Creation began on 12-18-15

Creation ended on 12-25-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Modern Day Legend of a Rage-filled Anchor: Deviation, Part One

A/N: Now, we get to see how far Shinji's power will take him to save people without the Eva.

GASP! Shinji awoke in the middle of the night, having just escaped from a nightmare.

Within it, he saw himself (or someone that looked exactly like him, with a look of confidence and a will to defy anyone that wanted him to do something he was uncomfortable with doing) in the company of a girl at a beach that looked like Asuka, but she had red eyes, just like Ayanami's, like she had the two parts of two girls he knew that stood out on them rolled into one person. He saw her kiss him…and he saw himself kiss her back as they fell to the sand on the beach as several waves washed up and down them. But then…he saw himself start to choke her, as if consumed with hatred for some unexplained reason…and the girl tried to free herself from his grip.

"Shinji…this isn't you," he heard the girl say to him, and she sounded nothing like Asuka or Rei. "The rage has taken over you."

He awoke before he could see the girl's neck suffer a harsh cruelty, and he was drenched in sweat. His hands were trembling, as if he had actually grabbed the girl's neck.

That's the third one this week, he thought, picking up a small calendar next to his futon and crossing off another day that he had these strange and surrealistic dreams.

It had been almost two weeks since he arrived in this world, and he has since experienced these strange dreams that he couldn't comprehend without Suzumi or Aya's aid. And further contact with Aya and Yuuhi had allowed Shinji to ascertain more of his visions about the girl and this Chidori he saw in his contact with Yuuhi. Because of this, he was able to have greater clarity of what could've happened if he didn't have this ability…and informed the household of what could've happened.

I gotta talk to them about this girl that looks like Asuka with Ayanami's eyes, he wrote down on a notepad so that he wouldn't forget, after checking the date and time he awoke.

-x-

Although it was just another glimpse into the same vision when he touched her, Aya still stood by her decision to believe in Shinji when he told her what it was he saw. It still left her wondering if, just because he told her what he saw, if it could even happen now that she and Toya knew. In her dreams, she couldn't help but fantasize of her future with Toya, living somewhere in the countryside, in some house or apartment in some rural town setting, and enjoying a meal with…

We still can't let that part of the future happen just yet, her subconscious reminded her, and she turned in her sleep. Shinji wants to help me find the hagoromo so that we may set Ceres free. Until then, Toya and I have to be more careful.

Outside of her dream, Toya, who still remained awake, simply held onto Aya for solace; even he was affected by the future he discovered from Shinji when he touched Aya, and, while it could've brought a smile to his face, it did cause him some discomfort.

Still, he thought, it was what he saw, so we have to accept it until we can be free to decide our own lives in the future we want to write for ourselves.

-x-

"…This is the only family the MAGI were able to find under the name Mikage," Ritsuko informed Misato, handing her a folder while looking on a tablet at several photos from old, medical records. "It's an old family that lives over what's left of the coastal areas of this country. There used to be ten families under the name Mikage, making it a clan of sorts, but then Second Impact occurred, reducing it to just one family of four."

"It says here the current head is Aya Mikage," said Misato, looking at a picture of a woman that appeared to be in her late-forties. "She's married to Toya Mikage, who married into the family, and has two children."

"And you've never met her before?"

"Never."

"Well, we might as well."

-x-

A young girl stopped her bike over in front of the Ikari estate, sighing as she made another attempt to reach out to the people still residing there. She had long, reddish hair, ruby-red eyes and dressed in a sailor uniform with blue wristbands.

DING-DONG! She rang the doorbell, waiting for a response.

The sound of footsteps came and the door opened up to reveal the same woman in her fifties she saw every other time she came to visit.

"Anzu," she greeted the elder.

"Asuka," the elder responded.

"Has she returned?"

"She hasn't. I don't think she ever will."

"You know as well as I do that she's in the house. She's been in there since… Please, it's really important that I speak with her."

"I can't force her to sit and talk with you, Asuka. You know that."

"Yes, but…I don't want it to be strained between us."

Anzu sighed and expressed, "It's nothing like that at all, Asuka. She doesn't hold you responsible for what happened last year…"

"Tomorrow," Asuka cut her off kindly. "Tomorrow, it'll be a year since what happened…and nobody beyond the three of us knows the truth."

Anzu then inhaled and told her to wait outside while she would try to convince her daughter to come down and speak with her son's girlfriend. Going upstairs and down a hall to her grandson's room, she found her daughter, a shell of her former self from the previous year, sitting in a blue and green ball chair, looking down at a framed photograph of her son and his girlfriend from two years prior to the previous year.

