who had also become aware of the frenzy that had been generated by the news, was present during the meeting with Gendo on his knees and a collar around his neck; the keeper of the Fallenbreaker was just as curious to how the world's ignorant populace could suddenly learn of the secrets that have been kept from them to ensure that they wouldn't attempt to overthrow their government masters.

"How pristine," she declared to the remaining members. "The revelation was both quick and clean. Somebody had excellent details of individual backgrounds, dates going back since pre-Second Impact, knowledge of the Evas, the former Instrumentality Project and the list of locales heavily associated to SEELE, which includes NERV and its branches."

"Did Ikari do this, Ms. Ayanami?" SEELE 11 asked her.

"Impossible," she answered. "I've had him bound to his chair in his office whenever I didn't have a use for him outside the Geo-Front. The last time he was ever allowed to wander…was when I needed him to confirm a suspicion about this Broken Heart Maiden that freed the Third Child from my possession of him. Gendo…did you have anything to do with this beforehand?"

Gendo didn't answer her, and so she decided to discipline him by pulling the chain around his neck up.

"Aaaaurgh!" He yelled in pain; he deduced that the Fallenbreaker had given Rei a heightened degree of enhanced strength, as she was never this strong in the past. "I had nothing to do with this."

"You swear on your life?" She asked him in front of the council. "You swear on your…wasted, irredeemable, black-hearted life?"

"I swear," he groaned; Rei had been tugging the chain constantly while asking him.

"Heh-heh… Honesty will only get you so far, Gendo Mu. But it saves you from my wrath right now. He's telling the truth. He couldn't hide it from me."

"And what of you, First Child?" SEELE 12 asked her.

"Don't call me that demeaning designation," she warned him, "and what would I gain from exposing all of you to the world? There was no reason, no motivation, no cause for revealing these secrets to people. I killed Ritsuko Akagi's grandmother and her cat as payback for the years of clinical abuse; a scientist that feels that there is a definition for being happy about something, anything, anyone, will certainly express unhappiness over their oldest of relatives being murdered, not just for being related to a woman that served as your personal doctor, but for helping that dumb man, Ryoji Kaji, for trying to satisfy his obsessive search for his truth, which is part of the reason why I killed the last of his family along with the old hag! The search for greatness often requires that you sacrifice many things…even if the things you give up aren't even things. And after memorizing his memories, I found that he wasn't close to them at all."

"Any reason as to why you brought Naoko Akagi back to life?" Gendo groaned, and then Rei pulled the chain again. "Aaaurgh!"

"Nobody was speaking to you, fool," she told him, her voice becoming colder and full of malice. "Isn't this how you had me talk when you were in control, Gendo? Speaking only when spoken to? Oh, how my face must be the only part of me that reminds you of your wife. Oh, wait. What about Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki? Did he expose the secrets, Gendo? Did he?!"

She pulled the chain again, and Gendo howled.

"I don't know! I don't know!" He expressed.

"You know, he never did want anything to do with the goal you and SEELE had in mind. Maybe he did do it, just to get back at you and your masters for threatening his life when he discovered who was responsible for the deaths of all those lives lost to Adam's forced awakening. Summon him for me, Gendo, if you don't mind. We should hear from him."

But before Gendo could think of taking out his phone to call the aged man that used to teach him at Kyoto University, he nodded in the negative in front of her; he was getting fed up with her behavior, her disobedience toward him, and how she had taken NERV from him.

"Do it yourself," he told her in harsh words, but all that did was make her pull the chain again, sending pain down his body through the collar on his neck. "Aaaurgh!"

"Did you just talk back to me?" She asked him, and armored up before kicking him in his waist! "You you know one of the many things I hate about myself, Gendo? It's how I picked up some of your wretchedness when I was little. But I guess that's natural when you're molded in literal ways."

She then grabbed him by his neck and lifted him off his feet, just in time to see him hold up a gun! BANG, BANG, BANG! He fired three rounds at her face, but the armor around her shoulder blades had acted up and formed a face shield that absorbed the rounds. This, regardless of her surviving his attempt on her life, reminded her of her previous incarnation had been murdered out of hatred, which was what Gendo had for her now because she turned on him…but was reminded that he provided the means to do so.

"Funny, how I thought I had cleaned you of your firearms, Gendo," she told him, and then snapped his right arm, breaking the bones.

"Aaaaaaurgh! Aaaaaurgh!" He howled in pain, and was then tossed to the floor.

"You should look at yourself now," she sighed as the armor retracted around her face. "You've been reduced to a little bitch."

Manifesting the scythe blade on her left arm, she intimidated him with the upper edge. What would really please her right then and there was to show the council, the world, the Rokubungi family…that beneath all of his high position at NERV, behind everyone's backs, in the confines of his own domain, Gendo was nothing more than a weak and bad, little boy that thought he could get away with anything he did that was wrong.

"Summon the old teacher," she ordered him, "or else I leave permanent injuries on your body just for personal laughs."

Gendo looked up at her and felt terrified of her for the first time in his life this year. If he knew this would be how she turned out after receiving the Fallenbreaker, he would've made her pilot Unit-01 instead of Rumi, who wanted only to protect her nephew, when Shinji wouldn't. For the first time right now, he regretted allowing for the Fallenbreaker to be created from the samples of the Third Angel and the technology of the Evas. He regretted allowing Rei's development to spiral out of his control…and he also regretted sending her predecessor to drive Naoko Akagi to murder herself after killing her previous incarnation in order to do away with the MAGI creator.

"I hope you burn, Rei," he told her, defying her order yet again.

"Wrong answer, my burnt-out bastard," she responded, and morphed the scythe into a large, curved blade attached to her forearm.

Never in the whole of NERV HQ did anybody hear any one person scream so loud whenever in pain. Not even a man that was viewed as one of the most cold-hearted men of all time.

"AAAAAAAAAAAHHH!"

-x-

"Hmm?" Shinji went, removing the earphones out of his ears as he set aside his iPod.

Exiting his room, he spotted Mayo in the hallway, who, apparently, was coming to get him.

"Is something wrong, Shinji?" She asked him, wondering if he was in any pain.

"No, it's just…" But he was having a hard time describing what was his previous confusion. "Did you hear anybody screaming just a few moments ago?"

"No. Sorry, but I didn't hear anybody screaming, Shinji." She answered him.

"I thought I did," he expressed, wondering how he could've heard a scream when he was listening to a loud song he heard off of television.

"Dinner will be ready shortly," Mayo informed him.

"Oh. Okay, thanks."

She then slowly turned and walked away, but stopped and asked him, "Who did you think you heard screaming moments ago?"

"A man," he told her; that was the best way he could say it because he thought he heard a man screaming in great agony.

"Maybe you were hearing things," she suggested; due to brushing up a little on medical texts and searching the Internet for medical knowledge, the twelve-year-old girl found that, while a person could survive for quite a short duration of time without their kidneys if they used a dialysis machine (and in their case with the additional assistance of Hydro Channelers), sometimes, their minds tended to wander, leaving them subject to subtle moments of insanity. "It could happen."

-x-

Thud! Rei had dropped Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki to the ground, having discovered, and much to her disappointment, that the aged man, while having a previous desire to expose SEELE and the truth behind Second Impact to the common people, hadn't done so at all on account that he had given the materials that were admissible as evidence to Gendo, whom he wasn't even sure if he threw it all away, and stayed quiet about the truth out of the fear of being silenced by SEELE (though he had informed Akira herself about the secrets organizations had and were keeping from the general populace, but he wasn't sure if the centenarian would tell everybody).

Kozo felt like a used book right now. Investigating the scream the base heard, he found himself assaulted by the former Eva pilot that now seemed to take on a colder appearance of Yui with longer hair, having used her gauntlet's powers to read his mind, assimilating everything he possessed in it, right down to his darkest secrets and oldest fantasies.

Straightening out her hair before reapplying the bone and metal strand, Rei was walking back to the center of the holographic monoliths that represented the remaining SEELE members.

"Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki's an old bum…but not very dumb for an old bum," she told them. "He only ever told his childhood savior, Akira Rokubungi, Gendo Mu's former adopted mother, of the former goals you had in mind, but he has high doubts that she would tell the world. Who would believe an old woman that doesn't look her actual age? And with what evidence could she use to give to the feeble-minded media?"

"If Fuyutsuki didn't expose us to the world," said SEELE 13 to the others, "then who did?"

Rei then recalled the memories she copied from Gendo and Fuyutsuki, exploring their individual pasts, noticing that while Gendo had encountered his wife's side of the family a few times, even giving the aged man and his younger daughter the death threat should they ever try to make contact with Shinji, Fuyutsuki, merely due to choices not made, only knew of Yui…and had never met with Masamune or Anne-Marie Ikari. While she wanted to deduce that Masamune, the aged accountant running a medical technologies business dedicated to the people maimed by Second Impact, had broken the would-be code of silence, she chose to keep this possibility to herself; jumping to conclusions when questioning Gendo and examining Fuyutsuki made her wiser than to assume anything without further details and interacting with suspects. So she looked up toward the SEELE monolith belonging to the ninth member of the council, knowing that the person it represented couldn't see her, but decided to not question the possibility of their hand in this matter that was really unimportant to her.

"Whoever did this will be dealt with in due time," she announced to the council. "For the time being, as the end of this summer approaches even further, those that remain free in SEELE should relocate to secure locations, as your current ones may not be safe, anymore."

-x-

In the dead of night, Akira awoke yet again, but not from any nightmares or visions of the past or future caused by her half of the Angelbreaker. No, this was something trivial: The call of nature. She got out of bed and walked down the hall to the nearest bathroom.

Sniff! Her nose caught a smell that alerted her to something foul.

"Aah, what in the name of…" She covered her nose and checked the bathroom, only to find that the toilet had been used…but not entirely by whoever was the last person to use it. "My children. Even when most of them are all grown up, they can still be a little childish."

"Yeah, I thought I had flushed that," she turned to the door and saw Shinji.

"This is your doing, Shinji?" She asked.

"Yeah," he answered her, and then came over and flushed the toilet, eliminating the source of the foul odor before grabbing a can of air freshener and spraying the room with the scent of flowers. "At least it helps me to learn from my mistakes."

She nodded in agreement with him…and then pointed to the door to inform him that she, being the reason that she got up, needed to use the toilet.

He nodded and closed the door on his way out, allowing her the privacy to handle her business. As he made the choice to return to his room, he heard a door opening…and spotted Rumi coming out of her room; he wanted to believe that she was sleepwalking again like before, always heading to his room.

"Huh?" He went, realizing that Rumi, if she was truly sleepwalking, would've entered his bedroom, but seeing her walking past his door and further down the hall, disappearing around a corner. But she looked like she was sleepwalking.

-x-

Rumi had no honest clue of how she ended up back in Tokyo-3 and deduced she was dreaming again. The city was complete ruin, with some of the buildings having fallen onto their neighboring buildings, shattering glass and littering the streets with debris. But what really caught her attention was the sight of Unit-02, looking in complete disrepair; its arms were missing some of their protective, armored plates, the torso area was leaking a reddish-blue liquid that might've been blood, with the four eyeballs hanging down from the head, which was completely deprived of armor, revealing that this Eva was indeed modeled after a creature described as being, as her elder siblings had revealed to her, "red as blood with a head possessing four eyes and two mouths".

Ugh, she mentally shuddered, disgusted by the Eva laying on the ground. This has got to be the foulest dream I've had so far.

Then, after walking past the Eva, she noticed a woman several feet away from Unit-02, sitting against a large, concrete slab. She looked like she was dressed more for bed than for outdoor activities, judging from the way her dressed appeared, and in addition, based on Rumi's own perception of the woman and her limited knowledge of different cultures and the understanding of ethnicity, the lady was certainly not of Asian descent. Not entirely. Then, recalling from an earlier time in Tokyo-3, Rumi recognized the woman in greater clarity.

"Um…Mrs. Soryu?" She asked the older woman, seeing her raise her head to face her. "Yeah, you are. You're Asuka's mother."

"Asuka? Yes. You're the little girl she met during a festival, aren't you?" The woman, Kyoko, asked.

Rumi bowed as she said, "I am (she then looks back to the Eva). Did you…really help build that (she pointed to the Eva)?"

Kyoko looked toward the damaged behemoth and responded, "Yes. I thought it would be used as a testament of people's greatest achievement through science. Heh-heh… How deluded I was."

"Where are my manners in a first meeting?" Rumi questioned herself, reminding herself that these two have never truly met. "I'm Rumi Rokubungi. Sometimes, people call me Little Rumi, due to my size."

"Likewise, for I have misplaced my manners, as well," Kyoko responded. "Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu, at your service."

Rotating between looking at the older Soryu woman and the red Eva, Rumi had asked her to elaborate on how deluded she truly was in creating the Eva.

"I hated my husband," Kyoko started, "and everything that happened after my divorce with him was a result of letting my anger over my broken heart consume my sanity. It wasn't long after I had gotten married that I longed for a family of my own…but nothing happens the way you imagine them to. I threw myself into my work with the GERHIRN organization, using it as my escape from the heartache. A while afterwards, I had my daughter, Asuka…and for a while…I was able to put aside my hate."

"Because you had somebody to live for? Somebody that would care about you?" She asked her.

"Yes. Yes… Unfortunately, my maternal instincts weren't as pure as they should've been," she answered Rumi. "Perfection, social status, power…and control… I let all of that consume and steer me in the way I went and poisoned my own daughter's mind."

The little girl sat down and uttered, "That wouldn't entitle you to acceptance from the public in your later years. You'd be accused of negligence and improper child rearing, something I'd rather accuse a different pair of parents of simply because someone I love tried to take his own life because of their negligence, their absence…and lack of guidance that he could've followed."

"You mean, the Ikari couple?"

Rumi's eyes widened before returning to normal and she answered, "Yes. How'd you know?"

"I only know about them…because earlier in my researcher career, before I had Asuka…I was drafted into working for the GERHIRN organization to aid in creating and perfecting the Evas," she confessed.

"Drafted?" Rumi questioned, never hearing of that word.

"Meaning I was obligated," she tried explaining as a shorter definition of what she meant to the girl, but Rumi didn't get that, either. "I had to help in achieving something I didn't believe in, that I wanted nothing to do with."

"You mean, you were forced," Rumi then expressed.

"Yes."

"And you couldn't just say 'no'?"

"There were people behind the organization…that don't take 'no' for an answer," Kyoko told her.

"Bad ones."

"Yeah."

"Somehow, I don't think you were selected to help build a giant mockery simply because of your brain, Mrs. Soryu," Rumi told her, needing to be honest with herself; she wasn't sure how she knew, but she just knew, in her own way and from her own experience, that those abominations weren't right in any degree in the way they were built…and the way they worked when she discovered with Shinji what was required of them.

"For once, I agree with you on your opinion, Ms. Rokubungi," Kyoko told her back.

Rumi, whose hands were behind her when she sat down in order to keep her from falling backwards, brought her arms to the front of her, revealing her right arm encased in a metallic gauntlet, catching Kyoko's eyes.

"That gauntlet," she uttered, and Rumi took notice of the Angelbreaker.

"It has a will of its own," the girl confessed.

"It reminds me of an old tale I used to hear about. The Trinity Glove, by some old man that heard of it from other old people, based off some myth."

"What was the myth about?"

"Twin sisters and their elder brother from an ancient past had to go on a journey to protect their queen's empire from a dangerous army. To fight the army, they had this gauntlet that was rumored to have chosen them to protect others from death. It made them almost invincible in their battles…but it also isolated them from the people. "Until their journey was done and the quest fulfilled, the Trinity Glove's chosen wearers shall not know harmony with the world". It's the sad part of the story, but it's the only part that made sense to me growing up; until you've accomplished something that only you can do, you will not know peace."

"There is such a thing as deriving some measure of satisfaction in what you're doing, you know," Rumi told her, knowing this for a fact; her experiences with the Angelbreaker, learning to control the elements, understanding the martial arts and so on had allowed her to enjoy much of what she did each day in her life. "Although, there are those that derive some satisfaction from doing things they shouldn't be doing at all if it hurts others."

"You know, you're smart for a little girl."

"I'm told I mature too much."

This, of course, reminded Kyoko of how Asuka, due to factors caused by herself, had matured so much that she hadn't the chance to enjoy a normal childhood filled with joy and laughter. It wasn't just the Eva that turned her daughter, initially, into an obsessive perfectionist or somebody that felt they needed to be better than others, it was also her fault, and it was her most grievous fault that she instigated this former path to damnation.

"I should thank your mother and you for setting Asuka free from the Eva," she told Rumi.

"It's unnecessary," Rumi responded. "Though, I hope that Asuka's at least enjoying some measure of happiness now that something that causes pain is no longer part of her life."

"You're quick to judge the Eva."

"I have every right to judge it quickly. Why build something so awful you know is going to lead people down a path to an early doom, and claim that it saves them? And I just recently discovered that the Evas were based off these behemoths from the world of darkness ruled by the masters of said world. Tell me, would you have really made your daughter pilot something that you knew could end her life, just to save others from an enemy you didn't fully understand, that you didn't try to understand?"

Kyoko turned her face away from the girl and answered, "No. Even if the world was truly coming to an end, I'd never make her throw her life away to save people, knowing she'd die. What kind of mother would that make me?"

"One of the bad ones," Rumi explained; the only thing she knew that made a mother bad to her child or children was whenever she did something extremely unfavorable, like lie to them about something or had them do something that they weren't taught was wrong…or even being made to commit murder out of love or devotion. "And it's always the bad mothers…that are undeserving of their children."

Kyoko couldn't deny her words to be true. There were quite a few mothers that, only after Second Impact, either due to circumstances beyond their control…or because they chose not to take responsibility for their choices that resulted in their life-changing turning points, were guilty of committing treason toward their children and even abandoning them, not even hesitating or trying to think about redeeming themselves and earning their children's forgiveness. And her memories, before and after the experiment she was made to participate in, showed her the extent of her hurting Asuka with the Eva, her mortal body's incarceration in the mental institute, and her death.

"Do you think I'm a bad mother?" She asked Rumi. "That I've hurt my daughter for years after I died?"

"Yes… But only through trying to make her be perfect," Rumi answered. "There is no such thing as a perfect person. There's always been people that were acceptable for their morals and positive flaws, knowing that they would try to change themselves to be better influences toward other people…and the unacceptable people that can't or won't change their ways to be better toward others or want other people to be more like them or just what they would want them to be like. If I had a brother that was being taught the martial arts by my mother and, while he was accepting of learning such methods of self-defense, he wanted to be a regular school teacher instead of a karate instructor, Akira would allow him to pursue his goal if it was what he truly wanted. But…if I had a brother who was being taught the same arts…and wanted to be a bank robber and be able to use the art to harm police officers and innocent lives, she would forbid this from ever happening because you're only to fight when you're placed in danger…and never to take a life unless you have, absolutely, no other choice. There's good and bad, moral and immoral, yang and yin. The fewer bad people there are, the better the world is because of the good people that guide it on the right path."

"I guess that I'm guilty of many things I've done, then. All I ask is that Asuka forgive me for my transgressions so I may move on from this prison that is the Eva."

This update from Kyoko confused Rumi! The Eva as a prison didn't make any sense to her.

"I'm sorry, but the prison that is Eva?" She questioned her. "Asuka said that you passed away a long time ago, when she was little. When you pass away, you either go up to this beautiful place high in the sky…or to the underworld."

Kyoko could now understand that Little Rumi clearly had no understanding that with mothers and Evangelions, dying wasn't as simple as one would think it was once upon a time.

"I've never seen a white light that you're told you see when you die," she told her. "I've never seen angels or a large, golden gate, demons or Death himself. In the Contact Experiment, all I saw…was an abyss of darkness and pain. A part me was ripped from the rest of my body, but it didn't feel like it was my body that was being ripped in two; it felt like it was my mind, my soul, my very will. It was like I was in two places, afterward: One that was in complete darkness with total sensory deprivation…and the other was the institute I was sent to after the experiment failed. I remember the days that came and went during my time there…but I couldn't feel anything for my daughter, who was reduced to watching me from outside my room while I took care of some doll like it was her instead."

For the shortest time in their conversation, Rumi, for about fifteen seconds, wanted to believe that maybe, just maybe, the woman was lying to her about her earlier years during Asuka's childhood, but something told her to trust in the Angelbreaker to confirm whether or not that she was lying.

"I remember Asuka trying to get my attention…and then myself, devoid of any attachment toward her…trying to end her," Kyoko continued. "I was stripped of my devotion toward my daughter…and then I killed myself. Killed my body. I spent the last years of my life within the Eva, trying to piece together my existence. And what a painful, tormenting, and horribly-unforgivable existence it has been. Everyday, for the last decade, I've been forced to watch my daughter become somebody that lived for violence, to prove she was better than others, and to push others away from her heart to keep from feeling any degree of emotional attachment."

Somehow, Rumi was able to understand that Kyoko was speaking of two different lives she lived after the experiment she participated in that ruined Asuka and her; her love for her daughter that was a good, pure, honest devotion…was locked away in the darkness, leaving the rest of her, unfamiliar with such a sense of duty toward her child, an empty shell of sorts that couldn't relate to Asuka at all and demonstrated her unfamiliarity by using a doll to express herself. It was no different from what she learned of her sister, Kanami, who grew up hating her own mother after her experience with dolls, and strove not to become anything like her toward her own daughter, Mayo. But the difference between them still was that, while Kanami had others to help her get over most of her problems, those that, as far as Rumi was concerned, were willing to help her, Asuka had no proper guidance, no alternative path to take, and no one willing to show her the way.

Is this the fate that befalls anyone that is associated toward a behemoth created by scientists that decided to do something they really shouldn't have done? She wondered, and her gauntlet's jewels glowed a little bit, as if reacting to her mental question.

"I…I never believed what I heard from Yui Ikari or her teacher telling me about the Evas being the pinnacle of human existence," Kyoko then told her. "I never gave the research put into making them a second thought that it was all for mankind's benefit in dealing with an enemy we knew nothing of."

"Since when is anything the pinnacle of everything we know about?" Rumi asked her. "Tell me something, though…and be honest about it. If…by some sort of a miracle, you could come back to the living world, get out of the prison that is the Eva…what would you do with your life restored to you?"

"Is…is this a test of my honesty…and my status as a giver of life?" Kyoko asked back.

Rumi then got up onto her feet and answered, in a firmer tone of voice, "You better believe it is."

"I'd beg Asuka for forgiveness…and the chance to be her mother again. A good one."

Maybe it was due to her naivete and the fact that she was still young in most people's view, but Rumi believed the Soryu woman. Her body was lost to death…but her soul, her essence, her will…had been imprisoned within a construct that would've probably impressed and disgusted her brother, Nemo, at the same time for different reasons, altogether.

"I've learned something a while ago that is a power that others should perform a great measure of their time within a day, a week, a year or a lifetime: The power of patience. The power of restraint and self-control. Wait for a sign, Mrs. Soryu. The day will come when this shall all end. But until that day comes, those responsible for hurting others must be dealt with first before those deserving of happiness, of redemption, will be set free toward the path of a glorious future." Rumi then uttered, speaking a way that was not her own, but of the Angelbreaker and the wisdom of the previous wielders.

-x-

Naoko, curious of what was going on with Unit-02's glowing eyes, stood in front of the red behemoth and watched as the eyes ceased in their three-hour glowing of bright orange. She didn't really suspect anything out of the ordinary, but there was the theory that, by either a minor flaw in its design or a supernatural phenomenon, the soul of the Eva was probably trying to find a way to escape from the Adam-derived cybernetic organism.

"What could be going on in that behemoth?" She wondered aloud.

"I wouldn't know," went Rei, reminding Naoko that she was right there on the umbilical bridge with her. "I can't acquire knowledge from those whose souls are bound to the Eva…or those I simply cannot touch. But it matters not. The day approaches closer."

"How can you be so assured that things will go smoothly when everything else has fallen into disorder and many truths have been revealed?"

"It has been said that the truth shall set you free…and I hope to believe in that…because I want, more than anything else in the world, to be free."

Yet, despite her knowledge, Naoko didn't understand or comprehend the entirety of what Rei meant by that. The girl seemed free as it was, turning against Gendo and developing great degrees of hate for him and his wife, also hating their son for some reason (which she wanted to deduce was simply due to being related to them) and the little girl known as Rumi Rokubungi, but maybe there was more to what Rei was saying about obtaining freedom. Maybe she was still, in an odd way, a prisoner.

-x-

Rumi fluttered her eyes as she awoke to the next day, finding herself in the candle room; she believed she had sleepwalked again, but this was the first time she woke up in a room that wasn't Shinji's. The candles, of course, weren't lit, and Shinji and Akira were present, as well, laying around her on the floor.

Okay, she thought, rising to her feet, this is a new weird for me.

She went over toward her nephew and slowly rocked him awake.

"Hmm…hmm…" He groaned as he slowly got up and looked at Rumi. "I think I need glasses now."

"Oh, really?" Rumi challenged him.

"Yeah…'cause suddenly, you're a lot more beautiful than you were the day before," he expressed, and her cheeks blushed a bright pink while her face remained calm.

"You know, Shinji, I think it's against the law for you to perform sweet talk toward me, due to the age gap between us."

"Oh, that wasn't sweet talk, Rumi, I meant every word I said. You look better than yesterday." He told her as he stood on his feet. "And last night, you went and sleepwalked into this room instead of my room, which I found odd."

"Sounds like you wish I had sleepwalked into your room."

"Maybe, Rumi."

"Careful with your positive tension," they both turned to face Akira, who they had forgotten was in the room with them…and was up, laying on her front and had a small, fiery outline of a heart in front of her face, hiding part of her dreamy expression.

The young pair looked back toward each other and were left feeling embarrassed by her presence.

"Oh, don't mind me," Akira told them. "Just pretend I'm not here."

If this is Akira being a little immature, it's a little creepy, thought Shinji, who now noticed that, when he looked at Akira from the distance set between them, the centenarian bore an uncanny resemblance toward her daughter. Man, these two are like large and small mirrors.

"…Well, they gotta be in this room," they then heard somebody outside the room, and then Mayo stepped inside, seeing the three and the flaming heart symbol that Akira had ceased creating with her Pyro Channeling abilities. "Found them, Mother."

Kanami showed up behind her daughter and took notice of her baby sister and only nephew with her adopted mother laying on the ground in front of them.

"I don't even wanna know," Kanami told them, sighed, and then walked out of the room.

"Breakfast is being prepared," Mayo informed them, following her mother.

Akira, Rumi and Shinji then left out the candle room and headed for the kitchen. Rumi, personally, didn't want to talk about what happened in that room…or what her dream last night was about, instead focusing on the present, which was cluttered with the last of her current worries: Rei Ayanami, who was taking her time in wanting to hurt her.

-x-

Masamune knew there would be Hell to pay for exposing the truths to Second Impact to the world, but he never anticipated that Rei Ayanami would try to get to the bottom of the revelation by means of force. Because neither Gendo nor Fuyutsuki knew that it was he that ratted on them all, even giving the media a list of names of the people that actually wanted the devastation to happen, the girl wouldn't think to deduce that it was him, even though she knew already that he was the only one that hated what SEELE was doing to begin with. As far as Rei probably knew, Masamune was just an accountant, someone that manages the finances that pay for the resources and services of NERV and SEELE, a major nobody that did only what he was instructed to do whenever he had to make sure that their wallets didn't get lighter and lighter.

"Are you sure nobody here has to worry about getting put on the news, Masamune-Dono?" Sora asked the aged man.

"I'm sure," he answered him. "I gave the media the names of everyone responsible for what happened fifteen years ago and those that invested in the Evangelion and Human Instrumentality Projects that they sacrificed everything for. The United Nations' ignorant members, the FBI, CIA, even the military powers that be now know who's who, where they live, what they've done…and will be looking for them if they try to run."

"So if they run, they'll be hunted to the ends of the Earth," Sora sighed, "and if they get caught, they'll be condemned for their crimes…and if they get loose, they'll have the dogs chasing after them."

The door to Masamune's office opened up and in came Anne-Marie, dressed back in her security outfit and looking as she did prior to the explosion. Her tigress, Jade, followed her in and sat against the desk.

"The cleaners have begun repainting the walls and replacing the broken furniture," she informed her father, standing in front of him, "but they're suggesting that the kitchen be modified with an electrical stove and oven to prevent another gas-based explosion from ever occurring again."

"Right. Okay. Have them do so." He instructed her, and she left out the room. "One other thing, Anne-Marie. Have you met Ms. Soryu yet?"

Anne-Marie turned around and answered, "Not yet…but after my rounds are done, I intend to."

He was still worried about having his daughter return to work after just getting out of recovery after a day of mending. Even Sora worried over her, but she had insisted on being allowed to resume her role as the head of security in the building, as it was the only thing she had the freedom of doing that allowed her to be constructive with her time.

"Sometimes, I think you should've let her follow her dream of being a veterinarian," went Sora, looking out the window like he always did.

"Believe me, I would've let her become the president of veterinarians all around the planet if I could," Masamune told him. "But could you imagine the repercussions of letting her do so, knowing who her sister is to her husband…and who she was to everyone else that took interest in her work?"

Sora did imagine them, and each vision of the future of the 'what if' was always unpleasant, with Anne-Marie either subjected to a life of experimentation…or being double-tapped in the back of her head.

"God-forsaken, immoral scientists," he muttered, though Masamune heard him clearly.

"Which ones?" He asked him.

"The foul, black-hearted ones that take more interest in their theoretical euphoria and proving that they're right about whatever they think they're right about than to help others properly, either by looking over their medical records to find solutions to any illnesses or simply not interfering in their personal lives." Sora answered, which made Masamune think about Yui again…and thinking that it was about time he came to terms about his legal daughter after putting his feelings of her aside after the revelation of her choices that forced him to get involved with her benefactors and sheltering Anne-Marie ever since to keep her safe from other scientists that could view her as a type of lab rat.

Forgive me, Pema, he thought, taking out his photo of the family again. This is the end of my relationship with Yui.

-x-

"…Whaaah! Whaaah!" Shamshel awoke to the cries of her baby sister, whom she shared her cell with; because she was the second oldest and more responsible than their big brother, Zeruel, it was only fitting that Shamshel be the one to take care of Armisael the most.

"Okay, sis, okay," she yawned, getting up. "I'm up."

Armisael, who couldn't even voice out her opinions or needs, was then picked up out of the bassinet and held her close to her chest as she rocked her softly, silencing her cries.

"Yeah, you're the motherly type, Shamshel," she heard her brother, Zeruel, sigh, which irritated her.

"Zeruel," came Sahaquiel's voice from another cell. "I'm sorry for saying this, but could you just cease with the pride and hatred? You're getting on everyone's nerves."

"Make me," Zeruel challenged.

"Zeruel," a voice much higher in tone than the other, speech-capable siblings put together, uttered out, and Zeruel became a bit frightened. "That's enough."

All the remaining siblings present in the rehabilitation center woke up to their father's voice as he, out of his cell, dressed in a pair of baggy pants and a sweater, was helping an orderly bring breakfast to the siblings. As Adam was not in the typical standard of needing to be rehabilitated, he found some semblance of rehab by helping the staff deal with his children confined here until it was decided that they were fit to be out in the world.

"Some of us are actually adjusting to our new lives quite well," Adam told his firstborn, "but you long for the old days, which are impossible to re-obtain. Even I can't go back to being what I used to be. I'd rather not, actually."

"Am I the only one left with some sense at all?" Zeruel questioned, feeling everybody had been tamed by the Lilin except for himself.

"You're a complete jerk, Zeruel!" One of the Israfel Twins called him. "Enough with your wounded pride. Let go of the hate. It's no wonder why Bardiel hates you more than the rest of us, excluding Armisael and Shamshel."

Adam looked at Otsu Israfel, being the one who uttered the truth toward the eldest sibling, and sighed. The last (and only) time Bardiel came to see them, at the insistence of a girl that he seemed to like a lot, Zeruel had expressed his contempt toward their little brother. And Bardiel, despite his wanting to leave after hearing that, stayed a while longer after Shamshel thanked him for coming to see them; this might've left the hunchback boy without feelings of hatred toward his eldest sister, who was actually the nicest of the bunch, something that this Taeko, who was with him, found meaningful.

"Surely, if you were the one that was assaulted by this Rei Ayanami, you'd be close to wanting relief from the emotional pain that was inflicted upon you," said Sachiel. "Hey, I'd hate the girl that dealt me my first end if she tried to do me in a second time, but I've not seen her at all…and it's hard to continue hating somebody if you've never even spoken to them."

"Sachiel, when you fought the girl, you only lasted three minutes with her," Zeruel told him. "And that was before she even possessed that damned talisman."

Sachiel, of course, had nothing further to say about that truth; of all the siblings, he was the unique one, having gone up against Little Rumi, who didn't possess the Angelbreaker at that time, and was defeated by her in a mockery of their father.

"Which would make him better than you, Zeruel," said Arael to them. "Sachiel goes up against a girl that values the life of this boy she likes that's older than she is…and Bardiel is dealt his life-saving, life-changing defeat at the hands of the same girl, assisted by her mother, of course, and the only difference is that there was no battle between them that could even be called a battle…like there was with you against them."

"You're lucky I'm restrained in my cell, Arael, otherwise, I'd be over there in your cell in three seconds before I'd try strangling you." Zeruel expressed.

"I think if I hadn't played favorites in the past, you'd be a different person, Zeruel," went Adam to his son. "And one thing I told Bardiel when I went to see him at the hospital, before I left, of course, was that I was done playing favorites."

Shamshel was now bottle-feeding her baby sister when she asked, "Done playing favorites? Meaning that Zeruel's not your favorite son, even though he's the oldest? Meaning that there's no competition between us siblings? No position of attention between the favorite and the hated?"

"Exactly," Adam told her.

As their father pushed the cart down the hall, Zeruel remained quiet. All his life, he prided himself in being his father's favorite, that he was the strongest of the siblings, inferior only to his old man. But now, after hearing this revelation that Adam was through with playing favorites, this left him questioning his position as the superior one.

-x-

Wow, thought Asuka, going over the programs that assisted in perfecting the formulas that allowed for the synthetic skin the company produced to be indistinguishable from regular flesh. Not even NERV was capable of applying these techniques to people. The blood substitutes and underlying layers of muscle fibers… The prosthetic limbs they cover are able to send sensation to the nervous system, allowing the people wearing them to feel with their artificial body parts. And all these theories and groundbreaking developments… They cost a fortune alone to try out and prove.

After reviewing the seventeen programs and making sure that they were up to date, she decided to look over the list of people in Kyoto that were patients of Medical Angel and check their statuses. There were almost one-thousand people here that had a synthetic replacement or more; some girls with prosthetic arms, legs or eyes, a couple of boys with artificial ears and lungs, elders with monthly treatments in their fights against minor forms of cancer. The list went on, but then Asuka stopped on one name that, in an odd way, stood out a little: Sora. There was no last name, and, according to the date his file was created, he was a special patient of Masamune's after Second Impact.

"Excuse me, Hiroshi," she asked one of her fellow computer technicians. "Who's this Sora guy that's been here the longest out of everyone else?"

"Oh, he's one of the special cases of Masamune Ikari," he answered her. "He got hurt to a point that he needed extensive regeneration to over half his body in the following years. Several artificial limbs have been surgically attached to him to replace his left arm and right leg, an artificial heart until an attempt to clone organs was put into action. Beyond that, Sora's a conundrum. The only ones that know his last name are Masamune and his daughter, along with at least five of the doctors that worked on regenerating his body. He doesn't talk much about his past, either."

And from the look of his current photo in his file, Sora seemed deprived of certain emotions; he looked calm, but there seemed to be anger beneath his uncovered right eye. This, combined with Asuka's curiosity, made her wonder where, exactly, had she seen a face like his before.

If his hair were a little longer, I could almost mistake him for a girl, she thought. Hold on. I'm sure I've seen him somewhere before…but where?

As the redhead continued to scroll down the list of patients, updating each record, the man without a last name, Sora, was on the roof of the building, sweeping the ground of dust and clearing weeds that were foolish enough to sprout from the cracks.

-x-

The sound of his clothes sliding against the floor as he was being dragged someplace awoke Gendo to the sight of Rei's back, and his right leg gripped in her left arm. He thought he had died a while ago after Rei had stabbed him in his abdomen, but he would've considered that to have been a merciful given…and that Rei, expressing her hate, wouldn't have allowed him the gift of his death. And to his horror, his injury had not been treated; he was wondering how long he'd last without medical aid.

"R…Rei," he groaned. "What are you doing?"

"And, finally, he speaks," Rei responded, dragging him into a large chamber; it was one that he was just as familiar with as she was now. "Take a good look at where we are. Look at the woman that never bleeds…that can't bleed because she does not possess blood."

Gendo looked up and saw Lilith, but she was deprived of her mask, revealing a head without a face, and the Spear of Longinus had been recently removed from her body, allowing her to regenerate her lower proportions, which still showed that she had a long way to go before she could be capable of complete mobility.

"What have you done?" He asked her.

"Your goal, your poisoned dream of becoming the master of everything in existence," she uttered, her back still facing him, "it revolved around what you called the forbidden union between Adam and Lilith once all the other Angels were dead. SEELE, the ones that want to become gods, as well, desired Lilith and the Spear of Longinus with some Evas never created that were to serve them. Pity…how things never went the way either of you wanted. But as time progressed for me, many things became clearer to my mind, helping to uncover the obstacles that are in my way to being completely free from everything and everyone. Can you imagine it, Gendo? Being trapped in darkness for a long time…and then being trapped somewhere else for another long time? That's how I feel about being imprisoned by you and Yui. But the Fallenbreaker… It acted as a key to a door, unlocking it…and releasing me from the minor prison that you kept me in. And it'll serve as a key to a much greater door."

Gendo deduced that Rei had a revelation of who she really was…and was trying to reclaim her true identity and status of authority.

"Rei…this isn't right," he told her.

"It's not about what's right, anymore," she told him, turning to face him. "It's about what's supposed to be fair and fixed. If it's broken, fix it. If she's hurt, heal her. If they're scattered, unite them."

Gendo tried to move, but his arms and legs barely responded to his brain.

"You won't be able to move for a while," she told him, seeing the futility of his attempt, and then dragged him further down toward the pool of LCL…and threw him into it. "Count yourself lucky you won't drown in it, but you won't recover as well as I have in it. If you ever manage to get rid of that bloody hole I gave you, you might actually live to see me come back down here…in the next six days, of course."

"Six days?" He questioned, not understanding this.

"Patience, fool," she called him, and then left him alone.

-x-

"…You're getting better, Rumi," Akira praised her daughter, helping her correct her Pyro Channeling stances, having begun teaching her the proper, basic movements to direct regular flames before getting to use them. "It looks like we can begin the usage of fire now."

"Really?" Rumi asked, worried that she may goof up. "Maybe I shouldn't."

"Oh, it'll be an easy move," her mother told her, pointing to one of the torches. "All I want you to do is try and direct one of the flames toward the ground in front of me."

Rumi looked up toward the torch beside her and wondered if she could achieve such a task; this was so different from the other lessons of controlling fire…or any of the other elements.

"Okay," she agreed, and tried to clear her mind of everything except for the fire burning out of the torch beside her. Just try not to set anything on fire, Rumi.

Up by the banister on the porch, Shinji watched them while periodically looking through the pages of his scrapbook, wondering if he should consider creating another one later on…if he lived to see old age become part of his future.

"Yo, Shinji-Kun," came Taeko, and the boy turned to face his nine-year-old cousin.

"Hey, Taeko," he greeted back. "What brings you out here?"

"The same thing that brings you out here. Of course, the thing isn't even a thing." She spoke out, looking between the supports of the banister and seeing their grandmother and young aunt train in the art of fire. "Has she started moving fire yet?"

"Not yet," he answered, "but she's about to."

Rumi reached out toward the fire with her left arm and directed it toward the ground in front of her mother…but the fire didn't respond to her mental command.

"Heh-heh-heh," Akira chuckled. "I wasn't expecting you to get it right on your first try. That would've been remarkable. Again."

She tried to direct the flame again, but all it did was blow her way, barely a few inches away from the torch it burned on.

"Did I forget something?" She asked Akira.

"Nope," she answered her, and then Rumi tried again to direct the flame towards the ground.

The fire made a move further away from the torch, but it burned out within seconds, not even close to the ground.

"Hey, she's doing better," said Taeko.

Yeah, Shinji agreed mentally, but she still has a long way to go.

Rumi, after failing for the fifth time to direct the flame toward the ground, looked over toward Shinji, who merely watched her try her best…and gave the victory sign with his left hand. This put her anger over her efforts aside and she tried again to direct the flame from the torch.

"Urgh!" She grunted, sending the flame from the torch…and succeeding in hitting the ground in front of Akira, who stood her ground as the fireball struck the dirt.

"Congratulations, Rumi," she praised her. "You've just achieved the third step in becoming a Pyro Channeler, not to mention the youngest girl in town to do so."

Rumi then tried directing another flame from another torch, just to make sure it wasn't a fluke, and it struck the ground, as well.

"Oh, I'm getting better," she expressed.

-x-

"…Are you two for real?" Ramiel asked the Israfel Twins, seeing their shared artwork of a dream they had last night.

"Why would we lie about something like this?" Kou asked him.

"It seemed like it actually happened," added Otsu.

Arael examined the four drawings that the picture resided on and was immediately repulsed by the degree of savage and carnage that one of the people in the picture expressed against the other person.

"And who is this other person that's being harmed by the abuser?" She asked her sisters.

"You know who it is, Arael," Otsu told her.

Shamshel and Sachiel looked at the picture and Armisael cried at the hostility of the scene.

"We'd better inform Father," Shamshel suggested, worried about the one person that seemed to be in danger in the drawing.

Adam, who was now performing janitorial duties in the women's restroom, thought he heard one of his children using his parental name and exited the stall he was cleaning (and he found it odd that the women's restroom was much cleaner than the men's restroom). The door to the room opened up and one of the security guards came in and informed him of a request made by his eldest daughter that played the role of the would-be mother to her baby sister.

"Okay, thank you," he thanked the man and dropped what he was doing, putting a sign on the door that stated the room was out of order.

-x-

"Now, that's more like it," went Rei, impressed by her own work, even if much of it was based off the same research that created her Fallenbreaker and tied her to the Evas. "Now, can you girls tear individual holes in that wall over there?"

Naoko, disbelieving that the reincarnation of the girl she once strangled to death had decided to use the technology to produce a different variety of what she had assisted in creating, had to admit the sheer brilliance of Rei's success, with three of them made so far.

"Exactly, how many of these critters do you intend to spawn for yourself?" She asked Rei.

"I figure the remaining forty-three spares should yield about the rest of these minions," Rei told her. "They don't do much else, anyway."

Naoko looked at the three that began ripping through the steel wall and asked, "Did you really have to model them after that one?"

"It's a demon, no matter how you view it," Rei expressed. "Could you really picture them looking anything like angelic beings from the old myths and fairy tales, Dr. Naoko Akagi? Ever?"

Looking at them again, Naoko realized that, despite the cosmetic appearances of each Evangelion unit, none of them could ever show details that would embody beings of light or justice; the Evas weren't even capable of being described as guardians or protectors.

"No, Rei," she expressed, "I can't view them as anything but this."

-x-

"It was bitter work," said the aged man in the cartoon, "but the results were worth it."

Unfortunately, Rumi had a hard time focusing on the cartoon with Shinji and Mayo; her mother had left about half an hour ago in response to a call from the rehabilitation center, and she was worried about her, almost as much as she was often worried about Shinji. And this was probably the only time she chose not to wear her half of the Angelbreaker, as it was simply a day to learn more of the elements she could control.

"I'll be seeing you again, little girl," she heard Rei's voice repeat in her mind. "Afraid that I might want to hurt you or do something cruel to Shinji? Let my voice haunt you whilst you sleep."

"Ugh," she shuddered, getting Shinji's attention.

"Are you okay, Rumi?" He asked her.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. I'm fine. Probably just slight chill." She answered.

"That sounded like a lie, Rumi," went Mayo, sitting on the floor in front of the TV. "Honestly, what's the matter?"

"It's nothing, really," she told them.

Down in the hallway, Taeko, having took her bath, was walking towards her bedroom when she decided to go to the living room and ask her cousins if Akira came home yet.

"Hey, did Akira come back yet?" She asked them.

"Iie," Shinji and Mayo answered her, and then Shinji looked toward her.

"Needed to know," Taeko explained her wearing a towel and not her clothes.

"Okay," he expressed.

Rumi looked at him and noticed the way that her younger niece came in and left out, and turned her nephew's head to face only her.

"Focus here!" She told him.

"Yes, ma'am," he responded.

"Heh-heh-heh!" Mayo giggled. "She's got you where she wants you."

Rumi frowned at her and pointed toward the television and said, "Focus there."

-x-

"This is what we saw in our dream, Mrs. Rokubungi," echoed Otsu Israfel's voice in the back of Akira's mind as she walked down the streets of the town; after her late-night meeting with the humanized Angels in the rehabilitation center, she needed time to herself to get over the drawing she saw and the things she heard. "We really must thank you for changing us when we fought you and your daughter. We couldn't imagine ever being able to perform arts and crafts without additional digits. In our dream, we see this city, probably the one you call Tokyo-3, and there are many people there as the sky is set ablaze. The people seem to be turning into…pulp or red-colored water, screaming in agony before this giant of a woman with tentacles and blades covering her body. But then…this woman, this…ethereal maiden…comes to set them all free and put an end to the red-eyed lady who knows only pain and death."

"She looks like me," she had told the twins, stopping on the Old Iron Bridge. "Except it looks like a bit of my age has caught up with me to leave scar-like wrinkles under my eyes."

"Is this a normal reaction to what could be a premonition-based dream, Mrs. Rokubingi?" Bardiel, who had been requested to show up at the rehabilitation center earlier than Akira to confirm any additional information behind the drawing and its hidden meanings, asked her.

"You wouldn't know for sure, unless it was someone in your position," she had told him, and took out the picture from her jacket to examine it again.

"Thank you," he had responded to her response. "You said 'someone', as opposed to 'something'."

It was then that the twins had taped the four drawings together and folded them to hand over to the town leader.

"You may wanna hand this to your daughter," went Kou to her. "It might have more meaning to her than to anyone else."

Akira sighed in regret when she remembered asking why the drawing would make more sense to Rumi than anyone else.

"Because the woman in our dream… The one with the scar-like wrinkles, facing the bad lady that you confirmed as Rei Ayanami… It's not you that she's fighting. It's your daughter." Otsu had revealed, which disturbed Akira.

"A rising angel against a fallen one," she uttered, tracing the etchings and lines of the crayons and color pencils the Israfel Twins used to create the large drawing that detailed their shared dream. Rei Ayanami…and Lilith…are one in the same person. But it seems that the Rei persona is so maimed in her existence that she seeks to restore herself before seeking to put an end to Rumi.

The depiction of Rei Ayanami seemed to speak for itself: She was a giantess surrounded by people, either screaming or crying in agony as they were beginning to melt away into swirling winds of red and black, being funneled into a hole in her left hand as the city in the background seemed to fall into disorder. And in the midst of it all, on the far right of the picture, Rumi, who looked like an older version of her mother, stood in the cyclone of mayhem, prepared to face Rei for what seemed like the first time and the last time.

"Akira?" A voice called out near her.

"Aaahh!" She gasped, turning to her right and seeing Camille. "Oh, Camille. It's only you."

"Sorry if I scared you," Camille apologized.

Akira folded up the picture, replaced it in her coat and leaned back against the railing of the bridge.

"What brings you out here?" She asked Camille.

"I was out delivering a talisman to a guy that moved here five years ago," she answered her. "What are you doing out here?"

"Oh, I just left the rehabilitation center. Learning something new."

"There aren't any more Angels that want to hurt Rumi, right?"

"No. They've all been humanized and detained. They're not a threat."

"You don't seem happy about something, though."

"It's nothing, really."

Camille then invited Akira to her workplace for tea. This was the latest that the town leader had shown up to The Temple Treasure.

"You know why some people are nocturnal, primarily?" Camille asked her.

"Cases of insomnia?"

"Barely. Their ancestors were believed to be watchers of tribes. They had excellent night vision and could see what lurked in the shadows of the night that others couldn't, so they would stand guard while their fellow tribe members could sleep peacefully."

"Wow. I guess that should be sufficient as an alibi for the living dead, then, huh?" Akira chuckled as she sat down near Camille's work desk.

"I've looked up different traces of vampire mythology and got that down, as well," Camille expressed. "Is it true that, about eighty years ago, you met a woman whose mother was a vampire?"

The town leader sighed and answered, "Yes, that is true. Not something I believed in like the existence of people that were blessed with the gift of the elements…but, yes, I did meet a woman that was a vampire. She was turned by an assassin who was one himself a month after her daughter turned four…when she herself was twenty-three years old…and lived the last forty years of her life as a creature of the night, feasting on animal blood to survive. It was only because she had someone of her own blood that was her link to her humanity, however much was left of it, that she went to great lengths to never engorge on people."

Camille then uttered, "I apologize for bringing up any bad memories, Mrs. Rokubungi."

"No, it's okay. They weren't all bad. Not many people truly believed that vampires existed…or that some would refuse the tendencies that make them a fearful bunch. And…my encounter with her in the dead silence of the night answered a few questions I used to have on vampires: While being a race that lived off the blood of their prey, they could eat regular food to a small degree, they couldn't become full-fledged members of the undead until they severed their ties to their humanity and gave in to their thirst, doing so would cause their hearts to cease beating, and they can't enter one's home unless invited by the owner, just like a Unity Channeler or a regular channeler over one-hundred years old."

"But…what about undoing the effects of vampirism? The possibility of restoring a victim of the undead to their original state of being?"

"That exists only in the movies and comic books. Once you're turned, there's no going back. Even finding and destroying the one that bit you wouldn't undo your fate…but it's okay to believe that by going after the guy…or woman that gave into their bloodlust and destroying them will at least save what's left of the true you."

"And…this woman did face the one that turned her?"

"With my help, that is. I was against the possibility of having to spill blood after meeting the assassin; my Aero Channeling teachings never stated anything about how to deal with the undead, only that life is precious and sacred."

And yet…she couldn't forget the night that the vampire woman that still held onto her humanity, Chika Fujikawa, pleaded that the town leader accept that Kuroda, the vampire that turned her, was beyond any shred of redemption and needed to be stopped because he lacked any respect and appreciation toward those that lived in the day and the night. She helped put an end to the vampire only by burying him halfway into the ground, allowing for her daughter, Asami, whom Akira once believed to be the mother and not the daughter, to drive a hot rod into his chest, causing incineration and putting an end to the nightmare that was his reign of darkness; she couldn't be charged with murder if the guy wasn't killed by her. But the cost of defeating the assassin was high: Chika, still feeling the drawbacks of her vampirism, wanted to prevent any further bloodshed that was human…and asked to see the sun for the final time. It was the only time the town leader had seen a vampire reduce herself to ashes in a non-gruesome way; her body, exposed to the rays of the rising sun, slowly dissolved in the wind as she looked relieved and released from a great pain that had consumed her body and almost consumed her soul…as her daughter sat by her side shedding tears. Akira had a new-found sense of respect toward the undead that wouldn't hurt the living, even if it was to survive themselves, as a result of that year she met the two women and assisted in lifting their curse.

The town leader then sighed as she removed her Angelbreaker bracelet and set it down on the desk.

"It would seem that the more things do change around me, the less they stay the same," she told Camille, "and the few people I meet in the past are left alive in the present that I actually know."

Camille looked at her…and then at the bracelet that was probably the greatest treasure the planet would ever know of, even if it was just one half of it.

Akira saw the way Nemo's girlfriend looked at the talisman and expressed, "Does something like this even have a value that is measured in economics, Camille?"

"I wouldn't know unless I examined it…thoroughly," she answered her.

The town leader then picked up the bracelet and held it in front of the young woman.

"Go ahead," she told her. "Satisfy your curiosity."

Miss Moto couldn't deny that the desire to know how much value could've been placed on a talisman of power that held unspeakable potential as a means of healing the world…but while her business side had this urge to know, her moral side had a greater hold on her decision.

"No," she informed Akira, chuckling. "Seriously… I can't take that, even to investigate its worth."

"What?" Akira gasped. "But last time, you couldn't wait to find out how much it was worth."

"Huh?" Camille went, confused. "What are you talking about?"

"I said that…" But Akira realized that she was also confused about what she said to her. "Oh. Sorry about that. It must've been from the other timeline that I spoke of this."

She looked around the large room and found several items of various sizes that weren't seen the last time she came here, of course that was when she was looking for Rumi, and then something came to her mind that didn't make much sense to her.

"Say…do you still have those four relics that belonged to these four women that claimed to be the reincarnated priestesses of the Four Guardian Gods that were believed to actually be the celestial embodiments of the four, mythological animals of China's ancient past?" She asked Camille.

Camille looked puzzled; what Akira had asked about was almost as sacred as the Angelbreaker itself.

"Only my grandmother and I know about those relics," she revealed. "I haven't even told Nemo about them yet, so how did you find out about them?"

"That's something I wish I knew how to answer you about," Akira responded.

As Camille then poured herself and Akira a cup of tea, the young woman expressed about why she didn't want to go finding out the economic value of the Angelbreaker due to its purpose of saving the world from irreversible ruination.

"If everything learned about it is as pure as the water of a sacred spring," she started, "then you and Rumi are the only ones meant to be wearing the Angelbreaker, as you two were chosen by it. It's no coincidence that, when it was a rusted, decrepit gauntlet the day Shamshel attacked the town and the museum, it placed itself on your wrists…and…until your destiny with it is fulfilled, I doubt that you both can escape it."

"Who could escape a talisman that can think and make its own choices?" Akira asked her, though it was a question that had many different answers to it.

"Though, in theory," went Camille, "the Angelbreaker is worth more than all the UN members, the former US presidents, diplomats and mayors put together."

"What about the black, white and gray markets?"

"Been there…and can't total up with that. Maybe even more valuable than all the nations of the world."

Akira drank her tea and let the warm flavor wash over her throat.

-x-

"…Ah, it looks like many of these people have had their minds crushed," went Rei to some of the other members of NERV, terrifying them as seven of their members had, seemingly, died from Rei's Fallenbreaker's tentacles and tendrils violating their brains.

"Miss Ayanami," went Kaji to her, "you are seriously out of your mind."

"Maybe," Rei told him, and then sent out a small spear at the woman behind him, killing her, "but I have been a prisoner for a long time, so I guess this is expected."

She then threw a spear at a man on her right, killing him. For the past three hours, she had killed more than seventeen people, robbing them of their memories, their experiences and the like, ignoring some of the few she deemed as having regular histories that weren't so special. But with the inspector, she decided to save him, seeing that despite his sins, he still had a thing for Captain Katsuragi.

"And why should you even bother stating it?" She asked him, walking some of the dead. "You sold out your childhood friends and your little brother to save yourself when soldiers threatened to kill you for trying to steal food and supplies. Their blood is on your hands, just like how the blood of those I kill are on Gendo, his wife and Ritsuko Akagi's hands."

"Well, what about your own hands?" He asked her.

"Oh, I can't really concern myself with being on the wanted list of serial killers. Didn't Gendo or Ritsuko ever tell you? Officially, I don't even exist."

She then left the room before he could ask her what she meant by that. For now, the less everyone knew, the safer she would be until the final day, five days from now.

-x-

The morning of the Twenty-Sixth of August was foggy, as the weather was suspected to be for said morning. Only bits of the sun's rays were able to get through the clouds and onto the homes of some of Akira Town's residents. That was enough to slip into the room of Tomoyo Kudo and wake her before her alarm went off.

"Ow," she groaned, irritated by the sun's rays that got through the blinds of her window. "I knew I shouldn't have recycled my curtains last year."

As she got out of bed, she traveled down the hall and went passed her sister's room…and then quickly turned back because she thought she saw something that wasn't supposed to be in said room. There wasn't anything that seemed out of the usual; none of Xiaolongnü's stuffed animals were moved from where they were placed, her bed sheets were tidy, there was not a speck of dust on her carpet or anything to indicate that her curtains had been tampered with. Tomoyo had to assume that it was just wishful thinking that, just maybe, her sister's spirit had shown up.

"And for the last two years, I thought you were haunting me," she uttered out. "Why didn't I ask Akira if the Angelbreaker possessed the power to restore life to the dead?"

She entered the kitchen and started preparing her breakfast, she took a look of a picture that her sister had drawn when she was three: It was of a giant, snow-white being that lived in the darkness that held a large, black marble in their hands.

"It was an idea that came to me a while ago," Xiaolongnü's voice echoed in her mind. "A giant woman…with bad intentions. She wasn't really a bad woman, but something really awful happened to her to make her believe that everyone's bad. So one day, she has an idea and decides to change the world into a place where she's taken everybody into herself and they can't hurt her ever again. But the problem is that every person taken by her is locked in a place where there's nothing for them to do, no one to see or talk to. No light, no sound. Just dark silence. My picture's based on a question: What could've happened to a woman that wasn't bad to make her think that every one else is bad?"

That was an interesting question that had many possible answers from Tomoyo's point of view. A great many things could've happened to a woman that wasn't bad to make her believe the rest of the world's people were bad. A poor childhood, unstable relationships with others, mishaps caused by those that felt they could do what they wanted and get away with their crimes and so on.

"Huh?" She looked at the drawing more thoroughly…and wondered about something unusual. "Why does the giant woman remind me of that Rei Ayanami girl Akira and I saw while on the roof that day?"

-x-

Shinji couldn't remember the last time he woke up from a night without his imagination (or past memories that were long forgotten, for that matter) creating unusual dreams or nightmares. He felt well-rested…but he also felt a little weak; he assumed his body was paying for those three cups of apple juice he drank last night. Turning his head to the left, away from facing the blue and green-painted ceiling of his room, he found, for the umpteenth time, that Rumi had sleepwalked into his room and was asleep beside him. She had her head rested atop his arm, which was holding his locket, and her right hand was holding her dog tags. While he could've tried to wake her up, he decided not to; it was still early and he didn't want to disturb such a pretty face.

Knock-knock-knock. A knocking came at his door.

"Shinji, it's Kanami," came the person knocking. "Are you awake?"

Before he could respond, Rumi, hearing the knocking, awoke to the new day, seeing that she had sleepwalked again.

"Why?" She asked, which made Kanami aware that her baby sister was in their nephew's room.

"Good morning, Kanami," Shinji replied to his adult aunt.

Outside his room, Kanami sighed and wondered when Rumi would stop sleepwalking into Shinji's room, whether or not he was there. She didn't have much hope that yesterday's discovery of her asleep in the candle room was the end to her periodic, nocturnal journey to his room.

May today be without stress, she prayed, walking toward Akira's room and knocked on the door. "Akira? Are you awake?"

There was no answer, so she decided to enter the room…and found it empty; Akira's bed hadn't even appeared to be slept in.

She must've not come back last night, she suspected.

It was only when she and Shinobu had entered the kitchen and living room, did they find Akira; the town leader, Unity Channeler and their surrogate mother had fallen asleep on one of the couches.

Shinobu leaned on the sofa and poked at Akira's left shoulder.

"Akira?" She went.

"Hmm?" Akira responded.

"How do you like your eggs? Over easy or scrambled?"

Akira opened her eyes and answered, "Scrambled today, Shinobu."

"Okay…and what's with that big piece of paper?"

Akira looked at her right hand and the drawing the Israfel Twins gave her to give to Rumi.

"Just something I'm giving to Rumi later today," she told her; it wasn't something that needed to be shared at all right now.

-x-

"…Masamune-Dono!" One of the younger members of the company's medical staff ran into the aged man's office. "The comatose patient, Kyoji Mikamura…"

The young man was out of breath by the time Masamune asked, "Yes?"

"He's…he's… He's awake," the young man panted, and this revelation made Masamune leave out his office to the floor his grandfather was housed on.

Sora followed suit, wanting to meet the elder his medical guardian and Anne-Marie had hoped would wake up from his coma for years.

"Tell me," went Masamune to the young man that had told him his grandfather was awake, "has he spoken with anybody since he revived?"

"Only your daughter, Anne-Marie," the doctor revealed. "She was the first to find him awake."

Exiting the elevator on the twenty-fifth floor, where the coma ward was stationed, the three men walked down the hall toward the room that was assigned to the building owner's grandfather, seeing Anne-Marie helping the awakened elder onto his feet.

Kyoji, remembering that he had fallen in the aftermath of trying to save the people, hadn't felt this weakened since he tried to channel the giant wave and prevent much death from occurring in Kyoto.

"My…my feet…" He slurred, having not spoken in years, but getting control over his throat. "My feet feel like mud."

"You haven't stood on them since you went to sleep," Anne-Marie told him, and went to grab a pair of forearm crutches to help him stand.

"Grandfather," Masamune uttered, getting their attention.

Kyoji looked at him and recognized him as his grandson-in-law, only a few years older.

"Masamune," he greeted. "It's good to see you."

"Likewise."

"You look older."

"You've been asleep for a long time, Grandfather."

Using the crutches to stand on his feet, Kyoji looked out the window of his room and saw that much of the town was submerged in water.

"How long was I asleep?" He asked.

"The year is Twenty-Fifteen," Anne-Marie explained. "Two-Thousand-Fifteen. You've been comatose since the day you dealt with much of that tidal wave. Fifteen years ago."

Removing his left arm from the crutches, Kyoji touched the glass of the window as he continued to gaze out at the world beyond the room. There seemed to be people out and about on small walkways that were above water and in boats, but the only other question he wanted an answer to was how many lives did he manage to save from the wave.

"You saved a lot of people that day, Grandfather," he heard Anne-Marie tell him.

He looked toward her and chuckled.

"Has it really been fifteen years?" He asked her, and she nodded in the positive. "It felt longer than that. Wandering in the darkness, trying to find my way back to everyone."

Anne-Marie and her father were certain that he had other questions to ask of, and reasoned that such questions would've been easier to answer once he had eaten.

-x-

Shinji wasn't feeling well; it wasn't his lack of kidneys or his cancer acting up again after his last relapse or anything he suffered from relating to his body's medical health flaws and requirements. He just felt like there was something wrong with the way today was progressing. Every time he nodded off, he woke up thinking he heard somebody screaming. He spent the day around the house, either reading Nemo's comic books, watching Rumi train in the elements with Akira, Shinobu and Tsukiko, or lay around in his room, hooked up to the dialysis machine that filtered out the waste in his blood that he needed his kidneys for.

Rumi, once more, hated that she couldn't use the Angelbreaker to help him because of the bindings of fate and fear. With the Angels dealt with and being handled by the staff at the rehabilitation center (or the hospital, in Bardiel's case), all that remained on her list of opponents that wanted her out of the way was just Rei Ayanami, and she needed all the skill and prowess of the elements she had in order to deal with her, instead of relying on the Angelbreaker or her hook swords. But of all the elements, it was Pyro Channeling that would be hardest without the genuine ability to create her own fire without the aid of a comet that would arrive at the end of the summer; she believed the one thing that would allow her to achieve the feat, and thereby becoming a true master of the art, was the great suffering Shinji would ever experience: Death itself. Every time she imagined him suffering due to some manner of pain caused by Rei or even Gendo and his wife, she saw herself with her hands on fire as she was overtaken by her own rage and pain at losing him.

Akira took notice that whenever she saw her daughter thinking about something that made her angry, her little hands began smoking; this was a premature sign of a Pyro Channeler's inner fire trying to break out of the body, but couldn't do so just yet, though it gave them an edge in certain cases, such as burning flesh of their enemies or melting through metal or ice.

Thinking of something that would make you lose control…is nowhere near the same as experiencing it, she thought, watching her throw one of her swords at a dummy target, impaling it in the torso.

"Whoa, Rumi," went Tsukiko, surprised by her sister's strength in hurling her sword. "You oughta try out for the Olympics one day."

Shinobu examined the target and saw how the small blade on the lower handle was wedged in deep into the wood and protective padding.

"I hope you never get angry like this with me one day, Rumi," she told her, removing the sword, but caused the dummy to shatter and fall. "Oops."

"Rumi gets two-hundred points while the dummy gets zero," went Mayo, who was being trained by Kanami in the art of the sword, watching the scene.

"I'm certainly glad that Shinji didn't see this," said Kanami. "He still had a hard time believing that she broke his door open with her swords."

"Mommy, even I have a hard time believing that."

Shinobu handed the sword over to Rumi, who gave a light chuckle as she accepted it back.

"Maybe I should continue with my Aero Channeling lessons," she suggested.

"Yeah," agreed Akira.

-x-

Naoko actually enjoyed watching Gendo suffer in front of Lilith. If it wasn't the injuries Rei had inflicted upon him, or the fact that he had to drag himself out of the LCL lake that generated beneath Lilith, it was the fact that he was now being watched by four of Rei's minor minions that brought out a degree of fear in him.

"Tell me, Gendo," she asked him, "what scares you more? Them or Rei?"

Gendo looked at her and responded, "You're foolish in helping Rei. Whatever she promised you, she won't deliver."

"Hmph! You don't know what you are talking about," she told him.

"You think I don't know Rei when I introduced you to her?" He countered.

"You introduced me to the first Rei. The original. The Rei that set me free isn't the original. And what do you think she promised me in exchange for my services? Money? I was declared dead after my attempted suicide and subsequent incarceration within Unit-00, so my accounts were removed. Not that I don't do much spending, anyway. I think you know what it is that I want, only you're too blind to allow yourself the foresight to see it."

Gendo couldn't even make a move against her because of the dog-like guards modeled after Unit-01, baring their fangs at him.

"You like 'em?" She asked him, pointing toward the beasts. "They were Rei's idea, though they were built around your spares."

"What spares?"

"Oh, don't play dumb with me. You know what spares I'm talking about."

"Grrrrr!" The beasts growled and snarled at Gendo.

-x-

"…I heard you were asking for cigarettes, Ritsuko," went Misato, finding her former college friend out of bed and walking around in the halls of the hospital; with the restoration of some sensation in her legs, the head of NERV's Evangelion Project was getting back in the rhythm of walking.

"I'm a heavy smoker," she confessed to Misato. "I can't believe the people here hardly smoke."

"Apparently, only eighty-eight of the people in this town actually have lung cancer," Misato told her. "They've found other ways to deal with their anxiety than to trade bits of their life away by sucking on death sticks. You try nicotine gum?"

"You smoke, too, Misato."

"I've haven't had a smoke since I broke up with Kaji years ago."

The friends were standing in the hall against a wall as they spoke of things.

"I still can't believe you made that thing that Rei wears," Misato told her.

"I still can't believe how much things have changed."

"Can you be honest about one thing that I'm going to ask you about?"

"I can't lie about much else, anymore, so go ahead and ask."

"The Marduk Institute. It was nothing more than a fabrication to hide another of NERV's deep, dark secrets, wasn't it?"

Ritsuko sighed and responded, "Yes. In the end, it was only Commander Ikari that handpicked the pilot candidates for the Evas."

"And the Evas requiring the souls of women that bore children after Second Impact to animate them?"

"That's true, as well."

"They're awful."

"They were supposed to be the pinnacle of mankind's ingenuity. The same could've been said for the MAGI…and even the Fallenbreaker, as Rei calls the prototype gauntlet I made."

"Rits, many things could be seen as a pinnacle in anything thought of, but there's no such thing as a true pinnacle in anything. You build one thing that's supposed to put an end to something or be capable of starting something…and then someone goes and makes something else, often similar, but with the claim that it will do a better job. Pinnacles are nothing more than falsehoods. They're nothing more than beliefs…that can't be proven at all."

"Where did you hear that from, anyway?"

"That's my own belief. My own philosophy."

"Inspired by Nemo Rokubungi's, I presume?"

"You could say that. Kami, what did you ever see in that jerk, anyway?"

Ritsuko didn't answer her on that question; it wasn't her best decision, personally. And the affair had revealed that Gendo wasn't exactly what one could call a nice person when he didn't get his way. She could still recall the night he held fire in his hand and tried to burn Rumi with it. In the years she'd seen him, he had never demonstrated such an ability, and then, after hearing of the limitations to it, she had to admit to herself that she feared anybody, even him, with the gift of fire using it on herself if they had foul intentions.

"Probably the same thing you once saw in Kaji," she said instead.

"Okay, that's just sick and wrong," Misato told her; there was no way in Hell that she could even compare her old flame with Akira's former adopted son.

Suddenly, doctors wheeled one of the NERV escapees past them and they managed to see that it was one of the women that was being treated for blood loss and an infection in her right leg. Moments after that, at least seven other of their fellow NERV workers were wheeled past them, being treated for their injuries and infections. It reminded Misato that she was the only one lucky enough to get away because she had a lie and the wheels to see her away from Tokyo-3.

"Say," went Ritsuko after she realized something, "whatever happened to Pen-Pen?"

As if by magic, the warm-water penguin came running down the hall and jumped onto Misato's left leg.

"Some of the lady nurses tend to want to give him the royal treatment," explained Misato; ever since she and Pen-Pen had arrived to give the message of the truth behind Shinji's cancer…and her mending injuries and current stay in the hospital, the penguin had become something of a celebrity to some of the women that took interest in him. "I think he's had enough of the attention, though."

Soon enough, a trio of young women, nurses, come from around a corner and show heart-shaped eyes toward the penguin, prompting him to run again.

"Just what is it about your bird that attracts them?" Ritsuko questioned, not seeing any logic in this.

"Well, he's cute," Misato told her, and then got in front of the nurses to keep them from chasing Pen-Pen any further than they already have. "Enough is enough!"

-x-

"…So, that child has brought greater shame to you both?" Kyoji asked Masamune, having been told what his eldest great-granddaughter, Yui, had done to the family once he'd eaten a fair amount of regular food to replenish his energy lost in his reinforced slumber.

"You remember that day you said that she was going to hurt me in the worst way?" Anne-Marie asked him. "Well, you were absolutely right. She did hurt me."

Kyoji didn't need to ask what she meant by that; it was just by the tone of her voice (and the near-cold gaze of her near-empty eyes) that expressed that Anne-Marie's relationship with her big sister had turn extremely bitter and full of hatred. It also shamed him to know that, while he had managed to save a lot of people that day the tsunami hit the city, he was unable to save his granddaughter, Pema, Anne-Marie's unborn child or her kind-hearted boyfriend that had gotten her pregnant after a meal at his grandson-in-law's home. And out of all his relationships with the Ikari family, it was Yui of whom he had to look at with a great degree of suspicion, as she obsessed over the wonders of science…and wouldn't leave Anne-Marie's gift of gab alone.

I always knew there was something wrong with that girl, he thought to himself, taking another bite out of a veggie burger. If she's not trying to find out what makes something tick if it's interesting to her, she's trying to get others to see things her way when they're not interested in her points of view. But I could manipulate water, she knew that. I told her and Anne-Marie, so why didn't she take a scientific interest in me while I was comatose?

"When I founded Medical Angel, I had to make sure that anyone else that was looked upon with scientific interest was kept protected from any organizations that didn't respect life in any positive lights," went Masamune to him. "Just in case you were wondering why nobody sought to study your abilities while you were sleeping."

"Oh. Arigato, Masamune."

"So," uttered Sora, setting down his cup of juice on the floor where they were sitting in the room, "now that you've finally awakened and rejoined the rest of the waking world, what is your agenda of rebuilding your life, Mr. Mikamura?"

Kyoji chuckled at the young man that was the most remarkable example of Masamune's attempts to advance medical technologies to save lives. Prior to his coma (even before Second Impact), the Hydro Master had decided upon returning to Akira Town to see his adopted mother and see how she was doing in her years. But now, seeing how his own family had a major problem caused by one of their own members, he felt that he had to aid his grandson and great-granddaughter in their role of deciding the rest of the world's fate to ensure that nothing terrible occurred.

"I would travel to see an old face," he had spoken, "but if I did that, then I'd be leaving some important people defenseless."

"Would this old face be one that hasn't changed for the better part of over one-hundred years?" Anne-Marie asked him. "A certain lady's face?"

He looked at her and sighed as he nodded in the positive.

"Maybe I should meet this Akira woman in person myself," went Masamune.

-x-

"…I can't believe I had nearly forgotten the pleasantness of a large, hot bath," went Shinji, relaxing in the spring-like bath.

His original intention later that day when the sun went down was to shower, but Akira had suggested that he drown his worries by taking a bath. And it seemed that, during moments like this, or whenever he was with Rumi or just away from the troubles of his past…he could feel no degree of pain, both physical and emotional. And the hot water eased whatever sores or aches he had in his bones and muscles. In some ways, he mirrored Akira's fondness for big, hot baths, despite some of his bad memories managing to find their way into his conscious during them.

"I'd protect you from anything, Shinji," he heard Rumi's voice echo in his mind as he sunk lower into the tub. "Focus here, Shinji… I'd give you the future without boundaries… I love you, Shinji…"

As his head sunk beneath the water, the soap and shampoo on his hairless scalp washed away…and a part of his mind, perhaps the part that was the least expressed in his imagination when he drew the picture of himself and Rumi being slightly older, pretended that said little girl was in front of him, reaching out to him with her hands near his face.

Is this lust that I'm imagining? He questioned, feeling his heart tense up.

It's not, he heard her voice in his head again, but felt as though she were really speaking to him. If you want me to, I'll be waiting outside your room.

He raised his right hand up to touch her face, feeling the water around him vanish.

Not tonight, he thought, and the illusion of her disappeared with a smile.

He then resurfaced over the water and climbed out of the bath, drying off and putting on his bathrobe.

-x-

As the last hour of the day was nearing its end, Rumi felt disappointed in the fact that the summer was nearly over. She turned over in her bed and gazed out at the night sky of her window.

The end of the Twenty-Sixth of August, she thought, counting the remaining five days till the usual end of the season of freedom. I'm starting to fear the end of this summer.

Knock-knock. Somebody knocked on her door.

"Rumi, it's Shinji," said the person outside. "May I come in?"

"Hai," she quietly answered, and the door opened, revealing his head all shiny due to the water drying off his skin.

Once he had changed into his pajamas, he thought of seeing Rumi before he turned in for the night.

"Hey," he greeted her with a small smile and sat in a chair by her bed.

"Hey," she responded back.

"While I was in the bathroom…did you try to talk to me while I was under the water?" He asked her.

She sighed and nodded in the positive.

"Not exactly one of my best moments," she confessed.

"Thanks for checking in on me," he told her.

"Sure. Any time," she expressed, and he started to get up and leave. "Shinji?"

He stopped before he could reach her door, feeling something, like wires or tentacles, wrapping around his right wrist. Turning back to face his aunt, he found that her bracelet had unleashed a few strands of organic/metallic material around his arm to keep him from leaving.

Rumi had done this reflexively and willed the strands back into her bracelet.

"I… You can think of this as a selfish request, but… Will you sleep in my room tonight? Please?" She asked him.

This was a first for the boy; never did his youngest of relatives make such a bold move on him before. Every now and then, she would, under the effects of walking in her sleep, enter his room in the silence of the night without an invitation and spend the remainder of it asleep in his bed, and now here she was, asking him to sleep in her room with her. He could've said 'no' to her, that he shouldn't tonight…but he found it nearly impossible to say so toward her. Especially when she possessed a face so full of affection that he was mesmerized by her combination of joy, beauty, devotion, and her ability to grant him the hope of a better future.

"Sure," he gave in, and closed the door.

-x-

Something inside Rei stirred with hatred. Atop the pyramidal structure of NERV HQ, the former First Child looked up at the technological barrier that kept her from viewing the sky. It didn't matter to her if the Geo-Front possessed the technological means to enable light from the world above to be filtered down below through the mirrors on the tall building structures above and the fiber-optics layered around below the place, being deprived of the actual night sky was no different from being deprived the right to feel something positive. But with her, it wasn't just that; there was something in her mind that felt a great anger over something that had been committed not too long ago.

"Shinji," she heard the little girl's voice in her head, "stay with us forever. Stay with me…forever."

"Yeah, Rumi," she heard the son of Gendo and Yui Ikari respond.

She had then envisioned an open field, full of wildflowers and trees and few statues resembling those of Asian culture. It was sunny, with clear, blue skies and several misty mountains in the background. A few people were gathered about, dressed in kimonos and yukatas of feudal Japan…and a young woman that bore a minor resemblance to the Akira woman and her daughter, but in her early-forties, though still quite attractive, and had a slight bulge under her blue and yellow kimono, no different from a pregnancy that had started just recently. There was another woman in front of her, with eyes as red as her own before her Fallenbreaker changed her, dressed in a purple yukata with a dragon pattern adorning it, wielding a large sword with dried blood on the blade.

"I have just as much a right to be free as any of you," the woman told the older Akira look-alike, brandishing the sword at her head. "I've been sealed away for far too long."

For Rei, it was quite a shock to hear this woman's voice sound so much like her own: Full of hate and hurt, coursing with desire and want.

"You've murdered nearly one-hundred-fifty people, Ayanami-Sakaki," the older Akira look-alike responded, wielding a wooden staff that looked similar to the one Rei had seen Akira wielding against her. "You've robbed them of their hopes and dreams just to satisfy yourself. You must be dealt with."

What is the meaning of this? Rei thought, confused by the identity of the red-eyed woman, and watched the fight, instigated by this Ayanami-Sakaki woman, play out.

The Akira look-alike defended herself graciously with walls of air and fire that lasted only a few seconds before fighting back offensively against the red-eyed woman with her staff, sending chunks of the ground around them at her. But Ayanami-Sakaki was just as good with her sword; she had nearly stabbed the woman in her abdomen but was too slow and grazed her upper sternum. Whatever reason was behind this duel, it impressed Rei enough to keep her watching for the outcome. Unfortunately, the battle only lasted for about seven minutes before the older Akira look-alike trapped the red-eyed woman in a small, pyramidal structure of rock.

"I'm putting an end to your killing spree…for good, Ayanami-Sakaki," the Akira look-alike announced, and then, on her right arm, a blinding light emanated from a bracelet and enveloped the red-eyed woman, leaving her screaming until she just disappeared from the stone prison. "It's finally over."

But for Rei, she saw something else that wasn't something she found as 'normal': The red-eyed woman that disappeared was being pulled toward a place bathed in darkness, toward a person that, in a familiar position, hung from the rafters by their arms.

"This isn't over yet!" Ayanami-Sakaki yelled in the darkness. "I'll be back! And when I do, I will be free from my imprisonment! You, all of you will be the ones suffering in the darkness! Aaaaaurgh!"

And then, the sight of seven eyes sparked Rei's memories of where she'd seen something like this before…and it made her slump on the top of the building. The seven eyes she'd seen…were those of the mask that was worn by Lilith, the woman that never bleeds…and who had tried to escape her imprisonment once before…but only got a taste of the freedom that she had been denied. She could remember the tenderness of holding a flower without questioning why she would want to do so, the thrill of watching fireworks during the night she had acquired the kimono she wore in the guise of the Lilin, the taste of chicken on her tongue and the sensation of getting away from that cold, dark place that a group of people chosen by a relic that wouldn't cease to exist placed her in until such a time came for her to be dealt with properly.

The Angelbreaker, she thought, getting up off her bottom and slowly levitating into the air. The past wielders…their duties to affect great change for the good of the world…and seal away what should not be exploited by immoral hands. Fifteen years ago, a pathetic bunch found something they thought was a god…and in their arrogance, their folly, their greed…tried to possess it, to make it theirs. Because of their actions, everyone had to be punished with pain and death, and their so-called deity disappeared for a time. Yet, they didn't learn from their mistakes…and tried to pick up their god once more, and from the god they pieced back together, their so-called Adam was made. And from Adam, a creature that could be passed off as an attempt to remake their lost god. The Eva. Heh-heh-heh! What a laugh! And for each of the Evas they made, they bestowed upon it a human soul as a martyr, a sacrifice, breaking the will of those associated to the original owner of that soul. Yet the Angelbreaker has yet to teach the world that there is only one truth, one universal absolute: People exist only to hurt others…and everything exists only to be taken. I have had my freedom stripped from me twice. My memories shattered and my heart ripped from my flesh. That's when the immoral ones started to take from me, over and over again, taking without asking, without permission, using my flesh like clay to sculpt their hope for the darkness that they themselves unleashed upon the world, robbing me of bits of my life…until I nearly lacked the strength and will to desire it all back. And I want it all back. I want all that they took from me back.

The Fallenbreaker formed her armor once more as her eyes flared with blue flames; the bone and metal tendrils now forming armor that wasn't racy or provocative in any fashion, instead looking more like it was designed to mimic the traditional samurai armor, but combined with the medieval armor of the Fifteenth Century, only a type that was built for women to wear. There was even a new color scheme that replaced the original that didn't fit the girl's original hair and skin pigmentation: Her gauntlets, boots, waist and shoulder armor were blue, while the rest was white and black like that of a white tiger, as though the Fallenbreaker had used her yukata as a base for the new form the armor had taken, evolving and adapting itself further. But the greatest change was that the armor on her back had sprouted large, bluish-black wings that looked like they were carved from a pair of large crystals, except that they folded into each other like curved blades connected at a base.

"Hmm?" She hovered over the artificial lake beside the base and examined her new look. "Magnificent. Absolutely magnificent."

She then levitated back up into the air beneath the top of the Geo-Front…and formed a large pair of crescent scythes from both hands.

"I want to see the real night sky," she expressed, and a dark smirk formed on her face.

-x-

…His body's so cool, it's almost as though he has no warmth left within him, thought Rumi, her head atop Shinji's chest, hearing the faint beat of his heart as she slept, the only sound that revealed to her that he was still alive where they laid.

I never knew that Rumi felt so warm, thought Shinji, feeling like he was laying atop a cloud with Rumi playing the role of the sun because she was so warm; he even felt the warmth through his pajamas.

Outside Rumi's room, Kanami had awoken and stepped out of her room to set about the new day. She decided to check up on Shinji before heading to the kitchen for breakfast preparation, but found in his room that his bed was tidy and the dialysis machine that was borrowed from the hospital that he probably should've been plugged up to last night to filter his blood looked unused.

"Good morning, Kanami," she turned to face Shinobu, whose hair was a mess, making her look like the Greek mythological beast known as Medusa.

"Shinobu, have you seen Shinji this morning when you got up?" Kanami asked her.

"Nope. I just got up. Why?"

"I don't think he went to bed in his room last night. His bed doesn't look like it was slept in at all."

Shinobu came over to see and her drowsy eyes became less exhausted from waking up and more focused on what may have been a woe.

"Let's ask every one else if they've seen him," she suggested toward Kanami.

They walked down the hall and found Nemo and Tsukiko entering the kitchen.

"Nemo, Tsukiko," went Kanami, "have y'all seen Shinji?"

"Not since I went to bed last night," answered Tsukiko, turning on the coffee machine. "Why?"

"He's not in his room."

"Maybe Akira's seen him," Nemo suggested, sitting at the table, but the eldest member of the house had just entered the kitchen by herself.

"Maybe I've seen who?" She asked, scratching her stomach.

"Shinji," went Tsukiko. "Kanami and Shinobu say he wasn't in his room and probably wasn't in it last night. When did you last see him?"

"Before he took his bath…which was before I decided to turn in early," Akira explained.

"He wasn't in the bathroom," Nemo revealed. "I just came out of there. The tub was empty."

Before another word could be spoken by any of them, Mayo had entered the kitchen and sat at the table, yawning.

"I think Rumi's tryin' to be more mature than she shouldn't be for a six-year-old girl," she told them, propping her head and arms on the table as she tried to stay awake.

"What do you mean, sweetie?" Kanami asked her daughter.

"I went into her room to wake her, and I saw her atop Shinji in her bed, holding his hand as they slept together. I think she saw a film she wasn't really supposed to see."

The adults all looked at each other before making their way toward Rumi's bedroom, where Shinobu opened the door and revealed the sight of the two kids asleep together in the little girl's bed.

"Well," went Tsukiko, "at least we know where he is."

"What's going on here?" They all heard Taeko question, as she showed up and got a good look at the two sleepyheads. "Huh? Ooh! I'm gonna tell Mama!"

She turned to run, but Akira, really not up to any snitching on unnecessary things, Aero Channeled her younger granddaughter onto her bottom with her right foot.

"Taeko," she told her. "There's nothing to tell on."

"Hmm?" The adults turned back to the inside of Rumi's room and saw Shinji waking up a little, followed by the frown of Rumi as she also awoke to their chattering.

