Creation began on 01-02-16
Creation ended on 01-02-16
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Modern Day Legend of a Rage-filled Anchor: Deviation, Part Four/Revelations
Shinji's conversation with the other Shinji didn't exactly end on the worst of notes, but he was left feeling conflicted between rather or not to thank him for speaking to him or to condemn him for what he knew about the Rage-filled Anchor and its effects on the Ikari men. To be informed that he would feel this unexplainable anger and any time…was as scary as it was to be forced to perform random acts of violence because of it…and never have an explanation for why.
As he stepped out of the bathroom, he stopped in the hall as Yui stood in front of him, holding something that looked like a photograph in her left hand.
She came closer to him and stopped several inches in front of him.
"Hey," she greeted him, sounding nervous about something.
"Hello," he responded.
"I need to talk to you about something. Is that okay with you?"
"Yeah, sure."
She then led him away from the hall and into an elevator, pressing a button that would send them to the roof of the building.
Shinji was left impressed by the small garden that stood in front of them. It was like someone tried to put a small playground atop a building, and this was as close as they could get. Sunflowers, violets, roses and other flowers blanketed the grass and three trees that were present.
"It's…really beautiful," he expressed, seeing Yui sit on a small bench nearby.
She gestured for him to sit next to her, and he sat at her left side on the bench.
"Miss Ibuki had your blood tested and informed me of something she didn't inform you about," she told him.
"Was there something wrong?" He asked her.
"Not in so many words to indicate anything wrong. There were trace amounts of a substance that she suspects may be…primordial in nature. But that's not the reason I asked you to come up here. When she had your blood tested, she also ran for paternity…and I need to ask you this." She then sighed as she handed him to the photograph that she had. "This is the man who fathered my son, but in your world, is he also your father?"
Shinji took a long look at the man in the photograph…and then turned away, feeling the rage trying to overwhelm his sense of morality and higher reasoning.
"Yes," he answered her, his voice showing the sounds of anger trying to be heard, and Yui quickly put the picture away.
"I am sorry," she apologized. "I have the worst taste in men."
"And he's the worst man in the history of worse men."
-x-
Gendo felt crossed by what he had seen and heard in the mirror. He couldn't believe that this version of Yui had proclaimed that she had a poor judgment when it came to men…and that the picture she showed the Third Child was a photograph of that world's version of himself who looked younger and completely disinterested in the world.
"Of all the men you were involved with, you had to get involved with him?" Shinji had asked her. "He looks like he could account for any child's attitude problems. What did you honestly see in him?"
"He had the same, rebellious attitude towards people that I demonstrated to my parents," Yui confessed. "To say that I found him intriguing would be an insult to you and my son. The fact that he was one of the men I had an affair with was the reason I never wanted to know who my son's father was. Even if there was a chance it was one of the other guys I hung with, there was always the possibility that it could've also been him."
"And that's why he never knew who his father was, even after he died?"
"I thought he knew once he passed away. All your questions are supposed to be answered after your life ends."
"Then that's not always true. Not everyone gets answers to the questions they have, especially the ones they need answers to."
"My father's the reason he's not around, anymore," Yui told him.
"Your father? Who was he?" Shinji asked her, and Yui took out an older photograph and showed him. "What the… Him?"
"Yes, him. Does he exist in your world?"
"Yeah, but I'm sure he's not related to my mother in any way that involves blood. He's the guy that works for my father."
Soon enough, all eyes in the room were on Kozo Fuyutsuki, for he was the man in the photograph Yui showed Shinji.
"Whoa," went Misato, who had done a background check of the sub-commander and knew well that he had no children and all his relatives were dead.
"What'd he do that caused your son's father to not be around?" Shinji asked Yui in the mirror.
"Gendo came to see me one night after he had gotten wasted," she explained, but Shinji didn't understand the concept of the last word she used. "He was drunk. He came to see me, and then he started beating me."
"What?!"
"That's when my father came in and saw me on the floor in the kitchen…and did what he had to in order to stop him from nearly killing me. He picked up a knife and stabbed him in his chest, proclaiming that he was unfit to be anywhere near me…and that he never liked him."
"But that should've been a justifiable homicide, then. I mean, if he was about to kill you and your father stopped him before he could finish the job, then it should've been justifiable, right?"
