Creation began on 10-11-15

Creation ended on 11-23-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Potential Paradise: Relocation

"We should talk to the Third Child about this?" Ritsuko told Misato during lunch.

"As much as I would want to ask him about it, I wouldn't try to pressure him into speaking about it," Misato told her back. "I'm still edgy about putting back up the phone at home."

"But what's the point of having a habitable space station if you're not going to use it?"

"It's his, so he can decide what to do with it."

"Commander Ikari may have something against that, as he feels he should've been in the loop."

"He didn't even know about this Senkensha Ikari relative of his on his wife's side."

"People will likely beg the boy just to live on that thing."

"You getting tempted?"

"I would do so for scientific purposes."

"You need a vacation, Rits."

-x-

Although he hadn't gone up to his space station yet, Shinji had gone through the virtual simulation of it, and found the place to be quite the word that he had just discovered: Heavenly. It was the only word he could use to describe what the place was, what it had for environments. The virtual walk around showed him several mountains, lakes and forests, animals identical to the ones that were wiped out because of Second Impact, and levels of mansions and other buildings scattered around the station, creating the wondrous realm that it was.

"Hey, Shinji," went Toji during the lunch period at school.

"Hey, Toji," he responded, removing his visor to look up at the jock.

"I spoke with my dad about that offer of yours…and he wants to take it while it's still on the table."

"Really?"

"Really."

That put a smile of Shinji's face, and he hoped he would feel the same way when he spoke to Rei.

Meanwhile, Asuka was speaking with Hikari.

"I'm surprised that he hasn't been jumped yet by any of the students," she told Hikari.

"Asuka, why not just ask Shinji if he'll consider letting you live up on his space station?" Hikari asked her. "I'm sure he'll allow it."

"No way. He'd probably crash it into the planet."

That's when Hikari decided to speak her honest opinion about what had happened.

"If he offered me and my family the opportunity to live up there," she started, "I'd take it in a heartbeat. It must be a paradise up there if it's so massive."

Asuka was surprised by this utterance from her friend. She had hoped Hikari would at least agree with her that such a place was wasted upon Shinji.

-x-

"…So, I…uh…the reason I ask is that you could consider living up there," said Shinji to Rei later in the day. "You seem like a person in need of a nicer setting. You don't have to answer right now, but at least think about it."

Rei didn't say much after that offer of Shinji's, but nodded her head that she would think it over.

"Great. Thank you for hearing me out."

As Shinji walked up ahead to the base, the albino girl pondered the offer Shinji had made for her to live up on his space station he inherited from an ancestress that left it all to him. Beyond her small relationship with the boy, and her relationship with Commander Ikari, who was very adamant against his son possessing a space station that was greater than the planet itself, there wasn't much she was ever offered like this had been. While her apartment had all that she really needed to live on, there were times where it got noisy…and the darkness that crept everywhere.

Should I inform Commander Ikari? She wondered. What would he say about the offer?

-x-

"…I can't believe the teacher asked that baka if he could live on the space station!" Asuka vented her frustration. "Always droning on and on about Second Impact, and then he goes and expresses his desire to live off the Earth! What is wrong with everyone today?!"

Misato, who didn't say much during the walk down the hall with the redhead, sighed as she herself had been hearing the same around the base from many of the personnel, most of whom felt relocating to the space station would help to save them from the Angels.

"And then Hikari says that if he offered her family the opportunity to live up there, she'd take it without a second's hesitation. Her of all people."

"I would ask him only once," they both heard Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki from further down the hall, speaking to a pair of technicians, "and then drop the subject if he declined."

"Most of the staff just want to go up and see what it's like," the woman had expressed. "I'd pay him if he let me live up with my sister and father."

"I'd give up my entire baseball card collection if he let me live up there," the man added in.

"They can't possibly be serious," went Asuka, getting ticked off with every passing minute about Shinji's stupid space station.

-x-

Within the Entry Plugs, the pilots were undergoing synchronization testing…and so far, Shinji's ratio was lower than the previous test.

"He's at forty percent," went Maya to Ritsuko.

"Figures," said Misato; she suspected that this was because everyone was giving Shinji a hard time over the space station.

Within her plug, Rei had replayed the conversation between herself and Commander, having decided to speak to him about a variation of her conversation with Shinji.

"Pilot Ikari was speaking to one of the students about the space station, and had offered the boy and his family the opportunity to live on it. What were to happen if he kept offering for people to live there?" She had said to him; while it wasn't a complete lie, it wasn't a complete truth, either.

"It is an irrelevant matter," Gendo had told her. "NERV will make preparations to have the Third Child transfer ownership of the space station."

