Creation began on 02-18-15

Creation ended on 03-10-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Different from You: Deadline

A/N: To clarify the confusion that any readers are wondering about. This isn't a crossover between Evangelion and Power Rangers. Don't expect anything beyond the Dragonzord and Phoenix Galactabeast in this story, as they are the answer to Shado Ikari's prayer/wish for a pair of angels to watch out for her and Shinji, as the father can't do everything for his little girl due to his limitations.

Shinji didn't sleep that night. After his daughter informed him of the men in black suits hanging outside their building, he felt the need to be vigilant. Even though that didn't seem to be a necessity for the time being.

"Daddy?" He heard Shado speak up in the silence of his darkened room. "Are you awake?"

"Yeah, Shado," he answered her, never looking away from his window…or his nightstand where he kept his spare knives locked, just in case he needed them in handy. "Trouble sleeping?"

"No," she answered, raising her head up to look down at him. "I was wondering if you had any trouble sleeping right now."

He looked at her and uttered, "No, Shado. I'm fine."

Shado accepted this and laid back down on the right side of the futon.

-x-

"…I'd take it that Asuka was still in denial about Shinji Ikari's past and his relationship with his little girl?" Kaji asked Misato in the cafeteria, as the woman was drinking a beer.

"It's like she can't even consider that a boy can be violated by a woman that was part of a kidnapping scheme," Misato responded, and her ex noticed that the beer can wasn't even opened.

"With Asuka, any boy is unlikely to claim to have been harmed by a woman."

"And she views one that wants nothing to do with the Eva as a coward because he doesn't want anything to do with protecting mankind…because he puts his kid before everything else."

"Well, one thing's for sure. This guy's not like his father in any way. He leaves Japan, takes his child with him, starts over in the States; kid loves his kid more than anything and wants only to keep her safe and happy. Who can argue with that?"

-x-

"That thing still in front of the building?" One of the Section Two agents asked, wondering if the mechanical creature was guarding the entrance to the building the Third Child and his daughter lived in as he sipped on his coffee.

Another agent looked out the car and noticed the creature that nobody else saw, acting like a well-trained soldier, moving left and right in front of the building, keeping a vigilant watch over the Sedans that housed the agents, never letting them out of its sight.

"Whatever this thing is, it's got a death wish on us all," he said.

Meanwhile, as the sun shone through the blinds, Shinji awoke to the new day.

"Aah…" He groaned, getting up off his futon…and seeing his daughter wasn't there. "Shado?"

The sound of the toilet being flushed came and a door opening.

"Yes, Daddy?" He heard her call back.

"Nothing, dear," he calmed down and stepped out of his room. Get a hold of yourself, Shinji. You give people you don't know an inch and you're afraid they'll take a mile just to hurt you.

He stepped into the kitchen and saw his daughter pouring herself a bowl of cereal.

"Good morning," Shado greeted him. "How do you feel?"

"As well as can be," he answered her, grabbing himself a bowl to join her. "You?"

"I slept great."

-x-

"…I hear that Commander Ikari was given a deadline to cease going after the Third Child and his daughter," Kaji spoke to Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki.

"The Committee feels that going after someone that can't be convinced is a waste of time and resources," Fuyutsuki expressed. "Yet Ikari doesn't strike me as the person to accept any degree of deadlines given to him. It's been at least two days now, so that leaves five days left on his deadline."

"You sound hopeful that the deadline passes and the boy and his daughter are left alone."

"The personnel was either injured or threatened when the young father was separated from his daughter…and the daughter was left surrounded by people she didn't know or trust, wanting only to find her father and leave after being kidnapped from the States and brought back to Japan against their will. There were no relatives that even showed any proper interests in the two. I used to want to believe in people wanting to rebuild society after what happened sixteen years ago… Yet, nobody seems to take into consideration how much a boy that was attacked by a woman in a kidnapping attempt to obtain wealth would warp his perception of the people around him…or how much maturity he went through after finding out his attacker had his child and died. Today, the boy would probably be more concerned with grades and a future somewhere where he can do good, but instead is faced with his parenthood, something his own father disregarded. No, society has, more or less, become degraded and flawed around here. So anyone that has a reason to leave Japan, like the numerous men and women in years following Second Impact, just go right ahead and try to fit in societies where they feel they can belong. That's what the young Ikari boy did with himself and his daughter; they left Japan and went to the States and are trying to fit in, start anew and not have to deal with the people of their past that wanted nothing to do with in meaningful way."

