Creation began on 02-21-16
Creation ended on 03-07-16
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Modern Day Legend of a Rage-filled Anchor: Deviation, Part Eight/New Agenda
A/N: I'd say that things are going to get more deviated now.
Aya, Aki, Toya and Yuuhi were upset right now. And they had good reason to be, too. Thanks to Shinji's new knowledge, provided to him by Frenzia herself, they knew what they were looking for, which Ceres hadn't informed them about at all, further emphasizing the Mikage Tennyo's uncooperative behavior with them. And Aya found her to be completely uncooperative, unlike Frenzia, who was being cooperative.
"The second we find Ceres' hagoromo…or mana or whatever it is," went Aya, "we make sure she gets it and leaves."
"Yeah," Aki agreed with his sister; the sooner they found Ceres' hagoromo, the better, and Aya and he could be rid of this madness in their family.
"We owe these two a lot," said Yuuhi, referring to Shinji and Frenzia for their reliability in the matter.
They were standing outside the cell Shinji was in, who, after being provided with a pencil and paper, drew a detailed picture of what the hagoromo looked like when separated from its owner, and relaying what Frenzia told him about what it could do when separated from its owner for a long time.
"I'm sorry," Shinji apologized to them.
"It's not your fault, Shinji," Aya assured him. "It's Ceres' fault. She's not telling us anything we need to know, anymore. It doesn't matter, anyway. Let her keep her secrets. Find her thing and be over and done with her."
Shinji knew that she was mad at Ceres for her unwillingness to cooperate with them now, and hoped that when they did find her hagoromo, Aya and the others would be free to live out their lives, no longer bound to this crazy fate. No matter what happened to himself, he wanted to ensure that no one else suffered because of their ancestral backgrounds.
"And she said that these are capable of turning into creatures by means of adapting to their environments?" Aki asked Shinji.
"That's what she told me," he answered. "So the Progenitor…or Mikagi as he was once known as, threw her mana in the ocean long ago…and it'll have adapted itself into a mobile form for the purpose of returning to her, but because of such an ability, it could be in any form."
"Like an animal?" Yuuhi asked.
"Or even a person."
-x-
"…He wanted you to move on?" Yui asked Asuka, as they were on the roof of the hospital where they could talk privately.
"He didn't want me to be bound by him simply because he died," Asuka explained her parting with Shinji. "Is it that wrong to want to stay true to him…even after he's gone…and he tells you to find love with someone else?"
"It's not wrong," Yui told her. "It's never wrong…if he himself tells you to find love with someone else. But…in the end, the choice is ultimately yours to make because it's your life, your love."
Asuka turned away from her on the bench and thought about the other Shinji whose past she saw as if she had been the one to experience it all.
"I do care for this other Shinji," she admitted to Yui, "but we've seen his lack of any meaningful relationships with people from his own world. I saw his world's version of myself, and she's someone I wouldn't want to be around at all…or end up being just like. She pinched his nose shut when she kissed him and nearly suffocated him… I mean, even she was beautiful…but that behavior, that attitude…"
"A vixen," Yui cut her off. "A harpy. Beautiful to look at…but dangerous to be around or get near, like a femme fatale luring men into inescapable danger."
"Yeah. If I reminded him of her, he'd probably live with the fear that I might try to hurt him for even the slightest thing he did…and he'd have every right to be afraid of me."
"But…he knows you're not her. And he's seen my son's memories of you to know that you're not that kind of person. Despite the ridicule and ill will of your past because people couldn't get around your eye color, you're not a violent woman."
"There have been moments," Asuka sighed, revealing a long-kept secret. "Just moments…where I have wanted to hurt someone that wouldn't overlook my eyes and see me as a person and not an omen of discord. I'm just as normal as any other girl with different-colored eyes."
"The whole myths and legends around red eyes is etched into people's fear of the unknown or unfamiliar. Personally, I don't believe in any of it."
-x-
Shinji kept expecting the corrupted soul of Mikagi to try and make himself known, but he felt fine since before his last meeting with Asuka. He focused on the other Shinji, needing to speak with him again, just to see what was going on within the confines of his own soul.
"You seem to have a lot on your mind to want to talk to me," he heard his deceased counterpart, seeing him on the rock with Mikagi laying on the ground, looking like he had been beaten to a bloody pulp. "When he's weaken, he can't voice his obsession for Ceres. And when he beaten, he can't make it seem like you've gone crazy."
"He's not…dead, is he?" Shinji asked him.
"He's like me; therefore, he is dead. Even the dead that are earthbound can still feel pain. It's a cruelty, to be harmed in excess…and be denied the peace that is supposed to come with death."