This, of course, made Rei curious; she didn't suspect that NERV (and by NERV, she really meant Commander Ikari) would want to claim the space station that was left to the Third Child. If anything, this was only because Commander Ikari wanted it for himself. But she didn't voice this belief.

"And…should he refuse?" She asked him.

"He'll have no choice," he answered back.

This made Rei curious as to what Shinji might do if he were to discover that his father wanted him to relinquish his ownership of the space station. As she was able to figure out by means of the information superhighway, anyone that inherited something from someone else, ranging from an estate to even a simple business, could often be sought after and pressured into relinquishment by someone else, feeling that they can't handle the inheritance or will squander it away. If this much was accurate, then it was likely that Commander Ikari believed that Shinji inheriting anything from this distant relative on his mother's side of the family was a mistake, and that he himself should have a claim to what was given to the Third Child.

But in the plug of the Second Child, Asuka found any thoughts about Shinji and his space station to be a complete bore, since even Hikari had expressed a mild desire to live on it. She felt a minor sense of betrayal because of this revelation, and wanted everyone to shut up about it.

-x-

"…I need a cold drink," sighed Shinji, as he tied his shoes and closed his locker.

He had to run into the men's locker to avoid being hassled by the men out in the hall, pleading, begging him to let them live on his space station. Stepping in front of the door to leave the locker room, the boy stood in front of the last person he expected to see today: His father.

Gendo, looking as cold and emotionless as he always did, but possessing a particular coldness towards his son, came to see him to address the matter of his space station.

"Yes?" Shinji asked him.

"You need to relinquish ownership of the space station to NERV," he expressed simply, making no effort to hide his contempt.

"Why?"

"You cannot be burdened with such an advanced piece of technology."

Somehow, Shinji suspected that there was more to what his father was saying. Ever since he came to Tokyo-3, there has been no words of kindness from his father, no praise, no attempts at having even a simple lunch together. No, ever since they met that day the Third Angel attacked, it was all viewed as business and his son was viewed as nothing but a pilot, never a person, never his son.

"No," he told his father. "I will not hand over my inheritance to NERV."

"It would be easier if it was done this way to avoid a further fiasco like what happened when it was brought here." Gendo told him.

"Easier for who? Me…or you?"

Gendo didn't answer that question, and so Shinji simply walked away. But he stopped momentarily to express himself to his father.

"She told me, posthumously, that I could probably save people," he told his father. "She was totally right about my present-day life, that I'm kept in the dark, that I'm placed in danger, forced to face enemies I don't understand. She didn't want me to live this type of life, and I don't want that life, either. And every day, I have to listen to the teacher drone on and on about what Second Impact did to the planet and how many people died. Even today, though what I didn't expect was to hear him ask me if he could live on the space station. People even offering me things I can't even think of wanting. I keep thinking about it, though, helping the people by doing something better than piloting the Eva, something that doesn't hurt anyone."

"That's a foolish belief," Gendo told him. "People will always hurt one another."

"That's your belief. Your belief…and it's not the only belief there is in existence, you know. If the Angels are doing the things they do because they want the Earth, then maybe it's a good idea to relocate. I mean, there's a place that's just like the Earth, only bigger and like something out of a science-fiction film. And if it keeps the people out of harm's way, then it's better this way."

"No, it's better to use the Evas to defeat the Angels. To do that, NERV needs pilots to move the Evas."

"And risk more people getting hurt?"

"This is war, and people die every day."

"It doesn't always have to be a war!"

"You wouldn't understand."

"You're right, I wouldn't. I wouldn't understand…because nobody tells me everything. I know you don't. You always have secrets, reasons to keep people in the dark. Except, perhaps, you don't know that secrets have a cost. They always have a cost. They're not for free. Not then, not ever. You know something, this conversation's moot. Talking to you doesn't change anything."

And so Shinji walked on.

"You either relinquish the space station to NERV, or you'll be placed in the brig, Third Child!" Gendo threatened him, but Shinji kept walking away, unafraid of him.

-x-

"…So, I heard you and your father had a little chat earlier today, Shinji," Misato said to the boy during dinner.

"It wasn't really a chat," he told her. "He wanted me to hand over my inheritance to NERV, threatened to throw me in the brig if I didn't."

"That thing up in space is going to get you in trouble," went Asuka.

"The only trouble I currently have is my father."

"Because he wants your space station all for himself."

Shinji didn't say anything about what the redhead had expressed, but his face hid nothing of his resentment towards the possibility.

"Asuka, maybe now isn't the time to talk about it," Misato suggested.

But then Shinji uttered, "Would you like to live up there, Asuka?"

"What?" The redhead questioned.