"Yui," she called her daughter. "Miss Soryu-Ayanami is here again. I really think you should talk to her about the incident."

Yui, well into her late-thirties, looked up at her mother and responded, "I can't face her. It's my fault. It's all my fault."

"There was nothing either of you could've done. He did what he did to spare us all the unnecessary suffering we all knew we would've gone through."

"Maybe if I had put him in someplace where he couldn't hurt anyone or himself…or consulted with one of the other families about ways to suppress the curse… I didn't take anything serious when I was younger because I hated all your restrictions, and Shinji paid the price."

"No, it's my fault," her mother told her. "I did try to enforce limits upon you. Even tried to set you up with that man, never realizing what a monster he was. I just wanted you to have stability in your life…and I went too far."

"You're not the one who made the choice to hang around with the self-destructive bad boys, Mother."

"No, but I drove you to do so."

-x-

"…This is the beach from my dreams," Shinji told Aya and Yuuhi, standing in front of the waves that crashed against the sand.

"Are you sure?" Yuuhi asked him; this was only the first town they came to since their breakfast, so it was likely they would have to travel a few times to find location they were looking for.

"I'm sure," he told him, looking over at a large rock that had a distinctive, magatama shape. "That giant rock over there."

"I think that's where this town gets its designation from," said Aya, reading a small book that spoke of the rural area. "Magatama Town is named after the large rocks that seed out certain parts with their distinctive, magatama shapes, supposedly vessels of good luck and enlightenment."

Shinji walked over to the rock and suddenly heard voices. But they weren't coming from anyone around him. They were originating from within his mind. He was hearing voices.

"It's inescapable! It's unavoidable!" A male voice had shouted.

"Inevitability is an aspect of humanity that they cannot accept," a female voice uttered.

"Shinji, don't let this curse consume you!" Another female voice cried out, sounding just like the red-eyed Asuka from his dream. "You're stronger than it will ever be!"

"Rage will be your downfall!" A multitude of voices, all ranging from male to female, young and old, somewhat calming and cruel in tone, yelled out. "It's your heritage! Your legacy! You can't dispose of it! The Rage-filled Anchor will end your life!"

He fell against the rock as his heart started to beat faster and harder.

Aya ran over to him and helped him up. Unfortunately, touching him against caused him to glimpse into the future once more. But this time, it wasn't what Shinji had expected to see, for he wasn't seeing Aya anywhere, but himself, surrounded by a sphere of energy, screaming in either pain or ecstasy (he wasn't sure which), and there was a young man with a scarred face and torso around Aya's age (he had to suspect that this was her twin brother, possessed by Ceres' former spouse).

"I'll never let you have her against her will!" He heard himself say to him.

"Shinji?" Aya spoke to him, shaking him by his shoulders. "Come on, Shinji! Snap out of it!"

His eyes flared an emerald color as he looked up at her.

She backed away, fearful right now.

Then, his eyes ceased their flaring and returned to normal, and he stood up in front of her.

"I'm okay now," he told her. "I'm good."

This ability of his seems to be getting worse, Aya thought, concerned that whatever this celestial power was within him was getting out of hand. Maybe it's like me. His body needs to be older in order to handle the power. But instead, it manifested prematurely, and it's causing him issues.

They walked away from the rock and beach, confirming just one part of Shinji's dream: They knew they were in the place where this recent dream of his had led to.

-x-

"…It's so…isolated," said Misato, as she and Kaji stood outside the Mikage home.

"Most families left to the inner regions after Second Impact," explained Kaji to her, "but the Mikages were some of the families that chose to stay where they've been for decades."

The estate was one of those ancient-styled mansions from centuries ago when Japan was a place for the Samurai, but much of the surrounding landscape had fallen into a state of disrepair, with few trees left standing and a field of weeds mixed in with wildflowers.

As they stepped onto the porch, Misato rang the bell and waited for a response to occur.

"Who is it?" An elderly, female voice spoke from out the intercom system.

"Misato Katsuragi and Ryoji Kaji, ma'am," Misato introduced themselves. "May we have a word with you for a moment?"

"One second," the lady responded and the door opened, revealing the lady from the picture. "How may I help you?"

"We're trying to find someone that went missing a few days ago," Kaji explained, and showed her a picture of Shinji. "Have you seen this boy around here?"