"And if Commander Ikari were to continue going after his son and granddaughter in a way that constitutes custodial interference and harassment?"

"I'd hate to know of the outcome if violence were used."

-x-

Shinji decided that he and Shado would spend the entire day indoors; this was decided upon after he looked out the window and saw several men in black suits still looming across the street. But they were fortunate to live in a building as nice as this one. There was a large playroom on the third floor if Shado needed to play with children around her age, and Shinji had acquired several films for his daughter to watch that were all child-friendly; just because it felt like they were being watched from the outside of their home, it didn't mean they had to feel tormented.

"His name is…Stitch," said the little girl on the movie they were currently watching.

"What does 'stitch' mean, Daddy?" Shado asked her father.

"It's an injury that's been closed up using a needle and thread," he answered.

"Odd use for a name."

"Along with terms and other words like 'bunny', 'toothless', 'friend', 'beast', or even 'jerk'."

"What about 'song'?"

"No, that works as a name."

"He's all yours," said the lady at the animal shelter in the film.

Meanwhile, outside the building, still on a strange form of lockdown or stalemate from the creature that was in Tokyo-3, the Section Two agents were left to ponder that the Third Child was inside the building with his daughter, but they couldn't trace the apartment and the boy and kid hadn't left out of the building or give any indication that they were there.

"I can't take this," one of the agents expressed. "I'm not going to get frightened away by some illusion."

As he went across the street towards the building, the mechanical creature snarled and extended its claws in defense.

"You don't scare me," the agent told it.

Then, just as the agent walked past it and into the building again, despite the warnings of Mr. Spera, the creature that was invisible to all but the Section Two agents grabbed the agent and lifted him off his feet and threw him across the street!

"Aaaaahh!" The agent screamed, and was slammed into a window of a bakery, scaring some of the patrons and the bakers present. "Aaahh… I quit."

The rest of the agents present looked at the entrance to the building…and Mr. Spera was left wondering just what exactly happened, unaware of the mechanical dragon that just made the scene…and its warning against the men in black heard.

-x-

Click! Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki hung up the phone after receiving the call from the USA.

"That was Section Two," he informed Gendo. "One of their agents was thrown out of the building that your son and granddaughter were believed to be residing in…by an unseen creature that was similar to the mechanical beast that fought against the Angel and the Evas."

"And am I to assume that they have had no success in acquiring the Third Child or his daughter?" He asked him.

"They retreated after what happened," Fuyutsuki explained. "Some of them were starting to theorize why it was there, and the conclusion was this: It, along with that other creature that didn't register as an Angel were there to interfere with NERV, but were there to protect the boy and his daughter from harm. It's only a theory, but the only one that makes sense."

"And the theory is accurate, then how would the Third Child and his bastard child obtain such a pair of creatures that rivaled the Evas?"

"NERV is the only agency in existence that has access to the only known weaponry that can face an Angels. The UN reports no other agencies anywhere close to creating a mechanical beast that was as efficient as what we saw. And there has been no success in any attempts at any genetic engineering."

-x-

"…Sorry again, Daddy," Shado apologized to her father for the juice stain on his shirt.

"It's okay, sweetie," he assured her. "Accidents happen."

He removed his shirt to put on a new one, and his daughter saw the tattoo on his back.

"Oh!" She gasped.

"What? What is it?" He asked, concerned.

"Your back," she pointed at him.

Shinji walked over to the mirror in his room and examined his back for the gunshot injury that he has assumed she was frightened by, but then saw the tattoo.

"Whoa!"

It looked like a highly-intricate tattoo, but one that took hours, maybe days, to work on. What shocked the pair was the creatures that served as their protectors were rendered in the ink, representing light and darkness in the world, like the Taoist symbol.

"When did you get that, Daddy?"

"I never got it. I don't know where this came from."

"What does the tattoo mean? What do they represent?"

"Probably split between they represent in various cultures. The dragon represents things such as wisdom and power, while the phoenix often only represents rebirth."

"I thought the phoenix also represented love and passion."

"Sometimes."

Shado raised her right arm up and touched her father's back.

"It's beautiful," she expressed.

