Creation began on 03-12-15
Creation ended on 03-31-15
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Different from You: Day of Recreation
It wasn't exactly a preplanned thing for the two. As it had been almost two weeks since the day a man in black was reported thrown into a bakery window, the young father and daughter had barely stepped foot outside their building, mainly because the former feared the latter's safety and wouldn't let her leave without him or have his permission to step out to do necessary errands. But, as they were on the bus heading towards their destination, the father didn't want to be ruled by his mild paranoia.
What we need is a recreational activity, thought Shinji, as he and Shado neared their get-off point.
I wonder what kind of fish they'll have, Shado wondered as she looked at a small pamphlet that advertised what the New York Aquarium had to show, trying not to think about the possibility of being followed by people from that place in Japan.
She then looked away from the pamphlet and out the window of the bus, seeing that they were nearing the place.
"It's so big," she said.
"Yeah, it is," Shinji agreed with her.
-x-
"…The Angel hasn't made any attempt to leave lunar orbit," Ritsuko informed Misato, as the whole of NERV was on high alert with the latest Angel being sighted in space.
The Angel, unable to be clearly identified because of its radiant appearance, resembled some sort of insect or something with multiples of limbs. But upon a closer inspection of the image the agency possessed of it, it looked as though its core was being held right underneath its body.
"Another Angel has been sighted, and Commander Ikari isn't here again," Misato expressed, unsure how this situation will be handled.
"The MAGI can't confirm if the Angel will make any attempt to approach Earth orbit," Maya informed the two.
"And we have nothing that can reach lunar orbit," Shigeru added.
-x-
Shado felt like she had stumbled into a watery wonderland, wandering through the tunnels of the aquarium with her father close behind. The feeling of being in the water without feeling the water was odd and mesmerizing. She saw several different varieties of fish, octopi and bigger fish (she had never seen whales or sharks before).
A shark swam by the glass and surprised the girl so much that she hid behind her father.
"What kind of fish is that?" She pointed.
"That's a Mako Shark," he answered her. "A Shortfin Mako Shark."
Then, they both saw a larger shark that was well known due to the films it played it.
"Is that a shark, too, Daddy?" Shado asked.
"Yeah, Shado," he answered. "It's called a Great White Shark, one of the largest predators in the water."
"Like Godzilla."
"Yeah. Just like Godzilla, heh-heh."
As they continued to explore the place, a man reading a newspaper looked at them…and could only frown at their apparent happiness. He set the paper down and got up from where he sat.
-x-
"…So, it's a stalemate, then," went Kaji to Misato after hearing the latest information about the Angel. "It makes no attempt to leave lunar orbit, and we have nothing powerful to breach lunar orbit…until it decides to enter Earth's orbit."
"It's almost as if it's just mocking us this way," Misato sighed. "It could come closer if it wanted, but it doesn't, and we can't get anywhere near it with the Evas."
"I take it that Asuka's upset about this?"
"Being unable to leave the base, or being unable to face the Angel unless it comes closer?"
"Both."
"And she still won't accept that the Third Child has been considered a lost cause, as ordered by the Committee after Section Two failed to persuade him and his daughter to return to Japan?"
"That…and because she still refuses to accept that he'd been a victim of child abuse…and his daughter being the proof of his abuse."
"Even if NERV were able to persuade the boy to pilot the Eva again, it'd probably be too much stress for the daughter to worry about him every moment he's up against an Angel. I still can't forget the terror in her voice when she saw her father in Unit-01 against the Third Angel…and the Eva was damaged and she feared her father was hurt."
"Sometimes, people don't understand what measure of stress that can put on a person that has a family to provide for."
-x-
"…They're so pretty," went Shado as she pressed her hands against the glass of the large tank to view the variety of fish in front of her.
Shinji wished he had a camera or a phone with camera-based qualities to take pictures of his daughter, but was content with just watching her enjoy herself.
"What a lovely girl," he turned to face an elderly woman that was beside him. "Is she yours?"
He nodded that she was his.
"She's like the rare koi in one of the tanks, being very beautiful."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that she's beautiful," Shinji decided to speak up. "Everyone says their children are beautiful. It's a common truth. She's pretty, though. Probably somewhat of a tomboy, if she wore pants a little more often."
"Heh. You seem immune to the concepts of old," she told him.
"I just don't buy into the whole beliefs of what most people say," he explained, turning his gaze back onto Shado, who observed a larger tank that displayed a trio of Killer Whales, some of the rarer species of marine life left on the planet. "As much as I want to believe, I prefer the comfort of believing for myself what young people are capable of and what they are to older people."
Shado then came by to him and pulled him by his right hand.
"Daddy, come see the whales," she ushered him, and he chuckled and followed her to the whales.