The lady, an older Aya Mikage, gazed at the photograph, and expressed, "Only in a dream. Something of a curse. When people go missing around the country, they tend to go missing for good, buried in the abyss so deep, not even their own ghosts could find them."

Misato sighed and expressed their apologies for disturbing her.

"Wait," Aya stopped them from leaving, and held out a hand mirror that looked as old as the house did, adorned with a diamond-shaped ruby on the backside. "Take this with you. It may help you find who you're looking for, but beyond that, it may not do anything else."

"Thank you," Misato expressed again, and she and Kaji left.

-x-

"…I know for a fact that the boy's family has resided in that rural environment for a long time," the Progenitor told Kagami, assuring him that Shinji Ikari lived in the Magatama Village. "There's no doubt that he's there."

"How can you be so sure?" Kagami asked him. "My men were there, and he and his mother have been out of town since last year, though I have my doubts on that."

"If you need proof, then I'll go there myself and get him."

"You?"

"Yes."

This had Kagami concerned; the Progenitor had yet to disclose where Ceres' hagoromo was (and he had some doubts that he would even tell him at all). And the Progenitor was too important to lose at such a critical time, as well, especially if this Ikari boy was indeed a descendant of a Tennyo.

"Be sure to have your escort with you at all times," he told the Progenitor, unwilling to risk losing him.

-x-

Laying on his back in his hotel room, Shinji sighed as he felt a little better after their time at the beach. Yet, there was still something else boggling at his mind. He wasn't sure what it was, but he would know it when he understood it.

I know it's only been close to two weeks, he thought, staring up at the ceiling over his bed, but why do I get the feeling I've been here for far longer than that?

Because you have been here for far longer than that, he suddenly heard a voice, almost identical to his own, in his head.

He jumped up and looked around his room, and saw nobody else present.

"Who's there?" He questioned.

Look at the mirror, the voice uttered again, and he turned to the mirror on the wall in front of the bed.

"What's going on?"He asked, seeing himself, but his reflection was completely different from the way he actually looked.

His reflection looked paler, with a more grim expression, like he'd been sickly for a long time, and he was dressed in a ripped, blue and green kimono, revealing what appeared to be old lacerations on his arms and neck. And there was a small series of burns on his left cheek and just over his right eye.

This is a fate I was dealt because I couldn't control the dark side of my family's history. Unfortunately, seeing as you're here, what I thought would end with me has decided to attempt a comeback, refusing to be…cheated. The warped reflection of him stated.

"What do you mean?" Shinji asked him.

The Rage-filled Anchor. It's the Ikari family's darkest aspect of its celestial heritage. Having all of that anger trapped inside of a member with Ikari blood, fighting to control what isn't as easy as one would expect. It nearly consumed me before I was able to stop myself from hurting others because of it. Either control the rage or be consumed by it. Back then, I believed those to be the only choices one like myself had…until I made a third choice, to not let it be the end of those around me.

"What did you do?"

The one thing people are often told is something they shouldn't do. There's no happy ending for those that take the route I took, but I did it not for any glory of selfish beliefs. I went down that route to save others from a cruel part of them that wasn't even me. And now…I fear this dark part of my family history has returned through you.

Shinji turned away from the reflection and looked at his right hand, feeling it tremble with an unexplainable feeling of anger.

That's how you know the Rage-filled Anchor's there, the other Shinji said, when your hands tremble. Then come the feelings of rage that can't be explained, following the outbursts of verbal fury, which escalates to the unpredictability of violent actions that only get worse the more they occur.

When his hand stopped shaking, Shinji turned to look at his reflection to ask a question.

"What about looking into the future?" He asked him. "Could you see into the future of certain people you've touched?"

My ancestors referred to that ability as Future Link, the other Shinji answered back. People that matter have their futures written by darker forces created or sought after by forces confined to the frailties of the flesh. You touch someone for the first time, you see how they will experience the worse pain imaginable, and you feel as though it had happened to you, as if it was you that was the one that suffered. And will you explore the unwritten future enough, you know what can lead to it.

"But what about preventing it? Can you prevent it from happening?"

No one has tried.

"What about you?"

His reflection turned away from him, revealing a large burn on the back of his head where hair should've been. And when he turned back to face him, his face looked more burnt.

