Creation began on 02-07-19
Creation ended on 03-25-19
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Salvation at the Hands of an Artificial God: Future
When the real Godzilla emerged from beneath the mountain following the destruction of its lesser kin, Haruo and the others were stunned at the size of the monster that had driven them from the Earth.
"No way," Haruo expressed, unable to believe that the Godzilla that had claimed the planet was capable of growing to over three-hundred meters and was likely more powerful after twenty-thousand years.
"It's huge!" Yuko gasped.
"We gotta get away from here!" A woman yelled as everyone else started to retreat to the Landing Ships; there was no chance of defeating a creature that massive with what they had.
Godzilla turned to see the ships taking flight…and couldn't permit them to escape from him.
"Grrr," he growled at them, intending to unleash his wrath upon them with his Super Oscillatory Wave and Plasma Cutter attacks…until…
FLASH! An intense brightness illuminated the sky for a moment, distracting the super beast.
Ding! He felt something hit him from behind, but as he turned to look, there was nothing there.
"What was that?" Yuko asked Haruo as he got on a Hover Bike.
"Something fell out of the sky and hit Godzilla on its back, but Godzilla doesn't seem to notice," he explained, confused by this himself.
-x-
Disoriented from hunger and fatigue, Shinji Ikari awoke from what felt like a long slumber…and wondered what was going on outside the Eva.
Beep! He heard a beep go by and looked at his plugsuit's life-support display.
"This can't be right," he uttered. "It should've been down to a minute, but now it says everything's fine."
He then checked the Eva's internal battery, which should've rerouted all that it had to the life-support system to keep him alive for at least sixteen hours, but saw something different being displayed in front of him. The Eva's internal battery at the usual capacity showed three-five minutes whenever the umbilical cable was severed, but now it was showing an increase of time to almost forty-seven minutes…and was still climbing.
"What the…" He uttered, wondering what was happening with the Eva to suddenly have this much time to spare.
-x-
"What's going on here?" Haruo wondered aloud as everyone saw Godzilla's electromagnetic energy seemed to be acting up against its will.
"It must be whatever hit Godzilla in the back," Martin suspected. "It's either siphoning its energy or is causing it to go haywire."
Suddenly, Godzilla fired its beam, but it was out its back, up towards the sky.
"Grrrrrraaurgh!" Godzilla roared, sounding in distress. "Grrrraaurgh!"
Seconds later, another beam shot out of its back, followed by another…and another…and another. Now, its back was shooting out more than twenty beams of electromagnetic energy into the sky, forcing it to hunch over.
CRACK! A series of small cracks formed in its legs, leading up to its waist.
Then, the people all saw something slowly levitate into the air among the beams that were firing out of Godzilla's back. It looked like…some sort of humanoid with large shoulder.
"What is that?" Yuko asked.
"It's…some sort robot," expressed Adam Bindewald. "Oh, my God, look at that."
The beams that shot out of Godzilla's back had ceased, allowing them to get a better look at the being that had hit Godzilla. It was some sort of armored humanoid, with a predominantly-purple color scheme and a horn on its head, as if depicting some type of demon.
"The Devil," Haruo uttered; there was no other way to describe the being that was in the air.
-x-
"My, my," went Metphies as he saw Godzilla being attacked by the humanoid being that appeared to siphon off a large portion of Godzilla's power. "This is quite an unexpected turn of events for the almighty King of Destruction."
-x-
The numbers on the counter were in a constant state of flux, as though the internal battery had so much energy now that it couldn't be properly measured. Even as he tried to keep up with the flux, Shinji couldn't get past the fact that his Eva had somehow drawn power from this strange creature that appeared to be about to attack the people below.
"If it's attacking them, they need to be protected from it," he told himself, unconcerned with how he ended up wherever he currently was right now, and was wondering how he was going to deal with a creature that was much larger than his Eva if all it could do right now was recharge and extend its internal battery and levitate. "Eva, if there's something else new that you can do right now, I'd greatly appreciate it if you could do it to protect the people!"