Akira quickly closed the door and allowed the pair some privacy.

"Can I suggest that, until they're ready to tell us about the 'why' to their action, we keep this to ourselves?" She told the others present.

"I'm cool with it," went Nemo.

"Yeah, sure," added Shinobu.

"Okay," said Kanami.

"I didn't see a thing," expressed Tsukiko.

Back in Rumi's room, said girl raised her head off of her nephew's chest and looked down at his face.

"Good morning," she greeted him.

"Good morning," he responded back. "Rumi, I had the strangest dream before I woke up. I saw a large bunch of eyes looking down at us and some voice said that we did something wrong."

She let go of his hand and slowly climbed atop his waist and placed her palms on his shoulders.

"I wish that was a strange dream, Shinji," she expressed, knowing that her half-opened eyes saw her mother and four of her six older siblings looking at them laying together. "Shinji?"

"Yes?"

"My sheets are all warm…but you're as cool as ice cream."

Shinji rose to a sitting position beneath her and placed her left hand on his right cheek, feeling that she was very warm…but his flesh had grown cold. He pressed her hand firmly onto his cheek as he held onto her, shutting his eyes.

Why did I have to tell him that? She wondered, and placed her right hand onto his chest, feeling for his heartbeat. He's not through with living yet. His body may feel like it's cold, but he's still alive on the inside (she could now feel the pulsation of his heart beneath her tiny hand). Beating…beating.

She pressed her right ear onto his chest, hearing his heart, holding onto him with her right hand.

"Rumi," she heard him say, "if it's alright with you, I think it's time we both got up."

"Just a while longer, Shinji," he heard her request to him. "Please?"

"Yeah," he obliged, holding onto her, unable to say 'no' once again; he could probably never say 'no' to her ever again.

Outside her door, Akira had heard the conversation between them and sighed with a degree of unhappiness for them; she could've stopped this from escalating further, end their developing passion for one another, separate the two before it was inevitable…but she stood by what she told Rumi, that she wouldn't stand between her and her affections for Shinji. And true to her words from when she was in the hospital prior to rescuing Shinji from Tokyo-3, the heart wanted what it wanted, and her youngest daughter's heart wanted the love of her only nephew, a luxury she couldn't have until after Rei Ayanami was dealt with.

Better now than never, she thought.

-x-

Kozo Fuyutsuki wasn't one to be impressed by large degrees of destruction, even to a place that really should've been a place to live peacefully. Sadly, this wasn't the case when he woke up this morning to find that a large expanse of Tokyo-3's underbelly had, apparently, collapsed into the Geo-Front and fell onto its woods and large lake, leaving a large opening in the structure that allowed for actual sunlight to seep inside.

What the Hell did this? He wondered to himself, and then noticed, atop a large pile of the rubble that used to be a few of the taller buildings, a lone figure sitting down in a thinker's pose, overlooking the environment, dressed in what looked like armor that you see in films about medieval or feudal warring times that were in progress. I don't believe it.

He saw Rei, whose armor had been restyled, and equipped with wings, as though she were imitating some of the styles that Akira and Rumi took whenever they donned armor to deal with the Angels, whom had all been taken care of. The first idea of accusation that came to his mind was that she had caused this destruction to the fortress city, which would've been the closest he had to expressing his dislike of the girl, both in general for her indifference and because of the way she was made in the beginning by messing with bad science and manipulating life.

From atop the rubble pile, Rei, enjoying the shift from night to day, turned toward the pyramid of NERV HQ and, with enhanced sight, took notice of Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki looking at her, so she smiled and waved at him, seeing his expression change to show fright as he backed away from the windows, leaving the hallway he was in.

"Heh-heh-heh," she chuckled, and then resumed her gazing at the sky. "It won't be long now."

-x-

Breakfast was much quieter this time. Each of the people that were there to see Rumi and Shinji asleep together were keeping to themselves. What bothered Akira about earlier, though, wasn't that Rumi went and crossed certain boundaries that she wasn't supposed to until she was much older, but that Shinji did seem to have a lower body temperature (she deduced that his current temperature was almost comparable to the temperature of their rooms).

RING-RING-RING! The kitchen phone started ringing, and Bumi got up to answer it.

"Hello?" He greeted the caller. "Oh. Yeah, he's here. Hold on a minute. For you, Nemo."

Nemo set his chopsticks down and got up to accept the phone from his elder brother.

"Yes?" He uttered to the caller, and found it was Camille. "Hey, Camille. Did I catch the morning news today? No, I haven't yet. Why? What?!"

At that, Miaka got up and went to the living room TV and turned on the news, revealing something that was being filmed just now.

"…Only a few blocks fell in, but the damage is extreme, revealing a large, underground cavern that UN sources reveal to be the Geo-Front for NERV Headquarters," a female news reporter was saying on the TV to whoever was watching. "While much of the city had already been abandoned due to earlier attacks in the summer, an estimated three-hundred NERV workers were still reported to be in the city when this happened. All attempts to investigate the Geo-Front's interior have met with drastic repercussions, with unmanned aerial drones getting shot down the moment they enter the cavern, and the only images they were able to transmit being fuzzy, but what looks like an armored humanoid atop the debris of the collapsed buildings below."

Then an image of what was obtained from one of their drones was shown, showing a person in what looked like ancient, medieval armor with wings and a large, crescent-shaped blade on its left hand, and with what looked like glowing blue eyes.

"…With several officials suggesting military action, it's anyone's guess as to what or who this strange figure is and whether or not they were responsible for the collapse of the portion of the abandoned city," the reporter announced. "As contact between the supposed NERV HQ and the rest of the world is, virtually, nonexistent, it's also anyone's guess as to what has happened to the workers still there."

Suddenly, the television screen blurred as the signal was scrambled by another signal. As it perfected its transmission, the television showed a shadowed woman's face, but some of the Rokubungi family members could recognize the person; it was Rei Ayanami, but with a different style of armor.

"Hear me, people of the shattered existence," she had spoken. "You question why a city, which was built to serve no other purpose than to draw in giant monsters that would sooner kill you than to state their business, has a giant hole in the ground with a large, underground chamber that possesses less than three-hundred people? Now, I say less than three-hundred because I've gone and killed a few of them. Know these facts: The end of your lives draw ever closer, everything that you hold most dear, everyone that you have ever held most dear…will be taken in an instant…and I've waited for what was rightfully mine…for a very long time."

"Is that the girl you guys mentioned?" Mayo asked her aunts and uncles. "Is that her? Rei Ayanami?"

"She sounds terrible," said Taeko, gripping the table. "And twisted up inside."

You have no idea how twisted she is, thought Akira and Rumi.

If I had any sense left, I'd probably get up and step out of the house, thought Shinji.

"But…being in the cheery mood that I'm in this morning, I'll express why there's a big hole in the ground of the city," Rei expressed. "I don't like my vision of the day or night being inhibited by living underground where I can't see the moon or the sun. So I cut down the streets, let buildings fall in and shatter, causing collateral damage just to see the sky. A poor excuse to people that think they can decide everything because they're old, wealthy, and have the connections to see their way through a goal…but it's rational to me. You can either try the inevitable and suffer the agonizing end of many things if you wish to stop me…or you can avoid the agony of it all…by doing a simple…or rather, a not-so-simple pair of demands for me. I'm sure you're wondering what it is that I want."

Then…her face shifted to resemble the face of Yui Ikari, but with longer hair and an aura of hate; her expression of rage and subtle greed making her stolen, warped identity of some degree of beauty and welcoming affection…that of ugliness and dark desires.

"I want this pathetic, weak boy that dies a little more with each passing day due to being leukemic," she revealed, showing a photo of Shinji on the TV, and then another photo of Rumi, "and this little bitch that lusts and rolls over for him."

Rumi then got up and left to her room.

"Uh, Rumi?" Tsukiko called, but her sister ignored her.

"You have until the end of the summer to decide. Pain or relief at the end of the world? What will be your decision? Bring them to Tokyo-3 so that they may see the start of things to cease. I have transcended the boundaries of what Gendo Mu-Rokubungi-Ikari had placed on me when he tried to control me all my known life. I…am the beginning…of the end of your lives…and all of you…are the beginning…of the end of my misery."

The television scrambled again after the connection was severed. And the adult Rokubungi members couldn't believe what they had just heard!

"I'll call you back later, Camille," went Nemo, and he hung the phone up. "I think I just lost the rest of my appetite."

"Who the heck does this…this… That ugly, young woman think she is, anyway?!" Mayo asked. "She seems intimidated by two people, and they don't even give half a care about who she even is!"

Taeko went and answered her female cousin's question with, "A witch, perhaps? An evil, wannabe queen of everything?"

Mayo sighed and responded, "Thanks, Taeko."

Shinji quietly got up and left to see Rumi, but Tsukiko caught him leaving into the hall and followed him toward his destination.

"Shinji?" She stopped him. "Are you okay?"

He turned to face her; his skin looked paler than it did before the news revelation, and his wig looked like it didn't fit on his head properly. But it was his eyes that told her the most; they were full of a different kind of pain that wasn't associated with his frail body…but to his heart, which was now totally obvious to her that it was already belonging to somebody else.

"I used to pity her when I saw that day I went to the city," he told her, "and now…I despise her. She despises me, and I don't even know her. She wants to kill Rumi, and she doesn't even know her. What runs through her head every second of her life? Who the heck raised her like this?"

Of course, that was something she couldn't really tell him.

"I'll go out on a limb and suspect that jerk man of doing so," she suggested Gendo of Rei's foul behavior; it was a half-truth at best.

"Ugh!" Shinji shuddered at the idea. "Tell me…do you think…the people of the world…are gonna give in to her demands?"

"As a whole, their reaction to this would be unpredictable because their decisions vary… But…personally, even if most of them wanted to get a hold of you two, I wouldn't let them sacrifice your lives to avoid suffering the potential agony of what that crazy child has in store for them. If…it's between agony for everyone and you two getting dealt with by a crazy girl, I'll accept the agony."

"Sacrifice two of our own in exchange for avoiding pain and death at the end of the world?" They heard Shinobu behind them, questioning the morals of Rei's demands. "We already got pain and death, so there's no use, no need, and no reason to give her what she wants."

"So, I guess that would mean that you're being as irrational as I am about her demand, big sis?" Tsukiko asked her.

"I suffered a minor heart attack with everyone else because one of our own almost sunk into the deep end of the pool…and it's an unpredictable event I'd take part in again in a heartbeat. I wouldn't give up anybody to that girl."

The three then walked over to Rumi's room, but found it empty.

"I thought she would come here," said Shinji.

"Where has she run off to?" Shinobu wondered, walking to the window and looking out of it, seeing that there was no indication that her baby sister had climbed out and slipped away from home.

Tsukiko checked Rumi's closet and didn't see anything big enough for her to hide in; even her swords were untouched.

Shinji sat on her bed and noticed her dog tags on her pillow, reminding himself that she had took them off before she came to eat breakfast. He picked them up and gripped them in his left hand.

I wonder, he thought, getting off the bed and looking underneath it, and answering his curiosity.

Little Rumi had crawled under her bed, looking up at the mattress over her head.

"Shinji, is she down there?" He heard Shinobu ask him, and he looked up at her and pointed to the door; it was one of those moments where privacy was required for a new conversation. "Oh. I see. Tsukiko, we should go check Shinji's room."

"Huh? Oh, okay," Tsukiko gave in and stepped out of her sister's closet and out the room with Shinobu, leaving Shinji, seemingly, by himself on the floor beside Rumi's bed.

Shinobu shut the door and allowed the boy and his youngest aunt their privacy.

"You wanna talk about it, Rumi?" He asked her, getting her to turn her head to face him.

"Will this madness that is Rei Ayanami ever end?" She asked him.

"It will end," he answered her, and slowly brought his head under her bed. "Somehow, it doesn't surprise me to find you hiding under here."

"It's my first time trying it," she expressed. "Why does an old attempt like this seem to be the first one that kids use in order to hide from someone?"

"According to Nemo, in the eyes of a kid, hiding under the bed would seem to be the safest place one can hide, thinking that nobody could lift a mattress or crawl under it because they're either too heavy, too big…or just disbelieving that a kid would think of hiding there."

"Did you ever hide under a bed?"

"No. I was under a lot of emotional pain to even consider trying to back when I was little. I never even tried to hide in a closet. The thought of hiding never crossed my mind."

Rumi had to suspect the reason to why her nephew never did so was because of his emotional pain, which was, and still was, to a degree, greater than his physical pains. Abandoned by his father and called a useless spare by him after meeting him over ten years later, wanting to exploit him in fighting in a would-be war against former enemies he never knew about, had been very detrimental in his mental development. For all Rumi knew, his abandonment by Gendo was probably also the source behind her nephew's dyslexia, explaining why he had difficulty reading.

Shinji then reached out to her with his right hand and placed it under her left cheek, slowly caressing it.

He could say that nothing bad is going to happen to either of us, she thought, but then he'd hate feeling that he was lying.

She reached to him with her left hand and caressed his right cheek. Still, his body felt colder than usual after last night.

Did I do this to him? She wondered to herself, and then let go of him to crawl out from under the bed. "I think I've hidden under here enough for today."

"Yeah," Shinji agreed with her, getting onto his feet.

-x-

"…You don't expect the people to actually listen to your demands, do you, Rei?" Fuyutsuki asked her, no longer hiding his discontent of everything she has done from her.

Rei, who was standing atop the surface of the water of the artificial lake of the Geo-Front, faced him and uttered, "Whether they do or not is of no consequence to me. Tell me, Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki…just what was it that you ever saw in Yui Ikari and Gendo Mu when you met them? I know from his memories that Gendo is nothing more than a genuine stupid ass, and he only possessed eyes for his woman, but with you, it's mostly a mystery of your opinions, even if I did read your mind. So I ask you…what did you ever see in them?"

Kozo turned away from her gaze and responded with, "What difference does it make?"

"Your admiration toward Yui…is broken in places by your respect for Akira, who saved you from getting killed when you were a little boy," Rei expressed. "Quite intriguing, having great respect towards an elderly woman that can't age past her late-twenties…or that you saw in her what you believed was a goddess-turned-mortal. Actually, I find that the night she saved you from your fate at the hands of your middle-class tormentors to be fascinating. She terrified them with her mastery of the elements and threatened to make it so that they couldn't use their hands ever again. Hmm…out of the three of them, I don't know who's as worse as Gendo, Yui and the old men that want the end of all things in order to embrace the unity of the original state of being. I guess I'll have to make do with putting Rumi's love interest as the next worst person, simply because of his parents."

"You can't hate a person because of who their parents were," Kozo told her.

"Says who? Says who?!" Rei shouted at him, and her face's tendril armor acted up, forming a tattoo-like structure under her eyes that resembled a pair of fangs or curved blades. "Are you afraid of me?"

"Does it really matter?" He asked her.

Why listen to whatever he says could be a lie…when the journey to the truth is all the more sweeter? Rei considered, her left hand aching to tear through the old man's mental barriers and suck up his memories and experiences. Oh, the Hell with this bullshit.

She reached out and grabbed his head with her hand and explored his mind once again, seeking out a new high from his experiences.

"Aaaaaaaurgh!" He yelled in pain, feeling like his flesh was set ablaze and his insides chilled to the last bone.

Nothing you think is hidden from me! He heard Rei's voice in his mind, forcing him to view many of the terrible things he'd seen since he had joined NERV's predecessor organization, GEHIRN…and all the horrible acts she herself had committed since she got the Fallenbreaker.

FLASH! The sight of her murdering some street hoodlums made him panic as she bathed in their blood whilst she ripped them to pieces. Several more flashes were brought upon the aged man until finally, after seeing the memory of his last time seeing Akira and Rumi in the present, Rei let go of the man, who, unlike some of her previous victims, simply fell out of consciousness instead of having his mind shattered upon the experience of having it explored.

"Whoa," went Rei, fascinated by his ability to survive having his mind shattered. "You are a tough, old man. Maybe even too tough."

But rather than deal with him, she left him on the ground, deciding to see how Naoko was doing with her MAGI. Any ideas she wanted to think up on how to deal with Gendo and Yui's teacher would have to wait until later.

-x-

"…But Rei never learned how to broadcast transmissions before," went Ritsuko to Misato, going over the televised message from earlier.

"Well, it's obvious that she's learning all new things," responded Misato, worried about what people would do just to survive; if Rei meant what she said, then there would be those that wanted not to suffer agony by coming after Shinji and Rumi, the would-be couple Rei deemed them. "What do you think those that want to avoid her threat towards them are going to do?"

"Right now, I'm worried beyond my capacity for rational thought and logical statistics."

"Can't you just give an opinion and not be logistic?"

"My opinion? Rei's become a deranged bitch that will say anything to convince people to listen to her."

"Is that really your opinion?"

Ritsuko sighed and expressed, "She's being no different from Commander Ikari, who was very manipulative toward others."

"It seems the Commander Ikari idea of using others to do one's dirty work is catching on."

"If I had lost much of my sense prior to having that man attack me for refusing him desired medical records," they turned and saw Dr. Gyatso, leaning on the wall opposite of the one they were leaning against, "and if I didn't already know about the girl, I'd say that Ms. Ayanami could pass herself off as the man's daughter…and favored her over his own son, whom he abandoned."

"Except now, she's done with helping him…and wants the world to suffer." Misato sighed.

The good doctor then looked out a window beside the wall behind him and up toward the mountain his friend, the town leader, lived on with her family, worried about the seriousness of anybody from around the town deciding to go crazy and try to capture Shinji and Rumi and bring them to Rei.

-x-

Asuka was never one to feel intimidated by the First Child, but after seeing her televised threat to the world and her demand for Rumi and her nephew, she became convinced of only one thing: Rei Ayanami was a sick person. A very sick person, probably due to the Eva known as Unit-00, but she was beginning to bet her money on the true source of her insanity being associated to the madman that ran NERV before the blunette went and took control.

"Is this girl crazy?" One of her co-workers wondered, having seen the broadcast. "Avoid pain and agony by giving her a boy that's dying and a little girl that she says lusts for him? Only fools would go after people like that."

"Or maybe people that are desperate," Asuka muttered.

"Huh? Did you say something, Ms. Soryu?" They asked her.

"Desperation, despair… Fear would push people to do things they don't normally do," she expressed, turning to face the guy that spoke of the craziness of Rei. "The girl's a complete, psycho freak."

"You talk as though you've met her before," another of her co-workers uttered at her.

"I did see her before," she confessed. "She was rather quiet and to herself. And then…she just…turned into that living nightmare we saw on the monitors."

"So, you once worked at NERV?"

"It's an old chapter that I'd like to leave buried, if you don't mind."

Her two co-workers nodded in agreement with her; some of Medical Angel's teenage employees never liked to talk about their previous employment elsewhere because there was always something about the previous job that would upset the worker, and Asuka's previous employment was no exception. She had found it difficult to believe, from time to time, that she had piloted the Eva just to prove she existed, and before then, it was to get her mother to notice her after her time in the mental institute. Now, she was just trying to keep herself busy and not think about what she left behind. As far as she knew, all the Angels were humanized, their threat to the world was negated, the people were saved from their reign of terror and death, and the only threats were those made by terrorists and megalomaniacs…or even military dictators. And yet…she still couldn't understand why the deranged Rei Ayanami seemed to hate Rumi and her nephew so much.

The boy was sick, incapable of piloting, she thought, and Rumi… Well, she only piloted once and wouldn't do it again, and she had that thing that Misato told me about a little that we've seen in the pictures and in battle. What, was it jealousy?

She didn't know, having never gotten close to the First Child. Rei Ayanami was a puzzle that she had decided was the madman, Gendo Ikari's favorite, which seemed to be a sort of contrast; the man has a son…and he has no relationship with him, whatsoever.

In the meanwhile, Masamune and Anne-Marie were pondering whether or not to attempt contact with the Rokubungi family.

"They should at least know that we care about their safety," went Anne-Marie, with Jade purring in agreement with her.

"I can only assume that…with Rei Ayanami assuming control over NERV, Gendo's hold over you two is no longer in force," said Sora, flexing his right hand's fingers.

Kyoji, now dressed in business pants and a blue turtleneck with cut sleeves, decided to speak up and say, "Whichever way this boat's going to be rowed, please, let it be the path of least resistance."

Anne-Marie then remembered something from before she had been escorted back home from Akira Town: Akira had written down her cell phone number and requested that, whenever she did feel the need to talk to her or Shinji, she use the number whenever she could. It was also a miracle that she was able to memorize and remember the number before she was caught in the kitchen explosion that nearly killed her with burnt skin on small parts of her body.

"Sora, do you have your cell phone?" She asked him.

"Yeah, why?" He answered and asked, taking out his phone.

"I got Akira's number…and I can call her," she expressed, which surprised Kyoji.

"Huh?!" Her great-grandfather gasped. "Hey, hey, tell her that I'm recovering from my coma, too."

"Masamune?" Sora asked the medical founder.

"Make the call, let them know that we care," he answered, and Sora gave the phone to Anne-Marie.

-x-

Being the only member of the current family that was an Aero Master capable of flight, Akira had decided to soar around the town for a few minutes in order to make sure that anybody that had seen the broadcast of Rei Ayanami's weren't going to try anything or make a beeline toward her home.

Everything's quiet from up here, she thought, turning her glider left as she soared lower to the buildings below her.

Ring-ring-ring! She heard her cell phone ring, and she landed atop an office building to answer it.

"Hello?" She asked.

"Is this Akira Rokubungi?" A woman's voice asked back.

"Yes, this is she," Akira responded.

"It's Anne-Marie. Anne-Marie Ikari?"

"Yes?"

"Father and I saw the broadcast made by Ayanami and we just wanted you to know that we're concerned for Shinji and Rumi."

Akira sat on the roof and expressed, "Thank you, Anne-Marie. It's good to know that there are some people uninterested in wanting to capture them and bring them to the megalomaniac maiden."

"There's something else you should know, as well," Anne-Marie added. "Kyoji Mikamura-Rokubungi awoke from his coma just yesterday. He's standing next to me right now and would like to speak with you. Here he is."

There was a silence before Akira heard a new voice that she was now hoping her ears and heart weren't going to be playing tricks on her.

"Akira?" An aged man's voice was heard by the town leader.

"Kyoji?" She expressed, recognizing the sound of his voice, even after more than one-hundred years of not hearing from him. "Kami, it's good to hear your voice again."

"It's been too long, I should've made an attempt to come see you right after the start of the new century. It freezes, how things don't go the way you wish they had."

"But it's still good to know that some of the people you encounter from long ago…can still amaze you in ways you don't expect to be…like surviving for over one-hundred years."

-x-

"…In brightest day, in blackest night… No evil shall escape my sight… Let those who worship evil's might, beware my power: Green Lantern's Light!" The Green Lantern shouted the oath as he fought against Parallax in the film belonging to Nemo, as he, Shinji and Rumi were watching it in the living room.

"The oath is an ancient bore, Nemo, brother," went Rumi, sitting in front of the television.

"Yeah, but you gotta admit… It's still cool to hear it," he responded.

"I should make an oath of my own," she suggested.

"She's inspired," said Shinji. "I'm encouraging her."

In the clearest of warm days…and in the darkest of cold nights, no form of cruelty shall escape my sight, thought Rumi, trying to comprise her own oath inspired by the comic book hero's oath. Let any that worship an unforgivable might…surrender to my power: Angelbreaker's love-filled light.

Shinji then took out his iPod Touch and wrote down a note that he figured could be used to help Rumi make up her oath.

Ring-ring! Nemo's phone rung and he picked up.

"Hello?" He asked, and then frowned. "They're not available."

Hanging up, he turned to face his nephew, who looked at him with some suspicion.

"Fans of Loonatics Unleashed," he told him. "The real ones."

"And the Sinestro Corps?" They heard Rumi ask them, never taking her eyes off the TV.

"Yeah, Rumi," Nemo expressed; in truth, he didn't want either of them to think that he, or any of the others, would, even if under pressure by others, hand them over to Rei Ayanami to protect themselves from pain and death. There's no equivalence in handing over two people to an enemy if the end result is still the same: Everyone's going to suffer.

The front door suddenly opened and Bumi, whom had left earlier after breakfast, came in, looking irritable, like something frustrating had happened.

"Tadaima," he uttered, sounding irritable, to boot.

Rumi and Shinji looked at him and then at each other before looking back at Bumi and asking what happened out in the town.

"Seven people that moved here two years ago tried to intimidate me," he answered. "I Geo Channeled the ground beneath them and left them in a seven-foot pit. Fear is causing some of the people to commit the most unsavory of acts."

Rumi, in silence, then pointed to herself and Shinji, as if to question the cause of the acts of the people Bumi left in the pit he made.

"Hardly," he expressed, though he hated the fact that he was lying to his baby sister.

Ring-ring-ring! The kitchen phone rung, and Miaka came out of the hallway to answer it.

"Yes?" She asked, and then her face frowned. "Gomen, but you have the wrong number. Bye."

She hung up and looked at her husband, who could sympathize with her about the current situation.

"You could just come out and say it," went Rumi, sounding disgusted. "Some people have given in to that crazy girl's demands and are trying to persuade you give up, as well."

Shinji sighed, feeling that Rumi was being accurate about the situation.

"Oh, we are not going to bend for those that do give in to that girl, Rumi," said Miaka to her. "It's not going to happen."

"My will to refuse to surrender loved ones is as solid as ice," added in Nemo.

"People can't use their hands to shatter solid stone without suffering some form of pain in return," Bumi had also added in.

"What is the belief that clings to the present from the people that lived in the lost Spring of Mountain City?" Shinji asked them. "It revolved around something. Faith? Willpower?"

"Hope, Shinji," answered Nemo. "The Geo Channelers and non-channelers that lived there, before it was lost to the sands of time like the other three cities, were a diverse bunch, proud in their enduring nature and their strength to resist or persist. So long as they had hope, they were invulnerable."

"That's a good belief," went Rumi, "believing that hope allows for you to endure what comes at you."

"Hope, willpower, change, love, trust, freedom, acceptance," said Miaka, "some of which people shouldn't take for granted…and shouldn't treat as though they're commonplace…for they're likely to abandon those that don't truly believe in them. They would be passing by in their evanescence."

"Evanescence?" Shinji questioned, knowing that word only as the name of a music group.

"Disappearing, Shinji," she explained its meaning.

Ring-ring-ring! The kitchen phone rung again, and Miaka balled her fists before answering it.

"Hello?" She asked the caller, and then her temper quelled. "Oh, hey, Bardiel. No, Taeko left to the hospital half an hour ago with my sister, Kanami. Yeah, it seemed like everybody saw the broadcast today. Huh? Well, thank you for your concern. Have a great day."

She hung up and slumped in a nearby chair; she didn't expect the former Angel of Hail to not be interested in coming after Rumi or Shinji and handing them over to Rei Ayanami, though this had to be because he was never interested in fighting Rumi to begin with; therefore, he was caring very little, if at all, about everyone else involved.

"It's nice to know that at least one of the humanized Angels give a care," she told them.

-x-

The afternoon sun was so bright that Shamshel was covering her face with a straw hat whilst she sat at one of the tables outside the rehabilitation center where she and her other siblings were out and about, with the exception of Zeruel, who preferred to stay in his cell. She looked to her left side at the basket that held Armisael, seeing that she was looking up at her sister.

"I don't suppose you want to go back inside, do you, Armisael?" She asked her.

"Gah!" Armisael gurgled, which Shamshel took as baby talk for, "No way, sis!"

"That broadcast this morning has taken the fun outta being rehabilitated today, Shamshel!" Sachiel shouted, over by the edge of the pool with the Israfel Twins. "This is bullshit!"

"I agree with him," added Sahaquiel, laying on the ground in the sunlight, hoping to burn off some calories by doing nothing.

"You gonna get a sunstroke, Sahaquiel," said Ramiel, sitting by the edge of the pool, having climbed out earlier to rest up.

"Bite me," Sahaquiel retorted toward his brother.

Seconds after, Arael, who was being timed by Gaghiel on how long she could hold her breath underwater, surfaced up after being under for a while, right next to Ramiel's legs.

"How long was I under that time?" She asked Gaghiel, pushing the strands of hair in front of her face behind her head.

"Four minutes and twenty-three seconds," Gaghiel answered, using a timer to keep track of his younger sister's record. "You lasted thirty-three seconds longer than the last time."

"Is that seat reserved for anyone, Shamshel?" Shamshel turned from the sight of her other siblings away from her and Armisael and saw Zeruel, wearing an oversized shawl (since there weren't any shirts he could wear in the rehabilitation center yet), sounding irritable.

"No, help yourself to it," she answered him, and then picked up Armisael's basket and set it on the table as their brother sat in the nearby chair. "What's gotten into you?"

"Adam made me come out here," he answered, pointing toward their father, who was now passing time by cleaning some windows.

"It's not the end of the world just 'cause he's no longer playing favorites," she tried to reason with him. "It just means that he's trying to treat us all fairly. There's nothing wrong with being treated fairly."

"Suddenly, it's a black and white world."

"You mix a little of them together and you get some gray, which symbolizes neutrality."

"What?"

"Neutrality. Balance. Equality between light and dark, right and wrong."

"Shamshel, my brain got compressed when I was humanized, so could you explain it to me in a way that I understand, please?"

Shamshel sighed and uttered once more, in simple-minded babble, "In a gray world, you can choose whether or not to perform an act of good or bad towards others. You can either choose to save someone's life when they're in danger…or you can let them suffer. Either way, it's all up to you."

"Is that part of the reason you've given up on the vendetta?"

"They could've killed me after I was defeated, buried me alive where nobody would find me…or even hand me over to people that would care less about me…but they didn't. And I've learned to let go of the hate, the desire for revenge that is sugar-coated with a feeling of justice that you think is right. I haven't seen the girl the Angelbreaker had chosen to assist it in restoring balance to the world and so on, but it's hard to continue hating her…and then later realizing that, while Sachiel was the first to be defeated by her without the talisman, I was the first to be defeated by her and Akira when the talisman chose them and was unleashed from years of not being in use. Close proximity to the relic's location when it hasn't attached to its chosen wielders was all it really took to humanize me."

"Ah-heh-heh!" Armisael giggled, causing Shamshel to chuckle in response.

Zeruel saw her take Armisael out of the basket and hold her, wondering how she was able to so with such a fragile body like those of the Lilin. His own body was suggested to be a lot tougher than those that used steroids or lifted weights all the time, as his skeleton, nerves and skin tissues were found to be denser than the average Lilin's, which would explain how he was able to possess such strength and endurance to stand up to the Angelbreaker's two wielders when he was humanized…and why he needed to be coated with numbing sedatives after he was defeated.

"How are you able to do that?" He questioned her.

"Do what?" She responded.

"Hold her with those arms?" He explained his interest.

"It's called learning how to hold a baby. It's not something that you just do, like it comes by instinct. It's one of the things that has to be practiced, developed over time until you get the hang of it. Plus, our little sister can't do anything by herself." She told him, and then got an idea. "You wanna hold her for a little bit?"

Zeruel then looked at his sisters before looking at his own hands.

"I don't think so," he answered her. "I'd probably end up hurting her. I was once the Angel of Strength, Might and Power."

"And Armisael and I were once the Angels of the Womb and the Day, respectively. All you need do is be gentle. You can grab a streetlight without worrying about breaking it, but when you touch something like a flower, you must be as delicate with it as you are with another person." Shamshel told him, and then got up and carefully placed Armisael in Zeruel's arms, against his will.

"I…" He spoke up, but then had to focus on not dropping his baby sister with his left hand beneath her head and neck.

"Keep her head still," Shamshel instructed him, "and hold her body gently."

"Why must you torment me?" He asked, trying to do what she said; the only good that came out of this was that Armisael wasn't crying, which indicated that he was doing alright.

Armisael looked up at her big brother and gave him a funny look that he found intimidating.

"I don't like the way she's looking at me," he told Shamshel.

"She's thinking right now," she responded, recognizing her sister's look.

"About what?"

"About you. She hasn't seen you in a very long time, so she's observing you right now."

Over by the windows yet to be cleaned, Adam took notice of his eldest son holding his youngest daughter and chuckled at the sight; for most of his life, Zeruel was never one to respect his other siblings because he was the strongest out of them, second only to himself, and it looked like, from a distance, the former Angel of Strength was finally starting to learn how to accept his new sense of humanity…and being appreciative of the humanized life he was given by the people that could've killed him…but chose not to.

-x-

"…Akira?" Tsukiko gasped, seeing her adoptive mother rummaging through her bedroom for her other martial arts weapons. "What are you doing?"

Akira, removing her katanna from under her bed, looked at Tsukiko and responded, "Oh, I'm just…gathering a few things."

But Tsukiko wasn't convinced or relieved by her words; the sight of several types of shuriken stacked on her bed, along with a few daggers and her staff left the young Pyro Channeler questioning what her former guardian was really up to.

"Akira," she spoke up again, "you're planning to go after Ayanami, aren't you?"

Setting the katanna beside her staff, Akira sighed and stood up in front of her.

"Only as a last resort. I won't go after her unless she goes too far in getting what she wants…who she wants." She told her back.

"Never fight…unless someone else starts?"

"Yes. And things are getting ugly out there. Rei Ayanami, the Fallenbreaker, Rayden's Comet… I had thought that once the Angels had been humanized, the duty of saving the world, restoring the balance, would get easier. Yet, it seems like there's no such thing as 'easy' right now."

"If the art of Pyro Channeling were easy, I'd say differently…but you're right, for there is no such thing as 'easy' much of the time." Tsukiko told her, and looked at her set of weapons again. "You look like you're set for a small war."

Akira picked up one of her throwing star-based shuriken and looked at the young woman that was, biologically, a year older than her own body was in appearance, and reminded herself that Tsukiko, being blessed with a youthful appearance that was a rarity among regular channelers, those that could only manipulate one element, along with some non-channelers that lived within the town, could pass herself off as a woman in her late-teens or early-twenties instead of one in her late-twenties or early-thirties (even her body's height was like that of Ms. Ibuki's, who was probably a young child herself during the Second Impact, same as her daughter). There was no denying that the super-centenarian had enough weapons to engage in a small war, but she doubted that whatever conflict she involved herself in could be called a war. If anything, it could've been called an aftermath struggle. An aftermath struggle because the initial concern was the Angels before they were all humanized, then the potential danger of anybody blessed with the power of Pyro Channeling being endowed greater strength over their element by means of a comet, and finally certain people wanting the end of the world so that it could begin anew, but in their own way.

Never fight unless someone else starts, Akira repeated in her mind. Rei Ayanami… Lilith… It'd be a horrid surprise if they weren't one and the same person.

Meanwhile, over in Shinji's room, said boy was at his desk, trying to read The Owl and the Pussycat by himself, having decided earlier in the afternoon that, just maybe a while back, he gave up on trying to overcome his dyslexia too soon. While the words looked jumbled in his eyes, he made an effort in trying to see them as they were written out as, even writing them down on paper to prove that he read them correctly.

"…Sometimes, the truth isn't enough," he recalled the words of Batman from the end of The Dark Knight film. "…Sometimes, people deserve more…to have their faith rewarded…"

Then…he looked up from the book…and at the rolled-up drawing of his mother that he put beside his other picture books. Sighing, he set his pencil down on his paper and picked up the drawing, wondering what he should do about his feelings of the very woman that died over a decade ago…and, in some sense, haunted him a little because he never knew about her until much later in his life, and even then, the ones that knew her only knew bits and pieces of her past from their point of view.

Even if she hadn't died that day, would things still be the way they are now? He wondered, questioning whether or not to do something negative about his feelings of her. She just died in her experiment…and he abandoned me. One of Nemo's comic books stated that scientists are supposed to be like wise men or sages, keepers of knowledge and creators of things. All I ever saw at NERV was a bunch of bad conduct…and a monster made by human hands. Then Akira reveals to me what Fuyutsuki-San revealed to her, that my mother had a big hand in creating the Eva I was almost forced into when I was kidnapped for Ayanami.

As much as he probably should've tried to remember whatever else there was about Yui as he could've, the pain of his childhood memories, even the memory of her death, were still shrouded in darkness that held too much anger…and the weight of his father's words of having no value and that he was tired of looking at his face, even finding out much later in life that he doesn't care about him…it was all too much for him to take. It was…too much hurt, too much of a strain on his heart and emotional development, and the knowledge he had gained from the point of view of others that knew of his parents only helped to raise too many questions of 'what if' possibilities that were always shifting between solutions. From the view of his maternal aunt, his mother was a person that saw life through the eyes of a scientist…and had tried to exploit her only sister's ability to talk to animals, and from the view of his adopted relatives, his father was cruel, unsympathetic, fueled by twisted wants…and a sadistic megalomaniac. He was the son of two people that were malevolent in their goals, their choices in life, dictators in deciding other people's fates, and he had to live with that truth for the rest of his life.

Even if she could come back from death, he thought, a tear escaping his left eye as a revelation came upon him, exactly as she was before she died, nothing would change. I'd still have the awful memories of what happened. I'd still know that…that awful man dumped me in the aftermath and told me that I had no value to him…and knowing later that he viewed me as worthless. You could rewrite history as much as you wanted to, but what's done is done, and there's no changing that. There's no going back once a choice is made.

Unknown to his perception, his hand had tightened into a fist, sending a subtle sensation to his nervous system that registered as pain, caused by his fingernails piercing his palm.

"Ah, man," he sighed as he became aware of the sight of blood on his hand, and he got up to head to the kitchen where the medical kit was kept.

But when he got there, he saw Miaka at the table, her hands and head down, facing toward the window by the sink. She was probably in a bad mood, so he turned to head to the bathroom instead.

"Hurt your hand again, Shinji?" He heard her question him, and stopped his escape; he was caught by her channeling.

"Just a little accident caused by a revelation I had a few minutes ago," he expressed, turning to face her, seeing that she was now facing him.

"What about, if you mind my asking?" She wanted to know, seeing the crunched piece of paper in his left hand.

"It was about my parents," he expressed, walking past her to get the kit that was underneath the sink. "I was trying to read a book by myself when I started thinking about them, trying to decide to continue thinking about my mother…or to stop."

"And what was your conclusion?"

Setting the kit on the table and taking out the sterilizing cream and a bandage, he sat down beside her and answered, "I don't want to continue thinking about them or trying to come up with 'what if' possibilities of what could've happened had things not happened the way they did. I don't remember anything about my mother, knowing only that she was as much of a scientist than that jerk she married is a cretin and megalomaniac…and that she dyed her hair a few times, probably why I drew her with reddish-blond hair instead of her natural black. They made something dangerous, and it killed her when she was trying to get it to work. And…I really hate that it took me this long to decide to put this dark, hurtful part of my past behind me to be buried for good."

Miaka picked up the crunched paper and saw the drawing of her nephew's mother, once more impressed by his artwork. While the woman being depicted seemed beautiful, all it helped to do for Miaka was remind her that Shinji had once forgotten what his mother looked like and that Gendo had destroyed every photograph of her, further damaging his consciousness as a young boy.

"You're really going to throw this away?" She asked, simply questioning his choice of getting rid of what was probably the only passable photo of his mother after so many years of being unable to recall her face.

Shinji thought about it, and decided against it.

"No," he answered her, applying the cream onto where his fingernails had pierced his palm. "I was just going to put it away in my closet, where I keep most of the other unrecognizable pieces of my past."

"Say, I just realized something about the way you wear your wig," she told him, holding her head in her right arm.

"What about it?"

"You wear that one more than you wear the other two. Heh-heh…I like this one more. It's…it's the real you, Shinji."

Shinji placed his right hand on his wig and chuckled; when you looked past his poor health and paler skin tone, he did seem rather normal. And he had to admit that his other wigs, the longer, wilder and spikier hairstyles, weren't really reflecting of his peaceful, inoffensive nature.

"Thanks, Miaka," he praised her, and applied the bandage on his hand. "Is it alright if I ask what you were doing in here earlier?"

"Oh, I was just thinking about the people out in the town," she confessed. "Wondering if people are going to celebrate the end of the summer."

"That would be a nice way to forget all the terrible things that have happened."

"Yeah, it would."

-x-

"…Oh…hmm…" Kozo awoke to the sight of the night sky in the Geo-Front. "…Sakaki…"

As he came to, a name that he hadn't heard of in all his years of recollection made it to his consciousness, and he had no idea of who this person was that owned that name.

Who's Ayanami-Sakaki? He wondered, remembering that Rei had grabbed him by his head and assimilated his memories again. Could that have been Ikari's idea of calling Rei before she was Rei?

He wasn't so sure as he got up onto his feet, staggering as he regained his balance.

"Ah, I see that we're finally awake, aren't we?" He turned and saw Rei standing several feet away from him. "You're probably the toughest old man I've met by far. I went and tried to put Ryoji Kaji into permanent nap time, and all I did was give him a major headache…while nearly everyone else feared dropping dead from my touch. I guess I could try something different with you."

Suddenly, tentacles shot out from her armored wings and wrapped around his body.

"Aaaurgh!" He grunted, feeling like he'd been crushed between two mattresses.

"And to answer your curiosity about that name," she uttered to him again, "I haven't gone by the name of Ayanami-Sakaki for over one-thousand years. Amazing to me that I have memories from that far back in time."

-x-

The early morning of August Twenty-Eighth had brought the new and familiar rays of the sun through the window of Bumi and Miaka's bedroom. Taeko, who had a bad dream last night, had slept in her parents' room because her most recent nightmare had revolved around the family's sole black sheep trying to burn them all into the next world, was the first to wake up to the new day, shaking her head of the cobwebs in her mind and unintentionally tasting the strands of hair in her mouth. Oh, how she often cursed her hair when she didn't have it tied in her ox horns like her mother did because of its length, obscuring her vision and the like.

May today be a bright day, she thought, and crawled under the sheets and out of her parents' bed and out the room.

In the hallway, Nemo was stepping out of his room and looking like he needed a shower because his hair looked like it was covered in dust.

"Whoa, Nemo," Taeko expressed at the sight of her uncle, "you look like how I feel."

"And I wish to feel like how you look, Taeko," he responded.

"I just want coffee, please," they turned to face Mayo, who seemed irritated by something.

"No offense, Mayo," went Nemo, "but you sound like sleep didn't come easily to you last night."

"That's because I had a nightmare last night," she confessed. "That horrible experience. Reliving the day you were kidnapped for the first time in your life, drugged by a man in a black suit, placed inside an ugly behemoth, having something identical to that thing that Ms. Soryu wears stuck to your head and nearly getting put down by a good-for-nothing jerk that won't admit that he's wrong in everything that he says and does has a tendency to affect one in their sleep."

Nemo and Taeko leaned against the walls, reminded of that horror through their heart attacks. It had only been seventeen days since that Mayo and her mother were nearly killed in cold blood due to the machinations of fate and bad luck mixed in with mercy and cruelty. The only thing that time couldn't seem to erase or mend was the hurt that had been inflicted upon the family because of Gendo's actions.

"In the end, he's going to get everything that's coming to him," they all turned and saw Shinji standing in the hallway with them, adjusting his wig as Rumi was scratching her belly and yawning.

"Three days till the finale: The end of summer," uttered Rumi, desiring some coffee right now. "That's something I don't look forward to, as a serious ending is 'in a rat with cake'."

"Huh?" Nemo gasped, trying to understand what his little sister just said. "You mean, 'inadequate', Rumi, sis."

"That's what I just said," she told her otaku brother.

"It's best not to contradict her right now, Nemo," said Shinji to him; there was no difference between the way a word was uttered and spelled out for Little Rumi right now.

"Where'd she get that word from, anyway?" Taeko asked them, and Shinji pointed to himself. "You're a funny book, Shinji."

-x-

"…My pager hasn't gone off, so I have no scheduled meetings with what's left of SEELE," Masamune expressed, sitting at his office desk and pondering what to do.

Anne-Marie, Sora, Jade and Kyoji were scattered around the room, wondering why he seemed agitated about a potential meeting with his superiors that he took care of financially.

"Could some of them have been caught trying to get away from the people chasing them after they were exposed?" Anne-Marie asked her father.

"It's possible, but we would've heard of such a possibility on the news," he told her.

"This Kiel Lorenz guy that you say is the head honcho of the SEELE organization doesn't sound like he's got long to live, if what you say about him is true," Kyoji stated, having been told by Masamune that this Kiel Lorenz had, ever since Second Impact, replaced most of his deteriorating body with cybernetic implants after his rapid aging in order to stay alive a little longer.

"That was once said about me, Mr. Mikamura," went Sora, subtly reminding the super-centenarian man that he himself had most of his own body replaced with cybernetics.

"The cybernetics used on Lorenz weren't manufactured by Medical Angel," Masamune informed his grandfather. "The guy kept a small staff of nurses and biomechanical engineers that were handpicked by him. I once questioned why he simply didn't make the request for artificial replacements when I had made great progress in replacing full-metal components with ones made of other materials, like fiberglass, copper, aluminum, chrome and even hard plastic…once the potential dangers of toxicity have been eliminated, of course."

"I guess it's safe to say that this guy didn't trust technological advancements from other countries, right?" Anne-Marie asked.

"Probably not," suggested Sora. "And much of the time, all the best things are made in parts of Asia."

"Would you disbelieve me if I told you that I was once suggested to apply the medical technology to advance the arms race of Japan's military forces?" Masamune asked them.

"I'd believe you to be no different from the soldiers that nearly killed me after pumping me up with hot lead," responded Sora; the very idea of the medical advancements that saved his life, time and again after Second Impact, being used to take lives was a grave offense to what he viewed his former medical guardian as, which was a healer.

"Heh-heh," Anne-Marie chuckled. "Sora, I was with him when a man representing Mr. Lorenz arrived here years ago. You were recovering from more of your body being fitted with prosthetics when he asked my father if his medical advancements had any military applications. Highly profitable military applications. Dad told him that he wasn't going to instruct the people he employed to try out that nonsense. The scientists employed by the military powers left in the world were already at work on developing the ultimate clean bombs that they completed earlier this year, rendering nuclear weapons to almost becoming a thing of the past. There was no need for Medical Angel to start assisting in the arms race. We're not killers."

Of course, that reminded Sora of his not-so-secret vendetta against his betrayer that fueled his desire for revenge. He only ever had hatred toward one person that he wanted justice against; whatever hate he had against other people was indirect, like with Gendo because he tried to murder Anne-Marie and get away with it.

BEEP-BEEP! Masamune's pager went off, signaling that he had to attend a meeting with the men that once controlled the United Nations and the world for years. And he wasn't looking forward to that.

"Okay, everybody stay silent," he told them as he switched on the security system on his computer for his secret communication with the remains of SEELE's superiors. "It's an audio-only chit-chat. Nobody's face is seen, so their public identity is often kept secret from the world."

-x-

Rei was impressed that the number of SEELE members had decreased even further since the last meeting. There were only SEELE 01, 03, 09, 11 and 12 left.

The puppeteers lose more of their puppets, she thought, standing in the center of the chamber that housed these holographic meetings. "The time to end this is almost upon us now."

"And yet we have lost more of our numbers with each passing hour of each day," went SEELE 03 to her. "Many of our allies have also turned against us, giving the authorities after our heads the locations of our safe houses in other parts of the world."

"Thirty of my men were gunned down when I had escaped from the Feds," added SEELE 11. "Some of my best people."

"Whatever happened to Ikari, Ms. Ayanami?" SEELE 01 asked the armored woman.

"He's in the doghouse…with my pets," she answered him, "being minded by a former ghost in the machine that he had harmed with harsh words of betrayal."

As she said that, deep down in Terminal Dogma, Gendo, whom was recently fed three bowls of porridge by Naoko, found that even if he were healed up from Rei's assault on him, he couldn't get away from the dog-like mockeries of Unit-01, demonstrating the brutal behavior of the canines they resembled to a degree.

"It's funny, watching you struggle to find a way out of the mess that you made," went Naoko, sitting in front of the only door that led in and out of the large chamber that housed Lilith, whom had now regenerated her legs, but was still incomplete. "Even when it is inevitable, you still persist. Inevitability, the sense of knowing that everything that happens is impossible to deny, to avoid or to keep from happening. The same with my MAGI when I had built them; they were meant to be able to come up to conclusions and have the right answers before you even fully comprehended the question you had…because to have a supercomputer come up with a conclusion before you do is inevitable. Hmm… I guess…I can share my darkest secret with you about the boy you abandoned. You remember the day that followed your wife's so-called death and absorption into Unit-01, when I requested that your son be examined by me?"

The beasts sat down in front of Gendo to keep him in line, and the former master of NERV sighed and responded to her question, "What of it?"

"To think that you would use him years later when you wanted to deal with the Angels on the field of battle, I found that possibility to be quite horrible, despite the fact that I didn't really give a damn about him. His cancer was given to him by me."

Because he didn't have his glasses on, the sight of his eyes widening was a shocker to Naoko; of course, she had revealed this truth to Rei some time after she was freed from Unit-00, and the wielder of the Fallenbreaker let her go, since the boy was still alive. She didn't expect that Gendo would react to the revelation with his eyes like this.

"You made him sick?" He questioned her.

"It's not like he matters to you the way a child should matter to their parents," she retorted. "You had already made the decision to get rid of him the instant his mother passed away. You once said that you could care less if he lived or die, as he was a pest in your perception. Hmph! All you ever cared about was that bitch, so why should you worry over your son's well-being? But, yes, I made him what he has become, medically speaking. A little of him dies everyday, with no hope of a miracle, short of an organ transplant. Of course, I doubt that such a method would even save him for a few more years. If piloting the Eva meant dealing in death and judgment through the hands of a child born to people that create a combat-oriented weapon that would, eventually, bring about the end of the world, then what I do to prevent them from becoming soldiers of war is better than the alternative."

"You… You…are a fool to think that I will allow you to get away with this," he told her.

"Why get angry with me? You don't even care about Shinji."

"You helped to ruin my plans."

"Oh, that. It's water under the bridge or over the dam…or wherever you wish for it to be. Were you really willing to sacrifice him…just to get back your wife?"

Gendo didn't answer her, which she took as his answer of being perfectly willing to offer his son to the Angels if that meant being given back Yui. Still, she chose to accept that what she did to the boy was the better fate than what was almost done to him when he came back to see his father. If piloting the Eva that took his mother meant dealing in death and judgment with hands that should've never known the pain and suffering that people do to each other, then what she did to him, for him, was better.

"And I could've killed her for what she did," they soon heard Rei behind Naoko, entering the chamber, an aura of blue, fire-like energy surrounding her armored body's outline. "And I won't deny that a part of me wants to, but there would be no point in doing so, as I still have need of her services involving the MAGI…and I promised her that she would get her revenge upon you once you were no longer necessary to me. The updated meeting with the remnants of SEELE ended earlier than I had expected and SEELE's inner circle of members has dwindled down to a sparse, five-man band. I'm beginning to accept the possibility that one of their own actually turned against them and broke the code of silence."

"But why would they want to do that? There'd be nothing to gain." Naoko questioned.

"Tell me, what do you know of Yui's background not relating to science? Those associated to her by basic, genetic or legal ties?"

"I don't know a damn thing about her family, excluding her son and only child."

"Learning from Gendo's memories, I found that Yui has a younger half-sister and her legal father, both very much alive and with good reason to hate the both of them. The legal father, Masamune Ikari, is SEELE's ninth member of the inner circle, and seems to have the means…and motive to turn on the others. All he needed was a major shove to his breaking point, didn't he…Gendo?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Gendo told them, but Rei wasn't interested in any more lies.

"Sure, you do," she responded, and approached him, grabbing his face and probing into his mind.

"Aaaaauurgh!" He groaned, feeling like his insides were going to burst out.

FLASH! Rei found herself inside a building that looked as though it had been around for decades, seeing that it was surround by water as a result of flooding. She was in a room that looked like a former boardroom that had been converted and renovated to serve as a kitchen, and there was Gendo, standing in front of a table with a lighter with a NERV logo inscribed upon it, smirking wickedly.

This will teach her a lesson, she heard his thoughts, referring to Yui's sister, Anne-Marie, who hated them both. She doesn't deserve her looks.

Rei found this unjustified: Gendo attempted to kill the younger Ikari woman without getting caught…simply because of the genetic likeness the two shared…and he hadn't seen her in years ever since he laid out the death threat to her and the elder Ikari man if they ever tried to contact Shinji. If this was how Gendo treated his in-laws as he did his adopted siblings and their children, then he was more screwed up than she had known he was…along with his wife.

FLASH! She released him and frowned.

"You…are a pathetic, little bastard, Gendo," she called him. "It's no wonder Mr. Ikari would sell out the rest of SEELE. You tried to murder his blood daughter…simply because of her subtle resemblance to your bitch…when I simply sent you to try and confirm if she was the one that snatched the boy from my grasp that night. I should deny you the privilege to see the comet that will be arriving soon and enable you to produce fire from your bare hands…but then why deny you the chance to incinerate the woman that kicked you out of her extended family tree of unrelated relations and watch her suffer from severe burning, hmm? Surely, you would desire revenge against her…before I allow Naoko to have her revenge against you…wouldn't you, Gendo? Wouldn't you?"

Gendo didn't answer her, so Rei simply added something new to her plans.

"I'm going to be sending your former guardian a little incentive in the form of a video message from an old contact of hers that she doesn't contact at all, and maybe she'll be pressured into doing something reckless, hopeless, careless…and dangerously stupid. Tell me…did you know that your sensei is quite the vocalist when under pressure and over blades that can skewer flesh and bone if he were dropped on them from five feet in the air?" She told him.

-x-

"…Whose turn is it to go retrieve the mail today?" Bumi asked Nemo.

"Mine," said Shinobu, collecting the dishes from this morning's breakfast.

"I thought it was mine," went Tsukiko, tying up the garbage bag full of compost waste.

"Nope," Shinobu expressed, putting the dishes into the sink and then getting her coat. "I should be back in about twenty minutes. Maybe less than that if I run up the path."

"Wouldn't you find it a simpler task if you took the jeep?" Miaka asked her, cleaning off the table.

"No. The trek up and down the mountain will do me some good."

As Shinobu left out to get the mail, Taeko found Akira going up one of the hallway attics that made up the interiors to the roofs of the house and followed her up.

"Whoa," she expressed, seeing many things up here that were covered in layers of dust, from boxes to what looked like futon mattresses. "I didn't know that there was a lot of stuff up above our heads."

Akira looked at her and responded, "Some of it goes back about half a century. What possessed you to follow me up here?"

"Curiosity," Taeko confessed, looking at an old, framed photograph and picked it up. "Ooh… Who's this lady holding a crystal trophy?"

Akira took a look at the photo and the woman in question, seeing that she possessed long, grayish-white hair and appeared to be in her early-twenties with an imprinted date going back to the Seventeenth of April in the year Nineteen-Eleven.

"That was Kana," she answered her granddaughter. "One of your aunts from over one-hundred years ago. She had won a trophy for being the first to gather seven bags of flower petals."

Taeko then found another framed photograph and picked it up, seeing a little boy playing by the town lake with a beach ball.

"Is this Nemo from when he was a little boy?" She asked, showing Akira, but the eldest woman in town widened her eyes at the sight of the picture.

"No, Taeko," she answered her, seeming disappointed. "That's not Nemo. It's Gendo."

The girl looked back at the picture and explored her past to the only time she ever saw the man in person…and shuddered in fear and disgust, dropping the photo.

"I wish I hadn't asked," she sighed. "He looked like Nemo does in pictures when he's playing: Sweet, kind, caring… Just your regular nice guy."

Akira picked up the fallen picture and recalled the summer day it was taken. The family numbers had dwindled down to herself, Bumi, Gendo and Shinobu during that year. While Bumi and Shinobu had adjusted to their new life with Akira, Gendo, who was still young, had still possessed a semblance of innocence that came with being a child, blind to all the darkness in the world; he didn't even know yet that he was adopted because he was still a toddler.

"A sweet, little child like what he used be, in terms of appearances," they turned to the opening in the attic and saw Kanami, climbing up into the room, "grows up to be a sociopath…and an untalented, unethical megalomaniac that brings great shame and disgrace upon us all."

"Yet, there's been enough death in the world," said Akira, "with any number of new deaths bringing greater imbalance to the universal flow of spiritual energy that resides within the coil of mortality."

"You're defending that bad man, Grandmother?" Taeko asked her.

"No, I'm not. We all have the same, varied opinions of him, and they all add up to the same thing: Gendo is an extremely horrible person…and we're better off without him, but to have any of us kill him, even if we had every right, every reason or desire to lay waste to him, to sever his lifeline, put him down for good…"

"If any of us killed him, we'd have to live with that fact for life," went Taeko, "and it'd be seen as just more senseless violence to most people…even if the potential end of his life were justifiable."

"I won't deny that a part of me wanted to end him back when we was in Tokyo-3," Kanami expressed, imagining crippling her former brother before hitting his pressure points that controlled the blood flow to his nerves and vital organs, watching him struggle to move and breathe…only to suffer excruciating agony as his life energy ceased then and there for good. "But I have my responsibilities as a parent that I can't place on others while I'm still willing and able to do right by my child."

Akira gave her a nod of approval.

"But this stinks," went Taeko. "We got just about everyone else's baby pictures up in here, but we don't have any of Shinji's from when he was a baby."

As the three ladies rummaged around the attic they were in, Shinji and Rumi were in his room looking at his scrapbook, enjoying the pages that had a great degree of life poured into them. Rumi, as she was just trying to relax for a few hours, removed her half of the Angelbreaker and left it on her bed in her room, hoping to avoid any mishaps that often happened when wearing it. Except right now, the girl was less focused on the book in front of her and more focused on the boy beside her.

"Hey, did it just get warmer in here?" Shinji asked her, almost feeling like he was sitting next to a fireplace or something.

"Hmm?" She reacted to the question. "I don't feel nothing."

Shinji then turned the page and revealed one that had a picture of Rumi wielding her wooden pair of hook swords for the first time in her life, with a second picture of her progressing to wielding an actual pair of metal ones, demonstrating her advancing proficiency in them after two years of learning the martial arts.

"Those were some of my happiest days," she told him.

"When you picked the hook sword to be your weapon of choice, I have to admit that I was worried that you would accidentally hurt yourself," Shinji told her.

"Self-control, Shinji. Part of the training is all about self-control. I can't use a weapon, even to protect those close to me, if I have no restraint."

Her tone of voice was calm, but it also seemed detached, which Shinji didn't like right now.

"Rumi…is there anything you wanted to do to me today, other than look at my book?" He asked her, but gasped as he realized he misused a word. "I mean, is there anything you wanted to do with me, Rumi? Anything you wanted to do with me?"

The girl looked up at him and chuckled; how he managed to let his words slip like that was a mystery to her, but she guessed that, with or without her mother's family artifact, she had some degree of influence on him.

"We should watch a movie," she suggested, though the options for most films were few since she was so young and required parental guidance just to watch the PG-rated ones and so on.

"Lilo & Stitch?"

"No, I've seen that one enough for now. My Neighbor Totoro?"

"Un-uh. The Wizard of Oz?"

"Boo… The Sorcerer's Apprentice?"

"Hmm… The Sorcerer's Apprentice, it is." Shinji then closed the scrapbook up and the two got up, but then Shinji fell to the floor. "Ooph! I'm alright."

Rumi helped him up and then found herself holding his head in a possessive manner.

"Okay, where did you get the superhuman strength to hold my head like this?" He asked her, and she let go.

"No idea," she answered him.

"Akira!" They heard Shinobu yell out, signaling her return from getting the mail. "You got a package!"

Akira came down from up the attic and found her second eldest daughter holding a rectangular-shaped package in her hand.

"That's odd," she told her. "I rarely ever get mail."

"You'll not like who it's from, either," Shinobu pointed to the return address that was limited to just a name. "It's from that girl."

The town leader read the package; it was addressed to her…from Rei Ayanami, with a message that read, "Look at right now!" that was written in red. She opened it to reveal a recordable VHS tape.

I don't like this, she thought calmly, and then took the tape to the living room and inserted it into the VCR player.

The static on the tape cleared up and revealed, to her initial shock, Kozo Fuyutsuki, upside-down, stuck to a wall, and looking like he had a few rounds with a truck and a toaster because he was covered in burns, bruises and lacerations.

"Hey, Akira," Kozo announced, "it's Kozo Fuyutsuki, the guy whose life you once saved as a kid back when I was twelve."

"My Kami," went Kanami, wondering who would want to hurt this elderly man like this and then have him be videotaped.

"Rei Ayanami has been…very displeased with the ways things have progressed in her plans, and has requested my aid in persuading you to see through to the fruition of her goal. Oh, this is bull, Rei! Lilith! Ayanami-Sakaki, or whoever you used to be in the past!" He continued, now making it clear that he was being forced into this recording by the person holding the camera. "Aaah, aaah!"

A series of metallic tentacles stuck him in his left side as the woman, Rei or Lilith, showed up in front of the camera, revealing that she was using the tentacles produced from her armored body to manipulate it, and grabbed him by his neck.

"You can voice out your opinions to me after we're done recording!" She told him. "Now, say what I've instructed you to say…and make it good."

"Rei has suggested that a trade would persuade you see things her way: She's taken me as her prisoner and is willing to cut me loose if her demand is met. The demand: Hand over Shinji and Rumi." Kozo continued, which made Shinobu tighten her left fist; if it wasn't the town's fear-induced population desiring that her nephew and little sister were handed over to some deranged bitch, it was the deranged bitch herself that was trying to manipulate her mother into getting with her program.

"But, honestly, Akira…don't listen to her. She's just gonna kill us all, regardless. Gendo and Yui, they drove her to this madness!"

That's when Rei slapped him hard in his face!

"Yeah, they did," she said in front of the camera, "and all it took was years of imprisonment, being pieced together in places…and spiritual maiming. What kind of people that failed as people, completely, would do such a thing to somebody that didn't deserve it? Still, if I have to be a villain, I'll be a villain that's also a victim of science's abusive misuse and inappropriate child rearing, since I was Gendo's investment in the shape of a child version of his stupid bitch of a wife. You heard me, Akira. And you got till tonight at midnight…otherwise, he gets to go to the top of the world…only to fall to his grave. Eh-heh-heh! Victims of cruel people…aren't we all? Eh-heh!"

The video then went static. Akira sighed…and then turned around to face Rumi and Shinji, whom she was aware had seen the video from behind her and Shinobu, seeing their woe.

"Crazy woman," Shinji expressed, referring to Rei.

-x-

Even if things didn't go so well, Rei was going through great pains to place the pieces of her puzzle in their proper positions. And Unit-01 was the first to be moved…by means of her Fallenbreaker talisman, which provided her the strength of the Angel the biological components were provided from. She never thought that her talisman would endow her with such power over physical objects, and the purple Eva couldn't even protest against her actions of lifting it up from the cages and catapults.

"So close to my goal…yet, I don't want to be close to it. I want to achieve it. I want to be free from all the baggage I've been forced to carry for far too long." She expressed, levitating up the catapult shaft that led to the inside of the Geo-Front.

As she worked with the Eva, Naoko was back with her multitasking of the MAGI, making sure that it couldn't be hacked or shut down from the outside. All the while, updating the aspects of herself to be more in tune with her current state of mind, linking the supercomputer system with herself, advancing her work…and improving on things that she hadn't noticed needing improvement before her attempted suicide years ago.

"Hmm-hmm-hmm, hmm-hmm-hmm," she hummed, walking from one computer console to the next one, all the while the choker's tentacled hands did her bidding, carrying out her typing commands based on what she had done on the previous console. "…I promise you that your heart will break…"

-x-

"…And he called her something that sounded like an add-on to her last name: Takashi, Takagi, or something like that," Akira told Camille.

"Ayanami-Sakaki," Camille responded, which caused the town leader to react with surprise.

"You know about her?" Tomoyo, who had been trying to contact Akira at her home since this morning, had to find Ms. Moto's business residence in order to see her, as Akira had gone there after being suggested by Nemo to speak with his significant other about what they had seen on the tape.

"My grandmother told me about her," she explained. "One of the things she picked up after trying on the Angelbreaker. If what you heard was adequate about her name, then it's definitely possible that Ms. Ayanami herself was modeled after a woman whose reputation preceded her."

"What kind of reputation, exactly?" Akira asked.

"Over one-thousand years ago, she…killed nearly one-hundred-fifty people in her goal to kill one-thousand…and the last person she was known to murder was a little boy that was related to one of the previous wielders of the Angelbreaker that put an end to her killing spree." Camille answered her.

"Did she do time after being stopped?" Tomoyo questioned.

"No. Hell, no. Grandmama said that the wielder that stopped her sealed her away…as she wasn't who she seemed to be. She was…some sort of a shade of a greater being that was buried in the planet until the time came for it to be unleashed. The people that were killed, however, were brought back after her imprisonment in the darkness was put back into force."

"Hey, I think I heard an old fairy tale like that once. A goal to murder one-thousand lives in the goal…of obtaining absolute freedom from the restraints of the world. A…a ghost girl with eyes that were like rubies floating in a lake of blood, wielding a sword that carried a thirst for retribution."

"Wait a minute," went Akira. "A ghost with ruby eyes…and a face that shows no emotion, even when faced with certain doom. Ayanami-Sakaki… Desumasuku 'The Maiden of the Death Mask' Ayanami-Sakaki, Camille?"

"Yeah, Akira, that's right," the younger woman expressed to the two elder women.

"What?" Tomoyo sighed. "Miss Moto…seriously…are you for real about this?"

"My grandmother wouldn't lie to me," she told her. "I wouldn't lie about anything serious, either. The story also expressed that there was at least one person trying to possess the Angelbreaker during that time, as well. One that could, potentially, wield it without needing to be chosen by it at that time, but they weren't… Well, how should I put it, Akira? Whoever it was wasn't as disciplined or as principled in their moral judgment as you or Rumi are with the talisman?"

Akira then thought of Rei Ayanami and her Fallenbreaker, seeing that she wasn't very moral or expressive in emotions; it was like her very face was a mask that hid her true self. Even the first time she met her, before the Fallenbreaker, before everything got rougher in this would-be war, the albino mockery of Yui Ikari was devoid of expressions, maintaining a face that showed emptiness.

"So…this Rei Ayanami…is a mockery of your grandson's mother, who allowed herself to be consumed by one of her pet projects, which resulted in the creation of the first incarnation of our albino adversary, who is also the would-be source of all the life we view as normal on this planet?" Tomoyo found this too crazy to believe, but at the same time it wasn't too crazy; she'd been around the channelers long enough to consider them a normal thing around the town.

"The generations of being trapped underground, waiting for her time to be set free from her imprisonment, and then being used in experiments, some of which resulted in at least one of the Evas being made directly from her, and then being maimed, spiritually, physically, pieced together after discarding the parts that were deemed unnecessary, stitched up into the very person she has become…has probably driven her to the darkest levels of insanity." Akira uttered, once again angry at what select people have done in the years since Second Impact with their malpractice of science and so on.

Then…Tomoyo expressed, "It's just like what my sister once said about a drawing she made: What could've happened to a woman that wasn't bad to make her think that every one else is bad?"

Camille and Akira agreed with her on at least that belief; while Rei, or Lilith, wasn't initially bad to begin with, terrible things happened to her that probably made her assume that everyone, not just those that were responsible for her turning out the way she did in her current state of mind, was bad.

"Rayden's Comet arrives soon. Tomorrow night…and she wants me to hand over Rumi and Shinji to her in exchange for the life of somebody I hadn't met in decades since he was twelve years old…and she's only giving me till midnight tonight to make up my mind." Akira spoke up.

"Don't let her get away with this," Tomoyo told her. "Give her Hell. Mother of mankind or not, she's twisted in her methods."

"She may kill this Fuyutsuki-San, regardless of whichever choice you make," Camille added in, "but we don't really know that for sure. And…there are other kinds of losses."

"Like what, for example?" Akira asked her.

"Like you losing your youngest daughter and grandson to unnatural causes," Tomoyo explained some of the examples, "or why Bumi, Shinobu and the other grownup siblings have to forfeit their baby sister and their only nephew because some people don't want to end in agony and pain, or why I have to know that another little girl was taken from this world under some bullshit circumstances like how my sister was taken because I made a lousy choice that I have to live with for the rest of my life. Not to mention two older girls losing their youngest auntie and older boy cousin."

"And then, there's the good doctor's loss because he likes the two of them without question," Camille added a few others. "But in the end, it's your family that suffers the loss of two of its own people…just so that a crazy lady achieves her heartless goal, costing everybody their future. Are you really gonna do that to them? Are you willing to?"

Akira didn't answer her; she was pondering how to answer the question with her feelings on the matter instructing her not to give a false answer.

"When people willingly choose to become parents or guardians," the three women turned to see Camille's grandmother wheeling herself into the room, carrying a tray of tea, "they forfeit all of their freedom to steer those without guidance down enlightened paths."

"And even with their deaths, the freedom isn't restored," Tomoyo responded; after Xiaolongnü died, she never felt the same about her own life, and the idea of going back to her life before her sister's birth would've been a poor choice to make, deluding herself into thinking Xiaolongnü didn't exist. "The only semblance of freedom they have…is on deciding how to teach their kids right from wrong."

"You reap what you sow, especially about you," said Camille.

"Yeah," agreed Akira, accepting a cup of tea from the wheelchair-bound elderly woman.

-x-

The time was now four-fifteen…with only a few more hours left till midnight before Rei made her move to end his life. As he reflected back on his life, Kozo really couldn't think of Akira, his childhood savior, actually giving up her daughter and grandson to the keeper of the Fallenbreaker in exchange for his life. He had aged up in the years, becoming a lowly elder with a degree and specialty in metaphysics. There wasn't really anything of particular that was special about him.

Then again, he thought, tied to the chair he was placed on by Rei, she did save my life that night when those rich kids tried to put me down for good.

-x-

Pool of Life, Pool of Punishment, Pool of Change

The twelve-year-old Kozo Fuyutsuki found the loneliness of Akira not being around him to be very dreadful. This was due to finding out that one of her adopted sons from years back when he was a little boy no younger than Kozo himself had finally succumbed to old age, and Akira had to make sure he received a burial when she transported his remains back home; the deceased man had just wanted to revisit his former home that was Kyoto, get back in touch with his original roots…and he was able to before passing away in his sleep, at ease to know that he had lived a good life, hoping the next one would be just as good. Back then, Kozo hated the idea of dying, not just living in fear of it, but the fact that his tormentors made his school life a living Hell with the constant bullying. This made the possibility of dying inch ever closer in his mind because of them.

But they've stopped for now, he thought, trying to enjoy his swimming lessons at the public swimming pool in the late hours of the night. I struck one of them in the head and gave him a concussion.

It was only ten days ago that he had left with his classmates out of Kyoto for the day to go to a frozen lake, and eight days after being encouraged by Akira to stand up to his bullies and defend himself. During the eight days, he participated in a weightlifting program at his school, which also required that the person be taught how to swim if they didn't know how to already, in order to build their upper and lower body strength. While he still seemed somewhat weaker than his tormentors, he had gained some confidence to deal with them that day at the lake.

"I hope you been learning to swim, poor boy," said the leader of his bullies, "because today, you're swimming in the ice water."

As he had minded his own business skating on the edges of the frozen lake, he had found an old pipe piece half-buried in the snow, deciding that he would use it to prove a point to his tormentors that he had become off-limits to their cruelty.

"Ready to go swimming, poor boy?" The lead bully asked him, finding him again in the middle of the frozen lake, accompanied by his friends.

"No," he had told him, bringing up the piece of pipe that he found.

"What on Earth are you going to do with that?" Another of them had asked.

"Hit you…if you try anything," Kozo expressed, taking Akira's advice to heart: Never making the first move until your opponent did.

"Heh! The poor boy is brave, all of the sudden?" The lead bully chuckled, unimpressed by Kozo's threat to hit them with the pipe if they tried anything on him. "Listen up, I'm gonna shove you into the water, and you're not going to do a thing about it."

This only made the rage he had for his bullies build up to the point where he really wanted to hit them with it until they got the message that he was off-limits. And then…the message came hard. The lead bully approached him, and he swung the pipe at his forehead, remembering that Akira told him to hit his tormentors harder than they hit him, with more force than he dared to unleash upon them until they stopped for good. His swing was hard and heavy, making it seem like he had struck a piece of wood with the pipe, and the lead bully backed away, grabbing his head as he fell to his knees.

"He…he really hit him," one of the four, unharmed bullies gasped, just as Kozo brought the pipe back up behind himself, ready for the second round to come while the leader howled in pain at how much his head hurt now.

"Who else wants a piece of me?" He had asked them, feeling justified for what he had just achieved until the teachers responded to the lead bully's cries of agony, not knowing what had happened, but seeing that it was violent.

It was the first time in his life of poverty that Kozo had actually felt a great weight had been lifted off his shoulders when he gave that boy a concussion. They had stayed away from him ever since that day; they didn't even try to jump him whenever he walked past them to and from the school. Even Akira herself was proud of what he did when he informed her.

"…Everyone out of the pool!" He heard a familiar voice, and turned to see it was his tormentors again, accompanied by a much older man that was probably out of his teens. "That's him, right there!"

Uh-oh, he realized his new predicament; this man was probably the elder brother of the boy he gave the concussion…and he wanted to settle the score with violence that was worse than what he had unleashed upon his brother.

The lead bully, still wearing a bandage on his head to show that he'd not recovered from his injury, smiled cruelly at Kozo and crossed his arms in satisfaction as he was now the only one left in the pool and the program's instructor was not present, having left to attend to a minor matter.

This…is bad, thought Kozo, seeing the older boy brandishing a pocketknife in front of them all.

"Get him," the older boy said, and the lead bully's four comrades jumped into the pool after Kozo!

"Ah…aaahh!" He gasped, trying to swim away, but the four grabbed him and dragged him out of the pool in front of the older boy.

"Let's see how long he can hold his breath underwater…upside-down," the lead bully suggested, and his comrades grabbed Kozo by his legs and held him upside-down back in the pool.

Kozo tried with all of his might to hold his breath underwater, but doing so upside-down was hindering his efforts. So this was how he was going to go in life? Not as an old man…but still a young boy?

Akira, he thought, feeling like he was about to burst in the water. You said you'd help me before you left. You told me you would if they continued to persist. You…promised…

His hearing was also dulled due to being in the water, but it sounded like the bullies were laughing at their attempt to murder him. Then, he heard something that sounded like a thud…and then felt his legs get free from their grip. As the back of his head rose to the surface of the water, his ears heard better.

"Witch!" One of the boys screamed.

"Aaahh! She can spit fire from her hands!" Another boy gasped.

"Please, don't hurt me!" A third boy's voice cried. "My parents are wealthy! They'll pay you twenty-thousand to spare me!"

"You think this is about money?" A female voice, calm in sound, but enraged in tone, questioned. "You just tried to murder one of my friends, and you think that bribing me will protect you from my wrath? I don't take bribes, and I don't forgive those that try to kill people I know very easily!"

More screaming was heard, along with splashing thud sounds and shifts in the water around him; he didn't see anything on account of his vision was darkened by his closed eyelids, and his air supply was severely lacking. Moments later, he felt a hand grab him by his right shoulder and pull him up out of the pool, causing the water in his mouth to spill free and allow the air to revitalize his lungs. And as his vision cleared, he was presented with a very rare sight: Akira, holding onto him, while surrounded at the waist down by a small twister of water, conjured from the very pool itself, in front of an cage-like prison made of ice, with all five bullies and the older boy inside it in the center of the pool.

"Akira?" He questioned. "What did you…"

"What I had to in order to get the message heard loud enough," she expressed, setting him on the floor by the edge of the pool now. "And just to make sure the message has sunk in…"

Kozo saw her hands turn into fire! He didn't see her hands catch fire like they were soaked in oil or gasoline, oh, no, no, no. Her hands heated up to the point of spontaneous combustion, literally! Then, her hair strands rose up around her head, like a breeze had swept her hair, except the breeze was coming directly from her. Finally, the temperature within the large room began to drop significantly to the point where Kozo and the bullies could see the mist that was their breaths.

"Call me whatever you will," Akira told the snotty, spoiled, rich boys, now walking on the water of the pool as it turned to ice. "A witch… A monster… A goddess, even… But know this: You've eaten well for a bunch of misbehaving cretins. You've eaten the wealth and spirit of your positive future. And your feast…is at an end. Kozo Fuyutsuki is off-limits to your life of cruelty and stupidity. If you so much as breathe in his direction, not only will I make it so that your hands will never express violence again, but I will unleash an even worse form of punishment upon you. Ever seen what people look like after surviving an unforgiving inferno…with their flesh burnt off to show they were maimed by the flames?"

Kozo couldn't have believed that this woman, this single parent, had in her possession abilities that could've marked her as a virtual goddess incarnate! She manipulated fire, water and wind, and he was certain that she could manipulate the other elements of existence, as well. He could tell that the bullies were wetting their pants already and swore that they wouldn't mess with him no more, which was all that he ever wanted from them.

"Now that we understand each other," she told them as her hands returned to normal, and the ice cage reverted back into water, letting the boys fall into the pool, "we should leave now, Kozo-Kun."

"Yea, ma'am," he agreed, and went to get his clothes.

-x-

Kozo could reflect back on that night and laugh at how stupid and helpless Akira had made his tormentors look. And then parting with one of her relics that was worth a substantial sum to him and his mother to turn their life around and get out of the poverty lane they were in, going from the lower-middle class to the upper-middle class, putting Kozo in the same boat with his tormentors, but, unlike them, Kozo wasn't a jerk.

"…A throwing star made of gold and silver," he sighed, remembering the relic she showed him.

"If you sold it to the right buyer, you could probably buy the nuclear power plant in the Tōkai region for up to five years," she had told him, explaining its value. "I had checked to be sure of its potential, economic value."

"…Yet, you gave it to my family because you felt we were deserving of salvation," he sighed. "Again, why can't a few more people be like you, Akira?"

-x-

Five-eighteen nearing the evening hours of the day, and Rumi was laying atop Shinji's bed with her love interest, trying to forget what they saw and heard of the tape Akira had received this morning.

"Rumi," she heard her nephew say, "have I ever told you about what I had expected when you kissed me that day we was in the elevator?"

"No," she responded. "What did you expect from me when I kissed you?"

"I had expected you would slip your tongue in my mouth."

"I think I heard somewhere that you're not supposed to experience that until after your first date, Shinji. Plus, my tongue doesn't stick out that far." She then stuck out her tongue, showing that it only reached to the underneath of her bottom lip. "See?"

"Eh-heh-heh. Yeah."

"Shinji…are you… You know…ever afraid of…Ayanami?"

Shinji sighed as he turned onto his left side to face his little auntie and responded, "Who's not afraid of Ayanami? When I was kidnapped and brought back to NERV, I was afraid of her trying something on me when I was disabled from being drugged. I get disgusted by the mere idea of her trying to touch me while she's wearing that mockery of the Angelbreaker."

"Ugh," Rumi shuddered; the very fantasy of anybody like Rei Ayanami laying so much as a finger upon her man gave her the creeps. "I'd rather bury her in sand than to let her touch you, Shinji."

"Are you afraid of her, Rumi?" He asked back, wanting her honesty in the question.

The girl looked away from him and at the bedspread, responding with, "Yes, Shinji. I am afraid of her. I'm afraid of what she's capable of doing to the rest of the family if she ever got rid of me. And…I'm afraid of her wanting to kill me…and she doesn't even know me the way all of you do."

"She knows you're protective of me," he countered with that fact. "Maybe that's all she knows."

Wanting to get off the potential death threat that Ayanami gave to her mother of murdering the elder she knew as a little boy, Rumi then decided to ask something that was personal regarding themselves.

"I…" She started, but Shinji spoke up faster than she did.

"I was still in a state of surprise when you kissed me in that elevator that day," he said to her.

"Oh," she responded, sounding disappointed.

"Why do you seem upset about it?" He asked.

"I was wondering…when I kissed you that day, for the first time…if you tried to kiss me back. I might have made the first move when I jumped you, but…I was hoping that it was…not something that just happened between us back then." She explained, having expressed that he would at least feel the same way she did when she kissed him on his lips; sometimes, she could still feel the warmth that was there on her lips.

"I did hold you," he expressed quietly, though if the elevator hadn't opened up during that moment, it would've probably led to…something that was more meaningful between them than a mere smooch that lasted a few seconds. "I…"

"Could I…" She spoke up. "I mean…with your permission…I wish to do it again…if you'll let me."

Shinji leaned his head in toward Rumi's…and kissed her on the lips, surprising her! It surprised her so much that she was glad she didn't have on her half of the Angelbreaker because she felt like she was going to lose her self-control…and kissed back. He felt something pressing against his lips that was small and realized that it was her tongue. Rather than resist her advances, he surrendered to her desire and opened his lips up a bit for her to trespass on his personal space.

Oh, Kami, thought Rumi, shutting her eyes and processing all of what she was doing. What am I doing to him?

She felt like she had lost control and grabbed his head, getting on top of him and savoring every layer of his taste.

This should be wrong, but…I can't view what I feel for Rumi as being bad, Shinji thought, raising his right hand up over Rumi's back…and calmly brought it down on her back as he felt her right hand reaching for his left hand.

A tiny, bead-like object fell onto his left cheek…and then another onto his right cheek, hearing a sound like somebody was moaning like they did in the movies and cartoons. He opened his eyes and saw, to his greatest shock right now, that Rumi was crying.

I'm hurting her, he suspected, wanting this to end before they went too far and she ended up hating him for whatever he might've done to cause her this pain.

But try as he might to raise his left arm up, this little girl had him pinned to the bed…and made him see the error of his suspicion as she pressed her lips even firmer down on his; even her tongue was reaching further inside his mouth, touching his tongue. What he had perceived to be tears of pain were actually tears of longing. She was happy in this second kiss. Her hand tightened its grip on his as her other hand reached toward his neck, feeling the warmth of his pulse that she felt was reserved only for her.

Then, as quickly as it started, Rumi released her hold on him and raised her head up to face him.

"Shinji," she said, almost a whimper, "I love you."

He nodded and responded, "I love you, too, Rumi."

She let him rise up enough to hug him as she regained control of her emotions and restraint. She was happy that he said that; while she had heard him say it before many times, this time, it felt a little different…and more meaningful. And as for Shinji…he meant what he said to her. He really, truly, loved her the way she loved him.

-x-

"…HMM?!" Rei acted up, looking up at the surface of the Geo-Front that she destroyed to allow light to shine through as she was setting Unit-01 down on the ground.

"I love you, Shinji," the little girl's voice was heard in her head.

"I love you, too, Rumi," the son of the two people that maimed her years ago had responded after, and it caused Rei to let of of the special cables that were designed to hoist Evangelions from off the ground and into the air, dropping it to the ground.

The armor under her neck slid up to her cheeks and the sides of her eyes, connecting with the armor that resembled fangs or curved blades on them. Recently, and only sometimes, she could hear the little girl she detested every time she was with the boy she had just expressed to caring about, and had returned her affections. Somehow, it sickened her, almost as much as it sickened her to be wearing the facial identity of Gendo's wife.

That little bitch, she thought, hovering back to the ground. Even if it's only a slight degree of comfort in a world on the brink of oblivion, I will deprive her of any happy feelings that she has.

As she abandoned the fallen Unit-01, its resident soul was currently locked within a conversation that it didn't anticipate for years after Second Impact: Yui Ikari was in a conversation with the ghost of Pema Ikari, her dead mother.

"…For you, anyone that would listen to you would do," Pema told her daughter, expressing her anger at what she had done over the years, before and after the end of half the world they once knew. "It didn't matter who it was! You exploited and used us all! You went and alienated Anne-Marie from kids her age because you obsessed over her ability to talk to animals! You forced Masamune to side with the people that wanted to become deities at the end of the world in order to protect her from a life as a laboratory specimen like how you persisted in studying her like she really was one! In a way, forcing him to accept a deal with the Devil! Then, you go and make your own husband, whom you also manipulated to manipulate those around him to help you with your sick goal, disguising it under the pretense of actually giving people a bright future. You, your husband, your mockery of a thing that you view as a deity… If I had known of the darkness that was in your heart, if I had known what you were capable of, what you were intending to do to us, as if it were some sort of a game you were playing… I would've never did what I did with Tai…or I would've took steps to prevent you from becoming a scientist…or just put an end to you before you drew your first breath of life myself, Yui."

Yui looked hurt to hear her mother tell her this, and with their constantly floating and appearing in different places of this white, shadowless, featureless dimension, it only added to her revelations of what she knew as the truth…but had been ignoring them, allowing the truth behind each of her choices to build and build until they became overwhelming.