I hated this power! He shouted at Shinji. I hated what it did to me! What it cost me! Nobody could understand what it felt like, being angry at random times for no reason that could be understood! I would start yelling at my mother like she did something wrong! I would raise a knife at my grandmother like I wanted to kill her! I even did something so awful to someone I loved that I knew I wouldn't stop, that I couldn't control this cruel power that was my legacy. Yes, I saw into the future that hadn't been written. Only once. But once was enough for me to realize that I couldn't let this rage harm people. So I took my own life. I took my own life in front of my girlfriend after telling her that I loved her too much to lose her to this power. I burned myself to ashes, hoping that she and my family would be free of the Rage-filled Anchor because only male children born into the Ikari family were the unfortunate ones to bear it every fifth or sixth generation.

Shinji had a sad expression on his face in front of his reflection.

Please, the reflection told him, please, don't let yourself be consumed by the power. I thought I could stop it with my death, but your presence proved that I couldn't, that it won't be cheated. It has a will all of its own, and it wants what I and others of the past have tried to take from it. It's too late for me. It was always too late for me. But maybe there's hope for you. You're not like me, so there must be hope.

His reflection then changed, no longer resembling a warped version of himself and instead resembling himself as he was, dressed in his white shirt and black pants, looking saddened.

-x-

Removing her hand from the wall, Aya (with some mental prodding from Ceres) had discovered that Shinji had engaged in a conversation with someone from the afterlife that had paid a terrible price.

-x-

"…So she knew not where the Third Child was?" Gendo asked Misato in his office. "And she gave this mirror?"

"That's right, sir," she answered him. "She said that it may help find him, but may not do anything beyond that."

Gendo crossed his hands in front of his face and told Misato to take the mirror to Dr. Akagi for research into what it was capable of.

"Yes, sir," she responded and left out of the office.

In the hall, however, the purple-haired woman started to hear a voice.

"It's too late for me, but maybe there's hope for you," she heard a voice sounding like Shinji's.

She turned around, but saw nobody there. Then, she looked down at the mirror in her left hand. Within the reflective glass, she saw a withered and burned Shinji, engaging in a conversation with…a boy that looked just like Shinji, but without the injuries, inside what had to be a bare, hotel room.

"My God," she gasped, and quickly ran to find Kaji.

-x-

Tomorrow was a day she dreaded deeply. Tomorrow was a day of grief and agony because it would be an entire year since…

Don't think about it right now, the red-eyed Asuka thought as she looked out her bedroom window at the night sky…and then at her clock. Only two minutes left to midnight.

On her nightstand left of her bed was a framed photograph of herself with Shinji back when they were together. They were at the beach and she was dressed in a purple, one-piece swimming suit while he was dressed in black shorts, sporting a lean-but-muscular torso area. The girl's expression was one of happiness while the boy's expression was subtle, a cross between happy…and somewhere near troubled. But Asuka had rarely noticed the expression until…

Midnight, she thought, still looking at her clock, seeing the digital numbers read out the twelfth hour of the morning hours. It's officially been a year now since Shinji committed suicide.

-x-

"Hmm?" Shinji muttered, having almost fell to sleep, but getting up after thinking he heard someone that wasn't this world's version of himself. "Asuka?"

-x-

"…You saw Shinji and a boy that looked like him, albeit injured, engaged in a conversation through that mirror?" Asuka asked Misato, making sure she heard right as she, Rei, Kaji and Ritsuko were in a room with the very hand mirror on the table in front of them.

"That's right," Misato explained. "The one that looked injured said that it was too late for him, which implies that he was beyond any form of help, but told the other one that there might've been hope for him, whatever that hope is."

"But neither one of them saw you or heard you?" Ritsuko asked her.

"No. I tried talking to Shinji, but his face wouldn't appear in the mirror again."

"Are you sure you couldn't have just been imagining this, Katsuragi?" Kaji asked her.

"I know what I saw and heard, Kaji," Misato told him, making it clear that she wasn't crazy. "I believe in what I saw, and I know that means that Shinji's alive somewhere."

"And Mrs. Mikage said that mirror may help find him, but nothing beyond that."

"What, so even if we were able to find him," went Asuka, deciding to pick up the mirror, "we wouldn't be able to find a way to get him back here?"

"That's…pretty much the way we're looking at it, Asuka," Misato told her.

Looking at her reflection in the mirror, Asuka sighed at how hopeless this seemed. Suddenly, her reflection shifted one feature that wasn't present on her, and she set the mirror down.

"Whoa!" She gasped, sliding it away from her. "I do not have red eyes!"

Kaji picked up the mirror and saw not himself, but Asuka, with red eyes, riding a bike up or down some road by a large body of water.