-x-
Godzilla felt like he had regained control of his power and was about to swing his tail and crush these inferior pests under the rubble…but then…
"Tonight, we either live or die," a voice uttered. "Tonight, we either rise or fall. And in your case, you will rise. You will rise and ascend to the heavens."
Suddenly, the King of the Monsters felt himself being lifted off the ground.
"Grrrrraaurgh!" He roared as he was turned to face the being above himself.
-x-
On his screens, the name of the attack just popped up in front of him. It was called Gravity Ascension, and it was only because the Eva had siphoned a large degree of power from this creature that was some sort of aberration. This was what was enabling Shinji to manipulate the gravity around this creature, raising it from off the ground.
I may not be able to harm you, but I may be able to dispose of you, Shinji thought, feeling a little strain in his body as the Eva ascended higher into the sky. I will dispose of you.
Over them, it looked like the sky was turning dark, blanketed by starlight, indicating that they were breaking through the planet's atmosphere and entering space.
"Grrr!" He heard the creature growl as it started to glow bright blue and purple.
"God, have mercy upon me," Shinji prayed.
Godzilla fired his Atomic Breath at the Eva, but it deflected it back at him with some sort of wall of orange energy.
BLAST! Godzilla was struck in the chest by his own Atomic Breath, causing further cracks to form across his body.
"Aaaaauurgh!" He roared in agony.
-x-
"…What in the Hell is that thing with Godzilla?" Unberto Mori wondered, watching from the Aratrum along with everyone else present, disbelieving that Godzilla had grown to such a colossal height after a lengthy period of over ten-thousand years.
"It looks like…an oni," went Takashi Hamamoto in response; to him, this purple humanoid, whatever it was, resembled a horned demon. "It's the Devil himself."
"That's the Devil, you say?" Halu-elu Dolu-do questioned. "It looks more like it's cybernetic than organic, based upon its appearance."
Everyone aboard the Aratrum could see this humanoid looking as though it possessed some sort of telekinesis that was affecting Godzilla as it was being lifted into space.
"If it gets rid of Godzilla and it's the only monster left on the planet, we can go back to the Earth," a woman expressed.
"Yes, it's possible, but only if that thing, whatever it is, can dispose of Godzilla," a man agreed with her belief.
They saw the humanoid appear to have successfully extracted Godzilla from the planet's orbit and turn one-hundred-eighty degrees away from Earth, as though telekinetically sending the colossal aberration that had driven them away into the abyss.
-x-
Fall into the abyss of space, thought Shinji, feeling weakened due to the fact that he hadn't eaten in over sixteen hours…or as far as he could tell, drift away, freeze up, get lost in an asteroid belt somewhere, crash onto Mars or wherever you end up now. Just never come back here. This isn't your world, anymore. It never was yours to begin with.
As he saw the monster slowly try to move towards the Eva, he tried to stay conscious in case it had some ability to propel itself forward in an attempt to get back to the Earth. This creature was no Angel, but it was just as dangerous and far too great a threat to permit back on the planet.
"Grr…" It growled, trying to reach out towards the Eva and the Earth, but the lack of gravity around it reduced any ability to move freely.
As it drifted further and further out into the darkness of space, barely bathed in the sun's light, it looked at the small humanoid that had ripped it from the blue sphere, as if marking it as an eternal foe. If by some random act of the universe itself that it came back, it would burn it away from existence and reclaim the world it was removed from.
-x-
With the understanding that Godzilla was a hyper-evolved species of plant with metallic fiber tissues integrated into its function, the adults on the Aratrum had to suspect that as Godzilla continued to drift off into space, the near-absolute zero temperatures all around it would reduce it into a frozen state in no time at all.
"Distance one-hundred-thirty meters," a man monitoring Godzilla's drifting uttered. "Distance one-hundred-fifty meters… Distance one-hundred-seventy meters…one-hundred-ninety meters… We're losing visual readings… Visual readings lost. We're unable to track Godzilla."
"We're not picking up any electromagnetic waves, even in the slightest," added a woman monitoring the scanners. "Godzilla must've been drifted far enough that it's in the solar system, but too far from us to be seen."
-x-
"…I can't believe it," went Haruo, as the remains of the Earth group regrouped and saw the humanoid slowly return. "It got rid of Godzilla."