Further away than the elderly woman was, the man that was following the young father and daughter kept a vigilant watch over the little girl, never letting up on his frown. The very sight of the child and her devoting, protective father was sickening to his mind; when the boy had been left by him, he didn't bat his eyelashes over what he was doing, and this was the complete opposite of what was going on, with the boy hardly ever letting the girl out of his sight.
"…Why do they have four eyes?" He heard the girl ask her father.
"They don't really have four eyes," he heard the father explain. "The eye-like patches on their heads give the illusion that they do, though. I think there's a few films to feature them as characters."
And he's teaching her, the guy thought, disgusted even further by their relationship.
"Let's go see the koi now," Shinji suggested to his daughter.
He followed them with the distance between them, waiting for the right moment to make himself known to the pair.
Suddenly, Shado turned around and was about to ask her father something…when she thought she saw someone a few feet away from them…and stopped walking.
Shinji took notice of this and asked, "What's wrong, Shado?"
"I thought I… I thought I saw that man again," she explained to him; whenever she said things like "that man" or "the bad man", Shinji knew they referred to his father, who was bad in every sense of the word to the point where it just did him proper justice to be known as that.
Shinji then turned around, but didn't see anyone in the small swarm of people.
"It was probably just some guy that thinks that black is a good color," he suggested to her. "Come on. We should really get to seeing the koi."
Behind a nearby wall, the man Shado had glimpsed appeared again, feeling fortunate that the boy didn't see him.
-x-
"…You know where Commander Ikari went, don't you?" Ritsuko asked Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, on the bridge in Central Dogma.
"I do," the elderly man confessed. "He claims he had to attend a business meeting in the States, but I know that he went back to New York. He still believes that he can 'convince' his son and granddaughter to come back to Japan with him and pilot the Eva."
"But the Committee has already considered the Third Child and his daughter to be a lost cause and instructed NERV to no longer bother with him."
"Ikari seems to believe a loophole exists in what he was instructed to do by the Committee. While NERV was told to cease all activity concerning the whereabouts of the Third Child and his daughter, Ikari has decided to handle acquiring them on his own. NERV, not himself as an individual, was ordered to stop."
"He's just circumventing the order by acting solo. If the Committee finds out about this, they will not tolerate that he went against them, even if he is successful."
"You don't think he'll succeed?"
"Don't you?"
"Honestly, I'm hoping that he fails. If there's no love between them, why insist on going after his son and granddaughter, whom he also feels nothing for? Why want them to come back and pilot the Eva if it'll only hurt them?"
"It's just the cards we were dealt," Ritsuko tried to simplify the situation they were in.
"Then, it's a bad bunch of cards we were dealt," he countered her answer. "The young man cares deeply for his daughter, but doesn't want to throw his life away over some situation he was nearly forced into a year ago, but his father is trying desperately to ensure that his son listens to him, even if it means he has to hurt his granddaughter to do so. There's no morality in what Ikari is doing."
Some of bridge techies overheard this conversation and were wondering why Commander Ikari would keep on trying to recruit the only blood family he had left that didn't want anything to do with him.
-x-
"Ooh… It feels so weird," Shado told Shinji, having touched a starfish with small bumps on it.
"Try touching this red one," Shinji suggested, holding a smaller starfish that was red and looked like it had exposed nerves around it. "It's not as gross."
The girl touched it, and actually agreed with her father that this particular starfish wasn't as gross to touch as the previous one.
"And they're like lizards?"
"Reptiles, actually, but same thing," a man that worked at the aquarium explained. "They can regrow missing limbs if injured, similar to how certain reptiles can regrow their missing tissues."
"Attention," a female voice uttered over the speakers, "the New York Aquarium will be closing in the next twenty-five minutes. We appreciate your visit and hope that you come again in the future."
"Already?" Shado questioned, feeling like they had only arrived just a few minutes ago.
"We still have plenty of time to look around the rest of the place, Shado," her father expressed, and put the starfish back in the submerged tray it was in. "We still got the penguins to look at."
"Ooh, ooh! Penguins!" His daughter expressed, and all he could do was chuckle at her joyful spirit.
From several feet away, further than Gendo had been, in one of the larger tanks, another miniature version of the same, mechanical dragon manifested…and high in the rafters above the people's heads, a small, bluish flame appeared, resembling wings.
The dragon and phoenix were out and about, keeping a close watch on the young father and his daughter, in the unlikely (and at the same time, likely) event that they were placed in undesired danger.
-x-
"…If he gets caught, there's a chance that the boy can have him charged with harassment," went Misato, who found out later where Gendo Ikari disappeared to. "Worse is that he could be charged with a potential hate crime against his own son and granddaughter, along with potential custodial interference, as well."
"He could also face the death penalty," added Fuyutsuki. "But that's if he gets caught."