"You…you don't really mean that," she told Pema.

"Is that what you think…or is that what you want to believe? Seven-hundred people, including myself, were the lucky ones to ascend to Heaven that day, Yui. Everyone else that died, that didn't survive the devastation that people like you deliberately, purposely, unleashed upon the world, weren't as lucky. They didn't descend to the bowels of the inferno underworld that we grew up knowing was Hell after it was, in the darkest sense, unleashed on Earth. They just wound up in the abyss of Limbo, swirling in an unending cyclone of pain and agony that even the kami themselves can't save them from. Heh! Even when I'm up in that beautiful place that exists in the sky, I'm still in pain because I have to watch the people I left behind…the people I still love…get hurt over something that they never wanted to be a part of, Yui. I saw the day your sister expressed her hatred of you for what was truly your fault…and the day she threatened to kill you if she ever got the perfect opportunity to do so, knowing that you would die by her hands in revenge for the future you took from her and flaunted in front of her. I saw the day you forced Masamune to ask you the very question you could never answer him: Were you insane? What pains me the most of everyday I see the hurt that has been inflicted upon the undeserving…is the choice you made of leaving your own child to be the ghost in the machine, just so you could live on as a mockery of eternal proof of people's existence. Is this supposed to be a joke?"

Yui didn't answer her. For years, she had been denying her part in the Second Impact, not wanting to be accused of spilling the blood of over half the world's population of men, women, children, exterminating animals and plants that could never be replaced…and actually wondering if any child born in the aftermath could call the world they had been left with, as if it were a terrible, unwanted heritage, a violent legacy, a place that is like Hell that they had to put up with. She wanted to believe, for everyone's sake, that anyplace could be like Heaven if you had the will to live in it. Unfortunately, there were those that just didn't share her beliefs.

"That little girl adores him, you know," she heard her mother say, sparking her curiosity. "Little Rumi Rokubungi. A little, energetic six-year-old, one of two people, chosen by destiny to give the people of the world back their future…in love for the first time in her life with somebody that really needed to know that someone close to him would give up her life to let him see the day his own can end after he's lived out his own goals that nobody kept him from achieving."

"That's illogical," Yui told her. "A six-year-old being in love with a fourteen-year-old. That's… It's not acceptable in society."

"There's no such thing as logic when it comes to love, Yui. There's no math needed, no statistics required, and no rules as a reference or guide. Love isn't some sort of a biological curse or instantaneous reaction in the brain that one gets. It's a choice, an intense, personal decision that only you, the one that feels it, can make. You choose to be in love, and you choose how to express it, for better or for worse, whether it's accepted by others or not. Anne-Marie, she loved Mori…with great passion. She was even willing to have his baby when she found out she was pregnant. Rumi, she loves Shinji…with just as much passion, if not more, willing to die for him because she feels he's worth whatever happens. But you…you have a long way to go…a really, really long way…before you can ever understand the depths of true love that transcends even the inevitability of death. Can you truly look me in the eye and tell me that everything you have ever done has been out of love? Can you be honest with yourself and say that your so-called bright future for everyone is what you say it is? Can you really hope to avoid your judgment day and atone for the pain you've inflicted upon others by using a project you were directly involved in to erase people from physical existence and smash their souls together in order to create a world where there's no such thing as pain, at the cost of individuality and free will, for everyone?"

Yui looked up at her, seeing that her eyes were the same as they were the day Anne-Marie had told her that she and Gendo had paid a visit to Mori in an attempt to get him to break up with her, further solidifying the hate that the younger sister now possessed for the elder sister: Highly judgmental. She knew that whatever she would try to say would be that of the scientific vocabulary, which didn't fit with her parents' vocabulary of morality, the line between what was right and what was wrong. Still, she had to at least make an attempt to say something without it.

"I… No," she finally expressed. "Nothing I've ever done has been out of love."

"There's an old saying that really is true that would help to teach young people the importance of love: 'It's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all'. When you lose the people that matter to you, you feel the loss that their absence brings you…and you never truly move on with your life, knowing that there were chances never taken, words that were never said, futures that couldn't be made realities that could've been full of smiles because of decisions that were best left unmade."

"But…people's united future, it was written in stone, and the end of days was foretold to happen in more than fifteen years after the Second Impact happened, so what was the point of any person trying to achieve their future if it was going to be short-lived?"

"Ancient inscriptions on slabs of stone don't tell one everything," Pema revealed. "The future isn't always written in stone. Call it whatever you will: Fate, destiny, fortune, or even misfortune. Only the past is written in stone…or in metal…or even in flesh. The present and future…are sought after in the here and now, but not everyone has the right to seek that future out. Maybe the future that they see…isn't the future that is right for people. I've seen Anne-Marie's future in your goal…and it is not one of happiness. I've seen the future of the people that care about Shinji…and even theirs aren't one of happiness in your goal, your husband's goal…or that girl's goal. And I've seen your future if everything happened the way that you wanted…only to see that you're no different from the fools that wanted the end of the world to happen, as you leave behind everything to live forever…and leave nothing but hollow words to the only person that remains alive on a withered and dead Earth to even hear them."

FLASH! Yui saw a glimpse of this future. She saw Unit-01, her vessel, floating in the abyss of space, looking like a fossil with long, bluish-white hair flowing out the back of its head, motionless as the very planet it drifted away from resembled that of the red planet known as Mars, the new planet Earth of the future. A decayed, hopeless world…with only one person left on it as he laid on the sands of a lifeless beach, his white, soaked hospital clothes blending in with the pure, white sand.

"They're all gone," she heard her son say, as he was the only person left alive in this dead world.

FLASH! She was returned to her all-white dimension within the Eva…and floating upside-down away from her mother.

"It takes the joy out of life now, doesn't it?" Pema asked her, but she didn't answer.

-x-

As Akira stood outside her estate, she wondered if she was making the right choice. To give into Rei Ayanami's demands was a foul decision, but to do the alternative was almost worse than that. But what choice did she really have left? Of course, she knew and accepted the choice she made over two centuries ago…and that was the choice to settle down and accept that her life was never going to be hers ever again, relinquishing her freedom to be a mother, just as her mother had before her. Even now, the mere idea of forfeiting two of her own, even when one of of them wasn't truly hers, was a decision that was best left unmade.

She opened the gate and stepped inside, seeing Taeko sitting on the steps of the front porch.

"Taeko?" She asked, approaching the steps. "What are you doing out here when it's about to be dark out? Did something happen?"

"Are…are you…going to kick Shinji and Rumi out?" She asked Akira, her voice filled with woe.

The super-centenarian nodded in the negative and expressed, "That was never the solution I was coming to. I'm not giving that crazy girl what she wants. Who she wants. If she wants them…she's gotta go through me."

Taeko smiled and hugged her grandmother's legs.

"Those two are really linked," she told Akira, who couldn't deny that truth.

Rumi had told her herself that she was in love with Shinji, and she had allowed her to continue feeling the way she did for him, unwilling to try and stand between them. And, despite being a family, there was no blood relation between the young girl and the boy that was eight years her superior, so you couldn't really say it was incestuous for them to be together if their affections were mutual. The only thing Shinji would be guilty of is robbing the cradle…and Rumi being the child that was being robbed.

"Heh-heh-heh!" She chuckled at the revelation. "Where are those two, anyway?"

"The last time I saw them, they were in Rumi's room," Taeko informed her, and let go of her legs so she could enter the house.

Kanami and Mayo were in the kitchen cooking up dinner when they saw Akira return.

"You're just in time," Mayo had told her. "We're almost done with making dinner here."

"That's good to hear," Akira responded, walking past them and into the hallway, where she spotted Nemo stepping out of his room with a comic book in his hand. "Nemo?"

"Hmm?" The young, thirty-three-year-old man responded, looking up at his adopted mother. "Oh. Hey, Akira. Did you just get back?"

"Yeah."

Then…Nemo had to ask her what he needed to know.

"Just…what have you decided upon, Akira?" He asked her.

"Is not giving in to the mad girl's demands a simple enough answer?" She tried.

Nemo smiled and responded, "Very simple…and direct."

Akira took notice of the comic he was reading and chuckled; it was one of those old comics about the martial arts fighter and alien by the name of Goku and those seven spheres needed to undo terrible catastrophes that couldn't be undone by mere, mortal hands unless they possessed them.

"I think they should've made the third series of that a manga when it came out on video," she told him, referring to the book.

"I look at the stories of it made by the fans on the Internet, and some of it's good to look at, among other stories," he expressed.

The super-centenarian then turned her head to the left to see the two people she needed to let know of her decision of how to handle Lilith's albino human incarnation, seeing the two walking down the hall holding hands. While she was willing to tolerate their relationship, since judging by the color of Shinji's cheeks that their affections were mutual, she really wished that they would slow things down, since the world wasn't going to end. Not while she still had life in her body to say differently.

"I wish you two would slow your roll," she told them.

"I would let go," went Shinji, with a chuckle, "but Rumi has a strong grip."

Rumi feigned innocence and uttered, "All the other ladies can't have him now."

"Ah-ha-ha!" Nemo cracked up; his little sister had laid claim to Shinji's heart…and refused to let him go in fear that another would make a move on him. "All the guys are sure to be jealous of Shinji when you tell that you're already taken."

-x-

Red may have been a color that Rei had associated everything she hated in life, but it was a color she was seeing a lot of for the last half-hour in order to vent out her frustration at the discovery of a little girl she hated enjoying a new sensation that she herself never could experience, in whichever incarnation she existed in. So she took it out on some unimportant NERV employees, killing them and spilling their blood on the walls and on her armor.

Why? She questioned, raising a man that weighed more than she did without the armor off the ground, ignoring his pleas for mercy. Why do I constantly hear that bitch inside my own head?

She shot her right arm through his abdomen and left eight smaller holes of blood in as he fell to the floor, deprived of life.

Naoko heard of their screams and the sounds of splattering…and she paid it no mind; why worry about the inevitable when she had her own problems to contend with? She was more focused on running the MAGI and finally exacting her revenge on Gendo…and then killing her own daughter for good measure after he paid the price for his own misdeeds. The one thing she did wish she had right, though, was a can of air freshener to eliminate the foul odor that the bloodshed would emanate afterwards.

-x-

The night was quiet. Too quiet, and that made Shamshel suspicious right now. She had put Armisael to sleep over an hour ago and proceeded to read her romance novel, but something in the back of mind kept her from enjoying the visualization of what she read.

"Sachiel," she whispered to her brother, "are you awake?"

"Yeah," responded her brother. "What is it?"

"Do you ever wonder how you're gonna spend your last moments at the end of the world?"

"No."

"Not once?"

"No."

In the next cell, Gaghiel, who was laying down, uttered, "Why ask, Shamshel?"

"That girl we saw on TV," she explained. "The one demanding that the Angelbreaker's youngest wielder be surrendered to her along with that boy she protects."

"I thought you said you no longer hated the girl for what she did to us," said Sachiel.

"I meant it. But do you honestly expect the rest of the town to not turn over the little girl that should probably be hailed a hero for protecting them from us, simply because we had a vendetta against her?"

Zeruel, the eldest of the siblings, still awake in his resting position of kneeling down, being chained and covered with numbing agents to inhibit his muscles and keep his inhuman strength down, looked up at the window in front of him and at the night sky.

"I'd rather go out fighting," he then uttered.

"Me, too, Zeruel," added Ramiel.

"Same here," added Arael, who was also still awake.

A shuffling sound of footsteps came from outside the cells…and Shamshel saw their father approaching her cell door with a key.

"What is the meaning of this, Father?" She asked him.

Before he could even answer, her little brother, Bardiel, appeared behind him and said, "It's called helping, Shamshel. Helping the heroes, that is."

"Huh?" Sachiel gaped, seeing their hunchback brother holding a pair of ropes that he had been told were Shamshel's whips that were confiscated from her prior to being sent here for her rehab.

-x-

The silence of the night wasn't as soothing to Kyoji as it used to be when he was in his prime less than a century ago. Even if he was surrounded by a large source of water to practice his Hydro Channeling in order to get back in touch with elemental blessing. As he raised a few gallons of the water that had destroyed most of his home in the following years, he couldn't help but think that something was wrong elsewhere…or that he felt he was needed, as well.

Watching her great-grandfather from her father's office, Anne-Marie had suggested to her father that they go to Tokyo-3 to settle the score they both knew each other to have with the people still there.

"I favor her choice and course of action, Masamune," went Sora, admiring the Hydro Master's ability to manipulate the water like how he'd seen it being done in the Asian-influenced cartoon that captured the hearts of millions around the world to survive Second Impact when the conflicts ended.

But Masamune wasn't sure that going to Tokyo-3 was a good idea when it had been declared by the military as a no-go zone after the broadcast made by the albino girl that mirrored Yui's appearance. And after Gendo's attempted murder on Anne-Marie, he couldn't risk losing her again. Still, he couldn't deny that he had a dark desire for revenge against Gendo; everybody that probably had a reason to despise the cretin would want to exact some form of vengeance against the jerk. His form of revenge would be just to watch him lose everything he took for granted, but judging from the way he lived his life, what he took for granted…had already been taken from him.

Sora, on the other hand, while not just wanting to get revenge on the guy he knew was still alive, had desired the truth as to why he and the others that turned away from the abusive caretakers had to pay the price for being sold out by one of their own.

Knock-knock-knock! Somebody came knocking at the door, and it was only the skeleton crew that was still around in the building, as everybody had gone home.

"Who is it?" Masamune asked.

"Miss Soryu," the response came, and it reminded him that Asuka Langley Soryu had volunteered to be part of the night shift of computer technicians for the week.

Anne-Marie, as much as she admired the girl's ability to move on with her life and find some semblance of normality in a former planned community that now served as a boomtown of sorts for the physically maimed to get the help they needed to get back on their feet, she had to admit that sometimes she was looking in places she didn't need to look in.

"You may come in," Masamune announced, and Asuka entered the office, noticing the security guard that was her boss' daughter and the mysterious man that was Sora.

"I'm sorry, was I interrupting something?" Asuka asked.

"No," Masamune answered. "How may I help you?"

"I…just needed to confirm something…about him," Asuka expressed, pointing toward Sora, who sat over by one of the windows, trying to keep from looking at the redhead.

"Oh?" Anne-Marie responded, leaning against the sill of the window opposite of the one Sora was near. "Curiosity or some clerical error that was made in the files?"

Asuka sighed and answered, "Curiosity. Wanting to know why his files lack one, recurring detail."

"Which is?" Masamune asked.

"Why his last name isn't included."

Sora frowned, but kept his face hidden from the other.

Masamune and Anne-Marie kept quiet about this, but Asuka just needed to ask him one question that, after thinking about the man's face, she couldn't let go of.

"I…is… Would he, by any chance, be related to a guy named Ryoji Kaji?" She questioned.

CRACK-SMASH! The sound and sight of the window in front of Sora had cracked under the pressure of his right fist slamming into it.

Suddenly, a tapping on the glass came, and Anne-Marie noticed her grandfather, Kyoji, right behind her, supported by a column of water, which surprised Asuka.

"I take it that something happened that made Sora bust a glass with his fist?" Kyoji asked them, just as Sora turned to face them.

"Hey," Anne-Marie told him, "we all got skeletons in our closets that we don't like being reminded of."

"Try to understand, Ms. Soryu," went Masamune. "Sora's past is…very touchy, very sensitive…and not to be heard by those that can't take the truth behind it."

This was all she needed to confirm her suspicions on the man.

"For the new record," went Sora, speaking up, "I was declared legally dead for the better part of fifteen years by relatives that never even saw my… What was left of me that still functioned. How do you explain to people that choose to disbelieve that an eleven-year-old boy survived to be twenty-six when he should've died from being riddled with bullet holes? And how do you live with knowing that the one you looked up to…when he wasn't poking his nose where it didn't belong…betrayed you to the cold hands of the military that decided that a bunch of kids were of no matter to anybody?"

Asuka couldn't answer those questions.

"Ryoji Kaji…was my nīsan before he sold me and a few others out to save himself from being killed by some soldiers that abused their authority in the cruelest of ways." He expressed further, revealing his association to the guy he hated most.

"Nīsan? You mean…Kaji-San is…was your brother?" She gasped, having read the translation required to address one's male sibling that was older than you, but couldn't really see the resemblance between Sora and his brother; Ryoji had a look of off-handed maturity…but Sora still looked like a young boy that had yet to experience a beard or mustache on his face. That's hard to believe a little. But now that I think about it, Kaji-San never once spoke about his family.

"I'm guessing you know Ryoji a little…well, you know him a bit, don't you?" Sora asked her.

"He…he was one of my guardians after my mother passed away," she explained, "but he never did mention having a brother. I once asked him about his family…but he neglected to say anything."

"Always the nosy baka; he'll talk about other things or people…but never of himself. You could probably hang him upside-down…and he still wouldn't say anything about me."

"Congratulations, Ms. Soryu," went Anne-Marie, "he's officially pissed about the one guy he hates to death and would want to end."

"And you get to see how he truly feels when he's fully conscious," added Masamune. "When he's under for surgery, he just…mumbles out how he wants to beat his brother down."

At first, Asuka wanted to defend Kaji-San from his brother, who seemed to possess a grudge that was instigated by him that could only end in blood, but just looking at Sora made her question how he was hurt, then supposedly killed…and still be alive. She had to remind herself that she heard before that he was mended extensively and even had a cloned heart in place of the one he no longer had.

"Um, just how much of his body had to be replaced with cybernetics?" Asuka asked Masamune.

"When you take away the flesh, you would find that there's not much left of him that's still original," he expressed, not wanting to use the science lingo to explain how much of Sora's body had been replaced in the years since he founded the company.

Sora then sighed and got up in front of Asuka.

"Have you ever heard of the theory of spontaneous revival?" He asked her. "I experienced that…several days after being shot to death. What was left of me that could still function brought me back…along with my hatred for my brother."

He then held out his left arm in front of her.

Asuka, unsure of the reason why, gave in and touched his hand, feeling flesh that didn't seem entirely like flesh. The flesh felt like that of a baby's bottom (if she had ever touched a baby's bottom, that is), but as she continued to feel the limb, she felt something in it that didn't seem normal at all. It was…as if this arm were like one belonging to some of the men she worked with…before they were covered in the new skin matrix formula that had been developed.

"Hand," she uttered, going up his wrist, wondering how far his prosthetic limb went. "Humerus…shoulder blade?"

"Entire left arm," he revealed, "right down to the collarbones that also needed to be replaced."

Next, she counted the ribs, having learned from the study of prosthetic replacement that a certain number of them needed to be removed to accommodate the new limb.

"One…two…three…four…five…" She counted, but Sora backed away to refrain from laughing.

"Heh! That…that fifth rib was me. I try not to laugh too hard, as well."

"Even your lungs are artificial?" She gasped.

"Actually, his left lung is artificial, along with his prosthetic bladder," went Anne-Marie. "Entire right leg, much of his spinal column, half his respiratory system. He even needed nanomedicine to help his damaged nervous system and to reconstitute his blood flow for two years after Father found out how severe his injuries that persisted in his recovery."

"And this all explains why you're his special patient," Asuka sighed in revelation. "I never knew that anybody… That any person that survived Second Impact…could ever be so…extensively regenerated."

"Yeah, well, you gotta look at the tagline of Medical Angel: 'It's not just what the doctors have to take away, it's also about what they can give back'." Sora explained, and then pulled the strands of hair away to reveal his hidden eye to her. "I still get the phantom limb pain once in a great while. Reminds me how happy I am to still be able to feel."

Asuka could see that the golden eye wasn't a natural part of him, but, then again, she couldn't say anything about what was left him that was still natural, as the man was like something out of the science fiction comic books. Still, she had to remind herself that, due to reading up on the history of the company's research and advancement, back in the early years, every prosthetic piece afforded to the people in need of them were exoskeletal before the research got better and more articulated in design to being endoskeletal and almost no different from the organic parts they replaced. While the eye made him seem unusual, like he was one of those people with discolored eye cases, she couldn't help but see him as someone that, due to circumstances beyond their control, with a temperamental streak that had been the result of betrayal and a near-death experience that took fifteen years to get over most of…but still left a vendetta that needed to be resolved by the brothers.

Drip. The sound of dripping caught her attention…and she looked down at his right hand, seeing that his knuckles were bleeding.

"Ugh," she shuddered; she had been used to the idea of bloodshed for years when she was a pilot for the Eva, and now she found the sight of blood to be unsettling. "You might want to get that bandaged."

She turned to walk away from the four, having procured the desired information she had sought out, but a hand landed on her right shoulder.

"Can I ask that you not tell anyone about this, Ms. Soryu?" Sora requested of her.

"Yeah. Sure, sure," she answered, and shut the door behind her, allowing her a moment to process everything that she discovered. He's got the most prosthetics out of everyone here…and he had been killed temporarily by soldiers in the aftermath of Second Impact, betrayed by his brother. He must've been nursing a hatred for Kaji-San ever since then, wanting revenge.

"Only people that can't see subtle methods of achieving a victory would resort to outright murder of an opponent," sheremembered Kanami telling her the day she resigned from NERV."The whole world must be insane to believe that killing someone or something makes everything alright."

Somehow, even as she walked away, she started taking the older woman's words seriously about how murder wasn't the solution to any problem one had. As she took the time to fully realize it, she found the idea of killing to be something that she had actually found tolerable as she got older and spent more and more time inside Unit-02. Ever since she could remember, she was attracted to violence in whatever source she could find it in: Action films, horror films, films based off survival-themed video games, even the games themselves. Hitting, kicking, shoving down stairs, pushing in front of moving cars, even unnecessary violence, she found it addictive.

Gott im Himmel, what the Hell was I truly doing back when I was at NERV? She questioned, and then realized that it seemed like her employer and his daughter were also caught up in the web of violence and revenge, not just Sora.

Back inside the office, Kyoji, who had also mastered the skill of healing through water, had mended the small lacerations on Sora's hand.

"I'm surprised you actually cracked the glass," he told the young man. "You didn't even scream."

Sora flexed his knuckles and explained that he'd been through surgery after surgery to get back on his feet, so his tolerance to pain was higher than normal. He then thanked Kyoji.

"Am I the only one in this room that doesn't have a vendetta with somebody that deserves whatever's coming to them?" Kyoji then asked the three, to which none responded, except with their shared silence and vacant expressions. "Damn."

"Water is supposed to be the flowing element," went Masamune, "but how does one wash away a deep-seated pain?"

"Some hurts never truly go away, Grandfather," said Anne-Marie, looking away from him.

He looked at the three and accepted that each had a reason to want revenge against their foes: Sora wanted to avenge his loss of family, friends and most of his body against his brother, Masamune desired justice against Gendo for almost murdering his daughter, and Anne-Marie, who suffered a pain that theirs will never measure up to, wanted revenge against Yui for being deprived of her unborn child and her spouse-to-be, along with her future while the elder sister was allowed to live out hers. He couldn't fully understand the pain they each felt, having been asleep for years, but he understood how it felt to lose someone close to your heart; he was nearing the age of fifty-four when his daughter, Pema's mother, was born after he'd been married to his wife for seven years. There wasn't a day that went by that he questioned his uncertainty of settling down at an age where his wife, who was twenty years younger than he was, would hate him because he would live to be over one-hundred…and there was no guarantee that she would live to see eighty, but their marriage was a strong one…and Pema's mother lived to be forty-two before she passed away due to an accident trying to save her own daughter three years after his wife died from old age. It was true that some pains never truly mend, but he still had people that cared about him, that he still cared about, and that allowed him to move on, to flow like the water he could control.

"You don't wash it away," he responded to Masamune's question, "because pain can't be washed away. It's always there…like ice cubes left in your cup after you're done with a drink…that have yet to melt."

"Does the water ever tell you anything, Grandfather?" Anne-Marie asked him.

"It only tells me the same thing it tells every other person blessed…or cursed with the ability to coerce it," he answered. "That in order to harness its potential, either for benevolence or malevolence, you must let go of your emotions and let them flow wherever they take you. It teaches mostly nothing but acceptance…to let one's emotions flow like the water."

"Where'd you learn that from?" Sora asked him, deeply moved by it.

"A lake back home when I was still young."

-x-

"…It's a strange sort of pity… To be no more. A sad type of cure. For who would let loose…and to lose… Though full of intense pain…this intellectual being that had been sealed away for thousands of generations? Those are the thoughts that will wander through eternity, in the hearts of those that wish… To perish, rather than be…swallowed up and lost forever… In the wide womb of the uncreated night, devoid of their senses and emotions," uttered Rei, floating high above the skyscrapers of what remained of Tokyo-3, holding Kozo Fuyutsuki, by his left leg, in her right hand. "Heh-heh-heh… That little bitch. I hear her in my head sometimes, and find her desires and motivations to be a pain. To save the world of people that are undeserving of the knowledge that was granted to them…and desire the powers of everlasting youth, dominance and freedom…and yet, all she really wants…is what some are denied in their lives: Love. That damned boy's love! Shinji's love! What a laugh!"

"Ah…ah…" Kozo gasped, worried that any moment she was going to let him fall to his death.

"I hate them," he heard her go on. "I hate Gendo for trying to dominate me in the years I was shackled in a weak, sickly form… I hate Yui for maiming my soul…and pulling me from my body when she made Unit-01, thinking she could decide what would happen… I hate the people that locked me away, for so many years, in the darkness… I hate Rumi for what she gained…and I hate Shinji for giving her a reason to see this so-called destiny to its end and save the people! Because of them, I should do to you what I have done to others, Fuyutsuki-San."

He looked at her, seeing her looking down and watching her eyes gaze down at him with bloodlust.

"But I won't let that be up to me just yet," she told him. "You're my beacon. You…and those that remain…to draw the vengeful here."

-x-

The quietness of her room brought no comfort to Rumi tonight. She guessed it was due to the fact that her mother had decided to go up against Ayanami after dinner was over…by herself. And when Bumi asked if she would need assistance, she saw her mother's face looking like a different type of fear, one that was familiar to her, who had experienced it before, had manifested on her expressions…and told that she would be fine by herself. Turning onto her left side, Rumi sighed in revelation; her own mother had lied out of fear of losing them if she brought them along with her.

This isn't right, she instructed herself, looking out her window. It shouldn't be this way.

Fortunately for her, she wasn't the only one thinking in such a way. In the kitchen and living room, Bumi and Shinobu, respectively, whom hadn't retired to their rooms, were in discussion on what to do.

"I should've stopped her from taking off," went Shinobu. "I know what she's capable of, but going up against a girl that isn't a girl…but some…thing with authority higher than hers…that's suicidal."

Seeing inside the refrigerator, the resident family man noticed that there was one can of alcohol left and grabbed it, holding it in front of himself. He'd given it up and wasn't going to get back in the habit. Popping the cap, he emptied it in the sink.

"She's the eldest out of us all," he told his sister. "Often, the eldest family member has to do what the others either shouldn't or couldn't…or just to lead by example."

"I think she's too young to go facing a demon before her time," they heard Kanami, as she showed up in the living room, sitting on the floor beside Shinobu, who sat on one of the sofas.

"Too young, you say?" Shinobu questioned her younger sister.

"Two-hundred-ninety-seven," she explained her reason for thinking that Akira was too young, chronologically, to just go dying in combat with a girl with an attitude against the world. "That's almost no different from when most of us were two, twelve or twenty years old."

As Bumi drained out the beer can completely, he thought back to the first day he met Akira…when his family before hers was still alive. He always thought of her as magical or divine to remain as she was everyday for years. But then his father explained that not everybody enjoyed looking ageless, and Akira was one to miss out on the fact that the people she loved would get older and weaker while she remained in her prime and retained all of her abilities until her chronological age caught up with her. And when he was eight years old…he was the only known survivor of a plane wreck, losing his parents and his older twin brother. He would cry in his sleep for weeks as he recovered from his post-traumatic stress and survivor's guilt…and everyday, he would find Akira there, asleep by his bedside, as if watching over him like a protector.

"Why are you always there, watching me?" He had once asked her, after spending his third month in her home.

"I'm here to listen to you," she had answered him. "Whatever you have troubling you, whatever you want to talk about… I'm here to help you recover."

I almost blamed her for what happened, he beat himself up, but she had no control over their deaths. She may possess power over the four elements, but she was no kami. She never was a kami. She was just a widowed, martial arts master and Unity Master, whose only solace in the world of mortality was to create new relationships with the people she would outlive, eventually. She helped me to endure the pain I felt after they died. Helped me create the comfortable life that I had back then…to the happy life that I have right now.

Moments later, Nemo showed up, sitting at the table with one of his manga books in hand.

"Hey, Bumi," he spoke to his brother, "loan me your car keys."

"What for?" He asked him.

"What do you think?"

"I think you're crazy right now. You don't even know how to drive."

"Then loan me the keys, dearest," he heard Miaka say to him, appearing right beside Nemo.

"Oh, Kami, I'll hot-wire the wheels," Tsukiko, who was carrying a sword on her back, came.

"Un-uh!" Bumi got in front of the door, blocking the path that his wife and younger siblings were gathering near. "Nobody, and I mean nobody, is stepping foot out of this house!"

They each gave him a frustrated look. Then he sighed and uttered, "If we're gonna go…we gotta go together, and that means everyone."

"Me, too?" They heard someone say behind them all, turning to see Shinji, being dragged calmly by none other than Rumi, who had gone into his room and got him up. "I can't fight Rumi. Kanami taught her a valuable lesson in the art of persuasion."

"No use fighting a girl in persuasion," said Rumi. "We often always win."

-x-

Okay, thought Akira, flying her glider toward the abandoned city of Tokyo-3, if I survive this, and get Kozo-San and whoever else is left out of there…then I'll reward myself with getting a new bike to replace the one I recycled back in Nineteen-Eighty-Three…along with getting everyone at home to go another vacation for some relaxation. For, like, five years!

She was glad she had helped herself to three plates of noodles with bacon and pancake bits in them; how Kanami had convinced her to try something that was a mix between breakfast, lunch and dinner was beyond her capacity to recall right now, but the flavor and taste were actually quite enjoyable.

"It was actually Taeko's fault," Kanami had explained the reason for the concoction last year. "She dared me once to cook something that had a theme of breakfast, lunch and dinner in it."

"I don't believe anyone else in the world would've made something that delicious," praised Shinji, just recently this evening.

As the sight of the remaining buildings that made up the abandoned fortress city came into view, Akira channeled the winds to bring her faster to the destination. This time, the city looked less like a ghost town and more like a lonely, desolate graveyard at night, the opposite of a peaceful cemetery during the daylight hours. It almost made the super-centenarian shed a tear…if she truly cared about a fortress city that used to be only a attractant to bring Adam's children to their deaths by using Lilith. She landed on the rooftop of a small building nearby that she deduced was a sort of public school, judging by the running track and outdoor swimming pool.

"My Kami," she expressed, seeing a door on the roof that had been left open.

Splash! She turned to the pool and saw someone climbing out of it. It was a naked girl! One that looked pale in the light of the moon. The girl turned around and revealed herself to be none other than Rei, raising her left arm up and manifesting her armor that substituted clothing.

"I've been expecting you," she told Akira, who heard her perfectly well, even from atop the school building. "Where are the little girl and the boy with a death sentence?"

"Not here for you to kill or manipulate, that's for sure," Akira told her, and then Aero Channeled down to the opposite side of the pool. "I will stop you before you destroy the world, you must know that."

"Me? Destroy the world? Oh, no, I'm not a destroyer of the world. I only want what was kept from me too long ago…and those that die will be my stepping stones. Those that destroy the world…are those that know not their limitations as mere mortals."

Akira found suspicion in the way she spoke…and greater darkness in those red eyes that slowly changed to resemble the greenish ones shared by Anne-Marie and her older sister, Shinji's mother, whom Rei's physical appearance was based off of.

"I saw one of your ancestors in a vision not too long ago," Rei told her, her left arm manifesting its crescent-shaped scythe. "Memories that weren't realized from generations ago… She resembled you, except she was older and looked a little pudgy for a woman in her forties. I don't remember the entirety of the reason she was there when I was tasting the freedom I had desired back then…but when I try to think it over…I see a little boy…not so different from Ikari's son when he was little, with the exception of sea-green eyes…lying on the ground…with blood spilling onto the soil."

"My great-great-grandfather, Kyokujitsu…and his mother, Fuu." Rei heard Akira say, although it was full of anger and pain; it seemed as though it was a dark hand of fate that seemed to tie them together. "Over one-thousand years ago, you went by a different name…because you were a different incarnation of a greater force. Desumasuku Ayanami-Sakaki, the Maiden of the Death Mask."

That name made Rei widen her eyes in revelation! The last name was familiar to her…but the first name had more meaning…for it reminded her of the mask that was worn by Lilith.

"So, just what should I call you…in terms of formality?" Akira asked her. "You're Rei Ayanami… You're Desumasuku Ayanami-Sakaki… Or…since they're only aliases of who you really are deep down, beneath the flesh…should I address you…as Lilith?"

The keeper of the Fallenbreaker lowered her head and a frown appeared on her face.

"Lilith," she uttered, more to herself than the centenarian across the pool. "I was sealed away by your ancestor…and before her, previous wielders of the Angelbreaker. I will not be sealed away again."

Akira willed the Angelbreaker to cover her body in the armor and resembled a traditional member of the samurai, excluding the headgear that was the same as the first time it covered her in protection, and gripped her staff.

"Seal this," she responded, and sent a stream of air toward the latest incarnation of Lilith, parting the water in the pool and damaging the diving board as it hit and brushed her backwards.

CRASH! She shook the attack off and flew toward her, her scythe at the ready to render her flesh into bloody bits.

Akira blocked with a shield that formed from the armor on her left arm as she leapt up, blocking the top half of her scythe and kicking her head with her right foot, sending her slamming her head first into the wall of the building…and crashing into the room behind the wall.

Lilith knocked the desks away as she got back up and burst through the ceiling and into the air, silhouetted by the light of the moon.

"I don't even know what's worse about you: The fact that you killed in the past…or that you're willing to kill even now to pursue a goal's fruition," Akira told her.

"In the past, I killed without remorse, pity or even fear. In the here and now, even those murdered by me…are no different from when they were alive. But I can't be held responsible for their deaths. Gendo and his wife are at fault."

"So you pin all of your sins on just two people?"

"No… I blame them for what is truly their fault."

CLASH! Lilith's scythe was blocked by a sword that came out of the shield Akira had.

"Is everything their fault?" Akira asked her.

"No," Lilith answered her. "Everyone's responsible for their own decisions…and theirs dealt pain, death…and retribution to many lives that were changed for the worst. What better form of relief for all those miserable souls…than to be cast back into the womb of uncreated night, swallowed up and lost?"

"But who would willingly let loose the dark mother of that womb?"

CLASH! Akira's second sword was blocked by the wings of Lilith's armor. They slowly floated over the streets of the city, away from the school, and then Akira was slammed against the side of a building by the so-called mother of all life on the planet.

"Even as I fight you, I can remember the time when I could see things more clearly," she told Akira, remembering the beginning-less time of her arrival on the planet that had already been selected for her equal in status, Adam. "I remember my fellow people from the lost world I knew as my home before this one. Grrugh! We had found ourselves facing extinction, but persevered to ensure that we would be remembered, one way or another."

Akira then breathed a breath of fire at her face and shoved her away before unleashing two streams of fire from her hands at her, enveloping her in a ball of fire! Unfortunately, flames that were intense enough to melt through solid stone weren't enough for dealing in pain, as armored wings burst from the sphere and dissipated the flames, setting her free…with nothing more than a minor sweat on her forehead to show any change.

"Is this truly the best you can do?" Lilith asked her, the sweat on her head now disappearing. "A little heat? Let me show how it ought to be done!"

Retracting her scythe, she unleashed a blast of energy from her hands and blinded Akira! The building behind the centenarian now sporting a perfect hole as big as the woman that had been blasted right through it!

"Ooh, maybe I overdid it," Lilith suspected.

PUNCH! Something quick had smacked her aside the back of her head, sending her falling to the ground, leaving a crater the size of a bus in the street.

"I know the difference between power and precision, Lilith," went Akira, floating above her, partially singed by the latest assault.

Getting back up, Lilith demanded, "How'd you get away from that?!"

"I move as fast as any other twenty-eight-year-old woman does," she simply explained, landing on the ground, feeling the minute traces of Earth within the concrete, but hating the fact that it reminded her that she still needed to practice manipulating metal constructs not made by the Angelbreaker.

She slammed her left foot on the ground…and the crater, in two seconds, shrunk to nothing, but it trapped Lilith in the street up to her neck and the top portions of her wings.

"Oh, like this is going to stop me!" She taunted Akira, and then shattered the street as she freed herself, sending chunks of concrete flying around, shattering glass windows nearby. "Ha!"

PIERCE! Akira felt a curved blade penetrate the armor protecting her abdomen…and as the dust cleared away, she found that Lilith had gotten in front of her. A scythe from her right arm had stabbed her in the belly and out her back. She felt weak in her knees and fell limp on the blade.

"Aaurgh!" She groaned, being lifted off her feet by the mockery of her grandson's mother.

"It looks like your age has gotten the better of you a little," Lilith told her. "Unlike me, whose body is merely a copy of a woman a year younger than you are, biologically."

Blood poured from her mouth as she looked at Lilith's carbon-copied face, and Akira had to ask a question pertaining to her looks.

"Tell me something," she struggled to speak without much pain, "that bitch, Yui Ikari…is she a fighter? Can she…aaahh…defend herself any better than I can?"

"Please. She might've been an attractive fool when she still possessed a physical body, but her only true power, her only demonstrated ability…was the science she employed. Of course, I can't truly speak for her, since I only know of her from the past experiences of others…but she had never raised her hands in violence."

"That's…aaurgh…a double pity there," Akira groaned.

"Why's that?" Lilith asked.

"What kind of a woman…who has never raised her hand in violence…be called a mother…if she has never brought her child up…and still be called a mother? Hmm?"

"You, who have raised her own hands in violence, call yourself a mother in every sense of the word?"

"I teach life, defense…and the capacity to bury the pain of the past that was inflicted upon others…by others. The one thing I won't teach is evil. Yet, I've seen those that commit evil and call it something good. Something right for others."

"To face evil, one must learn to see evil."

Akira then placed her hands upon the scythe.

"Evil is shapeless," she groaned, slowly pulling herself off the blade, surprising Lilith. "It is intangible. It is a vapor. It is a feeling which, when acted upon by those that express it, can only result in blood, misfortune…and fatal consequences."

Regaining strength in her legs, she stood in front of Lilith as her injury regenerated.

"Then it looks like we have something in common: We both hate Yui Ikari…but for different reasons."

-x-

"…Hmm?" Anne-Marie opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling of her room.

"Grr?" She heard Jade growl as the tigress raised her head from off the floor. "Grr…"

"Huh?" Anne-Marie looked over at her. "I'm fine, Jade-Chan."

You know, I can read you very well, Anne-Marie, to know that you're lying, Jade had responded to her. What were you thinking about?

Anne-Marie got up into a sitting position and answered, "I thought I had heard my nephew, Shinji, telling the little girl that was devoted to him, Rumi, that…he loved her…the same way she loved him."

Do little girls often fall in love with older boys?

"Yeah, but that's usually due to a childish crush on the general appearance of older boys…or because of how they live in the perception of others…or their personalities, even."

You fell in love with an older boy, right?

"I was fourteen going on fifteen when I experienced true love, Jade-Chan. Rumi's a six-year-old. There's a difference."

"Grr," Jade growled in understanding.

Knock-knock! A knock came to the door.

"Who is it?" Anne-Marie asked.

"Sora," came the response.

"Come in."

The door opened and Sora entered, dressed in jeans and a blue shirt. This, however, sparked the thirty-year-old woman's curiosity, as the young man was normally dressed in his hospital clothing.

"Yes?" She questioned.

"Your father sent me to come get you," he explained. "We're heading to Tokyo-3."

Tokyo-3 meant NERV HQ, and NERV HQ meant Yui, Gendo and Ryoji, and that meant…closure, justice, settling old scores, eliminating sources of personal vendettas…and outright revenge. She, her father and Sora…could satisfy their hunger for justice against their tormentors. She could finally take from Yui what Yui had taken from her: Her life. Revenge could finally be hers after years of nursing the hate she had in her heart as a result of her loss.

"Just let me get my swords," she told Sora.

-x-

"…Hey, Shinji? Shinji!" Shinji heard Kanami calling out to him, and he'd been snapped out of his train of thoughts.

"Huh?" He responded to his aunt. "I'm sorry. What was that?"

"I was just saying that you probably should take a nap," she told him; the drive to Tokyo-3, since the trains were found (earlier by Nemo himself) to be out of the question if the destination was that particular city, their mode of transportation had to be Bumi's jeep.

"Oh. Okay." Shinji complied and tilted his head back; he'd been thinking of how this would be the third time he'd been to the city he had grown to detest.

It seemed that every time the city came to mind, it related to his parents in some way. He just wanted to forget it all, to leave the memories that brought him no comfort…and let go of the idea of a life he could never have with the two people he wouldn't fool himself into believing were simply misguided.

Bump! The jeep had hit a road bump for the fourth time, and Nemo had accidentally bit his tongue for the third time.

"Aurgh!" He groaned, taking out his bottle of water and putting it on his right hand. "I swear to the kami, when I get out of this jeep, I'm slapping somebody in their face."

He used his Hydro Channeling powers to regenerate the minor injury of his tongue and he felt better in less than thirty seconds.

Mayo, reduced to sitting on her mother's lap due to the shortage of space in the jeep, had to question him, "Uncle Nemo, you really gonna slap somebody once you get out of the jeep?"

Shinobu answered for her youngest brother, "I hope it's someone that deserves it."

"It's official," went Miaka up in the front passenger seat, holding Taeko on her lap, "we're all tense."

"I'm not," went Taeko, whose voice contradicted how she felt; the only thing she wished she had done prior to leaving home was telling Bardiel that she probably wouldn't see him for a while.

Rumi, who was sitting on Shinji's lap, had fallen asleep earlier on the way to the city…but had also been questioning herself on how to deal with Ayanami the moment she saw her for the last time. In her subconsciousness, she found herself in the same, misty, forest-like environment again, lit up by the lanterns that hung from the tree branches. Her clear path leading her, this time, toward an open field that was occupied by many people. Some of them were clearly not of Asian origins, as some of them, both the men and the women, possessed lighter or darker skin tones. Rumi had noticed a dark man wearing armor that resembled a lion's physique in some ways, a woman that looked like she was from France because of the armor she was wearing gave Rumi the impression of both the Eiffel Tower and Notre-Dame de Paris, there were even at least twenty men and women whose armored guises that, while very limited and exposing their flesh to the elements, gave them the the impression of animals that walked as people.

They were like statues to her; despite their impressive stances and features, they appeared to be without a life of their own. As Rumi came to stop by a wooden chair near a traditional Japanese food stand, she wondered if these people frozen in time…were all servants of the Angelbreaker gauntlet before her mother and she were chosen to wear it and serve its needs. But, for some unusual reason, they did seem familiar to her…even though she had never met any of them before.

"I came back to this place looking for a solution…and I see people frozen in place," she sighed, unaware that a hand had placed itself on her left arm.

"There are always solutions," a woman had uttered, and Rumi turned around to find a woman that bore a slight resemblance to her mother had shown up behind the food stand. "However, sometimes the solution that presents itself isn't the one you're looking for."

"I'm sorry," Rumi apologized, "but do I know you from somewhere?"

"I'm just one of the previous wielders. Actually, to be more accurate, it's better to identify myself as the last of the previous wielders. The last real one, chosen to wear the Angelbreaker."

Rumi nodded in agreement and then placed her right arm, showing the ancient, sentient gauntlet, on the counter, causing the elder woman to release the girl's left arm.

"I…I just wanted to know, as a person, above being a Unity Channeler and a wielder of the Angelbreaker, how do I deal with Ayanami, who is not who she seems?" Rumi asked her, hoping she could give her the answer she was seeking.

The elder woman sighed and replied, "You're dealing with a spiritually-maimed woman that was given the role to serve as the source of all life on Earth in the beginning-less past, and her responsibility to ensure that her boundaries as the keeper of knowledge was never abused. But her success…and failure as the pinnacle of this world's inhabitants, people, the Lilin…have corrupted her in excess, and now she seeks to restore herself, even if it means removing the people that did her no such wrong. In her eyes, everyone, not just the people responsible for hurting her, is cruel…and the only way to deal with cruel people…is to eradicate them off the face of the Earth. She is angry…and unable to find stability in her existence. So, she punishes everybody with death…along with the accursed promise of a fate that is worse than that: A return to nothingness. She is Lilith, the mother of mankind, incarcerated within a form that is an abomination of what we view as natural life, twisted by the will of the cruel…and cursed with an empty heart, devoid of any of the things we take for granted. Humanize her…and make her let go of the hatred that courses through her."

Rumi nodded that she would do just that.

"But to humanize Lilith will not be an easy task," a new voice uttered to them, and Rumi turned around to see Shiori Reina, the Angelbreaker wielder from over twelve-hundred-forty years ago. "Unlike the children of Adam, who were humanized without fail, without sacrifice, something…may have to be offered in exchange for her conversion."

"What? But…what must I give up?" Rumi asked her.

"It may not be you," she responded. "We can't see past a choice that we don't understand when we make the choice. No one's an exception. All we know…is what must be given up."

"Which is?"

"The two greatest feelings that are most cherished at the final outcome," the last of the previous wielders answered. "That is the required toll."

"The two greatest feelings…that are most cherished," repeated Rumi, confused by its meaning. "But…but… Who?"

Then…all the other people, the previous wielders frozen in time, turned to face her and said, in unison, "Lilith will be the one to decide. Those that stand to stop her…and those that stand to achieve their own goals in some similar fashion."

"Trust in the Angelbreaker," the woman told her, then. "Have faith within it, have faith within the people you love…and have faith within yourself."

Then…the mist that always seemed to get in the way of these conversations she found herself in with the previous wielders came and blackened everything and everyone in its blanket. Rumi then found herself back in the waking world, well-rested and raising her head to the sight of the city that had been abandoned several days earlier after Zeruel had devastated some of it in order to cripple NERV HQ. It was daylight, meaning that it was now the Twenty-Ninth of August, the day that Rayden's Comet was scheduled to ignite the skies and grant Pyro Channelers the full extent of their abilities, something she had yet to acquire on her own. She turned to look up at Shinji, who was still asleep, but could fool some people with his dead-like look… She stopped herself from thinking like that and raised up her right hand, caressing his cheek, possessing a solemn expression on her face.

The two greatest feelings that are most cherished, she thought, feeling his skin like it were a burnt leaf now. But…what is this second great feeling that is most cherished? I'm sure I know the first one, but the other is beyond me.

Shinji, feeling something warm against his face, awoke to the sight of Rumi caressing him, her eyes expressing some form of woe. He raised his left arm up and slowly set it upon her hand, a small smile forming on his face.

"Could you two save that for after we're back home, please?" They turned and heard Mayo had spoken, looking a little disgusted.

"We didn't do anything," Shinji told her, but his tone sounded weaker, raspier.

"Drink?" Tsukiko, who was sitting on Shinobu's lap, offered her bottle of water to her nephew.

"Hai," he responded, accepting the bottle. "Arigato."

Suddenly, the jeep stopped…and Bumi hadn't even hit the brakes or taken out the keys.

"What gives, Bumi?" Tsukiko asked him.

"We're outta gas," he told them, but at least they got within walking distance of the city. "We gotta go on foot from here on out."

"Works for me," went Kanami, whose feet hurt from the position she had been in all last night.

They all got out of the jeep and then Nemo ran toward a bush.

"Uh, Nemo?" Miaka asked him. "What are you doing?"

"I was in the jeep all night, sis," he responded. "You try putting up with that far longer than myself when you don't handle personal business between you and a certain necessity back home."

He then ran behind the bush, as they all got the message.

"Who else has got to go?" Taeko asked them, and only Shinji, Rumi, Kanami and Tsukiko were excluded from those that needed to relieve themselves of some internal garbage.

-x-

The sunlight was something that seemed rather pleasant to her right now, even though it was always the moonlight that she seemed to have developed a fancy for. And the damage she had inflicted upon the streets as they fought…it was exhilarating…and quite terrifying when she saw the woman cut off her right arm! Who would've figured that a martial arts master was capable of swinging a sword with such speed and proficiency that they could slice right through dense bone?

Yet, I was unafraid of her, thought Lilith, hiding above the ground on some monorail track system, looking up at the sky, thinking back to her earlier life…before the here and now as her arm regenerated. She hurt me, physically…but she had yet to hurt me the way they hurt me.

Raising her regenerated limb up above her eyes, she slowly rose back up and sprouted her wings to take to the skies again.

In another part of the city, Akira was running down the street, looking for an available source of water to heal her minute lacerations instead of relying on the Angelbreaker to do so. She was hoping that depriving her of at least one of her limbs would slow her down some until she herself had recovered.

I cannot believe this entire city is abandoned to this bullshit, she thought, walking into an abandoned market and finding some bottles of water on the floor; this place was either ransacked or was rattled due to previous conflicts. Oh, yeah.

She picked up one of the bottles and channeled the water onto her exposed lacerations, sealing them up and looking like new, removing them from her forehead, neck and wrists. Next, she removed her shirt and revealed the injury to her abdomen that was left after she'd been stabbed; while whatever potentially-severe abdominal injuries were prevented by the Angelbreaker, the surface-only injuries were still very present and needed to be mended, leaving no scars. Akira had to assume that the Angelbreaker had a slight degree of perfection in its goal of protection for its chosen wielders. In less than five minutes, she had regenerated every cut on her flesh, resting to recoup her muscles. She gave herself a few minutes to catch her breath before she got up and went after the mother of mankind once more, hoping to find a solution to end her without resorting to murder.

"You're so unlike Gendo," Lilith had told her, moments before she has severed her arm off, having been slammed on top of one of the skyscrapers. "He would make sure that whoever wouldn't aid him or his former masters would suffer the consequences of their refusal. The power-hungry, God-loathing fiend would deny any involvement with someone's death or disappearance, stating that people die all the time. But you…you seem to be trying your hardest not to kill me, even though you could. Are you afraid that you may fail?"

"Murder is never the best solution," she had told Lilith, but this was more to herself than for her; the lives of six people, taken by her own hands, was enough weight on her consciousness, so she swore that she wouldn't take another life, no matter what. Roku…six… No seventh death. Seven, considered a powerful number…is both positive and negative. Seven, eight, nine… 'Seven ate nine'… Where are you when you need to pay the price for your misdeeds…Gendo?

-x-

"…I guess we should try the Geo-Front," said Bumi, creating a massive hole in front of them once they came to the city limits. "Everybody ready?"

Shinji looked down the deep hole that reminded him of the one he left out of the last time he was here…and responded, "Yeah, let's do this."

Rumi, Nemo and Miaka could see that Shinji wasn't looking forward to going underground again, not after he'd been brought here against his will the last time.

"Shouldn't we split up to cover more ground?" Nemo suggested, which was possibly his way to convince the family to separate between those that would go under…and those that would want to stay above, as Tokyo-3 was a big place.

Bumi looked at them all and agreed that Nemo's suggestion was better than all of them going under. It was Bumi, Shinobu, Tsukiko, Kanami and Mayo that would go underground, while Miaka, Taeko, Nemo, Shinji and Rumi would stay above to find Akira.

SLAM! Miaka slammed her left foot on the ground and used her channeling to try and find anybody in the city that could've been Akira. Despite her prowess in the art, all she found through the seismic vibrations of the ground were some empty buildings, vehicles and some trees.

"Nothing right now," she informed the others.

"Rumi, you can sprout wings with the Angelbreaker," Taeko suggested. "Go heroine and fly."

Rumi complied and armored up, sprouting wings and soaring up into the air. She gazed out at the buildings far from them and saw one of the skyscrapers looking like it was waving around slowly.

"What do you see up there, sis?" Nemo called out to her.

She floated back down and answered, "One of the buildings from afar looking like it was waving around slowly."

"Waving around slowly?" Shinji questioned, confused. "Like it was about to fall?"

"No…like it wasn't a part of the street it was on where its sibling buildings were."

"Let's go see," Miaka told them, and channeled a piece of the street off the ground and hopped on. "Lead the way, Rumi."

-x-

"…Urgh!" Ryoji Kaji awoke, feeling like he'd been through an intense hangover after his last encounter with Rei Ayanami and her Fallenbreaker.

"How nice of you to join us," she heard a woman's voice, and turned his head to face Naoko Akagi. "Did you sleep well?"

Looking around, he saw that, instead of one of the familiar rooms of NERV HQ, he was inside a large chamber with a giant, marshmallow-like creature crucified on a giant, red cross. There were several other NERV workers, as well, watched over by these dog or wolf-like creatures modeled after Unit-01, either laying around or on all fours with snarling expressions.

"What is this place?" He asked.

"This place…is where it all began," Naoko expressed with dry humor, "and where it'll all end."

Several feet away from where he and the other workers were laying, watched by four of the Unit-01-looking beasts, was Gendo, a mere shadow of a shadow of who he used to be.

"Heh-heh-heh," Naoko chuckled; she wanted to kill him so badly, but until Rei…or Lilith, actually, no longer needed him as a pawn, she would have to wait until she gave her okay to waste him. "People once thought the year Twenty-Twelve, Two-Thousand-Twelve, was going to be the end of the world, only to be led to the truth that it's going to end in this year. The end: A return to nothingness."

"You're wrong," they heard Gendo retort, still sounding capable of intimidating others. "It's not a return to nothingness. It's a return to the very beginning. Back to the mother we all lost."

"But not for you, Gendo," she told him. "Not for you…and not for those that desired the end of the world. For you and them…there is only Hell to look toward. Everyone else, including those who have been dead for many years, will be deprived of everything they are…and live only as smaller portions of a greater existence."

"The same applies to you," Gendo told her.

"Wrong. I won't be joining the rest of mankind in the return to nothingness. At the end, when Lilith is freed, I'll depart to the stars and be like the tenjikurounin, the wandering, lord-less samurai."

"Am I to guess that will be your payment for your services, Dr. Akagi?" Ryoji asked.

"I was imprisoned within Unit-00 for too many years because of this bastard (she pointed toward Gendo). I'm looking forward to exploring the abyss of space with the remainder of my life."

"You sellout," he called her.

"It's called self-preservation mixed with justified vengeance: I do what I have to in order to survive…and whatever I have to in order to settle old scores…surely…as there is somebody that wants to settle an old score with you."

"There's no one that has a score to settle with me," he defended; he knew that there wasn't a soul left that he had any familiar ties with, as Rei Ayanami murdered the last of his relatives…and there was no getting back together with Katsuragi…and just about everyone else he knew has been dead for years.

"If not in life, then in death."

-x-

The sounds of the helicopter propellers had muted out as Anne-Marie thought back to her years after the Second Impact, recalling one of the last conversations she had with Yui before finding out that the elder sister had gotten married. Somehow, even during the most quiet or loudest of periods when traveling around, either with others or by herself, she often always found the time to think back on the root of her hatred, the cause of her losses.

"She's really quiet," said Kyoji to Masamune up front; the Hydro Master had been surprised to know that Masamune, during his success of advancing medical technologies, had acquired a helicopter among other methods of transportation.

"She's always quiet when thinking heavily on many things from the past, Grandfather." He told him.

Kyoji nodded in acceptance and noticed that Anne-Marie also had a dull expression on her face, making her seem emotionless; whatever she was thinking of from the past, it must've been unpleasing for her to dwell on it.

"You two really need to let go of the past," Anne-Marie remembered Yui suggesting to her, and this was earlier on the day she found out about her conversation with Masamune.

Anne-Marie had been minding her own business in her room, and then Yui showed up to strike up a conversation with her.

"What do you want?" She asked with a directed malice.

There wasn't a single sentence of respect between the sisters; Yui spoke of putting behind you painful events and moving forward with your life…while Anne-Marie spoke of her not having lost anything or anyone that mattered to her…and then calling her a monster for her choices made in her childhood.

"I can't even see other people without you having something against them," she told Yui. "If they were people of your preferences, you'd probably allow it. If they were people that wanted to be mechanics, policemen or school teachers, you'd have something to say about that. You don't even like it when people refuse you or speak their mind about you, like you feel threatened by them."

"You know that's not true, Anne-Marie," Yui responded, though it seemed more to the latter part of the last sentence than the first two. "Surely, you'll meet someone new in the future."

"What future? Surely, you know about what happened in the hospital. I can't have children of my own, anymore. And people speak of you behind my back still. Of how I'm likely to turn out like you have. That's not gonna happen to me. I'm not gonna be some stupid biologist."

"What'd you just call me?"

"Well, that's what you are, other than the very monster that parents warn their children of at night."

"Now, you know that's wrong."

"No, Yui. 'Cause I'm being very rational, unlike you. You know, I don't even have to be an insufferable know-it-all to fully understand how it all makes perfect sense to me, right here and now, like it did back in the hospital, to know why you persisted in trying to study my ability ever since I was little when I first discovered it: Because no matter how many times our parents told you to stop, you could never let your damn curiosity of the 'how' and 'why' I could do something most others couldn't go unanswered!"

Yui looked hurt, but Anne-Marie never gave her feelings a second thought after that day, letting her know only that she had better be far away from her before she got the idea to want to kill her herself for all the wrong she did. Whatever affection there was between them, however small, was no longer there.

She never could let her curiosity go unanswered, she thought, looking out the window of the helicopter and down at the wilderness of what was left of the untouched parts of Japan as they neared Tokyo-3. She always had to be in control, deciding everything, even what I was going to do almost every time. Pah, she couldn't even cook without thinking scientifically. Even after the devastation… After the deception, the betrayal and manipulating… It's as though it's all nothing more than variables in some sort of equation for her, like some kind of game. If I do see her again, I'll give her an equation to solve. The last one she'll ever solve: How long will it take for me to put her down like a rabid dog?

Sitting next to her, Sora, almost with a degree of anxiousness, was looking out the other window at the trees that covered the mountainous environment that hadn't been paved over by people to build new additions of civilizations. In a way, the sight reminded him of the line between the natural and the artificial, of how thin the line really was. The mountains, rivers, lakes and forests were all natural…while cities and towns were often artificial. On another level, it also reminded him of how little there was left of himself that was still natural beneath his skin; he still had one organic eye, his digestive system, bone marrow, some muscles and nerves still attached to his brain that led to his natural limbs, but he still had to be over that line between the organic and the technological to a degree that was higher than any other person in Kyoto. He wondered how his brother would react when he found out that his own, little brother was still very much alive…and pissed off.

To be declared legally dead, even after reviving spontaneously some time later, can really make you almost invisible to those around you that don't know the real you, he thought, scratching an itch on his left arm; the synthetic skin was so much like actual skin that it even allowed for minor irritations like itches or rashes. I never saw Mother and Father after that day the soldiers wasted me. I never saw the dominion of the kami…or a blazing inferno… All I ever saw after that day…and just before reviving, several days later…was darkness. It was like someone had turned out all the lights in a room with no windows and left you in there with only the sound of your breathing as the only indication that you were there in the dark.

"What the Hell is that?" They heard Kyoji utter.

"What's what?" Masamune asked him.

"That," the super-centenarian man pointed out the helicopter, toward something below them. "What the Hell is that?"

Sora and Anne-Marie looked out and saw what he was questioning: From up high, the cemetery for all of Japan's deceased population over the last fifteen years had seen nothing to show a sign of positive acceptance from the world. It was though it were the only part of the nation that was truly unfit to support life; there weren't even traces of weeds on the ground.

"That," went Anne-Marie, "is Japan's primary cemetery for those that died during Second Impact or several years after it. It's nothing more than a meaningless attempt to pacify the people that lost somebody back then."

"A cemetery, huh?" Kyoji didn't sound convinced. "It looks more like a…a giant, open wound on the planet itself…and it got infected and nobody took care of it."

Masamune looked down at the cemetery and had to agree with him; it did look a lot like an open wound that got infected…with the infection being its conversion into a forest of tombstones. And only a handful of people were even buried beneath the parched soil that resembled desert sand. He hated the very idea of having his wife buried in a place like that…or the idea of his daughter being buried there if she ever died, which is why he would've had them reduced to ashes as an alternative, unwilling to see their graves in such a lifeless environment; when he had received word of Yui's supposed death, he never attended the would-be funeral, disbelieving that any more bodies would be placed there. And even if he could have done so, he was forbidden to see Shinji, who would've been there as a little boy.

"The planet's really dying because of the arrogance of people that want to be the new gods, isn't it?" Kyoji asked them.

"Yeah," Masamune answered him; he knew personally because he'd been told before, but only because of the former threat that was the Angels would show up in the year Two-Thousand-Fifteen. "Earth is dying…slowly…every single day."

"Heh…demons that masquerade as people in positions of power, use decaying penalties and create indelible agony for the rest of the world. Despite our ability to adapt to most situations…or resolve conflicts… If this is part of what Japan has become in the last fifteen years, then everywhere else must be in conditions a bit worse than this."

Anne-Marie, despite the fact that she had seen places where life endured, where life was unscathed, sighed and said, with a hollow tone, "Remnants of Hell of Earth, trying to take the rest of everything into oblivion. Even places where people reestablished order, death lingered. Guidance was limited to those that needed it…and often never received it."

Sora noticed how she absentmindedly placed one of her hands against her abdomen; despite her losses, there was only one thing about what happened to her that was probably the lesser of the two evils.

Masamune took another glance at the cemetery and could only recall one thought he had when he looked at what was left of Japan that was unscathed…but might as well have been the Garden of Eden…and that was, The world that was left is not a place for people that wanted more for their families that were either taken…or never came to be.

-x-

"…My Kami," went Shinobu, seeing the purple Evangelion that was Unit-01, laying on the ground. "It looks like the Baron of Darkness."

"A long horn and gnashing teeth," added Tsukiko, recalling the known features of the Four Barons of Hell. "And Rumi actually sat in that thing? I'm grateful she didn't die or go crazy."

As they were just outside the pyramidal structure that was NERV HQ, Kanami and Mayo recalled their shared experience within the Eva that was Unit-03, which had been modeled after the fourth known Baron of Hell that, supposedly, was as black as the night and possessed long, unusual arms.

"We should be quick about finding Akira or anyone else in here," said Kanami, just wanting to get away from the Eva as fast as possible.

"Yeah," went Bumi, and they all entered the facility, but he stayed behind for a moment to gaze up at the fallen Eva. "I pity the mothers that were ripped from their children…and forced to become harbingers of their destruction."

He then entered the building, getting away from the presence of the purple, horned, demonic-looking cyborg created by scientists.

"Wow," went Tsukiko, examining the walls and floor. "Looks like a war hit this place."

"And it was the eldest of Adam's children that decimated this place?" Shinobu questioned the impossibility of the Angels' eldest brother, the second oldest life-form before the arrival of the slime that gave rise to the single-celled organisms that spawned the dinosaurs, being able to lay waste to a paramilitary facility supposedly-designed to withstand his siblings. "I would believe it if I had seen it."

The middle-aged elder sister then looked toward her younger sister, Kanami, and asked her if she was doing alright, judging from her constant looking around corners.

"Being here," Kanami expressed, "it just brings back bad memories from my past."

They reached a large space where escalators were functioning and rode one going down.

"What do we do if we find…that jerk down here?" Mayo asked the adults, wondering if Gendo was in this building or not.

"I'm not too concerned about finding him down here," responded Bumi, gripping his staff.

-x-

"…Whoa, boy," went Nemo, tugging at the collar of his shirt as he and the others came closer to the building Rumi had described to them; from a distance, the skyscraper looked as though it was tilting over, left and right, but up close, it turned out that it was really just heated up by a source of energy that was much stronger than its own heating system.

"I know what you mean, Nemo," added Miaka; she and Taeko had removed the top halves of their hanboks, revealing a pair of undershirts that stuck to their skin due to the sweat that was present, but the mother's shirt was long-sleeved, as opposed to the daughter possessing a short-sleeved shirt.

"Miaka, you got to face the music and let go of that self-conscious belief of yours," Nemo told her.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she defended.

"What are you two talking about?" Rumi, who was hovering over their heads, unaffected by the intense heat, probably because of the Angelbreaker protecting her, asked her elder siblings.

"Rumi, does Miaka look skinny as a twig to you?" Nemo asked her, and Miaka grabbed him by his neck, strangling him. "Aaaaurgh! Miaka!"

"I can't believe you asked her that!" She snapped on her little brother-in-law.

"Mother, stop," Taeko demanded her mother to let him go.

Shinji, who had removed his own shirt, exposing his pale, skinny-yet-muscular torso, sighed and expressed discontent over his elder aunt's self-conscious fear. It had been over eight years since her daughter was born that Miaka started wearing hanboks constantly, not as a fashion trend, but to hide as much of herself as possible due to her belief that she had lost much of her weight after Taeko's birth, even going so far as to claim she was skinny. Shinji, of course, didn't need to be a rocket scientist to know that his aunt wasn't skinny; he'd seen her enough times, without her hanboks, that is, to know that she was just as fit as her husband was over fifty years of age.

"Nope," Rumi answered her brother's question, seeing that her eldest sister's upper body proportions were no different from Shinobu's or Kanami's, excluding the fact that the former sister wasn't a mother like the latter sister was, respectively. "Shinji's the only one of us that's skinny…yet we all know the reason for why that is so."

Miaka ceased her strangulation of her brother and released him, sighing at how her little sister could direct such a belief that was hers for over eight years to a young boy that was dying. And part of the reason she had insisted that she was skinny was her belief that much of her lost weight was due to Taeko's head when she was going through the joys and pains of childbirth. She had a hard time believing her head was considered tiny, after what she went through with her on the hospital bed and her legs on the stirrups several hours after she went into labor.

"Aaaahh!" She could still remember her screams in the back of her head, as though it happened only last week.

"Nemo," went Shinji, "lose the shirt."

Nemo took off his shirt and exposed his bare, muscular chest to the ladies' eyes.

"Nemo, who's Nami?" Taeko asked, which sparked Rumi's curiosity.

"Huh?" The Hydro Channeler responded, just as his niece pointed to his right arm, noting the tattooed name on his skin. "My mother before Akira. Nami Souma."

"He actually wanted to get her whole name tattooed there," added Miaka, "but he had to live with the harsh reality of traditional tattooing."

"Which is?" Rumi asked.

"Tattoos hurt," Nemo confessed; after taking the better part of two days to get his mother's first name on his arm, he had to forget about getting his blood family's last name, Souma, because he didn't enjoy the pain. "Always getting needles stuck in you to deposit the ink and paint."

Rumi flew down in front of him and said, "I've been getting stuck with needles at the doctor's since I was two, and you don't hear of me screaming in pain."

"Hey, now, I didn't say I screamed," he defended himself; Rumi never saw him screaming in pain as the tattooing process began. "Anyway, that was years ago, when I was nineteen."

As Shinji approached the hot building, he suggested to his uncle, "I don't know, Nemo, you might want to consider getting that tattoo finished. Submit to the superior-yet-equal authority of the women."

Nemo frowned and responded, "If it weren't for the harsh cruelties of that jerk and this crazy, psychotic Ayanami girl, I'd place you on a frozen lake to teach you how to ice skate."

As they entered the building, they felt like the temperature went up higher. The floor was hot, the air was dry, and the sweat on the girls' backs soaked their shirts.

"I think I just sweated out a whole bottle of orange soda, Mommy," said Taeko, impressed that the building still had power to run the elevators, but disappointed that there was no power for any air conditioning systems to work.

"Must…resist urge…to rip shirt off," Miaka sighed, as the heat was getting to her, and then she untied her ox horns, letting her vibrant hair flow down to the small of her back.

Shinji looked on the floor and saw a piece of paper nearby and picked it up. It was time to put his arts and crafts lessons to practical use. He folded the paper into a fan and waved it in front of his face.

"Ah," he exhaled, feeling a cooling breeze. "We got any more paper to fold?"

Nemo and Miaka looked at him and saw the fan, wanting it.

"Here, Shinji," went Taeko, holding five pieces she picked up off the floor.

Rumi, whom had gone further than they did, still unaffected by the heat, came to an office room…and hesitated to go any further due to the sight in front of her.

"You disgrace an ancient art," she uttered.

-x-

Lilith, sitting cross-legged on the floor, opened her eyes and gazed at the little girl in front of her, glaring at her presence.

"I was expecting somebody a little taller than yourself," she expressed, and the heat energy she generated in the hopes of luring Akira to her ceased as she got up. "But since you're here, I'll be convinced that your… Heh-heh-heh… I can't believe I even want to say it, but it must also mean that your lover is here, as well…isn't he?"

Rumi had never addressed Shinji the way this girl had just now. Sure, she loved Shinji, even willing to admit it in front of his parents, but the mere thought of addressing him as her…lover…was nonexistent in her mind right now.

"My Shinji is off-limits to you," she told her, conjuring a pair of hook swords from her armored hands.

"You don't know the half of it," Lilith responded, and charged at her.

SLAM! She pushed Rumi back against the wall behind her, smashing into another room, right in front of the others.

"Rumi!" Shinji gasped, rushing over to the large hole.

Rumi had endured the assault, but hadn't expected one like that. She looked around the office, but didn't see her.

"Up here, bitch," she heard, and then looked up, seeing Ayanami hanging on the ceiling.

SLAM! Shinji, upon entering the room, saw Ayanami driving his auntie into the floor. He picked up a tiny piece of debris and threw it at her back.

"Off my aunt, lady!" He demanded, which made her realize something: She hadn't planned on any means of acquiring the boy, as she couldn't touch him.

PUNCH! That was all the distraction Rumi needed to use her right fist and send Ayanami flying up a floor or two, allowing her to get up.

Shinji looked at her and she simply told him, "Get outta here, Shinji."

He didn't need to be told twice and left out the room.

"You busted my lip, bitch," Rumi heard Ayanami shout at her.

"Let's take it outside," she responded, and took flight, smashing through the window and feeling the cool breeze of the air.

Lilith followed her and manifested her scythes.

"You will fall before me," she told the girl.

"Not while I still have something to say about it," Rumi countered, and then used her swords to block her assault. "You're twisted, inside and out."

"You think I don't know that?"

"You're going to destroy everything and everyone just to undo the hurt you've been afflicted with."

"Well, greatness calls for sacrifice."

"The people that don't even know you, that have never even met you before… They don't deserve what you're aiming to do to them."

"No one is innocent, Rumi. Everyone's judgment day is now."

"Not while I'm still around," Rumi told her, and then willed a tentacle to form out of the armor on her back, curving around her left side and stabbing the Fallenbreaker's keeper in her waist.

"Urgh!" Lilith grunted, not expecting a sneak attack from a little girl. "Very clever."

BANG! Rumi them used her right arm's sword to bash her on her head, sending her falling to the streets below.

Thud! Lilith impacted onto the roof of a commuter car and took eight seconds to revive.

"I didn't expect my daughter to do that to you, Lilith," she heard the voice of the ageless woman, Akira, whom she found several feet from the car in an alley, glaring at her.

She got off the car wreck and shot a tentacle at her, missing as Akira turned to the side and grabbed the tentacle, pulling her right arm, along with her, toward her.

SMACK! Akira punched her hard in the face and sent her flying backwards into a wall.

As Shinji and the others came out of the building, Nemo noticed that the girl that wasn't a girl, but a thing made in the appearance of his only nephew's mother, had been stuck to the wall.

Whoa, he thought, never expecting that Akira could prove herself to be a heavy hitter.

Rumi hovered over the street and saw her mother stepping out of the alley.

"Do I even wanna know where you've been, Mother?" She asked her.

"Do I even wanna know why I see that some of you aren't at home?" Akira countered.

"Argue later, ladies," went Miaka, pointing over to Ayanami, who was now ripping herself from the wall. "Stop her!"

She was in quite a bind, as she had no means to acquire her target…and she was falling behind schedule by at least two hours.

"Catch me…if you can," she dared them, and took off, running past Nemo and Taeko, down the street.

"Oh, brother," Rumi groaned, reminded of her previous years when she was barely two years old. "She's playing hard to get."

Demented, thought Akira, unstable…and dangerous. Much of which hide her intentions.

Lilith had disappeared within seconds of running away from them, and Akira had only one clue as to where she was going.

"Did anybody we know go underground before I met up with y'all?" She asked Miaka, who hesitated in giving a response. "Why?"

-x-

"…What is this place?" Mayo asked, stepping out onto the bridge of Central Dogma; the last time she was here, she hadn't seen this part of the facility, only a locker room where her clothes and possessions she had with her prior to the Unit-03 incident were being held and Gendo's office.

"Some kind of operation control room or something," said Tsukiko, looking over at the consoles and monitor displays. "Probably where they sent program signals to their armored demons."

Bumi looked up at a part of the large chamber and noticed a desk-like construct that indicated a degree of dominance over everything below it. He jumped up it and found that it was a type of desk where someone sat and directed everyone in an operation of military or paramilitary action…and he loathed to guess who it was that used to sit at the desk.

"You find something, Bumi?" Kanami asked him from below.

"Only delusions of godhood, Kanami," he replied.

"Of nothingness or ruination?" Mayo asked, sounding sarcastic.

"Both," Bumi answered her.

"Let's get outta here now," said Shinobu, and they all left the chamber.

But Kanami stayed behind to examine three constructs that caught her attention: The three aspects of the MAGI's physical and technological presence, the mother, the scientist and the woman.

I wonder who was paid to name these things and places after pieces of religion and thrown around like this? She wondered, and then left to rejoin the others.

-x-

"…Huh?" Shinji went, seeing somebody from afar on the street.

"Shinji?" Rumi asked him, causing him to look at her. "Do you see her?"

"No, I…" He tried to point to what he saw, but it was no longer there. "I…thought I saw somebody down there."

Taeko, hearing in on the conversation, looked over to where her cousin was looking, and saw nobody.

"Maybe it was just the heat playing tricks on you," she then suggested.

"Maybe," he agreed with her, but he was certain he saw an elderly man in white, hospital clothes down the street, staring at him.

Akira, further ahead than the others, opened a door outside a building she learned from Kozo Fuyutsuki was one of the few NERV-owned buildings in the city that acted as emergency entrances and exits, entering a tunnel-like hallway that was shrouded in darkness. She generated a ball of fire from her left hand and illuminated the hall, bringing light to the darkness.

Shinji showed up behind her and Miaka, and the super-centenarian felt his feet shaking.

"Nemo," she uttered to her youngest son.

"Yeah?" He responded.

"Keep your arms soaked."

"Yes, ma'am."

They walked down the tunnel and Rumi kept a vigilant watch over Shinji; she hardly looked anywhere else during the journey in the darkness.

"Say, Akira," went Miaka, "when does that comet arrive?"

"At night, just before midnight," she answered her.

"What does the sky look like when lit up by the comet…from your point of view?"

Akira thought for a moment and answered, "It looks like a mix between beauty and despair: Beauty because of the bright, fiery colors that replace the black and white sea of night…and despair because it seems to evoke sadness at the end of its beauty…because someone could hurt you and not realize it…or you could hurt someone without meaning to."

"That's sad," said Taeko, and they all came to a dead-end. "Grandmother, this is going to slow us down from getting to where we need to go."

"No such thing as being slowed down right now, Taeko," she told her, and thrust her arms out forward at the dead-end, comprised of fallen debris that had cut their way off; as it was mostly concrete, her Geo Channeling pushed the debris forward until it all laid on the ground, revealing the path toward a train system that was present. "Must be one of their express route systems."

Nemo kicked the door opened and checked inside for anybody that might have been there, finding nobody aboard.

"There's no power," he told them, checking the transport system of the train.

"We won't need to worry about power," Rumi expressed, standing in the middle of the train car and pressing her right hand onto the floor.

BURST! A charge of energy from the Angelbreaker turned the lights on and made the express train move downward toward their destination.

"How big is this place you and Rumi went to, Shinji?" Taeko asked her cousin.

Hating to think about the Geo-Front, or any other place that seemed to exhibit a sense of moral decay or foul judgment of decisions, the dying boy, simply because the little girl was curious, responded, "It's probably smaller than home, give or take an extra mile of land. But it would be a great disrespect to try and compare the two places. You'll see when we get there."

FLASH! The train car escaped the dark shaft and the windows were bathed in light, exposing the occupants to the Geo-Front.

"Whoa," went Miaka, holding on to Taeko. "I think we just stepped into the Twilight Zone."

"We didn't step into the Twilight Zone, Miaka," Shinji responded, "we were already in it back two months ago."

His eyes were then directed toward a sight he wished wasn't there at all at the very bottom of the Geo-Front: Unit-01. Memories from his childhood of the last time he saw his mother came back from where he kept them buried, wanting to forget it all, causing him to become tense with a different type of fear.

Akira and Rumi saw this and took notice of Unit-01, but only the super-centenarian knew of who resided within the skyscraper-sized abomination. Rumi was still ignorant of the fact that the mother of her love interest was still around, but that didn't leave her questioning what she might do if she ever did see the woman. Their transport had reached the end of the line and they stepped out onto the floor of the Geo-Front, seeing the purple monstrosity from a short distance and the pyramid-based building that was NERV HQ.

"I'm, uh… I'm just going to close my eyes for a bit," Shinji told them, not wanting to see Unit-01 any longer, and shut his eyes to leave himself in the darkness.

Nemo pitied his nephew and, with Rumi as a guide, directed Shinji toward the base, but he hated the fact that the woman that should've played the role of his nephew's mother was nothing more than a ghost inside a mockery that, while he found some degree of fascination with, he detested for its raison d'être, its reason for being.

And yet, he doesn't know the harsh reality of it all, he thought, taking another look at Unit-01, seeing why it was comparable to the Baron of Darkness, or even why, once he got the story from Shinji and Rumi when they got home after their first time in Tokyo-3, it was also identified as an Oni. I can't even comprehend how he'd react if he ever did know the truth. He'd be crushed, driven to insanity that, even though we only found out recently, we kept this secret from him.

As they entered the base, Taeko looked at Unit-01 again and had the same reaction from it the way she had a reaction to Gendo: She just didn't like it, and it was all twisted up inside.

And Rumi was actually inside that monster? She wondered, thankful that the only repercussion Rumi suffered from was a foul odor that needed to be washed away.

"Taeko!" Her mother called out to her.

"Coming! I'm coming!" She gasped, running to catch up with the others.

"Can I open my eyes now?" Shinji asked them.

"Yeah, Shinji," answered Rumi, and he opened them.

-x-

"…So, that's Tokyo-3, huh?" Kyoji uttered, looking at the sight of the former fortress city designed to repel the former, supposed threat that was the Angels. "Excluding the damages, it's quite a feat of architecture in the years I've been asleep. I hate it!"

"You're not the only one, Grandfather," Masamune added in a mutter, now lowering the helicopter to the ground; he was actually lowering it through the large hole that was once a few city blocks. This was a city never meant for people to live in.

"Your opinion, Sora?" Anne-Marie asked the young man beside her.

"It's not home, it's not paradise, and it's not balanced," he expressed, and then stuck his tongue out in a raspberry fashion of disgust. "Osaka had sights better than this!"

"Oh, my God!" Masamune gasped, and they all saw what made him react with such fright.

Evangelion Unit-01, standing in the edge of the lake beside the pyramid of NERV HQ.

"The Baron of Darkness?" Sora questioned. "The Devil?"

"I assume you're referring to the would-be myth about the Four Barons of Hell, Sora?" Anne-Marie asked him.

"Of all the horrors I've seen so far this year, this one takes the crown," he responded.

"The Four Barons of Hell are nothing more than a myth…with some interesting topics or whatever," went Kyoji, who had looked into this fifty-two years ago. "The Baron of Darkness is synonymous with the Devil…as the Devil is synonymous with Death and as Death is synonymous with the Apocalypse."

"Armageddon… Doomsday… Ragnarok… Judgment Day…" Masamune added in. "If this ends… When this is all over, I pray that these Evas… These barons…are put down for good."

The helicopter landed on the ground and the rotor blades slowed down as the engine died.

As Kyoji made his first step onto the ground, he felt an eerie presence around him, like somebody had stolen all the happiness left within the world and channeled it elsewhere where it couldn't be unleashed.

"There is a great pain here," he expressed, "and it's angry."

Anne-Marie looked up at Unit-01 and felt only disgust that her sister made the monster…and wouldn't be surprised at all if she had, literally, become the very ugliness she represented in her passion for science and discovery.

In the end, she was the monster that parents warn their children about at night, she thought, her left hand twitching with desire to grab the hilts of her swords.

-x-

"…Hey," gasped Bumi, pointing down the hall toward a man that stood outside a closed door. "Maybe he knows where to find Akira."

Kanami looked down the hall, but she didn't see anybody.

"Bumi," she told him, "there's no one down there."

The Geo Master looked again, and could've sworn that he saw a man dressed in white standing in front of a closed door.

"But…I saw somebody down there," he insisted.

Shinobu looked up at the lights and suggested that they might be playing tricks on their big brother's sight, due to their periodic flickering.

They walked toward the end of the hall and at the door, and Kanami and Mayo shuddered at the door.

"You two have been in this room, haven't you?" Tsukiko asked them.

"That's Gendo's office," Kanami explained, not really wanting to go in there.

Bumi and Shinobu, however, due to their curiosity on what the former brother might have kept in his office, wanted to explore its secrets.

"It ain't like something can get any worse than it already is," Shinobu stated, and Bumi channeled the door to open up for them. "What in the… It's awful in here!"

"You're saying that as a person that enjoys architecture or as a person in general, sis?" Kanami asked.

"General! It's poor craftsmanship! Too dark up in here, as well. And… Bumi, is that the guy you saw out in the hall?"

Bumi looked up at the desk that Gendo sat at and saw the man in white, unaffected by the darkness, but his long hair was covering his face.

"That's the guy from out in the hall!" He expressed, and then the other girls came in.

"Huh?" Mayo hesitated, looking at the man in white. "Mama, haven't we seen him somewhere before?"

Kanami looked at him, but then saw him step back from the desk, pressing up against the wall…and then going through the wall, like it wasn't even there.

"He…just went right through the wall," said Shinobu, wanting to question her sanity right about now.

-x-

"…I smell blood in the air," sighed Shinji, as he and the others traveled down an elevator.

"I thought it was only me, Shinji," Taeko expressed.

The elevator stopped and opened up to reveal, true to Shinji's words, blood had been in the air, due to a recently-slain NERV employee.

"Oh!" Miaka gasped, holding onto her daughter.

It was a young woman, maybe in her mid-twenties, with brownish-gray hair and blue eyes, down on the ground with her torso and abdomen riddled with holes and her face sporting a third hole on the forehead, allowing for blood to flow out.

Akira and Rumi turned their heads away and covered their mouths, hoping they wouldn't react to their scene with fits of regurgitation.

"We…we better get moving," Rumi stated, wanting to get away from the sight of the first dead body she'd ever seen in her life outside the movies.

Akira lowered to her knees and closed the dead girl's eyes, suspecting that Lilith probably killed her to vent out her frustration.

"Shinji, did you say something just now?" She heard Rumi ask.

"No, why?" Shinji responded.

"I thought I heard someone speaking."

Akira then pressed her left hand onto the ground and used her Geo Channeling to track any vibrations along the floors…and found at least a few feet belonging to some people several floors below them, with some stairs nearby to lead them.

-x-

"…There's something behind this wall," said Bumi to the girls, and channeled the minute traces of Earth that was still present within the purified material, wishing he had the time to further his skill in the art further, ripping a large hole in the wall to reveal another room. "Whoa! Are y'all seeing this?"

"We're seeing it…but believing it is another story," said Kanami.

Tsukiko turned on a flashlight she had brought with her and illuminated the darkness within the room, revealing a large, tube-like construct in the center of the room, covered in a medical sheet. The sound of water being used was present.

Mayo walked behind the construct and took notice of a small device that reminded her of the monitoring systems she saw at the hospital back home, seeing a colored line that went up every time it showed up on the screen.

"Mommy," she spoke to her mother. "I think there's something alive in this thing."

Kanami went behind the thing and saw the monitoring device attached to it, and then grabbed the sheet to pull it off, revealing what was in it to her brother and sisters.

"Kami and Oni fight for the world," Shinobu gasped.

"Burn me," Tsukiko added.