"Yeah, it did," Yuko expressed, "but now we should know why."
"We don't have anything that could harm this demon if it should see us as a threat," said Martin to them.
"Wait a minute, everyone," said Adam, looking at a scanner, "we're picking up biometric telemetry from within the humanoid. I think there's a person inside it."
A collection of gasps and murmurs were heard, but it seemed like nobody wanted to believe that this giant humanoid was being controlled by a person just yet. Even as it finally landed on the ground, there was only conjecture without any proof.
Suddenly, the behemoth fell to its knees and hands as something…cylindrical jutted out of its back, expelling some sort of substance.
"Are you still getting biometric telemetry from it?" Haruo asked Adam.
"Yes," he answered, "and a faint heartbeat."
Adam then managed to get a scan of the cylindrical object and showed an internal scan of its interior and the occupant inside.
"Whoa," Yuko shuddered. "You were right. There is a person in there. Is he…dead?"
"No, he still has a pulse. He looks like he just passed out due to fatigue."
"Let's go get him," went Haruo to them; whoever this kid was, they just owed him a great debt for doing what they couldn't do, and the first step in taking back their planet in over twenty-thousand years since they had to evacuate."
-x-
Adrift in an asteroid belt, deprived of light and water to survive, Godzilla was motionless as he thought of the humanoid he was cast from the Earth by. Of all the arrogance of mankind, this behemoth had to be the most depraved example of how the species would lead to their own downfall. But it just appeared without any warning, sneaking up on him without him being aware of its presence until after it made itself known. But one day, he would find a way back to Earth, to reclaim his world and purge it of those that dared to oppose him, and the purple giant would be eradicated out of the malice he had for it.
Some time had passed before the light in Godzilla's eyes dimmed as he crashed into one of the asteroids in the belt. His final thoughts being of the Earth…and then…of nothing. It wasn't that he was dead now, but he had nothing more to think of or about as the silence around offered no measure of noise.
-x-
He heard a beeping sound as he struggled to open his eyes. There was some sort of pouch or sack of fluid hanging from a ceiling with a tube sticking into his right arm. With some renewed strength, Shinji rose up to see that he was inside a room that seemed…bare and not unlike a makeshift recovery room.
Where…am I? He wondered, just as a door opened, revealing a young girl dressed in some sort of black and white suit.
"You're finally awake," she spoke, cheerful to see him. "Can you understand me?"
Shinji nodded that he could, but it was her appearance that caught him off guard: She looked like a younger version of Misato Katsuragi if he had known her as a teenager or younger adult.
"Who…who…" He tried to speak, but his throat was dry.
Thankfully, the girl was holding a cup of water that she had brought with her, and gave it to him.
"Ah," he sighed, his throat revitalized. "Thank you. I feel much better now. Who are you?"
"Mima Katsuragi," she introduced herself. "What's your name?"
"Shinji Ikari."
"It is nice to meet you."
"Thank you. Um, where am I?"
"You're in recovery on one of our Landing Ships. It's been two days since we found you. Do you…remember anything from before, anything at all?"
"I was…in a dark place for what felt like a long time. Then I hit something and the Eva's internal battery started repowering itself. I think it was from that large creature that looked like a dinosaur, only made of rock."
"That…was Godzilla, and it was an aberration, a hyper-evolved species of mutant plant with metal fibers…that managed to grow from fifty meters to over three-hundred meters in the course of twenty-thousand years."
"Twenty… You said twenty-thousand years? Is this Earth?"
"It is, but we barely recognize it because we've been gone for so long."
"What year did you leave?"
"We left in the year Twenty-Forty-Eight…after eighteen years trying to defeat Godzilla, who was the worst monster in existence."
Eighteen years of fighting a monster that was the worst? They left in the year Twenty-Forty-Eight? That and twenty-thousand years is a long time to have to put up with such a problem. It's far longer than my problems.
"But thanks to you, we don't have to worry about Godzilla, anymore. You got rid of it, sending into space. We owe you a huge debt."