"Hopefully, she'll hear me out," the red-eyed lookalike said. "Today's a day of mourning over a personal loss."

Then, the mirror shifted again, revealing nothing but Kaji's visage.

"Okay, I have to ask just how much about the previous Angel do we actually know about?" He questioned Ritsuko and Misato, setting the mirror back down. "You said that it was a Dirac Sea that could've linked to another dimension?"

"That's what was discovered," Ritsuko answered. "The Angel connected to another universe. When the operation to destroy the Angel was attempted, whichever dimension it was connected to, Shinji got sent there, leaving Unit-01 without a pilot."

"Shinji, can I talk with you?" They all suddenly heard a female voice emanate from the mirror, and Kaji held it up to reveal a teenage girl speaking to Shinji as they walked down a street with two older boys and a small woman.

-x-

"Shinji, can I talk with you?" Aya asked Shinji as they, Toya, Yuuhi and Q-Chan (since Shinji found it somewhat difficult to even refer to the woman by her actual name due to her appearance, and he learned it was Kyu Oda) were walking further up town.

"Uh, sure," he responded.

"Last night…were you talking to someone?" She asked him.

"What gave you that idea?" He countered.

"I heard you last night, and who you were speaking with had the same voice as you, except he sounded like something awful had taken a lot from him."

Shinji sighed and expressed, "It was me. Or…the me that used to live in this world. It's hard to explain, but I find myself in the situation that the other me tried to escape from in order to spare people the bane of his family's darker heritage, which ties into this ability to absorb negative around him and redirect it into himself. Last night, I received a visit from his spirit, and he explained a bit about himself and how this power he had possessed a will of its own and refused to be cheated."

"Cheated?"

"He killed himself to save those around him, and he hoped that the power was gone so that it couldn't hurt anyone. But then I showed up, and now the power's back."

"So, then…the other you, the one from this world that died… He could possess you, then?"

"I don't think he could've, even if he wanted to. He said that it was too late for him, but that maybe there was hope for me."

Before Aya could say another word, a person on a bike came past them on the street…and it seemed like the world slowed down around them. The rider turned to face them…and locked their gaze with Shinji, who was shocked at who was on that bike. It was the girl from his dreams, the one that looked like Asuka, but Ayanami's eyes, dressed in a black and gray version of the school uniform Shinji had seen Asuka and Ayanami in enough times to memorize. And then time resumed and the lookalike sped away from where they were.

"Asuka?" Shinji wondered.

On the speeding bicycle, the girl was confused as she continued towards her destination.

But…it can't be,she thought. I saw him die last year.

"Uh, was that he you knew?" Aya asked Shinji.

"I think so," he answered her. "She just reminded me of two girls I knew."

-x-

The Magatama Village seemed very urban for a rural setting to the Progenitor as he and his security detail arrived. But he could care less about it. He was only here to find the Ikari boy and "convince" him to come with him to Mikage International to join the Tennyo project. The sooner he found him, the sooner they could leave this place.

"Where was the estate located?" He asked one of the men that was here earlier.

-x-

"Welcome back, Ms. Soryu-Ayanami," Anzu greeted Asuka, welcoming her into the house.

The elder lady was dressed in a black dress.

"Hello, ma'am," Asuka responded, removing her shoes and stepping into the living room area. "How are you and his mother doing?"

"It's only started to sink in," Anzu stated. "Are you alright? You look as though something happened on your way here."

"Today, I saw someone that looked just like Shinji out in the town. I thought I was being deceived, but he just seemed too much like him. And yet…I saw him in a recent dream a few days, and he seemed different from the way he used to be."

Anzu then led her upstairs to Shinji's room where Yui was, and found the woman dressed in a larger version of the redhead's dress with a darker shade of purple around the neck. She was standing in front of a space on the right side of her son's room where a dark, scorch mark was present.

"Miss Ikari?" Asuka greeted.

"Asuka," Yui responded, gesturing towards the other chair in the room by a small desk where her son did his homework.

Asuka sat in it and noticed one of Shinji's wristbands made with a platinum base and garnet gems adorning them.

"I think he only ever wore those once," said Yui to her, referring to the wristbands.

"He made a single complaint that they were heavy," Asuka told her. "He showed them to me, and I told him that they were nice. I had informed him of the gemology surrounding garnets as a form of protection for the wearer against evil. I sometimes wonder if that's what made him not want to wear them after that day."

"It wasn't what you said to him that made him remove them," Yui told her. "He just didn't want to risk losing them to people whenever he walked out on the streets. He went and had them appraised and found out that they were worth a considerable fortune. A few million yen."