The blue light from the tube bathed the room in a glow that was no different from an aquarium, but the occupant within it was no member of the list of marine animals that resided within one. Inside the tube was a man, the same man that Bumi had seen, the same one that passed right through the wall. Except this time, he seemed more solid…and in a state of suspended animation or a coma of sorts, provided with oxygen from a respirator machine stuck to the top of the tube. He was dressed in white, medical clothes and his hair had covered his face due to its length.

Shinobu went around the tube and concluded that it was some sort of medically-enhanced sensory deprivation tank, but it didn't make any sense for it to be used on someone that appeared to be in a comatose state; if he was comatose, he was already deprived of his senses.

Clang. Tsukiko had tapped a tag attached to the tank and turned it over to examine it, reading whatever information was present.

"Does that say who this is?" Bumi asked her.

"No. This man's a John Doe, but what bothers me is where he was found; according to this tag, he was discovered in the aftermath of Second Impact where it took place."

"You mean, he was found in the waters of the South Pole? But…he should've been a goner. Nothing can survive in those waters. It's a dead zone."

"The only person that actually survived there for a short while before being rescued was Ms. Katsuragi, right? And she was in a escape capsule. Maybe it was because she was found earlier in the aftermath, but this guy… Even if it was a later time, he should've been a goner." Kanami added in.

"Yeah? Well, tell that to his heart monitor," said Mayo, and then she placed her left hand on the glass of the tank. "But why would they keep him around here? And in secret?"

"Probably the same reason Nemo gets his information from the movies and comic books of science fiction," expressed Bumi to her question. "The darker flaws exhibited in people that take the path of scientific discovery: Illegal experimentation on human beings against their will."

"You mean…he's their lab rat?" Mayo questioned, disgusted by this discovery.

Tsukiko looked over toward an old gurney nearby and saw an old medical chart atop it. She went over and looked at it; the writing was faded, but the information was still present.

"Oh, my Kami," she shuddered, flipping the pages, one after another, seeing all that was written long ago. "This is awful."

"What does it say, sis?" Kanami asked her.

"This man has been here in scientific captivity since NERV's predecessor organization, GEHIRN, was founded, over ten years ago. They've been studying, experimenting and even dissecting him many times. He's… Now, this is something out of a horror movie right here. He's got some sort of uncharted, regenerative ability they've been trying to replicate." She explained.

"Regenerative ability?" Mayo asked, confused.

"A healing factor, if you will," Tsukiko used the knowledge that was Nemo's field of knowing. "Apparently, it makes him almost immortal in a way. Cut one of his arms off, and he'll just grow another in its place. Remove his eyes, he'll replace them in due time with a new pair that'll pop out his head. According to this chart, they tried everything used to kill an ordinary man: Electrocution, poison gas, firing squad. They even tried decapitating him. Twice! And he still didn't die. They even got the pictures to prove it here."

She showed them the photographs that were there, and each of them shuddered at the sight of the man after he was, supposedly, murdered many times over.

"I've never believed in a man able to evade death like this," sighed Bumi, "even in extreme cases."

"Nobody could survive any of these attempts," added Shinobu.

"But he did," Mayo finished. "Does that chart say if he was part of…that ugly project that made the…monsters wrapped in armor, Tsukiko?"

Tsukiko looked further in the papers…and answered, "No, Mayo. He wasn't part of that project. He's a pet project that was an attempt to make people…as immortal as they believed this man to be. But it didn't pan out for them…or it might've, but his tissues expired when administered to another person, like they can't survive when separated from him."

"So, I guess they decided to bend a rule that they couldn't break," Kanami expressed. "If you can't kill somebody, then you can at least contain them."

"Why didn't I take Nemo's offer to see the movie Jason X?" Bumi questioned himself.

"Bumi," went Shinobu, hushed. "The John Doe… He's looking at us!"

Bumi looked at the man in the tank and stepped back, for he was looking at them…through his uncovered right eye, which was as brown as the Earth back in its early stages of development…but with a touch of something else in its feature.

Thump. The John Doe raised his right arm up and pressed it against the glass; his left arm was holding on to something with a small chain attached to it.

"Whoa," Mayo gasped. "Can you… Can you hear us in there?"

The John Doe gave a slow nod that he could hear them, and then opened up his left arm, revealing an object they had seen many times before: It was a gold, heart-shaped pendant of some sort, suspended from a gold chain. Everyone looked at one another, wondering what was going on.

"We gotta get him out of there," Tsukiko stated.

"Get back," said Bumi, raising his staff up like a bat. "Uh, you might want to get back, as well, sir."

The John Doe moved to the back of the tank, and Bumi slammed his staff against it. The glass, made out of what might've been the strongest materials used in glass manufacturing, was now about to be put to the test against one of Bumi's staff that uses a combination of iron and white oak hard wood. Bumi had never used his primary bo staff to break something like glass that probably couldn't be broken, but he wouldn't deny that, as a child one time, he wanted to do so.

SWAT! His staff hit the glass, but it didn't break under pressure.

"Hold on, Bumi," went Shinobu, who approached the tank and pressed her palms against the glass. "I hope I'm doing this right. Aaaurgh!"

She grunted, concentrating on her hands as they pressed against the glass; she deduced that, while the glass may have been shatter-proof, it wasn't able to cope with being heated past tolerable levels…and she hoped that she wouldn't raise the temperature of the water by accident and boil the man inside.

"Shinobu, you're insane right now," Kanami told her, disbelieving that she could melt the glass. "Stop. You could hurt the man."

But Shinobu didn't stop. She pressed on, just as her palms showed her element of power and passion; the flesh on her hands were now red like fire, smoking from the contact between the glass and them.

"Bumi," she uttered to her brother, "you still got one more swing in you?"

"Bring it on, sis," he responded, raising his staff again.

"On three," she ordered, and, just as the heated glass was about to crack nearest her fingers, she pulled away. "Three!"

"Aaaaurgh!" He grunted, swinging his staff against the glass once more, and it made the tiny cracks of the tank bigger. "Oh, shit."

CRASH! It shattered and spilled water allover the floor and soaked the legs of the ladies (Mayo, however, was soaked on her chest as well as her legs), freeing the man as he fell to the floor.

"Aaah!" Mayo gasped, not believing that her second oldest aunt and eldest uncle could do something reckless. "Shinobu… Bumi… If we live to see the next year, I will push you two into the lake back home for getting me wet like this!"

"Oh, no, Mayo," went Kanami to her daughter. "Not if I get my hands on them first. I'll disable their limbs and then throw them into the lake myself."

Cough! The John Doe, once he had gathered his bearings and removed the breathing apparatus stuck to his face, took a few breaths to revitalize his lungs.

"Tha…thank you, Bumi and Shinobu," he uttered, his voice sounding rusty due to being suppressed underwater. "I never wanna do that again."

As he was getting up, Mayo noticed that his gold heart was a few feet behind her and she picked it up, finding it open and showing something she found truly unbelievable.

"No way," she breathed. "This isn't possible."

Standing weakly on his legs, the man saw Mayo holding his gold heart and remained calm; he'd been imprisoned for who-knows-how-long and wasn't about to let his anger be vented against those that never deserved it, despite his flexing fingers.

Tsukiko looked at the gold heart and saw what made her niece upset: There was a photograph in it that, while looking quite withered, seemed authentic and undeniably truth-revealing, with a little girl holding an older boy in front of her.

"Okay, now, I gotta ask a serious question," she uttered, looking at the mystery man. "Just who the Hell are you and why do you have a locket just like my nephew's, only battered like it had endured years of harsh elements in a harsh environment?"

The man removed the other wet strands of hair from his face to reveal his expression was that of somebody that possessed a great degree of anger, but looked as though other emotions had been there, as well.

"You speak in present tense," he said, as though her words had some other meaning to what she was asking him. "He must still be as he is before the unforgivable."

"What are you talking about?" Kanami asked, looking at the locket and seeing the battered picture of Rumi and Shinji together. "How'd you get a hold of Shinji's locket?"

"You mean, you don't recognize me?" He asked them. "Have I changed that much in the years since your passing?"

"What? Our passing?" Shinobu questioned. "Just who are you?"

"Of course," he realized. "Time is a funny thing. Things change, people change…and yet, they often don't. Look at the boy again."

Bumi looked at the photo and then focused more on his nephew…and realized that some measure of sanity had been taken from the world long ago.

"Girls," he said, "I think this man…is Shinji."

-x-

"Whoa," Shinji sighed, as though a cold breeze went through his flesh and chilled his blood.

"Shinji, are you alright?" Rumi asked him as they made it to a door that seemed sealed tightly.

"For another moment, I saw something I couldn't believe happened in any fashion of existence," he expressed. "I saw the Earth turn black and red from space…and heard everyone screaming."

Akira inhaled a new breath, concerned about her grandson's mental state right now; as much as she wanted to prevent the end of the world and save the people, she wasn't going to risk his sanity.

"Rumi, maybe you, Miaka and Taeko should take Shinji back to the surface…but away from that purple monster," she requested of them.

"No, Akira, it's alright," Shinji insisted that he stay. "Just my imagination playing with me."

"It's playing with me, too," went Taeko. "I saw the exact, same thing. The ocean waters turning from blue to red… The sky turning dark while the sun is still out… The trees withering away to dust…and everybody turning into orange puddles."

As the words were echoed by her nephew and niece, Rumi could imagine a horrible outcome that might've been worse than simply dying: She saw a young man in white, not too different from the hospital clothes that Shinji still had in his possession, lying on the sands of a white beach, looking like he'd been left behind in the aftermath of an unforgivable sin that befell everybody on the planet.

"Mother," she asked Akira, "what's your greatest fear?"

"The one thing most romantics think of without considering the unforeseen repercussions," she explained to her daughter. "Immortality, the darker sibling to longevity. There are sometimes drawbacks to seeking eternal life, but the greatest of undesirable desires is immortality being more of a punishment than a reward or gift."

"How could immortality be a punishment?" Taeko asked.

"A villain that seeks to outlive their enemies would desire to become immortal to crush any opposition thrown against them, but when a long time has passed and all your enemies are gone, along with those that you could use as slaves or followers…you find that your punishment has only just begun. Many years go by, the land changes, life elsewhere disappears, but you remain as you are, unchanged by the ravages of time…and you may become tired of it all. Not physically tired, but emotionally, mentally, spiritually, desiring relief, the end to what could be viewed as a dream that you find you, quite simply…can't wake up from."

"And if something like that were to befall you?" Shinji asked her.

"I would long for death. I would get on my knees and beg for release. But only if I lost everybody I held dearest to my heart. To spend an eternity alone is to live an eternity in regret and despair. You would do nearly anything possible, give nearly anything you had left…just to breathe for the final time and close your eyes, knowing that what you viewed as a nightmare would finally come to an end…and you would join the people you love, the people you wanted only one more day with on the mortal plane of existence in that beautiful place that lives above the clouds and under the sun and moon."

"Life at the end of the world… Who would want that after everything else is gone?"

And Rumi could imagine without fail, the very person in white lying on the white beach by the sea of blood-laced water…was none other than the boy she loved, who was left to live alone on the dead planet he was placed on.

"Let's just find this Ayanami…or Lilith…or whoever the heck she is and put her away with Gendo and the other loonies we find for the rest of their lives and be on our way back to home," she told them.

"Yeah, Rumi," Akira agreed with her, and opened the sealed door that led to what she had been told by Kozo was the very chamber that Lilith's original body was kept in a lake of what was her blood. Blood that isn't blood cannot be bled by a person. Anybody, even a woman, that cannot bleed what isn't considered something recognizable by others is deemed unfamiliar to the world. Hmm, a woman that cannot bleed. There is no such person.

The Angelbreaker on her wrist shot out several tendrils that smashed into the sides of the door and Akira pulled her hand back, ripping the door off its hinges as though it were made of paper.

"Wow," went Nemo, wishing he had taken his iPhone out to videotape what she had done; this was third to what he had viewed as her greatest feat fifteen years ago. "Let's end this dark chapter."

They entered the large chamber…but found several surprises in front of them.

"I take it that these are some of the employees that didn't get away from here?" Miaka asked Akira, as they looked at the injured and helpless men and women that worked for NERV. "Nemo, can I suggest you do what you can for them?"

"Akira?" Nemo asked their mother.

"Start healing what can be healed, Nemo," she ordered him, and he set off to start mending the injured.

Rumi kept Shinji close to her as she approached a man that was bleeding out through his left arm, and decided to use the Angelbreaker on him.

Maybe I can't use it to save Shinji just yet, but maybe I can use it to help these people, she thought, pressing her armored hands against the injured man's arm.

"You…" The man looked up at her. "You're that girl that piloted Unit-01 to keep him outta it, aren't you? You look like her."

"Whatever gave you that impression?" She questioned.

"What makes a little girl do what they do for somebody older than she is? Praise? A reward? Love?" The guy responded, which made Rumi uneasy.

"Most likely because she has a responsibility to her older relative who longs only for her happiness," answered Shinji, and when Rumi removed her palms from the man's arm, he was healed. "And everything else comes second to her happiness."

"Hey, you're that hunk that Dr. Akagi said was more attractive than Commander Ikari," they heard a woman that Nemo was healing of her abdominal injury. "Wow, you are cute."

Nemo looked up at Shinji and Rumi, who gave him deadpanned expressions.

"Don't ask me," he begged them.

"Don't tell us, then," Rumi told him, walking up to the next person in need of healing.

Akira got in on the healing action and used the Angelbreaker to heal two people near her on the first attempt, regenerating a man's nearly-skinned left leg and a woman's right arm that looked like it was about to fall off her body.

"That First Child girl," she heard an injured woman she was about to heal say. "The First Girl. She ain't human. She's not human. She's a monster."

"Yeah," she agreed with her, regenerating her head and chest injuries. "Hey, did you, by any chance, see her with an elderly man? Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki's his name."

"If she's got him, it'll be where she keeps Commander Ikari," she answered her, pointing down the dozens of more people. "With a giant creature…nailed to a giant, red cross."

Lilith's original body! She realized, and went up ahead.

-x-

"…You…you can't be Shinji," said Tsukiko. "We left him back up in Tokyo-3 with Nemo, Rumi, Miaka and Taeko."

The aged man, the older Shinji, looked at her and said, "If that's true, then how am I here? Or, as confused as I was back then, how am I back in a world where there are people left alive?"

"Maybe this is something out of those comic books that Nemo likes to read about with different worlds," suggested Mayo to them. "What was it, time travel? Or something like a video game made with different ways to view the same plot?"

"Alternate dimensions, Mayo?" Her mother questioned.

"Yeah, that," she agreed. "This may be Shinji, but he's from a different, alternate time. Maybe not so different from ours."

"You gotta give credit to Nemo for his insight into the realm of make believe," the older Shinji added.

"But how similar is his background from our Shinji's?" Bumi questioned. "Let's try this: Answer me something that only I could know about him. You. What was my first reaction to seeing you on my doorstep when you were little?"

"You were wondering if Gendo was trying to make a joke by abandoning me on a rainy afternoon at your house," he answered him. "Gendo didn't even explain for himself why he left me on your doorstep, or my relation to him. He just dumped me on you, even left money for my upbringing, which you didn't use. You were too much like Akira to accept money from others. You earn or get what you can on your own, and you don't take handouts or charities."

The ladies looked at Bumi, who bowed his head.

"You…you really are Shinji, only older…and you can't die," he expressed.

"I can say many other things from before my trip to Tokyo-3 for the first time in over ten years, but I can't say anything about what happened after that day," the older Shinji told them.

"Why not?" Shinobu asked him.

"Because, as it was suggested, that I'm from another time, a different dimension similar to this one, Rumi and I never came home," he revealed, which had them worried.

"Wait a minute, what do you mean, you never came home?" Kanami questioned. "I mean, you two left to the city, the Third Angel, Sachiel, attacked and was, subsequently, defeated by Rumi, and the day after, you got on the train and came back."

"The day after Rumi defeated the Angel and saved my life, along with other people living in that city, we did set out to return home, but they interfered in our goal to come home."

"They?"

"Gendo…and his superiors. They had no honor or respect for others' wants or needs to go back home after a trip to another place. They saw Rumi as my replacement, since I couldn't and wouldn't pilot the Evangelion…and they used me to force Rumi to serve them."

"But…why didn't you try to run away?" Tsukiko asked.

"We did, every chance we got to do so…but they were always watching us. We tried to catch a train, they shut down the stations and stops. We tried to take a cab, but the drivers were bribed into disregarding a sick boy and a five-year-old girl that acted as his guardian. We even tried calling you, but all our calls were being monitored. We weren't allowed to leave the city at all."

"How long did it take until we started worrying so much that we come to get you ourselves?" Shinobu asked him.

"We were kept for almost three weeks until we got word that Nemo was in the city looking for us," he answered her. "But Gendo (he could still recall the horror)… That monster… When you use or get rid of one person that's against your twisted, so-called beliefs…you gotta go and get rid of the rest of them, just to make sure that you're still in control."

"You mean… He wiped Nemo off the map?" Bumi asked him.

"That's exactly what he did," he answered, "along with the rest of you."

Kanami wondered just how terrible this Shinji's past was compared to their Shinji's past; if his past's variation of Gendo had gotten rid of them to keep Rumi and him in his possession, she feared that Mayo and herself had been dealt with in the same fashion as they almost had been in the Unit-03/Bardiel incident that had been orchestrated by him.

"…And then…the end of the world came," he continued, "and everyone else was taken by cruel hands. Gunned down, stabbed, blown to pieces and liquified. The sky and oceans turned red with blood and wherever life remained was ended completely. I was locked away in the purple behemoth that was once my mother, who ditched me at the age of three to play God's inbred mockery of himself, made to watch the Apocalypse. The last thing I saw, my only remaining link to a life I once enjoyed, even when pained by sickness, was Rumi getting put down like a rabid wolf by Gendo's mockery of his woman, Rei Ayanami, just to drive me over the edge."

They could imagine the outcome of that: The purple Evangelion being lifted into the sky on orange wings of light and nerves, Shinji, as he had been before they met the older him, stuck inside the cockpit, made to watch Rumi shoved to the ground by the blue-haired albino on Gendo's orders, and then seeing a gun pressed to the back of her head as she looked up at Unit-01's head.

"Shinji," they could imagine her saying her final words, "this was never your fault. I love you."

And then…the hammer fell, and then Rumi fell, never to rise again. The last of the only family Shinji ever held dearest to his heart, taken by his parents, whom he gave up on for leaving him. It drove him mad with grief, agony, hatred, made him want to give up everything he had left just to wake up from the nightmare that was his dark future alone. He finished his story within five more minutes about how he did go mad, how he was forced to see everything from the beginning of the world to its twisted end, how many deities from many different cultures that ever existed suddenly manifested around him, his parents and Rei Ayanami and another albino that was at least a year older than himself, playing the role of judge and jury.

"They had brought up undeniable testimonies from the souls of dozens of their victims, including a dead girl that had been my mother's little sister, whom she had killed to cover her attempts to turn her into a lab rat like I was after I was found. The end result was the deities had decided to ensure, in their own perception, that my parents' punishment fit their crimes…and so they punished them…by condemning me."

"What?!" Mayo questioned, seeing this revelation of her cousin's fate as completely unfair, even if it was granted so by the gods. "Why'd they punish you if it was your parents that did the unforgivable acts they did?"

"Why does anybody, even a god or goddess, punish anybody that they know doesn't deserve it? To prove a point, to show a semblance of what is best left alone and unsought for…or is it just because the punished person is related to the people that should be punished for the mistakes that they made? Either way, it was I who paid the ultimate price for their insanity, their awful self-righteousness…and it drove me mad in the years that followed."

"They cursed you to live forever in a dead world where you were the only one left alive," Tsukiko hated this revelation, as it reminded her of how her family was murdered at the circus due to cruel people's acts. "But I don't understand this: How did you wind up here if you were left in a dead world?"

"That's what I questioned myself on," he responded. "I wasn't sure how I ended up here. I remember throwing myself off a cliff and into the water. I lost consciousness before I hit the water…and I drowned myself for the seventy-fifth time. The next thing I knew, I was in the water of a different place, where there were these pillars of ice that floated in the blood-red ocean…and a ship found me. At first, I thought I was dreaming that there were people left alive after the world ended, and for a while it seemed too good to be true…but then…it turned into a nightmare when I was examined. They didn't even ask me for my name or introduce themselves. And then…they condemned me to a life as a laboratory specimen. I had found myself thrown over a thousand years back in time to before I was ever cursed…and over a month before I was even born. The year Two-Thousand-One, the year after the so-called Apocalypse happened."

Bumi was infuriated by these revelations. His only nephew from a different time, another universe where he and Rumi were kept in a city that was without a positive aura…and an underground facility for a paramilitary organization…against their will, he and everyone else that came to worry about them had been killed for trying to bring them back home, and the very planet they resided on reduced to a lifeless hunk of rock that could've been no different from Hell, minus the fire and brimstone. He wondered what kind of people with moral responsibilities would allow such actions of ill consequences to occur, knowing that the price was so high that it was like selling away your soul.

"…The gods wouldn't even cut the penalty short for me," he then heard the older Shinji say.

"How long was your curse to last?" Shinobu asked him, wanting to know, so that they could help him end this undesired retribution.

"One of the Asian goddesses, the goddess Izanami-no-Mikoto, stated that, if by the will of what life remained within the soul of the Earth or by the will of the other deities, I were to return to a time where life still existed in the form of people that remained alive, and those that could and would do something to aid those with the power to restore the world back to its original state before the Second Impact…and those guilty of their immoral or amoral decisions were brought to justice or dealt with in some painful fashion, only then would my curse be undone…and I could finally pass on to the next world…where those that wait for me would see me." He answered her.

"By the will of what remained of Earth's soul or by the will of the gods themselves that punished you?" Mayo repeated, wondering which of the other deities from other cultures and beliefs decided to stand by that decision. "If it was the deities that chose to act, I don't like that they made you wait for over one-thousand years to get here where we're trying to keep the family together and prevent the end of the world as we know it. But if it was Mother Earth's withered soul at the time, gathering her energy to send you on a one-way trip to the past of a different time, at least she was trying her hardest to help somebody that could probably save her before the bad guys go and kill her again."

Older Shinji couldn't help but agree with her on the latter suggestion that the very planet's soul might've brought him back to this past to prevent its dark future. If it was Mother Earth that had given him this chance to defy the hands of retribution and fate, to steer the fate of everyone toward a real bright future, not at all like the one his mother had wanted, then he'd be very grateful if he helped to prevent this nightmare from repeating itself. He'd be eternally grateful.

-x-

"…Oh, Kami," Anne-Marie sighed, the sight of slain, dismembered NERV employees made her want to throw up.

Masamune, wishing he had acted on his conscious sooner than later, wondered if he had caused the deaths of these young people unintentionally. He felt responsible for their deaths.

"I feel like I should be praying right now," said Kyoji.

Sora, who was just as quiet as Masamune, thought, at the sight of the fallen victims, This certainly brings back bad memories.

To each their own reactions and responses to the sight of dead people laying around the floor as they wandered around NERV HQ for their enemies.

Thud! A sound from behind them caught their attention, along with a sound that reminded Anne-Marie of footsteps that didn't seem like people walking around.

"I don't like the sound of that sound, Father," she told him.

It sounded like someone dragging and dropping things from around a corner, and as they looked at the corner from which the sound was originating behind, they wished they had worn armor. A creature of some sort, resembling a dog or wolf-like animal, modeled after the purple monster they saw outside, but it seemed like a ravenous beast, untamed and unafraid of the alien environment and the creatures that wandered around it.

"What the Hell is that?" Masamune questioned, wondering if Gendo had spent some time trying to play with science and splicing it with nature to create a different type of monster.

The creature looked at them and let out a growling sound, which, to Anne-Marie, indicated that it was no different from a wild animal that was dangerous to people. It even bared its fangs, which seemed like human teeth!

"Run!" Sora screamed, and they ran for their lives.

"Damn whoever made this thing!" Anne-Marie shouted, just as the creature gave chase and pursued them with only thing on its mind: Feeding.

Kyoji saw an open door and instructed the other three, "That door! Over there!"

They ran into the room and slammed the door shut, locking the beast out.

"Somebody was crazy as Hell to play God and make that thing," went Sora, looking out a circular window to see if the beast was still out there.

"Is it still there?" Anne-Marie asked him.

"Yeah," he answered. "It's waiting out front."

"I'm going to kick somebody's ass when we… Oh, shit." Masamune cursed, confusing Kyoji.

"What is it, Masamune?" He asked his in-law as he turned around, and realized that he made a grave error in decision. "Oh, shit…is right."

Anne-Marie and Sora turned to see what caused their poor vocal expressions, and saw at least seven of the same monster that they just got away from, feasting on the bloody remains of three NERV workers. If anything, the Eva-like wolves could've been the biomechanical offspring of Unit-01, only smaller, compact and, potentially, unbound by power requirements. Then, one of them looked at the four humans and alerted the rest of its kin to their presence. They each looked at the quartet and snarled.

"Grandfather?" Anne-Marie said. "I hate you right now."

"Gomen nasai, Anne-Marie," he apologized for his error, just as the Eva-like wolves started approaching them.

"Anne-Marie, can't you call them off?" Sora suggested. "I mean, you can talk to them, right?"

"Sora, I don't think these guys are talkative," she responded.

Kyoji then realized that there might be a way to get out of this predicament, but it was against everything he lived for.

The beasts then made an unusual vocalization that seemed to be a form of communication between them, which made Anne-Marie fearful.

"Uh-oh," she went, having understood their language.

"Uh-oh, what?" Masamune asked her.

"Daddy, I'm green-leaf salad while you and Grandfather are the all-you-can-eat buffet," she explained.

"What about me?" Sora questioned.

"Sora, they don't want anything with only less than half of a body," she expressed, referring to his cybernetic pieces under his skin.

To commit a sin against nature, thought Kyoji, wondering if he should do something he swore never to do again, or not to?

But when the beasts charged toward the four, the choice was made.

Yelp! They were halted…and raised off the floor…by Kyoji himself, using his bare hands. They struggled to move their limbs, but they dealt with great pain, even trying to move their muzzles hurt.

"Kyoji?" Masamune, seeing what his grandfather was doing, was confused greatly. "Are you doing this, Kyoji?"

As his forehead and wrist veins showed on him, Kyoji uttered, "It's a curse, through and through." He then thrust his arms forward, sending the monsters slamming into the walls behind them, knocking them out.

"I'll take my chances with the one outside," said Sora.

-x-

"…Huh?" Shinji reacted to the sight of an injured NERV employee he'd seen at the festival back home. "Hyuga-San?"

Makoto Hyuga, with a broken arm and leg, looked up at the former Third Child and expressed, visually, confusion at why he was here; he'd been slipping in and out of consciousness for several hours now.

"…Hey… That little girl's nephew," he responded, then seeing the little girl that had changed everything with her initial arrival to the city with him.

"He's been run through," said Rumi, and she began using the Angelbreaker to heal his injuries, once more hating herself for not being able to do so for Shinji.

As she and Nemo continued to heal whoever they could, Akira, who had gone further down the large chamber, straight to another large door with a trail of blood at the base of it. She slammed her left foot on the floor to send out vibration rings to see if there was anybody on the other side…and couldn't sense anything.

I guess the metal's pure platinum, she theorized; some Geo Channelers may have been able to manipulate processed metals to varying degrees, but controlling metals that had no trace amounts of the very Earth itself were a feat that could never be achieved. Not even I could sense through pure metal. Well, time to be rough.

She shot tendrils out of her armored wrists and ripped open a hole in the door, letting herself into another large room, with several men and women that, to her shame, were beyond saving; their faces and torsos had been shredded. As she looked around, she found the source of mankind's rise to power on the planet, nailed to a giant cross, expelling a steady flow of yellow-orange and reddish-orange liquid from somewhere on her body.

"Just like how the Angels were spawned from Adam, humans were spawned from Lilith," she recalled the information she had obtained from Ritsuko, even though she had acquired the information from the Angels and Kozo themselves. "Lilith spawned the first series of microbes and bacteria, which then evolved from slime to single-celled organisms to the dinosaurs, marine lifeforms, mammals…right down to what we are today."

She stopped approaching the being that was as large as an Evangelion, halted by the large lake of the orange-tinted fluid that flowed from her body. Her first encounter with the mother of all life she knew…and it felt like a cheap introduction because Lilith lacked the rest of her existence.

"…If knowledge truly is power," a voice uttered around her, "then our damnation because of its misuse is inescapable."

She turned to the right of where she stood at the edge of the artificial lake, seeing the rest of Lilith, sitting down by said edge, glaring at her.

"Why am I not surprised?" She asked her.

"I knew you would come down here," Rei Ayanami, Ayanami-Sakaki, Lilith expressed, revealing a paralyzed Kozo Fuyutsuki beside her. "There's no denying your desire, your need to protect those close to you, even when some are separated by a great distance. Besides… I believe that Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki here still has a great degree of affection for you. Admiration, trust, respect…puppy love…all of which are highly overrated because they're a waste upon the worthless scum of my existence."

"You go too far and Fuyutsuki-Sama is ripped from his life, I won't hold back in putting you down once you're dealt with," Akira threatened her, not wanting to see another innocent life taken.

"Oh, this old man," she responded. "He was just a lure to bring everybody that would play a vital role in my grand design down here. And now that we're here…my goal can be realized."

Suddenly, several monsters, looking like miniature, wolf-like versions of Unit-01, climbed out of the lake and growled at Akira, who held her staff defensively; she wasn't going down like cattle.

"Stop," Lilith told them, and they stood perfectly still, dripping with her original body's blood. "Sit down now."

They obeyed again, behaving like dogs at the beckoning of their master.

"I wouldn't want you harming my pets now, would I?" She questioned her, snickering.

Click! Something pressed against the back of her head.

"Drop your weapon," a new female voice had ordered her, and she sighed before dropping her staff. "Good bitch. Very good."

Akira stood as the wielder of the gun revealed themselves as an older, darker version of Ritsuko Akagi.

"Naoko Akagi, I presume?" She asked her.

"In the reanimated flesh," Naoko responded. "I owe my return to Ms. Lilith."

"Akira!" They each turned to the large hole in the door and saw Shinji and Rumi.

"Careful now," Lilith warned them, just as her pets bared their fangs toward them and Naoko raised the gun at Akira's forehead. "Let's not get hasty around here."

"I don't know what else that antique gauntlet of yours can do," went Naoko, "but I'm certain that it can't stop a bullet to the head at close range."

"I gotta hand it to you for thinking that, Akagi-Sama," Akira sighed. "It's a wager you'd win."

Shinji looked up at Lilith and shuddered in fear.

"Mister Shinji Ikari," Naoko greeted the boy, "what an honor it is to see you here."

"It's Roku… Oh, forget it," Shinji grunted, angry at people always referring to him by that name when it meant nothing to him.

"Baka," said Rumi to Naoko, "was that really necessary? Are they (she pointed her right hook sword toward the creatures that resembled the ones from her nightmares) necessary?"

"Bring the boy over here," Lilith ordered three of her ten pets to collect Shinji. "Don't you two (she pointed to Akira and Rumi) try anything funny."

The three wolf-like Evas approached Shinji and Rumi and one of them growled at the boy, ordering him to come with them.

"No way," Shinji refused.

"You may speak for yourself," Lilith told him, "but you can't speak for them now, can you?"

The second of the retrieving beasts on the right side of the lead one got on Rumi's left side and snarled at her head, just as Naoko pressed the muzzle of her gun against Akira's head. They were making things difficult for the Angelbreaker wielders, as they couldn't do anything right now without risking some fatal form of repercussion.

"I'll say it again, boy," Lilith told him. "Come here."

Shinji frowned, but had to submit to her demand, and went with the beasts.

Rumi looked at the beast that continued to look at her and frowned.

Once Shinji was within two feet, Lilith had him stay there; despite having the upper hand now, she didn't want him touching her.

Akira kept her gaze upon Naoko and took notice of the strange, choker-like object around her neck that seemed to pervert or disgrace Christ himself by replacing him with an Evangelion crucified upside-down. It made her wonder if Lilith or Naoko developed disrespect for select religions.

"You got something against Christianity, Akagi-Sama?" She asked the physically-older woman.

"No," Naoko responded. "I don't practice any form of religion. Why?"

"You seem to express a dislike and perversion of Christianity, like naming a trio of supercomputers after the wise men that visited Christ after he was born. And you're wearing a perversion of the crucifix displaying an Eva in place of him, only upside-down."

"Must you complain of everything, older hag?" A new voice entered the verbal conflict, which brought Akira's attention toward a farther-away man laying face-down on the ground beside the edge of the lake, dressed in black and looking rather battered.

"I have to be honest about him right now, but I had thought that Lilith dealt with him," Akira then sighed, not expecting Gendo to be down here, but then she figured, since Kozo had informed her that he rarely ever leaves the Geo-Front, this whole facility was like his shell or small kingdom, originally the only place he had control over.

"Oh, I've hurt him a bit," Lilith expressed, "but I won't kill him. He's Naoko's to do away with."

"Why?" Shinji questioned her. "If you don't mind my asking."

Lilith sighed and uttered, "Care to explain why, Naoko?"

"Sure," she responded. "As his son, he has the right to know what kind of person his father is."

"I already know what he is," Shinji defended his own way of viewing his old man.

"Actually, you don't," Naoko retorted kindly. "Sure, you know that he attempted to murder one of your adopted aunts and your cousin and call it a necessary sacrifice to defeat an Angel-possessed Evangelion, that he got rid of you and had no meaningful contact for over ten years, even tried to burn your little aunt that seems to like you more than anyone else."

"Gee, must you make the last statement seem so obvious to me?" He asked her; he wouldn't deny that his affection for Rumi had grown into the type of love between two people that trust each other more than others, but if anybody was going to question it a little more than necessary, they were going to have a problem of unnecessary conflict.

"I don't think we need to know that much, Naoko," Lilith agreed with the boy; she knew enough of the revelation and didn't need to hear it again, as she still couldn't shake out the expressing of love between the boy and the little girl she loathed. "Just tell him what he doesn't know about his father…even if it means he has to know everything else. It's already inevitable."

"Your father… That arrogant bastard…is very immoral when it comes to love and trust," Naoko expressed. "He's unfaithful, even to his own wife."

Shinji turned to face his father laying on the ground and wondered if his would-be infidelity was true, just to go along with the revelation that he himself was deemed worthless by him.

"Go on," he told her to continue.

"After your mother's so-called death in an accident, he came to me for my help. I won't deny that I fancied him for a time…but then…he sent her elder sister clone to seal my fate five years ago (she gestured her free hand toward Lilith's human-based vessel/prison). He said I was annoying, unnecessary and an old hag. Oh, he set me off."

Having gotten behind Akira again, Naoko wondered if the super-centenarian woman was as disgusted of Gendo's infidelity as she probably was as his behavior right now, seeing that Shinji was slightly affected by this truth.

"I guess my old man really can't do anything but hurt others," Shinji expressed, turning away from his father, "which questions his lack of moral fortitude."

"He has none to speak of," Lilith told him. "He's the kind of person that will do anything, hurt or threaten, even use anyone, to achieve his own ends. Heh, he'd even use his own son as a tool to declare war on the Angels, just to get back his woman, the only person he ever committed himself to caring about…and the only person that really matters to him. Everything and everyone else is of no concern to his black hole of a heart."

Shinji again looked at his old man and found this truth harsh, but it justified the mad man's behavior from his point of view ever since he met him for the first time in over ten years. The guy was a complete, demented megalomaniac that would do anything to get his way, sacrificing anybody that didn't see eye-to-eye with him or got in his way of achieving a goal.

"Is there anything else about him that I should know about before asking any other questions?" He asked them, waiting for a response.

"He doesn't give a damn about you," Naoko told him.

"He already knows that," said Akira to her.

"Well, how about his mother being no different from her husband?" Lilith questioned.

"I already know that she hurt her own family years ago," Shinji explained.

"That your mother has a younger sister that can talk to animals that she alienated from others?"

"He met his maternal aunt once already, and she told him about his mother from her point of view," Rumi expressed. "What a disgrace."

"What about duping her old man into serving her superiors?" Naoko asked.

"I can't forgive her for her sins against her family," Shinji stated.

"Is there anything about your mother that you can forgive?" Lilith questioned the boy.

"What is there to forgive? I put her behind me." He confessed. "She's just a ghost that I buried in the darkness where my lack of memory of her can't haunt me, anymore."

"Heh-heh-heh!" Lilith laughed at him. "A ghost, is she? Is that really what you believe? You think she's in the afterlife and all she does is watch those she left behind."

Rumi then recalled her dream where she had conversed with Asuka's mother's soul, who revealed herself to being imprisoned within the red, four-eyed behemoth. This made her wonder if, depending on Lilith's dependability to be truthful with revelations, her love interest's own mother was bonded spiritually to one of the Evas, as well. And then…she looked at her own mother, who might've known more than she did, back then and now.

Akira wished Shinji wouldn't know the harsh truth about his mother at all, as it could break him. Truth be told, she feared his reaction to the revelation that his mother was always inside the very monster she created. He'd been hurt by different truths before; one was he living a, potentially, shorter life due to his cancer, another being that three of his only friends in life had died before him, and the last one being that his father would never care about him for as long as he would live. In her heart, the truth Shinji heard from anybody he didn't know personally for several years or trusted with his life could be will-breaking and, unquestionably, traumatic.

"Yes," Shinji answered Lilith. "Not the afterlife that is Heaven, though. How can a person go there with a history of doing things they know to be wrong…and not doing anything to obtain forgiveness from the people they've harmed? That only condemns a person to the only other two routes in the afterlife after death: Limbo, the purgatorial realm where they're judged or sentenced to try and atone for their mistakes, their sins, their misguided and awful deeds…or the realm of the Oni, where their souls burn from the weight of their sins."

"Heh-heh-heh, you poor, deluded soul," she called him; while she was willing to praise his choice of words to explain one's state in the afterlife, his potential belief of his mother being in Hell was far from the truth of the current matter.

"He is not deluded!" Rumi shouted at her. "You're deluded…and you're awful."

"He is if his parents, his mother, in particular, kept a cold fact from him for years that revolved around the Eva," Lilith defended her designation on Shinji. "His bastard of a father keeps the truth hidden, his bitch of a mother made him watch her…physical departure from the mortal coil when she made her ugly prison shell with the lower half of my flesh, and neither one of them made the choice to tell him of what had really happened that day. Of course, I can't blame Gendo for never telling him, even though he got rid of him, as he himself barely knew the truth, either. Something a little information taken from the elder's head confided in me when I delved into the hidden rooms of his mind."

Akira looked over at Kozo and was convinced of him knowing a little more than what he had shared with her last time. But it was obvious that what he knew wasn't shared with anyone else, not even Gendo himself.

"Ugly prison shell?" Rumi repeated, confused, but now willing to believe for sure that her Shinji's mother was imprisoned within the purple Eva left outside. "We all seem to get that the Evas are a little awful and that no attempt to make them appear friendly to the eyes of people was ever made, but could you just say whatever it is that you're talking about? 'Cause I'm already starting to suspect misdeeds that were and are fouler than foul were committed right now."

Naoko looked at the little girl that resembled the super-centenarian woman gratefully and told Lilith, "I still can't see why you despise her so much…other than being a little pretty and in the way."

"Pretty?" Shinji questioned her. "Yeah, because she takes after her mother in several respects. But in the way? Hardly. Whose way is she in?"

Lilith then looked at Rumi, then at Akira, who frowned at her, then at Gendo and Fuyutsuki before looking up at her true self that continued to hang from the cross.

"Just because you have every right to know the devious acts of your parents," she revealed to Shinji, "your mother's far from dead and a little less than alive. At least in the proper sense that is having a physical body with a mind and soul, which are intangible, attached to it. The day of her experiment with Unit-01, originally Unit-00 at that time, she pulled me from my true body hanging up there in a loose mockery of that mortal certain people worship…and got herself landed in the purple-armored mockery of me made to look like a mockery of Adam, as he is the one all other Evas are based off of. Her grand design, the artificial lifeforms that were tasked with killing Adam's children, bred from the harbingers of life themselves, double as a prison of sorts with a life sentence to any women that bore children after Second Impact, caused by the arrogance of people that seek to become the deities they have ceased to believe in. Heh-heh-heh… Living prisons that offer a semblance of what one can call immortality, the blessing…or penalty…of living forever, outlasting all that exists, to the ends of time and beyond. That's the fate your mother condemned herself to that day she made you watch her leave…and nobody that knew of the truth of this ever told you. Oh, they never told you."

He looked at Akira, who seemed to have a look of shame on her face, and then he looked at his father and the elder man near him, seeing that they were silent (although the elder man seemed ashamed of the revelation, as well), forcing Shinji to recall the awful memory that he'd forgotten in order to protect himself from the intense pain it caused him back when he was little. The scent of oil and blood, the alarms ringing, the sight of the Eva without its armor…and that face he'd lost recognition in…the face that was now perverted, warped and twisted, worn by the girl that he had once pitied for her previous injuries when he and Rumi met her for the first time, and later grew to loathe and detest. He fell to his knees, his eyes looking this way and that, as if unable to cope with the truth he had just been told. The horrid nightmares he had of the purple-armored monster resurfaced in his conscious, along with everything else he had tried to keep buried that related to a past that brought him no comfort or could ease his pain.

"Far from dead and a little less than alive, your mother is," the woman's words repeated in his head. "Nobody that knew of the truth ever told you."

Clang! He slowly turned to face Rumi, who had dropped her hook swords; she seemed upset that he was upset.

"The elder man knew…only because that woman told him," she uttered; she didn't even know how much of a fact that was. "He probably told my mother just recently, and she didn't want to tell my nephew of it, fearing the truth, if that's what you can even call it, would make him question everything he's ever believed in about his parents completely…or would just hurt him too much. And yet, you can tell him…and care nothing for it? You tell him, simply because he has a right to know the truth that had been kept from him for over ten years. Heh… Ten years… I could question the elder why he never revealed the truth. I could question my mother on why she didn't want to tell him. Heh, I should question them about it…but they're hardly at fault for this."

Shinji's eyes ceased their search for direction and focused only on the little girl that loved him dearly. She had become the light in the darkness surrounding him.

"That dark lady," she had uttered. "It's her fault. All her fault. She made the choice, and for what? For what? She left him to spend over ten years as a mockery of a demon, and that has caused only suffering. And I'm only guessing that the baka that tried to scorch me the night of my sixth birthday spent the majority of that length of time chasing after her leftovers."

"She talks mature for a six-year-old that sounds pissed off, doesn't she?" Naoko asked Akira.

"Shut up," she responded.

"You're out of line, you little brat," they heard Gendo call Rumi.

Suddenly…a tentacle shot out and wrapped around his mouth, silencing him.

"Nobody wants to hear you speak, Gendo Mu," went Lilith, lowering her right arm back down to her side. "And to be honest with your choice of words, little girl, yes, he was chasing her remains for over ten years, and every time he attempted to reclaim her from the bowels of the only cybernetic monster made from my body, he ended up failing…and the closest he ever came to succeeding was when he freed me from the mockery…and reduced me to the previous guise as a wretched, sickly miniature of his woman that he felt he could use to get her back."

"Yeah, Akagi's daughter explained that to me once about you," went Akira, "but can you answer me this one question regarding Shinji? I won't deny that you say you need him inside the monstrosity that is all that's left of his mother, but wouldn't it have been easier for you to have it down here? I see a potential drawback here: If Unit-01, the woman that has been absent for over a decade, is required, and Shinji is nowhere near it, her, then your goal cannot be realized, and if he were…harmed in any way that places his life on the line, like right now, your goal cannot be achieved. Is that true, Lilith? Is it?"

"What are you getting at?" Naoko questioned her. "This world is going to Hell in a paper bag because of the arrogance of select people, so why question what is or isn't a fact right now?"

"Because it appears that at least three people," Akira continued, "all have or had terrible goals that revolved around one particular requirement: They all needed Shinji involved…while he's still alive, as he's not good to anybody with less than half a heart to care about him if he's dead."

"I'd still care about him," went Rumi, "alive, dead or nonexistent."

"Yeah, in Gendo's plan, he was a requirement," Naoko confessed. "In his wife's plan, whatever the Hell it was, anyway, her son was also a requirement. But the only person whose plan is nearing achievement is Lilith's, as all that's required of Shinji before his final breath is be inside the Eva. He doesn't have to fight or anything."

"And am I really supposed to believe that, coming from you?" Akira asked.

"That is his fate, regardless of what you might try. It is inescapable. The Eva dominates his existence."

"You're wrong," went Shinji, looking up at her. "You're wrong."

"Oh, really?" She countered. "That's the fate your parents dealt you."

"The Eva, the monster, the Oni…is their fate… Not mine. I'm not dependent upon some ugly piece of trash that they invested their time on. It…can burn at the very bottom of a raging inferno…along with them, because I can't see them as anything but the awful strangers they are now." He told her.

"Tough words from the son of two fools," she praised him. "I must give you props for your disassociation with your parents. Aside from your…heh…mild resemblance to the two, you don't have their defective personality traits, their willingness to do whatever it takes to achieve a goal or their willingness to betray the people they have harmed."

Rumi then uttered, "For somebody that was…with the jerk with the ugly glasses, you seem to have a funny way of treating somebody related to him only by past association. I can see that you praise Shinji for being so unlike his…the two that opened his door to life, but your words are only half-hearted, with barely any actual effort put in them. And…simply because you've, more or less, explained my nephew's requirement in your master's goal to bring an end to everyone left in the world, you fail to see many problems in it."

"And what are those problems?" Lilith asked her.

"One is that you need my nephew alive. Two is that he needs to be inside Unit-01, the ugly monster that is that awful woman that left him to try and play one of the kami. Three is my mother and I, tasked by an ancient relic of untold wonders and lore to save the people left alive and return stability to the world. And the last one is… Oh, it's a very major problem that you have."

"What is the fourth problem?" Naoko wondered, curious as to what it could be.

"Well, it's the same as the first problem, but with an addition," she answered. "You need Shinji…but now he's off-limits…and that gun you have isn't going to do anything for you."

Suddenly…Naoko's gun-toting hand was knocked away from Akira's head, encased in a ball of…ice!

"What?!" Lilith demanded, and then saw a few pieces of metal coming her way. "Oh!"

She raised her right arm up and blocked the small fragments of iron that bounced off her armored body.

Akira took their distracted moments to take action. She jump-kicked Naoko into the artificial lake of Lilith's real body's fluids and then grabbed her staff to slam Lilith's Fallenbreaker-wielding guise into the lake with her.

"That was the last of my water," Shinji turned to where Rumi had been standing, seeing Nemo, Miaka and Taeko were present, all the while Rumi was now throwing the Unit-01-like beasts around to keep them at bay.

For all he could suspect, Rumi had been plotting this act with just being vocal about it (though not giving any indication of it), or she was using the Angelbreaker to draw Nemo and the girls to where they were.

"Grrr!" He looked toward one of the beasts near him, and almost fainted at the mere sight of it bulging in size and looking like it just ripped its own head in half to sprout additional fangs.

"Aaaahh!" He gasped, rising back to his feet to run, but was blocked by the other beasts, who imitated the first one by splitting their own heads in half to show additional fangs.

Akira, seeing the beasts entrapping her grandson, used her staff in conjunction with her Aero Channeling and whipped up a strong gust that blew the monsters up into the air, leaving Shinji unaffected by the wind currents.

"Run!" She told him, and he made a move to do so, but hesitated for a moment; he was looking down at Gendo.

He looked down at his old man, who, due to being gagged, couldn't utter any words to him, and knew that he wouldn't speak to him, even if he wasn't gagged, not even to ask for help. No words of praise or comfort, no begging for his forgiveness, and there were no words able to mend the lack of ties between the cold-hearted father and the son he abandoned.

"He doesn't give a damn about you," he recalled the words of revelation given to him by those that knew the harsh truth.

"He's the kind of person that will do anything to achieve his own ends. He'd even use his own son to get back his woman. Everyone else is of no concern to his black hole of a heart."

Time seemed to stand still, right then and there…until Shinji did the one thing that certainly wouldn't put any thoughts of reconciliation between the two men: He kicked his father in his face with his left foot before running.

Whoa, thought Akira, who couldn't believe she had lived to see that act being committed.

"I can't believe you just did that, Shinji Rokubungi," said Nemo, slamming one of the Eva-esque beasts into a wall.

"There was nothing left to say, Nemo," he defended his reason for wanting to hurt his old man.

"I would've done it, too," his otaku uncle told him; Nemo would've indeed kicked Gendo in his ugly face, as well…if he had any sense of foul play to do so.

Akira shot streams of fire at the creatures that had split their heads in half and entrapped them in a ring of flames; they seemed to possess an bestial instinct to keep away from fire. Once they were held at bay, she went over and grabbed Kozo.

"But Akira…" He tried to talk her out of saving him.

"Talk later," she told him, and carried him on her back.

She then looked down at Gendo, almost as helpless as the day he drew his first breath. Akira almost felt sorry for him. Almost, but she wouldn't disregard the facts she had learned of his unforgivable acts toward others, and couldn't condone that he had become worse than his father before him, dishonoring his mother's memory. She would leave him for Naoko and Lilith when they got out of the LCL lake; he deserved whatever they had in store for him.

-x-

"…Grandfather," Anne-Marie uttered to Kyoji, "that thing you did to those beasts made in the Eva's image. How? I mean…just how were you able to do it?"

As the quartet journeyed down the halls, the super-centenarian man recalled a childhood before the one he had with Akira as his new parent, and shuddered at the memory of the last look his own mother gave to him before everything changed forever.

"That cartoon you told me about that has arts similar to what the channelers can do," he expressed. "You said that one of the bad arts was called…Bloodbending, right?"

"Yes."

"Well, what I did was an art that was similar…and disgraceful."

"You can Bloodbend without a full moon?" Sora asked him.

"First up, the art I used…is called Hemo Channeling, and, second, it's a bitter pill for me to swallow, since I think it may have something to do with the way Yui turned out years ago." Kyoji expressed; as he had thought about using the skill to save them from the beasts, he had started to suspect that his genetic background was part of the reason the eldest of his granddaughter's daughters had turned out the way she had over the years.

"What makes you think the way she turned out has something to do with you?" Masamune asked; he had never judged his wife's grandfather of anything that was probably immoral or wrong, just as he knew his wife had no contempt for him because he had outlived her mother and grandmother. "I had always believed it was my fault."

Kyoji sighed and turned a corner with them. It was a hard thing to reflect upon, but it might've explained many things.

"I thought that forgetting about it as I got older would help me move on," he said to them, "but I guess some childhood traumas aren't as easily washed away as dirt and grime. It all started with my mother before Akira. Mai Mikamura…the Blood Mistress."

It was two years of a childhood he could never put behind him, and it was a situation that he could never be relieved of, either. Kyoji Mikamura, the then-seven-year-old baby brother of Mai Mikamura's firstborn son, Mushi, who was older than him by an additional three years. Back on his sixth birthday, Kyoji had been happy beyond belief to discover that he had been blessed with the power of Hydro Channeling, just like his brother had discovered on his sixth birthday, and had immediately begun learning on how to control the power. But his happy days of knowing the art of Hydro Channeling were anything but happy, as his mother wasn't the best instructor he or his brother knew. Mai was, without any doubt in his young mind, controlling and demanding. Whenever she trained her sons in Hydro Channeling, she expected nothing but perfection from them. Perfection, like how she looked with her shoulder-length hair of ebony with a gray streak on the upper left side, and eyes like the deep sea at night, making her an object of some measure of attraction, even in her early-forties.

"Put more effort in your rotation, Kyoji," she had once told him in the dead of the night. "We'll be out here all night until you get it right."

"I… I'm…" He once tried to explain his slow hand movements and moving the globules of water, but her harsh words left him stuttering and losing focus because she never liked anyone talking back to her, even her own children; whenever she wanted something done, there was no questioning the demand.

"Mother, he'll get the hang of it in due time," his brother defended his lack of effort; their father, prior to his death from sickness, had installed within Mushi the right sense of equality, as he wanted everyone treated equally, even those that were slower than others in an art as ancient as channeling.

But Mai was anything but into equality. To her, nobody was equal, and that meant that nobody got off easily with her. Despite being residents of Akira Town, Mai preferred to live a secluded lifestyle, barely talking with the neighbors. This, unfortunately, made her the subject of some rumors that Kyoji heard about that seemed to have certain people almost frightened of her every time he came home from school, something that was his only haven from home at the time.

"Why is Mother so angry all the time?" He once asked his brother.

"I'm not sure why," Mushi responded. "She's been like this ever since Father died."

"I had thought that Hydro Channeling would be a great thing to learn. I see the people that do so many great things with it."

"Just because something seems easy, that doesn't mean it ever is."

As the first year of Hydro Channeling training past into the second year, and as Kyoji got better at controlling the water, instead of things getting better…they simply got worse than ever. Mai had taken her sons outside of town toward a lake at night whenever there was a moon out, and she made them use Hydro Channeling on a pair of goats she had stashed there. Mushi went first, and soon wished he hadn't gone at all. Kyoji could see the way one of the goats moved in time and sync with his brother's left hand, and it made the goat yelp in a way that he recognized as pain. This was the first time the brothers had encountered the art of Hemo Channeling, the ability to manipulate fluids internally, within a living creature in order to control them.

Mai had explained, from her point of view, that it was a powerful skill that only a rare few blessed with the flowing element could harness, and that she was going to make sure that they would master the art, just as she did. This made Kyoji and, as far as he knew at the time, his brother very fearful of her when she put a little emphasis on the words "you will master the art".

"…I can't believe your mother was such a…a sociopath," said Masamune to him, disgusted that this Mai woman had passed onto him a skill that was deemed forbidden to learn for centuries.

"It wasn't like I had a choice at the time," he expressed, which was true; he'd been left ignorant of the illegality of the art of Hemo Channeling…until much later toward the end of the second year of his training in the art. "And I couldn't just say 'no' to her, even if I had wanted to. She never took 'no' for an answer whenever she wanted something done."

"But…what happened to her?" Sora asked him. "You said that Akira had taken you in when you were much younger, so something had to have happened to your…to Mai that made her incapable of taking care of you and your brother."

"It was during the beginning of winter in the second year of learning Hydro Channeling's darkest skill," he revealed. "I had obtained total control of Hemo Channeling's hand movement requirements…while my brother had mastered Mai's ability to Hemo Channel without the hand movements, which made him her favorite. But as it nearly made him just like her, a sociopath, and as I was nowhere near reveling in the power I had obtained, Mushi had made a choice that had…severe repercussions for the both of us. Mai had wanted to push our abilities to their peak by doing the worst any parent could instruct their children to do: She made us use Hemo Channeling…on each other."

"Now, that's awful," said Anne-Marie to him, wondering how he had put up with channeling his own brother. "Did you…"

"No," he cut her off. "She ordered us to do it… Mushi went ahead and channeled me… But I couldn't do it. I didn't have the heart for such forms of cruelty. I didn't want to Hemo Channel ever again after being made so helpless against somebody that could either manipulate your body without so much as touching you…or even kill you with such techniques a Hydro Channeler had over water. "I'm never going to Hemo Channel ever again", I told Mai. That was when I saw her for the last time as my mother…and for the first time as the Blood Mistress she was known as by several of the other town residents that I later found out were trying to convict her but had no hard evidence against her."

Flash! The memory of his mother making a psychic attempt to Hemo Channel him had replayed itself in his mind, and his first savior that would be remembered for the rest of his life was his brother, who, despite feeling the horrible weight of the power's seductive nature, still had enough of their father's sense of righteousness to see how wrong the art was, and used it to protect his brother.

"Kyoji, run. Tell the people. Reveal the truth. End this nightmare." Mushi had instructed him, fighting back against Mai's Hemo Channeling, which put her on near-equal ground with her eldest son.

Kyoji had run away from the house, away from his brother, from Mai and the horribleness of not knowing that that day was also the last one he would ever see Mushi alive.

"Aaaaahh!" He had heard the first and last scream Mushi let out, but kept on running until he found somebody that would believe him.

Flash! The memory ended and left the super-centenarian man back in the present.

Masamune couldn't believe what he had heard. This Mai Mikamura had murdered her eldest child.

Anne-Marie was also disgusted; she hated that parents would do such irredeemable acts toward their children and then expect to get away with it unpunished.

Sora couldn't say anything; he'd known death once, he'd known death enough.

"It was misfortune that took my brother's life," Kyoji continued, "but it was salvation that led me to several non-channelers of the neighborhood shrine, who had connections with the authority of the town…and the town leader, Akira herself. I told them what had happened, what Mai had done. They needed my help to shed light on her crimes against others in order to put her behind bars for good, since the channeling she could do was believed to be impossible."

"I'm guessing she couldn't deny her faults after everything she did caught up with her," Anne-Marie suspected of Mai.

"A series of heinous crimes, avoiding overdue retribution, parental misconduct, child endangerment, first degree murder… The people harmed by her knew that she was guilty of her crimes, but they had no hard evidence to convict of anything…until I assisted."

Flash! He remembered the day of Mai Mikamura's trial. The people directly involved in her crimes had shown up to aid in bringing her to justice. And one man that was defending her. Even Akira, as the leader of the town, but choosing not to be part of the town council that would make the final decision, was part of the jury, mainly so she could keep a closer watch on Mai, just in case she did try what she believed she was capable of doing.

"For a few years now, Mai Mikamura, the so-called Blood Mistress, has been suspected of gross misconduct that nobody was able to convict her of," said the male prosecutor to the people. "Until recently, she couldn't be fully accused of any unlawful acts. You shall hear testimonies from dozens of her victims, including her son, Kyoji Mikamura, and they will tell you that she has committed her dark acts by means of an ability that has been deemed forbidden and illegal for over four centuries. The art that is Hemo Channeling."

To hear the name of the art being revealed to the court made his heart feel like ice. But then Mai's lawyer had to try and make the trial seem like a joke and mockery of justice.

"This prosecution is built on the make-believe notion that my client is able to perform Hemo Channeling…of her own, free will…at any time she chooses on any day she pleases. I'd like to remind the council that Hemo Channeling is considered an extremely-rare skill, even among the Hydro Channeling population, and that it can only be performed during nights when the moon is present. Yet the victims, including her son, will claim that Mrs. Mikamura used this ability at every other time, except during nights when the moon was out. It would be a complete mockery of the justice system to convict a woman of crimes that are impossible for her to commit."

He remembered almost twenty of over forty-five of Mai's victims, each one telling of what she had made them do against their will, of how she just decided to exploit such a benevolent power among the channelers for malevolent purposes…and then it was his turn to reveal the truth in front of everybody.

"There was no saying 'no' to her when she decided that we would learn the art," he told the council and the jury his testimony. "She made us practice every chance she could, day and night. She had us start with the goats…and then dogs and cats…until she made us use it against each other. I felt helpless, terrified. I didn't want to do it again, ever again. My big brother is now dead because of her."

And not a day goes by that I can forget his face, Kyoji thought, just as the next flashback of what happened after his testimony against his mother.

"Councilwoman Houki will now deliver the final verdict," he heard one of the bailiffs say as a woman, probably in her late-fifties, with graying hair and a few wrinkles on her face, stood on the far right of the council table.

"In my years of seeing the town being built slowly, I've encountered many people with rare and unique channeling abilities," she told the court. "Why, I even bested a young woman with one of my war hammers…and she was able to Aero Channel with remarkable prowess, despite being born with only one hand. Even the ability to manipulate metal was deemed a fantasy until several Geo Channelers, like those of our well-trained policemen, decided to develop the skill to do so. The overwhelming amount of testimonies and evidence…have convinced the council that Mai Mikamura is one of these unique channelers, and she exploited and abused her abilities in order to commit these heinous crimes, including trying to pass the art on to her children, who were not informed of the illegality of the art until much later during their teachings. We find Mrs. Mikamura guilty of all charges and sentence her to life in prison without the possibility of parole."

The gavel struck the table, ending the trial and solidifying the passing of judgment on Mai, whose lawyer simply grunted, crunching his papers and giving up, unable to convince the people that what he believed to be untrue was definitely true, even though Kyoji was for sure at the time that the man hadn't seen what his mother was capable of. Unfortunately, the penalty on the woman had yet to be put into effect, for she rose up from beside her lawyer and looked toward her son and the council.

"You seem to be under the belief that I'm going to…surrender without a fight," she had uttered to the people, raising her shackled hands in front of them, "but you're being misled into believing that notion. I will not be locked away."

Then, without any further warnings, Kyoji saw her eyes widen…and then saw the councilwoman, Houki, raise her arms back as she gasped in pain!

"Aaaaurgh! Aaaurgh!" Houki gasped and groaned, soon joined by the rest of the five-person council and the rest of the court, including Akira herself; Kyoji, due to learning the art his mother had possessed, was only slightly affected, like being weighed down by only a few pounds while everyone around you was weighed down by much more weight that wasn't there.

One of the Pyro Channeling security guards that wasn't affected by the Hemo Channeling yet drew fire from one of the torches and tried to burn Mai, but she then focused on him and the rest of the guards, making them feel as helpless as the day they drew their first breath.

"You're next, Kyoji," she informed her son, who was terrified of her power over the people; he'd never seen her perform such a feat of overwhelming odds, but now that he had, he knew he had to get away while he still could.

"You won't get away with this, Mai," they heard Akira, who still had the strength within her to resist the effects of the channeling to a degree, raising her right arm at the woman from behind her.

"You might be a Unity Channeler, Mrs. Rokubungi, but even you won't develop a skill like mine, and all because a simple law stating it's wrong." Mai told her, just as Kyoji ran out of the large room and out of the building, into the streets to get away from his mother; he had to get help from somewhere, people that his mother couldn't control with her channeling.

Flash! He was once more in the present with the others.

"She was definitely out of her mind," went Sora, who was impressed by such an ability, but disgusted that it was used in such a fashion. "She tries to get away after all of her crimes came back and bit her in the ass…and then comes after you?"

"The only flaw in her escape attempt was that she was dead set on making sure that I came with her, regardless of whether or not I was willing," Kyoji revealed, which led to his mother's downfall. "I was running down the empty streets of the town for less than twenty minutes, which I felt was a good head start for me to find a place to hide or find help, whichever came first. Not even eight years old, and I just wanted to get away from her."

"I think I can see the comparison between her and Yui," said Anne-Marie. "They both obsess over something someone can do, they go to great, varied lengths to achieve something, maybe even had variable willingness to be looked down by others for their obsessions."

"You left out a willingness to break the rules you don't like to play by," said Masamune to her. "How long was it until you found help to deal with her or she was unable to find you, Kyoji?"

"She was able to find me where I hid," he explained; a child's first instinct when ruled by their fear was always to hide in places familiar to them. "I hid at the playground of that time, hiding behind the bushes big enough to hide around. But she was no ordinary Hydro Channeler; she could feel the presence of anything that had water in it, even another person that hid from her eyes. She found me that way…and channeled me off my feet. It was the second time I felt so helpless against somebody that could kill me with channeling like my mother's if they chose to. My muscles and organs felt like they could burst at any moment if she forced more of her will over mine."

Flash! He remembered how he was lifted off his feet by his mother's channeling and was levitated right in front of her.

"How dare you expose me like that, Kyoji," she shouted at him, her face contorted with so much rage that her veins were protruding under her skin. "I'm going to have to do something about you running from me."

He soon felt his leg muscles contorting harder than ever, like she was trying to twist them around with her freed hands at the same time.

"Aaaaaahh!" He whined, crying from the pain she was inflicting upon him. "Stop it! Please!"

"Don't talk back to me," she told him, applying more effort on twisting his legs. "I'm going to make it so that you will never walk again!"

"Aaaaaahh!" He felt like he was going to die right then and there.

SWOOSH! He saw Mai blown off her feet and sent slamming against a nearby tree; her Hemo Channeling focus had been disrupted, freeing him from the pain he had felt. He almost hit the ground when another breeze came and slowed his fall, allowing to hit the ground with less force.

"Kyoji!" He heard Akira calling out to him as she had rushed over to him. "Are you alright?"

Akira, who had been knocked out by Mai, had soon revived and came looking for her, seeing her hurting her son without remorse, and Aero Channeled two blasts of wind to blow her away and slow his fall to the ground.

"Unity Master Akira," he greeted, feeling the hurt his mother inflicted upon him now gone. "Is she…"

"Hardly," Akira had told him; she was hoping that her air blast had knocked her out. "I've never met a channeler as strong as her…with an awful will."

Before he could ask her a new question, he had felt the mild sensation that he hated once more; his mother had regained consciousness and performed Hemo Channeling again.

"Aaaaurgh!" Akira groaned, being lifted off her feet and suspended in the air, just as Mai had gotten back on her feet, sporting a gash on her forehead. "Aaaaurgh!"

"This time, I'm going to put you down, town leader," she told them, and enforced her will over Akira's with her hand gestures and movements; Kyoji had suspected, right then and there, that his mother's attempt to murder Akira was a bit more challenging because the town leader was older and more powerful than the other channelers of the community, so she required more effort.

"Aaaaaurgh! Aaaaahh!" Akira yelled, fighting back against the channeling used on her body; she felt like her limbs and neck were being forced to turn one way that would cause the greatest degree of pain, but due to being a Unity Channeler, she could endure the pain for a longer period than most of Mai's previous victims. "Aaaaurgh!"

Kyoji looked back and forth between Akira and his mother…and faced the facts that the only way he could save the town leader that everybody looked up to…was to use the art his mother forced onto him.

"Aaaurgh!" Mai gasped, seeing her second-born son raise his arms up and perform the gestures required to Hemo Channel a person; this had reduced her own channeling by a great degree. "You? How dare you?! Cease your Hemo Channeling, Kyoji! Now!"

"No, Mother," he told her, and forced her to lower her arms to the ground in a kneeling position. "You have gone too far in what you've done. You made people commit treacherous acts under your influence, harmed other families for your own amusement… You even killed my brother when we went against your belief that this channeling is the strongest art in existence, so you must be stopped."

"I will kill the old hag before I fall," Mai warned him, as she still possessed the other Hemo Channeling ability to harm Akira without physical movements. "Could you really kill me, Kyoji?"

As his mother continued to torture Akira, the young boy was left with a critical decision: To stop his mother, he would have to kill her, but if he didn't stop her, she would kill Akira.

"Aaaurgh! Aaaaaurgh!" Akira yelled louder, feeling like her left arm was about to be snapped in two. "Kyoji, don't listen to her. She doesn't know what she's talking about."

"Oh, he knows," Mai told her, "and he knows that he can't do it. He can't kill his own mother."

"And yet, his mother can kill others without remorse or pity? Urgh! What is there to gain in killing me or anyone else, for that matter, Mikamura?"

"Because I can. Because I'm absolutely willing to kill others. I heard about your past crimes, Rokubungi. You killed at least six times and you walked away unpunished."

"I…was absolved of my past wrongdoings. I got off with community service and the like. You will not enjoy such benevolence if you continue to do this."

"You can warn me after you're dead," Mai expressed for the final time, and put greater effort in trying to snap the super-centenarian woman's neck. "Now, you die!"

"Aaaurgh!" Akira groaned, fighting back against the woman's channeling, but feeling her neck being pushed past its tolerance in turning. "Aaurgh!"

SNAP! Kyoji, who had shut his eyes to avoid seeing any deaths, heard a snapping sound, along with a thud and cough that came soon after.

"Kyoji?" He heard Akira's voice, and then felt a kind hand caressing his face, turning his head left.

He opened his eyes and saw the town leader right next to him, looking exhausted; he knew what had happened, but couldn't bring himself to say it then.

"Why?" He asked her instead. "Why did she make this happen?"

Akira didn't answer his question, and instead just held him in a comforting embrace until help arrived to get them…and collect Mai's remains, her death the result of a broken neck.

Flash! Kyoji looked at Anne-Marie and Masamune, who were silent from discovering the act that was cruel and justified that he had to live with for over one-hundred years. He didn't expect any sympathy from them; he just wanted to them to understand why he felt this was all his fault.

"Your mother made the choice to do those awful acts she did," went Anne-Marie, "and she paid for them with her life. She had only herself to blame for her death."

"I still killed her," he reminded her.

"It was either her or you and Akira," added Masamune. "She wouldn't have stopped with your brother or any other person in the past. She wasn't making the decision easy for anyone."

"You saved your guardian's life that day, Kyoji-San," went Sora, praising him. "You put an end to the art that was deemed forbidden for centuries. You probably even got absolved of any blame that was a result of that woman, right?"

"There was never any absolution needed for me," he explained, just as they reached a staircase. "Mai's crimes were her own. Anything I might've done when she was alive would've been an extension of her crimes…because she manipulated me, my brother and others. And back then…I really hated her for all that she did. She never once, not even before her neck was snapped, told me that she loved me or my brother. There was no love at all."

Anne-Marie sighed and placed a comforting hand on her great-grandfather's shoulder.

"Incompetent, sociopathic bitch," went Masamune, wondering just how much of his in-law's mother's personality had reflected upon his legal daughter's before and after Second Impact came and went. "If this belief of yours is accurate, and it relates to the themes and concepts of nature versus nurture, then why didn't Yui… Why didn't she try to impart her beliefs onto Shinji when he was little? Why didn't she try to convince him to follow in her footsteps when she had the chance to do so?"

Going down the stairs, Kyoji wondered about this, as well, despite having never met his great-great-grandson because he'd been in a coma after saving what he could of his Kyoto home…and Shinji had been born a year later. Though, he had to doubt that Yui had picked up some of Pema's good qualities as she matured.

"What beliefs?" Sora questioned. "That anyplace can be like Heaven if you have the will to live in it? That as long as you live, you will be able to obtain happiness? As much as I want to believe in them, I don't. I believe in Heaven and Hell, however, and I would like to enter Heaven after dying of old age."

"Heh-heh," Kyoji chuckled. "Same here, Sora. Same here."

-x-

"…I think we can stop here for a while," said Nemo to the others, and leaned against a wall to catch his breath.

With a handful of NERV employees with them, it seemed like things were a little brighter, but Akira still had to look at Shinji, who seemed depressed about something, which she figured was everything he heard down in Terminal Dogma.

"Shinji?" She got his attention, as he looked up at her. "About what happened back there, I…"

"Save it," he cut her off, his tone sounding dejected. "I'll get over it."

"Yeah," she gave up; it was a conversation that wasn't going to happen just yet.

"Just tell me one thing," she heard him ask her. "What they said about that woman I saw die when I was little… She's been in that accursed monstrosity ever since that day, hasn't she?"

She nodded that Yui Ikari was in Unit-01. This made him uneasy now, knowing that his father didn't give a damn about him…and that his own mother was a ghost in the shell.

"If I ever see her outside that piece of metal filth again," he uttered, "it will not be pleasant."

Taeko noticed that her cousin's tone was more hollow than usual when he was angry about something, or someone, and pulled on her mother's dress to get her attention.

"Yeah, Taeko?" Miaka asked her, lowering down to her knees to meet her face.

"Shinji's really upset about what he heard from those crazy ladies back there, isn't he?" She whispered back. "I mean, we weren't there, but it sounded like he found out something that was bad."

"I won't lie and pretend that he didn't hear about something he didn't like," Miaka whispered in response, "but I hope that whatever he heard didn't turn him into a person that believes it's really the end for him in life. There are many truths that are given in revelations, and maybe he didn't get the whole truth that was given to him."

"He only heard what might've been the truth…from their point of view…and they can keep many things hidden from him."

"That's right."

"Mommy… Things are not looking so well for anybody the truth harms."

"Yeah, Taeko? Heh…I'm one of them."

Taeko then wrapped around her mother's left leg.

Nemo, trying to channel water from the air vapor around them all, was only able to gather a handful of water due to the great lack of moisture; this was because he was still requiring water to heal certain injuries of the NERV workers that they were able get away from Lilith and her servants.

"If we see Bumi and the girls down here, I hope they can share their water," he uttered.

"Yeah," Akira said, being passive right now, using the Angelbreaker to mend Kozo's injuries.

-x-

"…Oh, I hate seeing dead bodies," went Kanami, as she and the others walked over and around slain NERV workers, all of whom had died from what looked like multiple stabbings and dismemberment, with their blood splattered on the walls.

Older Shinji, on the other hand, didn't complain about the sight of the dead. He'd seen his whole life in the past go straight to Hell because of his parents and their choices, losing everything he had left and being condemned for unforgivable misdeeds that weren't his fault. But as he walked along with his uncle, aunts and cousin, he could still hold his parents responsible for the murdered people around them, since they had manipulated one person that was above all of them combined…and brought her down to the level of a lowly serpent engulfed by madness.

"Hey, Older Shinji?" Mayo went, designating her male cousin from a different time and place. "Can I ask you something?"

"I can't guarantee that I'll answer," he responded.

"How were you going to… I mean, if you had, before you were imprisoned, how were you going to keep this awful history of violence and unnecessary conflict between people and the children of the deities from repeating itself?"

He looked down at her, pondering whether or not to answer that question, and then said to her, "My aim would've been to dispose of those that would create the Evas, since they themselves are one of the roots, one of the awful causes to the suffering people are forced to endure. That would've included my awful mother, as she was the hand behind the scalpel that cut the flesh off the gods."

"But…if you had disposed of her, wouldn't that have meant resetting certain parts of history's present?"

"If you mean by erasing certain people that only exist because of the misdeeds they had committed…I had considered it to be possible…but only to those that would influence the future in ways that were best left undone."

"That could've meant erasing yourself, if all the theories and would-be equations of time travel are truly possible to be attempted."

Older Shinji didn't respond to her assumption that if he had murdered his mother, the hand behind the Eva that damned him, he wouldn't exist in any form of history; he'd be just a memory that was wiped clean from everyone's mind. But to him, the him that was cursed by the deities and not the him that was still afflicted with cancer, that would've been a risk that he was willing to accept. It was a fate he was willing to be dealt with if it meant he could close his eyes and know he would never open them again. His years in that tube were less than half of what he wanted now and back when he awoke alone on the beach of the world he was left in. Darkness and pain, mental and spiritual, had become his unending nightmare, where even one day of life in a world left barren was a death wish that would never become real, just because the gods themselves said so.

"Mayo," they both heard Kanami speak up, "people can drive themselves crazy thinking about the possible repercussions of traveling through time. Nobody knows for sure what may or may not happen when something is done or undone. It's a theory used in make-believe films and stories, using some level of truth. Who's to say that we've all probably walked down this hall more than once, and we wouldn't know about it? Who's to suggest that we've probably spent our last day of life trying to lead the rest of the world to the tomorrow that never came?"

"I prefer not to know what my future is before I get to live it," said Shinobu to them. "If you know what's going to happen before it happens, and it still happens, regardless, then it's a lousy life that you lead each day, knowing how it's going to turn out."

"But if you only knew of the horribleness of what was to come," went Tsukiko to her, "wouldn't you try to prevent it from happening? If something awful was going to happen to somebody that didn't deserve it at all, wouldn't you do everything in your power to make sure it never came to pass?"

Shinobu thought about it for a moment, thinking back to the last day she saw her mother, her Goze, alive and well when she left out the door. She couldn't deny that if such a possibility were true, and she had done something to ensure that she stayed around for another moment or so, then maybe she wouldn't have been a victim of the train accident that changed her life. She would've probably spent at least another day with her mother…or another week, month, year, however long that single change in history would've allowed for them.

"I used to think that way," went Bumi, recalling the tragedy of his childhood. "But some things that happened in the past…are inevitable. I'm not saying that if we knew the people we look up to, the people we love the most, were going to experience something that could've been prevented is terrible… I'm just saying that there are events that we experience that simply can't or won't be avoided, situations that are just supposed to happen."

"Maybe it's like the time travel possibilities of the Terminator franchise," said Older Shinji to them, "as it was filled with different scenarios because people and machines kept going backwards to the past to alter the present, either to save the world, end it or to ensure some other goal to tip the odds of winning a war between the opposing factions of flesh and metal that are locked in a fight where the end of it is sought after. There are deviations in every time lived in, every journey one takes…but there's always a point of origin, the original time where everything either did or didn't make sense or happen in the way you would've expected it to. Maybe if I had killed my mother before she had me in this time, nothing else would've changed. I'd probably still be living until something causes my life to end. Maybe if Kanami had gone with her boyfriend before he and his father died, things might've changed, but maybe they wouldn't have changed. I can't say for sure because I don't know for sure. Nobody does. Just like the Ouroboros, the serpent that devours its own tail, the serpent cannot do so forever."

They soon came across another flight of stairs, which Kanami was grateful for not having any dead bodies on it. As they went on, Older Shinji pondered another possibility of his current predicament: His presence in this time could've also truly had similarities to the theory of the existence of multiple universes, a multiverse, where there was more than one version of yourself that lived a similar-but-different lifestyle than your own. He may have told them that his past prior to arriving to Tokyo-3 with Rumi, his life was completely identical to this world's Shinji Rokubungi, but their lives up to the aftermath of the Third Angel were totally different. Thus, they were two different people; he had a curse that kept him alive for far too long…while his other self was just barely hanging onto life.

"…Rumi might freak when she sees you," he soon heard Tsukiko speak up to him.

"Huh?" He reacted, his train of thoughts derailed now.

"Rumi," she had repeated. "She might freak when she sees you."

His last memory of the little girl, which drove him to grief-filled madness, was replaced by previous memories of when she was alive, smiling at him, holding his hand, being responsible for him when she needed to be, and just talking to him when she liked to hear how he spent his day.

"How is she these days?" He asked her, now curious.

"Honestly?" She questioned.

"Like fire that burns blue, please," he answered back.

"She found true love ahead of herself…and fights hard to protect him."

"And by 'him', I'm assuming the lucky guy is well-aware of her affections and reciprocates them?"

"There ain't no doubting the feeling's mutual."

Older Shinji then pointed to himself, wondering if Rumi had fallen in love with his younger self.

"I won't lie to you about it," she responded, which was all the answer he needed.

"Am I that special to her?"

"She's crazy about you. Maybe she's always been crazy about you and didn't realize it until after she and Akira were chosen by an ancient, supernatural and powerful talisman that exists to restore order and balance to the world."

"The Angelbreaker gauntlet? So the stories about it are true?"

"As true as the moon reflecting light from off the sun at night."

-x-

SPLASH! Lilith surfaced from beneath the LCL lake and climbed back onto the ground, despising the frailties of her human-based prison. As she got to her feet, Naoko resurfaced and joined her, just as infuriated.

"That," went Lilith, "was unpleasant."

"No shit," Naoko added. "Damn them."

Looking at her pets, Lilith grunted and ordered them to rise up.

"Oh, shit," went Naoko, noticing what was wrong with the current scene. "They made off with Fuyutsuki and left Gendo."

Lilith took notice of Gendo being left behind with the dead bodies of several workers and decided that enough was enough to wait for the comet that was required to aid her in achieving her grand design. She grabbed the worthless man by his neck and stood him on his legs, sending several pain signals to his brain.

"Aaaurgh!" He hissed.

"Oh, shut up," she told him, "and listen to what I'm going to tell you, you stupid man."

-x-

Akira, just as she and the others were about to turn a corner, swung her staff and struck the wall, hoping to frighten whoever it was around it.

"Hold fast, whoever you are!" She shouted, turning the corner, only to come across Anne-Marie and her group. "What?! Anne-Marie?"

"Hey, Akira," Anne-Marie greeted the super-centenarian woman. "What are you doing here?"

"We're just… I could ask you the same thing," Akira countered, curious as to why she was here.

"We're here for revenge, ma'am," said Sora for Anne-Marie.

"Huh?" Akira looked at the young man beside Shinji's maternal aunt, and could've sworn that she had seen him somewhere before, despite the fact that he looked like he embraced effeminacy a little due to his appearance. "Ryoji Kaji?"

That put a frown on Sora's face; he had just met the woman that was one of the two people the fate of the world was depending upon, and she thought he was his brother.

"No, Akira," Anne-Marie explained. "This is Sora."

"No last name," Sora added in, though saddened a little by his choice of words. "Just plain, old Sora."

Akira nodded and then noticed two older men behind them.

"Oh, hey, Anne-Marie," went Rumi, as she and Shinji showed up around the corner and saw them. "It's quite a surprise to see you here again."

Shinji looked up at the elder man on the left, seeing him as being a bit unusual…and almost familiar, like he'd seen him before, but this is the first time he ever saw him.

"Hello," he greeted the elder.

"Hello," the elder, Kyoji, responded.

Nemo came across the corner and noticed how his nephew was staring, albeit unintentionally, at the elder man. He also noticed that, in a strange way, the elder seemed to relate to his nephew a little.

"It looks like time has taken its toll on you, Kyoji," said Akira to the man.

"Despite being physically withered, I haven't lost any of my spiritual potency," Kyoji responded to her, which helped to identify him as one of the Unity Channeler's adopted children from over a century ago to the younger children that never knew him directly.

"This is Kyoji Rokubungi?" Nemo gasped in surprise. "You're the Hydro Master that came before the one before me."

"You mean the Hydro Master known as Kaori Rokubungi," Kyoji expressed, recalling the young woman that was a master of water like himself years ago after he was taken in by Akira.

"Yeah."

"Akira?!" The town leader turned around and saw down the other hallway a small band of women accompanied by two men, one of whom she didn't recognize at all.

It was Tsukiko calling out to her, followed by Kanami, Mayo, Shinobu, Bumi and the man she didn't recognize but had to deduce that he was with them for some reason.

"We found you," went Mayo, cheerful at seeing the family back together.

"Y'all look like you had an adventure we should know about," said Miaka to her husband, and then she looked at the man beside him, "and you found a friend."

"He's…not exactly a friend, sis," Shinobu expressed, as she was unsure of how to explain the guy's existence without sounding awful, like everything else that was wrong with the city above their heads to the very building they were inside.

Older Shinji looked at Miaka, reminded of how she looked from his past, and bowed his head.

It was then that Rumi and Shinji came over to see the others…and Rumi looked up at Older Shinji, as though hypnotized by his presence; she felt like she'd seen him before, a long time ago, but this was the first time she saw him…or was this the first time? She wasn't sure now. It was only when she blinked, ten seconds after gazing up at him, that she broke eye contact with him. It was also when Shinji had noticed that the man had a heart-shaped locket similar to his own, but appeared battered, withered, aged down in a way while his was barely affected by the negatives of age; he also tried to keep it clean all the time in the likely event that it got dirty.

"So…who is he?" Rumi asked, still wondering why, most importantly to her young mind, this man reminded her of another young man that had been hurt by people that should've mattered to him.

"If we told you," responded Kanami to her, "you'd be disbelieving."

Akira then uttered, "Try me, Kanami. He does seem…familiar."

Older Shinji then removed his locket and opened it up to reveal the faded photo. In his mind, it was all he mostly needed to explain himself, aside from small words to break the thin ice that formed the wall between them. He saw how his younger self reacted toward the photo…and how his Rumi was now able to see the resemblance between them.

"Is he…really who you say he is?" Akira asked them.

"This is also Shinji," answered Bumi. "He's just older. A lot older."

"It's science fiction made even more bizarre," said Mayo. "Similar background, different time, different dimension, dark outcome and a twist of fate at the end of the world…over a thousand years from now."

"I couldn't imagine myself with waist-length hair," Shinji expressed, as though he were looking at himself in a warped mirror, seeing his reflection taller than himself, along with a sense of androgyny with his longer, natural hair giving the impression that he had, unintentionally, swung the other way with his appearance. "I… Well, um… How old are you…am I…in your previous time?"

Older Shinji could see that his past self was very confused by this turn of events, just as he would've been if he'd been unchanged by the consequences of their parents.

"Forty-five," he answered him. "Physically speaking…but I've been that age for less than eighty-two years, aging a year older for every one-hundred years that come and go."

This made Akira a little terrified of him now. If Older Shinji took one-hundred years just to get a year older, then that meant that he'd been living for over three-thousand years somewhere. And it looked like being alive for that length of time could've made anybody go mad. Anybody human, that is.

"One year for every century?" Rumi questioned.

"In his past, and he's from a past that's similar to our Shinji's, except he and his Rumi never came back from Tokyo-3 when they left," Kanami explained their alternate nephew's predicament, "he was cursed by the gods for the crimes his parents committed. He can't die."