-x-
Through all the commotion, Metphies lost his Garbetrium bead. Without it, he wouldn't be able facilitate a ritual necessary to the Exif culture. Although he still possessed the other Garbetrium device like his fellow Exif Endurph, it just wouldn't suffice.
"In the arrogance of banishing the King of Destruction from the planet, we may have lost our means to call upon our own deity," he uttered to himself in silence outside of the base camp built around the purple behemoth they now knew as the Evangelion. "The Eva, an artificial deity harnessed by its creators."
For now, all he could do was wait for the future yet to come…and for a solution that might never come to him.
-x-
It was an unexpected turn of events, but it appeared that the new ecosystem that had been created around Godzilla in mankind's absence, meant to serve and maintain it, was starting to show signs of degeneration. The trees that were discovered to contain Godzilla's DNA were showing minor signs of reversion. Several of the scientists from the Aratrum theorized that because Godzilla was no longer present, the ecosystem was regressing to its previous state before Godzilla appeared.
"…Those creatures we saw earlier haven't been seen, either," said Yuko to them; it had been a total of five months since they returned to the planet and landed the Aratrum in what used to be Tokyo. "Could they have died?"
"More than likely, they're in hiding after Godzilla was removed," suggested Martin. "After the loss of Godzilla and the rediscovery of the Mechagodzilla production facility at Mt. Fuji, the discovery of the Houtua tribe, nature does seem to be regressing back to its previous state, even if it's only by a small amount every now and then."
"And none of this would've been possible for us without Shinji's unexpected arrival and aid."
"Is Shinji still at the production facility with the Bilusaludo?" Haruo asked them.
"No, he's actually with the Houtua right now," Martin answered him. "I guess he's trying to cope with his new settings and the fact that we have a relationship with two alien races."
"Still, I wonder, what seems challenging for him right now," went Yuko, "that he's in a strange, new world…or that the life he once knew no longer applies to him here?"
They've all heard of Shinji's past story and how he ended up here and likely had no way of returning to his universe or time, and thus had to find his own way. He wasn't what many would've called a hero or even a soldier. If anything, Shinji was a reluctant hero due to the fact that he was forced into a life of war by his own father, who called upon him only because he had a use for him. Wherever he was from, this Tokyo-3 in this year Twenty-Fifteen with no means to return, it must've been a small place built to replace the original Tokyo and it successor after several devastations.
-x-
Standing in front of a fire in the dwelling of the Houtua, Shinji, having eaten with the tribe members that discovered he was the one that disposed of Godzilla, whom they referred to as the Burning Mountain, took the time to reflect upon his current predicament. He was in an alternate universe and timeline where a monster unlike any that had ever been seen before had taken over the planet for over twenty-thousand years, around three different races consisting of human survivors, the Bilusaludo, the Exif and the Houtua (though the latter race was descended from the humans that were unable to escape from Godzilla), and may have changed the fate of the human survivors by returning the planet back to them.
"Those who oppose the Burning Mountain would be engulfed by flames and disappear," the two lady members of the Houtua once told him. "You, who were not with the Passing Crows, within the shadow of the False One, removed the Burning Mountain before any could be engulfed by its flames and made to disappear. You, who fought against a natural storm, caused it to end. Blessed and cursed, you are to have control of the False One, but a path of loneliness and pain, are you not destined to walk forever."
He took that to mean that by disposing of Godzilla, the Houtua, who were against facing against due to survival reasons, were grateful to Shinji because he made it so that they could leave their home and explore the world freely. And then, there was the Bilusaludo, who, while friendly to Shinji, did make him feel uneasy after he discovered that they didn't need to rest after rediscovering the recreated facility that housed the preserved head of Mechagodzilla, which they had dubbed Mechagodzilla City, due to the energy provided to them by the presence of nanometal they had created to give them indefinite stamina, something they could use to overcome the Eva's energy requirements should it ever be needed again in case of the possibility that another Godzilla should appear. Of course, they didn't dare touch the Eva without his consent, so he was grateful that they didn't try to alter it while using the nanometal at their facility to help get mankind back on track to rebuilding their lost civilizations after several extensive surveys of the planet showed places they could rebuild or establish new settlements in; some of the leaders of this United Earth had decided that it was a necessity to give up on rebuilding Japan because the Houtua resided there. And last but not least the Exif, who, to a degree lesser than the Bilusaludo, made him question the possibility of aliens that practice religion because they seemed to have a greater understanding of the cosmos than humans do from having traveled across space further and longer than they have.