Shinji looked at Mikagi, almost feeling sympathy towards him, but only for the injuries he had sustained to keep him in check while he was a resident within his own soul. As much as he wanted to feel sorry for what Ceres did to him, he found it unlikely to do so without feeling the same degree of sympathy towards the other men that Ceres had manipulated to father her children.
"It's okay to feel sympathy for people, you know," the dead Shinji expressed. "One way or another, they were all victims. We're all victims of others."
"Yet Ceres feels nothing for them…or does she even feel at all?"
"It would depend upon your interpretation of feeling," Shinji heard Frenzia's voice, and saw her stepping out from behind a tree. "And, of course, engaging in another conversation with Ceres herself."
"But…surely as a parent, she feels some maternal attachment towards her children, right?" He asked her. "Even slightly?"
"I wouldn't be able to answer that," she told him, and walked over to the other Shinji and Mikagi, lowering to her knees and placing her left hand on Mikagi's face. "I can say this, however. While the Tennyo of the past committed themselves only to propagate with as many males as they could, my feelings toward this biological drive were of disgust. You shouldn't commit to something like that unless it's with someone you take the time to know and care about as a person, not a breeding tool. I let myself feel for others and achieved a substantial degree of enlightenment. I understand emotions like love and friendship…along with loss and grief."
Shinji looked away from her and said, "But Ceres…she seems to exhibit only anger…and her desire to have her hagoromo back in her possession, no matter what."
"And you don't want her desire to get back what's hers to endanger Aya Mikage and the others," Frenzia explained.
"Yes."
"She can bitch and moan about it all she wants to," said the dead Shinji, surprising the two of his choice of words to use about the Mikage Tennyo, "but if she gets it and leaves without harming anyone in the process, we should let the sleeping dogs lie when she departs."
"What do you mean by that?" Shinji asked him.
"As long as she doesn't do away with Ms. Mikage, her lover, her friends or Asuka and my relatives…OUR relatives, as they're as much your family as they were mine in life, Shinji, we can forget about her the second she gets it and leaves to wherever she wants to return home to."
Frenzia then looked back at the living Shinji and saw that he was unconvinced about something else that was in his mind.
"You fear the other relatives of Ceres' descendants continuing to harm others with a celestial background," she stated to him.
"Yeah," he nodded to her. "That's why I want to ask you something."
"Go ahead, though I already know what it is you're going to say."
"If Aya's relatives that want to exploit Ceres for reasons that endanger people…then someone should make them stop before they go any further than they already may have."
"Not someone, Shinji. You."
"Yeah, me."
"You're saying you want to stop Ms. Mikage's relatives from hurting more people with Tennyo blood in their veins, like a knight off to slay a dragon to rescue a princess…or princesses…if it means putting an end to what these people are doing?" The dead Shinji asked his live counterpart. "Can you add a selfish reason to why you want to do this?"
"Is this a selfish reason for you?" He asked back. "What if they know about your past relationship with Asuka? That you two were…very, very close? What's to keep them from coming after her like they tried to with me, thinking I was you when you were dead for a year?"
Frenzia looked over at her dead descendant and had to agree with his living counterpart that such a belief was within the realm of plausibility; she, too, had been aware of his relationship with the girl when he was alive and knew that, despite the unwanted rage that had coursed through him in life that forced him to end his life to preserve hers, he would've done anything to keep her safe from harm, no matter what price he himself had to pay a second time.
"You really think that these…Mikages that don't share Ms. Mikage's morals or her brother's wish for peace…will go after Asuka…just because of my past relationship with her…and who I died for…and would die for again…and again…and again?" He asked his living self.
"They might," Shinji answered him.
"Then that…will be among their greatest mistakes."
-x-
In the room, Misato put the down the mirror as it stopped showing Shinji engaged in conversation with this Frenzia and his deceased counterpart.
"I don't like where this is going," she told the others present.
"His dead self asked him for a selfish reason to do so, and he answered with his lover," Rei expressed.
"And he's right," added Asuka, ignoring her own dislike of the First Child. "What's to stop any of these people from going after her like they did for who they thought was someone they were looking for?"
Fuyutsuki then checked his watch and announced that it was getting past the hours where the skeleton crew worked.
Asuka yawned and picked up the mirror, which showed something new.
Shinji, still in his cell to keep from harming the others, with an angry expression.
"I won't let you do this," he uttered.
-x-
None of them expected to hear Shinji say this to them. It was mainly Aya who informed him of what they had suspected of what he had told them much earlier, but it was frightening of just thinking of it being so. After being told that Ceres' hagoromo could adapt and take on a mobile form for the purpose of returning itself to her, Aya and Yuuhi came to a conclusion that the hagoromo had to be close to them, based on something Yuuhi had once heard: "Seen, but never seen. Protected, but unknown to its protector." But when they told Shinji, he showed his hesitance to believe this was so…that the hagoromo they had been trying to find for such a long while…was really Aya's lover, Toya.