Tsukiko handed her over the photographs that proved his unwanted immortality, showing him being murdered time and again…and always coming back. It made the super-centenarian woman bitter that gods could go and punish a kind and gentle soul for the sins of their unkind and irredeemable parents' actions with a power that romantics often desire. Bitter…and nigh-quick to question the immorality involved in the act. Then…she handed the photos over to Kyoji, as, by right of blood-based heritage and the belief of certain parts of a person's heritage transcending time and space, he was Shinji's maternal great-great-grandfather, just as Anne-Marie was his maternal aunt.

"Who the…" Kyoji almost cursed, but reminded himself of the little ladies present, right as he handed the pictures to Anne-Marie. "Who would do such awful things to him?"

"Immoral scientists, that's who," went Anne-Marie, who wondered if her sister had a hand in this; she was quick to accuse and blame Yui for every vile, scientific act committed.

"You look similar to her," Older Shinji uttered, taking in Anne-Marie's facial features, "but you're younger, softer and like that princess from the fairy tales."

"You mean Snow White," she simplified.

"Yeah, her," he agreed.

"A handful of people say I resemble my sister to a degree…but I don't see the resemblance between us. There's only my grand hatred of her."

"It looks everybody associated with that jerk's wife desires revenge upon her," went Rumi. "Take a number and get in line. It's first come, first serve."

"Huh?" Sora got confused, and then had to count his fingers to recall how many people had beef with Anne-Marie's sister. "But only Anne-Marie has a vendetta against the woman that, more or less, deserves what's coming to her."

Older Shinji looked at Shinji, suspecting his past self of knowing the same truth that haunted him for a long time: Both were the only blood members of the current Ikari family tree that were aware that Yui Ikari was in the same place she'd been ever since that awful, last day, which was inside Unit-01, the Baron of Darkness. He could also see that his younger self, despite knowing the harsh reality of the truth, desired some degree of revenge…but it wasn't the type of revenge that he himself wanted. Shinji probably desired proper justice against his parents…while Older Shinji wanted to deal with the couple that were directly responsible for his damnation himself to be free and move on, and to ensure that no other poor soul was hurt by their monsters.

"Where's the purple Eva?" He then asked them, to which Shinji looked at him and wondered what was going through his older, accursed self's mind.

Masamune looked at him and pointed up at the ceiling, answering, "Outside the base, where it's been since we got here."

Anne-Marie then got suspicious of her older, alternate nephew; he knew something she didn't, something that related to her sister.

"If you're going to kill that woman that's been living inside the purple Eva for over ten years right now," went Shinji to his maternal aunt and other self, "just be sure that it's what you really want…and that you can live with the repercussions."

Anne-Marie went wide-eyed! The whole time, her sister had been the Eva she made years ago! She had been right there, a mere, walking distance away, and she never knew.

"Daddy, don't try and stop me," she told Masamune, who turned his head away and gave a sigh of approval. "I've lived with hate in my heart for too many years."

And then she and Older Shinji ran off, leaving the rest of them to question Shinji's decision to let them go and kill the mockery of Lilith that held his mother in the mortal coil.

"Are you sure that that's a choice you can live with?" Akira asked him. "You…and not the other you that's cursed and looking to be freed?"

Shinji looked at her and then at the others; after everything he found out about his parents, the dark secrets they kept, their agendas, their methods, he couldn't see a possible outcome where the three of them would be sitting down somewhere to talk about anything. There was nothing to talk about between them…and nothing to forgive that could have been forgiven.

"Shinji?" He looked down at Rumi. "Can you live with that choice? Truly?"

"No," he answered her, them, "but they had it coming to them for a long time."

"It's only a possibility," said Masamune to them, "but Kyoji believes that Yui's behavior may relate to his past…whereas I believe that it's my fault."

Shinji and Rumi looked at the elder man that was Nemo's superior in the art of Hydro Channeling, and then Rumi asked, "How could he be responsible for the way this lady we don't really know enough about turned out?"

"Because he's Shinji's great-great-grandfather," answered Akira, which made the other family members gasp in disbelief. "His maternal great-great-grandfather."

"Say what?!" Tsukiko reacted.

"No way," added Bumi.

"That explains the familiarity I get from him," went Shinji, who, now made aware of his relation to the elder, bowed his head to show respect. "But…how?"

"Blood being thicker than the water," he expressed. "What people describe as nature being against nurture, what comes naturally than what is taught."

"You believe that Yui's behavior may be due to your mother's background, don't you?" Akira asked Kyoji, remembering the day they dealt with her at the park.

"Hmm," Kyoji responded.

"And you, Mr. Ikari?" Akira questioned Masamune.

"My absence," he explained with just that; he could explain the cause and effect later.

-x-

"…How do you kill an Eva?" Anne-Marie asked Older Shinji, running through the halls and up a few stairs.

"Evas were made without souls of their own," he explained to her. "They obtain their souls by taking the souls of women that bore children in the aftermath of the Second Impact, but they're bound to this world by their cores, red spheres that look like they're made of crystal. Destroy the core completely, and you destroy the strings that tie the soul to this world."

Alright, Yui, this is for me and all the years you cost me of my life and future, Anne-Marie thought, unsheathing her swords from the scabbard on her back. The monster you've become is about to die today and burn in the depths of Hell!

As they reached the outside of the base, rewarded with the sight of Unit-01, Older Shinji looked around at the world he had only seen before in his past before he was cursed…and saw the sunlight that he saw only at night. But with the sky of his condemned past being that of eternal darkness, he hadn't seen the beauty of the blue sky for too many years. It almost made his anger toward his parents dissipate a little, as he was able to take joy in the beauty of the sky that he had just gazed at for the first time. It was one of the few things that people took for granted, thinking that there would never be a sight as great as the sky or the sun, the way the colors were set as the sun set upon the horizon, casting the world back into its periodic darkness.

"It's so beautiful," he sighed.

"The sky?" Anne-Marie asked him.

"Yes. I've been trapped in a world of darkness for over three-thousand years, and the sky I saw each day…was darkness where the sun shined…but the sky remained a black curtain with tiny holes that were the stars. It's a taste of what Heaven is truly like."

She noticed how his eyes teared up; he must've been trapped in the darkness for so long to cry at the sight of the sky. Unfortunately, the sight had started to remind her of a time that could've been…but was denied to her. She fantasized a day where she had shown her baby the sky with Mori beside her; it was just one of those quiet and peaceful moments where she could enjoy each second spent with the people she loved.

"Can I ask you something personal?" She asked him.

"Feel free," he responded.

"Did I do anything good with my life in your past? I mean, did I live a nice life that left me smiling everyday and with anybody…that mattered to me?"

"No," he answered her, knowing this for a fact in his past because the gods had shown him, told him, and revealed what had happened to his maternal aunt because of his parents. "I am sorry."

"It's not your fault. You didn't do anything wrong."

"That's not true. My only crime…was being related to a deranged woman that would stop at nothing to see her goal realized, never realizing that it didn't have everyone's best interests in mind…and they all got reduced to an ocean of blood in a nightmare that they would never wake from. Now, much of what I want to do is to ensure that such a calamity can never be repeated…by ending the lives of those responsible for the deaths of all the world…and end my own madness."

"You don't seem mad," Anne-Marie told him.

"The same could be said about you…and I should ask why do you hate her so much?" He told her.

"We never got along as we got older. I could talk to animals…and she would make attempts to study me for my gift. I had very few friends…and I eventually met a guy that I loved at the age of fourteen and got pregnant by him (Older Shinji looked at her like she had done something wrong). I know, it wasn't exactly my best moment, but I was more than willing to deal with the would-be stigma of being a kid with a kid."

"I'm guessing Mother wasn't able to set an example for you that you were willing to follow, am I right? Oh, what am I asking you that for? Of course she couldn't set an example for you, not if she was going to try the scientific crud that can't answer everything in life."

"She was never able to set any examples for me. She was herself, I'm myself, and that's how I like it. Anyhow, that awful day came and everybody that had somebody that meant everything to them was taken. She knew what was going to happen…and never warned anyone. She knew…and didn't think to warn our parents that Hell was about to be set loose. She robbed me of my dreams, my future…and that is why I hate her and want revenge upon her."

Older Shinji looked up at Unit-01 and wondered if Yui could see them from within her monster. If she could, then she would know that justice, retribution, and spirits of vengeance would be coming for her. A more-than-generous bounty had been placed upon her soul…and he was about to collect his prize.

"Let's waste the science mommy," he said to Anne-Marie, who raised up her swords.

"Show me the core," she responded. "Show me the core."

-x-

"…Man, the threads of causality are some of the worst aspects of life," said Shinobu to the others, as they were now heading back to Gendo's office; Kozo Fuyutsuki had explained to them that it was one of the only places in the entire base that had no cameras to spy on them, as Gendo often resided there for hours.

"Yet," went Nemo to her, "people still possess the power of choice, as everything begins with choice."

"But Yui…and Mai, more or less, pervert and manipulate choice, making it an illusion. You either do what they say…or there are repercussions to face." Miaka expressed, now seeing Shinji's mother (and his maternal great-great-great-grandmother, for that matter, since she had heard the story of the Blood Mistress) as a crazy variation of a bad seed. "But her work has gone to waste if it doesn't get the former job done."

Akira, since this office was situated near the top of the pyramid-based building that was NERV HQ, looked out the damaged windows and at the monstrosity that was Unit-01. She was processing all the hidden truths and possibilities that allowed for Yui Ikari to be the woman that she was…and the monster that she had reduced herself to being. While she had no ill will toward Masamune or Kyoji's granddaughter, Pema, who had given in to her womanly desires and committed a lustful act with Masamune's best friend, who had been looking after her until he came back from a financial trip, she had to consider the possibility that a combination of the two factors, Kyoji's maternal background and Pema's one-night stand with this Tai Kyoubou because of Masamune's absence from home, were the primary cause of Yui being who she was. And with her passion for science being a trait shared by her biological father and not her legal father, there was a degree of disassociation between the Ikari family and their eldest daughter. This would also explain her twisted need to alienate Anne-Marie from others her own age that didn't share the passion of scientific discovery, as Mai Mikamura had also been possessive of things and people.

As she pondered what to do, Shinji was sitting on the floor against a wall with Rumi; the revelations of his recent discovery of relatives he'd never met and was never supposed to meet because of a death threat made by his father, the truth about his mother being less than alive in the proper sense of the word, meeting himself from a different universe where he and Rumi never came home from the city they hated, along with why he was requested (or demanded, really) to come to the city to begin with, had left him questioning his past and future. His father needing him only as a pilot for his mother's cybernetic tomb to help him achieve his goal, Rei Ayanami, Lilith or whoever that crazy woman was that wore a perversion of his mother's face needing him for his mother's tomb to achieve her goal, and even his own mother needing him only for her tomb to help her achieve her goal, it was like he didn't have a say in what they wanted of him, like he had no choice. Was nearly everything in his life, up until now, decided upon by people that should've mattered to him before he was abandoned?

I can't believe all of this, he thought, angry at his parents above everyone else that he could've been angry with. Of everyone that could've been my parents, I ended up being the son of a pair of crazies.

Rumi and Taeko were some of the only young women to notice how Shinji seemed very miserable right now because of these revelations. Rumi more than Taeko, despite the three-four-year gap between them. As Bumi and Miaka's daughter crouched on the floor, Akira's youngest daughter wondered what to say to her love interest at a time like this.

"Rumi?" Taeko got her attention. "Can I confess something?"

"Sure," she answered absentmindedly.

"I accept that life is considered sacred and precious and everything, but I do hope that these two people, who aren't sacred, precious or anything else likeable, get their comeuppance for their poor choices that they committed."

Her words, of course, made Rumi realize something. Many things, really. One was that Gendo was left down in NERV's basement with Lilith and that other woman that seemed to have an ego comparable to Gendo's, only with less delusions of godhood. Another was that she still needed to deal with Lilith, humanizing her and putting an end to this massive struggle. But another realization was that in order to do that, two emotional energies were required…and she didn't know what the second feeling that was most cherished was yet. She accepted that love was the first feeling because love was a powerful, ancient energy that nobody truly understood until they experienced it, but whose love would be forfeit to ensure Lilith's defeat?

With that, she got up and walked toward the door.

"Where are you going, Rumi?" Bumi asked her.

"To Lilith," she answered him.

"Un-uh!" Mayo told her, getting in between her and the door. "Rumi…that lady will eat your heart once she's ripped it clean from your chest."

Rumi then made a hand gesture…and Mayo felt like she'd been slid aside so Rumi ran out the room.

"Why?!" Mayo questioned, and chased after her child aunt. "Rumi, don't make me sit on you!"

Shinji had snapped out of his train of thought and got up, but as the fear of Rumi getting hurt by the crazed woman that wore his mother's face overtook his conscious, a different type of pain overtook his body. He felt like he was going to throw up.

"Hurgh!" He did just that, puking out his last meal from the other day before falling to the floor. Oh, no. I didn't bring any of my medicates with me when we left home.

As he was helped to his feet by Tsukiko, Rumi, running through the halls like they weren't there, sought out the crazed Lilith to face her for what she feared would be the final time of her life, with the stakes being extremely high. She went to Central Dogma instead of Terminal Dogma, under the belief that she wouldn't be waiting in that basement cell again…and was proven right, as she was sitting right there atop the MAGI computer system.

"Little Rumi, welcome to Central Dogma, NERV's little…abdominal cavity," said Lilith to her, looking down at the girl with eyes that held no love for anyone. "Tell me, where is Gendo and Yui's sacrificial son when he is needed?"

Rumi raised her left hook sword and told her, "It ends here, Lilith. Right now."

"Not yet, it does," she heard the other woman that had raised a gun at her mother's head and saw her appearing from behind one of the MAGI, her choker sprouting several tentacles that ended in claws with three talons. "We still got another… Oh, we got another few hours before this comet arrives and everything changes."

"Oh, and one other thing," went Lilith, just as several of her pets arrived from the other side of the MAGI, baring their fangs. "Since I'm in this to win, I've decided to allow your…former elder brother, Gendo, a small reprieve from his overdue sentence that he's entitled by Naoko here…and have given him a simple lighter."

This caught Rumi a little off her guard, and she turned around, just in time to avoid a large, blue fireball that could've left her feeling the heat of the kitchen. She took to the air in front of the command bridge and saw how Gendo, indeed wielding a lighter that allowed him a source to channel fire, still unable to bring out the greater qualities of the element he made a curse with its misuse; Akira was right when she explained that Gendo had never mastered any of the basics that Rumi was learning. She took a breath and let it flow past her limbs, her muscles, and felt revitalized, whereas Gendo, due to using much of the air around him and focusing on the offensiveness of fire, was panting heavily.

"If you're relying on him, then you must be desperate," she told Lilith. "He's the worst Pyro Channeler to have ever practiced the art. He's not even qualified to be a master of it."

Lilith looked at how Gendo quickly caught what passed for his breath and manipulated the fire from his lighter again to create a large ball of blue fire and hurled it at the little girl who, simply due to having wings sprouting out her armored back, dodged it gracefully, allowing the ball to blow up against the ceiling and leave debris to hit the ground.

"Maybe relying on him was a mistake, Lilith," Naoko suggested, and then Lilith stood up.

"He never learned how to breathe," Lilith responded, and started levitating off the MAGI. "If he misses again, Naoko…you can kill him and be avenged."

This left Gendo fearing for his life now, knowing deep down that his Pyro Channeling wouldn't save him if he couldn't even hit a little girl with fireballs.

"You should've brought your mommy with you. She's tough to tango with."

"You know that it's me you want to deal with," Rumi told her. "It's always been me, ever since we met on the bridge after you went and killed that man at the hospital. Probably even before then, when we met for the first time. I'm the one you want."

Lilith chuckled and nodded her head in realization.

"You're right," she agreed. "You are the one I want. I'm wasting my time with everyone else."

With a quick conjuration of her scythes, Lilith crossed blades with Rumi's hook swords. It was her against the youngest wielder of the Angelbreaker, and she would get to see how the talisman could make such a foolish mistake of loaning her powers that made people incarnate gods. The wielders that locked her away for thousands of years, along with the wielder that locked her spiritual fragment back into her original body were older and more experienced than this little girl.

How did the Angelbreaker make a mistake by adding this bitch to its line of guardian warriors that make the choice of saving the lives of a world that has no hope left? She wondered, just as the Angelbreaker formed a mask over the girl's face.

How do I get myself into these situations? Rumi questioned herself, feeling much safer now that the Angelbreaker covered all of her body. How do I go from a six-year-old girl that uses hook swords to a six-year-old girl charged with saving everybody in a world people are trying to end? Shinji, why the heck didn't you try to stop me from leaving that darn office?

-x-

Shinji was so not feeling so well. Not only did he not have his medicates, he felt bruised on the inside and was being carried off by Akira to the medical ward NERV possessed. He doubt that there were any resources there to help a leukemic like himself.

Akira was thankful that Kozo was leading the way, since he had some experience as a physician due to working as an unlicensed medical worker after the Second Impact when his career as a metaphysical biology ended, though what metaphysical biology meant was lost to her.

"You really should've let me take him," he told her. "You really should be helping Rumi."

"I will," she informed him. "I'm not playing favorites here, Kozo. I'm just being concerned about him."

"You have so many relatives and so many problems," he told her again, just as they reached the medical ward of NERV, and Akira set Shinji down on a nearby gurney. "And just how old are you?"

"Old enough to be everyone's living ancestress," Akira made a half-hearted joke on her age. "If his heart stops beating, if he so much as stops breathing…"

"I promise he won't, Akira," Kozo swore on his life; this super-centenarian wasn't somebody you wanted to upset with false promises right now when a family member was involved.

Akira took one more glance at Shinji and then sighed at his rising hand gesture to go help Rumi, and she left to do just that.

"Okay," Kozo uttered to himself as he looked through cabinets for pain-relief remedies. "Now, I just need to find some pain-relief medicates."

As he searched through the cabinets, Shinji looked up at the white ceiling and sighed in disgust; NERV might've been an organization formerly tasked with dealing with the Angels before they got humanized, but one of the least they could've done when they had this place built was rethinking of which color to paint the walls and ceiling, as white the poorest color one could choose.

"I…really…hate the color white," he made his opinion heard, even wondering if this pain was part of the fact that his body had no kidneys help him with cleaning out his blood or his cancer working around Rumi's bone marrow to affect another of his organs like his liver or pancreas. Everyday, I'm just a little more dead…and a little closer to the afterlife that I don't want to leave to just yet. I mean, I told Rumi I'd stay with the family, with her forever. But…those two people, my parents… How could they go and do all that they've done to others, to me, and believe that they were doing good when they were doing wrong? And they tried to get me to aid them when I don't even have a decent of them? I can't remember that jerk ever once smiling without needing to be an idiot. I don't remember that woman ever being… If that forty-five-ish guy that's supposed to be me from another dimension where Rumi and I never came home after that trip does get his revenge upon that woman that's been inside the Eva for over a decade, I just hope it's truly what he wants, along with Anne-Marie wanting revenge against her sister for the life she had desired that was taken from her.

-x-

"…If I knew that wanting to kill her would be this difficult, I would've brought spelunking gear," went Anne-Marie, as she and Older Shinji stood in front of the massive Unit-01, unable to find a way to climb the behemoth to her upper torso where her core resided.

Older Shinji looked toward the helicopter that his maternal aunt had arrived in and asked her, "Can you fly that?"

She looked at the helicopter and responded, "Yeah. Provided there's a place stable enough to land on."

"Whoever said anything about landing on the Eva-Yui?" He questioned. "I was once forced into the monster to watch the end of the world…and I intend to get into it again, only to rip open the chest and expose the passable knockoff of a heart."

-x-

"…Urgh!" Rumi grunted, feeling like she just ran a mile after being thrown against one of the MAGI by Lilith, but was thankful that the armor protecting her had taken the brunt of the impact.

"Hey, hey, hey!" Naoko shouted. "Don't damage my baby throwing that baby around!"

Then Gendo launched another large fireball at Rumi, who decided to try another Pyro Channeling tactic that was redirecting offensive fire; she aimed it toward Lilith, who simply raised her right arm's scythe and sliced the fireball in two. Gendo was so not feeling the power he exerted over the girl that he loathed for causing the beginning of his fall from power.

"Gendo Ikari," Naoko uttered, reinforcing what Lilith had told her.

"I didn't miss!" He panicked. "She didn't dodge or evade; she threw it out of the way!"

"Oh, shut up, baka!" Rumi told him, climbing atop MAGI Casper's dented side. "And lady, your 'baby' is made of metal. Why should I care if it gets broken? You can fix it, right?"

An Eva-esque, wolf-like creature made an attempt to jump and harm her with its split head's fangs. But Rumi stood her ground and used her hook swords to impale the beast by his waist.

"What in the name of…" She was disgusted, for the beast felt like Lilith, only less like a human and more like an animal. This thing's less like her and more like my old Play-Doh set.

Still, the creature was as stubborn as…well, as stubborn as Gendo was in her eyes, trying to claw at her with its forelimbs and split head. She had to discard her swords and threw the beast off the bridge, hearing a thud and no whimper that canines would give when injured.

"There's more where she came from," she heard Lilith say to her, just in time to dodge her left arm's scythe with a back flip and evade another of her beasts that had a split head. "You're quite energetic for a six-year-old with a round tummy."

Again with the round tummy talk, thought Rumi as she conjured two replacement hook swords from her wrists. Okay, maybe I'm a little round in the gut than I care to admit, but I'm not Ponyo. I am not Ponyo. I just like the film.

"I can't stop envisioning a scene in which you will suffer the greatest loss of your life," Lilith told her, reminding the girl of what she accepted as her greatest fear above all other fears she could ever admit to even herself.

"You'll never touch him," she responded, and crossed blades with her again, impressed by her Angelbreaker-enhanced strength once more.

Of course, in Lilith's mind, the little girl had no idea how hard those choice of words hit home.

-x-

Sora couldn't stand the waiting around Gendo's office with everyone else, as he felt his skin-covered cybernetics aching.

Across the room, watching said young man look out the cracked and damaged windows, Tsukiko and Kanami were making sure that nobody else got the insane (or desperate) idea to go face this psychotic woman that resembled Shinji's crazy mother.

"Is it just me," whispered Tsukiko to her sister, "or is he…a little cute?"

Kanami couldn't believe that she had asked her that question! Then again, she was younger than the single mother by less than a decade and had never allowed herself the time to truly think about the other pieces of her own future, such as her lack of a love life; Tsukiko hadn't even gone out on a date before her high school prom or graduation party. Thus, Kanami took a glance at this Sora and noticed that, despite his…pretty looks, he bore a minor resemblance to another guy that was at least, probably, four years older than him.

"Yeah, he's cute," she agreed with her younger sister. "Why not talk to him?"

"Huh? Talk to him? Me? I, uh…uh…"

"Just be yourself, sis," they heard Shinobu say to Tsukiko, who was sitting beside them on the left. "Who knows? If we survive this, if we live to see the next day…and another year, you might be fortunate enough to get his number, along with his name."

Kanami then had to ask her, "Are you eying him, Shinobu?"

"What do you take me for, a two-timer?" She asked her back; Shinobu might've believed this guy was handsome, but, romantically, she wasn't into men.

Kanami and Tsukiko looked at each other before the former sister responding to their elder sister, "Right. Sorry about that."

"No offense taken."

Tsukiko then got up and walked over to the guy that seemed to give the impression of being likeable in the ladies' point of view.

"Hello," she greeted Sora, who turned to face her, and, for the first time in his life, with less than half of his original body parts left, he seemed at a loss for words.

"Uh, um… Hello," he responded back. Great Caesar's ghost! I'm thinking about settling an old score with my brother, and now I'm talking to a girl that looks like a supermodel! A hot one!

Masamune, whom was having a conversation with Akira's son, Bumi, her extended family's immediate family man, had taken notice of Sora engaging in a conversation with one of Bumi's sisters.

"Uh, Bumi, who's that young lady speaking to Sora?" He questioned, and Bumi turned around to find Tsukiko speaking with the young man.

"That's Tsukiko," he explained. "She's the youngest sister I have before Rumi was born. She's harmless, if you're worried she's going to hurt somebody."

"No, it's not that at all. Honestly. It's… I've known Sora for over ten years, helping him get back onto his feet, and he's never once, due to awful mishaps, spoken with a girl besides my daughter."

Bumi then noticed how it seemed that Tsukiko was simply trying to talk with the young man that was three years below her, and recalled that the girl never so much as went out on a simple date with anybody that never even made a move on her.

"I think she likes him," he expressed, but then noticed Sora turning away from his sister; he had an expression that seemed like he was affected to a degree by Tsukiko's presence, but he had something else on his mind, something that he had to deal with himself.

"I'm sorry," he heard the young man say to her. "It's not you at all. It's me. I…I have an issue that hasn't been resolved yet. But I'm intending to resolve it soon."

Then…Sora walked away from her. Bumi noticed that Tsukiko seemed a little upset at this; he guessed that she might've been affected by the old belief of love at first sight, and was trying to get to know the guy that she was older than. So he excused himself from talking to Masamune and Kyoji and went over to Tsukiko to speak with her.

"He wasn't interested in you, was he?" He asked her.

"No, it wasn't like that," she explained. "He's got…an unresolved issue that he intends to deal with soon. He says it's a family matter."

"It's probably just my imagination, but didn't he seem similar in appearance to that Ryoji Kaji we saw at the festival?"

"There may have been some resemblance, but Mr. Kaji didn't seem like the type of person to have any ties to the past that related to others…except perhaps Ms. Katsuragi. Why do you ask?"

"I think your first crush may be associated to Mr. Kaji…but they haven't seen each other in years. Maybe he's the family matter that Sora wants to resolve."

"You mean…end."

"Well, Masamune knows something about Sora, and he has known him for years."

"Hey, what's up with the sky?!" Somebody gasped.

"It's burning up!" A woman added in.

Masamune and Kyoji looked up at the surface of the Geo-Front where the large hole was over the artificial lake and forest, and saw the sky that had started to turn reddish-black.

"But it's only… It's not even three-thirty yet, so what's the deal?" Shinobu questioned, knowing that Rayden's Comet was supposed to arrive later at night when the sun went down.

Miaka and Taeko looked closer up at the hole where the red color was darkening, and the nine-year-old girl saw an armored angel shooting streams of fires out of their hands.

"Mommy, I think that's Akira covering up the hole," Taeko informed her.

Outside the Geo-Front, Akira, making the conscious decision to keep the power of the comet from getting misused by the enemy in the city, gathered large chunks of the fallen buildings and shot streams of fire hotter than any she had unleashed before to bring the concrete and metal to a liquid form that she was able to manipulate with the Angelbreaker augmenting her channeling (and for once, she had to admit that she was glad that Nemo made her watch that crazy cartoon about the kid with the arrow on his head and his successor), controlling the molten metal and concrete as though it were like water. She covered every inch of the large hole and then used her Aero and Pyro Channeling to cool the makeshift covering down to avoid others getting harmed by the heat.

"Nemo, I owe you big for making me watch that demented cartoon," she told herself, and then flew back down to the NERV building, which, now that she really looked at its external appearance, was completely ugly because it resembled something she wouldn't tell the others about, viewing it as a mere poor choice in architecture.

As she flew back, she had disregarded the helicopter hovering above Unit-01; as much as she knew Yui Ikari had deserved whatever retribution she had coming to her, she wouldn't stand between Kyoji's great-granddaughter and Shinji's older, alternate self that was laid low by the gods because of what his parents did to others. This was a matter that she decided that Anne-Marie and Older Shinji would have to resolve on their own; whether they did the right thing or not was up to them.

-x-

CRASH! Lilith had to praise the little girl again for her unwillingness to give up, just as she had to demean Gendo for every time he tried to hurl a large ball of blue flames and having it thrown elsewhere; he wasn't missing on hitting the girl, but he wasn't doing very well, either. But so long as he didn't miss (that is, Rumi dodging each assault thrown by him), he inched away from sudden death, even if it was only for a few more seconds.

Rumi didn't think it would get this serious now. She'd been relying on the Angelbreaker to enhance her channeling to levels she never imagined were possible for her to raise them up to; she never believed she could blow Lilith and some of her bestial minions away with a breath of air that rivaled a hurricane-level gust of wind. Unfortunately, while the talisman had been able to make her a little more difficult to contend with than usual, Rumi, due to having not achieved the last step of Pyro Channeling (and refusing to cheat in order to master the ancient art and be declared a master of it), was only using already-existing fire sources and redirecting fire-based assaults back towards Gendo or whichever wolf-like mini-Eva was nearby to limit Lilith's forces.

Lilith fired tentacles from her right arm's scythe and nearly had the little girl impaled to the wall on the left side of the chamber, but missed by an inch.

"You're getting on my last nerve, you pint-sized brat," she informed Rumi.

"Then I suggest you stop trying to hit me and just hit me," Rumi countered, and then swung her right fist at her face, knocking her to the bottom of the chamber. Wow, I don't know my own strength.

Lilith got back on her feet and then looked up at Rumi, infuriated even further by the fact that she was being made a fool in front of herself. She despised this child with much greater displeasure, right to the point that she considered the possibility that she was playing with her rather than fighting her. And she despised that awful relic attached to her body for choosing her to deal with the great imbalance that had thrown the world out of order.

Gendo took aim at the little girl again, mindful that his life hung in the balance between life and death if he missed her again. As he made the blue fireball in his hands bigger than the previous ones, he let all of his anger, all of his desire to send the girl into the netherworld consume him.

"You miss…and you're dead," Naoko reminded him, waiting for the opportunity to come to her when she could just end his miserable life and be avenged.

But Gendo wasn't intending on missing this time; he was making absolutely sure that this time, his attack hit his target on the spot…and reduced her to ashes.

Rumi looked down at him and could've sworn she never saw a face as battered as Gendo's that was also twisted in negative emotions. She saw him as a monster pretending to be a man and wielded fire like it was a toy, letting the most offensive and destructive element in every culture pertaining to the four elements consume all around him.

"Fire may be the element you were blessed with, Gendo, but you make it a curse if you use it with no self-control," she warned him of the dangers of his element. "Without discipline and restraint, the power that you wield is nothing more than a firestorm that burns away everything in its path."

"That's all that fire is, you wretched brat," he retorted. "It burns and consumes, caring for none of the damage it creates."

Rumi frowned; her former adopted brother was beyond even the capacity to teach of the dangers he was opening himself to if he continued to abuse the burning element of power and desire. To prove her point in needing restraint, having learned and taken the lessons serious from Pyro Channelers with greater experience than a novice like herself, she wouldn't try to dodge his attack…or redirect it elsewhere. She would take it head-on, instead, despite her fear of getting burnt beyond recognition.

"You won't escape this time," Gendo cackled, intending to enjoy this; if he got her, he was certain the talisman forming armor around her wouldn't protect her from the intense flames of the blue fire.

"Gendo!" He turned around to see Akira, up against the MAGI, looking at the scene that was going on. "Focus on the fire you left in your hands when you look at me."

"Aaaaaaaurgh!" He howled in intense pain, feeling the fire he had in his grip singe his fingers; in his distraction, he forgot about the heat of the flames and burned himself as the flames dissipated and he fell to the floor. "Aaaaurgh!"

"Pathetic," Akira remarked, and then looked at the Eva-esque beasts and Naoko Akagi. "Let me show you how a real Pyro Channeler can wield fire without anger."

She generated flames around her hands and condensed them into a basketball-size sphere…and unleashed a wide stream of regular fire toward Naoko and the few beasts that remained. The beasts were singed right to the point where they fell over the edge of the bridge and Naoko was trying to eliminate the small flames on her clothes.

"Aaaaahh!" She screamed, and dropped to the floor, rolling around in order to put out the flames.

Gendo slowly got back up and looked at the charred, blackened pieces of decaying flesh that were his hands. He looked up at Akira, just as she looked at him.

"Make your flames too small, they may go out," she uttered, "but make them too big, and you may lose control. You disregarded the lesson that is the oldest rule in Pyro Channeling philosophy, Gendo, which is to keep fire manipulated by you at a stable degree of size and heat control. Fire without discipline, self-control or respect will consume until there is nothing left but ash. Fire, like you, myself and Rumi, lives, breathes and spreads to continue living. To wield it, you must respect it, understand it, control it. Look at your hands. They show how much you lack discipline, how you consume without restraint. You…who will never master the art…can never achieve your goal as long as the power you wield is only that of agony and self-ruination. You…are a failure."

Gendo frowned at her…and then charged toward her; even if his hands were now singed, he was going to waste this ancient woman and send her to Hell.

Rumi and Lilith watched as Akira simply slid out of the way and allowed Gendo to head-butt himself against the side of the MAGI, knocking himself out.

"Eh-heh-heh!" They both giggled.

"Asshole," Naoko muttered, getting up and revealing singed holes in her clothes, looking down at the incapacitated fool that was Gendo. "No way he could be associated with you."

-x-

As the needle stuck into his right arm and injected morphine into his bloodstream, Shinji felt some degree of relief from the physical pain he felt most of the time.

"I'm really surprised that you have lived this long, Mr. Rokubungi," he heard Fuyutsuki-San say to him. "You must have a guardian angel watching over you."

"Rumi," he uttered, which caught Kozo off guard.

"Huh?" He reacted.

"Rumi," he repeated. "She's my guardian angel."

"Oh. Is she, really?"

"No doubt."

The elder couldn't question whatever feelings of affection the son of his former students may have had for a young girl not even ten years old. The family of unrelated relatives had become the only thing left in his life that made any sense left in his world that separated itself between the soothing and the chaotic. And knowing so many different truths in the course of a single summer had been nothing short of detrimental, mental and health-wise. As he continued to stabilize the ill boy, Shinji felt that he needed to ask the elder about something personal that related to much of what he had discovered.

"Fuyutsuki-San," he started, "do you…know the truth to why…those monsters were made?"

As he looked further in the nearest cabinets for medicine suited for a cancer patient, Fuyutsuki turned back to look at him, still on the gurney, and responded, albeit with hesitation, "You…really shouldn't be talking right now, you know. You'll get worse if you do."

Shinji turned his head to face the elder and responded, "Physically or psychologically? Either way, the truth can't hurt me any more than it already has today. Or this summer. All it does…is what it does best: Bring light to the darkness that is the blanket of lies created to hide it."

Fuyutsuki could tell that he'd been around Akira so much that he took up some of her words and made them his own. The super-centenarian woman's philosophy of life and all of its wonders, unacceptable flaws and acceptable circumstances, from the teachings involved in the martial arts to the methods best used in child rearing, had been passed down to a young man that took to heart the words of a woman old enough to be his ancestress. And he was asking him about the Evas and why they were truly made.

"When Man created the Evangelion, were we really trying to create a clone of a god?" He remembered asking Yui back when the young man in front of him was just a little boy, completely ignorant of the world's dark secrets around him because he was just an innocent life.

"Yes," she had explained the reasons for the Eva's existence. "Human beings can only exist on this planet…but an Evangelion can live forever…along with the human soul that resides within it. When the sun, the moon and the Earth have disappeared, the Eva will still exist…along with the one person that lives inside it. They will be very lonely…but as long as one person continues to live…"

"It will be eternal proof that mankind truly existed," he uttered, not realizing that he had expressed it out loud for Shinji to hear.

"What will be eternal proof that people truly existed?" Shinji asked him. "The Eva?"

"The Eva," he sighed. "The Evas are just copies, mockeries of divine beings that we found here."

"That you give the souls of any women that had children after that bogus devastation that some crazy people caused on purpose. That's insane, sir. It's…it's unforgivable."

Even though that was the logical point of view of a young mind, Kozo couldn't muster the strength to argue with him; this boy had lived in a place where children born after Second Impact still had their mothers involved in their lives, and Kozo had met three of them today, and one of them was his childhood savior.

"Yeah, it is unforgivable," he decided to agree with him on his opinion, "but this was a fate that couldn't be turned away from. It was destined to happen."

"Destiny… Hmph… What does anyone know of its true meaning?" Shinji questioned, looking back up at the awful ceiling. "You let a small fish swim down a river, you think it knows the destiny of the river? Or let a lion wander around the savannah until it memorizes every little detail of the grass and trees to understand its destiny as an environment? No, Fuyutsuki-San. The fish will never find the ocean that the river might lead to…and the lion will never truly understand the balance between itself and its territory. There is only the universal truth that is causality once a choice is made by a person: For every action taken, there is an equal and opposite reaction that can be unexpected. Cause and effect, the aftermath of a choice made, for better or for worse."

Kozo wished for a few moments that he could understand what Shinji truly meant by his choice of words to comprehend destiny, causality and choice. It didn't make much sense to him at all. Just because you do something, something unexpected happens as a consequence of your action. But he got the feeling that he heard something like what the boy was saying to him.

"A person cannot reach a book on the lowest shelf without causing a car crash in the farthest town," Shinji then expressed. "Or…a man cannot touch the petal of the nearest flower without influencing the course of the furthest star."

"What? What does that mean?" Kozo asked him.

"Everything is connected…and every action has many effects," he answered. "Some good, some bad…and some that don't happen for a long time, but will come to pass, eventually. Every choice that you make affects choices made by others."

The elder couldn't believe in such a concept. But then again, he'd been disbelieving many things that have happened lately since this summer began, most of which should've been impossible, but have happened, regardless. And then, there was his childhood fate being prevented because of his savior, who left an unforgettable impression on him and his former tormentors. He even thought it was impossible for a woman like Akira to remain as she was, physically, for over forty years, and yet when he met her again, probably even by sheer coincidence, she was still a beautiful, graceful twenty-eight-year-old woman that could command great respect from those around her if she wanted to.

"Are you…in any further pain?" He sighed as he asked him.

"Pain?" Shinji questioned. "I'm always in pain, whether it's physical or emotional. I could live with the physical pain that I experience, but the displeasure that comes from the untimely departures of people I care about…or the sight of them in pain, regardless of the cause…is something I hate more than my cancer. Three friends I made, each one was as sick as I am, and they died within a year. I used to find the concept of death to be incomprehensible, that it was a great unfairness that existed in the world. Until Akira explained it to me how it is part of the natural order of existence."

"The only point of death being pointless…is that it is always pointless," Kozo heard Akira's voice in his mind; it was as though the woman had spoken to him about death herself, but he had no memory of such a conversation between them. "People fearing death fear what lies beyond mortality. Each new generation afraid because of whatever reason they have, however large, however small, to not want to die when they can no longer escape the inevitable fate that awaits them. It's only the stopgap between whether you shall ascend to paradise or descend to the netherworld, unless you're entitled a reincarnation. But whether you're young or old, rich or poor, death is the only thing that equalizes everyone. Even the deities that embody death know this truth."

Death equalizes everyone, he thought, wondering how Akira became such a philosophical well on life and death.

"…I think I can finally understand," he heard Shinji speak again, "why the older me…hates her so much that he seeks revenge upon her."

Kozo looked at him and awaited his explanation for why and how he could understand the man that was himself from a different time…and whom he had no knowledge of at all; nobody, not even Gendo, had informed him of a man found in the dead waters of what was once Antarctica where the White Moon of Adam had once resided until Second Impact destroyed it. And to find out that the immortal damned was an older, grief-filled Shinji Rokubungi that went mad due to centuries of isolation on a lifeless rock that had once been Earth was all the more insane.

"What seemed like an eternity for him," Shinji explained his reason for being able to understand the older version of himself that was cursed, "alone in a world that wasn't his home, anymore… With no friends or family to go to, having it all taken from him by those he couldn't trust with his life… All he had left in his future was loneliness, pain…and hate. He directed the hate to those he felt deserved it all, that were directly responsible for his damnation by the gods that saw people commit the most unforgivable acts that the world wouldn't endure. What kinda life is a life without a home, without family or friends, without the people and things that give you your stability, your sanity? It's as empty and desolate as a demolished or burnt-down building. It's as empty as a dream you sought to make a reality for others that didn't pan out the way you wanted it to…or the meaning behind the goal got lost or misinterpreted by dozens of people to the point of being corrupted or twisted into a nightmare. The older me probably never asked for any of what was handed to him against his will after he arrived with his Rumi to the city that lacked actual life, but I'm sure he had asked for what I know I really wanted in this life…many times."

"And…what was it that you wanted in your life?" He asked him, curious; the boy could've wanted money, fame, power or whatever it was that people of younger generations desired in their youth.

"A home that was truly my own," Shinji had confessed, "with a family and some friends. And a simple job as a chef. That's all I really wanted out of life. It's a simple series of simple goals. No greedy ambitions, no desires for revenge against somebody, no deviations. There's nothing wrong with wanting a simple life with the simple needs and desires, is there?"

"No," Kozo agreed with him, "there's nothing wrong with wanting a simple life."

-x-

Older Shinji hated the interior of the Entry Plug, the point of beginning for his madness that drove away what little sanity he had left as the people of his past were taken from him. As the plug snapped into place and began filling up with LCL, Lilith's primordial substance that spread life on the barren rock that became the blue marble that he knew as Earth, he shuddered as the memories of the last time he was inside the plug. He'd been forced in by Gendo and made to watch as Rumi was shot from behind her head by his mockery of his wife, who did nothing to prevent the little girl's murder.

"Shinji, this was never your fault," he remembered her saying to him, just before her face was reduced to pulp. "I love you."

He could recall how everything he recognized as peaceful became the things that caused him severe agony, like how his home for the last eleven years since he was abandoned became a razed crater due to a bomb dropped from the sky above, designed to deal in retribution to a monster that was just another type of human being without the proper shape and appearance…turned into a genocidal weapon of unjustifiable destruction. The people he loved…taken from him by the people he loathed. He could smell the blood that burned in the air, imagine the last exhibitions of emotion on their faces before they were sent to the afterlife. What had frightened him the most was not the giant that was Lilith wearing the warped face of his mother…but his adopted grandmother, burnt beyond recognition when her town was razed, and screaming her last scream before a shockwave rattled her decayed and incinerated flesh and muscles off to reveal her skeleton, cleaned up of the innards that had surrounded it before it fell into a pile that was soon blown away.

But now he was in a different past, one where none of what he had experienced came to past, and still aiming towards a future that he couldn't let happen because of some cruel people that desired more than they weren't allowed to possess. If he destroyed the Eva that was his mother by destroying the core that was her prison and the Eva's source of animate life, he would prevent the end of the world. He would save the people that didn't deserve death and destruction from the ones that wanted power and immortality by wiping away individuality and free will.

Mother, he thought, hating the sound of that term of endearment because there was no love left in him that could be directed toward the woman it was used on. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. And I am one of the many and you are of the few. I want this nightmare that is my damned life to end for good, and to do that, I must remove the one Eva that select people of cruelty favor as a means to an end. I must remove you from the mortal coil to end my suffering and prevent the end of days from happening.

-x-

The alarms were going off like crazy as Akira slashed and hacked away at Naoko's choker tentacles! Something had happened and it made the computer monitors undamaged by the fighting between the two Angelbreaker wielders and their opponents flare up and show bits of information that couldn't be understood if they weren't still to read it off the screen.

"What the Hell is going on here?!" Lilith asked Naoko, blocking Rumi's swords with her scythes.

Naoko looked at one of the console monitors and saw graphics displaying Unit-01 achieving synchronization with somebody that shouldn't have been inside the Eva at all, but was in it, anyway.

"Unit-01's been activated," she expressed.

"It ain't Shinji that's in the Eva," Akira revealed to them, using her staff to disable Naoko's left leg. "Not the one you've seen, that is."

"What are you talking about?" Lilith demanded. "There's only one Shinji."

Rumi realized that her mother was referring to the older, alternate Shinji that was driven mad by being forced to live for hundreds of years on a dead world; she suspected that anybody born after Second Impact were able to pilot Evangelions, regardless of how old they had gotten over the years. Thus, this made Older Shinji still qualified to operate the biomechanical abomination.

Unfortunately, this left Lilith confused at whoever it was that was within Unit-01, as she desired Shinji inside it to help her achieve her goal once the comet arrived and set the skies ablaze. And then she realized something: Gendo, one of her tormentors, had the ultimate knack for keeping secrets, and flew away from Rumi over to where the bastard was lying out cold.

"Again, you hide secrets from me," she uttered, retracting the scythe from her left hand and grabbed his head. "What have you done, Gendo Mu?!"

FLASH! She explored his past once again, finding herself beside him on a ship surrounded by red-tinted waters, looking through a door window at what he had recently found out was an incredibly-rare discovery: A man, in his early to mid-forties, chained to a chair in the center of the room as several scientists stuck him with needles and drew blood or injected chemicals, all the while hearing him vocalize his hate at how they were treating him.

"What is this?" She questioned, not needing to worry about Gendo hearing or seeing her; because this was just a memory being explored by her, like being an unnecessary passenger of a voyage that wouldn't deviate, no matter what you did, whatever she said or did would go unnoticed by anybody in this memory because everything that happened has become past tense, unable to be changed.

As she looked closer at the man (once she let herself into the room he was placed in), she took in several features that identified him; he reminded her of that bitch, Yui Ikari, with some delicate features in his eyes and nose…along with that bastard, Gendo, due to his ears and lips. The hair also reminded her of Yui's, except that it was longer, just like hers now, ending at his waist, and looked as though it hadn't been taken cared of in years, even if there wasn't a speck of dirt in it. But what threw her off were the eyes and voice; the eyes weren't at all like Gendo's because they showed the great degree of pain this man had gone through, in a place that wasn't like any left around after Second Impact, and his voice… His voiced sounded just like their sacrificial child, Shinji; only his voice demonstrated the degree of pain he had felt in his heart and soul. Then the truth was revealed to her: This man…was Shinji himself…and he was being tortured for the sake of scientific discovery, mirroring herself before and after she was ripped away from her true body and shackled in the one that mirrored the bitch that gave him his life, only to aid in destroying it.

"…Stop!" She heard him demand, as the people in white lab coats continued to stick him with needles, ignoring his cries of pain. "Stop it!"

She could almost sympathize his pain and anger, being treated as a valuable find instead of a person in need of aid. She raised her left hand up, as if to touch him, only to have it pass through his head; even in a memory, she couldn't touch an older variation of who she needed to help her achieve her goal, or allow herself to be touched by him. To her, now more than ever, Shinji Ikari, Shinji Rokubungi…was no more a means to an end as she herself had been by two cruel hearts that would never know bliss at the ends of their lives. She would see to that herself.

FLASH! The memory ended and Lilith pulled her hand away, dropping Gendo back to the floor.

"You…you disgusting, awful piece of flesh!" She yelled at him, just as he came to, still feeling the pain of his self-inflicted burnt hands. "You find an older version of your son from another time…and you use him against his will to pursue your own goal! You…are a waste."

He had recalled that day, as well, watching…and disregarding what he later discovered was true, that the old man had the same, identical genetic makeup as Shinji that no degree of cloning could ever imitate. When he had discovered that he couldn't be killed by any means, short of potentially throwing him in a volcano and letting the lava consume his body, he had him studied, dissected and experimented upon to try and replicate whatever it was that made impervious to death, and, in essence, a god-like being. But when that failed, finding out that his tissues were useless for prolonging the cellular life of others, he had him put away behind his office; this was to ensure that he remained GEHIRN's and later NERV's property…as well as to ensure that he himself wouldn't be killed by him.

"…You care nothing for your son, even going so far as to experiment on your son from another dimension, like he was a guinea pig with no voice to utter out their unwillingness to bend over for you. I really should kill you myself, Gendo. You're the worst man that has ever lived or ever will live. You're worst than Adolf Hitler or Julius Caesar, men of cruelty that sought power and control…and were willing to do whatever it took to achieve their goals. And we both know that your faux-mother wouldn't do it because she refuses to stain her soul with further bloodshed."

"My soul is already stained with murder," Akira expressed, "and wasn't he promised to Naoko Akagi for using her?"

Lilith grabbed Gendo again, by his neck this time, and lifted him off his back and slammed him against the side of MAGI Casper. She found it almost amusing; because he was a man, it seemed to fit that she had slammed him against a supercomputer that reflected its creator as a woman…and a woman he used and betrayed.

"Yes, I did promise his life to her," she told Akira, looking at the ladies, "and I still stand by that agreement. You can kill him now, for he won't be missed."

She let him slide down to the floor as she walked away, wanting to see Naoko put him down like the rabid dog that he truly was; megalomaniac barely came close to what she viewed him as.

"Ladies, I won't deny that the retribution you want him to experience is what he should get in extremes," went Rumi, hovering over MAGI Melchior, the scientist aspect of Naoko, "but he's not really worth it. Well, he may be worth getting rid of in your eyes, but if he's gotta be dealt with, let him waste away in prison. Murder is too good for him."

"And if he were to get away?" Naoko asked her. "If he were to walk away unscathed and avoid his punishment because he tried to manipulate the justice system? What then, little girl? He'd use anyone that, in his mind, could be useful to him…and then discard them like garbage. The only person he really cares about is that bitch of a wife of his."

"I don't care who he cares for more than anyone else in existence," Rumi uttered. "I don't care who he obsesses over… I don't even care who he's willing to make a deal with and then betray them like it's nobody's business. But as much as I'd like to see him go to the underworld for his cruel acts…I'd rather see him go to jail for his cruel acts, since he'd probably get a life sentence…him and his wife."

"You know not what you speak of," said Gendo, defending his reasons, which, in turn, earned him a kick to the chest by Naoko.

"Speak when spoken to," she warned him.

"In his mind," uttered Akira, "due to the valuable information received from a friendly source, he believes the one he calls God, from the Christian forms of religion, is cruel to him because of an old, religious belief: Everything he gives to the people, he will take away from them, eventually, that everything given exists only to be taken away after a time."

"So what if the deities take back what they give?" Naoko expressed. "That's life."

"I doubt you're one to talk about it, as your relationship with your daughter demonstrates a severe lack of family ties."

"That explains Ms. Akagi's seemingly-detached behavior," went Rumi, looking down at the MAGI she stood upon. "Like in those movies with scientists that can't comprehend the awful consequences of what they do because of their working lifestyles."

"Ritsuko Akagi never knew her mother as a mother," Lilith revealed, "yet respected her as a scientist."

"That's awful," Rumi expressed; her own relationship with her mother was, in her young mind, very meaningful because she knew her mother as a mother above all other terms associated with her, including the title of town leader. "What kinda parent has only a relationship with their kids that excludes the main point of their association with them?"

"Parents that don't take their responsibilities as parents seriously," answered Akira to her daughter.

Rumi's gaze was then turned to the screens displaying Unit-01, and she had to cover her mouth due to the horrid sight of it.

"What is he doing?" She questioned, and the other ladies turned to see. "What…is he doing?"

"Oh, Hell, no!" Lilith shouted, and ran out the chamber, angry at the fact that an older, alternate incarnation of the very boy she couldn't touch was trying to, though unknowingly, prevent her from achieving her goal of freedom by incapacitating the purple Eva she required.

Akira's eyes widened at the sight of Unit-01, Yui's would-be prison, using its hands to grip into its torso's pectoral muscle-like structure, growling like a savage animal that was being harmed, wondering what Older Shinji was doing.

Hold on, she realized. Evas, like the Angels, have cores that act as containers for their souls, located within them. Kozo stated that if the core was damaged beyond regeneration, the owner of the core in question dies, as their link to the mortal coil no longer anchors them to life. But Yui… Kozo believed that Yui could come back if she wanted to in order to avoid being killed, as her whole body was absorbed into the Eva. He told me that she told him never to tell Gendo her own decision, believing that he would try to stop her. She chose to remain inside the monstrosity, despite his attempts to salvage her, leaving behind everyone.

As revelation made itself known to the town leader, Lilith had smashed through every floor above Central Dogma to get to the outside of the base and found that Unit-01 had already managed to expose its core within its chest.

"Cease and desist, whoever you are in there!" She shouted to the person within the Entry Plug. "You're damaging a necessity to my goal!"

The Eva's head turned to face the flying mockery of Yui Ikari and a loudspeaker device within it uttered, "If it's between the Eva being used to condemn people again and people being allowed a future free of the nightmare I couldn't wake up from… I'm going to choose the latter over the former. Eva is bad, its maker is bad, and there's no denying it."

"Don't make me cripple you," Lilith threatened the guy.

"Go ahead and try," he countered her. "If you could kill me permanently, I'd be grateful."

Then, without further hesitation, Older Shinji made Unit-01's hands grab onto the core and began the process of removing it from the body.

"No!" Lilith panicked, and flew toward the arms with her scythes extended; the Eva spawned from her flesh didn't need to be in perfect condition, it just needed to be whole with its core undamaged.

If the Eva's core was damaged beyond regeneration, her goal would take longer, maybe almost indefinitely, before it could be achieved. With one quick swift, she had severed the Eva's left hand off, spilling the red blood spill out until the limb ran out. But that didn't deter Older Shinji at all, even with the sensation he felt from the Eva losing its hand. Lilith flew back to deal with the remaining hand, but was then swatted away by Older Shinji.

"I will not be denied," he told her, reaching deeper behind the core with the Eva's right hand until he couldn't reach any deeper. "Aaaaaurgh!"

Lilith, rising from the ground, looked at Unit-01's legs and decided to cut Yui's prison down a few inches. She was not going to put up with an older variation of an abandoned child's vendetta against his parents for what they've done.

I am not to be trifled with, she thought, and flew toward the Eva's legs, swinging her scythes and cutting through the armored restraints that covered the synthetic flesh and bones.

"Aaaaurgh!" Older Shinji gasped, feeling like his feet had been severed from his body for the fourth time in his cursed life. This immortality is flawed. People used to believe that having immortality made you invincible. But all it really does is extend your life and make it unbearable when you find that your future has only a beginning and a middle in your life story…with no end in sight. I have tried bleeding myself dry, only to find myself full of blood later on. I've even thrown myself off skyscrapers…eight times…and all those attempts at dying did nothing but put me to sleep for several days at a time. This is what immortality causes people to do when bestowed upon them against their will.

During the process of removing the core, the very woman he grew to despise for her role in his damnation and the damnation of the world he was left alone in tried to speak with him, only for him to ignore her completely, not wanting to converse with one of the people that were overdue for their comeuppance, even if she was the direct cause of his existence. In his mind, she was a disgrace to the status of motherhood…and the worst mother in the history of mothers.

As the Eva fell, he managed to achieve what he had set out to do, and pulled out the core and it fell to the ground, impressing Anne-Marie and enraging Lilith, who now needed to seek out an alternative method to achieving her goal.

The core, covered in blood and bits of the armor, cracked on its side as the cavity required for the Entry Plug came out and the hatch opened up.

"Urgh!" Older Shinji groaned, the left side of his forehead bleeding over his face as he breathed in the air that wasn't stained with LCL. "Never again will the Eva mean anything more than a disgrace to those harmed by it."

Anne-Marie landed the helicopter and went over to the damaged core of Unit-01 and saw something that seemed like something out of a horror film: A hand, wrapped in what appeared to be the same material that was used in making diving suits, along with the production of plugsuits; the young woman had once heard of her sister wearing one. Seconds later, the hand fidgeted, which made her (and Older Shinji, who had staggered over to the cracked core) fume with much greater contempt for the root of their individual misfortunes.

Older Shinji grabbed a part of the fissure forming the opening where the hand came out and pulled it further apart, ripping it off and exposing the rest of the woman that lied within it.

Cough-cough! Yui gagged from the LCL as she came to, restored to her mortal form for the first time in over ten years. She looked up, just in time to watch a hand grab her by her neck.

"Aaaurgh!" She choked, as Older Shinji picked her up off her feet by her neck and threw her out the remains of the core.

"And look at what we have here," he frowned, noticing how her plugsuit was similar to the one that used to be worn by the creature that wore her face, but it had small wings on the back of her shoulders. "A woman masquerading as an angel of protection, an angel of mercy. Heh, more like a fallen angel with wings made from a web of countless lies."

She recognized the man that bore an uncanny resemblance to her son, but he was filled with such hate, and saw her sister armed with a pair of swords.

"Anne-Marie," she managed to speak out.

"Aaurgh!" Anne-Marie grunted, giving her elder sister a righteous kick in the waist, knocking the breath out of her lungs.

"Urgh!" Yui gasped, never expecting her sister to lay a violent hand (or leg) upon her.

Older Shinji looked at Anne-Marie like she crossed a line, and waited for her to explain herself.

"That felt good," she told him.

"Not good," he countered, and he grabbed his mother by her neck once more. "Justifiable."

"Wait," Yui begged, but Older Shinji wasn't having any of that, and slammed her face against an armored part of the fallen Eva. "Aaaaurgh!"

"Your turn again," he told Anne-Marie, who then used one of her swords and swung it at Yui's chest, cutting the suit and leaving a slash on her waist.

"Aaaahh!" Yui screamed, just as Older Shinji punched her in the gut after holding her up by her head; she saw the older incarnation of her son and saw something worse than she had seen just moments before: He wasn't her sweet, little boy any longer, as he'd been replaced by an angry soul, cursed to live on as the eternal testament of mankind's existence that the Eva was supposed to represent…and was desperate for release…and more desperate to ensure that she could never hurt others again like she already had. "No! Please!"

BASH! Anne-Marie head-butted her, knocking her down. She wasn't so sure about her nephew's older incarnation, but she was enjoying the pain inflicted upon her sister. It was exhilarating…and terrifyingly wonderful.

"You have no idea how long I've waited for this," Anne-Marie told her, raising her sister's head up by her chin using one of her swords. "How does it feel to be on the receiving end of pain and torture?"

"Please," Yui begged again, only to see Anne-Marie withdraw her sword…and punch her in the jaw.

"Oh, is begging all you're able to do, Yui?" Anne-Marie questioned her. "Whatever happened to that great intellect you flaunted in front of me ever since I was little? Say something smart, something I could understand with the skills befitting a young woman that took a position as a security guard at her old man's medical company."

"You're a really rotten woman, Mother," Older Shinji expressed. "You go to cruel lengths to stay in control of others, even taking the hopes and dreams of people that don't share your twisted passion for science. Will your science save you from your retribution that's long overdue?"

Feeling that her jaw wasn't broken, Yui couldn't remember the last time she went through something awful prior to the Contact Experiment with the Eva.

"Where's your power of knowledge now, sister?" Anne-Marie asked, wondering if she should stab her in heart or decapitate her head.

"Let me see one of those swords, please," Older Shinji told his aunt, who then handed him one. "You want her head or her heart?"

"Her head," she decided on.

Seconds after they got within striking distance, several tentacles out and impaled Older Shinji by his waist, head and left arm.

"Aaaaaurgh!" He gasped, feeling himself being lifted off the ground.

"If I can put her back inside the Eva and repair the core," Anne-Marie heard the mockery shaped like her sister speaking, having been the one to impale her nephew, "I can still achieve my goal of being free from this nightmare! And I will not allow a pair of hypocrites stand between me and my freedom!"

Lilith shot another tentacle and wrapped it around Anne-Marie's left leg, lifting her off the ground and hanging her upside-down, dropping her sword.

"No!" Anne-Marie shouted, so close to being avenged, only to have it halted.

"I'm still alive, Lilith!" Older Shinji announced, unaffected by one of her tentacles impaling his forehead. "If you were going to kill me, at least make it effective!"

Lilith leapt onto the damaged Eva and examined the torso area, seeing that Unit-01, due to its unique design, had four other cores, smaller than the one that had been damaged, and deduced that these were meant to serve as backups in case the primary core was destroyed or its resident soul was released, ensuring that it could still function so long as it was intact. She kept the older Shinji and Yui's sister suspended in the air and looked down at the woman that had been the thorn in their sides.

"Don't think this the wrong way," she told her. "I still require Unit-01, and by extension, yourself, for my goal. But while I'm at it with restoring the needs of the Eva's core… Since you're outside the behemoth, your memories, your knowledge…is as unprotected from me as your bastard husband's."

She then shot a tendril from her Fallenbreaker at Yui's forehead before she could react and run from her, and the woman felt like something was picking at her brain instantly.

"Aaaaahh!" She screamed, seeing her whole life flash in front of her eyes. "Aaaahh!"

FLASH! Lilith saw the past of Yui Ikari, in all its ugliness, and found many things that helped to judge her as she had been judged already by the people that despised her.

"I swear, Yui, sometimes," her mother, Pema, once said to her, as they were out in a park, "I don't know who you really are or why you feel the need to do what you do to people. If this is how you want to live with your life, don't drag your family and friends down with you."

FLASH! She saw the distance placed between Yui and what was left of her family.

"Are you…INSANE?!" She found herself in a room with Yui and her legal father, Masamune Ikari, who was questioning her morality, or rather her immorality. "Don't you ever speak to me like we're close again. Ever."

FLASH! She found herself inside the Entry Plug with Yui, looking out at some people that were recognizable from ten years ago.

"I want to show him the bright future ahead for humanity," she heard Yui's words to Kozo Fuyutsuki, explaining why the little boy, formally Shinji Ikari back when he was a toddler, was present…only to have his innocence and carefree childhood of ignorance stolen from him. I'm doing this for him…and to undo my sins. To wash away the hate between my sister and I, the shame I placed on Father, and the dishonor I dealt Mother.

So she rips me from my body in order to aid her in erasing her crimes, absolving her sins against the people she harmed, Lilith realized Yui's reason for imprisoning her inside a sickly husk that was molded into her likeness. What a bitch!

FLASH! Now Lilith found herself further back in the woman's past, seeing her as a much younger woman, still in her teens, playing scientist on her little sister, taking notes on her ability to communicate with animals, which had once been used to clear an entire building of mice when the girl was seven years old. But as the years went on, she saw that Yui was trying to keep a leash on her sister, still wanting to study her ability, even if it meant depriving her of a social life, and this went on, despite their parents telling her more than once to cease her playing scientist on the younger sister and allow her to live her life. Unfortunately, Yui's vocabulary didn't include sentences like 'leave your sister alone', 'stop treating your sister this way', or 'enough is enough, young lady'. For Yui, there was only science and discovery, and back then, her sister's ability to talk to animals was so intriguing that she persisted in studying the ability, even if it meant her sister had to be deprived of a life of her choosing.

FLASH! Lilith had to frown at the sight of sisters that couldn't relate to each other becoming bitter siblings on the younger sister's part due to irreparable actions committed by the elder sister, with an unforgivable revelation being dealt in a hospital room; Anne-Marie Ikari having been through recent surgery after having a miscarriage, losing the baby of this man that Yui saw as a poor excuse for a love interest for her sister because he was a mechanic and not a scientist, having needed a hysterectomy just to save her life while it still could be saved.

"You and your people made all of us do all the suffering for you!" Anne-Marie had told Yui, letting out all the anger she had pent-up against sister the day she found out how far her passion for science went…and to what lengths she was willing to go to achieve her goals. "You shamed Father, you took Mother, my boyfriend, my dog, and my… Kami, I hate you, Yui! I hate you! I HATE YOU!"

Wow, thought Lilith, realizing that there was no love between the ladies. She certainly deserves this hate that the young girl possesses for having her chance at motherhood stolen from her. Her father hates her choices, her sister wants her dead… Heh, even her mother had to question herself many times to know the answer of just what was wrong with that woman.

FLASH! Lilith released Yui from her mind-reading grip and watched her collapse to the ground.

"Pathetic, Yui," she told her. "Truly pathetic. You think you can just use me to help you wash your hands clean of the sins you committed against your family? Against the world? What a joke! Your soul is forever-stained by the blood of the lives you helped put an end to, and yet the only lives that your sister cared for in her own life were those of four people. Three, when you exclude her dog. Two, when you exclude her unborn baby. You can't ever wash your crimes away. You might find the means to be absolved of past misdeeds in other ways, but you can never turn back the hands of time. What's done is done…and there's no going back."

Yui struggled to get up, but felt her muscles were taxed.

"'Anyplace can be like Heaven…if you have the will to live'," she heard Lilith say, in a perfect imitation of her voice. "Yet, you helped to unleash Hell onto Earth, making many places unfit for habitation, ending many thousands of plant and animal lives, all spawned from the creatures I bestowed life upon, billions of generations back in time. You aided in the Second Impact, believing that the damage you caused was the lesser of the two evils, instead of having to face the would-be wrath of Adam once he was rested and set free upon you…which I doubt would've happened while you were still alive. Whatever you wish to call it… Destiny, fate, the future, fortune…or misfortune, it's not always written in stone…or metal…or flesh, as your mother once told you."

Lilith then levitated off the damaged Eva and stood on the ground in front of her.

"Heh-heh-heh!" Older Shinji chuckled, causing Lilith to look up at him. "You say that destiny, fate or even misfortune aren't always written in stone, metal or flesh… But tell me…can you decide what was already decided upon by greater wills? What people manipulating the world have striven to achieve only for themselves?"

"They will receive only what I permit them to," she told him. "You seem twisted in your existence…as though what passes for morality, sanity…died within you long ago."

"I have her to thank for that (he pointed toward Yui). You can impale me a thousand time for a hundred years…but I still continue to live, cursed until the world changes for the better. A lifetime without end, the agony of immortality…that was unwanted, undesired."

"You hate living…for when you were much younger, your present self that is dying, cursed with sickness bestowed upon him by the elder Akagi woman, you sought only happiness, not very different from what you had desired when you were him."

"That's right," Older Shinji expressed, just as Lilith removed the tentacle from his head. "Ow! I was hoping I would see a white light just then…or an army of angels that were going to tell me I was now dead… Or probably wake up from another nightmare of what might've been instead of what was or what is. You ever get dreams like that, Ms. Lilith? Dreams that seem like they're glimpses of other worlds, other forms of existence…where the things you enjoy, that you take for granted with the people around you…don't exist in the way you understand them to?"

"Once upon a time," she expressed, dropping him to the ground, along with the younger Ikari woman, "I did have dreams like that, and they all ended on terrible notes."

Thud! Older Shinji fell on his head while Anne-Marie landed on her feet.

"I was sealed away for generations in one dream, not very different from my past, except that I never tried to obtain freedom…and in the end, I was still used by people like her (she pointed to Yui), ripped to pieces and made to bring about the end of their world. And I see you…driven to the ends of insanity, made a pawn by your parents."

"I have had the same series of dreams. The same series of an omen that plays itself out in different ways, and for me, the most horrible dreams of a life I live, only to come crashing down on me as it's stolen by my parents… Are the ones where the people I knew and loved, the ones that cared about me for me, that never sought to exploit me…or get rid of me because of who my parents were…don't exist at all, like they were some fantasy I had thought up to escape the ugliness of my existence."

"It's a sad life. A very sad life. But why do you go on?"

"Get rid of the people that sought the end of the world, you end the nightmares," Anne-Marie explained, unable to reach her swords because Lilith was watching them all. "Eliminate people like my sister…and all you have is the world people that abuse their authority can't control."

"But if that were to happen, if I were to stand by and let you kill Yui, one of the people I need to achieve my goal…I won't be free from these chains that bind me to this awful existence I have right now. I will always wear her face, a mockery of her identity, an imitation of a life that I so don't need. Which is why…I can't permit the stupid bitch to killed by her son from another time where everyone went to Hell because of her arrogance, her stupidity…or by her sister that was robbed of a life she saw most other women possess."

"Well, what are you going to do, kill us?" Anne-Marie asked Lilith. "You can't kill him, and you impaled his head."

Lilith then shot a tentacle at Yui's body and wrapped her up, lifting over toward one of Unit-01's backup cores, and dropped her on it.

"Now she can't run from anybody, as she's going to be absorbed once more," she informed them, hearing the struggling of Yui as she started to sink into the new core. "You try anything, and I will maim you, even if that means maiming you will be a constant act (she pointed to Older Shinji)."

"Hey, Lilith?" She turned to her left…and soon wished she hadn't. "Being exploited is such a witch."

PUNCH! Akira, who had, along with Rumi, heard everything that transpired between the four, and then punched Lilith hard in her jaw, sending her flying into the lake, having seized the ultimate moment to strike.

"Now that felt good," she praised herself.

"Uh, Mother, Mrs. Ikari…the bad Mrs. Ikari…is back inside a new, red ball in the Eva," Rumi informed her mother, looking at newly-regenerated core that replaced the damaged one that used to house Yui. As much as I dislike her, I do this only to make sure that justice is served.

She raised her retrieved hook swords and bashed them against the sphere, trying to crack open the blood-red orb.

SPLASH! Lilith shot out of the water and hovered in the air with her armored wings, dripping. It was one of those parts in her shackled life that she was pleased with having the ability to swim, even when wearing armor.

-x-

"…I didn't expect to find you like this, Ryoji," said Sora to the injured man that was his elder brother. "This is quite unexpected."

Ryoji Kaji, waking from a light doze, looked up at the younger man and almost thought he saw a face from his childhood.

"Who…are you?" He asked him, and Sora crouched down in front of him.

"What? You mean, after fifteen years, you don't recognize one of the people you condemned to save yourself?" Sora questioned, mocking his actual feelings of being hurt and betrayed by the older man. "I had sprained my ankle and it was my turn to go steal food from the soldiers abusing their authority over the child survivors whose parents were usually murdered on sight. You took my place and went to steal food…but you didn't come back."

Ryoji's eyes widened to the realization of the man in front of him was his greatest torment from the past, the very person he was supposed to protect after their parents died.

"Sora," he expressed, "but you're dead."

Sora then grabbed his brother by his neck and lifted him off the ground!

"I was dead!" He yelled at him. "Shot up, lost an arm and leg, my left eye and some other parts of me that needed to be replaced! And what did you do in the last years of your life?! You go snooping around other people's shit to find out their dirty secrets?! Our parents did once say that if you continued to poke your nose where it didn't belong, you were going to wind up either a lonely man…or dead! I think I was more on the side that was dead, which is probably what you're going to be!"

He dragged him by his neck, causing him great pain.

"Aaaaurgh! Aaaurgh! Stop!" He whined, but Sora ignored him; the guy was too pissed to listen to another guy that left him and several others for dead to save himself. "Sora, please! This isn't like you!"

"Oh, it isn't, is it?" Sora responded, dragging him up some stairs. "You'd be surprised of what can change a person in fifteen years. If I wanted to, I could kill you and be done with my vengeance, as I was declared dead after I was shot dead…so I don't exist, anymore. But I'm reminded that I'm not a coward or a psychopath, and that there are other ways to get revenge on those that have caused you grief, despair, agony. You made it a childish hobby to go snooping around other people's business, to brag the truth…so I'm gonna shake the truth to why you made your deal with the Oni to save yourself at the cost of my life and those of the boys we escaped that awful Hell with!"

WHACK! Ryoji had the back of his head hit against the nearest wall. Not once in their childhood had he ever seen his brother so angry at anyone before; Sora had never felt a reason to be angry with his brother before the Second Impact. If there were any way to describe the emotions he was going through right now, it would've been this way: Seriously pissed off.

Sora then stopped and hung his brother over railing of the stairs, having stopped about four floors from where they had met for the first time in fifteen years; the regenerated young man was certain that, even if he decided to hurt Ryoji in an extreme like this, a fall from this height wouldn't kill him.

"Sora, wait a minute!" Ryoji pleaded. "You don't have to do this! You don't want to do this!"

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't drop you to your judgment day?" Sora questioned him, wanting the truth, the root, the very cause for his pain of betrayal. "I'm all ears, waiting for your attempt at a confession."

"Ryoji, you protect your brother, no matter what!" Ryoji recalled their mother instructing him to watch over Sora, amidst the rising levels of panic and chaos.

"Ryoji, no jokes," their father had instructed him. "You're the one in charge now. You guard Sora with your life."

Some good I did for him, he realized, seeing not his brother as he is right now, but as he was the last time he saw him years ago: A little boy riddled with bullet holes and a bloody socket where his left eye used to be, always covered by strands of hair that, combined with his effeminate looks on their mother's side, made him almost appear as a girl because he was also petite as a child. "Sora, wait. Please!"

"For what?" The child-like apparition of Sora asked him, sounding twisted and friendly at the same time. "What should I wait for, Ryoji-Nisan?"

"…Oh, God," Sora turned to the left, toward a hallway, and saw a frightened Tsukiko, accompanied by Bumi and Masamune. "Hey, let's not go this way."

"Sora," Masamune uttered to his ward, "you don't wanna do this to him, even if he probably does deserve it."

"Hey, don't encourage him," Bumi told him.

Sora frowned and loosened his grip on his brother's left leg, letting him dangle further down.

"Aaaaurgh! Aaaahh!" Ryoji cried out, wondering if his brother was really going to kill him, even though he said he wasn't a killer.

"He's a lost cause, Mr. Ikari," Sora addressed Masamune by his former professional alias. "Not a good person one can look up to. Look at him. Despicable, rotten, untrustworthy. He deserves whatever Hell he gets from me."

"Aaaurgh!" His brother cried again; if Sora was truly trying to intimidate him, he was succeeding. "Sora, please, don't! Don't kill me!"

Tsukiko could've said she was impressed that a young man that survived Hell on Earth by means of medical science and technological advancements and was strong enough to hold an older man by his leg over some stairs, but she was really terrified to even be impressed. Seeing that Ryoji Kaji was Sora's elder brother and, by extension, the only family he had left, and was now seething with hate over a betrayal made long ago. She wondered if her first-sight crush was going to cross the line.

"I was held at gunpoint," Ryoji uttered, which brought Sora's attention back to him. "I was caught by the soldiers. They threatened to kill me unless I told them who else was with me. I tried lying, but they didn't buy it. I…I was scared to death, so I told them! By the time I made it back, they had fled like they were getting away from a heist. You were all dead. Riddled with bullet holes, laying on the ground. I traded you for myself."

Ouch, thought Masamune, able to understand how someone like Ryoji Kaji could end up like a…type of person that seemed so out of sorts with others. This revelation certainly might not get him in Sora's good graces.

Big brother sacrifices the little brother to save himself, thought Bumi, disgusted that wars, conflicts, and cruel authority figures could drive former children from fifteen years ago to make such choices that never truly work out for everyone.

Now I see why he said he needed to settle his family matter, Tsukiko realized, only able to imagine how she would've felt if it were her that were sacrificed by someone responsible for her well-being, only to come back to life (after a fashion of sorts) and feel hatred for the one that betrayed you.

It should've been me that day, Sora told himself, wishing every time that he could go back to that awful day and change the outcome, to still risk his life to steal food from the soldiers that abused them with crazy rules because their parents had been killed, because he knew that deep down none of what happened would've happened if it had been him, sprained ankle or no sprained ankle. "You're a coward, Ryoji, and I should just let you fall to your death."

"Sora," Masamune tried to intervene. "Maybe he does deserve it…or whatever else he gets coming to him…but would it change anything? Would you really feel content with your decision to end him…just because he made the choice that caused more trouble than what he believed he might've caused?"

Sora looked over at them, at his savior, at the girl that seemed to like him before she even knew his name or how he came to be, and sighed. As much as he hated his brother, as much as he probably wanted to see him suffer from his past crime…Sora couldn't and wouldn't stain his own soul with anybody's blood on his hands. He pulled Ryoji back over the railing and dropped him on the ground.

"I hope you haven't ceased your repenting," he told him, flexing his cybernetic digits, "'cause I know I haven't. I was always wondering why it was only I that survived being shot up and experiencing the agony that came after dying. I guess now I know why: I just have a twisted sense of luck. And you… You're bad luck, big brother. I'm as disappointed in you for your choice as I'm disgusted with how you turned out. "Do something good with your life, otherwise, something awful will turn it upside-down", Father used to warn us. And I almost did do something awful just a moment ago. But you…you're still poking your nose where it doesn't belong, unable to wise up. See you in another life, big brother."

Sora then walked away from Ryoji, leaving him to wallow in the shame of his past that cost him his friends and his brother…and got him his brother's hate.

Masamune sighed and went over to help Ryoji off the ground; he was proud that his ward made the choice to spare his brother, but displeased that there was no hope for the two reconciling. Then again, it was a choice Sora made…but a choice that Ryoji made too easy for him.

"We survive this day, you'll probably be lucky to experience the age of being an eighty-year-old," he told the quiet man with the unshaven face.

Bumi aided Masamune in helping the guy walk while Tsukiko caught up with Sora, who, despite his hatred toward his brother, was shuddering with his right hand shaking. She deduced it was the aftereffect of an adrenaline rush and almost making a decision he would've had to live with for the rest of his life…along with a decision he had to live with for the rest of his life.

"Mister Sora," she uttered out, getting his attention, "how are you feeling?"

"Bitterly satisfied," he answered her, turning his head away. "If you want to say something that you think is awful of me, go ahead. You wouldn't be the first person to say something I knew was wrong."

"You can't forgive him for taking the road of cowardice," she told him, "and that's okay. You let him live, and there's nothing wrong with that choice. You wanted the truth, the cause of the 'how' and 'why', the betrayal and abandonment. Bitter satisfaction is better than no satisfaction. I should know."

"Whatever happened to you?" Sora asked her.

"I lost my family…my blood family…in a circus-related accident that wasn't an accident. Yakuza-affiliated cretins. I've been living with my mother, Akira, ever since, and I was able to move on once I got revenge against the fools that ended my past."

Sora turned to face her, wanting to know what she did to obtain justice.

"The circus my family traveled with came back, and the Yakuza were at it again with their protection racket. But I was ready for them…and I had help…and the man that robbed me of my relatives was sentenced to life behind bars. Justice was served…and my loved ones were avenged. I was able to move on with my life after that."

Sora sighed and expressed, "Murder begets more bloodshed, no matter which side of the line you're on. To walk away from the path of darkness, to stay on the path of goodness…is a tough choice to make…but always the better choice."

"That's right. I don't think we got off to a good start back in that office, so why don't we start over?"

"Yeah, that's a good idea. Ladies first."

"Hello, my name is Tsukiko. Tsukiko Aizawa-Rokubungi."

"Sora. If I wasn't legally dead, my last name would still be "Kaji". Sora Kaji."

"I'm twenty-nine years old and a competent martial artist gifted in the art of fire manipulation."

"I'm twenty-six years old, a former grade school student that wanted to be in the Olympics one day because I had inherited my mother's athletic talents as well as her good looks."

"I…I aim to be a lawyer one day, helping the innocent. I…I also suffer from seizures once a month that I require a service wolf to warn me of around the estate I live in, which started when I was twenty-two after watching a cartoon episode that my elder brother, Nemo, had recorded years ago."

"One of the older-generation Pokemon episodes that was banned because of the appearance of one of the Pokemon called Porygon, which caused over five-hundred people to become hospitalized back in the year Nineteen-Ninety-Seven?"

"Yes. My brother had blamed himself for what happened…but I really wanted to see that episode he was able to record before it was banned for life. Despite it causing me a moment in time for any one random day of a month where I don't feel like myself and throw a fit, I never resented him for his nature as an otaku; he's knowledgeable on everything about make-believe. It's his…thing. You?"

"I sometimes get phantom pain as a result of my injuries received prior to my first death, despite having been regenerated over the fifteen years I've been under the care and protection of Masamune Ikari and Medical Angel. One surgical mishap resulted in my left eye being replaced with a bionic, gold one (he lifted his bang to show the eye). I was under anesthesia, though, but it still hurt. But…I can see as well as I did in my childhood."

"I… I find you intriguing and attractive, Mr. Sora."

"Thank you, Ms. Tsukiko Rokubungi. I find you very attractive, as well."

"Why, thank you."

The building then rattled, bringing the two back to the harsh reality of there being a vicious battle outside in the Geo-Front between those blessed with the potential to save the world with an ancient, living weapon of protection…and those that seek end all that is left in the world in a cruel attempt to become that which is not truly beneficial for all.

"Kami, help my mother and little sister," Tsukiko prayed.

"I'm pretty certain they'll be alright," Sora gave her his hopeful opinion. "Your sister's a martial artist, too, isn't she, ma'am?"

"Yes…but not on the same level as her mother or elder siblings are. We've had variable lengths of decades to master the lessons we were taught, but Rumi's only had less than a decade to learn the arts of self-defense…and less than a summer to channel the four elements."

"But she's got half that relic called the Angelbreaker, so that should compensate to a degree, right?"

-x-

DING! Rumi was slammed hard against the side of the building, relieved of her swords, by a strong kick from Lilith after Akira was swatted into the lake.

"Aaaahh!" She yelled in mild pain, grateful that the armor generated to cover her body cushioned her from the brunt of her would-be killer's assault.

"As all the Angels were humanized, there's really no longer a need to continue letting you live," Lilith told her, raising up her left arm's scythe. "Did you tell your dying lover goodbye?"

Rumi looked up at her with renewed anger, reminding herself why she needed to defeat Lilith; if she defeated her, she could save Shinji's life, give him his future, one that he can decide for himself…with her to share it with. Now was not the time to quit. She needed to save her nephew, her friend, her lover from a dark fate that was undeserved.

CLASH! Lilith brought her blade down, but Rumi had raised up a new blade created by the Angelbreaker. A larger hook sword that had a scaly, dragon theme on the back of it.

"You only delay the unavoidable," Lilith told her. "You get that feeling of despair in the back of your neck and ears? That's the feeling of the end. The approaching grief of inevitability. Your death."

"Oh, really? Well, then, let's see if we can turn that feeling into something a little brighter!" Rumi shouted, and stomped her left foot onto the ground, causing a pillar of stone to rise under Lilith, sending her up.

"Whoa!" Lilith gasped, just as Rumi ran around the pillar and turned her sword into a bo staff, slamming it into the ground and forcing the pillar to sink back.

SWAT! She used her staff to strike Lilith on her back, sending her flying forward into the wall she had been slammed against. She felt like more than an hour had gone by…and she was nowhere near humanizing the last threat to the world; all she knew of the two greatest feelings that were required to stop the mother of mankind was love, since it was a feeling she had experienced with the one she loved the most…which left the second feeling a mystery to her. Whatever the other feeling was that she required to humanize Lilith, it eluded her.

Lilith removed herself from the wall and faced the little girl once more. Every time she got hit by her, every time she avoided her end, her voice, filled with such happiness, seemed to play itself like a broken record in her mind. Her voice telling the dying boy how much she loved him and wanted him in her life. It was sickening to her perceptions of others; all she could do was deduce that this was part of her own, twisted existence because of Gendo and Yui's behaviors, which lacked qualities appreciated within most people.

As she made an attempt to approach her, the little girl had been joined by her mother, wielding a yari or naginata in her hands.

"Mommy, have I ever mentioned that this is the longest we've ever fought somebody that was considered dangerous?" Rumi asked Akira.

"You could stand to mention it a little more," she responded.

As they pressed on dealing with Lilith, Older Shinji and Anne-Marie were pondering how to deal with Yui, who was still stuck inside the new core of Unit-01; the Entry Plug was too heavy for both of them to move and put back into the Eva, thus piloting the abomination a second time was impossible, even to rip the new core out and get revenge against the woman that deserved retribution.

"Damn it," Anne-Marie uttered, gripping her swords. "Just when I was so close."

"We can always try shattering the core," Older Shinji suggested, as the idea of piloting the Eva again was not an option.

She handed him one of her swords again and proceeded to stab at the red sphere while Lilith was too busy fighting Akira and Rumi.

-x-

Thud! A falling sound woke Shinji up from his light doze, bringing him back to the reality of himself in NERV's medical ward. He looked up from the gurney and saw Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki on the floor, out cold.

"What the heck?" He questioned, and then gasped as the gurney started moving. "Aah!"

He looked up front and saw another of the same beasts that resembled Unit-01, dragging the gurney.

"No way!" He reacted, about to get off the gurney, but found that impossible; another of the beasts was right behind it, waiting for him to try so. "Oh!"

It looked up at him and snarled in a way that made Shinji suspect it was laughing at his inability to get away without getting hurt. It then jumped up and landed atop the gurney and forced him back down.

"Aaaahh!" He shuddered.

-x-

Gasp! Rumi shuddered, feeling that something wasn't right with her Shinji.

Oh, no, she thought, and flew back from Lilith toward NERV HQ.

"Rumi, where are you going?" Akira demanded, managing to sever off Lilith's left wing, causing her to fall. "Rumi!"

The little girl soared faster than she remembered, her surroundings a complete blur as she only knew one thing: She was relying on the Angelbreaker to take her directly toward Shinji because he had been in a new type of danger. When the blurs of her surroundings came to a halt and were normal once more, she stood in front of another beast shaped like Unit-01 in front of a gurney, accompanied by a second beast on top of the gurney, keeping in check her lover.

"Shinji!" She panicked, which got his attention.

"Rumi," he responded, "this is a nightmare right here."

"Grrr!" The Eva-esque beast in front of Rumi growled at her; it had received its instructions from its master, mentally, to regain possession of the Ikari couple's son and bring him to the Eva his mother was inside, by any means necessary that left him unharmed.