"You got him a pair of wristbands that were worth a few million yen? It surprises me that…every time that he was under the influence of the rage, he never said anything concerning finances."

"My family had no problems with finances. Old money."

"Yeah. Old money. Miss Ikari?"

"Yes?"

"On my way here…I think I saw someone that looked like Shinji."

Yui looked at her like she had said something crazy. It was always crazy to believe that there were other people that looked like people that passed away. But Yui had no time to criticize a possibility.

"Are you sure?" She asked her.

"He looked just like Shinji, though he looked at me like he'd seen a ghost. And… I don't know, he looked…withdrawn, introverted."

"When he was younger, he was introverted. That was my doing because I didn't take much of an interest in him like I was supposed to. My mother managed to get him to open up a bit when he met you all those years ago."

"Why?"

"My rebellious streak. It was only after our family heritage started to manifest within him that I tried to save him from making the same choices I had made in my youth."

"He only ever spoke about you three times, but I was able to understand a little about your relationship with him. He said you were often away from home because you took a position as a geneticist."

"That was only a half-truth. I did take a position as a geneticist…but it was hardly the reason I was away from home. It was my inability to explain to Shinji why his grandfather died in prison and why nobody would tell him about his father. How do you explain to your kid that you don't know who their father is and the last guy you had a relationship with, lack of a meaningful relationship with, tried to kill you and your grandfather killed him?"

Asuka didn't know how to answer that question; every Father's Day, Shinji preferred to go to the beach…and every Mother's Day when he didn't see his mother, he would also go to the beach. In a way, her boyfriend came from a broken family because he didn't have a father involved in his life or a mother that took her responsibilities as a parent serious. She suspected that it was one of the reasons they hung out together as often as they could, because they both came from broken families.

"Maybe there's never a logical answer to any question that is asked," she told Yui. "You never once asked me what I had expected you to ask me last year. What were Shinji and I doing in here when we were supposed to be in school?"

Of course, Yui knew the reason. She just never wanted to force herself to talk about it. Her son and his girlfriend had decided to not go to school and spend the day in bed; the redhead, as she had suspected, had taught her son the ups and downs of physical intimacy long before he had committed suicide to avoid killing her or anyone else.

"I know why you two were here that day," Yui told her. "You're not the first pair to play hooky, and I doubt you'll be the last pair to play hooky. One thing I probably should've asked you was this intrusive question: Did you two at least have the decency to use protection?"

That question, of course, had Asuka turn her face away from the older woman.

"It's okay," Yui told her again, "before I found out he was growing inside me, I didn't use it, either."

"Go with the flow?"

"Go with the flow."

"Two weeks after this day, I cried when I got my period."

"Why?"

"Because he died, because he killed himself to keep from harming me any further. I saw him immolate himself in front of me. He was gone from the world forever, and I thought that maybe…just maybe…that I had gotten pregnant, and that a part of him would be with me." Asuka revealed. "But then I got it, and all I had of him were memories."

-x-

"…So, he's in another dimension where another version of himself that lived in that dimension had died," Ritsuko explained to Gendo in his office. "We're trying to attempt communication with him, but all we know so far is that the mirror connects visually with the other dimension and we've found the Third Child with several people that seemed to be younger versions of specific people from this one."

"And he's made no response to anything said by any of you?" Gendo asked her.

"Major Katsuragi and the Second Child have yelled into the mirror several times, but the Third Child has made no indication that he could hear either of them."

Gendo then dismissed her, leaving him alone with his thoughts as company.

How do we go about getting the Third Child back? He wondered. And will he still be able to pilot the Eva if brought back?

-x-

"…This is the Ikari house?" The Progenitor asked the men that were here earlier, pointing to the Ikari estate.

"This is the place, sir," one answered him.

"Then let's pay the family a visit."

-x-

"Gah!" Shinji gasped, clutching onto his chest as he fell against a streetlight in front of Aya.

"Shinji?" She questioned, helping him stand.

But unfortunately, her touching him had triggered another vision, and he saw a small house surrounded by a large garden, and her possessed brother assaulting the red-eyed Asuka.

"Where is he?" The Progenitor asked her, and then kicked her in her waist.

Shinji had Aya release him, and then he ran down the street, towards where he now knew where the house was located. All he knew now was that he had to keep this from happening. He had stopped some things from happening, he was going to stop this from happening.

To be continued…

A/N: Merry Christmas!