"Not always when the murder happens to be in your own house and your father's fingerprints are the only ones on the murder weapon…and not when your only daughter's the one to alibi you and you have a minor history of being in several affairs doesn't help to convince the police that it wasn't anything beyond what it was that happened. So he was charged with Second-Degree Murder and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison…and died before his fifth year behind bars due to a riot in the prison yard."
"I am sorry for your loss."
"Ever since that day…and ever since my son was born, I've sworn off men. I couldn't go through that again, knowing the consequences."
Then Fuyutsuki got up and stepped out of the room.
-x-
"…Can I ask you something concerning this power that's bound to your family?" Shinji asked Yui, wanting to change the subject of her personal loss to one of understanding what this celestial power was and what it was supposed to be for. "This power that now dwells within me. It used to dwell within your son, but…just what is it? How did your family come to possess it?"
"That's something that seems like a fairy tale…but you need to know, anyway. Supposedly, the very first Ikari had met a woman that nobody else could ever compare to. I don't even know how the story really goes, but when the woman died, her children with the Ikari man became prosperous and lived well to the point that they went from being three children to five families that spanned over ten generations…until the curse started up."
"The curse?"
"The Rage-filled Anchor. Every few generations, five or six, at least, the Ikari bloodline produces only one child, the eldest male, and they're always placed in the most unforgiving of situations. I didn't believe it until I found out I was part of the fourth generation of my family's present existence, which meant that my Shinji was the unfortunate son of the fifth generation."
"So every five or six generations, any one of the men born into the family came into possession of this power…but also got the anger that came with it. Did it ever show up when Shinji was younger?"
"When he turned eleven, that's when the rage manifested. Even before then, it seemed like it was active; my mother and I could never explain why there were people around us that were about to blow their tops suddenly feel a sense of relief and avoid conflict."
"The Rage-filled Anchor siphons away negative energy from those around the one in possession of the power…and is channeled into them, housing the negativity."
"That explains the rage being without a sense of reason. It seemed like every boy that reaches their eleventh year of life, they feel the power start to run through them. Maybe it's a test by the ghost of the woman that married my family's ancestor or just some drawback of the prosperity, but it's something that doesn't go away by simply talking about it or using any medication. I tried putting Shinji on pills, but they just made him sick and caused his eyes to become bloodshot for days. I found myself unable to do anything for him if I didn't even know how to help him. I hated my inability to help him just as much as I hated not being involved in his life when he needed me to be."
"What of his relationship with Ms. Soryu-Ayanami?"
Yui looked at him, then looked away.
"I had nothing against their relationship," she answered him. "It's not something I can be upset about. He loved Asuka and she loved him. Even when consumed with anger that wasn't his, he never said things that were demeaning to their relationship or her. He never said 'I hate you', 'You're not worth my time', 'We're through' or anything of the sort."
I wouldn't give myself the dissatisfaction of saying anything of the sort to anyone, Shinji heard the other Shinji say to him, making it known that he was hearing the conversation.
"With every passing year since he turned eleven, the rage just seemed to get more intense within him," Yui continued. "The tale only went on to say that some of the men that inherited this power were able to handle the rage, but there was no mention of how they could do so. Some can handle it while others simply couldn't."
Shinji saw a tear escaping her eye and dug into his pocket and pulled out a tissue.
"Here," he told her, offering it to her, and she accepted.
"Thank you, Shinji," she praised him.
Shinji placed his left hand back on the bench…and a cracking sound was soon heard.
Yui looked behind him and saw that a piece of the bench had broken off under his hand, which had gripped it.
"Oops," Shinji expressed, letting go of the broken piece. "Sorry about that."
"You're the second person I know of to have done that. Gendo's cousin being the first."
-x-
Standing in front of the hospital, the Progenitor stood with a vengeance against the Ikari boy. This time, he wasn't going to be cooperating with him. He would return him to Kagami, even if it meant breaking him into pieces if he stood between him and Ceres.
I will break him! He thought, walking into the lobby. Ceres will be mine once more! Nobody will keep her away from me! Not even him!
-x-
"…Where were you two?" Anzu asked Shinji and Yui, seeing them return to the waiting room area where she and the others were.
"The roof," Shinji answered her. "It turns out your late relative has a similar kinship to my own. We both have the same father."
"Do I even want to know who he is?"
"He's pushing up daisies, Mother," Yui told her, making it simple without disclosing his identity to her.