Rumi raised her armored hands up and had talons where her fingers were, as the Angelbreaker's true form (as far as anybody knew) was an armored hand with a ruby and pearl encrusted upon it.

"Rrraugh!" The beast on the floor growled and leapt at her, but she grabbed it by its neck and threw it over herself, sending it against a wall, but it was obviously smarter than the last few she dealt with, for it used its claws and latched itself to the wall, almost like a spider or wall-crawling lizard. "Rrraugh!"

"Uh-oh!" She gasped, seeing that this one was smarter, and turned to face the one keeping watch over Shinji. "You gotta be kidding!"

The one atop Shinji have sprouted what looked like orange wings of light with veins. And the sight of larger fangs made Shinji almost feel like he had gone to the bathroom on the gurney.

"Do you really think you're a match for us, little girl," the beast on the gurney spoke out, surprising them, especially since it spoke with Lilith's voice.

"I wish I could just pass out for a little while," Shinji expressed, knowing that today was turning out to be bad, and he hadn't even eaten anything since last night.

"I knew my instincts were right when I came down here," Rumi turned to the left side of the fork in the hallway, seeing her elder that was her lover's maternal great-great-grandfather was here, carrying a large bottle of water. "Now, kindly get away from my grandchild and my little sister before I use up all my water I have to disgrace myself with more Hemo Channeling…and that's an art I would like to leave buried."

The Eva-esque beast on the wall looked at the man and then, infused with the fact that Lilith was now able to see through its eyes, recognized the elderly man with the memories of Yui Ikari, seeing this was Kyoji Mikamura-Rokubungi, the great-grandfather of the wench that imprisoned her in a sickly husk. But he was only one half of the woman's heritage; it had been revealed to Lilith that, from the perspectives of Yui and Gendo, Yui was only related to this man, pushing over a century, through his dead granddaughter, who had an affair with her husband's best friend.

-x-

SLAM! Akira was really going off on Lilith this time, dishing out all kinds of hurt that she hadn't unleashed on people for decades over a century ago. But Lilith was persistent, either not knowing the meaning of the phrase "give up" or merely being unwilling to do so.

"Say when, Lilith," she told the mother of mankind, pressing the hilt of the pole arm against her head. "It ends today!"

Lilith looked up at her and responded, "Not for me!"

She pulled her head away from the weapon and regenerated her missing left wing, soaring back into the air, looking toward the damaged pyramidal building, seeing in Gendo's damaged office windows the people present, noticing a few that were associated with the woman that caused said man to lose focus and burn to a crisp his own hands in a heartache/jealousy-induced rage. Her quarrel had been with Rumi, not her mother, but she had abandoned the fight to go play savior for her dying nephew that wasn't immortal (she had deduced that, despite caring about the other Shinji, it was only the one they were familiar with that the little girl's affection for was the greater); she was able to know this because of her beasts, which she kept a few away from Terminal Dogma where her true self resided, having developed the ability to see and hear through them on the go (she had also deduced that, because they were, physically, made from the same material that comprised her real body, she could create mild links with them of her own will, like interacting with others in real time…but without the need to actually be present wherever they were). There was something about needing to be known as the one that defeated Rumi that drove her to want to be known as the one that defeated. She wasn't sure what it was, but maybe it had something to do with wanting Yui and Gendo's estranged son to suffer a great pain that exceeds all other forms of pain he was familiar with.

"I don't have time for some woman pushing over two-hundred-ninety-five years old," she told Akira, and then flew over toward the cracked windows of Gendo's office.

"No!" Akira gasped, conjuring a chain with a claw-shaped grappling hook attached to its end and threw it at her, but ended up being dragged by her. "Whoa! Aaaahh! Damn!"

Inside the office, Nemo and Shinobu cleared everybody away from the glass.

"Incoming!" Kanami panicked, and the sounds of the glass that had been believed to be shatter-proof was heard.

SHATTER! Lilith crash-landed into the office and frightened the employees that she tormented with her powers and presence, and grabbed the chain attached to the blade stuck to her back and pulled Rumi's mother inside the large room, causing her to crash-land into the desk.

CRASH! Akira had reduced the desk to a scattered piece of lousy wood and metal.

"Urgh!" She grunted and groaned, slowly rising from the debris, looking like she just fought in a desert forest. "Okay… That hurt my spine."

"What does it take to kill somebody like you?" Lilith questioned, and then ripped the blade out her back and ran off, fleeing the office.

"They always try to run," went Nemo, earning a groan of agreement from his adopted mother and sisters present; his knowledge derived from the films was a great help from time to time.

"I know where she's going," Akira uttered right after. "Don't go anywhere."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Kanami expressed, just as Akira ran out the room.

"Are you people for sure that she's not some sort of goddess?" A female employee asked them.

"She ain't even three-hundred years old yet, and she can still feel pain like we can," answered Miaka to her. "And it's longevity, not immortality, in case you were wondering. She's as mortal as we are."

"Being able to shrug off crashing into a desk like that, I'm very convinced."

-x-

"…Urgh!" Kyoji grunted, having had to wonder how crazy his eldest great-granddaughter was for being most of the cause for this Rei Ayanami or Lilith woman that wore her face like a mask, who had to go and create these dog-like beasts that were pressuring him to resort to Hemo Channeling once more, even when he had some water to use against because he hated the skill, as it reminded him too much of his blood mother. "Do I really have to resort to lethality to resolve this?"

"I can provide necessary lethality, Kyoji," said Rumi, creating another sword and cleaved in two the beast that wasn't guarding Shinji on the gurney, slicing it at the waist.

"Rumi, I get that you're wielding a very powerful artifact, or at least half of one, but you didn't really have to kill that thing." Kyoji expressed his woe at his baby sister committing murder.

"Actually, Kyoji," went Shinji, "the Angelbreaker can't bring death to anybody, no matter what."

The crippled beast, demonstrating the proof of the talisman's inability to cause death, growled in annoyance over its loss of legs, and dragged itself over toward Rumi, who had her head turned. Unfortunately, said girl turned back to face it and then impaled into the wall by its neck, letting it struggle as it tried to get free.

"Ouch," Shinji expressed, which earned him a snarl from the beast atop him. "Oh!"

SMASH! The wall further down the hall from his gurney blew open and a woman in armor came crashing out, wielding a large scythe on her left hand. It was Lilith, having smashed her way down several floors to reach the medical ward.

"I have had enough of you!" She pointed her right hand's index finger toward Rumi. "And him (she then pointed at Shinji, who wondered what he ever did to infuriate her)!"

"What'd I ever do to you?" He asked her.

There was no time for an explanation, as Lilith raised her scythe to block an incoming attack from behind her…by Akira, who flew into the scene and slammed her against a wall opposite of the damaged one.

"Get him! Get him out of here!" Lilith shouted at her unharmed minion holding Shinji to the gurney, as she locked armored gauntlets with the super-centenarian woman.

The beast obliged and then grabbed Shinji off the gurney and flew away through the hole in the wall.

"Aaahh!" Shinji panicked. "Rumi, save me!"

"Un-uh!" Rumi gasped, chasing after him, followed by Kyoji, who had to take an alternate route after finding that the large hole in the ceiling limited his ability to keep up with his sister. "I'm coming, Shinji, I'm coming!"

"Love conquers all," Kyoji muttered, having to run through the hall the same way he came in to see his great-great-grandson. "Love is stronger than death."

As he ran up the stairs to keep up with his sister, cancer-stricken Shinji was starting to feel nauseous; being rushed around tended to make him feel that way because of his frail body. He felt like he was trying to vomit, but he hadn't eaten anything, making him wonder if he would puke out his blood for the umpteenth time. The world around him was a twisted blur as the Eva-esque beast carried up through the holes that he suspected that Lilith had created when she came down to see them. The next thing he knew, he was released onto the ground in front of a damaged Unit-01, receiving a scrape on his left arm.

"Aaah!" He groaned; he could've sworn that the last time he was kidnapped, he was treated a little more properly than this. She must really hate my parents so much that I'm part of her most hated list.

As he slowly got up, the beast that dropped him snarled at him, or at least that's what he believed.

"Are you alright, Shinji?" He looked up at the fallen Eva and saw Anne-Marie looking down at him.

"It's just a scratch," he explained, and slowly tried to move away from the purple-armored behemoth that his maternal aunt and immortality-cursed incarnation were atop of, only for the beast to growl at him for trying to move away. This is really not turning into a good day.

Older Shinji looked down at his younger self and the beast that mirrored so much of the monster that had robbed him of his own past, feeling internal conflict between trying to destroy the new core of Unit-01 so that he could have his revenge…or to save his dying self from suffering a similar fate that he had long ago. Then he thought of the Rumi that wasn't his…and how she would feel if she lost the one she truly loved. He knew that, just like himself, she would've felt the devastation and self-destruction that came with the pain of loss and heartache…and he couldn't allow her to suffer as he did when he lost his past version of her, even for revenge and ending his curse.

"Time to put my damnation to use," he told himself, gripping the broadsword in his left hand as he jumped off the damaged Eva. "Hey, dog! How about me?! Self-regenerating flesh! You know you want it right here!"

My Kami, do I really sound like that when I'm insane? Shinji wondered to himself as his older self approached the beast that watched him.

The beast looked at him and became confused; Lilith hadn't ordered it to deal with the other guy that was also Shinji, just the dying boy until she came back to the surface of the Geo-Front. It could send a telepathic question of how to deal with him, but it never got its chance to, for Older Shinji tackled it away from the younger boy.

"Aaaaurgh! This makes falling off buildings easy to achieve!" Older Shinji grunted, grabbing the beast by its upper snout, demonstrating something that he, in his past, lacked greatly before his curse was placed upon him by the gods; after being by yourself for centuries, without a single yen to your name (not that finances would've mattered when you're the only one left in the world), you spend much of your unwanted eternity needing to do whatever you find you're able to in order to keep yourself busy, including the maintaining of whatever measure of sanity you have left, and Older Shinji showed such in his strength, able to deal with the beast.

Wow, my nephew from another dimension has…really worked out, thought Anne-Marie, having ceased her attempted hacking at the core her sister was placed back in to watch the scene that was happening in front of her.

-x-

"…Hey, Nemo?" Kanami asked her little brother, as they were watching the scenes outside the NERV base in Gendo's office.

"Yeah?" He responded.

"Do people from alternate dimensions…"

"Display abilities that are different from the people you're already familiar with?" He cut her off. "Sometimes, Kanami. Sometimes."

Taeko looked out the windows with her mother and saw Older Shinji pick up the Eva-esque beast and hurl it into the artificial lake behind them.

"Whoa!" Taeko gasped. "He threw that monster away."

"Yes, Taeko," Miaka agreed with her, "he sure did."

Suddenly, the floor rumbled, like an Earthquake was going on, which was very rare; Earthquakes rarely occurred anywhere around Japan after the Second Impact caused some unnatural stability to the archipelago's tectonic plates.

"Oh!" Taeko panicked, holding onto her mother's legs.

Miaka held her closely, just in time as the floor beneath burst opened and Lilith, stilling fighting Akira and Rumi (who was pounding away at Lilith's head), came flying out and exiting the office through the hole in the window.

"If they keep this up, they'll tear the whole building up," one of the former male employees stated.

"They can tear the place up all they want," said a former female employee, "I just want to live to see old age."

"Ah, Christ!" They all turned to the busted door and saw Kyoji returning, panting as he tried to catch his breath. "Did y'all see Shinji being dragged by one of those ugly beasts shaped like that purple behemoth outside?"

"Yeah, and now Older Shinji's demonstrating his ability to take licks and give kicks," said Shinobu, pointing out at the ground, just in time to watch Older Shinji receive a claw thrust to his stomach. "Aw, man! That's foul right there! Rip its ugly head off, Older Shinji!"

Kyoji looked out the window and saw his older nephew facing the beast. Despite knowing that he was, obviously, as a result of his past (and current) fragility, Shinji was not adept at the martial arts or any other form of combat, but he was quite skilled with what appeared to be brawling.

Out front of the base, Older Shinji looked up and saw Akira, Rumi and Lilith still going at it, but then got head-butted in his jaw.

"Ah!" He groaned in pain, but it passed in moments. "Oh, my jaw! Here's my medical bill!"

He jumped onto the beast and grabbed its jaw…and broke it roughly off, spraying blood onto his face.

Lilith saw this and paid it no mind; there were still a few minions left where that one came from. Unfortunately, Rumi got atop her head and grabbed her by her ears!

"Aaaaahh!" She screamed, recognizing this tactic as a childish move. "You are such a baby, you little bitch! Let go of my ears!"

"What do you expect?!" Rumi retorted. "I'm only six! I am a baby!"

"Eat this, Lilith!" Akira added, and shoved a sword up her abdomen, causing her to spout blood from her throat; the Angelbreaker couldn't kill her, but it could certainly cause her great agony.

Rumi then pulled harder on Lilith's ears and, eventually and accidentally, ripped them off her head.

"AAAAAAAAAURGH!" Lilith screamed louder than she had ever screamed before, and unleashed a series of energy waves that sent Akira and Rumi flying off her body, surrounding her in a large, reddish-gray, see-through sphere. "Aaaaaaurgh!"

"Whoa!" Rumi cried out, flapping her armored wings to regain aerial stability, just as her mother Aero Channeled to regain her stability. "Oopsie."

"Rumi, why did you pull her ears off?" Akira demanded to know.

"I didn't do it on purpose!" She defended herself; in truth, she really didn't mean to pull her ears off, accepting that the Angelbreaker could only enable her to harm her opponents in ways that leave them desiring an end to the agony they receive, even if the end was a permanent one.

"She'll be lucky if she can still hear," Akira sighed.

The energy sphere faded out and revealed Lilith, her Fallenbreaker doing whatever it could to regenerate her injuries, eliminating the Angelbreaker-based wounds she sustained. She looked at Rumi with more hatred than she ever had on any other people before she regained her independence of others. The way the girl could harm her, disgrace her in front of her other descendants…and even try to keep her from her desired goal, it was enough to make her do the unthinkable and move the heavens themselves to turn the rest of this dying rock into a second Hell.

"Had enough, Lilith?" Rumi asked her.

"As long as I still have the Fallenbreaker, you wretched mule," she responded, "no, I have not had enough. You think you know pain when you hurt somebody? I will show you pain!"

She then produced a spear-like pole from her left hand and brandished it in front of the Angelbreaker wielders…only to smirk cruelly as she hurled it not at them…but at Shinji, who was still on the ground beside Unit-01.

PIERCE! GASP! Shinji felt a great pain as the spear struck him in the side, going through the left side of his back and sticking him to the ground. A warm, fluid-like substance escaped his mouth as he looked up toward Rumi, who returned the gaze with a similar degree of hurt.

"Ow," he uttered so quietly, it was as though he was losing his voice, and then his upper body went limp as fell to the ground. "Rumi…stop this atrocity…"

He felt the light in his eyes dwindling away, but he still felt some measure of strength still residing within him; he knew he had to stay alive long enough for Rumi to save him with the Angelbreaker after Lilith was stopped. She could still save him…and he wanted her to do so; he reserved that right for her and her alone. This was, probably, the greatest pain he had experienced since his heart attack that nearly killed him, as he couldn't feel anything in his legs now. He felt like he'd been crippled.

-x-

"…You poor, deluded soul," Lilith's words echoed in her mind, along with her subtle threats to cause harm to both Shinji and herself, making Rumi writhe with anger at this display of cruelty and violence to one of the few people in her life she felt didn't deserve this type of treatment from anybody.

She felt her arms go limp, as if her strength had left her.

"Now, that's a show of great pain," Lilith had uttered.

Akira, feeling a burning energy emanating from her daughter, hovered a few inches away, believing that she was about to reach a breaking point of intense emotion, which, as she was familiar with, would lead to something that, while not uncommon, was unique to herself.

"Aaaaurgh!" Rumi shouted, as her hands burst into flames and she released fire in blazing streams!

"What the Hell?!" Lilith gasped, and was hit by one of the streams, feeling like her armor had been singed to melting points. That was not from the Angelbreaker!

Back in Gendo's office, Rumi's nieces were amazed (yet frightened) at their youngest aunt's fiery gift.

"She's…she's shooting fire from out her bare hands," Mayo stuttered.

"Shinobu, she beat us," went Tsukiko to her fellow Pyro Channeler.

Shinobu looked at her and realized what she meant by that; while they had spent years training in the art of controlling fire, their baby sister had spent less than two months understanding everything about Pyro Channeling…and just achieved the title and status they were trying to achieve without cheating.

"The Hell with it," she responded, and returned her gaze back to her fallen nephew, who was being approached by his maternal aunt and older incarnation, both of whom seemed to have postponed their vendetta against Yui Ikari to help him, something that she felt that they, as his family, should be doing right now.

"…He's not doing so good," went Anne-Marie, confirming that Shinji was still alive after checking his pulse; as a security guard at her father's company, she had a slight tendency to overhear or even play at medicine whenever the building was short-staffed.

"Ugh," Older Shinji grunted, grabbing the shaft of the spear-like weapon Lilith struck his younger self with. "It's like trying to rip a wishbone in half."

"Aaaurgh," Shinji came to, feeling pain as his cursed self tried to remove the spear. "Aaaurgh! No! Stop! Stop!"

Older Shinji ceased and noticed that he hadn't moved his legs at all when he reacted to the pain.

"We're gonna need a physician or somebody qualified to move him," he told Anne-Marie.

As she ran back to the building to get help, Rumi continued to send waves of fire at Lilith, leaving regenerating scorch marks on her armored body. Lilith had never expected a little girl to wield fire with such control that it seemed very reckless, but Rumi wasn't in the mood to care about her opinions of the unimportant matter. She just wanted to stop her before she could hurt or threaten the lives of anyone else here.

You hurt him, her mind screamed in an inferno frenzy. You hurt him…and he didn't even touch you! You had no right! You had, absolutely, no right!

Then, seeing that her flames weren't enough, she used the Angelbreaker to shoot out several tentacles that struck Lilith in her sides and stomach before unleashing a stream of fire at her head.

"Aaaaurgh!" Lilith shrieked out in great pain, despite her armor protecting her from the brunt of Rumi's attack. All I did was sever his sensation in his legs and she acts like it's the end of the world in her heart!

If Shinji had died, right then and there, it probably would've been the end of the world in Rumi's heart; she just confessed her love to him yesterday, saying that she loved him before his very face and not just kissing him to demonstrate how much she cared about him, and she didn't want to lose him. She didn't want to lose him to any murderous hands, his pathetic and awful excuse for parents, angels of mercy, demons of cruelty, older girls that might've wanted him all to themselves, anybody. He was hers, and she wanted to give him a grand future where he could smile everyday and know that the next day to come would be just as grand as the one before.

"You're a very weak woman, Lilith," she uttered, flying behind her and placing a burning palm on her nape. "You think you know everything…but you don't understand many important things that make us value what we find in our lives. I found somebody I love most dearly, something you don't have any understanding of."

"Do you have someone to protect…or were you just following orders?" Shinji's words echoed in Lilith's mind, as if taunting her with such a question.

The next thought that popped into her consciousness was instantly reduced to a series of pain-filled screams, as Rumi, literally, breathed a stream of fire at her face! She fell from the air and into the lake, sinking back into the artificial abyss.

Ow… She thought, just in time to hit the bottom with a soft, silent thud. That little bitch.

Whoa, thought Rumi, now able to calm down as she looked at her hands. I can't believe I actually did all of that… I mean, I shot fire at her and burned her a few times, but then I breathed fire at her like Godzilla and other fire-breathers. Shinji… Oh, Kami, I nearly forgot him in my anger.

She flew down toward toward him as he and Older Shinji were left alone, joined by Akira, who had watched the battle between the ladies. Of course, she knew that they were both aware that the battle was far from over. It was more of a intermission at the moment, a short period of recuperation, like every other conflict they experienced with the Angels.

Just to be cautious, Akira thought, hovering over the lake and using her half of the Angelbreaker in conjunction with her Hydro Channeling to freeze up the surface of the water, hindering Lilith for a while until they were ready for the next bout.

-x-

As the little sphere that held life turned, ever-so-slowly in the background of space, its empty vastness of personal space was lighting up with bright, reddish-orange colors. The Earth was shifting into its lunar period of the day, allowing the darkness to cover the lands, which was the required grounds for most celestial events to occur. The comet that was more of celestial, spiritually-bounded phenomenon than a real-world-based one, incapable of being altered by any degree of mortal means, was beginning its approach toward the blue marble of the servants of the deities that existed. A large, fiery body, with an unending purpose, a duty to travel the stars of every galaxy it ventured in and out of until its periodic task, to bring a wondrous light to the Earth's darkness once every seventy years, was the greatness of Rayden's Comet…and one that couldn't be matched by any blessed or cursed in the art of handling the flames of life.

-x-

"…I saw," went Shinji, coming to as he saw Rumi looking down at him, "the sky set on fire…and a woman trying to prevent the unforgivable from happening."

Rumi sighed and held onto his right hand; she would explain to him how long he was out cold and why they were in an ugly, white recovery room later.

"I know that Rumi loves him a lot," said Tsukiko, after sitting in a chair out in the hall of NERV's medical environment, "but I didn't really expect her to react like that after seeing him get hurt by somebody that was cruel to him."

Accompanied by Nemo, Mayo and Shinobu, the mismatched relatives responded with silence as they hung around the hall, keeping an eye on the two lovers.

"How long until those still alive are removed from this dump?" Nemo asked, wanting to change the subject now.

"Bumi and Miaka have taken the last batch of survivors that we might've missed when we arrived earlier out onto the city streets above, sending them away from the city before Akira sends us with them since Lilith is far from down for the count," Mayo answered him. "And she's off doing something I didn't believe she would do."

"And what's that, Mayo?" Tsukiko asked her niece.

"Freeing Shinji's mother from that ugly monster that she made from an uglier monster," she answered.

True to her words, out where the fallen Unit-01 remained, Akira used the Angelbreaker to rip open the new core and pluck Yui out from the cybernetic behemoth, only to toss her to the ground. It wasn't an accident that she just threw her out like that; the scientist was, as far as the super-centenarian was convinced by some and self-convinced to believe, no better than the burnt brat she cast out for his own cruelty and arrogance. But, because of her unwillingness to cross the line, she wasn't going to permit the woman to walk away unscathed or be dealt with by her little sister or her son from another universe where he was cursed by the gods for the sins of his parents. She would find a way to make sure that the victims would walk away with their scarred souls mended.

Yui, set freed from her creation once more, coughed out LCL as she looked up at the chronologically-older woman that dropped her to the ground.

"Don't think it the wrong way," Akira told her. "As much as some of the people you harmed want to waste you, it'd be simpler just to lock you away in jail to rot for your crimes."

Yui then turned to cringe at the presence of what was left of the…evidence of her sins: Anne-Marie, with her swords pointed to the ground, Older Shinji, needing to be held back from going all-out on one of the people that disgraced him by Kyoji, whose neutral expression was hard for her to read, and Masamune, who had a look of outright disappointment on his face.

"You look like I feel…to a small degree, Yui," Masamune uttered, which made Yui a little frightened of him right now, unlike the last time she ever saw him, when they had their falling out because of her. "Can you answer my last question to you from over ten years ago now…or is it beyond you?"

"Oh, let me cut up her face a little," went Anne-Marie, really wanting to see her sister breathe her last breath before she died; it was revealed that Kyoji was holding her left shoulder to keep her in check, just as he held onto Older Shinji's right shoulder to keep him from hurting his mother.

Akira then looked back at the frozen lake, fearing that Lilith, who was either binding her time before she made a return…or was still recuperating from the burns and stabbings Rumi left her. Either way, she didn't feel it was safe to play this family feud for long out here, not when she just sent Bumi and Miaka up to the ruined Tokyo-3 with the last batch of NERV employees that were still alive; only Fuyutsuki, wanting only to help her as much as he could, chose to stay behind.

"Let's permit Yui to explain her actions thoroughly inside the building," she told the Ikari family (she didn't speak the name "Ikari" because, out of mere experience with her younger grandson, Older Shinji would utter out in anger that it wasn't his name any longer). "Things are about to come ablaze soon."

Grabbing Yui by her left arm and taking them into the damaged base, the last surviving few of NERV were being led out of the city as the night began to shift into an eerie phase, as if it was being set on fire with airborne chemicals that were combustible.

"Holy God," said one of the male employees.

"Rayden's Comet," went Miaka, amazed and terrified at the sight of the fiery sphere that was high in the sky. "It's finally here."

Bumi, who had never seen the comet, just like his wife, was amazed and terrified by its presence. He was amazed because it made the night sky more beautiful than the day with its bright, burning colors, and terrified because it seemed eerie and could be abused.

"I wish I had brought my camera with me," he spoke out.

-x-

SPLASH! Lilith, having used the Fallenbreaker to dig herself a way into the base from under the lake, rose up from within Terminal Dogma, jumping out of the artificial lake of LCL and landing on the floor. All of her wounds were healed and she was ready to begin again her goal. She knew the comet had finally arrived and that her plan was ready to be put into motion, unfortunately, there would be a major deviation to that plan; with no Unit-01 or the boy, her only other alternative was Unit-02, something she wouldn't accept at all, as it was as useless as its pilot was in anyone's plan for the Instrumentality Project that no longer works for black-hearted humans. That meant only her Fallenbreaker, the Spear of Longinus that was paired with Adam, her counterpart sibling, the comet that was now above her head in the night sky, her true form still hanging on the cross…and a lot of luck to pull her hopes off.

"…Urgh!" She looked over to the open door to the chamber she was in, and saw Gendo, wielding a gun in his burnt hands, raising it up at her.

"And I thought Naoko dealt you," she told him.

"She almost did," he expressed, bleeding from his wounds he received earlier from her, "but I had the upper hand…and blew her brains out."

Lilith didn't take kindly to this from him; if Naoko was truly dead instead of just being put back in the Eva, then Gendo, despite being a fool and a thief, crippled in his hands and emotions, was worse than she originally thought he was already. And he would be the first to go.

"I want to show you what will be the end of everything," she told him, walking in front of her true body, just as her left arm began to flare with blue and orange lights. "It's almost like something out of a nightmare: The oceans became red and were like blood, people all around the world screaming before a great silence overtook them, the grounds that once carried the capacity to support the trees that supported the air became so toxic that the air was corrosive. And at the end, eyes that couldn't be seen from so far away saw a giant of light…covering the once-beautiful Earth in a darkness so thick…it disappeared forever."

Gendo then fired the remaining bullets of his gun and left four holes in her chest, only for Lilith to smile the smile that reminded him of Yui, but it was stained with hatred. He fired again, but only clicking was heard from the gun; he was merely desperate.

"Eh-heh-heh! You're going to enjoy this, Gendo Mu-Rokubungi-Ikari," she told him, and then levitated off her feet up to her true form's chest. "It's all I could ever hope for. It won't be as stable as I desire it to be without your dying son, but it will suffice until I have him…and then nothing else will matter."

BANG! Gendo felt a small explosion in his chest and fell to his back. He thought he had killed her; he'd left a hole in her forehead and watched her fall to the ground before she could impale him with more tendrils. All he could assume was that Naoko Akagi was as persistent as Lilith.

"You arrogant bastard," he heard her voice as she showed up, still sporting the bullet hole in her head, aiming the gun she had at his face. "Now…we're even."

Before she pulled the trigger again, she looked up at Lilith and saw how her true body was beginning to react toward the false body that mirrored Yui Ikari's.

Lilith inhaled a breath and then announced, "I've come home."

A hole in the chest formed, like a vertical mouth of sorts, and a voice, silent and disturbingly similar to her own, responded with, "Welcome home."

Lilith entered the hole without hesitation, melding with the flesh she had been cut apart from for too long, and the hole sealed itself up. She felt the emptiness in her filling up gratefully, but it wasn't enough to satiate her completely. Her consciousness spread throughout her body as she regenerated fully, feeling mobility and sensation in her arms and legs, perception and awareness as her head generated the required features of her face, and the rage of knowing that right to this very moment, two lives that have infuriated her to no end were having another moment that pissed her off.

As her feet touched the ground and she stood up for the first time in too long after removing her hands from the nails that kept her stuck to the cross, Gendo could only look on in fear at her. Even when restored to her true self, she couldn't stop looking like his wife, even if she did sprout out longer hair and sidelocks in an attempt to escape her shadows.

"Kill him," she uttered out to Naoko, who chuckled wickedly, and then pulled the trigger on Gendo's face, reducing its lower half (just below his nose) to something out of a gory film where somebody's face looked like it was turned to pulp or muck.

-x-

"…I appreciate what you've done for Shinji, Mr. Fuyutsuki," said Taeko to the elder that had some experience as a doctor, helping him throw away the bandages used to staunch Shinji's would-be minor injuries long enough for Nemo to use Hydro Channeling-induced healing to mend the flesh half-way, and Kozo stitched the rest of them while Shinji was unconscious (and it was revealed that Shinji would still be able to walk once he was rested).

Suddenly, the building started to rumble, as if influenced by another Earthquake. When it stopped, Taeko got the idea to go check on Rumi and Shinji, suspecting that her youngest aunt would be very protective of her love interest.

True to her suspicions, Rumi was being protective of Shinji, helping him off of the medical cot and onto his feet, relieved that he could still walk at least.

"EVERYTHING LIVES TO BE TAKEN!" A thundering, feminine voice roared throughout the building. "THIS WORLD IS FULL OF SADNESS AND PAIN!"

In the halls, leading the Ikaris and Kyoji to the medical ward, Akira recognized the voice as Lilith's, since hers was quite similar to Yui's…only darker and full of emptiness.

Masamune looked at Yui and had to speak out, "Whoever that is, she sounds like you when persistent."

"I do not," Yui defended.

"Actually, you do," Anne-Marie sided with him; she should know, having been the victim of her sister's persistence many times.

"I don't wanna hear it," Older Shinji expressed; Akira was probably the only person that could see that he, unlike his present-day incarnation, due to living for over three millennia in a world where he was the only one left, his social skills were severely crippled, making him, put quite simply, not so good with talking to other people, despite needing their presence to cope with his madness.

The building rumbled again, as a series of cracks formed in the walls and floors; it was like something was trying with all of its might to break the place down…or break out.

"Aw, shit," said Kyoji, fearing for the worst.

"Bad memories that should stay buried refuse to die," Older Shinji uttered. "Lilith's gonna tear the building apart trying to rise from under our feet."

"EVERYONE MUST RETURN TO NOTHINGNESS! EVERYONE MUST RETURN TO THE WOMB OF UNCREATED NIGHT! THE END IS BEYOND THE JEALOUSY AND BETRAYEL INFLICTED UPON THE MINDS, BEYOND THE HATE AND DESIRE THAT WEIGH DOWN THE HEARTS, AND BEYOND THE PAIN AND DEATH THAT PEOPLE CAUSE!" Lilith's voice raged on as she damaged the building further.

"Go! Now!" Akira ordered them, and they all ran (though Yui had to be carried by Akira because she had been tied up).

As the Rokubungi and Ikari families escaped out the building, the whole of the metallic pyramid cracked and crumbled as a pair of giant hands reached out from within it, followed by a large head.

"Suck me dry," Kyoji gasped.

"That's Lilith?!" Anne-Marie asked.

"Uh, aaahh, monster!" Taeko was panicking. "Really big monster! I wanna run right now! And I'm wetting my pants!"

As Lilith climbed out of the grounds of Terminal Dogma, her eyes and hair (which had started to shift around as she grew larger) were flaring like fire. Her eyes, which were red when she retook her true body, flared red…and then green (possibly due to who she resembled) before finally flaring black while her hair pigmentation became blue. She looked down at the people below and locked her gaze on the dying boy and his overprotective love interest.

"You two (she pointed her left index finger, just as her Fallenbreaker's bracelet form manifested around the wrist) will be the last to fall!"

"I'm all for doing what Taeko wants to do," Older Shinji told the others.

"Ditto," went Shinobu.

"Yeah, y'all do that," Akira told them, dropping Yui to the ground and then unleashing a large stream of fire at Lilith's head. "Aaaaaurgh!"

BLAST! The stream struck her hard and she turned left and right, yelling in great pain until armor formed on her face!

Rumi slammed the hilt of her left hand's hook sword onto the ground and split the land around them, raising up a large patch of the ground and levitating it in the air over the frozen lake. She had Geo Channeled them across the lake to the other side where the wilderness resided.

"Thanks, Rumi," praised Mayo to her.

"Sometimes, you gotta retreat in order to win," Rumi responded, and then turned around to find Older Shinji on his front. "Older Shinji, weren't you beside Kyoji?"

"Uh-oh," went Taeko, pointing back toward NERV HQ, just in time to see Lilith break free from the destroyed building and pick up the ruined remains of Unit-01, sprout wings identical to those of her armored guise and began to float across the frozen lake, where, on the surface of said lake, a bound woman squirmed in an incredibly pathetic attempt to get away.

"You threw our mother off the rock while Rumi got us away from Lilith?" Shinji asked his cursed counterpart, knowing that he hated her greatly because of her absence and past crimes to want to lay a death-dealing blow to her life.

"No," he answered his younger self. "She was about to fall off, so I tried to grab her."

"I thought you hated her," went Rumi, questioning his potential change of heart.

"I do," he explained with a frown, "but I wouldn't let Lilith waste her now, would I?"

Thud! Something was thrown to a spot right behind him and they saw that it was…Gendo's remains, all mangled and everything.

"Aaaaahh!" Taeko screamed, and Mayo turned her cousin's face away from the dead man.

"Ugh!" Masamune shuddered, and approached the dead man's head and closed his eyes.

"I, uh… I'm just going to, uh…" Nemo muttered, and then channeled some of the frozen lake water into a mode of transportation and ran it across the lake to where Yui was. "I'm not exactly sure how you were able to piss people off, but she looks really pissed off."

He picked up and made his waterspout go back to the other side of the lake, all the while picking up the foul stench of blood emanating from off of Yui Ikari.

"Aw, lady, you reek of blood," he informed her. "You make my nephew's nightmares of the last time he saw you before you went and got yourself eaten by your work seem like a scary daydream."

Hearing this, of course, made Yui displeased about her son having nightmares of her Contact Experiment, as she never did take into consideration that what she did would have lingering effects on his psyche. But after taking half of the physical abuse she received from the immortal damned version of her son, as well as her sister, she could only assume that he had viewed her so-called death as one of the worst moments of his life, if not the worst.

"It takes the joy out of life now, doesn't it?" Pema's words repeated in her mind.

"How does it feel to be on the receiving end of pain and torture?" Anne-Marie's words added in.

"Are you…INSANE?!" Masamune had shouted at her, and only now did she have an answer to his question that she couldn't respond to back then.

I must be insane, she thought, as Nemo's waterspout reached land and she was set against a cut tree trunk. I've condemned everybody to this unavoidable conclusion.

"Oh, Shinji!" Lilith called out to them. "You can run, but you can't hide from me!"

Akira ran back to the edge of the frozen lake and Hydro Channeled the water to rise up, forming a large wall. She then sent it toward Lilith, covering her with a giant wave, sending her crashing against the large, wall-like construct that was several feet away from the destroyed pyramid.

"Gendo should've killed her when he had the chance to," Lilith muttered, slowly rising back up. "I'm still gonna get you weaklings!"

Looking at her right hand, she found that Unit-01's remains were reduced to just its lower body without its feet, rendering it completely useless. She tossed it aside and reevaluated her options of how to achieve her goal without the Evas created from her flesh. Reabsorbing all the souls on the planet, minus Naoko Akagi's would be all there was to reasserting her existence and making it whole, but she still required Shinji to complete the goal to be whole.

Or do I need him? She questioned herself; she knew from Gendo and Yui's memories that their goals both required Unit-01, herself and their son as the primary key components, but now Unit-01's soul was set free and reasserted in its original body, the purple Eva was as useless as the Second Child had been from the very beginning, which meant that the former Third Child, the only son of the Ikari couple that were the biggest disgraces to have ever breathed the breath of life, was also, in a sense, just as useless.

There was something about how the scenario revolved around exploiting the boy now that confused her in a small way. So small, in fact, that it caused her to imagine an outcome that seemed to be what SEELE were forced to accept as the end result of their goal, even when it wasn't what they wanted: Shinji had been pushed past his breaking point and, unknowingly, duped into sending all the world, from his damaged point of view as a place where all anyone did was use, harm and abandon him, taking so much from him, expecting so much from him, and giving back absolutely nothing for his efforts, as well as his inability to break free from the bindings of exploitation and betrayals, regardless of how hard he tried to find his own calling in his life, into nonexistence as an amalgamation of souls without ties to the body or mind. He'd been left screaming to the edges of insanity as he was left alone, unaided by anyone. In a small way, she could've compared him to herself; they were both viewed as a mere necessity and weren't treated the way they should've been treated by the scum of the Earth, but there was no concrete similarity. There was only her being used for years, and him being abandoned by his parents for years to the point where they were no longer an important aspect of his present-day life.

She turned and reached into the large hole where NERV HQ once resided and pulled out the Spear of Longinus that belonged to Adam; as much as she wanted to believe the boy was no longer necessary, she couldn't risk it. The Third Child was a requirement, always has been and always will be. She flew back to the other end of the lake, but found that her targets, her requirement…and her enemy were gone, but there were no footprints, no trees giving a hint of being climbed on or anything to show them escaping…except for the large patch of dirt that reminded her of the shifting sands of the deserts of pre-Second Impact Earth.

Where are you? She wondered, pressing her left palm to the ground.

-x-

"…Coming, I'm coming!" Kagura called out to whoever it was that rung her house bell; she had to keep her windows and doors closed to avoid being touched by the light of Rayden's Comet since she hadn't setup her reservation at the underground shelter with the Pyro Channeling population that didn't wish to cheat their way to becoming masters of the art…and had to try channeling every time to make sure she wasn't blessed by the comet's power. "Who is it?"

"Camille Moto, Akane Yami and Tomoyo Kudo," said a female voice.

"Okay," she responded, and opened her door, keeping out of sight of the blazing lights that overtook the regular night sky.

Quickly, the three women entered the house and the tallest one closed the door. Then, Kagura turned on the lights and asked them what would have them come to see her instead of watching the comet she couldn't unless it was on television, which she was waiting on.

"Has Shinobu contacted you since the last time you saw her?" Camille asked.

"Un-uh," she responded. "I called her a few days after the Angel known as Bardiel had shown up trying to get revenge, and I find out that she and the others had experienced a heart attack that nearly killed her nephew. I was waiting for her to call me back."

"She's probably at Tokyo-3 trying to aid her siblings, nieces and nephew against that black sheep, Gendo, and bring balance back to the world," sighed Tomoyo, worried about the Rokubungi family, since that city was a perpetual dead zone right now. "Under that city in that dome-like environment I heard about."

"The Geo-Front," Camille corrected her. "It's the last place anybody ought to be at, even at the potential end of the world."

"I don't believe in the end of the world," Akane told them, caressing her right hand, "even after everything that has happened…and has yet to happen."

Kagura then went to her kitchen and pulled out four bottles of water from the refrigerator for them; as long as they were here, they were to be treated as guests.

"And what will happen next?" She asked Ms. Yami. "That is, I mean, do you know what will happen next, Ms. Yami?"

"I do not," she answered her back. "But whatever's going to happen, I hope it is positive. Too much violence has been committed."

"But this has all happened many times before, right?" Tomoyo questioned. "I mean, Akira and Rumi… They've worn the Angelbreaker many times in different timelines ever since this summer started…after the little girl's birthday and the festival."

"Yeah, Shinobu told me about that," Kagura expressed. "Although they were unsure of how many times they've turned back the untouchable hands of time. It's almost like a video game with that supernatural talisman: When something goes wrong or is too extreme to resolve, you simply go back to a level you previously came from for a simpler solution, as many times as you want, until you can win the game or defeat your opponents that can't be beaten through regular means. Or a story you've read…except that you stopped reading it because you fear the conclusion, so you go back to the very beginning to avoid it."

"Yeah," Camille agreed with her, "until you muster the courage to turn the page you avoid turning and face the outcome. Hopefully, this time, we can all avoid the devastation that we couldn't in the other timelines…and live to see the sunrise."

That last part of her sentence made Tomoyo fearful.

"Miss Yami," she asked the wheelchair-bound woman once more, "you once had dreams concerning past or alternate future events relating to the Angelbreaker and its wielders, right? What happened on the penultimate day before the end of this summer?"

"Every dream about this day the comet arrived all had the conclusion being a bad note," Akane explained her dreams and visions of the events from alternate timelines of their lives being played out. "Everybody falls…the ocean waters turn red and were as blood…and the sky never turns blue again. Sometimes, just sometimes, Akira or Rumi meet their end at the hands of either Gendo or his mockery of his wife, all in an attempt to achieve their goals, and sometimes it's Shinji and Rumi who get disposed of, mostly in a cruel attempt to use the boy in their goals, but it always goes south."

"Rumi gets killed…just so that the bad guys can use her organs to force her nephew to aid them…and then he dies, sooner or later, because he doesn't want to live at the cost of her life," went Camille. "Akira had reset the timeline back to the here and now in at least one of the previously-known timelines, where she killed Gendo when he had killed everyone else. This time, nothing serious has happened to them and they're still fighting, trying to not rewind time."

"Can they save us all?" Kagura asked.

"I believe they can," answered Tomoyo. "I want to see the sunrise today…and the world restored."

"I hope they're doing alright," Camille then expressed; she worried about Nemo a bit more than she did for the rest of his family, mostly because she truly did love the guy.

"They're incredible martial artists, most of them with the power to bend the elements to their will," Kagura reminded them about the Rokubungi family members. "They were all mostly trained by Akira herself. What kinda danger could they possibly face that they can't overcome?"

That, of course, reminded the woman that there were dangers that even a channeler couldn't overcome, especially ones that deprived you of your natural element. All she or any of them could do was hope that these people could prevent the end of everything.

-x-

"…You know, if it weren't for the fact that the comet seemed eery, it's almost very beautiful," said Misato to Ritsuko, looking out the windows of the hospital.

The night shift was mostly a handful of about thirty-eight men and women tasked with keeping alert for any new arrivals in case the comet caused a few incidents. One of the people on the night shift detail was Gyatso himself, bandaging a young man's left leg after treating a second-degree burn caused accidentally by an elderly Pyro Channeler failing to make it to his designated shelter before the comet arrived, becoming endowed with greater strength.

With luck, people will get to see the comet passing on film, thought Gyatso, finishing the bandaging. "How's that feel?"

"Good, thank you," the young man responded, getting up and limping away, as he chose not to use crutches until he could walk properly.

"This world is full of sadness," the good doctor heard a little girl's voice from behind himself, and turned around, only to see no one there.

"That's strange," he sighed. "Hey, are there any children running around the halls that shouldn't be?"

"No," the nurses told him.

-x-

"…Wake up," a voice called out to Akira, as she felt like she was being rattled a little. "Come on, Akira, wake up."

She opened her eyes and felt like she had a headache after waking up from drinking during the festival when she allowed herself to indulge in alcohol. She looked up and saw…Asuka Langley Soryu looking down at her.

"Miss Soryu?" She questioned. "What are you doing here?"

"Blame the father of the humanized Angels," she told her, pointing to the guy that was helping up Tsukiko, Adam himself. "He showed up where I was sleeping, and asked me to come with him here to help you."

"Gah!" The town leader turned and saw Shamshel holding her baby sister, Armisael, who seemed pleased to see the woman awake.

"We…we were pulled into the ground," went Shinji, having come to and looking around and seeing the last place he wanted to be: It was the chamber where Lilith's true body had been held. "What are we doing back here?"

"Sorry, but this was Zeruel's idea," said the humanized Angel Ramiel, toting his bazooka.

"My idea?!" The eldest brother snapped. "Sahaquiel suggested it!"

"Save the argument for later, please," said Nemo, helping up Kanami, whilst the humanized Bardiel was helping up Taeko. "Lilith's gonna be back soon."

"So," went Shinobu to the humanized Angels, "what brought you guys here?"

"The idea to help you, what else?" Arael explained.

As they all came to, the Rokubungi family noticed that, while most of the Ikari family had come to, Yui remained out cold.

"What do you want to do about her?" Asuka asked them, seeing a similarity between the unconscious woman and Anne-Marie.

"I got this," answered Older Shinji, to which Shinji could only sigh at how his immortal incarnation would wake up their mother. "Wake up, Mother."

SLAP! Older Shinji slapped her hard across the face, leaving a red spot on her right cheek.

"Ah," she groaned, waking up and seeing him looking down at her.

The Israfel Twins looked at Akira and asked, "He's not so good with communication, isn't he?"

"It's complicated," she responded.

Sachiel looked at Yui and proclaimed, "I don't like her. She's dark."

"Join the club," went Anne-Marie to him, expressing her own hate.

"Could somebody, anybody, please," went Adam, now curious about Yui Ikari, "explain what the deal is about her? Please?"

"She's bad," said Anne-Marie to him. "She manipulated people. Did a lot of wrongs."

"Gross misconduct, insubordination, exploitation, associating with lunatics and megalomaniacs, child abandonment, devastation-based profiting, misuse of science, and a bunch of other things I can't even count," Older Shinji added, counting her crimes off his fingers.

Sachiel continued to look at Yui, and knew where he'd seen her before.

"Of course," he realized. "You were the mockery of Father that Little Rumi used to lay me down."

"Huh?" Yui responded, confused.

"He was the giant monster that attacked the city the day Rumi and I showed up," explained Shinji, and then he returned to his silence.

"Well," said Asuka, who just wanted to know what they were going to do now, "now what?"

Rumi, who was beside her Shinji, got up and said, "Until Lilith is humanized, it's a minor standstill that we're in right now."

"So humanize her, then."

"It's not that simple, Ms. Soryu," said Akira. "To humanize Lilith, something of value must be offered up in return…and that's something we only know half of."

"And what is it that must be discarded that's of value?"

"The two greatest feelings that are most cherished at the end," answered Rumi to her.

"The two greatest feelings…that are most cherished? What two feelings are most cherished?" She questioned, as the one feeling she had gone through her life since her mother's suicide was satisfaction in achieving things and being recognized for those achievements.

"So far, we're down to just…love," Taeko told her.

"But…love is so…so…" Asuka couldn't find the proper words to voice out her opinion about such an emotion, as it had been over a long time since she ever experienced it.

"Yeah, to some people," Taeko seemed to get the idea of what she was trying to say, "and mostly when it's dirty, rotten, impure or manipulated."

"Real love will aid in beating the First Child? I'll believe it when I see it."

"Achoo!" Shinobu sneezed. "Sorry, the smell of blood got in my nose."

Shinji and Older Shinji turned toward the giant cross that once held Lilith in place and at the artificial lake filled with LCL, and Shinji shuddered in disgust.

"Shinobu," went Rumi, "let's not go there, please."

"Right," she responded. "Sorry."

Akira then looked at her armored right hand and mentally requested that the Angelbreaker gauntlet show her what Lilith would do until she found them.

FLASH! She stood over the Japanese islands and saw the horrors of Lilith's wrath! Countless souls were being ripped away from their bodies and sucked into the giant woman's left arm as she continuously grew larger. She seemed to be absorbing the souls from places far away from Japan, saving the souls of that particular nation for last.

"First, the souls scattered throughout the planet! And then the rest of them here!" Lilith shouted, as Rayden's Comet continued to travel high in the planet's atmosphere.

Moments later, a lone figure bathed in light flew up into the air and in front of the giantess rich with hatred, wielding a sword that looked as though it could've been forged from the sun itself.

"I see your boyfriend sent you here to play the grand savior for the world before he drew his last breath, did he not?" Lilith asked.

The light fading to reveal a young woman resembling Akira, the lady responded, "You can absorb all the souls you want to, Lilith. You'll still be weaker than everyone else…and someone like you, that knows nothing of love…and cannot bear to have someone that understands it because they've experienced it touch you…is a pitiable person living a hollow life."

Akira remembered the drawing the Israfel Twins made and their revelation that it was Rumi fighting Lilith at the end, and it made her worry over her daughter's chances of defeating the mother of mankind, who'd become corrupted and manipulated to the point of insanity, and afraid that she may not survive this battle.

FLASH! The vision ended and she was returned to the bowels of NERV HQ.

"Did you see something terrible, Akira?" Tsukiko asked her.

"Only that Lilith would be saving the souls of Japan for last," she explained to them, "and the rest of the future is unclear."

"Kami, this is a nightmare," Kanami uttered out.

"Can I point my finger at who I feel is directly responsible, Mother?" Mayo asked her.

"Yeah, sure."

Mayo then pointed her left index finger at the person she felt was most responsible: Yui Ikari.

"Mayo, we already know she's the root of this madness that has been set loose for a long time," said Nemo to his niece, "so you can cease with the obviousness."

"Is it also obvious for me to point out that Lilith is going to go end the lives of every other family out there in the world until she comes back here looking for us?" Mayo questioned him, only to see him sigh in defeat; Nemo couldn't counter that obviousness when somebody explained it like that.

"Lilith told us why she did it," went Anne-Marie to them.

"She wanted to erase her sins," added Older Shinji in the explanation, "to be absolved of the crimes she played a role in. But she revealed that her sins can never be undone, that her soul is forever-stained by the blood of the lives she helped put an end to. What's done is done. And she pissed off Lilith in the process when she ripped her soul from her original body."

Masamune and Kyoji couldn't believe this! Yui had tried to use Lilith…just to erase her mistakes that she didn't try to seek forgiveness for, even if she couldn't be forgiven for every bit of her sins by the people she harmed. Even Kozo, in his silence, couldn't believe that he didn't know about this part of Yui's reasons for performing the Contact Experiment, but, then again, he couldn't remember the last time she had, if ever to him, mentioned having relatives that were angry with her. However, Akira couldn't condone the woman's reasons for trying to do what she did for several reasons; how could you disregard a woman that treated her baby sister like a lab rat, used her life as a bargaining chip against her legal father to ensure his years of servitude to a cabal that she aided, bent on ending the world in order to become deities, created artificial monsters from the two beings charged with bestowing life to the planet they inhabited, even if one of them was never supposed to be on the planet to begin with, and then commit child abandonment on a little boy that didn't even know what was going on or why his mother made him watch something that was going to be horrible and leave lingering trauma that slowly resurfaced over a decade later?

"You…stupid bitch," uttered Shamshel toward Yui, breaking the small silence that was upon them all.

The woman remained silent; she already knew there was a lot of guilt upon her that she couldn't remove, so speaking was out of the question…and she had two people that wanted to kill her.

Anne-Marie then tightened her grip on the broadsword in her right hand and slowly approached her sister, intent on sending her to Hell as retribution for her sins.

You're dead, Yui, she thought, really wanting to kill her, to watch her die, to see the light leave her eyes.

A hand grabbed her left shoulder, and she turned to face Older Shinji, who just wanted the other sword she had, and she gave it to him.

Yui didn't even look up at the two.

"You two shouldn't kill her," from out of the silence, Shinji spoke up, causing the would-be killers to pause and look at him, wondering why he suggested they not end the very reason they were in pain.

"Give me one good reason not to waste her?" They both demanded of him.

Shinji looked up at them and explained, "Don't get me wrong when I say that you shouldn't. I don't have some…misplaced sense of devotion toward a woman I've not seen in over a decade, or wanting to keep her safe from overdue justice. You have every right to want revenge against her for what she did to you two, to everyone, past and future. But if there was any reason not to end her, it's this morale: You decide her fate…then you're no better than she is when she decided yours."

Older Shinji hated knowing that his younger self was right about this morale he used on them; as much as he wanted to end his eternal and internal agony, to embrace death and stop the madness that consumed him for thousands of years, the fate the gods dealt him…he would truly be no better than his mother…or his father…when his fate was made against his will. And Anne-Marie hated the mere belief that she could be just like Yui, who was responsible for her shattered, sheltered life, her dreams being crushed, her lack of friends that she wanted in her life, and her ability to decide how her gift of gab would and could be used. There wasn't a day that went by that she couldn't stop thinking about wanting to cause her the great pain that she felt when the news of her boyfriend's death and the loss of her baby came crashing down upon her, even if the satisfaction came with execution later on if she was ever caught. She looked at her sister, her face empty, hollowed out, almost a reflection in a cracked mirror of how she felt during her recovery from her miscarriage and hysterectomy, and sighed in defeat, throwing her sword to the ground.

"The last thing I could never want in my life is to be anything like her," she told Shinji, and turned away from Yui.

Older Shinji also threw his sword away, expressing his desire for justice at the end of this insanity because he was tired of living with a curse that forced him to go on living; if he couldn't kill his mother, he wanted a guarantee that she wouldn't walk away from her sins.

Adam whispered to Akira, "He's not so good with talking to others, is he?"

"It's complicated," she responded in a whisper.

"I believe you."

"How did you live with being an immortal-like being, excluding the life-bearing prosperity?"

"I invested myself in my children, coping with eternity."

"Is that the only way to put up with living forever?"

"It's the only way I knew how to stay sane. What is time to someone that won't die?"

"But what is eternity to one that wants death?"

Ramiel heard the two whispering and butted in with, "It's despair, that's what it is!"

They looked at him and wondered how good his hearing was to butt in like that.

"People, the Lilin, give anything and everything for eternal life, inappreciable of the wonders of their mortality. They go to great lengths to avoid or master death that they fail to see their attempts will always be in vain." He continued.

"Where did he become so philosophical in the advantages and disadvantages of immortality and mortality?" Akira asked Adam.

"Shamshel made him read these foreign story books about a boy with a scar on his head," he answered.

"Harry Potter?"

"Yeah, him."

-x-

Having developed further in the minutes that came and went, Lilith phased through the dirt, concrete and metal that covered the ground over the lands of Tokyo-3's wilderness, seeing the people walking down the highway street away from the damaged city. As much as she wanted to absorb their souls into herself, something told her to save all the souls of Japan for desert, and take the souls of every other person across the planet as the main course. She assumed it was the accursed human way of thinking, something about letting the people that stood up to her think she was going easy on them and then realizing that things were going to get much more difficult than they already were before.

But first, she thought, having grown to a massive height, to return the Geo-Front to its original state… Its truest state.

The ground around most of the damaged city, the countryside and several miles worth of land started to rattle as something large began to rise from the bowels of the underground.

"Come to me!" Lilith called out to her egg that laid dormant beneath the tectonic plates of Hakone.

On the streets, Bumi and Miaka took the idea to use their combined Geo Channeling to transport the remaining NERV employees away from the city, but after the ground began trembling, they realized they had to get them further away to safety, which meant getting a good distance away from Hakone. However, both were hesitant to do so because they feared for their daughter's safety, even though she was with the others, probably safest in Akira's presence. Their role as parents always at the top of their pyramidal structures of order in their lives, making sure their precious child was happy.

Akira, I hope you're keeping an eye out for Taeko, Miaka thought, helping her husband channel the large slab of solid rock and concrete zigzag across the ground.

As the night sky continued to glow like fire under the comet's passing blaze, the heavens themselves could now see, as well as those miles away from the Japanese archipelago, a colossal sphere of what looked like obsidian, rising from the Earth and being held in between Lilith's palms. This was her former vessel of transportation to this former world of emptiness, her container of the souls of the first forms of new life for the barren sphere and the source of all of life's wonders. The Black Moon, the egg of Lilith. Even though there were those that desired to not return to the hollowness within its shell, she would grant them no other alternative but to do so…and return to the nothingness that their souls once were. It was the only thing left in their future…and the only way to fully restore herself and be free once again.

-x-

"…What's going on?" Mayo questioned, feeling a little lighter than usual.

"Lilith's about to drain the remaining life out of this planet, that's what going on," went Rumi, worrying over how many lives were about to be put on Lilith's dinner plate while she and her mother were just standing around within the chamber Lilith was sealed in. "I'm not about to let that happen."

"Rumi, she's gone and turned into a giantess," Kanami informed her. "You might've dealt with Adam's kids when they were large and almighty before they got humanized, but what hope do you have against a corrupted woman whose heart is as empty as a…well, empty?"

Suddenly, Shinji thought back to the many times he had been around the other members of the family: The motherly Grandmother Akira, Aunts Kanami and Miaka, Uncle Bumi, the sole family man that took his status of that role seriously, but made time to be funny and easy to be around, the innocent-looking otaku that was Uncle Nemo, who's fountain of sci-fi knowledge made him a friendly individual that provided a sense of humor among the family, then the shifting affection of Aunt Shinobu, whom demonstrated a different kind of passion that those elsewhere would often frown upon, and even the child-like friendship of Aunt Tsukiko, whom he had some measure of a good relationship with; his relationship with each of them, along with his friendly relation with his cousins, Mayo and Taeko, his full-blown love for his Aunt Rumi, had made him see a great flaw in Lilith's very heart…and may have explained why she kept a safe distance from him whenever she approached him or he got near her.

"Rumi can beat Lilith," he expressed to everyone. "Heh. Lilith's only weak…because of my parents and their own weakness. Lilith's corrupted perception, her entire isolation from others, even the lack of strong connections that give a person a positive outlook on life…has left her unable to understand, comprehend… She doesn't know a thing about love…or friendship, luxuries that they truly don't understand. And…and I feel sorry for each of them."

They looked at him like he had revealed a great, philosophical revelation! Lilith was devoid of the aspects of love and friendship, having never been shown or taught love by her captors, left without even a single friend that was just a friend. A life without a companion that liked you or demonstrated a great passion for your well-being…was no different from being left alone after a great devastation that left where you resided, devoid of joy. It was a miserable existence.

Anne-Marie could sympathize with the deranged woman a little; not once in her childhood did Yui ever tell her that she loved her. And the same went for Kyoji, as Mai had never expressed genuine affection for her second-born, even before the murder of her firstborn.

"Love and friendship," Akira said, now able to understand why the woman seemed different from others after meeting her Rei Ayanami guise. "Anybody without those experiences…is truly a miserable person…with almost no hope of understanding them."

"If you don't receive love from a person," added Shinobu, "you don't know how to give it."

"If you can't make friends, you can't be one," added Mayo, "for you don't have any."

Rumi then left out the chamber and walked past the dead workers toward the long way outside; if love and friendship were truly the dearest feelings that were most cherished that needed to be offered to Lilith in order to defeat her, she wouldn't let Lilith take anyone's but hers. She wondered what would happen when those feelings were offered; one of the worst possible outcomes, in her young mind…was that she wouldn't have such feelings for the rest of her life. If that were the outcome, then it meant that…she wouldn't feel the way she did for Shinji, anymore. A tear fell from her right eye; as much as she was willing to part with her feelings of love if it meant saving the world, she feared a life where she couldn't feel it for the boy she gave her heart to.

"Rumi!" She stopped at the sound of Shinji, her Shinji, calling out to her, and she turned to face him.

"Shinji," she spoke up, "don't try to stop me…or convince me of an alternative when there might not be another in sight."

He looked sad hearing her say this, and he took off his locket and held it out to her.

"As much as I believe in the one wielding the Angelbreaker that can save the world," he uttered, his voice cracking up, "I…I have more faith in the little girl that saved me long before she ever picked up a sword to defend herself. A life without you in my life…is a life that is devoid of happiness, Rumi. You're the sun, stars and moon in my day and night skies, so…so you come back home. To your nieces, your siblings, your mother…and me."

Rumi nodded and then took off her dog tags. They exchanged possessions…and then Rumi let her selfishness take over for a few seconds, just so that she could savor what could've been the last kiss she could get from the man she loved. She grabbed his head and left shoulder, pressing her lips firmly onto his. And then…she felt Shinji holding her tightly…before he let go of her, revealing his own tears.

"Be back soon," she told him, and then ran off.

Shinji soon felt weak in his knees again, so he sat against the wall, putting his lover's tags on.

"Akira," he uttered, knowing that his grandmother had witnessed the whole thing, "do you believe she's going to come back?"

Akira stood beside him and answered, "If you tell me she'll come back, I'll believe it, too."

"She'll come back," he told her. "She always does."

-x-

"…Ah…good," Lilith chuckled, seeing the red twinkles and hearing the screams of passion and agony as the people from places like Germany, China, Russia, Europe, Vietnam and the USA were reduced to just their souls and forced to return to her. "Come to me, my children!"

The Spear of Longinus shifted and wrapped around her left arm, integrating with the Fallenbreaker, strengthening her further.

Let all of them return to the nothingness from whence they came, to cause great harm no more…and to be free of the pain they inflicted upon each other and the planet itself. She thought, as a pair of strange, aperture-like openings in her palms manifested, now absorbing the souls that swirled around the Black Moon in a frenzy. Oh, yes… Yes, yes, yes!

Her bladed wings spread out and she tilted her head back, looking up at the stars, ignoring the screams of children crying for their parents, men yelling in insanity as they became pulp and women begging for release.

"Ah-ha…heh-heh…ah-ha-ha-ha!" Her laughter echoed across the stars.

"This has gone far enough, Lilith!" A voice uttered out, and she looked down at the levitating form of the little girl she loathed more than Yui Ikari and Ritsuko Akagi. "I will stop you now!"

"You? Stop me?" Lilith chuckled at her. "You're already too late! All the world's souls are returning to my womb of uncreated night where they will stay for eternity. You are nothing more than a child trying to stand up against a goddess!"

"But you're a goddess of pain and death," Rumi countered, clutching onto Shinji's locket, drawing strength to stand up to the woman that would attempt to kill her. "You're empty, and you try to get rid of that emptiness by taking everyone into yourself, not knowing what it is you're devoid of!"

"It doesn't matter, and once these souls around us are taken, all that'll remain are the souls of Japan…and your precious Shinji. I'll take his soul…and you'll fall from the happiness you feel from his affections for you."

Rumi frowned, as the screaming souls swirled past her and her hair moved in the air behind her head.

"I don't want to fight you to the death, Lilith," she told the stealer of hopes and dreams, "namely mine's…but I will if I have to, because I don't care much for your hopes at all. Cease this cruelty against the world now…or suffer the consequences of humanization…you twisted excuse for a woman that knows nothing of love or friendship…and is to be pitied."

"Ooh, the bitch can threaten…but I will not be denied my freedom from the chains of my torment. YOU WILL DIE!" Lilith yelled out, and a stream of red light was unleashed from a third eye that just appeared on her forehead, striking Rumi dead in the chest…and out her back.

"Aaaahh!" Rumi cried out, and a sphere of red light formed around her body, just as she felt like her heart had burst from the attack, despite the armor generated by the Angelbreaker covering her.

The sphere of red light burst into flames and Lilith was convinced that Rumi was now dead, since she had attacked her heart. And if she wasn't dead, she was close to it, and all she could do was try to endure the pain she was feeling and watch her world end. To challenge Lilith is to invite the potential end of your life, which was to face Death…and lose, eventually.

-x-

GASP! Akira felt a great pain in her heart, and her maternal feelings telling her that her baby girl had bitten off more than she could chew.

"Akira?" Kozo, who had shown up to see why they hadn't come back to Terminal Dogma, asked, wanting to know what was wrong.

Akira then retracted all of the armor generated by the Angelbreaker and removed the bracelet from her wrist…and all the power that came with it.

Please, she begged her half of the ancient talisman, stop Lilith. Save the world. Save my daughter.

The bracelet then glowed brightly and shot away from her hands, seeking out the one that needed the power more.

-x-

Lilith took notice of a light that sparkled in the sphere of fire that surrounded the little girl, wondering what she could be up to, certain that she was now too weak to do anything but breathe her last few moments away.

Within the sphere, Rumi didn't feel like her life was fading away. She felt…like she was half-asleep, surrounded by a warm light that covered her body that she felt was very bare. Lilith had tried to kill her before she could stop her from ending the world…and she hadn't warmed up yet. With a new feeling of energy flowing through her, she raised her left hand…and could've sworn that it wasn't as big as her mother's hands were. She looked at both her hands, seeing hands befitting that of an adult woman rather than those of a little girl, with longer legs…and a chest that probably rivaled her mother's.

The sphere burst into a brightness that blinded even Lilith's eyes, but faded out as quickly as it flared. Removing her left wing to shield herself from the blinding light, the corrupted woman gazed at what she deduced was the little girl…but having developed a growth spurt that made her resemble the other woman. She was beginning to wonder if most of the women of the family this child was descended from shared remarkable similarities to one another, but one distinctive feature that separated her from Akira was what looked a pair wrinkle-like markings under her eyes.

Rumi, aged up by the power of the Angelbreaker, looked older than her mother and much more tougher than she used to be. The armor now enveloping her form, while still resembling those of the samurai, was much sleeker and the coloring was both gold and silver, as if…as if Akira had given up her half of the talisman to her without her knowing!

"Because the Israfel Twins say that the woman facing this woman is you, Rumi," she recalled her mother's revelation to her the day she found out about a four-page drawing the Angel twins had made based off a premonition-based dream. "I don't want to believe it, but you may be the only person standing between her twisted goal and the end of everything we hold most dear. I hate putting such a weight on your shoulders."

"You did only what you thought you had to," she uttered to herself, her voice mirroring her mother's, but still carrying a shade of her true self. "Fate is so unkind."

"You're…bigger?!" Lilith was disturbed by her ability to survive (and adapt) her assault, but she suspected that that talisman of hers was pulling off new tricks (and that this adult Rumi was just a temporary transition that couldn't last forever).

"When you nearly took me out of the game," Rumi told her, "I felt like a part of my life flashed in front of my eyes. It wasn't the life I was living before I turned six this year…but it helped me understand something I had said in at least one other lifetime."

Lilith, as the last of the screaming souls were absorbed into her body, snarled in hatred at the grown-up little girl.

"I had said something that I felt was justifiable toward the lady you resemble in a bad way…and I think it was after I found myself dead and forced to watch the man I love live an eternity alone because of her. She claimed to be protecting him from all the awful things in the world that would hurt him…but, somehow, I knew she was lying." Rumi continued.

"Yui Ikari's nothing more than a poor excuse for a mother that can't even do right by her child," Lilith responded, just as the Black Moon floated several feet away.

"I told her…that she had failed him, failed Shinji, and that he would have to spend eternity on a barren rock alone because of her and her husband, because they lied, manipulated and killed…even in the service of liars, manipulators and killers. My words were filled with hate. A righteous hate…because I couldn't be with him or take him away from that eternity of darkness and loneliness filled with pain, both directed at the people that deserved his hate…and at himself for being unable to die, to embrace death as he had embraced life when I met him for the first time as a baby. She couldn't protect him… She wasn't protecting him…because she was never truly there for him. How can you truly be there for somebody…when your soul is bound to a wretched existence that you're told is for the good of the people, but is only a lousy, misbegotten attempt to make a little child mature in ways that tarnish their hearts and souls…and you spend your semblance of eternal life as an ugly monument, meant to outlast all other things, just to prove people existed?"

"Those aren't mothers that make that choice," Lilith produced a larger, crescent-shaped scythe from her left hand.

"They're just poor excuses for mothers," Rumi then moved quicker than Lilith had seen, and was in front her face, wielding a large katana aimed directly at her nose. "Nothing more than poor, miserable excuses. Some can be forgiven…while others will be condemned. And I'll show you…a heart that shines full of hope."

SLASH! Lilith felt a cut being made across her face, but as she hovered backwards, she had seen images of a younger Shinji that showed him with three other children that had bald heads that were covered by wigs.

"That was the day Shinji went on a fun day with new friends to see a movie at the theater," Rumi revealed. "They had gone to see an action flick!"

SLASH-FLASH! Rumi flew down and cut Lilith's right arm, and in the process reveal a memory of the night she used the Angelbreaker to see Shinji in the hospital, sharing the same dream together.

"I had asked him during that visit if he would pretend to go steady with me, as I didn't realize I was falling in love with him at that time, reveling in the comfort of his presence, just as he reveled in the comfort of mine, which I had denied him for two days out of fear of you walking into the hospital and taking him."

"Aaaaurgh!" Lilith yelled out, swinging her blade, but missing Rumi. "Aaaaurgh!"

Rumi moved so fast that it looked like she was multiplying; Lilith hadn't ever achieved this sort of power over speed with her Fallenbreaker, making it impossible to keep up with the little girl. She widened her eyes at the sensation of a blade pressing against her nape.

"The power is so incredible, it's hard to fight the desire to do so much more with it," Rumi's child voice echoed behind her. "I want to do great good after this is over, but also to keep the Angelbreaker from falling into the wrong hands that would use it as a weapon. I've heard of the places that existed before Second Impact occurred…and I would like for those places to exist again. Can you imagine the places that existed before the devastation, returning after balance has been restored and people aren't consumed by hatred and pain?"

"Ever since the ocean-levels of the planet rose up," a new voice uttered, "the places that used to exist…exist only as shadows of their former beauty."

Lilith suddenly found herself surrounded by…the humanized Adam and all of his children, floating a safe distance from her. Even though she hadn't seen them, with the exception of Bardiel (and being able to recognize Adam as a human, no matter how he looked), she was somehow able to tell who was who based on their appearances alone, mostly because of albino-like coloration they possessed. Adam's eldest son, Zeruel, was the tall strongman that seemed to be an exaggeration of real strength and had his former core placed on his chest, looking like a hardened bump, the eldest daughter, Shamshel, a lovely representation of a woman, wielding a flaming whip in her left hand…and holding what looked like a defenseless infant in her right hand, and then the second-born son of Adam, Sachiel, who seemed associated to the waters of the ocean with his greenish hair and pale skin, as though he'd never been out of the water much of his own life. Then came the third son, Ramiel, Angel of Thunder, wielding a bazooka and possessing grayish-blue skin that were possibly an echo of when he was a large monolith that shot out energy blasts, followed by the only brother of the siblings that probably enjoyed the water more so than Sachiel, the trident-wielding Gaghiel with his blue eyes, red hair and bone-gray skin tone, followed by the large heavyweight that Lilith assumed had to be Sahaquiel, the Angel of the Sky, reduced to a sumo wrestler that was trying to lose weight rather than put on weight. The sight of two little girls that seemed alike, with the exception of their different hair coloring, had Lilith suspect that they were actually the former Angel known as Israfel, now reduced to twin girls, just like the Angel when it was split in half by the Second Child, and beside the twins was Bardiel, looking relieved of past issues and much stronger than he wasn't when they met the first time and she nearly killed him. Next was a young woman that looked like a twisted Snow White version of Shamshel with white hair and blue eyes, with a core on her forehead like Sahaquiel's, only smaller, so Lilith deduced that this girl was Arael, the Angel of Birds.

Wait, she realized something was wrong with this gathering of Adam's children. Where's the last one? There was one other Angel prior to my arrival.

She then turned back to Shamshel and at the baby she was holding; there was no way the child was hers, as she was only humanized in the month of July and was never confirmed to be pregnant when she was examined by NERV during their brief stay at that town, not even throwing up.

"Armisael," went Shamshel, identifying the baby in her arms, "just in case you were wondering about the little sister. I'm the only one she seems to take kindly to her holding the most."

"Yeah, she's the motherly one," said Ramiel.

"I can't imagine why," she responded, now expressing some measure sarcasm in her voice, "though I can't imagine what any of you could do to harm me."

"Whoever said they were going harm you, Lilith?" Rumi asked her.

Then, Adam raised his right hand, making a gesture that mirrored when a lord desired something from a servant, and then a chain…made of the clouds around them…latched onto Lilith's left arm!

"Eh!" She gasped, moving her limb to free herself from the chain of clouds, but the clouds moved wherever her arm did, and they felt as dense as steel and Bakelite when she attempted to activate Unit-00 for the first time instead of going through more simulations.

Adam then raised his head left, summoning more clouds chains to ensnare Lilith's arm, then right…then left again…and then forward until Lilith was ensnared by at least seventeen chains made from the clouds; seventeen to remind Adam that he and Lilith were equals in their statuses as harbingers of life and prosperity, his children that were alive…and his children that died, along with the Lilin (he didn't need to worry about his previous status as the would-be servant to the would-be masters behind his captivity, Kaworu Nagisa, because he still retained the memories of said boy).

"You really think a couple of chains are going to hold me?!" She questioned them. "This is childish!"

WHIP! A long, blazing whip had wrapped around her neck, causing burn marks to form on the flesh!

"Anytime you wish to deal in the endgame, Ms. Rumi!" Shamshel told the girl that could prevent the very end of the world.

Rumi then made the sword she had conjured in her hands melt away in her gauntlets and she flew toward Lilith's armored torso, aiming directly toward the spot where her heart was or should've been.

There's your weakness, Lilith, she thought, penetrating the dense armor of her enemy, finding the one organ she learned during her stays in the hospital that never ceased its activities in a day, right where you're devoid of everything warm and meaningful.

She had to own up to something she never truly thought of before, and that was that traveling inside a person's insides being very gross and she had to hope she wouldn't get sick after this was all over.

GASP! Lilith grabbed herself as she felt like her heart was on fire, something that was unusual to her in every sense! Her eyes saw things that weren't truly there now, all from the little girl's point of view! There was a memory that both surprised and disturbed her, mostly because of the setting, which was on a train, something she had rarely been on when she was Rei Ayanami. It was train ride toward a destination that was represented by its loneliness shared between two people.

-x-

A lonely ride

Rumi wasn't truly one to complain about the lack of people on the train, but the fact that it seemed that she and Shinji were the only ones currently in the car they had got on was a little unusual, since there was usually a lot of people taking the train to get somewhere. She got up off her seat and looked behind her toward the opposite end of the car and saw nobody present, not even near the doors to travel between the cars.

"Rumi," she heard Shinji, who was looking at an old picture book of his, say to her, "we've been the only two people on this train ever since we left home to travel to this Tokyo-3 place. I don't think anybody's going to jump onto this train until we reach the next stop."

"Heh-heh-heh!" Rumi chuckled, and sat back down in her seat and placed her left hand on the small counter beside the windowsill. "Sorry, Shinji. It just seems odd that we're the only ones here, not that I'm really complaining about it."

Shinji then set his book down and looked at her, removing his wig and chuckling at her young mind that had its moments of immaturity to counter the moments of maturity she demonstrated much of the time they were together.

"Maybe we should've asked one of the others to come with us," he suggested. "Like Nemo or…"

"Un-uh! I'm the responsible one for you right now! I'll make sure you're fine when we get to that city and then back home." Rumi persisted, wanting to show her maturity when it was needed.

"Rumi, we haven't even reached our destination yet," he reminded her, which was another hour before they made it to Tokyo-2, which was a few miles from where Tokyo-3 was. "I know Bumi, Kanami and the others instructed you to make sure I was fine when we get there…but we're not there just yet. You can be a little childish right now."

But Rumi nodded in the negative; right now, making sure her only nephew didn't succumb to his cancer if it ever tried to make itself known again to cripple him was her priority over her immaturity. She would have plenty of time to be herself when they were back home, though Shinji had to admit that she took her position as his current caretaker almost too seriously, like she was afraid she would do a terrible job at it and disgrace herself in front of everybody.

Still, Shinji did enjoy her as his company…in this present solitude where they were the only ones around, since she helped to strengthen his resolve to return home to Akira Town after seeing his father after more than ten years of the man's complete absence from his childhood, just to tell him that he no longer wanted or needed him in his life. He was grateful when Akira had asked him an hour after he saw his father's letter what he wanted to do if and after he saw him the next day, since the letter demanded he arrive the day after it was received.

"I'm not asking you if that man has suddenly developed a change of heart," she had told him, once she had found him out back on the porch, looking out at the town below them. "I want to know what it is that you want to do after you see him, if you intend to see him at all."

"Well… I don't think we'll be on good terms, even if I do see him again," he told her, "but I'd like for him to know that I don't need him in my life, anymore, to have him hear it from me. I am happy where I am. Honestly, truly."

"You mean, you wish to continue staying here, the only place where time does seem to stand still?"

"You asked me once, and I answered that I do, Akira. This is home, Heaven on Earth, and I wouldn't leave it for another place."

Rumi had helped herself to another ice cream stick from the box she got from the vending machine, once more offering it to her nephew before she ate it; he had already eaten only three of them, needing to avoid having cavities in his mouth. She decided that this would be the last one and closed the box up, saving the rest.

"Why meet him if nothing good will come out of it?" She soon asked him.

"To let him know he's a complete disgrace, amongst other terms of disappointment," he answered her. "I've had not a single conversation, meaningful or otherwise, with this guy ever since he dumped me at Bumi's, and the only time he had ever considered seeing me was on an anniversary day that doesn't mean much for me because it involves a woman I simply don't remember…and that was three years ago when I… When we had to go back to the hospital. It's…very difficult to consider wanting to spend more than a few minutes talking to him when your last memory of him is full of pain. If I had to think of that day any further, with a heart full of anger, whether or not it was misdirected, I'd suspect him of wanting me to be left alone…purposely…with my heartache."

Rumi then devoured the last of her stick and sighed. She hadn't told anybody this before, but whenever Shinji seemed to suffer from something…or someone that caused him great pain, her perception of him being taken away from the family was always being taken away by Gendo, him and his awful facial expression that mirrored a great shadow looming over everything. He was somebody she would've threatened with her skills with a hook sword to keep Shinji safe…because she wouldn't bring herself to leave this Tokyo-3 city without him, needing to protect him.

"Shinji, what does it mean when someone says, 'In solitude, where we are least alone'?" She asked him, having heard that somewhere before.

"Hmm? Oh, that's like…well, when people are in their rooms where it's quiet, peaceful, and there's no one to bother you. Where did you hear that from, anyway?" He explained to her.

"I think it was Nemo," she suggested, only knowing that she had heard the term before, but but not exactly knowing where.

"He is a knowledgeable otaku," he agreed with her, and then looked around them on the car, "and this is pretty much solitude, where we are least alone. It's quiet, with a nice view of the scenery outside the windows, and there's nobody to bother you."

Rumi smiled before putting her braided ponytail, which was in front of herself on her left side, behind her back and got off her seat and approached him.

"Uh, Rumi?" Shinji questioned, somewhat worried by her advance on him, and then she hugged him. "Heh-heh-heh…this is helpful."

"We go there, see the guy, find out why he wanted to see you after so long…and then we go back home, where we are at least at ease," said Rumi to him.

"Yeah… Yeah, Rumi."

"Attention, passengers," went a man's voice over the loudspeaker. "We will soon be approaching Tokyo-2. Have all your luggage and valuables before vacating the cars, please. Thank you."

The little girl then separated herself from her nephew and picked up her little bag while Shinji picked up his bag, which contained his extra medicine in case the ones Rumi held for him went missing, his change of clothes in case he spent more than day where he was heading, and his portable oxygen tank and mask that he sometimes needed due to arriving in places that might've possessed air pollutants that made it difficult for him to breathe with ease.

"Hey, Rumi?"

"Yes, Shinji?"

"Thanks for coming with me."

"You're welcome."

-x-

Lilith never felt such pain that was internal before in her life among the Lilin, her children that possessed the Fruit of Wisdom she carried within herself to bestow upon her descendants that would prosper for her and the ancestors they would come to know as their gods. The memories collected by the little girl were chaotic to her, like they had no sense of time and were filled with a fair measure of positive and negative emotions. She could…feel the girl's hatred…and her love, both of which caused her great pain that couldn't be matched by fire blasts or gunshots. It was nearly sickening!

"Stop!" She demanded, but Rumi persisted. "Stop! Stop!"

The next thing she knew, she saw the memory of the girl kissing the older boy, causing her eyes to flare red with hate!

"STOP!" Her screams echoed, and she ripped herself free of the cloud chains, surprising Adam and his children.

SURGE! She unleashed large waves of energy that sent the levitating former Angels flying backwards as she fell from the sky, heading toward the archipelago that had been devastated by the arrogance of mankind's inhumanity…and her own attempts to escape her shackles of imprisonment. Then, she reduced in size and mass, unable to maintain her hold on her egg, which fell after her.

"Stop the Black Moon from falling!" Adam yelled to his children, and they, with the sole exception of Armisael, due to her infancy, unleashed streams of energy that, defying logic, latched onto the sides of the former transport vessel and forced the former Angels of Adam's brood to strain as they kept it from falling and impacting into the planet like it did over four-billion years ago.

Zeruel, second only to his father, had finally understood what the Lilin meant by being pushed to their physical limits when exerting themselves to do something; he could lift and throw heavy objects with much ease, but the Black Moon of Lilith, which he suspected to be about the size of the planet's moon (based on what Arael had expressed about it during her time in space), had to be the heaviest object he had ever used his inhuman strength on, had to express himself with, "I can't believe I gave up my former status for this! This is insane!"

"Zeruel," went Shamshel, needing one hand to hold Armisael while using the other to hold the energy stream that was released from her palm, "for once, I agree with you on that last part. This is insane."

"Gah!" Armisael gurgled, and Shamshel noticed her exposed hand had an energy stream around it; the youngest humanized Angel was sharing the load with the eldest sister.

"Hey, Kou," Otsu Israfel uttered, atop her red-haired twin, holding onto her energy stream, "shift your balance more to the left!"

"We're both floating in the air, Otsu," the other responded harshly, "so shifting of one's balance doesn't really matter at this moment."

As they began to halt the Black Moon's descent back onto Earth, within said transport vessel, the people remaining had to hold onto whatever stuck to the ground to keep from impacting with the floor.

"Are we still on Earth?" Mayo asked the others.

"I don't think we ever left," suspected Nemo, getting up off the ground.

CRUNCH! Something had made a large, cranking or metallic mashing sound, and Taeko held onto Tsukiko's left leg, as she was the closest relative nearby.

Akira, raising up her staff and looking up at the darkness above their heads, saw nothing, but had to suspect that anything or anybody could hide up there in the shadows.

CRANK! Something had fallen loose from the shadowed ceiling and was falling toward them!

"Get back!" Akira shouted, and everybody backed away from the edge of the large pool of LCL.

SPLAT! A person, Lilith, reduced to the size of a regular person (she was about the same size her adult guise was before she reclaimed the rest of her true self), had impacted against the metal floor. Seconds later, she raised her head up to face them, her eyes regenerating from being reduced to pulp, and slowly got back up.

"You should look at yourselves," she told them.

"We're not done yet, Lilith," they all looked up and saw Rumi, floating down to the space of ground between the corrupted woman and the rest of them.

"Whoa!" Shinobu gasped. "Rumi?!"

The older Akira look-alike looked at her sister and responded, "This is a temporary transition."

Shinji and Older Shinji turned to face each other before facing back toward the little girl that had a supernatural growth spurt that they both were hoping was really temporary; this was just because, despite Shinji being in love with the girl, he felt she looked better still being little instead of now looking older than himself, while Older Shinji couldn't imagine Rumi looking older than Akira, even when he was still dying over three-thousand years ago.

Extending the ends of her crescent-shaped scythe once again, Lilith brandished her weapon of choice in front of the little girl that received a growth spurt from the Angelbreaker.

"Your memories and feelings are chaotic," she told her.

"In what way?" Rumi questioned; she didn't know what 'chaotic' meant when it came to memories and emotions, only that they were strong when valued.

"That way," she responded, being vague…and, somewhat, direct; truth be told, Lilith felt great pain from the memories of the little girl, for every emotion demonstrated by them, from the love she had for the former Third Child to the friendship she displayed in her relationships with her elder siblings and nieces, they were like a battle between a tyrannous legion of demons rich with hatred against a legion of angelic warriors, all fighting to change the world. "You make the souls I've already taken from the scraps of land above the water scream louder in my head, as well, augmented by the fact that we're all inside my egg, the Black Moon, the counterpart of the White Moon of Adam, which had become a memory once Adam was forced out of his slumber and he self-destructed."

Rumi could hear the screams of countless people emanating from within Lilith, most of them being a lot of kids screaming for their parents, mothers yearning for their children to be returned to them and fathers that would've made her smile at the thought of them being no different from Bumi.

"You should look at yourself, Lilith," she told her, just as her eyes and wrinkle-like markings under them glowed. "Look at yourself and see the very thing you cannot understand. And you hear people screaming at you, around you and within you. Most of them expressing emotions that you are familiar with…and emotions that you cannot comprehend. Let those souls go."

"Everyone's soul, even yours…belong to me…and I cannot let them go," she revealed, indicating that what she had done, she couldn't (or perhaps, she wouldn't) undo.

Taking the souls of everybody left on other parts of the ravaged planet have not mended the damaged inflicted upon her tortured soul, one of the male voices of previous wielders within the Angelbreaker spoke to Rumi. They are, unknowingly, waging an internal war within her with their desires to be free.

Lilith cannot fathom the power that comes from the ability to express love and friendship, one of the previous female wielders added in. She's trying to keep them scattered about to hold them at bay. But it is no use.