"To think that he would go to extreme lengths to get two members of his own family to join NERV, especially after their unwanted involvement with the agency recently." Ritsuko expressed.
"If this is how he is to his own family, then how he is to others is half as worst." Misato added in. "He just won't accept their refusal."
-x-
"…There's so few of them," went Shado, looking at the penguins that were playing around in their frozen, tundra-like environment.
"Yeah, after what happened fifteen years ago, they became an endangered species," Shinji explained the reason why there weren't as many penguins today as there had been in the past. "It could be another twenty years before they're no longer on the endangered species list."
"Really? Is twenty years that long?"
"You'd be in your mid-twenties by the time there'd be more penguins, Shado…and I'd be a lot older than I am right now. Near my forties."
"Oh… But why that long?"
"Well, like the guy said in the movie, nature has an order. There's an order to many things."
She looked up at her father beside her in front of the glass divider that kept the visitors away from the penguins and then hugged his legs; her father was such a good teacher to explain things she didn't fully understand yet.
"I hope we see many more penguins in the future, Daddy," she expressed her desire.
"Me, too, Shado," he agreed with her. "Come on now, let's go home."
He picked her up into his arms and walked away from the penguins exhibit. And as he headed for the nearest exit, he started recalling his daughter's first word when she turned a year old, and it was quite a surprise for him to hear her, of all people back in his past, say the word that made his relationship with a lot more meaningful than any other relationship he might've had with others.
"Dada," Shado had called Shinji for the first time, and it was the first time that Shinji ever shed a tear at such a common experience that every parent goes through.
I don't even know what my first word was, he thought, a little down about how scarce his own childhood had been, since it was considered by the few that were affected by what had happened prior to his involvement with Shado that it ended the day he was sexually abused.
But Shinji had considered his childhood oven the day he was left by his father.
GASP! He heard Shado gasp, and he snapped back to the present, seeing the cause of her fright.
"It's been a while," said Gendo to them.
Shado held onto her father while he frowned at the man in the glasses.
"You…are clearly out of your mind," Shinji told him. "You can't take a refusal no matter who it's from, can you?"
"You will do as you're told, Third Child," Gendo told him, "even if it means I have to threaten you. Both of you."
Shinji felt lucky that he brought one of his spare knives with him in the unlikely event that he had to use it to defend himself and his daughter from others.
"It's a free country, so we have every right to refuse you anything," he told Gendo.
"But it's not your country," Gendo countered.
"You say that like it's a bad thing."
"The only bad thing I see…is a petulant child with a bastard child of his own."
"You hurt my daughter. I should cut you for putting your hands on her the way you did."
"Sometimes, risks are necessary to know who is who."
"You sent your men in black after us."
"To persuade you to come back to Japan."
"That place is not our home, anymore."
"You can't escape your past."
"Escape the past? Maybe not. But deciding the future is a definite. There's nothing left to go back to in Japan, not that there was anything there to begin with."
"And so you run away."
"Left for a fresh start."
"Turned your back on people."
Shado thought back to the days when her father and she lived in Japan, and could only recall the hurt inflicted upon them, either verbally or emotionally. The woman that was her father's aunt (her great-aunt) once called her an outcast, something she had to ask her father what that meant, and it was the first time she recalled seeing him cry as he held her.
"No means no, Mr. Ikari," Shinji addressed Gendo, and then walked past the man.
"Don't you dare walk away from me!" Gendo shouted at the two.
"We're walking," Shinji retorted.
Shado looked at Gendo as they walked away, and couldn't see the awful gaze he gave them because of his glasses. Yet, even as they were now several feet away from the man, the little didn't feel safe after their undesired meeting with him.
Shinji couldn't believe how tense he felt right now. If it wasn't people he wasn't related to giving him and his daughter a hard time, it was the people they were related to against their will. And there were times where he just wanted…to take out his knife and feed it to his father if it meant being left alone by him, because after adjusting to his own fatherhood, there were no feelings left in his heart towards Gendo, only bitter resentment with no resolution.
"He's not going to leave us alone, is he?" Shado asked.
"One way or another, he will," Shinji told her, but while he meant it to assure that Gendo would stop harassing them, he also meant it to mean that either Gendo would leave them alone of his own volition…or he would be forced to leave them alone if he valued something more than whatever he had left in his life…if not his own life. "How about we go get some ice cream, Shado?"
"Okay."
But as they turned a corner and returned to the city, they didn't see Gendo make an attempt to approach them…and be cut off by human-sized versions of the mechanical dragon and blue bird that attacked and defeated the Angel.
"Leave…them…alone," the bird expressed, and then the mechanical dragon's claws extended small rockets, waiting for an excuse to fire them off.
A/N: Sorry to leave you with another cliffhanger, but you'll have to be left wondering what happens next. Do read and review, please. Peace out!