-x-

"I heard the Section Two agents tasked with trying to 'persuade' the Third Child and his daughter to return to Japan have given up?" Misato asked Kaji.

"Something happened that made them change their minds about the young father and his kid," he responded. "One of the agents was, as I heard it, thrown through a bakery window…across the street from the building they were suspected to be living in."

"But what could throw an agent across the street away from a building?"

"They say it was a smaller version of that mechanical creature that was seen here when the last Angel appeared. Only the agents ever saw it."

"Some of the personnel are over their limits in suggesting that the two be left alone, yet the commander still believes that they're worth the suffering we got from the boy that piloted only once. Why haven't we found a Fourth Child yet?"

"Because the Marduk Institute hasn't turned up anything new yet on anyone capable of piloting an Eva. They're still looking."

"What about that autopilot system NERV is supposed to be working on?"

"Nothing new on that, either."

-x-

It may have been a PG-13 film, but the primary creature was the most popular and most powerful of all creatures in cinematography, and that couldn't be denied.

"Yay, Godzilla's using his flamethrower thingy!" Shado cheered, enjoying some more popcorn.

"Shado, are you sure we couldn't just watch The Little Mermaid?" Shinji asked her.

"No, Daddy. She's not fun, anymore. Neither is Sleepy Beauty or The Princess and the Frog."

As the King of the Monsters was attacked from behind again by the flying parasite, Shinji couldn't help but recall how his daughter had a list of her favorite princesses, and Ariel, Aurora and Tiana were among the princesses that she didn't like as much as the other princesses they'd seen on film. When compared to franchises that dealt more with action and fantasy violence, films with princesses either trying to achieve a goal or being rescued by their dream guy weren't all that amusing to the young father's child, even if one of her favorite princesses was the original one that once lived with seven little men that mined for diamonds and had names based on their personalities.

"This is probably the saddest part," Shado expressed at the sight of the building falling on Godzilla and probably injuring him. "Poor Godzilla."

"But part of the reason to this scene is to have him look at the man before being consumed by the debris and smoke." Shinji informed her.

Shado then got up and said, "I need to go to the bathroom. I'll be right back."

As she left, Shinji sighed and continued to watch the film as the larger parasite revived and went after the men trying to get rid of the nuclear warhead before it detonated. But then, for the sake of knowing, went to the living room window and looked out it to see if those men in black suits were still out there, and he saw no trace of them, not even any cars or vans that were unmarked.

I hope they don't come after us ever again, he thought, and then shifted his gaze from the streets to the rooftops of the buildings across the street, seeing no one there. All I want is for a peaceful life for the both of us.

A second later, he felt something small grab onto him.

Shado, having finished using the bathroom, saw her father looking out the window with a solemn expression, and reacted in woe, going over and holding him by his legs.

He bent down, picked her up and held her as he sat back down to watch the rest of the film, just in time to watch Godzilla decapitate the female parasite, ending the threat against the world.

-x-

"Ikari," went SEELE 01 to Gendo in the latest meeting, "we're to understand that you've had a week to reacquire or persuade the Third Child or his daughter?"

"Correct," he answered the council.

"And you were unable to complete this task?" SEELE 03 asked him.

"Correct."

"We stand by what we declared last time," went SEELE 07 to Gendo. "The Third Child and his daughter are to be considered a lost cause. No more time and effort will be spent going after them. We have more pressing concerns to deal with."

"We expect an update on other suitable pilots for the Evas or the Dummy System by the time of the next meeting," SEELE 12 expressed.

By the time the meeting was over, Gendo just wanted to declare war on his son and granddaughter for defying him. Even though he was now being ordered by SEELE to cease going after the Third Child and his daughter, he wasn't going to give up just like that.

You'll pay for this, you petulant brats, he thought, and opened a drawer in his desk, pulling out a case he had obtained just last year, shortly after the Second Child and Unit-02 arrived.

It was the Adam embryo, the keystone to the Human Instrumentality Project needed to ensure that he had control over the whole thing when the time came to initiate it. He took the Adam embryo out of its protective case…and consumed it.

A/N: Sorry to leave you with a cliffhanger, but I gotta stop here and save my possibilities for another chapter. The next chapter will be in due time, but I assure you that there will be another Angel and the Dragonzord and Phoenix Galactabeast will be seen again, and something new will be encountered.