Creation began on 12-12-14

Creation ended on 12-25-14

Neon Genesis Evangelion

The Horrid Aftermath: Salvation Village

A/N: Everyone that read this story requested an update. Here is something I hope will please them until I write another chapter after this one. Merry Christmas!

"…It's unlikely that he's bluffing about suing you for child endangerment and neglect," Ritsuko informed Gendo, shortly after they both went over the data on the disc that Masamune gave the faux-blond woman. "And with the new information on the Third Child's current state, he's unlikely to be capable of piloting the Eva until he's adjusted to his cybernetics. In addition to this, the boy seemed to be bonding with the strangers that came to see him."

Gendo was enraged over these factors that interfered with his plans. Now, he would need to find a way to compensate for what had happened. As much as Rei was capable of piloting Unit-01, it was easier to have his son pilot the Eva if he could be manipulated.

-x-

"…I just remembered something," said Shinji to the little girl the next day, after he had recovered from his seizure. "You know my name, but I don't know yours."

"Oh, that's right," she remembered this, having spoken to him just yesterday and speaking for the first time in several months. "It's Rumi. Rumi Rokubungi."

Shinji went wide-eyed! In his dreams where he met the little girl this one resembled in every detail, her name had also been Rumi, and he was surprised to know that this girl's name was the same.

"Is something wrong, Shinji?" Rumi asked him, seeing him looking at her strangely.

He blinked and responded, "No. Nothing's wrong. Just a memory of an old dream."

"Good dream or bad?"

"It was a good dream, actually."

"What about?"

"A festival of some sort. People were out and about, having a nice time, talking, playing, those sorts of things you do at a festival."

"We have festivals at the Salvation Village. I've been to three of them."

"With lanterns, yukatas, kids running around with fans and such?"

"Yeah. I loved the festivals back then."

"Back then?"

"I stopped going to them."

"Why?"

Rumi looked at him with distant eyes and said, "My mother, she passed away about a year ago. Her departure…crushed me."

"I can relate to that feeling, being crushed after losing someone. My mother passed away when I was younger. I haven't had much a good life after that painful experience."

"I didn't speak to anyone for months after she died. You're the first person I've spoken to in a long time. People tried to get me to talk, but nothing ever helped."

"My father left me alone with my mother's relatives…but they acted like I was nothing but trouble to them, like my very existence was trouble."

"That's awful. How could they be so cold to you, and you never did anything wrong."

"It doesn't matter, anymore. I know I can't go back to that place. The day I left, they didn't so much as tell me to call or write them. And as for Tokyo-3… After meeting my father for the first time in many years, and then left in agony, I can see where I fit in his life."

Unbeknownst to the two, just outside the room they were in, Kiki had overheard the entire conversation, right down to the neglect that Shinji had received from this aunt and uncle she didn't know of. With a thought and a sigh, she left further down the hall and went to see Mr. Kusanagi about the contact information there was on these Ikaris so that she could have words with them.

-x-

"…Contact information on the Ikari family?" Masamune asked Kiki, confused by her request for the contact information. "But why?"

"Crisis of kindred morality," she explained to him. "Gendo is someone I may have to speak with later, but his late wife's relatives are people I want to have words with."

"Somehow, I take it that this has something to do with their personal disregard of Shinji?"

"Yeah."

"I thought so. Hold on a moment." He searched through his computer and found the primary number to the Ikaris where Shinji used to live. "Here it is."

Kiki looked at the screen and memorized the number before taking her phone out.

Ring-ring-ring! Her phone rang until the line picked up.

"Ikari residence," a man spoke up.

"Hello, is this Togusa Ikari?" Kiki asked.

"Yes."

"As in the uncle of Shinji Ikari on his mother's side?"

"Yes. What is this about?"

"This is Kiki Rokubungi, one of his great-aunts on his bastard father's side," Kiki said, expressing her negative emotions toward the maternal family. "Exactly what right did you think you had to treat Shinji like scum?!"

"Excuse me, miss?" Togusa retorted.

"Pendejo, you heard me," Kiki called him.

Ouch, thought Masamune, never thinking that he would actually hear a woman like this curse someone out over the phone.

"…Here's some advice if I ever see your face," Kiki told him. "The next time you treat someone's kid like garbage, you had better be insured by the gods themselves because you might not live to be one-hundred-twenty!"

Then, she hung up on him, through venting her anger.

"Sorry about that," she apologized to Masamune.

"Don't be," he responded. "I probably would've said the same thing to him. Question now is what are you going to do about Shinji's well-being?"

"If his father's not interested in looking after him, and his mother's relatives treated him poorly, I believe I should take him to the Guze-mura to live with his paternal relatives there."

"That's not such a bad idea," he agreed with her. "He needs the support of a family to get through what will probably be one of the hardest experiences he's ever had to go through, and I don't feel that his father or his maternal relatives can or will measure up to what you and your relatives can for him."

"Thank you, Mr. Kusanagi."

-x-

"…So, the town was built around a tall mountain?" Shinji asked Rumi, who was drawing a picture of what the place she lived in looked like.

"Yeah," she told him. "My mother said the place was built over two-hundred years ago, so it has an aura of history around it. Old theaters, the museum, even a large hospital that had to be expanded upon after several hundred soldiers came around after the end of the second World War. Some people still claim that the facility smells like it did when the soldiers came for medical aid."

Before could think to ask her the next question about the town she lived in, the sight of the wolf that he recently discovered was the family's pet for several years (as far as Rumi could recall, since she was told the animal had been around during her mother's time) had caught his attention again for the seventh time. There was something about the way it looked at them, like it was just waiting for him to show an ounce of carelessness toward it.