Twenty-thousand years, both figuratively and literally, he thought, referring to how the human survivors had initially spent twenty-two years in space trying to get to another planet that was light years away, only to find that it didn't meet their conditions to survive on at all, and then jumped through time to return to Earth without needing to take another twenty-two years just to try and reclaim it. If I stumbled through a black hole and entered a temporal phenomenon where I ended up thousands of years into an unknown future, how are things going back in Tokyo-3? Were Misato and the others able to defeat the Angel? Does anyone think I'm dead? Have they moved on? Is anything going on there that is…just a regular event, nothing unusual?
"Thinking about your past again?" He heard someone say to him, and he turned away from the fire and saw one of the people that had been in a Servum attack prior to his arrival standing beside a cave wall.
"Past and present," he told the woman that asked him. "Well, the past for the most part, wondering what could've happened to the people I knew before I disappeared."
"If you think about it too much, you could go crazy over what could've been or might've been. We're not supposed to know everything that transpires in the past, only what was recorded in history. Beyond that, it's anyone's interpretation on whatever else."
"But for me, it's hard not to be concerned about those I…had to leave behind, knowing that it's impossible to get back."
"But…even if you could get back…would that change anything for anyone?"
"What do you mean by that?"
"People from the past believed in the concept called the Butterfly Effect, that you change one thing in the past, however small, however insignificant, and you change the entire present and future on a large scale. Maybe the concept of time being immutable is true, as well; you throw a stone into a river, it causes a ripple, but the current never changes…and the ripples disappear."
"And you can't go backwards to go forward," Shinji sighed in acceptance. "Sometimes, you just have to go forward just to get back a little."
"Scrap and rebuild, you mean?"
"So I'm told. This one guy in school, a little old to be teaching for my taste, would just keep repeating the same historic aftermath, over and over, like it was all he really knew. He wouldn't talk about life before the aftermath, about life before Second Impact, the things that were also history and needed to be learned. What was your world like before Godzilla?"
"What was life like before Godzilla? All I really ever knew about it was that it was a world where monsters really did exist, not just in old myths and legends. But they were mutated versions of the regular animals we saw in animal preserves or zoos. Some were even dinosaurs that survived extinction by going into hibernation. While some of them were aggressive and dangerous, others were rather ignorant of humans and weren't trying to attack us, even though they could've. They would just pass by a town or city, trying to get somewhere to eat vegetation or fish. There used to be a saying that even if we were spending the rest of our lives fighting monsters…we would be content so long as we didn't know anything about Godzilla."
Shinji concluded that because of the creature, people's recollection of their past before its appearance had been stunted due to its repeated attempts to either hurt or dispose of them wherever they were and wherever it went. A monster…that was so dangerous that even other monsters, lesser creatures with little to no intent on harming people, would rather avoid than face. And one so dangerous that some perceived it as a sort of god while others viewed it as a demon that existed only to destroy what was, what is and what could've been.
"What was your world like?" The woman asked him. "You're from the year Twenty-Fifteen, a time where monsters didn't exist and attack you all the time, except for the ones you had to face. What was your world like?"
"I wasn't a fan for big cities, preferring small towns or the countryside where things were quiet. The city I did live in, though, Tokyo-3, wasn't all that bad when it wasn't attacked, but it was too advanced for a fortress city. Even though people lived in it, it was hard to pretend that it was just a regular place like Nagasaki or Osaka. I guess…despite living in a world where monsters never existed or attacked in the past…I never lived myself. I might've tried to live a little, but I didn't get very far. I'm probably handicapped. I want to enjoy life, but I can't."
"You're just rusty. Every last of us is rusty. This was our life up until a few months ago. We're still rebuilding, but…we're optimistic on finally settling down and living like we used to."
Shinji returned his gaze to the fire and uttered, "Yeah…being optimistic helps."