Then…Lilith propelled herself toward Rumi, turning her scythe onto its side, aiming for her neck!

"Die!" Her voice echoed through the chamber.

But Rumi, having a greater awareness of her surroundings because of the Angelbreaker, simply moved out of the way and grabbed Lilith by her neck! Then, she willed the talisman to send a surging amount of positive energy, fuelled by her emotions, into Lilith!

"Aaaaurgh!" Lilith screamed, and then her armored body shot out several tentacles that went flying in every direction! "Aaaaaurgh!"

"Whoa!" Older Shinji gasped, dodging two of the tentacles, even knocking Kanami and Anne-Marie out of the way of several other tentacles!

"Oh!" Taeko gasped, and Mayo picked her up and dodged another pair of tentacles. "Rumi, please, save the world!"

Shinji, unable to find a safe route to relocate himself to safety, was somehow Lilith's personal prisoner of some of her tentacles that seemed to strike at the floor in front of him every five seconds.

"Hey, I don't mean to be whining, but I can't get away from over here!" He told them.

"I'm coming, Shinji," went Kyoji to his great-great-grandson, but then one of Lilith's tentacles went and pierced his left leg. "Aaaaaurgh!"

He fell to the floor, wishing he had some water to at least staunch the bleeding he was going through.

Lilith, even though her unintentional strike on Yui's great-grandfather was only for an instant, had seen the darkest memory he had in his past, which was the day he had gone and murdered his own mother in order to save Akira from being killed by her; the memory helped to compare Yui to the lady that would go to great lengths to achieve her goals that earned her the fearful designation as the Blood Mistress. But the memory of the matricide seemed to be pale in comparison to the memory that Rumi possessed of having discovered a drawing Shinji had made that featured a pair of individuals that were similar to the two, engaged in a scene of intimacy that Lilith couldn't truly comprehend because there was only confusion to her on why a little girl would…commit such a disgrace with a boy that was older than she and, essentially, robbing the cradle…with her permitting it out of her affection for him.

"Naughty boy!" She heard the girl's words to Shinji, expressing her humor, however limited, at seeing how her nephew's sense of art could be influenced by both dreams and reality…and how she herself could be attracted to such perceptions. "Naughty girl, too!"

"Aaaurgh!" She continued her shrieking, this time sending a tentacle toward Yui, who was pulled to safety by Masamune; the aged man might've hated her for her choices, but letting anyone else die today (or have their soul sucked out of their body and be reduced to a hollowed shell or pulp) was not an option for him.

"Kami, may we see the salvation of this world," he uttered, something Yui couldn't help but agree with in her silence.

Older Shinji then rushed over to get his younger self to safety, unconcerned with getting struck by the tentacles; if no other form of murder could end his curse, then risking expendable pieces of himself to save his untainted self from the end of the world was worth the pain.

STAB! He felt one of Lilith's tentacles go through his back and out his chest before it retracted, halting his advance toward his younger self.

In my damnation…there was absolutely no one to talk to, no one to go to…and no one to bury, he thought, continuing his approach toward Shinji, just as another tentacle shot through his neck and out his waist. I had told that bastard and his wife that the difference between where I had lived for years after my abandonment…and the awful future they had left me with where there was no joy left…was that…at least in the town where there was a primitive culture mixed with a small degree of modernization that didn't progress into a future where everything wasn't recognizable, there were those that still buried their dead that was a major part of their lives. And if I was ever to see them again in another life…there was no way that we could ever remove the ties of detachment that had been made between the three of us. We were nothing more than strangers, and there was no way I would ever bury them if Death came to claim them for his own.

PIERCE! Another tentacle stabbed him in his forehead, as his personal demons of hate came further up to the surface of his mind, wracked with madness caused by pain and loneliness so great that there was hardly a form of soothing warmth that could lift his eternity of hurt that he had convinced himself that revenge upon his parents, his mother, especially, would eliminate his immortality and set him free from all of the pain that he'd been forced to put up with his entire life. But he was able to reach his younger self, helping him to get away, shielding him from the tentacles.

Shinji looked at his older, cursed self and wondered what he was thinking about, whether it was positive or negative. As much as he knew his older self despised their parents enough to desire their deaths (and he was one parent close to achieving his goal), he seemed to be held at bay by something that seemed stronger than vengeance. Little did he know that his other self was held back from the desire of vengeance; a little lady that held the biggest heart for him would be devastated if her true love suffered the worst fate…and it helped to remind him further of a life he treasured in his own past…and what he desired in it, even if it had to be in another version of the past.

Maybe my madness hasn't faded from my heart, he continued to think, turning to face Rumi, who was now looking at them escape danger, but I can't let my desire for revenge and escape from this eternity destroy what might be the only chance this boy has in escaping from the cold fate I was dealt with.

Rumi, hearing every thought going through Older Shinji's mind, gave a little smile at him for why he was doing what he was doing; even though he wanted revenge, even though he had gone insane from isolation in a world where they were taken from him by arrogance and false promises of hope and freedom, he still had a speck of hope for a better future. It reminded her of what she had heard off of Nemo's Beast Machines cartoons: "The seeds of the future lie buried in the past…for a better world." It made sense to her because Older Shinji was from a different future and he wind up in the past again, and was helping to try and change it.

Lilith, unable to escape the girl's grip on her, turned her sights on the two that shared the same name and raised her right arm up, firing a tentacle that wasn't intended to stab or cut through anything. No, she intended to entrap the two with her Fallenbreaker; she was for sure that she couldn't touch the child Shinji personally, but she decided to test her limits touching him with the artificial talisman Dr. Akagi had made to please that bastard that was beneath every proper definition of a real man.

"Oh!" Shinji saw the tentacle forming a lasso that encircled him and his older self.

"Oofph!" Older Shinji grunted as the lasso was tightened. "Lilith, Ayanami… You're as awful now than you were when they used you to destroy everything that exists right now! You're as twisted as I saw them all twisted!"

Lilith didn't need to be telepathic to guess who this immortal Shinji meant by 'they used you', and even when in great pain, it infuriated her to know who he might've meant.

"D…d… DON'T COMPARE ME TO THAT EMPTY-HEARTED MAN OR THAT DISGRACEFUL WOMAN THAT WILLINGLY USED EVERYBODY AROUND HER!" Lilith's voice roared like she was using dozens of megaphones to make herself known.

She then pulled them off their feet and sent them flying toward her.

"I'm the victim, too, Shinji Ikari! I'm the victim, too!"

Rumi, afraid for Shinji, both of them, released Lilith and Aero Channeled herself in between them to keep them from getting hurt (even though pain probably didn't matter to Older Shinji, being damned).

SLAM! She was hit by Older Shinji while Shinji himself had his wig fall off his head.

"Aw!" He groaned, both in pain from the impact…and his wig falling off. "Tell me something… Am I this horrible in your future after spending hundreds of years alone after the end of the world?"

"Argh… Un-uh," Older Shinji groaned, finding himself on Rumi's grown-up body, "this is just me running my mouth, tired of living…and wishing to see the true bright future for all of mankind."

"Well, Older Shinji," went Rumi to them, "I think it's safe to say that you got Lilith more angry than I ever could've."

"And she's about to choke your little bitch into the next world!" They heard Lilith say to them, having gotten back onto her feet, and immediately grabbed Rumi by her neck, squeezing the air out of her lungs. "You know what the three of you remind me of?! My empty, decimated heart!"

"Aaaaurgh!" Rumi choked, unable to move her arms because of Shinji and Older Shinji. "Aaaaurgh!"

Shinji tried to break free of the hardened tentacle, but it was too tight to move his shoulders.

Older Shinji then noticed something in plain sight: Lilith's left arm was positioned right in front of his younger self, close enough for him to grab while she used her arms to choke Rumi.

"Shinji, your hands!" He instructed him. "Your hands!"

He understood what he meant…and bent his elbows enough to grab Lilith's wrists; he knew he would never be the strong powerhouses that his older relatives were, but he still stood by what he had decided for himself when Rumi agreed to help him live longer, and that was making sure she didn't lose her life over his, which would be meaningless because he took her future.

"Aaaurgh!" Rumi could feel her mind fading out of consciousness as the air in her head thinned out.

"Grrr…aaaurgh…aaaugh! Aaaaurgh! Aaaaaaurgh!" Lilith suddenly screamed, seeing that her armored wrists were smoldering as the flesh beneath them burned from Shinji's touch. "Let go! Let go!"

She released Rumi's neck and ripped herself away from the fallen trio, having never felt like her flesh could suffer such agony as what could've compared to the inferno of the sun itself.

Rumi soon recovered and freed Shinji and Older Shinji from the tentacle and got up, wondering how Shinji was able to hurt her like that. At the same time, Shinji looked at his hands, seeing them as unchanged from the assault, just as Lilith recovered enough to frown at him like a deranged monster.

"How dare you, you worthless brat!" She called him, and then Shinji did the one thing that she never anticipated he could ever do to her: He raised his hands up and charged toward her! "Aaaahh!"

He grabbed her by left arm and her face, causing her intense pain allover again.

"Aaaaurgh! Aaaaaauurgh!" She screamed, the armor melting away, leaving her vulnerable. "Stop! Stop it! It's too much! Too much!"

Everyone else stayed back, fearing for their lives, but Rumi couldn't let Shinji do this any further; Lilith might've been corrupted, psychotic and unstable, but she knew pain enough to know that even she had her limits of tolerating it. She approached them and grabbed Lilith's left arm and Shinji's right shoulder, but then the Angelbreaker on her right arm acted up, causing her armored form to cast off a brightness that had only been seen a few times.

"Whoa! Aaaahh!" She and Shinji gasped, and then everything disappeared into the light.

-x-

"Hey, what the Hell's going on in there?!" Zeruel wondered, asking his family as the inside of the Black Moon gave off several holes with light flooding out of them.

"Whatever it is, I just hope it's a sign of hope," went Bardiel in response.

"Same here, little brother," added Shamshel. "Same here."

-x-

"Wha… Huh?" Rumi came to, finding herself in what looked like an auditorium for some grade school. "Where…where am I?"

"One of my worst nightmares," she turned around and saw Shinji, laying on his back on the stage, looking at her. "I had to write an essay once on describing how I view isolation, and this is it."

"An auditorium? Yeah, I can…understand why it would be an ideal place of isolation."

"Be careful, Rumi. Lilith's behind you on the floor."

Rumi turned around again and saw Lilith, crouched on the floor against what appeared to be the only door in or out of this large room, facing her. But Lilith seemed different now; she was dressed in the same yukata she saw her in the day they were on the bridge back home, and her face was partially obscured by her hair covering its left side. Despite what Rumi was thinking about her, Lilith seemed like Shinji did after receiving a transplant or after coming out of a surgery, exhausted and wasted.

"I don't understand you two," she spoke up then, sounding like she did when they met her for the first time, weak and helpless. "I felt so close to being free from the shackles of my torment…and you two were all that stood in my way. How? How is it…that you two are able to stand in my way and not fall into despair? I'm older than you, stronger than you…but you still managed to get the better of me."

Rumi sighed and went over to see how Shinji was doing right now, never once wondering why she was returned to her six-year-old self. She sat on the stage and propped his head onto her lap once she found nothing wrong with him (she couldn't even find any former places she knew were signs that he'd been harmed by Lilith).

"I have someone in my life that makes it worth living each day," she told Lilith, placing her left hand on Shinji's chest, feeling his heart beat. "I didn't realize it until this summer started that there was a person that made my view on everything clear. And then one day, he was nearly taken from me because of others that couldn't understand him. They would never understand him…because they were absent from his life too long, and…I feared what they would do if they wanted him back."

"Like I'd ever go back to them," Shinji sighed, never wanting to be reminded of the awful memories of his parents leaving him alone during that awful point in time where his life's direction changed from north to southeast. "Our paths just crossed, albeit unintentionally. There was never any real desire to face you back then…but it was inevitable. Things just went bad."

"And yet…you still hold onto a selfish belief that this little girl can save your life, by means of an ancient artifact that's all that remains of an older talisman that was paired with me before I arrived on this blue marble your predecessors started to devastate over the years with their wars, their plagues, their garbage, unable or unwilling to seek better solutions."

"Not everybody has done such acts, Lilith. And nobody ever asks to be associated to those that do such awful things," Rumi told her; she was able to understand how certain people could not put up with the choices made by others before they became aware of the repercussions of such choices…or how the choices made involved them in some way that was against their will. "Why would Shinji want to aid a bunch of people that kept such awful secrets, unforgivable truths, especially those that used you to try and achieve their goals? Why would anybody younger than the people that decided to go maim the world and render it so messed up than it probably was over ten years ago…want to help people like that? You'd be kept in the dark on many things, never revealed everything on why you're tasked with aiding the ones holding the hidden truths in the maze-like web of lies. Do you honestly believe anyone that didn't know the entire outcome of something viewed as terrible would want to do something as awful as make you cast the world into darkness…or nothingness…or worse than that, Lilith?"

The mother of mankind didn't respond to her question.

"I had a heart attack for the first time this summer," Shinji spoke up again. "It nearly ended my life…and I recalled memories of the last time I saw that woman before she left me. Her perception of a bright future for people…was awful in its outcome. Who would want a future like that where everyone had to pay a heavy price?"

"People…that can't see beyond what it is that they truly want," she finally spoke in response. "People that can't accept that they've done things in their past that they may never be able to atone for, so they may attempt to erase any sins that they themselves committed in the past instead. Man's greatest flaw is their belief in the illusion that is separation. They fail to see how they are all one and the same, living with divisions, races, territorial boundaries and the like. They used to view what didn't make sense to them as magic and then adjusted to what they defined as science…which they abuse around the clock, creating things that cause greater pain than any one person alone is capable of. People…like that bastard and his bitch…decide to go bring about the end of all life on the planet and sugarcoat their reasons for doing so by saying that they're trying to save the world. Heh-heh-heh…what a lousy falsehood that is for those that are fed that bull."

Rumi raised her left hand closer to Shinji's head before she said, "Yeah. It is a lousy falsehood to use on others that don't know the whole truth. Is that part of the reason you did what you did to everyone left in the world? To be free from such half-truths and flat-out lies?"

"More than that. Much more than that. To be free from manipulation, from abuse, enslavement. I hated my own children for using me so much that I wanted to punish them for their sins. Was being locked away for countless generations by those before the ones that would use me to create their shadows of higher authority my punishment…just for arriving on a world that was already under the ownership of one of my fellow harbingers of life? That's something I could never find out…and nobody told me that another harbinger was already here."

"Nobody's perfect, Lilith," Shinji told her. "People make mistakes. They either try to fix them, lessen their potential consequences…or they end up paying for them in one way or another."

"Like me?" She asked him.

"Like them, the ones responsible for the death of half the world…and trying to eliminate the rest of the world that lost much just trying to rebuild," he expressed. "Lilith… People may be a flawed, scattered bunch that live under beliefs older than themselves, like religion or bureaucracy, trying to obtain great wealth or maintain it, achieve immortality or simply outliving others they might despise or some nonsense like that, but they're worth embracing when they find the right path that is theirs to take. People can change for the better if given the chance to. Even you can change…if you wanted to."

Then Lilith got up, slowly approached the stage and said, "Is that what you truly believe…or is it just what you think?"

"It's both, Lilith," said Rumi to her. "And…maybe it'll never be the type of freedom you want, but…people that want to escape the confines of their current lives often manage to do so by just leaving the people that try to control them or cause them problems, severing their ties, relocating to different places, building lives that are theirs to decide upon. It's similar to freedom. It's just called independence…uh, right, Shinji?"

"That's right, Rumi," he looked up at her and nodded. "And people are free to choose how they'll live, who they want involved in their lives…and…who they choose…to devote themselves to…if they find someone they care for."

Lilith looked at the two and could finally see why, no matter what she tried, no matter how hard she struggled, she would never beat them or cause them an awful end…because they were connected. The two were bound by something much stronger than any form or measure of cruelty and manipulation; deep down, she knew in her heart what it was that kept them together, but she couldn't bring herself to admit it. She had failed in her goal, just as the ones that tried to exploit her had failed in theirs…and would have to pay the price for their attempts and ambitions. It reminded her of her past from long ago, from a time when only survival of memories mattered to her, from across the stars and beyond the galaxy that was the Milky Way, when she had seen another pair that refused to be separated from each other due to the interference of others. They had refused to be parted so much that they took their own lives and couldn't be brought back, even with the power they possessed.

Crack! Lilith turned to the left side of the auditorium and saw a large crack on the floor and side of the wall, like glass fracturing.

"The souls I've taken are breaking out as the comet leaves the atmosphere of the planet," she explained the reason for the crack. "I've failed in my goal. I couldn't absorb all the souls left in the world. There were only less than ninety-million left that weren't absorbed."

Had Rumi paid much attention to her right hand, she would've noticed her lack of jewelry, she might've been fearful of having Lilith this close to her and Shinji, but she wasn't concerned; Lilith was beaten, unable to take any more souls into herself to become whole from her point of view, and that was that.

Crack! More cracks around the room formed, causing Rumi to become more protective of Shinji, in the worst case that any cracks that formed above their heads had fragments fall on them.

"Shinji," she said to him.

"Yeah, Rumi?" He responded, feeling drained of all of his energy, left exhausted.

"I love you."

"I love you, too, Rumi. Very much."

"You're like my best friend."

"Likewise."

SHATTER! The whole room fragmented into pieces and fell into darkness.

-x-

CRACK! The Black Moon had a series of lines forming on it until it became like a ball that had been cut many times in cubes, allowing the souls that had been taken to scatter about as Rayden's Comet left the skies, returning the blazing scenery to its ordinary night.

"Is it over?" Bardiel asked Adam.

"I don't know," Adam responded, wishing he knew.

Then, the Black Moon began to fade away, as if it was being erased from existence. When it faded away completely, the humanized Angels fell to the planet, unharmed by their reentry.

-x-

The interior of Terminal Dogma felt stable, like it was on the ground once more, and its visiting occupants were out cold on the ground in front of the red cross that once held Lilith, who reawakened in front of the sleeping pair that had defeated her. She looked at her reflection in the LCL and saw that her face had changed and no longer resembled Yui's; now she had eyes that were the opposite of the humanized Adam's, with a jaw and chin that were more rounder than Yui's that were angular in shape, along with her hair being the pale shade of blue that she had in her Rei Ayanami guise, except that it was the same length and style that helped her escape half of Yui's shadow. But her expression was one of sadness, sadness at a revelation of all of her goals coming to naught.

"You were never able to win, Lilith," she heard Shinji's voice in her mind. "You were deprived of the things you really needed in this life. My parents made you weak…so you never knew of love or friendship. So…you should go out and see for yourself how much they matter to you. Find your freedom that is away from the people that exploited you, knowing that they can never do so again."

She shed tears at the revelation of her defeat and got up to flee the chamber, but stopped to look at the two lovers, seeing that Rumi was awake, looking up at her.

"Damn you two," she told them, just as Shinji awoke, her voice full of shattered hope. "Damn you two…for being the only ones to understand how I truly felt."

With what remained of her Fallenbreaker talisman, Lilith fled out the chamber, crying over how she was handed her greatest defeat by two kids that had preserved the future of this world, and how their feelings of love and friendship prevailed over the feelings of hatred and vengeance she possessed. So much so, that she couldn't raise her hands in violence toward them; the mere thought of killing them, even if she could, wouldn't change the fact that she was defeated by their devotion to one another. As she fled the restored whole of NERV HQ, Shinji had fallen back to sleep, watched over by Rumi, who looked at everyone else around them, present and unconscious, seeing a lone woman rise up. It was Yui, freed of her bindings and looking at them as though she meant to approach them.

Rumi looked around where she and Shinji laid and found one of her hook swords nearby, picking it up and raising it at the older woman. She didn't need to say anything to Yui, who didn't even try to approach the two; the raised sword and frown were obvious of Rumi stating to her that if she tried anything, if she tried to get within a foot of Shinji, the little girl that loved her son more than anything else would make her regret more than the choices she already had to repent for. A whole lot more.

Yui looked at Shinji, whose days were probably at an end because of his artificial cancer Naoko had cursed him with, but would've probably lived more with these people that cared about each other as siblings and other family terms of endearment, regardless of whether there were blood ties between them or not. And worse was what she had to admit in her darkest nightmares of actually failing at being a parent…and how she robbed her sister of that privilege, that rite of passage, the very transition from immaturity to maturity. She wasn't sure if she heard Rumi say it to her or if she simply imagined her saying it, but someone had told her that she failed Shinji the day she let herself be consumed by the Eva, leaving him with his father, who abandoned him shortly after to devote his time to trying to be with her again.

"You are not protecting him!" The person, sounding just like Rumi, had spoken out to her. "You're not even there for him! You never were! All you've done is hurt him with your absence, never once helping him to come out of his shell of isolation and get over the hurt of his being without parents. He once hit a low so low that he tried to kill himself when he thought he was being replaced by someone that wasn't sick or dying, never once knowing that he was going to make a terrible mistake until his grandmother stopped him and broke him out of his pit of misery over his constantly-absent parents. He still had the pain of their absence, but it was pushed to the bottom for nearly six years. There were no words that could describe his transition from discontent to content. But then his father had to try and use him after ten years of non-involvement in his upbringing…only to be rejected. I would not have Shinji hurt again by anyone, for any reason, even by the people whose blood runs in his veins."

She then turned to look at the older Shinji, who seemed just as vulnerable as his younger self when asleep, but he also looked like he was deprived of anger in that state, unlike when he was awake. He sought out her death to end his eternity of living, fueled by an insatiable hunger for revenge…and a great measure of Thanatos, the Death Drive…because of the loneliness he was dealt by the gods for what his parents had done. The decade she spent in the Eva was nothing compared to the centuries he spent alone on a lifeless Earth from another time, in another dimension where the Third Impact came and the Human Instrumentality Project destroyed his already-devastated life after his family was taken from him by them. Sighing, she turned back to Rumi and the younger Shinji before uttering out a small bunch of words that the little girl took more as a parting than a potential warning or threat.

"Take care of him," she said, and then left out the chamber.

Rumi inhaled and placed the sword down. It was only then that she noticed her lack of jewelry on her right arm. She doubted she would find it, since it was possible that it simply disappeared from existence, as the world had now been saved and would go on. So she laid against Shinji and held him until she fell back to sleep.

-x-

"…Bumi?" Miaka uttered to her husband, unable to see any damage caused to the mysteriously-restored Tokyo-3 or much of the land making up Hakone by the rising of the Black Moon of Lilith.

He looked at her, just as confused by everything that had happened, but had to suspect that what they found out from Akira about what could've happened had everything happened without much interference from anybody that wanted to make a positive difference in the world…prevented its end and the loss of all life on the planet.

"I think Akira and Rumi did it, honey," he then responded to her. "They saved us all."

-x-

Waking from a world of darkness and fire, Gendo, miraculously healed from his life-threatening injuries, all save the wounds Lilith had inflicted upon him and the burns he inflicted upon his hands by accidentally losing control, found himself back in the Geo-Front. The last time he ever recalled, he'd been shot dead after seeing Lilith return to the rest of her real body and escape Terminal Dogma, and now he was alive in front of NERV HQ and thinking of escaping before anyone that could come after him; with NERV and SEELE's secrets known to the public worldwide, along with his involvement in the Instrumentality Project and the Evas, if it wasn't the death sentence he was in for, it was the rest of his life behind bars. Either way, he wouldn't walk away unscathed.

Before he took his first step to the nearest elevator to the city above, somebody had stepped out of the front doors of the pyramidal building. A young woman, dressed in a plugsuit similar to the one used by Lilith when she was Rei Ayanami…and looked almost like her, except older and not an albino, with small wings on the back, and she was carrying a small book. He recognized her greatly, mostly due to the fact that she hadn't aged a day ever since the Contact Experiment that made her the soul behind Unit-01; he could never forget his wife.

"Yui," he uttered, almost a whisper.

Yui, having found a scrapbook that appeared to be a copy of an original, looked toward Gendo and saw how time and desire, obsession and devotion had taken their toll on him.

"Gendo," she responded.

-x-

"…I don't think we'll be finding Yui any time soon," said Akira to Masamune, waking up hours later to the new day, August Thirtieth, walking up the stairs of NERV HQ, not only looking like it was untouched by conflict, but occupied by the people that were previously dead, murdered by Lilith, restored to life and vacating the facility.

"It probably won't matter in the end," he responded to her. "She was declared dead over ten years ago. Even if she was still alive, she has nothing to live on."

"I doubt she's even alone; I had Nemo look around for… Well, there was no luck in finding what was left of Yui's spouse, so I can only assume that he might've been revived like the others."

"But he's a wanted man, like the rest of SEELE's group. Even if, by some sort of miracle, he did flee the very country…he'd be wanted elsewhere. I…had a lot of information saved up on GEHIRN, NERV, SEELE, the Evas and the Human Instrumentality Project ever since I was forced to join them."

"How's Anne-Marie taking their disappearance?"

"She'd rather forget about it all. How's Shinji taking it?"

"The one that's sick or the older one?"

"Both."

"Neither of them wants to talk about it. Older Shinji, though…he's still immortal, unable to die."

"Can't you just…use that talisman of yours to relieve of such a curse?"

"I don't have the Angelbreaker, anymore. Rumi lost it."

"I'm sorry."

As they reached the top floor and walked out the base, Rumi stayed with Shinji and Older Shinji as they had to use the bathroom; Nemo, being the only experienced Hydro Channeler Shinji trusted the most outside the hospital, had to help him with using the toilet while Older Shinji, having been freed of his cancer ever since the end of his former life, merely used the toilet and washed his hands. She wasn't sure how to get over the fact that she had lost the Angelbreaker after defeating Lilith, or how she was ever going to make it up to her mother for losing such an invaluable artifact…or how she would be able to save Shinji without the relic of great power.

Maybe it's like the Witchblade artifact from the television series, she wondered, since the artifact possessed the power of self-awareness. It could…and would abandon its wielders in their time of great need, when it's needed most. Did it abandon me, knowing that I would need it to save Shinji?

The door to the men's restroom opened it and her Shinji came out, looking down at her.

"You…waited for me the whole time?" He asked her.

"Yeah," she answered. "Why not?"

Older Shinji came out from behind his younger self, seeing her, and sighed at the weight of knowing he was still immortal. Then, he walked away from them.

Shinji looked at Rumi again and then pointed at his older incarnation; he was suggesting to her that she go talk with him, keep him from going back into his insanity that had consumed him in the years he'd been alone in a dead world and tortured by unforgivable minds.

Rumi nodded and chased after the older boy. She found him at the place where they had encountered Unit-01 for the first time, looking at Asuka meeting a woman that had red hair similar to her own, looking like she was in her early-thirties, wearing a hospital gown that covered her like a dress. They saw Asuka run into the older woman's arms and hugged her tightly.

"I'll make it all up to you, Asuka," the woman told her, just as the girl shed a few tears. "I promise you on my heart."

Older Shinji sighed at the happiness he assumed Asuka was going to find later in her future after reconciling with her formally deceased mother, as they were able to connect after years of loneliness and deprivation of much-needed love and attention.

If only everyone's problems could be solved like that, he thought, feeling minor envy over how the former Second Child would get on with her life…but he wouldn't, not with an eternity of unrest.

"Hey," he turned to face Rumi, who looked up at him. "Is it alright if we talk for a while? You and I?"

"Yeah," he answered her, and she led him away from the cages.

"How are you holding up?" She asked him once they were away from the Soryu women.

"I…feel like nothing is going to change for everybody," he told her. "I mean… People probably don't have to worry about Lilith now that she's humanized, Third Impact's been prevented, the Evangelions are useless, most of the people responsible for Second Impact will be brought to justice, but…those two crazies got away…and I'm still cursed with this immortality that I really want to get rid of so I can…"

Rumi pressed her back against the wall and crossed her arms; Older Shinji was the opposite of her Shinji in just way that she had to thank Nemo for providing her with Greek-themed information on during her time on the Internet, and that was his possessing the Death Drive, Thanatos, for a long time after being made immortal, which was the opposite of her Shinji's Life Drive, Eros. He longed for the final moments of life so that he could let go of the emotional baggage he'd been forced to carry ever since his life was destroyed, whereas his younger incarnation had only been under its influence due to his parents' complete absence in his life, then desiring the right to live a happy life after her mother saved him from making the wrong choice. She wouldn't question his desire to have his life in the mortal coil of existence to end completely, but she couldn't except that he had wanted to let go of living when he could embrace the future he had helped to bring to the people. However, she could suspect why he wanted to pass away for good: He missed his family that resided in the afterlife, having wanted nothing more than to die after his Rumi had been killed right in front of him.

"Does…putting an end to yourself mean that much to you?" She questioned his motive.

He faced her and before he could answer her, the sight of his younger self made him pause; Shinji seemed so hopeful of something relating to him, but the older version never seemed filled with much hope back when he himself was fourteen years old.

"I appreciate everything that was done to help me and all," he uttered, "but my presence is…overwhelming in a way. I might be Shinji, but I'm from a different world that met a different fate…and I lost people that meant more to me than I'll ever be able to express…and I can't integrate myself into a life that isn't truly mine's to live."

"You mean…you don't want to steal a life belonging to another you is what you're saying," Rumi corrected him, understanding some of what he was trying to say to her. "You long for your life. Your aunts and uncles, your cousins, grandmother…and me."

Older Shinji pressed his back against the wall opposite of hers and sighed, "You must think I'm pathetic right now for wanting all of that."

"You're not pathetic," she assured him. "I've met pathetic people this summer…and you're not one of them. Not even close to pathetic. If anything, you're just…looking for release, your ramp for your descend from the air or something like that. I…I want to see you happy… The both of you. I love you both…more than I'll ever be able to express. So…if being mortal once again, just so that you can pass away and go to that…peaceful place high up in the sky…then I'll go find the Angelbreaker, hoping that, while it can't bring an end to anybody's life, maybe it can set people free from curses that aren't like sicknesses. That's what I was… It's what I was putting my hopes on the moment I became aware of what the Angelbreaker could do. It can render Angels human like ourselves, endow chosen wielders with great powers that are beyond belief and make them more than regular people. I wouldn't call anybody wielding such a talisman a kami, but a guardian would fit their designation well…because that's what I feel like each time I used the talisman. I'm just a guardian; I don't try to decide anyone's fate that results in people being unhappy for a long time, and I don't like being called anything that's demeaning to one of my status as an aunt to my nieces and nephew and a little sister to my elder siblings. Have you…ever been called something that was demeaning to you?"

Older Shinji's facial expression became deadpanned and he uttered, "I've been called 'Third Child', 'the specimen', 'the test subject', and 'abomination', all of which were demeaning to me. I'm no third child to anybody…or a second child. I had no siblings…and this god-given curse put me in a terrible disposition for scientists to poke and prod at. They thought immortality could be obtained from me, having no idea that it's nothing but an awful penalty…or what it takes from you in return for longevity and accelerated healing. I couldn't eat anything after waking up on that dead world I was left with, even if there was anything edible, which there wasn't."

"Gomen nasai, Older Shinji," Rumi apologized; she had unintentionally brought up awful memories of his loneliness in the past.

"It's okay. It wasn't your fault. You didn't know. I haven't had anyone to talk with for a long time. And…I don't want you to waste your time trying to find the Angelbreaker just to help me. Maybe it disappeared after deciding it was no longer needed to save the world. Or…it just relocated itself back to where it slumbered for decades prior to being put back into work. And, anyway, you need it to save your boyfriend, don't you?"

"Of course, I need it to save him…but you need saving, too, you know. I met you just a few hours ago, and…already, I feel like I've known you, another guy named Shinji Rokubungi, only all grown up and looking like you'd been in the hospital for most of your life instead of being at home with your family and friends, for a long time. I want to see you happy. I'm positive that your Rumi desired your happiness more than anything in the world."

"She did," he told her. "You did. I don't think anything would've made me happier than to…to…"

"To what?"

Shinji stayed away so as to not interfere in their conversation…or listen in on it; whatever his older self was saying to Rumi, it must've been heavy on the immortal that suffered greatly.

"To just walk away from this place with her…just like we were supposed to, away from the violence, from the manipulation and exploitation. To go to that one place that eats away at the cruelty of the other places you've been to." He explained to her.

"You mean…home?" She asked him.

"That was truly…all that meant anything to me. It was the only place I ever felt at peace."

"It…it is our haven. Our temple, our sanctuary, the one place where darkness can't prosper."

"Shinji…" A voice, identical to Rumi's, maybe a little immature, had called out in the hallway, catching their attention. "Shinji…"

Rumi, Shinji and Older Shinji went down the hall and turned a corner, spotting a glowing light shining around one of the doors leading outside the building. Walking away from the light was…a little girl, who looked exactly like Rumi did when they first arrived to Tokyo-3. She was glowing, like how…angels were believed to glow when they visited the loved ones they had left in life.

"Shinji Rokubungi," she greeted the older incarnation of the dying boy, looking very happy to have met him, "it's time to go home."

Home? Shinji himself thought, confused by this little girl he had to suspect was an angel, here for her Shinji, not him. She must be his Rumi.

Older Shinji then looked at his younger self and his Rumi before he bowed his head and slowly walked over to his Rumi, feeling like his heart had finally stopped beating, meaning only one possibility, and that was he had finally been freed of his curse, made mortal again…and allowed to die, right then and there…before moving on. As he walked closer and closer toward the angelic child that had saved his life as many times as you could count, he felt like he'd inched closer to the floor. Looking at his hands, he found they were tiny, like his hands from when he was fourteen.

Rumi and Shinji's eyes widened at the sight of Older Shinji having been regressed back to the age of fourteen; it was probably as a means to symbolize the age the two had arrived in the city…and how they would depart.

"Hey, you two," he caught their attention, as he became see-through as a result of his passing into the afterlife. "Please, tell the others that…I'm happy that you found me…and that I'm happy that you were part of my life."

The two held hands and nodded in the positive, and the former immortal was now within hand-holding contact with his little auntie, who held out her left hand for him to take…and he took it.

"Shinji Rokubungi, I must've searched these halls forever," the fading Rumi told her nephew. "I was worried I might never find you. Where were you, anyway?"

"I'm sorry I worried you, Rumi. It wasn't like I really had a choice. For you see, I had to wait over three-thousand years for another little girl, who was just like you, to show me the way home." The boy told her, just as he faded away with her.

"Hey, Rumi?" Shinji spoke to his little girlfriend.

"Yeah, Shinji?" She responded.

"Can we go home now, please?"

"Yeah, sweetie. Let's go home now."

-x-

"…So…this town that your mother founded and helped to build," went Sora to Tsukiko, helping her fill her eldest brother's jeep with water. "Is it a big place?"

"It's bigger than this place, that's for certain," she answered him. "So…you used to live in Osaka?"

"I loved the sights," he expressed, remembering the parts of the city he used to reside in with great clarity. "The tall buildings, the cherry blossom trees, the beauty of how it looked at night. Heh, one of the things I loved about that city was that I could outrun my father and brother on the way home."

Tsukiko chuckled at this discovery. And then she told him, "I actually went to the city once when I was nine. I thought the buildings were so tall, they rivaled mountains."

As they continued to converse, Asuka was introducing her resurrected mother to Akira, who found the woman's revival (from Mrs. Soryu's point of view) to be the result of her daughter's victory over Lilith, as well as her want to do right for Asuka. The super-centenarian woman had to admit that Kyoko Soryu's daughter was the spitting image of her mother, though she had to overlook the hint of anger that still resided after years of being without her. One of the other things that Asuka had to come to terms with was the acceptance of life truly being mysterious and amazing after seeing an alternate version of Shinji disappearing into the afterlife after living for over three-thousand years, having gone off to find Shinji and Rumi.

"Did he go with a smile when he moved on?" She had asked Rumi and Shinji when she met up with them, wanting to know at least that much.

"So…what will you do now?" Nemo asked the Soryu women.

As Kyoko expressed wanting to see Kyoto where Asuka was working with a bunch of other teens were working at for this Medical Angel that Masamune had founded, along with rebuilding her life. When everything was said and done, the goal to go home was put into action…and Tokyo-3 was left as a ghost town for the time being, until the Japanese government could decide how to deal with it; a place designed as a fortress city against an enemy that people were never warned of was clearly no place for anyone with families to reside in, not even worthy of vacationing in.

"After we get home," went Akira, opening up her glider, "I'm considering the postponement of the new school year for a small period of recovery."

Rumi and Shinji looked at each other before raising their hands to show the victory sign.

"Heh-heh-heh…at least until the Fifteenth of September," she added on.

"Works for me," responded Mayo.

Then, they took off, heading back home.

-x-

They had waited until the city was abandoned before they made their way toward a boat that Gendo had hidden away from the people. It was one of those large boats that were modeled after speeding boats but were able to keep in line with the type of boats that people lived in for months or years. The plan, according to Gendo, was to get away and start over elsewhere. Once they were out in the ocean, at least five miles away from land, Gendo allowed himself the leisure of resting for a while as the boat was now on auto-pilot, allowing him to recover from the burns he self-inflicted on his hands, leaving Yui awake to continue reading the scrapbook she had found out was made by Shinji. The woman flipped through several pages, seeing more of the decade of a life she had missed out on.

"The two of us together again, Yui," she heard Gendo say to her. "The way it was meant to be."

"Yes, Gendo," she responded, and noticed how he had fallen asleep, leaving her alone to continue reading the book.

Each page was a fragment of a life spent with people that helped you to live more in each day than you probably did in a week, month or year. Her son had a smile in each photo clipping there was of him in the book, and there were these relatives of Gendo's adopted family that went to extreme lengths to see him come out of his solitude and pain…and they succeeded. But the little girl, Rumi…she seemed to possess the highest degree of freeing him from the misery…along with Akira, who stopped him from taking his life. It was like they, out of the rest of the people he lived with, were the ones he felt the strongest connection with, more so than anyone else alive, like Rumi represented his heart while Akira represented his spirit. Three years since her son made the original scrapbook when he was eleven, and his efforts in those three years showed on each page…along with showing what she had missed out on.

He knows the truth now, she thought, turning to the last page. He knows what we've done…and there's no way he'll forgive us. They'll never forgive us…or me. Ever.

"You helped put an end to countless lives when you messed with forces that were best left alone!" The ghost of her mother had shouted at her; this had occurred earlier in their conversation within the Eva. "You're as cruel as they come in women, Yui! You say you're saving the world, but all you've done is maim it. How many lives do you have to put an end to or reduce to shells of their former selves full of misery until you're satisfied with yourself or have achieved your sick goals?! What is the total number? How many people that had nothing to do with your goals were to be offered up? And in the end, are they all truly worth it? Was treating Anne-Marie like a guinea pig worth the hate she has for you? Were your advancements in science worth the cost of murdering one of your fathers and forcing the other to side with your erstwhile masters because they needed the financial security he was skilled with? Was your so-called 'bright future' worth killing me and abandoning your son?"

"Even if she could come back from death," she heard her son's thoughts in her mind, having experienced this revelation earlier before regaining consciousness after Lilith was defeated, as though he had actually spoken them to her, "exactly as she was before she died, nothing would change. I'd still have the awful memories of what happened. I'd still know that…that awful man dumped me in the aftermath and told me that I had no value to him…and knowing later that he viewed me as worthless. You could rewrite history as much as you wanted to, but what's done is done, and there's no changing that. There's no going back once a choice is made."

"My only crime…was being related to a deranged woman that would stop at nothing to see her goal realized, never realizing that it didn't have everyone's best interests in mind…and they all got reduced to an ocean of blood in a nightmare that they would never wake from." Older Shinji's words to Anne-Marie were heard in her mind soon after.

"Every time I ended up making a new friend, I find out later on that they know about my sister and then they make up excuses in order to not hang around me." Anne-Marie's voice followed suit. "A handful of people say I resemble my sister to a degree…but I don't see the resemblance between us. There's only my grand hatred of her."

"I'd still care about Shinji, alive, dead or nonexistent." She heard Rumi now, and was replaying the moment down in Terminal Dogma that was between the two of them, and how the little girl picked up her sword and made it clear that her son was off-limits to her as penance for her crimes, her sins. I would spare Shinji further pain from anybody that would or has harmed him, even if those people are his own parents, guilty of abandoning him to pursue other goals that led to the end of the world. What kind of parents do such things, even to their children, and expect to get away with it? I don't know who said this before, but I heard someone say it: "If you're not fully prepared to take care of that child, then you shouldn't involve yourself any further". If you, Yui Ikari, were not as committed to your son before you decided to go play with forces you had no right to mess with, then why did you go and have him with that pathetic disgrace that's your husband? Did you get some sick, twisted satisfaction at playing house and family? Playing games where you're the only one that enjoys the outcome or when you don't play by the traditional rules with others? Or maybe it's leaving people in the dark, never letting them know what it is you're dead set on doing to them? You…made your father worry in excess about Anne-Marie. About what's going to happen to her, what somebody's going to try to do to her, every waking moment she's not in his sight. And you make me worry about Shinji. What you might've done to him, along with Gendo, had I not been around to stand up for him and keep him safe…and what you might do to him if any of us let him go. I won't let you have him back, Yui. I won't let you hurt him like before.

Setting the book down, she looked at the main fuel storage system and opened its tank before looking at her husband; it wasn't one of her best choices in her history of choices, but when the realization of how she and Gendo had created awful pages in the lives of their respective families, starting in the past and carrying onward into the present, it made sense to her that she had a responsibility now to put an end to the sad story that was the both of them so that their relatives could be free. She took one last look at Gendo and gave him a sad smile.

"It will be…just like old times, Gendo," she told him, and then lit a match.

In that instant, her final vision was of the mother she shamed with her existence, her biological and legal fathers, both of which she disgraced with her decision to commit unforgivable acts for the sake of scientific advancement, the great-grandfather that she disappointed with her mistreatment toward family and friends, her little sister, with her baby bump from her first trimester before the cruelty and revelation that made her swear revenge on her for robbing her of her independence…and her own son from the time when he was a little boy, unstained by hatred, loneliness and fear, walking away from her toward a great path of light; the sight of their backs were all she deserved from them. At least now, they would probably obtain the measure of happiness that she had tried to return by undoing her sins with the Eva. At least now, they would be free. Justice had finally been served.

-x-

The First of September came by, and a little more of the world seemed to come back into order. Outside the abandoned city of Tokyo-3 on a quiet road, a woman walked by, heading toward what looked like a bus stop, where an elderly man was sitting on a bench; both looked like they had something serious to talk about, judging from their expressions.

"What a surprise this is, finding you here of all places," the woman, dressed in a bluish-green dress, looking like a mix between Asian and American races, with the appearance of an Asian woman, but her blue eyes were like those of an American's. "I see that you've taken to looking like other people and not like animals the last time I saw you."

"I've heard from the male representative of the talisman," the aged man, who looked like an older version of Kozo Fuyutsuki, with very little hair on his head and more wrinkles on his skin, responded in greeting the woman. "This time, we had played a far more dangerous game than usually performed."

The woman sat beside him on his left and responded, "Making sure that Adam and Lilith's descendants were on equal ground is always a dangerous goal that is best achieved by those that can adapt and change the outcome of a mistake made long ago by those that didn't realize the mistake until it was too late to prevent it. We were responsible for a terrible mishap that had nearly no hope of change…but now there is change. Now, there is hope for a better tomorrow."

The aged man nodded in agreement, and then revealed that the rest of the planet would return to its previous state with each passing day before he got up and walked away from her.

"What about the others?" She questioned him.

"What others?" He responded.

"The ones that are stuck in Limbo, those that were deprived of their futures…and those that were taken before their time when the Second Impact occurred, along with its aftermath."

"It's obvious that they will be revived, their lives returned and the people they left behind will smile once again at the happiness they deserve," he revealed to her.

"Do I have your word?"

"What do you take me for, a liar?" He questioned her, which implied to the woman that it was a vow, and such vows couldn't be unmade.

And then he vanished, leaving the woman alone…until she also disappeared from sight, as though they were never there to begin with.

-x-

"…How long do you think it might be?" Akira asked Dr. Gyatso, having waited outside the examination room while Shinji re-dressed after being examined again, not feeling as well as he had been after waking up and leaving Tokyo-3.

"A week," he answered her, "maybe a little more than that. We'll still looking for a replacement for him, and it might be a while before Mr. Ikari can clone every organ in the human body without leading up to cloning a whole person."

"Organ cloning, perhaps," Akira sighed, "but Shinji won't go down the road of living if he had to continue living with someone else's kidneys in him. And…be honest, please, but…there's no way either he or Rumi would survive such invasive surgery of that sort, would they?"

The good doctor sighed before giving her his opinion, which was, "Honestly…Shinji might, considering his age, but after everything that has happened to him, his chances are fifty-fifty…and Rumi would probably have less than half a chance of pulling through. She's younger than any of the other kids that did require surgery for something severe."

"I ask not because I might give the impression of being desperate," Akira explained, "but because I want to be forewarned about the outcome."

"Akira, I didn't want to ask you this before, but…what happened to the Angelbreaker?" He questioned, noticing that neither she nor Rumi possessed their respective bracelets on their arms.

"We…lost it," she told him. "Back in Tokyo-3…after defeating Lilith."

"I'm sorry."

"That's what Rumi told me when she explained how she lost it. Now, she's worried that she might not find it and… She had high hopes for wanting to use it to achieve the one thing we never could with the other attempts we tried over the years."

The door opened and Shinji stepped out.

"I'm ready now," he told them, having a solemn look on his face.

"That's good to know," Akira responded.

Meanwhile, back at the Rokubungi estate, Rumi had gotten more control over her Pyro Channeling; her mother had been right when she stated that the first time you made your own fire was the hardest time…and every other time showed your growing proficiency in the art. She was able to make the torches cease burning and restart them without much effort now, but it didn't help her to get over the degree of shame she had in herself for losing the Angelbreaker. With every ounce of her heart and soul, she wanted to use the talisman to restore her nephew to good health…and she feared that she would be unable to do anything further for him that didn't require the aid of such a supernatural artifact.

"Hey, Rumi," she heard Mayo say behind her, and she turned to face her, seeing that she was holding a pair of cups filled with lemonade, offering the one in her left hand to her.

"Arigato," she thanked her eldest niece, and drank deeply of the cold drink.

"How are you holding up?"

"Not so good. You think I can't convince him to take one of my kidneys?"

"You know he's just going to be against it. And, believe it or not, I still believe you can save him without having to give up anything."

"I wish I could believe that I could do so."

"Don't give into doubt, Aunt Rumi. We've all seen what you're capable of…and you'll one day be much stronger than Akira, who's, like, the strongest person we both know…if not the oldest person alive."

"Mayo…my mother is the oldest person alive. There's not another person in the world that's two-hundred-ninety-seven or older than that…except for those people from ancient myths and religions. I mean, she's the oldest person currently alive today. I mean…"

Mayo raised her hand to silence her, getting what she meant or was trying to clarify. Then told her that faith was all she needed right now.

I seem to be lacking much belief in faith right now, Rumi thought, and then she finished drinking her lemonade and gave her niece back the empty cup. I believed in the Angelbreaker to help me…but then it left me after the worst was prevented. What kind of object of power does that to a person that still wanted to save a person that matters to their heart? What's the point of possessing such power…if you can't even use it to save just one person that you love so much?

"When you going to return that to Shinji, by the way?" Mayo asked, which snapped Rumi out of her train of thought.

"Huh?" She responded.

"Shinji's locket," she questioned. "You've been holding onto it ever since we left that ghost town of a city. When are you going to give it back to him? Come to think of it, he's been holding onto your dog tags, too."

Rumi looked down at her shirt and found her nephew's locket hanging around her neck, reminding herself that she had forgotten to hand it back to him.

"I'll…just go put this back in his room," she told Mayo, and then left to do just that.

She walked the empty halls to Shinji's room and went inside, noticing nothing out of the ordinary, except for his copy of the current family photograph face-down on his desk, which seemed out of place to her, as Shinji never had his photos facing down. She went over to his desk and raised the frame up and placed his locket in front of it. A warm breeze came from out the window behind his desk and blew her hair further back; it was one of those times when she was glad that she wore her hair down and not in a braid…but it wasn't enough to ease her worries about not being able to save her Shinji from his fate without that gauntlet that had been in the family for years.

I'm sorry, Shinji, she thought, leaving the room.

-x-

"…I think I heard Rumi's voice in my head just now," said Shinji as Akira drove the jeep up the mountain path back to the estate.

"What'd she say?" She asked him.

"She was saying that she was sorry."

"Sorry? For what?"

"Not 'what'. Who."

"You?"

"Me."

Akira sighed and pulled up by the walls and gate.

"I don't think you should worry much. Either of you, I mean. It probably doesn't explain much of anything, but people should believe a little more in faith. Belief is a powerful concept that started long ago in ancient times." She told him.

Before he opened the door, Shinji asked Akira, "Does it help to relieve tension and the fear that you may leave somebody you care about because you refused to do something that might've did more harm than good?"

"Only if you let it," she answered him, and he got out of the jeep.

Shinji didn't really mind being weaker than usual as a result of his artificial cancer (he'd been told everything else that was discovered this summer by the adults of the family), but he couldn't stand the thought of not being able to enjoy his life with Rumi. He had just begun to experience the type of love that others desire in their lives, and he felt it was going to be short-lived because of a bad hand he'd been dealt by a deranged woman that had desired Gendo Ikari and was willing to afflict him with a disease that would kill him over the years just to have him all to herself. While a little grateful that his illness brought him to people that really cared about him, he was being cheated out of a full life now that everything awful had been prevented and the world would slowly revert back to its original state of existence before Second Impact.

"Hey, you two," greeted Kanami to them as they entered the house. "How was your appointment at the hospital today?"

"Good," Shinji expressed. "It was…good."

He then left the women to go rest up in his room.

"It was bad, wasn't it?" She asked Akira.

"More like problematic, Kanami," Akira responded. "Did anybody call while we were out?"

"No, nobody called."

Akira then went over to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of water.

"Where's everyone else?" She asked Kanami.

"Well, Nemo went over to Camille's, Bumi and Miaka took Taeko shopping for the new school year, Shinobu went to see Kagura, Tsukiko's at the supermarket, Mayo's in her room resting after sword practice, and Rumi's… I saw her entering Shinji's room to return his locket."

"Yeah, and I noticed Shinji still had her dog tags with him."

"Akira, can I ask a serious question?"

"Hit me."

"We all saw what was left of…him back in Tokyo-3 underground in the Geo-Front, right? Well, ever since we came back, you haven't made an attempt to clean out his room. Even if, by a small miracle, he came back after Lilith was defeated and humanized, I'd doubt he would get away with most of the world after him and anyone else involved in causing the Second Impact."

"You mean, he'd get the death sentence if he was caught."

"Yeah."

"Well, even if he did come back, and I won't doubt that he probably did come back, I'll wait until confirmation of his demise is made known. I mean…reconfirmation. The world is slowly going back to its undamaged state, so the people around it are going to be busy gathering their original bearings."

"Not to mention the whole of Japan will be saying their farewells to the agony of perpetual summer time and embrace the return of the other seasons. I can't wait for autumn to kick in and show the world that the seasons are coming back to this nation. How does anything as the pathetic concept of a small meteorite not only melt the Arctic icecaps, but throw the planet itself off its axis?"

"It can't. Maybe a large meteorite, but small ones only cause minor damage to the Earth as a whole. The wrath of the kami, however, can cause great change to the world."

Then Kanami realized something she hadn't asked Akira before: What was up with her relationship with the elderly guy, Kozo Fuyutsuki, who was currently at the town hospital.

"I had forgotten to ask you about Mr. Fuyutsuki," she started. "What's he going to do once he leaves?"

"That's something I've not asked him about," Akira told her in response. "With this country's portion of the NERV agency, more or less, disbanded because the people that worked in it have left it for good, he, like the other former workers, is out of a job. I don't believe he'll want to work for any shady businesses ever again, though, so I don't know what he'll do with the rest of his life."

"And…not that it's any of my business, of course, but…wasn't he that jerk's friend?"

"No, Kanami. Kozo Fuyutsuki was never Gendo's friend. Gendo doesn't understand the meaning of such a relationship. Kozo was more his confidant and nothing beyond that."

"That's sad and pathetic. For Gendo, I mean."

"If I was an alcoholic like Bumi and Misato were, I'd drink to that. Along with being heartless."

"Then we'd rarely recognize you on a personal level."

"True." The super-centenarian woman then finished her bottled water and tossed it in the recycling basket. "I'd probably best get started on dinner."

"Need a hand?"

"Sure."

-x-

"…That's strange," went Masamune, looking out the window of Medical Angel at the remains of Kyoto's submerged skyscrapers that made up the neighborhood.

"What?" Sora asked him, building up his muscles in his right arm.

"Before we left, most of the city was underwater. But after we came back, the amount of water submerging the buildings decreased a little bit…and the parts of the buildings that were submerged look like they haven't seen any devastation for years."

"Masamune, the planet is returning to its original axis, so the ocean-level is dropping," Sora expressed, as he and Kyoji were noticing the ocean-level changing earlier. "In addition to that, Kyoji had noticed a change in the water that he couldn't explain."

Masamune then felt a twitch in his leg where his cybernetic appendage connected with the nerves that allowed for him to wiggle the mechanical toes of his prosthetic limb. One of the things that surprised him since before returning was that Kyoji didn't go to the town his adopted mother had helped to build like he had intended to do when he awoke from his coma, instead returning to Kyoto with the rest of them. Another thing was Anne-Marie giving Shinji her number so that he would call her sometime, if he ever wanted to speak with her.

"I thought that once we'd taken care of our past problems, like our vendettas and what have you, our lives would get easier," he uttered out. "Instead, I feel like nothing much has changed."

"I find myself thinking of Tsukiko Rokubungi every now and then," Sora revealed; he'd never thought much about women in his life, not since he was a little boy on the verge of death after he was rendered a living corpse with bullets in much of his body. "Is that normal?"

"You're crushing over a woman you only met just recently. Of course, that's normal. Crushes are very normal for young people."

"What about the elderly? Don't you get crushes, too?"

"Don't be ridiculous. I mean, I see women every day, but I don't think about them in a romantic way." Masamune told him, looking at his family photo, at his wife when they were younger.

"Gomen nasai," Sora apologized. "I didn't mean to sound…intrusive."

"It's okay. I just hate remembering that I lost the love of my life over some unforgivable act that was caused by the people I was forced into running numbers for."

"Tell me about her. About Pema. What was she like?"

"She wasn't like other girls, I'll tell you that much. When she cleaned house, she barely left a layer of dust anywhere, and when she saw her family dirty, she expected each of us to be sterilized the next time she saw us. But she had her wonderful moments, like when she played checkers or reading a novel quietly. Half the time, I rarely knew she was there because of her silence."

"Anne-Marie once said she loved flowers."

"In many respects, too."

As the two continued to converse, Kyoji and Anne-Marie were wandering around the building, as Anne-Marie was still the head of security, so she had to keep an eye on things; despite settling her beef with her sister (along with expressing her pent-up anger at being denied her rights to live her own life), the young woman still felt hollow deep down.

"Hey, Anne-Marie," went one of the younger women around the building to her, getting by with her cybernetic legs.

"Nikki," Anne-Marie responded. "Is there something wrong?"

"That boy that came from Germany to get treatment for his cancer," she explained. "Drake Von Meyer. He just endured eighteen hours of nanotech surgery, chemotherapy and further intravenous injections, and his guardian's wondering when he'll be able to eat when he wakes up."

"Surely, once the boy has recovered from operation, he'll be able to get on with his life," added Kyoji; he'd been familiar with the effects of cancer long before his coma, so the time it took to deal with it without risking serious harm to the one afflicted with it varied between individuals…and he assumed that with the advancements made to medical technology, cancer treatments became more manageable and easier to handle so young people could live to be elderly grandparents and pass away in their sleep.

Anne-Marie then covered her mouth and coughed.

"Are you alright, Anne-Marie?" Nikki asked her.

"I'm fine," she answered. "Probably just minor side-effects from earlier when I got hurt in the explosion. Or…"

"Or you could be getting yourself worked up," suggested Kyoji, "exerting yourself after getting hurt in an explosion caused by a disgrace to three families, particularly two of them he disrespected utterly. You should take more time to recover."

-x-

The thundering waterfall of this lonely lake was all that mattered to the lonely woman that was Lilith, sitting on a rock beside the fall. It was where she relocated herself after getting away from Tokyo-3, NERV, Gendo and Yui, and all the pain of the awful ugliness that permeated the air around her while they were near. She ignored the cold, moist air the falling water caused, as she spent much of her time simply thinking. In due time, the planet would change to accommodate the lives that were taken fifteen years ago; she knew this was to come because she had foreseen it in all of its glory: New land would be found, enriched with life long forgotten, animals that were (and by all means, still) her children aside the race of Man would thrive once more, and the cities and towns taken by the corruption, the wars and pollution, they would all breathe with life once again. But she would stay away from all of that. She had to, for she feared the possibility of being used like before.

"Shinji…I love you," she recalled Rumi's revelation of her affection for the dying boy that was over a decade her superior.

"I love you, too, Rumi," the boy's words of love echoed in response in her mind.

Beaten by a pair that accept that they love each other, she thought, looking at her reflection in the water. A little girl in love with an older boy…and the older boy admits to loving her back once he comes to accept that his relationship with her is a lot stronger than his other relationships. It's true love without question, and when it's true, it's pure…and when it's pure, it's eternal. The phoenix of ancient myths and legends was a grand representation of true love, burning as it begins the process of rebirth over again, showing that love is stronger than despair.

She looked up the night sky, illuminated by the light of the moon. For as long as she could remember, she fancied the night more so than the day, and the moonlight helped her to get over the old desires she once had under the Rei Ayanami guise, like the desire to return to nothingness herself because of Gendo and Yui's exploitation of her. Now, all she had was a future where, for the moment…she just wanted to be by herself…in the solitude where she was least alone. And nobody would really think to bother a woman that lived in a cave behind a waterfall.

-x-

Dinner had been rather quiet, unlike the previous times he'd been in it. Shinji had retired to his room without so much as talking to Rumi, who herself was very quiet like he was. He really wanted to speak with her, but there was something between them, like a thin wall of paper that houses had more often in ancient times than they did today.

Is the loss of the Angelbreaker that heavy on her conscious? He wondered, laying on his bed. I should tell her that it doesn't matter to me. It's just a talisman that disappeared from the face of the Earth. It's moot, not worth moping about.

He started to get up again, but felt his strength fading all of a sudden…and he fell back onto his pillow; this feeling of weakness had come about him several times in his childhood, but not so instantly before. He tried to get up again, but as he did, he fell to the floor.

"Oh, dang," he muttered. "Kanami? Nemo? Taeko? I'm on the floor in my room, and I can't get up!"

The door to his room opened up and Akira came in, having felt a thud with her Geo Channeling, and helped him back onto his bed.

"What happened?" She asked him.

"I was about to go talk to Rumi when I started feeling weak," he explained.

"I think you overdid rising up," she responded, knowing perfectly well that getting up too soon (or too quickly) could leave a person drained of energy or cause their muscles to feel like pulp for a while. "Lay here for a while. I'll go get her for you."

That was easier said than done for the two-hundred-ninety-seven-year-old martial artist and mother, for she entered her youngest daughter's room…only to find it devoid of said girl's presence. She checked under her bed, in her closet, even in her bin where she kept her dirty clothes, and even that was empty. It was like her baby girl had disappeared.

"Kanami!" She called for one of her older daughters.

"Yes?" Kanami responded, coming into Rumi's room.

"Have you seen Rumi?"

"Un-uh, I haven't seen her since dinner was over. Hey, Bumi!"

"Huh?" The eldest male sibling responded, hearing his name being called from within his youngest sister's room. "Yeah?"

"Have you seen Rumi?"

"No, why?"

"She's not in here," Akira told him, wondering if the little girl was even in the house. "Hold on a sec."

She slammed her right foot on the rug and used her Geo Channeling to send out vibrations through the house. The people she did find were just everyone else that lived here, but no Rumi.

"Where could she have run off to?" Kanami questioned.

-x-

Rumi hadn't really run off to anywhere far from home. She just left to the peak of the mountain, looking out at the town below and around it. The only word that came to mind as she sat on the rock was 'awful'; without the Angelbreaker, she couldn't save the one she loved the most, and when he died… Well, she didn't wish to experience that sort of pain at all while she was still young. Loss was a great pain that tore certain people up from the inside out when loved ones died.

"I have more faith in the little girl that saved me long before she ever picked up a sword to defend herself. You're the sun, stars and moon in my day and night skies, Rumi," her nephew's words echoed in her heart, reminding her that he believed more in her than the talisman that chose her to save the world from total destruction.

But I lost the Angelbreaker, she countered his words. What good is possessing the power to control the elements when I can't even use them to save the one person that matters to me more than life itself. What good is having untold potential…if you can't save just one, small life that you feel is worth everything you went through?

Her left eye shed a tear and it hit the soil beneath the rock. Then, she heard footsteps approaching where she sat; someone, possibly from the house, was right behind her…but she didn't turn to face them, giving any indication that she was aware of their presence. Whoever it was didn't speak out to her, but placed a rather ancient-looking hand upon her left shoulder; the only people she knew that had ancient-looking hands due to their elderly ages were Dr. Gyatso and Mr. Fuyutsuki, but she wasn't sure if the person behind her was either of them because she didn't turn to face them.

"Rumi," a soft, feminine voice spoke out to her, reminding the girl of her mother; the voices sounded so similar, and made her assume that her mother was accompanying the elder.

"Not now, Mother," she responded, her voice expressing her depression. "I just wanna be left alone for a while."

"But you called us here…little sister," another voice, almost like Shinji's, but with a hint of Bumi's sternness when facing an opponent, uttered out loud, getting her attention.

She turned around…and saw at least five people she hadn't seen before…but felt a strange relation to each of them. There were three men, two of whom were elderly while the third was probably in his late-thirties, and two women, one of whom was just as young and beautiful as Akira appeared while the other smaller woman looked like she could pass herself off as a little sister or cousin to Akira because of the similarities between them. Now that she thought about the women, Rumi seemed to be meeting ladies that looked more or less like her mother, who got her looks from her…

"Grandmother?" She pointed to the woman that seemed a little older than Akira, who nodded in the positive response.

If the woman was her mother's mother, Rumiko Yoshimi Rokubungi, then the two elderly men had to be Akira's father, Kazuhiko, and…the other guy was her father, her mother's husband, who passed away over a century ago before she was ever even thought about.

"Father," she greeted the elderly men. "Grandfather."

"Don't forget your elder blood siblings," said the younger girl to her. "Your brother, Shuya 'Tora no Yuki' Rokubungi, and your sister, Noriko 'Tenshi no Rui' Rokubungi."

My mother named my brother and sister "Tiger of Courage" and "Angel of Family", respectively? Rumi wanted to question to the reason for Akira naming her firstborn children before ever having her, but then decided that it must've been a family tradition to name firstborn sons and daughters like that.

"You've gotten more in touch with your roots and spiritual self, Rumi," the elderly man that was her father, Yoshitoki, told her.

"I…don't understand what you mean," Rumi responded.

"It's not all that complicated," went Shuya, explaining some of the reason they were here right now. "It's only when we hit our lowest of points in life…"

"Are we open to the greatest of changes, sis," Noriko finished for their brother.

Rumi took a while to get what they were saying to her and seemed to understand what they were telling her. And then her grandmother approached her…and placed her hands on her forehead and chest.

"I've never wielded the Angelbreaker, but I never guessed two of the family's descendants would and save the world," Rumiko expressed with a chuckle, and was grasped on her right shoulder by her husband while her son-in-law grasped her left shoulder, along with Shuya and Noriko. "Rumi…you can't ever lose…what was never lost to begin with."

The souls of the deceased relatives glowed an eerie-yet-wondrous reddish-pink while Rumi's body glowed a healthy, emerald-green. Their souls then disappeared from the mortal coil, leaving her after meeting her for the first time in her life. But their words, their comfort didn't leave her heart.

I can't ever lose…what I never lost to begin with, she thought, and realization struck her like the terrible news of Shinji's cancer returning to cripple him. Kami, that's it!

She jumped off the rock and landed on the ground, using her Geo Channeling to run back to the estate; she had a nephew's life to restore. As she came down the path and headed for the closed gate, she used her Aero Channeling to propel herself over it and land on the grounds out front of the house, just in time to see Akira and the other adult women, who were both surprised and curious of how Rumi could channel elemental energy like that while she was still young (not to mention that her training of the Aero and Geo Channeling arts were still less than adequate), but still desiring to know where she'd run of to earlier.

"Rumi, where were…" Shinobu spoke out, but Rumi ran passed her and the other women into the house. "Huh?!"

"Gomen! Can't talk!" Rumi told them, having a smile on her face.

"She seems to be in a cheerful mood," went Tsukiko to them.

"Did something happen to her that we don't know about?" Kanami asked.

"That's what I want to know," added Akira.

-x-

Shinji seemed so much like corpse right now in his sleeping state to Rumi, just as she locked the door to his room. The sight of his nerves and veins under his pale skin made her worry a little that she might be too late to defy fate. But she held onto the hope that he was not beyond her reach just yet.

"Shinji," she uttered out quietly to him, watching his chest rise up and down with the rhythm of his breathing. "Heh-heh… I can finally save you."

She approached his bed and climbed atop of his sleeping form. From the perception of any other person far more mature than she was for a six-year-old child, she could've been trying something very adult-like and out of bounds, but Rumi knew what she was doing; it seemed that for the first time since the summer season began its end in order for the season of fall to begin its return, she finally knew what needed to be done.

"For you," she said, holding onto the sides of his face, "I would go against everything that's not right."

Her right hand glowed with fiery intensity, as a ring of gold light materialized around the wrist. A strong wind fanned around the pair, blowing the girl's hair back. Her right hand then moved away from his face and onto his chest, pressing against his heart, causing a searing effect, but Shinji gave no indication that Rumi was harming him. Rumi then plunged her hand through his chest and grasped a pulsating sack she guessed was his heart; it felt awful and disgusting to her, but she knew what she was doing to him. For him.

"She's in his room," she heard her younger niece, Taeko, say to somebody outside, "and the door's locked. What's she doing in there?"

She ignored the fact that the whole family was outside the room, even the possibility that she might get the biggest scolding of her life. Right now, none of that mattered to her. This, right now, did matter.

FLASH! A giant flash of rainbow-like light came and it felt like it rattled the whole estate, knocking only the people and smaller things down.

-x-

"…Where… Where am I?" Shinji wondered, feeling like he had entered a dream that was unlike any he had previously. "What is this place?"

His new setting was like vast desert or a vast, scattered sum of floating isles with bits of grass and flowers and lake-like patches in between, with the sky being very beautiful and with large clouds that looked like they had temples built on and into them, and just below him was an ocean of fire and brimstone, networks of lava ways running through the ground. It was like…he'd stumbled upon the three realms of the afterlife that existed after your life was spent living in the mortal coil. He could only deduce that he was in Limbo right now, which meant…

No way, he thought, reaching under his shirt and feeling for a pulse…barely feeling such a thing. Why me? Why me?

"Shinji Rokubungi, the afterlife's going to have to wait for a long time before it's going to receive your soul once you pass on." He heard a female voice say to him, one that was as familiar to him as people that mattered to him did.

He turned around to face the person and had to look down; the girl standing in front of him barely came up to his knees because of her body's petite build, but her voice gave the impression of being in charge. In addition, the girl couldn't stop thinking about him and vice versa.

"Rumi, where are we?" He asked his aunt.

"Nowhere," she answered him, "and everywhere."

"I'm sorry, but could you be a bit more specific, please?"

"I guess you could call this Limbo, the intermediate realm between the three realms of existence. The heavens, the netherworld…and the mortal coil. Nowhere…and everywhere."

"Why do I get the feeling that something happened while I was sleeping?"

"That's because something did happen. I happened."

Shinji then noticed something about Rumi that he didn't see when he saw her: Her right wrist had a golden band around it, complete with a pair of ruby and pearl spheres as the sole decoration.

"Rumi, is that…"

"Yes, Shinji, it is."

"But…where'd you find it? How'd you get it back so quick?"

"Shinji…I never lost it to begin with. I guess…in the battle between Lilith and myself, the Angelbreaker had evolved to become a state of the mind, heart and soul, going far beyond the limitations of the body, the base of mortality and existence."

"Meaning what, exactly?"

Just then, a growling, snarling noise came from beneath the large, desert-like isle they were situated on.

SMASH! A large, slimy and grotesque claw burst from the ground, followed by a creature that looked like a creature belonging to Greek mythology, the lamia, except that it also reminded Shinji of a vampire because the head of the creature, while humanoid in many traditional respects, had fangs like the supernatural people of old. It was dark, slimy, with large claws attached to rather weak arms, which were the base of wings like those of a squirrel's, and all along its back were curved, crescent-like spikes that began at the back of its head and ending at its waist, with a tail ending in trident-shaped tip.

"Oh!" Shinji gasped. "What the heck is that?!"

"Your sickness," Rumi told him, as calm as Akira most often was. "Look familiar to you?"

He looked at the creature's face and did notice that it did possess a sharp resemblance to that woman he met in the bowels of NERV HQ, that Naoko Akagi woman he found out was the lady that caused him to become sick with his leukemia.

"I'm not out just yet," it spoke, sounding just like Naoko had when they met her, only more twisted.

"Actually…you are out," Rumi told it, or her to be more accurate. "Everyone else has been dealt with across the world that is slowly returning to its original state, which is a necessity for the people that will come back from the realm of the dead, and those cruel souls that haven't been caught will be caught and brought to justice."

The she-creature then suddenly fell to her claws, as if drained of her energy. She knew something was wrong; for the last few years, she had rising success in claiming the boy, but every time she came close to doing so, she felt a little more of the little girl in front of her putting her down, like she was with him twenty-four/seven, which was not possible.

"What are you?" She questioned Rumi, who was in between Shinji and herself.

"I am a guardian," she answered her, as the armor of the Angelbreaker formed around her body, appearing in a way that was very similar to the armor she wore when she faced Ramiel with her mother, except that it wasn't racy and was equipped with an armored skort. "A protector, who cannot be differentiated between being a warrior of the body…and a warrior of the soul. I am both…because I've had guidance that has been easy to understand and follow, with teachings that enable me to comprehend much more than any other girl my age. Heh, I guess that comes from growing up in a house full of martial arts masters and channelers of the elements. And, here, in this realm that separates the three planes of existence, you, a curse of sickness and death to my true love, created by a woman possessed by a poisonous desire for a man that knew not the power of the heart when filled with purity and honesty, who are neither a guardian or a warrior of hope, forgiveness or redemption…are not protected by anything that promises release from constant agony."

Shinji watched as Rumi raised her hands up over her head, forming a hook sword that glistened with great beauty and with a curved end that looked more for cutting than allowing a wielder to do other things with it. He was still convinced that the Angelbreaker couldn't bring death to anybody, regardless of intention, but he was convinced that this she-creature was not a living being, so she could be sent away and would never come back.

"Why now?" She whined quietly to Rumi. "Why this time? Why?"

As she bowed her head in forgiveness, Rumi told her, "Because love and friendship are stronger than pain and vengeance, and they transcend good and evil, right and wrong, which are more purer than blood and water."

She then pulled the sword down, slowly at first, but then it sped up, and Shinji watched her send the cruel, poisonous fiend away.

-x-

The sound of the chirping birds awoke the yawning Mayo and Miaka as they came to in the hallway. And then they found themselves having fallen on Nemo and he himself was buried on the floor beneath them.

"Nemo?" Miaka asked, waking him up.

"Ow," he remarked, remembering that his sister-in-law and twelve-year-old niece had fallen on him when the house shook from whatever it was that Rumi had caused to happen last night, and it wasn't everyday that one of his elder siblings that weighed more than he did fell on him and kept him immobile for a few hours.

"Oh, gomen, Nemo," they apologized to him, getting off and helping him up.

"Oh, ow. Ow!" He groaned; he was stiff everywhere, right down to his toes. "Bad experience this morning. Very bad experience this morning."

The sound of his mild temper woke up Bumi and Tsukiko soon enough, followed by Shinobu and Akira, and they got to their feet, straightening out their limbs.

"I feel like all of my pressure points were hit," Shinobu expressed.

"Likewise, sis," added Bumi, seeing Taeko had fallen atop Kanami's face and he picked her up. "My brain's cracked right now, so could somebody tell me what happened?"

Click! The sound of a locked door unlocking caught their attention, and the door to Shinji's room opened up, revealing the cause of their incapacitation from last night.

"You guys are going to wake him if you don't quiet down," Rumi told them, leaning against the side of the door and crossing her arms against her chest, pointing to Shinji as he lay sleeping on his bed.

"Huh?" Tsukiko uttered, noticing something off about her nephew; she noticed how over the decade his skin had paled up to the point that his veins and nerves were visible, but right now, like some sort of miracle, he looked like he had gotten a lot of sunlight that gave him a healthy complexion.

Then, because of the tone of her voice, Shinji's eyes opened up and he blinked a few times to get the mucus out. He slowly rose up and looked at them all.

"Good morning," he greeted them, sounding different from the last time he spoke, too. "Huh?"

Normally, he felt slight exhaustion when waking up, but not right now. Shinji felt a different type of weakness waking up; it was the tingling sensation from when your limbs fall asleep and needed to be flexed out to get circulation going again. He scratched his bald head, as his wig had fallen off, and he noticed how his veins and nerves couldn't be seen beneath the flesh.

"How do you feel today, Shinji?" Rumi asked him.

Setting his feet on the floor, he responded, "Like you look, Rumi, which is probably a good thing."

"Judging from the sound of your voice…and the look of your face, it must be a sign of good fortune," she told him.

A moment later, Shinji sprung up and ran out the room, past them, and toward the primary bathroom.

"Rumi, if you did something you probably weren't supposed to," Akira informed her daughter, "I'm grounding you for a solid month."

"Yes, ma'am," Rumi responded, but wasn't entirely intimidated by the warning; she knew she did nothing seriously out of bounds, at least not in the boundaries that adults were known to commit.

The sound of the toilet flushing and running water caught their attention as they went over to the closed door, and Shinji came out, drying off his hands.

"I never thought I'd be happy to use the toilet by myself again," he expressed.

"But, Shinji," went Nemo, confused a little, "you have no kidneys, so you shouldn't be able to use the toilet without existence from a Hydro Channeler."

"He does seem very…lively," added Kanami, wondering if Rumi had done something she had been intending to do, but wasn't able to do because of the Angels before they were humanized, Lilith and her hatred against being used and locked away, Gendo's grudge and vendetta against the divine (along with any other happy person in existence) and the cruel people that would face justice later on that they never met. "Rumi, just what did you do to him?"

Rumi raised her right arm up and revealed what was there to see.

"When did you get that back?" Taeko asked her, as Rumi had lost it.

"It was never missing," she explained.

-x-

"…Rumi?" Shinji asked later that day, after everyone (excluding Rumi herself) decided that he needed to be examined at the hospital, finding the time to be able to ask his…love interest something he felt he needed to know from her. "Last night, while I was sleeping, I didn't feel so good. I felt my heart slowing down and it was…getting difficult to breathe, like I was leaving for a long time. I saw people I knew nothing of coming towards me, and one of them was a monster that resembled a wicked woman that had a snake-like lower half. And then…I saw you, exactly as you were when the Angelbreaker first formed armor over you, except that you had a skort over your legs, but you were kept away by a line of white fire. You said something to them, but I didn't hear what it was you said. What did you say to them?"

Rumi knew what he was asking about, for she had experienced the exact same dream he had last night; it had occurred just moments after she had driven away the beast that represented his sickness…and the deities came by to try and take him from her.

"I said," she started, holding onto his right hand as they sat outside Dr. Gyatso's office while he spoke with Akira and the adult members of the family, "'Hey, all of you with the divine right to decide before the Grim Reaper does on who stays and who goes. Let this one go. He's off-limits. He still has a whole life to live out with those that want him in their lives. And, for him…I won't move Heaven and Earth and decide the fate of others. For him…I would cross the line between the two realms if it means being with him. And then you'll be sorry I did so. I might be a little girl that acts mature time after time, but I have someone I want to spend my life with, even if it's for up to half a millennia'. I told them that."

"Someone you want to spend your life with, even if it's for half a thousand years? Really, Rumi?"

"Yeah. Since Unity Channelers can up to five-hundred years or so, I'm sure to live a long time when I get older. But I want as much of that time as possible to include you."

"Same here, Rumi. I want you in my life."

He lowered his head down to her as she leaned up. They had almost kissed until…

"Oh, please, you two," went Miaka, stepping out of the office. "Reserve the kissing for another time."

The young couple looked to her with a frown of irritation; she had disturbed the moment between them.

"You can kiss when we're done here," she then told them.

"Shinji, bro," went Nemo, sounding cheerful, "you'll most definitely live to be older than forty-five if you practice martial arts like we do and so on."

Akira stepped out of the office soon after and chuckled at them all.

"Even the good doctor was surprised when he looked at your blood test," she explained. "You're cancer-free, Shinji Rokubungi."

"I told you," Rumi expressed sarcastically, reminding them that she felt they needn't the opinion of the doctor. "I told y'all. I told y'all."

Shinji agreed with her and added, "Yeah, she did. She told y'all."

-x-

Antarctica had seen harsh times during the fifteen years that went by after Second Impact. But the people that went there to examine the water of the former frozen wasteland that once held wonders often wished that they could see more from this barren place than just pillars of half-melted ice covered with salt and other elements that made it unsuitable for habitation.

"How's the temperature out here?" The captain of one of the ships asked one of the scientists present.

"The same as yesterday," she answered him. "And the day before that…and the day before that. Nothing could survive here."

Suddenly, the calm waters became restless and formed tsunamis, as large as skyscrapers and mountains. But unlike the ones that ravaged coastal cities and left only mountainous terrain and tiny settlements too high and too far away to be maimed, these giant waves didn't attack the research ships. Instead, to the shock of the captains and scientists present on the decks, the waves all gathered together into a large dome of dead water.

"Captain!" One of navigators called out. "The ocean-level! It's…it's…dropping!"

And stranger was the dome of water was becoming snow-white and ocean-blue, solidifying into ice and snow as the people aboard the ships felt they were sinking; because the ocean-levels were decreasing, the research vessels lowered further and further down as the dome grew larger and larger. As it grew, its mass expanded across what used to be Antarctica, becoming it once again. Ice and snow was sculpting into vast valleys and mountains, caves and cliffs, and islands that were no different from those that were lost over a decade ago. The skies, which were already dark, were also beginning to regain their dominance of the lost continent, restored of their natural light displays, making the stars high above sparkle like jewels.

"Oh, my God!" Some of the people gasped.

When the ocean-level returned to pre-Second Impact conditions, the whole of Antarctica had been returned to the world, complete with the one thing it needed most in its existence: Life.

"Mmmm!" An ancient sound came from the ocean that returned to its truest state of being. "Mmm!"

"Is that a…a whale singing?" One of the men of the ships questioned, only to be answered by the curiosity that came from the water.

BURST! A whale, as large as a small boat, jumped from the water and sent small waves up against the deck of the closest vessel.

"Ah-ha-ha!" Some of the women broke into fits of laughter; none of them had ever seen a whale before except for animal books.

"Squawk! Squawk!" The sounds of penguins came right after several whales splashed around in the icy waters, and the flightless, black and white birds of the tundra appeared on the frozen grounds, sliding across the icy terrain and into the cold ocean, looking for fish.

-x-

The Fifth of September was a day where the news media couldn't stop sputtering about the phenomena that kept happening, one after another, as Akira, one the many people just going with the flow of the world, saw on television and in the newspaper. What amazed her so far was the restoration of Antarctica and its lives, along with many coastal sites, lost as a consequence of the Second Impact, were cleared of all that ocean water and looking like new, thousands of animal and plant species, like zebras, elephants, orchids, roses, redwood trees, jaguars and sea lions, returning to life around the world, new land masses showing up around previous ones, like the planet was growing up from being a little marble of life into a basketball. She concluded that this was the Angelbreaker's doing, since it was a powerful artifact, born of hope and salvation.

"…And with the capture and arrest of the apparent leader of the organization known as SEELE, Kiel Lorenz, all UN members in league with the group have been accounted for," said a woman on TV, reporting the latest story on SEELE, a group she wouldn't have to worry about. "Each voluntary member is expected to be facing life behind bars for widespread charges of gross misconduct, misuse of funds, murder, attempted murder, multiple and mass murder, attempted genocide, exploitation of human resources, conspiracy to commit murder and genocide, illegal genetic experimentation and several other charges that are being brought forth. One of the people known to have served under SEELE against his will is former metaphysical biologist professor, Kozo Fuyutsuki of Kyoto, Japan, who'd been threatened with murder if he took the truth of what really caused the Second Impact to the media. Another who'd been serving SEELE against his will was discovered to be current CEO of Medical Angel Industries, Masamune Ikari, who's daughter, Anne-Marie Ikari's life had been threatened unless he served as the accountant of the organization. Both known men have been officially exonerated of past wrongs during the fifteen years of recovery and…"

"You must be happy for Mr. Fuyutsuki, Akira," she heard Shinji behind her.

"As you must be happy for your grandfather, I suspect," she countered, and he came from behind the sofa and sat next to her.

"I heard earlier that Rumi went and gave you back your half of the Angelbreaker, among other things I've heard today while I was out in the town."

Akira raised her right hand up, showing the bracelet that was similar to Rumi's, but with a silver base instead of gold. During the later hours of the morning, Rumi had approached her and said that she no longer needed the whole talisman and gave her back her half, since it had divided itself between them after the battle with Shamshel. At first, she was going to question her about why she shouldn't keep it, but the previous wielders of said artifact had explained that, while balance was being restored to the world, the Angelbreaker made the choice to remain with them until the time came for it to part from the family for good and aid the future wielder, should they ever be needed and the balance of light and dark has been threatened once again. Akira decided not to question it for now, since she really couldn't imagine sending the Angelbreaker back to the museum where she had donated it decades before Second Impact, and because, probably because of those comic books and films of Nemo's about people with powerful items in their possession, she felt that much good could be achieved with it in use…but in the hands of those chosen by it to do right by the world.

"…Gendo Ikari, former commander of the UN-sanctioned NERV organization, now being sought after by the police," a male news reporter was heard on the TV, catching their attention, along with the revelation that he was also being charged with several crimes like his former superiors.

"Shinji," Akira uttered soon after the reports on TV shifted to the minor groups affiliated with SEELE and NERV, "how are you coping with all of this? I mean, with your…with them being looked for?"

"I've put it all behind me," he answered her; he didn't wish to be reminded of two people he couldn't relate to or ever reconcile with due to the years of absence and hidden truths and dark motives that tore them apart and wouldn't unite them into something that should've been…but wasn't any longer. "I'm not letting the revelations of what had been thought to be true, but wasn't entirely true, put me down in the dumps, if that's what you mean."

"And…his unforgivable reasons for doing what he did over the years?"

Shinji sighed and exhaled a breath that, to Akira, seemed to be a release of tension before he said, "I've accepted that there are different types of love and affection that people express…and he only accepted love for a single person. But he allowed himself to be consumed by his longing for her that he disregarded everything and everyone else for years. He thought he could control everything…and remove what he viewed as hindrances in his life. The only cruel thing that went through my mind after discovering all of that, other than my attempted suicide over five years ago, is that if he wanted his wife back so much after chasing her for over a decade…I decided that he could have her. He could have her all to himself, and I would wash my hands of them."

"Really?" She asked, wanting his honesty. Coming from him, I assume he has renounced them.

"Yeah," he answered…and he was honest in his words, though they were very sad. "You remember when I said I started remembering things I had forgotten since that day she let herself get devoured by that thing she made from parts of Lilith. The problem with my recollection is that I only remember the trauma that came after watching her leave. I don't remember anything that occurred prior to that day. I don't…recall any happy moments where I felt content with my life. There was some dialogue between them, but I was probably younger than I was that day I they were talking, so I didn't understand much of it at all."

"Is there any of what they said that you can recall?"

"Only that…she said something about anyplace being like Heaven if you have the will to live in it. But, honestly, I don't believe that because of what happened before I was born. The world outside of town was a disaster in most cases: Cities underwater, people fighting each other over resources and land leftover from the giant waves that covered much of the planet, weapons of war causing more deaths than those that had already been caused, and instead of recovering properly, Earth got reduced to a rotting ball that truly awful people wanted to end based on their selfish desires."