Rumi turned to face the wolf and then turned back to Shinji, asking, "I take it that you're not much of a dog person, Shinji?"

"I've never been around wolves," he explained to her. "Is it friendly toward strangers?"

"Only when he doesn't bark or snarl," she answered him. "I don't really know much of anything about Siberian Huskies."

"I thought it…he…was a wolf."

"He is. Wolves, foxes, dogs, they're all the same, one way or another."

Then, the Siberian Husky-like wolf got up off the floor and approached the bed where Shinji and Rumi were, and climbed onto it to get a closer look at the boy.

"Oh…" Shinji moaned, unsure of how to react if the animal decided to bite him.

Sniff! It sniffed his face…and then licked him on his left cheek.

"I guess Raiju likes you," said Rumi, cracking into a smile.

"Raiju? Like the thunder beast?" Shinji questioned.

"That's right."

Shinji then brought up his left arm and petted Raiju on his head, earning a purr from the beast.

-x-

Misato felt like an errand lady right now, seeing Shinji for Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki because he was incarcerated for forging Commander Ikari's signature to save his life. She believed that if the tyrant had considered signing the form himself to save his son, maybe there would be no measure of conflict between the two men.

As she approached the Medical Angel site, she noticed Shinji with a little girl and what looked like a wolf with a leash around its neck.

"Hey, Shinji!" She greeted him, and he turned to face her.

"Miss Katsuragi," he greeted back.

Suddenly, the wolf looked at the purple-haired woman and bared its teeth, growling at her to keep away from the two.

"Oh!" She kept away.

"Raiju," the little girl gasped and grabbed hold of its neck. "I'm sorry, ma'am, and who might you be?"

"Misato Katsuragi," she introduced herself, and the wolf, Raiju, continued to bare its fangs at her.

"You'll have to forgive Raiju, he's judgmental towards people."

"He judged me," Shinji added. "What brings you back here?"

"Checking up on you for Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki," she explained.

"Oh. Well, I'm doing fine. Um, this is Rumi, one of my paternal aunts."

Misato looked at Rumi, and was surprised that a child younger than Shinji had a measure of superiority over him.

"Your aunt?" She questioned.

"It's been known to happen in many families," went Rumi, sounding like the woman had a problem.

-x-

The sight of the damaged city's undamaged areas didn't make Shinji happy to be wandering around the place with Rumi and Raiju. There was just something about a city designed to be a fortress that made the idea of even living there uneasy.

"You call this a city?" Rumi asked.

"I'd call it a mass of tall buildings," Shinji expressed.

"Tokyo-2, Tokyo-3… You might as well just call them what they are: Successors that will never live up to their original predecessor."

Raiju led the two while on his leash, taking in the buildings and lack of trees.

"No trees, shrubs or weeds," Rumi uttered.

"I think there was a park nearby," Shinji suggested.

Unfortunately, the fact that there was a park didn't ease the pair. While there was a lake and trees and grass, they didn't feel like the place was welcoming.

"Hey, Shinji?" Rumi asked.

"Yeah, Rumi?" He responded.

"You wanna get outta this place and live with us in the Guze-mura?"

Shinji looked at her and expressed, "Anyplace by that name is bound to be better than where I've been before…and at right now, Rumi."

-x-

"…And he's recovered to the point where he can go places," Misato informed Fuyutsuki.

"That's good to hear," the elder expressed.

"There's something else you should know. Shinji has met some relatives on his father's side of the family…and he's going to go live with them in this place called the Guze-mura."

"That means Salvation Village. Supposedly, it's a sacred place that was founded over two-hundred years ago. Quite possibly a boomtown, too."

"You've heard of this place?"

"Only that several people have relocated to such a place and weren't heard from again after they found such a new setting. It's supposed to be able to enlighten and reveal to people who they truly are, as well. I could imagine living in such a place."

"Well, Commander Ikari doesn't seem to believe Shinji should."

"He may not have any say in the matter. If this is what Shinji wants, who is his father to stop him?"

-x-

Gendo was officially pissed off now. Not only had Shinji met with relatives that he could associate with, but he was going to live with them in the Guze-mura. He viewed that place as one of the worst ones in the history of towns and villages, and it was mainly because of how he himself growing up there, supposedly, revealed what kind of person he truly was. There wasn't even a time where he told Yui where he used to live, wanting to bury that part of his past for good. But now that his son had decided to go live there with a bunch of relatives that he despised, that made his chances of using Unit-01 against the Angels to further his agenda dwindle a bit.

-x-

"I swear, we're going to have to shop for you when we get you settled in, Shinji," went Kiki to her nephew as they traveled across the open countryside on the train, noticing that Shinji only had one bag that was, more or less, full of all the clothes he had right now.

"Oh, I wouldn't want to be a bother," said Shinji to her, as he and Rumi were eating some Pocky sticks opposite of where she sat.

"Shinji, you will never fit the category of a bother. I've met people who have been bothers at one point in my life or another, but you don't come close."

"Thank you."

Kiki looked out the window and at the sky, noticing one of the clouds that had an unusual shape. It looked like a giant humanoid with larger shoulders, hunched over, preparing to attack.

Creepy, she thought.

"Look, Shinji," she turned to see Rumi pointing toward a mountain range. "Those peaks mean that we're halfway to where we're heading."

As Shinji looked at the peaks, he couldn't wait to get to where he would be living with his aunts and other relatives he hadn't seen yet.

To be continued…