"My space station. Would you like to live up there? I've already asked Toji and Rei, so I might as well ask you. I'm conflicted when it comes to asking my father if he would want to live on it, but I see no reason to even try. He's impossible to put up with."

He then got up and went to his room.

-x-

"…So, he refused to hand it over," went Fuyutsuki to Gendo. "It was his choice."

"His refusal will hinder the scenario," Gendo grunted, frustrated by his son's unwillingness to relinquish his space station.

"Maybe he would reconsider…if we were to tell him the truth," Fuyutsuki suggested.

"If he knew the truth, he'd refused to continue piloting the Eva."

Fuyutsuki couldn't deny that possibility, but it would've brought some clarity to the boy's mind on his mother's passing. However, even emotional clarity could be the same as emotional calamity.

-x-

"Stupid!" Shinji grunted, angry at both Asuka and his father. "Stupid, stupid, stupid!"

In his room, he made a decision to get away from it all. He really needed to get away from the frustration and stress caused by both of them. And getting away also meant getting away from the Eva, and the Angels. He could've viewed it as the perfect getaway, one that didn't need to end unless he decided it would himself.

Reading what ways to get to the space station were available to him and others, he discovered that the colossal structure had at least two-thousand transport vessels that could hold five-thousand people each and that it possessed the means to teleport people that had been registered into its internal DNA database that was, despite being ancient in terms of chronology, quite advanced enough to put current technology to pasture, including the MAGI. And since he had inherited the station, his DNA had been the first in centuries to be added as a new citizen.

Stepping out when Asuka and Misato were out of the kitchen, Shinji left the apartment and went to the roof of the building. He had opted for the teleportation method so as to avoid further discord to the city. Once he was on the roof, he saw the materializing platform needed to engage teleportation. Standing on the device, he felt the process of teleportation begin.

It was like he was fading away from existence, all his skin, muscles and bones atomizing. The strangest thing of it was that the teleporting didn't hurt him like he had expected it to. He didn't scream or anything, but the mere thought of suffering from being broken down and scattered was scary enough. No white light or angels anywhere for him.

In the span of an instant, Shinji was no longer on the rooftop of the apartment building…and inside a large room that looked as though it had been around for several decades and was made with oak, redwood and elder, adorned with figurines and small pictures. It was some kind of study or trophy room. Quite possibly associated to the boy's ancestress.

"Hello?" He called out, but then recalled that he was the only person actually on the space station at the moment. It seems so lonely here.

"Can we be of assistance to you, Shinji Ikari?" He heard a male voice behind him, and turned to find a robot that he was certain wasn't there in the room before.

The robot was humanoid, standing about six feet tall, wearing bronze-colored, cybernetic armor, and had glowing, emerald eyes.

"Who…who are you?" Shinji asked it.

"Assistance Droid Unit-18," it revealed. "A minor scan of your body indicates you would request for air conditioning."

Before Shinji could say something, a calm breeze entered the room.

"Thank you," he praised the droid. "Is there a bedroom around here?"

"Yes. Follow me, please."

-x-

"… And you're sure you didn't see him leave?" One of the Section Two agents asked Asuka after she and Misato discovered that the boy they lived with wasn't in the apartment with them.

"Positive," Asuka told him. "I didn't even know he was gone until I got up this morning."

With her side of the story and Misato's side, the agents were left to consider one other possibility, and that was the Third Child had likely left to his space station.

-x-

It was such a beautiful garden, with large trees of oak and holly, flower shrubs of dandelions, sunflowers and violets, and a large fountain in the shape of a Taoist symbol. It felt like one of those places that shouldn't have existed, anymore, but did in places people weren't meant to be in. And for Shinji, who was laying on the grass, looking at the sky above him, it was like he had gone to Heaven while still alive. It was so quiet, with even the small birds flying around, tweeting with their blissful ignorance of the world around them, and a complete lack of cicadas like in Japan.

-x-

"…I can't believe he just up and left like that," went Asuka, infuriated that Shinji would just go to his space station and not tell anyone.

"Well, considering that there have been people giving him a hard time, I don't blame him," said Misato to her, as they were driving down to NERV. "We practically forced him to go there."

"You tried calling him?"

"He left his phone when he left. I guess he didn't want anyone disturbing him."

Ring! A phone started ringing in the car; Misato had brought Shinji's phone with them in case someone did call.

"Wait a minute, didn't you say that he hardly ever receives calls?" Asuka asked her, as she took out the device. "His own father won't even call him."

Misato opened up the phone and spoke to whoever it was that was calling.

She would soon wish she hadn't answered the call at all.

To be continued…

A/N: Sorry to leave you with this cliffhanger. Who do you think was calling Shinji's phone? Remember, this is set in the manga universe.