Akira leaned the left side of her head against the sofa and continued to listen to him.

"Sure, I enjoyed being in different parts of the world when on vacation in the years I've been here, but with the way places are returning to their previous state of being, I look forward to seeing them as they were meant to be seen as. I mean…don't you?"

"Hmm…very," she responded. "With every passing day, more of the Earth returns to its previous state. One of the places I look forward to seeing when fully restored is Tokyo…as it doesn't seem that Tokyo-2 will be coming back as a capital city…and Tokyo-3 has been reduced to a ghost town with an underground disgrace. I also long to see Osaka Castle and show you kids one of the things you never got to experience before."

"And what's that?"

"Seeing the world from the view of a Ferris Wheel."

"Oh, yeah! Heh-heh! I had nearly forgotten about those. Heh…maybe we should have one built here."

"Ah-ha-ha! Well, that would lighten things up a little here," she assumed, but then her expression of cheerfulness shifted to slight annoyance as she raised her head back up. "You're not as quiet as you wish you could be. I don't even need to see you to know where you are, making it nearly impossible to sneak up on me…Rumi."

Shinji looked around Akira and saw his girlfriend behind her, annoyed over not being able to sneak up on her mother for the umpteenth time. He didn't even know she was there…and he wondered how much of their conversation she had heard.

"Rumi? Just how long were you…" He asked her, but she cut him off.

"Just the part where you said that you couldn't recall any memories of your life before that day your… That woman left you for a long time," she confessed; she didn't like the idea or the very truth of identifying Yui Ikari as his mother, reminded of when she used her hook sword to threaten the woman if she tried to approach him while she was beside him, for she wouldn't allow anybody, even a woman that should've been more involved in his life long ago, to hurt him any further. "But I agree when I say that we should see the places that were changed because of the awful conflicts and disasters that befell the world years ago."

As much as Akira wanted to question her daughter on eavesdropping on a conversation that was, more or less, personal, she wasn't going to make a scene so long as Rumi didn't speak of the personal part of the conversation. The younger Unity Channeler seemed to possess more maturity.

"Say, I just realized something," the little girl spoke up. "If the world's returning to its pre-Second Impact state…then doesn't it mean… I mean, with the places devastated returning to normal…will those lost to the devastation…come back, as well?"

That question caught Shinji off guard! While he noticed some trees changing to reflect the autumn season coming into play, proving that the three other seasons had returned to Japan, he wasn't considering that people that were killed in the years following that event could be brought back to life. If such a thing were possible, then he'd believe that anything hopeful, such as his Rumi saving his life and eliminating his cancer, literally, was possible. People that survived the Hell on Earth, but lost those that weren't as lucky, would be returned of family and friends…and those that didn't have anything to do with the devastation, just being victims of other casualties, could come back, too.

"You mean…revival? Resurrection? That sort of coming back, Rumi?" Akira asked her.

"Yes," she answered back. "Nemo's comic books, the ones with the aliens that know the martial arts and those seven spheres with the dragon… I ask out of that type of possibility."

Shinji and Akira looked at each other, unsure how to answer that possibility. While they accepted the possibility of reviving people if their bodies weren't too far gone to be regenerated or healed of certain sicknesses, the idea of resurrecting people was pure fantasy. Except that Akira had used the Angelbreaker to revive Sachiel from defeat, but she assumed that he was a special case; if the Angelbreaker could revive large numbers of lives from the realm of the dead, it would've done so a thing long ago. Or maybe, the wielders had to do so with it.

RING-RING-RING! The kitchen phone rang, and Akira sighed before getting up to answer it.

"Rokubungi residence, Akira speaking," she greeted the caller on the other end. "What?! Tomoyo, you're not making any sense… Are you sure you weren't… Okay, I'll see you, then."

She hung up and placed her hands on her hips, giving a confused look to nobody.

"Akira/Mommy?" Shinji and Rumi spoke up. "Is everything alright?"

"That call was from my friend, Tomoyo," she revealed, "and she said that her sister came home."

"Her sister?" Shinji responded, knowing a little about the woman his grandmother spoke of. "But…isn't she… You sure she wasn't hitting on the sake?"

"I know Tomoyo, Shinji, and she's not a heavy drinker. She doesn't even like the taste of sake. If she says that Xiaolongnü has come back…then she must be serious."

Rumi wondered if this was a response to her curious question about people returning to life, but decided not to question it until later.

-x-

The night was cooler than before, something Masamune felt was a godsend from the other nights of the last fifteen years, along with the water flooding all of Kyoto no longer present. The city looked like it was before the day it was maimed, despite one man's attempt to save it, and the aged man was with one of the regenerated young adults giving the place a thorough look-over, just to be sure that there was no water left covering the streets.

"Father," went Anne-Marie behind his desk. "You think the previous owners of this building are gonna want it back, should there be previous owners?"

"If it comes to that, I guess I'll probably buy the building," he told her.

"Masamune-Dono, you have a visitor," the lady at the front desk called from his intercom.

"Who is it, Yoka-San?" He asked her.

"A woman that says she's your wife," Yoka revealed.

"My wife?!"

"Mother?!"

They left out the office and went straight to the first floor of the building where the front desk had been relocated once the original levels were no longer underwater, where they saw a gray-haired woman in her thirties at the front desk…and another woman they hadn't seen in many years: She was shorter than Masamune, about Anne-Marie's height, as she was taller than Yui (due to being thirty and not twenty-seven), having the medium build of a person that put on a few pounds but was able to burn away a bit and still retain some measure of attractiveness, had long, flowing dark hair with small streaks of gray, making her seem to be a little younger than Masamune (by probably five or seven years, give or take), and she had bluish-green eyes. The woman was also dressed the same way Masamune saw her last before she died, and that was in a purple blouse and blue skirt.

"Oh!" Anne-Marie gasped, covering her mouth to keep from saying anything, processing this sight in front of her.

Masamune mouthed the one word that came to mind after fifteen years of coping with his loss.

"Pema?" He mouthed, and the woman in front of him, unchanged by the passage of time, nodded her head in response.

"It's good to see you again," she uttered, sounding like she had changed a little.

-x-

Hour after hour, people that had lost their lives in the years after Second Impact (even during Second Impact) were showing up out of nowhere, either in places they were last seen when they died or in places where others were thriving. While some were brought back unchanged since their premature passing, others were brought back slightly older than those around them. The graves that possessed their remains were nonexistent. However, for some reason that was yet to be explained, the only people that returned from the realm of the dead were those that all seemed to possess one thing in common: None of them were foul or black-hearted.

"…Feels like something out of one of your comic books, Nemo," said Tsukiko to her brother on the Seventh of September.

"Yeah, my Dragon Ball Z comics," he responded. "A wish was made to revive all but the most evil lives that were taken during a tournament toward the end of the series."

"So, then…only the good people were brought back to life after we saved the world," went Rumi, as the family looked down at the town, where several hundreds of the revived people had wandered into, either looking for those they left behind or just in need of aid. "That's good, right?"

"Yeah," answered Shinji for her, wondering how many of the people that lived below them had lost people over the fifteen years the Earth had been maimed and unable to properly rebuild. "Good people coming back is always good."

"I was shocked when the good doctor met a woman he went to his high school prom with that had been brought back to life yesterday," said Miaka, who didn't expect Dr. Gyatso to actually have a girlfriend many years back.

"We'd be amazed of many things we don't know about completely," went Akira, wondering how many good people had been resurrected (she was also wondering how many children that would've or could've been drafted into the Evangelion program the moment they drew their first breath of life had lost their mothers over the years). "You know only a portion, a measure of something about somebody, but you don't know the entire something about them, which creates a needed measure of privacy surrounding the personal nature of their business."

As the afternoon sun went down over the horizon, the sky was cast into faded hues of pink, white and orange, leaving Akira Town's smaller buildings in large shadows of the taller buildings. The trees were beginning to lose some of the leaves as the season of fall continued to progress back into existence over the country. One of things most of the people were looking forward to as the season continued to progress was the sounds of the cicadas dying down as they began to disappear from the outskirts of towns and cities; despite the massive damages done to the archipelago nation, the elemental town itself had no abundance of such insects, mainly due to being collected over the later years and being either used for cooking ingredients or relocated elsewhere around the world. And now, with the restoration of the planet's lost ecosystems and landmasses, there wouldn't be too much of them wandering around the populated domains.

"Hey, I just realized something," Nemo gasped, remembering something they might've neglected back in Tokyo-3. "Whatever happened to…that other person with the attitude that you-know-who asked to aid them in doing you-know-what that almost happened?"

Akira then frowned at the fact that her youngest son had brought up Naoko Akagi, who disappeared before any of them woke up. Wherever she had run off to, she hoped it was someplace far from here and without a single person to harm. The elder Akagi woman was as twisted as anybody that fell victim to the twisted hands of Gendo and his manic devotion toward his wife.

Hearts become black holes when possessed by cruelty, obsession…and the desire for more than what was given and received, she thought, looking up at the sky and seeing birds that never left the town flying around, perhaps daring to migrate for the winter now that fall was settling in.

-x-

"…Looks like lost people are being found all over the nation," went Misato to the mending Kaji, who had been transferred to Akira Town's hospital, mostly to avoid further anger from Sora, whom Misato had discovered was his little brother, long believed to be dead.

"I never thought I would live to see days like this," he responded; he had never believed in things like the dead coming back to life or places that were devastated beyond repair being restored to their original state of being. "It's almost unreal."

"Tell that to Ritsuko," she joked, but then needed to be serious about his brother. "Kaji…was that truly your brother you met back in Tokyo-3?"

"It was him," he answered her; he could never forget the look on his brother's face, the hate in his voice, the fact that he held him upside-down over the stairs, demanding the truth to why he betrayed his friends and family to death. "After all these years, I thought him dead."

"But…you saw him dead, didn't you?"

"He was dead. He was riddled with bullet holes, even one where his left eye was hidden under his hair. He…he wasn't moving or breathing…and he couldn't fake it."

I guess spontaneous revival actually does exist, Misato assumed, unsure of how to make sense of the fact that Kaji had a younger brother that eluded death and developed a hatred toward the guy that was supposed to protect him from any that would hurt them, right to the point of almost crossing the line and killing him.

"…I didn't expect to see him again," Kaji uttered.

"I don't think anyone expects to see anyone they either lost touch with or didn't get along with," she expressed, though this was because she was wondering if, with the people coming back to life, she would see the man that had caused much pain in her past.

Kaji could deduce what she meant by that, wondering if she would see her father, who probably came back to life, as well.

Knock-knock. They turned to the door and saw Ritsuko present, dressed in a kimono identical to to the one she wore previously at the festival.

"Hey, Rits," Misato greeted her. "What brings you here?"

"I called my grandmother," she explained, leaning against the wall, seeing their surprised expressions. "What, does it surprise you that I called my grandmother…or that she's alive again?"

"Both," they expressed."

"Anyway, I'm leaving to go see her."

"Alone?" Misato questioned.

"Yeah."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Kaji asked her.

"If this is about my mother, I got over her a long time ago," she told them. "Also, I doubt she'd be interested in coming after me. If Rei was defeated along with Gendo, what's left for her? She's probably long gone by now; it has been eight days."

-x-

Shinji ran. He ran for a long time, over a creak, through the woods, with Rumi, exercising his legs and lungs as he embraced his newfound reprieve from sickness and death.

"You can't outrun me forever, Shinji!" Rumi shouted toward him, catching up. "You don't stand a chance against me!"

"That's what you think, Rumi," he responded, and ran up a large rock and caught a branch to swing across the grass. "I've never felt more alive during an exercise!"

Rumi leapt up off the ground and jumped off a tree she made contact with. Until Shinji was drilled in the martial arts as she and the others had, she would be his superior out of the two of them. Though Shinji didn't mind this; he'd been frail for over a decade and was now just learning to embrace his restored health, so he wanted to do many things he wasn't able to do.

"Hey, slow down, you two!" They heard Kanami call out to them, out of breath as she caught up with them. "Some of us don't run as much as we should when we jog."

She was soon followed by Mayo, Taeko and Miaka, who were also out of breath.

"I knew I should've signed up for that track team," Mayo uttered.

"We need to focus more on our breathing exercises," Miaka added in.

"Through the nose and out the mouth," Rumi told them, hanging on a branch.

"How'd you get up there, Rumi?" Shinji asked her, as the branch was above their heads by a good three feet…and Rumi wasn't entirely proficient in manipulating air currents yet.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" She chuckled.

Rumble! The ground shook a little and the grounded Rokubungi family members staggered.

"I did it!" Taeko cheered, and Shinji and Miaka turned to look at her, seeing that the ground beneath her rose a few feet.

"You still need to learn advanced forms of Geo Channeling, Taeko," her mother informed her. "Your stunt felt like an earthquake."

"Thank the kami I was up here," said Rumi, who then let go of the branch and hovered down to the ground, landing gracefully.

"Is there really a need to be channeling today?" Kanami asked, as she felt it was unnecessary during peaceful hours.

-x-

"…Hmm…Rumi starts school soon, and I've yet to take her shopping," went Akira, her previous train of thought about a recent story in the news about an island near the islands inhabited by some dinosaurs that fed off plants broken, needing to focus on her youngest daughter's educational prowess that was to be advanced.

In the living room, she was reading a new magazine full of children's fashion, finding the uniform she had noticed from the young girls she assumed were skipping school or being relocated from the city itself when she had visited Tokyo-3 for the first time were now made in toddler size. She'd be lying to herself if she told somebody that was a good design for girls, but she really didn't like the design at all; her taste in old fashion was greater than anything recently made. But her daughter wasn't like her, personality-wise, so there was a measure of doubt that Rumi would choose new clothes for school that were like that type of uniform.

CRASH! Something in the hallway made a loud crash and Akira got up to investigate it.

"Ow…" She found Bumi on the floor, surrounded by old items that had fallen out of a plastic storage bin. "Oh… I'm alright."

Akira bent down and picked up a dusty teddy bear, wondering what Bumi was up to.

"I believe this was one of the toys you selected upon your sixth birthday, Bumi," she told him.

"The bear being a creature of the Earth," he responded as he got up and began to pick up the fallen items around him. "Along with the golem, an artificial creature often made of stone. With the exception of a toy submarine and helicopter, it was discovered that I possessed power over the rocks and mountains, that I had to have had ancestors from the Spring of Mountain City hundreds of thousands of years ago during the time when there were many channelers."

Akira looked around on the floor and found his toy golem under a chair. She handed it over to him and asked what he was doing with all his old things. He answered that he was taking them to the basement; even as he was in his fifties, he couldn't let go of such old memories. It pleased Akira to hear this.

"Oh, Miaka and I were thinking about taking Taeko to go shopping again for more new clothes for the new school year," he told Akira, resealing the bin once everything had been put back inside it. "Do you and Rumi wanna come with us?"

"Sure. I mean, if I can get Rumi to come with me 'cause I've been meaning to get her new clothes, as well. It's only a few days left before school starts." She responded.

-x-

Misato was tempted to pick up her cell phone and dial an old number she feared was not in use, anymore, but was going to drive herself crazy if she didn't find out soon. She had made a complete recovery and was set to return to Tokyo-3 just to collect her possessions from her apartment and relocate elsewhere, but wanted to make sure that one of the people that did come back to life was somebody she knew from before Second Impact. Fear made her hesitate to dial the desired phone number, as she feared the person on the other end.

"Wondering if your old man was brought back to life, too?" She turned to face Kaji, who didn't possess the expression of one trying to crack a joke; he was just asking a question.

"Not him," she explained. "My mother."

Misato wasn't a person to talk about her mother after the devastation that destroyed her past and corrupted her future. After Second Impact, she had no family on either parent's side to take her in. This left her a charge of the country, something that didn't help her much in her later years, even when she attended college. She recalled how she couldn't stop talking after more than two years of being a mute from the trauma of both her injuries and what she saw when Adam self-destructed after being awoken prematurely from being experimented on. But now that some people were showing up after fifteen years of absence, she worried over the possibility that her mother wasn't around like before.

Face the music, Misato, she suck it up and dialed the number in her phone.

The ringing tone came and nothing happened in the stillness of the moment…until the ringing cut off and somebody spoke on the other end.

"Katsuragi residence," a woman uttered on the line. "Misao speaking."

"Is this the mother of Misato Katsuragi?" Misato asked her.

"Yes."

"It's Misato, Mother," she expressed.

-x-

"Un-uh," went Rumi, going through several selections of shirts for her upcoming first year of school at the town mall. "Nope. Not my type. So not my style."

Shinji and Akira looked at each other and wondered how much Rumi had matured over the summer after fighting, defeating and humanizing the children of Adam, though still maintaining some degree of her immaturity that was necessary for her taste in a school wardrobe for her first week of the slow path to being further educated.

"I don't even need to ask," Shinji told the town leader.

"So long as it's not one of those uniforms I saw during my time in Tokyo-3, I'll put up with anything from animal pictures to characters from cartoon shows," Akira expressed.

"If anyone at the age of six wearing a uniform as their choice of fashion on their first day of school, then it's due to freedom and self-expression…provided it's nothing revealing and racy."

"Like the armor again?"

"No, Akira. Like the clothes you see people wear in the movies that show no decency, just action, comedy, drama and so on."

Akira chuckled at her grandson's opinion on fashion choices; at least when it came to the armor Rumi and she wore when using the Angelbreaker, he didn't complain about it.

"Ooh!" They heard Rumi express cheerfully as she found something from the clothes rack that caught her interest. "Mommy, you think this will fit me?"

She showed them a dark blue, button-up, long-sleeved shirt that looked more like the top half of a girl's uniform, since it was designed in a way that older school uniform was made for girls, which were, from Akira's perception (since Shinji had never seen them before), modeled after the uniforms of sailors because it had the scarf piece to go with it.

"I kinda like it," Shinji gave his opinion on the shirt.

"Try it on," Akira gave in, and Rumi took it, along with a skort (after her mother's humorous stunt she did at the hospital when Shinji was present, Rumi was hesitant to wearing a skirt during a windy day or in the presence of an Aero Channeler) into one of the dressing rooms.

While changing, Rumi was listening for conversation between her mother and nephew.

"…Her choosing a skort over a skirt is your fault," she heard Shinji say.

"I was only messing around a little bit," her mother defended, just as she removed her pants and put on the skort.

"You ever wonder what Rumi will be like in ten years?"

"No…and that's a long time from right now. You?"

"Just taller, more mature, nothing on aspirations or ambitions. Oh, I've decided to take another reading course again, along with a human ecology course this semester."

"Why reading? Nearly everything written looks like a haystack of jumbled words and numbers to you."

"I've had the whole summer to reflect upon that…and after having Rumi read to me… I might've given up just far too soon. People fail only when they stop trying."

"Try, try, and try again."

Rumi then changed out of her shirt and into the uniform top, listening to where their conversation was taking them.

"Shinji," her mother spoke up again. "We all had probably decided in our own, individual ways to put behind us everything that happened back at that city, but I just wanted to know…if you ever found out why it seemed that… I mean, could you ever figure out why Lilith…"

"What about Lilith?" Shinji asked her, as Rumi buttoned up the front of the top.

"Why you were the only person she couldn't bear to have touch her?" Akira asked her.

Rumi recalled that event, where Lilith screamed in actual pain from mere contact with Shinji's hands, like he was poisonous to her. She never understood why that was so and just assumed that her nephew was blessed with a power they had yet to see.

"No," she heard him respond to her mother. "You know why, don't you?"

"I found out why in a dream," Akira told him. "And…it was probably clear to me beforehand. It's mostly all because of Rumi, you see. She was willing to give up everything she had for you, even her very life if it meant saving yours, one of the only two things she probably thinks about more than anything else right now. Her wanting to protect you from Lilith…left its own mark on you. One that can be seen…but is never truly seen."

"A mark that's seen, but never truly seen? What kinda mark is that?"

"I think you already know the answer to that question."

"Yeah… Yeah, I guess I do."

Rumi then pulled the privacy curtain aside and showed the outfit off. When you ignored the skort she had in place of a skirt, she almost did look like one of those young girls wearing a school uniform, as the skort was like a skirt, but with shorts underneath.

"How do I look?" She asked them, presenting herself with her right hand behind her back and her left hand bent up, pointing toward her neck.

"You look adorable," Shinji gave her his opinion, smiling.

"Ditto," her mother added in.

-x-

Kyoji had never seen such a sight as beautiful as Kyoto restored back to its former glory and filled with the lives of the people that were taken fifteen years ago. Well, the town he grew up in might've been a beautiful place, too, but with less change over the years. As he rode a bike around the neighborhoods that were no longer underwater, he got back in touch with the community he had settled down in over a century ago when he met his future wife. The sun shining, the smell of flowers, the air after the water mixed with it had settled down after a cool night, and the sounds of children playing around playgrounds, even those with artificial body parts yet to be covered in perfected skin matrices.

Ah, it's great to be able to ride my bike down these familiar streets again, he thought, now riding away from the small neighborhoods as he entered the business district of the city, on his way to the Medical Angel building to see his granddaughter and her family; it was just yesterday that Kyoji ventured off to the spot where his house had resided, finding it, like everything else in the city, restored to its previous state, like it was never washed away by the tsunamis that devastated Kyoto, and spent the night there.

He also needed to find out what it was that happened to his great-granddaughter that got Pema and Masamune worried, as they had called him in the morning and told him that he needed to come see her. At first, he assumed that she had caught a disease or was suffering from a side-effect of the advanced medical technology that saved her life from an explosion that he was told was caused by Gendo prior to him reviving from his coma. Whatever the reason, whatever was wrong, he had to be to support Anne-Marie however he could.

What could be wrong with Anne-Marie? He wondered, entering the building and then the elevator. I was in a coma for fifteen years, and I was doing fine, with the exception of being asleep for a long time and waking up with sluggish muscles, slurred speech and hunger.

When the elevator stopped and the doors opened, he was greeted by his revived granddaughter…and a younger girl that looked an awful lot like a thirty-year-old woman he'd seen upon waking from his coma…except that his younger great-granddaughter was fifteen years old…fifteen years ago.

"Pema…is this who I think it is?" He asked his grandchild, hoping he was just imagining things because this was beyond what he had discovered about what had transpired in the fifteen years he'd been asleep from Masamune and Anne-Marie.

-x-

"…In other news, dozens of people from around the globe woke up to a startling discovery that they have regressed in age," Shinji heard off the news the day before the new school term was to start in the town, the day of a festival that celebrated the end of summer and the returning of autumn. "Judging from a small series of examinations performed by experts in the field of longevity, more than half the total population of people from the aftermath of Second Impact have physically regressed in age by fifteen years. Some have claimed that this regression is some sort of blessing to those that were cheated out of their pursuits of desired futures, while others believe that…"

Shinji turned off the television and went into the kitchen; he had enough of the news of these great changes for right now. But he had to wonder about what he heard off the news about the age regression. If his aunt, Anne-Marie had also regressed in age by fifteen years, then she'd be about a year older than himself, and, due to hearing about her childhood, he had to wonder if her boyfriend was one of the many people brought back to life, and if the regression was part of the resurrection: The lives taken brought back the same age as they were prior to that awful point in time, and the lives devastated by the arrogance of the cruel and heartless restored of a measure of their youth in order to share with the people reborn for the years that weren't how they should've been.

"A long time ago, not everything was simple or complicated," he muttered, rummaging through the refrigerator, "and there wasn't a single day, week, month, year or decade where there was hope or despair in the hours that came and went."

He grabbed the carton of milk and closed the door…and was surprised by Rumi being there in front of him, quiet and attentive.

"Aah!" He gasped, and then the little girl gave a giggle. "That's not funny, Rumi."

"Gomen," she apologized, and sat at the table while he poured two cups. "What was that commotion on the TV?"

"Just some talking about some of the people waking up to the next day fifteen years younger."

"Fifteen years? Wow, that's…uh…more than I'll count for now. Maybe it's a good thing for the people to have a measure of their lives undone like that."

"In what way is it good…in your opinion, Rumi?"

"A video game you can play differently because you go back to where you last saved. Instead of doing the same thing over, you can do something different, better than you did before."

"For those that lived through a nightmare and were forced to endure in ways they wished they hadn't, they are able to do what they had decided upon before the nightmare began," Shinji stated, to which Rumi had nodded her head to, and Anne-Marie did say she wanted to be a vet because she liked talking to animals.

Rumi drank deeply of her cup of milk and noticed that Shinji hadn't touched his yet.

"That's going to get warm, you know," she told him, and he started drinking. "So, what are your plans for this back to school festival that's happening later tonight?"

"Well," he started, "some of the people were going to this dance that's supposed to happen. You?"

"Wandering around," she confessed; she would've liked to dance with him, but she wasn't tall enough…so she didn't want to embarrass him in front of everyone. "Looking at things I'll probably need…or things I'd probably want."

"Have you…invited anyone to accompany you?"

"No. Have you?"

"No."

"Rumi/Shinji…" They both started, but then stopped to let the other speak first. "You first."

"Okay," Rumi restarted. "I think you should go dancing, then."

Shinji leaned his head in forward and told her, "There's only one person I'd choose to dance with if I went there, just as I'm sure there's only one person you would dance with if you went there."

She leaned in and responded, "I'm not tall enough to dance with."

"Size means nothing to me."

"People will say things, maybe bad things. I don't regret my choice of wanting to be with you…"

"People can say what they will. They can me a cradle robber…or say I'm shameless…or sick. I won't care for their opinion."

"Other girls will probably try for you."

"They won't get me. I'm already taken. Cupid went and hit me with a six-year-old's arrow."

Rumi smiled at knowing this…and closed the gap between them by kissing him again; she was getting better at this with each time she did so with him.

"You two seriously need to get a room," they broke their kissing at the sound of a girl speaking, and saw that it was Mayo, dressed in her purple bathrobe.

"And just how long were you there?" Rumi asked her.

"I just got here, and in time to see you two kissing," she answered back.

The two sighed and then resumed what they were doing before she interrupted them.

"Ah, Kami," Mayo sighed and left the two alone; she, like the rest of the rest of the family, was willing to overlook the romance between the two, but was probably the only one still grossed out by their shared affection. "Why do I even bother?"

-x-

Ritsuko stood in front of her grandmother's home, hesitant at ringing the bell to announce her presence to her only elderly relative. The pictures that Lilith had taken to show that she'd murder her and her cat fresh once more in her mind, along with those words that were laced with the malice and cruelty that she had been subjected to when she was Rei Ayanami.

"Your mama's mama and your pussycat are ash," Lilith's voice echoed in her conscious.

DING-DONG! She rang the doorbell and awaited the presence of her grandmother.

The door opened and an elderly woman, short and wrinkled, well into her late-seventies or early-eighties. This was the same woman that Ryoji Kaji had met in secret several times to share information relating to NERV.

"Ritsuko," she greeted the younger woman in front of her. "You changed your hair again."

Before she left Akira Town, Ritsuko decided to wash the blond-yellow dye out of her hair, restoring it to its original, brownish shade.

"I've…I've had the time to readjust to some old things," she explained; having been in that little town of the elements of nature and being on the mend after a near-death experience was really what she needed to open her eyes to the immorality, emotional detachment and insanity she had immersed herself in the very moment she stepped foot into NERV's predecessor organization…and when Gendo came begging her to help him. "How are you doing?"

"Mew," they were interrupted by the arrival of Ritsuko's Egyptian Mau, who came and rubbed its left side against her right leg. "Mew."

"Well, Rika has missed you a great deal," her grandmother expressed, referring to the cat, "just as I have missed you. It's been three years. How long will you be staying around this time?"

"Actually, I was hoping that I could stay until I found a new job that was closer to home," Ritsuko told her. "I kinda…um…was laid off."

"You know, this is the first time you tried to lie about something," her grandmother responded. "I was killed by a girl that looked like she belonged in a mental institution somewhere and she set my house on fire."

Ritsuko groaned in woe at that; she was now convinced of an old belief that people became aware of everything that goes on after dying, even the secrets of people still alive.

"Come on in," she told her granddaughter, and Ritsuko picked up Rika and entered the house. "Have you visited your mother's grave since the last time you were here?"

"No," Ritsuko didn't intend to visit Naoko's grave, as it was moot now, just as it had been before the Angels returned to attempt destroying the human race; after meeting your mother brought back to life and learning that she had made an attempt to kill a little boy, that knew nothing of what his parents were doing, just to do away with her love interest's distractions, it's hard not to see her as anything other than a monster, different from the ones that wanted to destroy you in the beginning. "I think I've visited my mother's grave enough."

-x-

"…So, what brings you here…Naoko Akagi?" Lilith asked the revived Akagi woman, standing outside the waterfall cave, looking restless.

"I was almost gone, Lilith," she told her, referring to the fact that she was almost free from the world when the keeper of the Fallenbreaker was large and almost in charge. "I was almost away from here. But then, you were defeated…by a little girl that gave the Ikaris' only son her heart. What's left for me…if not including a visit from the Grim Reaper later on?"

"Freedom from domination, manipulation and abandonment?" Lilith questioned. "Independence from the Ikari couple and anybody else that seeks what is best left unsought for now?"

"This…is not the freedom you wanted, isn't it?" Naoko demanded the truth from her.

"No," she answered her. "It is not what I desired…but it is what I've been granted in my defeat…along with a greater clarity and inner peace of mind. Do you have any idea of how it feels to live a life deprived of love and friendship, to be manipulated by a man that has never shown a capacity to love anyone except his wife, and has never made an attempt to make friends, or by a woman that has no idea on how to treat people that don't want to see things from her point of view and causes her own family grief and madness? They didn't know any measure of how to give kindness without wanting something in return, only lying, cheating and deception. They drove me mad by depriving me of such needs, made me the weak one. That's why I was beaten. That's why all but the cruelest of souls have been reborn on a world being healed of its devastating wounds. If you don't have the ability to feel, accept or return love or friendship, you're as hopeless as can be…and that is the fate that Yui and Gendo were dealt when their son rejected them after learning the truth behind their goals, refusing to be anything like them, or how Yui realized that she could never atone for the crimes she committed toward her baby sister and stole her hopes and dreams and left her with nothing but vengeance."

"You know what happened to them, don't you?" Naoko asked her. "Where they went and everything?"

"If you want to find them and still get revenge on Gendo, even though you already did so when you killed him that first time, you won't have much luck finding them in the next world. Yui had committed a murder-suicide over a week ago, killing a resurrected-but-still-crippled Gendo and herself, marking their shared grave at the bottom of the ocean. They'll eventually wash ashore, though…in about a month or so."

Naoko went wide-eyed at this revelation! Yui and Gendo were dead, and it was Yui that killed them both! It wasn't what she expected to hear about. Well, she was pleased that they were dead, but it left a bitter aftertaste in her mouth. Knowing that Gendo had been brought back to life only to die a second time was something she couldn't understand; if people being resurrected only so they could be murdered a second time after a devastating defeat, they were better off staying dead.

"How do you know all of this?" She asked her, now curious.

"Because I've seen happen from a distance," she explained; her Fallenbreaker regenerated from the damage it sustained, and then adapted to the point where it could perceive events from afar, like watching from a satellite, a literal eye in the sky.

"So, now what?" She asked Lilith.

"People live," Lilith responded. "Life returns…and prospers. Differences set aside, relationships rebuilt and mended, and the fear of the end of all things taken from the world. Everyone has the chance for a better future, free of the lingering darkness that was born from messing with forces that were best left alone…and will never be misused again."

"And you?"

"I stay here, in this solitude, where I'm at least alone…and free. I could go and involve myself with people, but I don't wish to be exploited again like before. You can do what you will, though. Your life is yours again. You can make a new identity, start fresh, live a better life."

Naoko realized this to be true; as she'd been declared dead over five years ago, she didn't officially exist anywhere on the planet, just a ghost from the past. Of course, a new identity meant leaving previous ties, family included, for the rest of her life, since nobody could know that she was back among the living, even if a few of them saw her face. With no other alternatives, a new identity was the best attempt at a new, fresh start for herself. And on a personal level, when Lilith came back to NERV and set her free, she used her MAGI to hack into Gendo's personal finances and siphoned some of the wealth that SEELE bestowed upon him when he joined them into an untraceable account for her own use. That way, she had a bit of cash to live off of.

"Say, whatever happened to their son and that little girl that loves him?" She asked Lilith.

"They've gone home," she answered her. "Beyond that, I don't know what else has become of them. I don't know if the girl saved his life from an undeserving fate, and I won't attempt to find out. They should be left alone, unfettered by the concerns and troubles of others. They deserve to live out their lives to their fullest…and see where their ventures take them."

"For the first time, Lilith…I agree with you. I had wanted to keep the boy from being used by his parents, and, in one way or another, I did. I wanted to settle old scores with that bastard, and I did. Well, I'd best be off building a new life for myself. Perhaps, we'll meet again…in another life."

"Maybe, Naoko Akagi. Maybe. Good luck."

The Akagi woman then walked away from the waterfall, off to the nearest town with a computer to setup an identity for herself, and then off to someplace where nobody could prove she was really Naoko Akagi, brought back to life, without hard evidence.

-x-

The festival music was comprised of drums and ancient, musical instruments, as the town was into old music for festivals instead of modern-day music made with microphones and electrical pianos. People were feasting on meals, chatting about the return of the seasons, people from their past that were taken and returned, the upcoming school year and so on.

Akira, dressed in a green and pink yukata, walked around the streets, seeing the people having fun. The sight of leaves having changed their color and falling from even the simplest breeze was a great sign of change having return to the world…and how a return to the old times was as pleasant as nearly every other event that occurred in this little town of the elements.

In another part of the festival, Nemo was spending time with Camille like before during the previous festival, while Bumi, Miaka and Taeko were looking for Bardiel, who was supposed to be at the rehabilitation center where the rest of his family was, and Misato, simply because she didn't want to spend another day inside the hospital, wandered around the streets of the town, not really trying to involve herself in any activities that were going on, but just trying to keep herself busy.

"Misato Katsuragi," she stopped at the sound of somebody calling her. "What brings you out here?"

She turned around and met up with Kanami and her daughter, Mayo, both wearing pink and yellow yukatas with a flower in their hair.

"Too much hospital food," she claimed to them.

"Huh?" Mayo went, looking around, but not seeing what she was looking for. "Where's Pen-Pen?"

"Squawk!" The answer was given in the form of said penguin running down the sidewalk toward his owner, wearing a red obi around its waist.

"Eh-heh-heh!" Kanami chuckled. "Somebody seems either restless or cheerful."

"He's cheerful. I still can't believe your mother and little sister saved the world."

"Actually, it's mostly because of Rumi that we have a future to be proud of," said Mayo to her. "She faced a woman that was, quite literally, the source of all life here, minus Adam and his children…and prevailed against all odds."

"I believe you," Misato agreed with her; she was willing to even worship the ground the little girl walked on in this town.

-x-

"Hey, Bardiel," went Taeko, greeting the hunchback son of Adam, finding him in the halls of the rehabilitation center. "How are you?"

"Oh, Taeko," he greeted back. "I'm doing fine. You?"

"Great. I'm going to the festival before I start school tomorrow, and I was wondering if you wanted to come with me."

"Me? Go to a festival? With you?" He was surprised to being asked to attend a festival with the first friend he made since his humanization. "Uh, I… I…"

"Oh!" Taeko gasped, seeing the approaching Zeruel behind Bardiel, and ran behind her parents.

Zeruel stopped walking the moment he came within three feet of the three people his little brother was talking to, and, with a much different tone of voice, spoke out, "Does Bardiel need to go to school after he attends this fall festival out there?"

Taeko stuck out her head from behind, a confused and bewildered look on her face, and she uttered, "Since when do you speak of things that aren't… Well, what we do around here?"

If the humanized Angel of Might didn't possess so many facial exaggerations, he would've gave away an expression of being unable to properly answer that question.

"Forgive Zeruel," came the voice of Adam, appearing behind the three Geo Channelers, carrying a bucket of dirty water in his left hand and a mop in his right hand. "He just recently started attending what you call therapy sessions with Arael and Sachiel. It'll be a while before he's able to properly socialize with others."

"Therapy sessions?" Miaka questioned, having believed that only Bardiel, whom her daughter seemed to fancy, had needed therapy due to a poor childhood, billions of years ago, not believing that any of the other humanized Angels required it. "Really?"

"How else is he ever going to finish his rehabilitation and survive out there if he ever gets out?" Shamshel, who came from behind Adam, asked them, holding a baby bottle in her left hand. "Every now and then, even we need somebody smarter than we are to talk to about our lives. Our flaws, our weaknesses or what we might view as problems that exist every day."

"I'm not exactly sure what to do at a festival," went Bardiel to them.

"Just…have fun," Taeko told him.

-x-

The sight of them walking down the street, holding hands, was an eye-opener to some of the older people that lived in the town. Nobody had seen such a show of affection between them before, and some were quick to assume that something happened between them over the summer where the end of the world almost happened were it not for the little girl and her ageless mother. True to some beliefs, there were few people that stared, albeit unintentionally, at them as they went over to a part of the street where others were dancing.

"I never figured this would happen," they heard a female voice, and turned to their left to see the one and only Camille Moto, accompanied by her grandmother and Nemo. "At least not so soon."

"Do you," went Shinji, wearing a blue and green kimono with a yellow obi, "have a problem with us?"

Miss Moto simply bowed her head and answered, "I never have a problem with true love. Does anybody up in here have a problem with true love?!"

The soft music playing in the background stopped as every couple present looked at the youngest couple, and simply cheered.

"Heh-heh!" Rumi, dressed in her blue yuakata with the pandas, chuckled. "And I was getting worried over nothing."

The music resumed itself and the couples returned to dancing. This, of course, had Rumi a little worried, since she and Shinji had never danced together.

"Um," went Nemo, taking a hold of Camille's right hand, "we'll just, uh…be faces in the crowds."

Nemo said so with the intention of letting his little sister and only nephew being alone so that they could enjoy the evening.

"Oh," Shinji sighed, unsure of how to make his first attempt to simply dance with the girl that became the keeper of his heart. "Um…"

Whoosh! A small-but-strong breeze nudged Rumi against Shinji's legs. Whoosh! Another breeze nudged Shinji's head to lower down at Rumi, and he inhaled before offering his right hand to her. She accepted, though she climbed atop a chair in order to be a little higher for him to dance with; even if it was in one place, a dance was a dance, no matter who it was being performed with.

'I know we've been friends forever,' a new song started up, 'but now, I'm starting to feel something totally new…'

It does seem like we've been friends forever, thought Shinji, though it was an odd type of friendship that had been exhibited by them.

I never felt this way about him before the summer started, Rumi thought, and now this. It's such a good feeling to have.

From outside the dancing bunch, Akira, sitting on a wooden bench, smiled at the young pair; she figured a little Aero Channeling was all that was needed to get them to dance, not something she was particularly proud of, but it got the proper results. Love, in its purity, was as beautiful as the sunrise on a field of flowers or fresh snow falling from the sky, even if that love was expressed by a little girl that slowly felt such an emotion toward a fourteen-year-old that was dying from an artificial disease…and said boy returned the affection…mutually.

It's not love at first sight, she thought, seeing Rumi climb atop a table to meet Shinji on a higher level, just so that he could hold her close to himself, letting go of his nervousness. Or a childish crush. It's not even foolishness. It's only love. Yoshitoki…you'd probably be proud of Rumi's achievements this year, just as I am.

"I am proud of her, Akira," the ageless town leader turned to the right of the bench and faced the man she had given her heart to long ago before he succumbed to old age. "I'm as proud of her as I am of you yourself…for everything you've done over the years."

"Yoshitoki?" She uttered, and then looked around them to confirm whether or not she was hallucinating her dead husband's presence.

"Akira, you can relax," Yoshitoki assured her. "I'm really here."

She calmed herself, and then raised her right hand slowly; she'd fantasize about touching him like she used to, but didn't want to get her hopes up because he was a ghost or spirit walking the Earth right in front of her. Just a few minutes ago, she sat there on the bench, by herself, looking at her daughter and her love interest enjoying each other's company…while also thinking about her own love interest that desired just one more day with his family before he breathed his last breath of life. For a moment, she almost thought her palm had passed through his face, only to see it connect with flesh that was as warm as it was the day they met, just as he was young that same day.

"It's because of the Angelbreaker," he had explained to her. "It's the reason you can see and touch me."

Akira then embraced her spouse with a hug and kiss combo; she had gone over a century and a half of widowhood and celibacy…and was still willing to continue living this way until he either reincarnated into life…or she passed away herself, but for the moment, here and now, she just wanted Yoshitoki at her side.

-x-

"…Wow," went Bardiel, having gone with Taeko and her parents to the festival, surprised by there being so many people that lived in the town out and about. "Do many people attend festivals? I never knew there'd be so…many."

"Some festivals are like that, Bardiel," Taeko told him, holding a fried fish on a stick in her left hand and a cone of cotton candy in her right. "People wander around the street, there's music being played, traditional food being prepared and most people wear traditional clothing."

Bardiel felt like he didn't fit in well because his only outfit consisted of black pants, a shirt and coat; the hospital allowed him to have the patient clothes he woke up in when he was recovering as his pajamas. It would be a while before he had anything else to wear than what he received upon his humanization. At least after returning to the town after Lilith was defeated, his spinal column didn't hurt as much whenever he switched from being a hunchback to standing upright perfectly.

"Hungry?" His small train of thought was broken by Taeko holding out her cone of cotton candy in front of him.

He knew that was a sweet substance that people ate, but he wasn't sure he would like it any more than he detested the taste of actual cherries. Still, he was being offered a sample of it by the girl, so that had to mean it was tasty. Slowly raising his left hand up, he accepted the cone from her and took a small piece to sample it. It made contact with his tongue and he felt like he was eating something fluffier than bread because it became moist quite quickly, and it had a good taste to it.

"Mmm," he reacted to the candy. "Good."

Taeko then offered the whole thing to him, and he accepted it as they continued to wander around the festival streets.

"Oh, dear," went Miaka, stopping behind her husband and daughter.

"Something wrong?" Bumi asked her.

"Yeah, I forget my purse," she revealed, not realizing that she left her fish-themed, coin purse-like pouch bag back home. "Y'all go on without me. I'll be there and back in a while."

She then ran off back toward the mountain path, leaving the three behind.

"I'd better go with her," Bumi sighed. "She might forget to bring something else with her on the way back. Can I trust you to look after Taeko, Bardiel?"

Bardiel nodded in the positive and Bumi gave thanks before running off to catch up with his wife.

"Why do I get the feeling," Bardiel uttered.

"That they left us alone on purpose," Taeko expressed.

"Yeah."

-x-

Using the need for air as an excuse to escape the dance floor, Shinji and Rumi had ran away to the roof of the building, looking down at the people enjoying the festival for the return of the seasons the day before the new school year.

"Shinji?" Rumi asked her nephew, sitting on the ledge of the roof while he leaned against it.

"Yeah, Rumi?" He responded.

"I had a really good time dancing with you back there."

"Yeah. Me, too, Rumi."

If there was a word for a little girl that could've evoked seductive power over an older boy, Shinji wouldn't use it on his aunt. Having a crush…and being seduced…weren't the same, and Rumi, while as beautiful as her mother before her, wasn't completely in full bloom of her beauty…and may never reach it until she reaches Akira's physical age or so, but she was still an attractive maiden. Of course, Shinji had doubts that he would use the word 'maiden' toward Rumi, for she was above such a word.

"Shinji, how was your first day of school?" She asked him. "I mean…without the sickness and everything. Your experience during your pursuit of the future."

"It was…like time had stood still for a while," he told her; there were many ways to interpret (or even misinterpret) a first day of school, and every time he went back was a first day to school, but he could assume that Rumi, quite literally, meant the very first day. "It was also very loud. Kids were running around whenever it was playtime. It was almost crazy…but it was also very pleasant."

"Really? Is it like that for every kid attending their first day?"

"In my opinion, yes, Rumi."

Suddenly, a dried, rough leaf fell onto Shinji's bald head with his hair growing in; with the ridding of his cancer, he didn't feel the need to wear his wig any longer, as his hair would soon grow back and resemble his wig. Taking the leaf from off his head, Rumi looked at it and then at him; she wanted to say that he used to be like the leaf: Rough and scruffy, but still full of life. But she chose not to say so, and let the leaf fall to the ground below them. The leaves of autumn were the opposite of those belonging to spring, death and rebirth, respectively, with winter and summer making what happened to them, somewhat, similar to how people change: Winter, after autumn, made the trees incapable of showing life in any other form except for its own existence, spring, the period of life and rebirth, made the trees embrace life once more, with new leaves and flowers that were as fresh as river water, and summer taking most of the life out of the leaves and trees until autumn returned and brought their end until spring came back into the world.

"At some point, I might have to write a poem on how I feel for you," she told him.

"Really?"

"Yeah, maybe. Something to do with the changing of the seasons, the themes of duality, the philosophy of the balance between life, death, rebirth, love and change. Stuff like that."

"Hey, Rumi?"

"Yes, Shinji?"

"Can you promise me something?"

"Anything."

"Stay with me forever, just like you told me."

"Hmm."

Rumi got off the ledge and onto the ground, having Shinji lower to meet her, and she kissed him again. Her right hand connected with his left hand and she felt atop the world once more.

-x-

"…I'm home," said Kyoji, taking his first steps back into the town he grew up in before he left to make a life elsewhere.

"This is how they celebrate festivals?" Anne-Marie questioned, having readjusted to her fifteen-year-old body, awed by the traditional features of her great-grandfather's ancestral home. "It's so…lively."

"So, this is Akira Town," said Pema, marveling at the buildings and people. "Grandfather, we could've come here when I was twenty or younger. It's so beautiful here."

"Whoa," went Masamune, looking up at the mountain surrounded by the town, seeing what looked like a large temple or mansion, or even a monastery, recalling that Kyoji stated he used to live there during his boyhood years. "Is that building up on that mountain Akira's?"

"Yep," the Hydro Master confirmed. "Looks like it was painted over, though. Probably a few decades ago to keep it looking nice."

"Oh, scorch my skirt," the family quartet, Jade and Sora (whom were invited when Kyoji decided that he was going to spend time back in the place his life began anew after the death of his blood mother) turned to the left and saw one of the adopted women of the Rokubungi family, Shinobu, with her girlfriend, Kagura, taking notice of some familiar faces. "Kyoji? What brings you back after all these years of absence?"

"Minor homesickness," Kyoji told his sister of a younger generation under a century from his own, and then noticed Kagura. "Who might this be?"

"Kagura, my girlfriend."

"Hello," Kagura greeted them, but then backed away at the sight of Jade. "Oh! Tiger!"

"Grr?" Jade growled, not understanding why this woman seemed afraid of her; she'd been fed by Anne-Marie ever since she got her bionic leg, so she never thought to hunt anything for food.

"Uh, Shinobu, Kagura," Anne-Marie uttered, "this is Jade."

"Your…pet?" Kagura suspected.

"Pet, best friend, roommate, the first known, big cat with a cybernetic appendage. She's harmless."

Shinobu held out her left hand toward the tigress, and Jade purred under being petted by the Pyro Channeling woman.

"How'd you get a pet tiger?" Shinobu asked.

"It's a long story."

Meanwhile, Bardiel and Taeko had wandered into the playground nearby and sat on the swings. It was Taeko's idea, and Bardiel followed her.

"I…I've never been on one of these before," he told her.

"It's a fun activity to do," she responded, swinging back and forth a little. "Just swing your legs forward to go up and pull them back to go back in order to go high."

Bardiel sighed and followed her instructions, pulling his legs back and pushing them forward to swing.

"This," he uttered, actually starting to enjoy it a little, "is pretty good."

"But can you keep up with me?" Taeko teased a little.

"I can try."

And so he swung higher to meet her, and for five minutes, nothing else seemed to matter to him except for this girl that became his first friend.

-x-

"…Here they are," said Bumi to his wife, looking through the fence and at his daughter and Bardiel on the swings.

"Ah-ha-ha!" They heard Taeko laughing with the former Angel of Hail.

"Miaka, honestly," Bumi told his wife, "did you leave your purse at home on purpose?"

Miaka sighed and responded, "Yes…but I wasn't expecting much to happen between them."

"Well, what were you expecting?"

"Only for them to be by themselves for a short while and see if they have anything else in common."

"Oh, so you weren't intending to…hook them up?"

"Oh, no. As friends, that's a definite. But as a pair, I would let Taeko decide for herself who she wants to be with…when she gets older, that is. I'd be awful if I decided everything she was going to do, like she had no say in anything."

Bumi chuckled and leaned against the fence; there were often times when he wondered what he loved about this woman the most prior to the day they got married. It was obvious that he loved the warm and caring aspect of her personality, which was higher than her beauty when they were younger. Miaka was also, when they met the first time, capable of being able to decide things ahead of time, but only for the right reasons. She was, in no way, whatsoever, a manipulative woman.

"Whoa!" They saw Bardiel slow his swinging and fall off. "Oopf!"

"Heh-heh!" Taeko laughed at him. "You're funny, Bardiel."

He got up and said, "That wasn't very funny, Taeko."

The girl got off the swing and looked at his left shoulder, which had a small scrape and then took out a bandage rag from within her yukata.

"How's that feel?" She asked him.

"Better," he responded. "Thank you."

-x-

The rest of the night went by with many things happening: Shinji met his maternal aunt who now looked a year older than he did, the family found out from Akira that the town leader met up with her deceased husband's ghost at the dance, Sora, even though he still hated him for what he did years ago, went to see his brother at the hospital, and, among other points of interests, Kyoji expressed to Akira that he intended on coming back to town every chance he got after being in a coma that lasted fifteen long years, wishing to see how much had changed since he'd been away…and how much had stayed the same. Before they knew it, Rumi yawned, indicating that she was tired from all the excitement that had transpired in the festival, and Shinji picked her up and carried her back home; it was the day before the new school year, and everyone needed to be rested up before the next day came.

"Hey, Akira," went Masamune, before the town leader traveled up the mountain toward her home, "is it alright to ask you something?"

"Feel free," she responded.

"I never understood why it was so that Kyoji could…manipulate water the way that he can…and I've had to make sure that nobody tried to exploit him while he was comatose, but…what I'm trying to ask is… There's nothing…magical about channeling…is there?"

Akira chuckled before answering, "No, Masamune Ikari. There's nothing magical about the art that is channeling the elements. You could call it magic, but there are just as many limitations to it. Channeling…is an ancient art that is unique to each of the four elements, grounded majorly in both spirituality and physicality. Because it's so ancient and people that don't understand it well enough, some would view it as magic…while others would or could think it's some form of kinetic power limited to certain substances or chemicals as a result of experimentation. But there used to exist a time before any of that happened. Before the channelers and the four cities…when people merely manipulated their own energy to achieve feats they couldn't normally do. Magic…or science…or alchemy. Channeling was simply channeling. Despite the many people that use it here, it's almost an extinct art, kept alive only those that pass the secrets on to the new generation that's fortunate enough to inherit the power."

"So, in a simpler way of explaining it," Masamune suspected, "it is simply viewed as what we perceive it as because it's so ancient, and thus far too complex to understand fully?"

Akira nodded in the positive; for as long as she could remember when she thought about it, channeling, to her, was both knowledge, power, life and freedom. With the four elements at her disposal, she could go anywhere and be able to defend herself and those that couldn't stand up for themselves. Most people from her generation had viewed the stories surrounding channeling as nothing more than myths and legends that spanned countless millenia into the past, but to her and a few that were versed in the arts, said myths and legends were as real as the creatures of ancient mythology were often perceived as. And for her, the worst thing anybody could do with channeling, other than exploit it for the wrong reasons of greed, vengeance and domination…was to take the gift of it away. It was a horrid thought, for she couldn't imagine a life without her channeling; if she couldn't fly her glider, control fire, stop floods or tidal waves or earthquakes, she'd be just like everyone else, unable to do so much, showing that she held much of her dependence on this power because it enabled her to help them so much.

"Yikes," she shuddered. "The thought of not being able to do the things I can do with my channeling frightens even me."

"I think losing that one thing in life frightens everyone, Akira," went Kanami to her, walking past her with her Mayo asleep on her back.

"People don't know how much value they have in things…or people…until they're gone," Masamune uttered out, looking over at his wife, who was as quiet as Shinji appeared to be, looking down at the town below the mountain.

Pema, once she was done gazing at the beautiful scenery, turned to look at Masamune and Akira, giving away a small smile. She was then grabbed by her left arm by Anne-Marie, holding onto her like she did when she was younger. It reminded the mother of how often her daughter, her youngest daughter, needed simple guidance to navigate her way around the confusion that existed in the world, something that she hadn't been able to provide properly, something her husband hadn't been able to explain in a way she could understand…and something Yui couldn't give her. Her death had deprived her of fifteen years of watching her gifted child grow up into somebody that had found her place in the world, and now here she was again, alive and unchanged by the passing of time, as if the horror of what happened never was…and she could now make up for all of that.

"…I can't wait for school tomorrow," said Taeko to her parents.

"I can't wait for the rest of the seasons to return to this wonderful archipelago," her father responded.

"I can't wait for… Well, I can't wait for the next day to come around the corner," added in Miaka, just as they all entered the house.

-x-

It's so quiet down here, thought Lilith, sinking further and further down to the bottom of the river under the waterfall; she needed to occupy her time and spent the last few hours underwater, gazing at the deep darkness. It's so quiet, so empty, so peaceful.

Once she felt the air in her lungs drain away, she swam back to the surface of the waterfall, her yukata soaked and her hair dripping in the cold water that didn't bother her flesh. She breathed in a new breath and wadded out of the water to her cave, just in time to see a beautiful sight make itself known. The rising of the sun, spreading light so bright it could've harmed sensitive eyes. But not hers, for she had endured the darkness and found great comfort in the light that had made itself known in said darkness. She smiled at the sight of the new day, not knowing everything that would happen, except for several more people with good intentions returning to life and places that were once unsuitable for habitation becoming as pure as the virgin snow that fell during the winter seasons.

Shinji Rokubungi… Rumi Rokubungi… Damn you two, she thought again, thinking of the only pair of souls she now hoped would truly have a bright future together. Damn you two for being the only ones to know how I truly felt back then…and thank you both for setting free. Thank you.

-x-

"…I'm gonna go now so that I arrive on time," Nemo, who'd finished his breakfast, told the family after he got up from the table and set his dishes in the sink.

"Hmm?!" Shinji and Rumi, who were still eating, grunted, looked at each other, and responded with a few extra grunts toward the young Hydro Channeler, indicating that he should wait for them to finish up so they could head out and begin their school day. "Hmm!"

Rumi finished first, nearly choking on a piece of celery until she drank the last of her orange juice to avoid that situation.

"Are you two sure you've eaten enough for breakfast?" Akira asked them, and Rumi, calm after finishing her meal, nodded in the positive for herself, while Shinji answered that he was full.

"I hope today will be a good day," said Taeko, as she, Mayo, Shinji, Rumi, Nemo and Shinobu walked down the mountain path and toward the town.

"We're a peaceful town," went Mayo to her, "what could possibly go wrong today?"

"I hope nothing," answered Shinobu.

"Hey, Shinji?" Rumi asked her nephew.

"Yeah, Rumi?" He responded.

"You gonna be home after school's out?"

"Nope."

"Oh."

"I told Akira that I would pick you up myself."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Swear on your heart?"

"Swear on my heart."

As they reached the bottom of the mountain, back at home, Akira stood outside of Gendo's room, dressed in dirty, baggy pants and a shirt with an apron over them, holding a bucket full of cleaning items in it; last night while dancing with her husband's spirit, she was informed of a fact that has avoided her ever since she left Tokyo-3, and that was the second passing of Gendo, who died in a murder-suicide instigated by Yui herself, after accepting that their choices, their actions and desires had caused great pain toward everyone they knew…and was hurting those they didn't. Now that she knew that the former Pyro Channeler, orphaned child and cruel soul that was Gendo Mu was no longer alive, she could clean out his room, getting rid of most of the physical evidence of his existence here.

"Akira?" She turned and saw Kyoji, who had just come from his old room further down the hall. "Another of your old habits?"

"Yeah," she answered him with a slight chuckle. "I found out last night that a boy that used to grow up here has been gone since after we left that awful city…along with a girl that realized her goal was as rotten as his."

Kyoji shut his eyes and gave her a small bow. He couldn't bring himself to wonder if Yui was dead, like he had wondered before after waking up from his coma. The sad history and chapter of his past and current family, his and Akira's, had been ended, with a new chapter being written out in front of them.

"I…I never thought that Yui would do such a thing to herself," he told her.

"I never thought she could do something like that," she responded. "Everything else, of course, but that was… I don't know how to explain it without sounding or being cruel."

"Unlike a former brother that was also an in-law, my eldest great-granddaughter appeared to have a crisis of conscious and found she couldn't escape from her ghosts of shame."

"Either that…or she had a little help in realizing her mistakes. Their mistakes."

"Maybe…it was both."

"Hey, Kyoji."

"Hey, Akira."

"Do you mind helping me clean out this room?"

"I wouldn't mind at all."

-x-

"…Shinji Rokubungi, welcome back to school," said a lady teacher to the boy that entered the room with a bunch of other teens. "I didn't think you would attempt reading again."

"I gave up too soon," he responded as he sat down. "It's never too late to turn it all around."

She agreed with him, and asked the class how their summer was, earning a widespread of cheers that it was an amazing summer because their town had been invaded by giant monsters that were beaten by a pair of guardian angels wrapped in armor.

"Oh, boy," Shinji sighed with a smirk. "This is going to be a long day."

-x-

Rumi was thankful of not being asked about her experiences in dealing with the humanized Angels during the summer, the Angelbreaker, being wanted by Lilith, saving the world and so on. One question she was asked, though, was how was visiting Tokyo-3, to which she answered that it was an awful place to visit because it lacked the aura that existed in Akira Town. She was even grateful of three kids her age that became acquainted with her: A girl named Asami Kuze, a boy named Azuma Kayabuki and another girl named Miko Tendo. As the day went by, she had a good time doing things that she normally did, excluding the martial arts: Drawing, coloring, painting, reading, sleeping during nap time (even though that was something she simply didn't do much of the time on account of being active all day), among other things children her age normally did.

Laying down during nap time, Rumi looked at her half of the Angelbreaker, grateful that it enabled her to save the life that mattered to her above most others and was worth saving, then at her dog tags.

"Hey, Rumi?" She turned to her right of the cot she was using and looked at Asami, who was looking at her. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"Before I say, it's not about what happened over the summer."

"Go ahead."

"Are you really…seeing your nephew?"

"Mm-hmm. It's not…entirely official or in the same way that others enjoy theirs, but I still love him, regardless of how I spend my time with him."

"Is he really that special to you?"

"Beyond measure."

"You're lucky."

"Arigato." Rumi then laid back on her cot.

-x-

Two hours later, Rumi was waiting on the steps of her school. She had, what was probably, the best day of school so far. It was as normal a day as any of the other days she had experienced.

"See you tomorrow, Rumi," went Miko to her as her parents picked her up.

"See ya," she responded back.

Since she didn't have her cell phone with her, having left it at home by accident, she wasn't sure what the time was since school was left out. It could've been more than half an hour or maybe just seventeen minutes when she started waiting for Shinji to come get her. Bored stiff sitting on the steps, she got up and walked to the bottom of the steps, just in time to hear someone running.

"Hmm?" She wondered who could be in such a hurry to be running.

The person in such a hurry was none other than Shinji himself, probably running the instant he was let out for the day, just to get her like he promised. He stopped in front of her, catching his breath, and greeted her with, "Did I make you wait long?"

"Not really," she answered him. "I left my phone at home and I don't have a watch, so I don't know what the time is."

"It's about four-eighteen. I got out at four-ten and ran ten blocks."

"Did you really need to run?"

"I didn't want you to think I wasn't coming."

Rumi nodded in agreement and opened her backpack, pulling out a bottle of water and giving it to him.

"Thank you," he praised her, accepting the bottle and chugging down the beverage. "I feel better now. Shall we get going now?"

"Hmm."

They walked down the street toward the mountain, wondering how to strike up further conversation between each other.

"Did you learn anything new in school on your first day?" Shinji broke the silence between them.

"Yes," Rumi responded. "The teacher explained to us something about how the body is made up of three temples when you view the world from a different perspective that involves looking into old myths and legends and culture. The body is a temple in and of itself in its own right, and inside it are the Temples of the Mind and Soul."

"I think I heard of those before once. Go on."

"Well, the Temple of the Soul is viewed sparingly through the eyes, which have always been said to be windows of sorts to the soul, but that, when viewed on a universal standing, the temple is very protective of the soul that dwells within it. The Temple of the Mind is like a first line of defense for the Temple of the Soul, with the last defense being the temple that protects the soul itself."

"Protects the soul from what?"

"Other souls. Everyone's soul is one of a kind, but malleable, fragile and susceptible to being manipulated by somebody that's not supposed to mess with them. It's almost like what nearly happened when I faced Lilith for the last time: She was trying to absorb the souls of everyone left alive to restore herself after being subjected to the cruelty of others that tried to exploit her in foul ways, and they were nearly locked away inside her. If she had taken everyone's soul, they would've lost their identities. There would be no individual existence between them. No knowing who was who or what was what when they were independent. Not all that different from what we found out earlier, but still the end result would've been bad for everyone not desiring a dark future where we had no future."

"So, the Temples of the Mind and Soul are meant to keep people separate from each other to retain individuality and assist with the existence of a large number of people? Allow it so everyone can have…opinions, different views, points of interests, the right to speak their mind and so on?"

"If, by that, you mean free will and such that give you your identity, then yes. Everyone has a Temple of the Mind and Soul within them, unique to themselves, kept isolated from others so that no one trespasses on personal spaces."

Then, without even trying to think about it, Shinji had to ask her his new question concerning the Temple of the Soul.

"Did the Angels possess these temples for their souls before they were humanized?" He questioned.

"No," she answered him; learning of the temple made her suspect that, while regular people had their souls within their metaphysical sanctuaries, Adam's children, prior to being humanized, were the exact opposite, having their souls outside theirs, which aided in their appearances and varied degrees of strength, age and personality traits. "Once they were humanized, they gained temples for their souls. They were like ghosts: Floating around, not grounded or held in place. Adam, their father, may have been the only exception before he was even humanized. Lilith, while another exception, had hers violated too many times."

Shinji could accept that as the truth, as there was no way that Lilith could act as she had toward others without having been the victim of some foul play committed against her, except that the foul play in question had taken place over a decade ago and could never have started with her being locked away thousands of generations before. She had been locked away to prevent such abuse from ever happening, but bad people found her…and exploited her to the point where she became twisted by them…and slowly regained her independence and sought to punish everyone because of them. It had driven her mad with hatred toward everyone.

A warm breeze swept past the pair and blew Rumi's hair up for a moment, like a calm hand with a brush or comb was grooming it.

"That must've been what I heard was called a fall breeze," Shinji sighed happily.

"We lived for years in a nation that was a victim of constant summer," Rumi sighed, "and with its seasonal end, I hope to enjoy a wondrous season that's more than just a period of change."

-x-

"…Arf! Arf!" A dog barked from down the street, as Anne-Marie and Pema, enjoying the school day off (since Anne-Marie had yet to get back into school and get her education again) by wandering around Akira Town. "Arf!"

Anne-Marie looked up ahead and noticed the barking dog, examining the features it exhibited: It was a small Kishu, a Japanese breed of dog, with a predominantly white fur coat that had a large patch of brownish-blond fur that was shaped almost like wings. To her, it was a very unique dog…mostly because she had one that looked just like it! But she thought that, with the exclusion of animals of much greater varieties that were extinct as a result of Second Impact, animals that were treated as pets that were lost to death were incapable of being brought back to life. She hoped that this dog was who she believed it was. She wanted so much to believe that it was Yukiko.

"Arf!" It barked at her. Anne-Marie, I'd recognize your scent anywhere.

"Mother," she told Pema. "It's Yukiko!"

The female Kishu ran over to the teen and jumped onto her left leg.

"Oh!" Anne-Marie chuckled, feeling like another important piece from her past had been returned to her. "Hey. Heh-heh!"

"Anne-Marie?" She looked up from petting her dog and felt like she was going to pass out from too much excitement in a single day. "Is it really you?"

A boy that looked about fifteen years old, with ragged-like hair and a face that evoked an eternal youth-like appearance, with baby-blue eyes. He was dressed in jeans and a green turtleneck shirt.

"M…Mori?" She whispered, recalling the day they met for the first time.

He took one step forward, and she took one step forward…until she fell into his arms.

"I never thought I'd see you again," she told him, reveling in his embrace.

"I was lost in a dark place," he responded, "and then I woke up, as if from a long sleep, just a few days ago, among many others. I came here last night, hearing commotion and seeing what looked like a festival, hoping I would find you. And then I found Yukiko…or she found me. She always seemed to know where to find you."

"Arf!" Yukiko barked happily.

For the longest time, Anne-Marie felt a great emptiness in her heart that had consumed her in despair every day since she and Yui's relationship went further south and consumed by hatred. The emptiness was so great that not even her relationship with Jade or recent relationships with Shinji and relatives from her great-grandfather's adopted family could've undone the heartache. She had often believed in the old fairy tales where dreams and miracles came to life and were possible through hope and belief, like Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Snow White and other such fairy tales. Then, because of the Angelbreaker, with everything that it's done since it revealed itself to the world, it seemed obvious that such hopes of people taken from a long time ago being brought back to life were more than possible. They were true.

-x-

"Akira," went Kyoji, bagging the last of Gendo's abandoned possessions as the town leader, having finished the window, opened it to let it fresh air to clear out the smell of sanitation and lemon scents, "can you be honest with me about a possibility of dealing with Gendo were he still alive?"

"Yeah, sure," she answered him.

"Knowing what he was capable of…and what he was incapable of, how he treated everybody, even those that should've mattered to him just as much as his wife did… What I'm trying to ask you is…were you willing to make the choice, would you have done away with him, knowing that he was beyond redemption, beyond salvation and beyond any shred or hope or acceptance?" He questioned her, just wanting her honesty.

Akira inhaled and said, "Were I willing to make a choice like that, as I had crossed that line more than once before in the past, and were I able to live with the repercussions of enforcing my decision… Yes, Kyoji, I would've done away with him. But in the end, I'm glad that I didn't cross that line again. I'm rising above such choices that end in unnecessary violence. You, if given the choice?"

"If it were up to me…I'd do the same as you, Akira," he answered her. "I wouldn't kill him…but if there were those that had sworn a vendetta against him or had to settle old scores that wouldn't end peacefully, I wouldn't save him from overdue closure and justice, even if it was just some twisted form of revenge that others desired from his death."

"Not kill…but not save, either."

"Exactly."

Akira then turned to the dresser where she had set the four toys that Gendo had selected upon his sixth birthday that confirmed his status as a Pyro Channeler: A dragon sculpture, an flashlight torch, a stuffed doll that wore an armored outfit with flames and a toy sword with the ancient characters for 'fire', 'wrath' and 'inferno' engraved upon the plastic blade. She sighed at the fact that he was a failure of the ancient art, a failure as a parent and a person, and that it was a lousy hand of fate that he was endowed with such a power that, for him, became part of his one-way path to the realm where fire was a constant occurrence for those who were damned. Then, she gathered them up and threw them in the garbage bag with the last of Gendo's possessions, not wanting to see them again and be reminded of how close he actually came to demonstrating a great fear of fire: Mistreat it, and you risk harming those that don't even deserve to feel the singe of a heart that burns with cold fire.

"You mistreat fire, and you risk harming those that don't deserve to feel the singe of a heart that burns with cold fire," she uttered.

"And with a heart of cold fire, there can only be the path of self-destruction for the person it resides in," Kyoji added.

By the time school was let out, Gendo's former bedroom had been cleaned out and his things placed in the garbage to be collected at another time. The only problem Akira had to contend with now…was how to explain the deaths of Yui and Gendo to Shinji, who had a right to know about their fates, even though he had renounced them for their choices in life.

-x-

"…Hello," went Misato to Masamune, whom, to her, reminded her of the woman that was Anne-Marie, in subtle ways, as she met him at the hospital. "I'm sorry. Have we met before?"

"No," he answered her. "I would've recalled a face like yours after meeting you once or twice."

"Misato Katsuragi."

"Masamune Ikari."

"Ikari? As in Anne-Marie Ikari?"

"Yes. My daughter."

"So, what brings you here?"

"My ward. Well, that's what I could still call him, since he has nowhere else to go."

"Oh."

"And yourself?"

"Old boyfriend."

"Oh… Um, getting back together?"

"No. I'm just here to make sure he hasn't done anything to upset his relative, whom I was told would be seeing him."

"Is it…Ryoji Kaji?"

"How'd you know that?"

"My ward is his little brother, Sora."

The two went up to the room housing Ryoji, just in time to see Sora walk out, looking like he regretted something very recently.

"Sora?" Masamune asked. "How was your visit?"

"Awful," he answered him. "If I ever see my parents again, I hope they do something to him that shows him the error of his Second Impact upbringing. If it's not bringing up what he did with his life, it's actually asking me what kind of person you are, Masamune. As if I have any dirt on a good man."

"I should try getting in contact with your folks. They gotta be alive like most other people brought back to life by the Angelbreaker. Something like this that has been going on for years isn't something that should be overlooked."

"What, his passion for the truth?" Misato asked them.

"Passion…or rather obsession," Masamune responded. "Did he behaved any differently after he was assaulted by this Rei Ayanami girl?"

Misato thought about it for a moment, but answered, "He didn't enjoy being in pain, but there wasn't any indication of seeing life from a different angle. Part of the only reason Rei even attacked him was because of his search for the truth to what really caused the Second Impact. But it also the only reason she went and murdered his other relatives before assaulting him."

"Other relatives?" Sora asked her.

"Oh, that's right, you don't know. Rei had gone and drowned his aunt, uncle and cousins before returning to Tokyo-3. It was probably to hurt him by showing that everything he did had a consequence to it."

"Any cruel soul would do great harm to one's heart by endangering their family," said Masamune, reminded of such cruelty.

"You've experienced such a heartache, too, haven't you?" Misato asked him, and he nodded.

"Gendo, may his soul burn in Hell, actually tried to kill my daughter and walk away unscathed. I never did like the guy. He was always up to something, like he had a grudge against the world. I considered him a sociopath, even if he demonstrated some degree of honest feelings. Yet, I'm only grateful to him for showing his true colors toward his relatives, which enabled me to expose SEELE and their cruelty to the world. If I had gone further, I would've did whatever I had to in order to lock him away for life."

"He actually made an attempt on your daughter?" Misato questioned; she knew Gendo wasn't a well-liked by a lot of people, and she had to consider what Kaji had told her about Gendo to be a heavy fact, as she'd seen him try to burn Rumi for not wanting to pilot the Eva again, even to save mankind.

"I hated him," he continued. "I hated the people I worked for. None of what they were doing was right. Not even moral. If murder, manipulation, forcible persuasion, threatening, bribery and genocide were what it took for just a small group of people to be immortal and god-like, then I'd rather let all of mankind be condemned to their mortality like we have been for thousands of years. It's less complicated than the pursuit of something that is best unsought after."

"You really think SEELE's goal was not worth everything that was said and done?"

"He's as serious as a stroke, Ms. Katsuragi," Sora explained. "Sure, if you had the power of the gods, along with a moral conscious and a compassionate heart, you would do great wonders for the good of the people. Maybe end the useless need for wars, make deserts come to life and be carpeted with lush vegetation and beauty, or whatever else it is that could be done to make the people happy. But if you were a god and had an immoral conscious, and a wicked heart, you'd probably be looking out only for yourself, doing whatever you wanted without any remorse, taking from others and leaving them with very little to nothing. That doesn't make you a god… It makes you a demon, and a disgrace to those that knew you or despised you."

Sora then left to wander around the hospital while Masamune and Misato went in to see Ryoji. Sora wasn't sure why he ever tried to hope for his brother's change, but chalked it up to some small, pathetic chance that he could cease his obsessive, truth-seeking drive before it killed him. He decided that there were just some people that were beyond the capacity for change, and that his brother was one of the people whose disposition would follow him to the grave.

"Sora?" He stopped walking and turned to see Tsukiko down the hall. "What are you doing here?"

"I… I had a further falling out with my brother," he explained. "What are you doing here?"

"I just came to get potential references."

"Your goal to be a lawyer?"

"Yes."

"Good luck with it."

"Thank you," she praised him. "Say, Sora…are you free later this evening?"

"Yeah, why?"

"I, uh… Well, I… Would you be interested in eating ramen with me?"

"Sure," he answered her, and she smiled.

-x-

The night air was cool and the town lights were bright, like a giant network or spiderweb of lanterns built around the mountain. It had been a calm and peaceful day…until Shinji had been informed about the whereabouts of his parents by Akira, who relayed the information she obtained from her dead husband at the festival. He had gone to the back porch of the house to be with his thoughts on how he should really feel about what had become of them, and also to avoid unnecessary anger at the truth. For a while now, he had put them behind him, just as he had put his mother's so-called passing behind him after having adjusted to living here, but much of what occurred during his time in Tokyo-3 had left some lingering anger toward his parents that hadn't faded away. But now that he had been informed of their deaths, he had a hard time trying to cope with this revelation.

"Shinji?" He turned from the sight of the town to his love interest, who had come outside to see how he was doing. "You wanna talk about it? About them?"

He slowly turned away from her gaze and looked down at the mountain's trees and bushes.

"I really hated them," he told her. "I hated their goals, their reasons for doing what they did. How were they able to live with themselves after causing so much pain?"

"I honestly don't know," she explained. "Probably convincing themselves that all could be forgiven once their goals were fulfilled. Who could or would forgive them for years of wrongdoings? How do you forgive a person or people that have done wrong and don't try to make amends?"

"They say that forgiving someone is supposed to set you free…but that means forgiving them for their awful acts committed against others or even yourself, and that's just not right. It's like letting someone go after discovering that they committed a crime that cost somebody their life or the life of somebody that had no involvement in what they had committed. I mean, that man tried to hurt you just because you told him you didn't want to help him in his goal, which he had masked under some bogus mission to save what had been left of the world he helped maim. Then, he deliberately placed two of own in danger, almost getting them taken away for good. He even tried to get rid of Anne-Marie, who did nothing but help rescue me from certain danger when I was kidnapped. And then, there's…that woman, who reduced herself to being the ghost in the machine, leaving me. Kami, I hate them."

Hearing this only helped to remind Rumi of how she made her threatening gesture toward Yui with her hook sword when she saw her get up after Lilith had been humanized and defeated. She wasn't going to let her or Gendo harm Shinji again, even if it, probably, meant she had to cross a major line and hurt them to enforce her choice of keeping him protected from them. It was the first time she ever made a threat to an older person that she didn't even know but disliked. And, being honest to herself deep down, if she had to do her life all over again, she wouldn't change the outcome between herself and the woman that walked away from her responsibilities as a parent to her child.

"Listen to me rambling," she heard him say. "Surely, you don't want to hear any of this."

"Actually, I do, Shinji," she assured him. "And it's not rambling if you're simply expressing how you feel. It's not rambling at all."

Shinji gave a weak smile. He appreciated her honesty. There were hardly any times where he had to wonder what drew her to him and he to her.

"Thank you, Rumi," he praised her. "I actually feel a little better now. I think I'll turn in early."

"Okay. See you tomorrow."

"Yeah. Goodnight."

As he walked back into the house, Rumi looked out at the town below and marveled at its nightly beauty. She hoped one day, maybe next summer, when the family went on vacation outside of the town, they could visit the places that held other forms of beauty at night. And with Shinji…well, she would like to be alone with him on a Ferris Wheel, just wanting him at her side.

Inside in the hallway, heading to his room, Shinji saw Akira exiting the bathroom and seeing him.

"Hey, Shinji," she uttered. "How are you doing?"

He answered, "I'm not entirely over the revelation of my parents' fate…but I'm getting there. I actually had a good rambling with Rumi."

"I never heard someone say 'rambling' before," she responded. "It must've been very good."

Shinji yawned and expressed that it was so, and then walked past her down the hall to his room.

"Shinji," she stopped him.

"Yes?" He asked in turn.

"I forgot to say that I love you," she told him.

"I don't think I've ever heard you say that before, Akira."

"If I didn't, I meant it…everyday since we met at Bumi and Miaka's when you were little."

He smiled and told her he loved her, as well, and then turned in for the rest of the night.

-x-

The night was silent, but the inside of his head was like a storm. Shinji awoke in the middle of the night, staring at his blue and green ceiling, feeling exhaustion, but was unable to find relief in sleep.

Creak! He became aware of the sound of his door opening up, and looked over at who it was.

"What are you doing up at this time of night, Rumi?" He asked the little girl, who wasn't sleepwalking, and she closed the door behind her.

"I woke up a few minutes ago," she explained. "I heard a grunt of frustration, so I came to see if it was you that was awake."

"Yeah, it was me."

"Why are you awake?"

"Bad dream."

"You want to talk about it?"

"No. Not tonight, Rumi. Later."

"Okay," she accepted, and turned around to go back to her room.

"Rumi?" Shinji stopped her.

"Hmm?"

"Will you sleep in my room tonight?"

She turned to face him and nodded in the positive, removing her hand from the doorknob and climbed into her nephew's bed.

"This is becoming a major habit, you know," she told him, laying on the right side of his pillow. "It'll have to end, eventually."

"Don't promise to end a habit that you can't break, Rumi," Shinji told her, laying down beside her.

"Oh, even if I were to promise to stop, only to not do so, I heard someone say once before…that those kind of promises are the best kind." Rumi responded, indicating to Shinji that, despite her habit of coming into his room, sleepwalking or wide awake, she didn't intend to stop it for a while, however long that while might be. "Shinji?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm glad that I got to know you."

"Me, too."

Then, the two fell to sleep, and the nightly hours went by without a care in the world.

-x-

"…Ever since that summer of Twenty-Fifteen, and the years before it," went a young man, in his early-thirties, standing in front of a grave that had been recently decorated with a bouquet of white roses, as if speaking to the deceased owner of the grave, "I've lived a wonderful life, full of joy, hope and fulfillment. Earlier this year, we went to China again and ran across the Great Wall…three times. Who could top that? We miss you a lot. It's like we only met you for a short while, and in that while, I was getting to know a little more about a part of our family. Well, I'll be by later this year. It's always good talking to you."

He bowed his head to the grave and brought up the collar of coat to keep away the chill of the cold breeze that swept past him. And as he walked away from the grave, the tombstone that identified its deceased occupant was revealed to be none other than a man whose body succumbed to his advanced age: Kyoji Mikamura-Rokubungi.

"Hey," a young woman, in her late-twenties or early-thirties, dressed in an outfit that resembled a school girl's uniform, but was yellow and green and had baggy pants underneath, and she had her long, ebony hair tied in a ponytail. "Did his spirit talk back?"

"No," the man answered, "but it was unnecessary. You know, you could've talked with him, too."

"But I had no idea on what to speak with him about."

"Anything, really. Everyday things, past or present. Even about us."

The woman raised up her left hand, decorated with a silver bracelet with a tiger and panda engraved on it…and a ring on her finger, identical to the one on the man's left hand. It had been almost fifty years ever since the summer of Twenty-Fifteen, and over ten years since Shinji and Rumi, against most odds, tied their knot. And it was a shocker for Rumi when she physically ceased her aging after she turned thirty, two years' older than Akira, so she could almost pass herself off as her mother, with the exception of slight wrinkles under her eyes that extended to the sides of her cheeks, looking almost like tattoos instead of a sign of old age. It had also been a shocker for Shinji himself when had experienced the same sign a Unity Channeler experienced when they reached their physical prime; he had never known his body, even when he had leukemia, to feel pain that was like getting frozen on the inside…but pricked in certain places on skin by needles for several hours after he turned thirty-four.

To both Akira and Rumi, this meant that Shinji's life had not only been saved from an early death, but also extended when Rumi used the Angelbreaker to save him. They could only deduce that he might live as long as they would, which was close to a little over half a millennium, since only Unity Channelers possessed such advanced longevity, and what was more puzzling was an ability he started exhibiting after he had turned eighteen, which was similar to channeling, but instead of any of the elements, he channeled energy, the very energy within people that enabled them to channel.

"How long do you think it'll be before we cross the bridge to starting a family of our own, Rumi?" Shinji asked his wife.

"Oh, I don't know," she responded. "Another year, maybe. Or, since we're not doing anything about our careers, we could start right now."

"That would please Akira."

"Just as Nemo and Shinobu did when they married Camille and Kagura, respectively, and had kids. Or Tsukiko and Sora, or Taeko and Bardiel, of all people. How those two got together, I swear I'll never know completely."

"Love is a mysterious emotion to most people, Rumi. Shall we go home now?"

"Yeah, let's go home."

Hand in hand for the umpteenth time, the couple that found romance during a summer of adventure and fate-altering wonder that led to an eternal relationship in life that would follow them into the next one left the little cemetery of the town the girl's mother help to found and expand, little by little, and returned to their home up on the mountain that was a beacon of hope, love and change. Their whole life together seemed destined to happen the instant the girl was born to help save his life from an artificial plague forced on him by a woman that desired the attention of his failure of a father after the would-be passing of his disgraceful mother, and in the six years following her birth, life together had changed them both, allowing for the girl to demonstrate an adult-like maturity when it was necessary, and for the boy abandoned by his parents to actually live happily in the presence of those that care about him rather to just exist in a life that had no benefit of meaningful relationships without prices, love without cost and a real home without the fear of being rejected or exploited.

"Hey, Rumi?"

"Yes, Shinji?"

"If we get to live again after our lives end, I hope we get together again."

"Same here, sweetheart. Same here."

And with that, she stopped him from taking another step forward up the mountain path, and kissed him deeply on his lips. He held her close to himself as her arms went around his head. On her right arm, the relic that allowed for their hearts to be unified shone brightly against the light of the sun. The Angelbreaker, which had remained with her ever since the day it attached itself to her mother and she, seemed to never choose another wielder or wielders, as the world still embraced balance and order. And as Rumi sometimes wondered if there would ever come a time where the order was corrupted and the balance was broken, would the Angelbreaker still want her as a wielder to aid in the preservation of all the good that existed in the world, or would it choose a new wielder? She decided to do what people often did during situations that were sometimes odd and difficult: She went with the flow, and let her feelings flow like the very element that brought life.

She had Shinji in her life, and he was enough to convince her to just enjoy life while she was still alive, and that Heaven existed on Earth when it had the things, places and people that you loved in it.

Today, I hope we start our own family, she thought, her cheeks turning pinkish-red. For ourselves…and for the future.

A life that became fragile to the point of breaking, a family that possessed different backgrounds and a bond of love that endured and transcended all boundaries, and an artifact that was sought after by many in the ancient past for the purpose of ultimate power…but granted to those chosen to defy fate and change the world for the better. The Angelbreaker…and its special keepers…who ensure that life never ends…but begin again, anew, until the end of time.

A/N: It was the idea of granting Shinji a situation that would lead him to those that would become for him the very thing he never seemed to truly have in his life: A family that really loved him for him and could help him accept himself as he was deep down. And I did want Rumi to represent for him a heart that could understand love and friendship, hope and acceptance, and for Akira to represent for him a spirit that could be guided down a better path and understand whatever needed to be understood. And, character-wise, I wanted to make Akira a more enlightened, wiser, philosophical, strong-willed, understanding and motherly amalgamation of some of the existing characters of Evangelion, but demonstrating acceptance and a responsibility that makes her almost like an actual person that has lived a long time and has learned from others from generations younger than hers after learning all that she could from those before her time. And with Rumi, like the other members of the Rokubungi family, she's an innocent soul with a caring heart, and when she learns of how serious Shinji's illness is, she wants to help him out of the love she has for him; put simply, she would do almost anything that was right…out of love. As for the backgrounds of Gendo and Yui? Their family backgrounds were never touched upon much in the manga or anime of the franchise, so that gave me the license to bestow history that could be touched upon and how what they've done can and has affected the people they grew up with in their earlier years, and how they themselves had matured in their upbringings. So, please, read this story and grant me your opinions and views. And, just so that you know, even though it stops here, it's not truly over for these people that form a family that goes beyond the limitations of biological heritage and not being related by blood. I intend for there to be more stories involving the family and more use of character development. I was able to complete this before my birthday of this year, and I consider it my greatest accomplishment in the realm of fiction. See ya!