"The fact that you both have the same father is as messed up as the very reason your father died in prison almost nine years ago."
"We both know that my poor judgment is what led to Father getting incarcerated…"
"No, it's messed up because I didn't take the guy out myself."
"Huh?" Shinji and Yui gasped in response to her words.
"You heard me," Anzu told them. "I didn't trust Gendo as far as I could stand him, and when you told me he came to our house after drinking, I suspected that he was capable of actions he wouldn't do without having an excuse to do so…and not as many inhibitions to keep him in check. Why else do people find an excuse to drink? Alcohol changes the brain's chemistry and lowers one's sense of restraint. You get intoxicated, even you would say and do things you wouldn't say or do normally."
"And what if a person were just an angry bastard?" Shinji asked her, sounding different from a moment ago. "What if an angry person behaved no differently from an drunken dumbshit?"
"Uh, Shinji?" Aya asked, noticing that his hair obscured his eyes. "Are you alright?"
"Answer me!" Shinji then shouted, his eyes revealed to be completely black, and she and everyone else in the room stepped back.
He started to approach Aya, but then fell to the floor, coughing.
"Aurgh," Shinji groaned, looking up at them as he shook his head. "What happened? What was I saying a minute ago?"
Aya looked at Yui and Anzu, who looked back at Shinji.
"You mean, you don't remember asking a question just now?" Asuka asked him.
"No," he answered back. "What was I asking?"
Asuka then realized that it was just like with her dead lover. This Shinji had experienced the Rage-filled Anchor taking hold over him at a random period. He had no awareness of what he said or did during that period. It left as quickly as it came.
She placed her hands on his shoulders, but then his perception shifted.
Shinji suddenly found himself facing the Progenitor, who was gripping both Asuka and Aya by their necks, threatening to kill them if it meant keeping them out of the reach of others (though, this was mostly directed at Aya because he wanted Ceres to himself).
"You drove me to this, boy," he heard the Progenitor say to him, but Shinji saw the background and recognized where this vision of the future was taking place.
It was the hospital they were at right now!
Oh, no! He realized, and knew that they had to leave right now.
"…Shinji…" He heard Aya's voice say to him, but it sounded distant, like she was far away. "Shinji, stop! You're hurting Asuka!"
As her voice got louder, his vision returned to the present…and he saw the horror in front of him: Asuka Soryu-Ayanami, gasping for air in front of him because his arms had wrapped around her neck, tightening to suffocate. He immediately let go of her and she fell to one of the chairs, gasping for breath as she held her throat. With his hands shaking, he backed away from them and ran out the room.
"Stay away from me!" He shouted at them.
"No!" Asuka gasped, trying to go after him, but Yui stopped her. "He's not safe on his own."
-x-
"I can't believe he just did that!" Asuka expressed, having seen Shinji nearly strangle the other world's version of her.
"It's not his fault," Rei defended. "He wasn't aware of what he was doing."
Suddenly, the alarms went off within NERV HQ, indicating that an Angel had appeared.
"One picks now to show up?" Misato questions, having forgotten about the Angels after discovering the mirror was showing Shinji alive in this other dimension.
"Sortie the Evas," Gendo ordered, stepping out of the room.
Asuka and Rei got up and left to put on their plugsuits.
Misato and Ritsuko were the last ones to leave out the room, leaving the mirror on the table.
-x-
He ran. He ran down the stairs and into the lobby. The rage had coursed through him, but he kept running. Unfortunately, he couldn't get any further away from Asuka or the others because of the people in front of him.
Oh, no, he realized that his vision had been too close to now, seeing the Progenitor and his men in black. This is bad.
The Progenitor looked his way and expressed some relief.
"You just saved us the trouble of having to find you," he told Shinji. "Where's Ceres?"
"Did you try the morgue?" Shinji asked, which was unlike him. "Did I just say something again?"
"Get him," the Progenitor ordered his men, and they approached him.
Shinji ran back up the stairs, but nearly lost his footing when one of the men behind him almost grabbed him by his right leg. He turned around thrust his arms forward, shoving the guy and his two companions backwards, sending them down the stairs.
"Frenzia," he grunted, and ran out a door leading to the third floor.
To be continued…
A/N: Here's the new chapter of this new year. What was said by Eva Shinji and Ceres Yui will be explained in the next chapter.