-x-
Ten years later
Ten years of surveying the planet, along with extensive use of nanometal to repair and rebuild ruined settlements found across the continents and islands they visited to colonize and rebuild the human race, but things were starting to look like they were returning to a semblance of normality. The remnants of the human race had resettled in the western lands upon the clearing up of Godzilla's extensive radiation with Anti-Nuclear Energy Bacteria while the Exif were building their settlement in what remained of the European lands to establish their religion while the Bilusaludo claimed what was left of Canada to continue developing tools to aid in the reconstruction efforts. It was approaching the winter season again for the tenth time, and for those that had never seen the snow before, it was a magnificent sight to see places covered in white that fell from the sky.
Shinji, who relocated to the inner parts of the western continent where the country of Illinois once resided because of the Japantown that was built there, was looking up at the falling snow as he stood in the backyard of his home; in the decade that passed, the people that returned to Earth, less than four-thousand, had managed to grow close to five-thousand, give or take because most of the couples started having children after two years when the last of the Servum were found to have died being unable to adapt to an environment stripped clean of radiation.
"You must love the snow, Shinji," he heard a woman behind him say to him as he turned to face her. "Some would prefer the summer, but you seem more into winter."
She was around his age, with dark brown hair and gray eyes, wearing a thick coat over her blue dress, and she smiled at him.
"You know how I am whenever I see the seasons change," he told her. "Nothing is still on Earth. The days and weeks go by…the time goes by…"
"Your girlfriend has something important to ask you?"
"Oh? Okay, I'm listening, Rumiko."
"You remember when you were told that there were two ships that were carrying people into space to find new worlds to call home?"
"Yeah, the Oratio and Aratrum, but only the Aratrum returned to Earth while the Oratio was considered lost because all contact between them was lost. Why do you ask?"
"Yesterday, the Bilusaludo were able to reestablish communication with the Oratio," the woman, Rumiko, revealed to him. "They had managed to get to Kepler 425, but it didn't have an atmosphere to sustain human living conditions, either. When they were told that Earth was once again safe to return to, the crew took the same route we did and are expected to be back in a year's time. Soon, Earth will home again to ten-thousand more refugees."
"That's great news, Rumiko," Shinji expressed, but then got concerned. "Uh, the Bilusaludo…didn't tell the crew aboard the Oratio about how Godzilla was defeated, did they?"
"No, no," she assured him; ever since the first year people came back, Shinji had wanted to stay out of the spotlight as some sort of celebrity, preferring the simplicity of a basic existence rather than being famous for doing the impossible, "but they found out something as they made preparations to return. They claimed to have seen a large asteroid that looked like Godzilla adrift in space, fractured and lifeless, implying that someone found a way to either dispose of it from the planet, or there was a random rock in space that resembled it at over three-hundred meters. But rest assured, Shinji, nobody's looking to interview you or get your autograph."
"Thank you, Rumiko."
"Hey, what's that indent in the ground in front of you?"
Shinji looked down at the snow angel he had made earlier after seeing a bunch of children do so at a playground.
"It's just a snow angel," he explained. "People make them in the ground by spreading their arms and legs to give it its shape."
"It's beautiful."
"Not as beautiful as you are, though."
"Thank you, Shinji."
"Hey, Rumiko?"
"Hmm?"
"When the Oratio returns, do you…want to get married afterwards? I mean, will you marry me?"
"I thought you'd never ask. Yeah, I'll marry you."
Meanwhile, in an United Earth storage facility just off the coast of what was once New York, Evangelion Unit-01, the so-called "hero of the human race" was gathering dust as it was decided to keep it locked away until such a critical time came if some other dangerous monster appeared to threaten the world that couldn't be handled with the means they already possessed. For a brief moment, its eyes flared up, but then died down, as if nothing happened. And in the silence of the facility where it was monitored in case of potential theft, it slumbered in the darkness, hoping the boy that once used it to save a world was at peace.
Fin
A/N: And with that, this chapter comes to a close. Funny, how this one was longer than the first one, but with the same outcome of Godzilla getting defeated. I think the third chapter will be the last one before this story ends.