It only just occurred to them that during the time the guy was injured, he recovered from his injuries, but they realized that he had recovered much faster than usual. And then it occurred to Toya himself that he wasn't normal…when he explained what he had saw of himself when he saw one of his hands changed when he and Aya were on a beach a while ago.
"Shinji, it's the only explanation we were able to come to," Aya told him.
"That doesn't necessarily mean that it'll end with a positive outcome," Shinji responded; in truth, he was just afraid for them, because even if it was true, he saw Toya as a person and not as a form for the hagoromo to take on just to return to Ceres. "We don't really know what could happen if you're right…or what could happen to him if Ceres does reclaim her hagoromo."
"But…this is what we're trying to do, right?" Toya asked him. "It's…all that matters? If we find her hagoromo, we're free of her. She leaves and…"
"Please…don't think about it until we know for sure what could happen," Shinji pleaded to them.
-x-
"…I take it Shinji wasn't too happy with what you discovered?" Yui asked Aya and Aki, seeing them on the hospital roof.
"He doesn't want Toya to do anything until we're for sure nothing we don't expect to happen won't happen," Aki explained.
"Personally, I don't blame him for being cautious," Yui told the twins. "He is a very quiet person and longs for peace, not sadness. Aya, you saw his past, so you know this is true. You know what he fears could happen if you're right."
Aya turned to face her…and then nodded in acceptance to what the older woman was really saying.
"He doesn't want anyone to die, anymore," she sighed.
-x-
Asuka wandered down the halls to Shinji's cell again and found him crouched against one of the padded walls, looking depressed and upset about something.
What are you thinking about? She wondered, placing her left hand on the glass. Who are you thinking about? Why are you thinking about them?
In his cell, within his mind, Shinji was trying to get back in touch with Frenzia to ask her a serious question about the fate of anything made by a hagoromo.
Frenzia… Frenzia… Frenzia, I need to talk to you! His mind yelled out to her as he returned to the realm where his dead counterpart was with the unconscious Mikage patriarch.
"You're getting better at this," the dead Shinji expressed.
"Thank you. Is Frenzia here?" He asked.
"I am always here," Frenzia answered for herself, appearing behind him.
"Frenzia… Ceres' hagoromo… Toya…"
"Calm yourself," Frenzia calmed him because he was babbling. "What are you trying to say?"
"Ceres' hagoromo… Aya and the others… They think her hagoromo is in Toya, Aya's lover," he explained to her. "Suppose the hagoromo could assume a human form so that it could get back to the Tennyo that was separated from it. What happens to the human when the hagoromo is returned? I mean, what really happens to them?"
Frenzia was at a loss for the words to answer him.
"I honestly don't know," she told him. "I've never truly known of any humans created by a hagoromo, but if they were created solely to return the mana to the Tennyo, then they will have done just that."
"You mean…people made by mana…exist only to return it to their owners…and nothing else beyond that task?"
"That is…what the mana will have decided upon when its construct was created to return it to its owner. Nothing more, nothing less."
"So, then if Toya is just a construct for the mana of Ceres to be returned to…and he does what he was meant to do…he will just die?"
"If he is…then yes, Shinji. He will die if he does return Ceres' mana to her."
"But then… Is there any way to save him if he is and does this? I mean, even if he is a creation of the mana, he is still a person and deserves to be with Aya."
"If mana can be made to do so, it can give him the normal lifespan of a human."
"But… But she might not care what happens to him. Ceres may not care for what happens to Aya's feelings if Toya dies. I…I know I said that I would help Aya find her hagoromo and return it to Ceres, but not like this. Not like this, Frenzia."
Frenzia walked closer to him and placed her palms on his shoulders.
"If you have mana, you can do what Ceres may not do," she told him. "If you have mana…you can save lives, Shinji."
"Me? But…"
"The Rage-filled Anchor was transferred to you, which makes you a part of my family's lineage. It also means you can inherit my mana, which I made accessible to those of my bloodline if they were able to obtain it."
"But…none of your descendants have ever been able to obtain it…and for different reasons. How can I expect to succeed where they failed?"
"By knowing the difference between being who you know you are meant to be…and being what others want you to be."
"Being who you're meant to be…and what others want you to be," the dead Shinji repeated. "It revolves around want and need, Shinji. Want and need."
-x-
Toya was convinced that he was Ceres' hagoromo now. He believed this because had just stabbed himself in his left hand with his stiletto dagger in the men's restroom…and the stab wound regenerated. He was the hagoromo Ceres needed to leave this world. But Shinji urged him and the others not to give it to Ceres just yet, wanting to make absolutely certain that nothing would happen to him when and if they returned to her.
"Please…don't think about it until we know for sure what could happen," he recalled Shinji's worried plea to them. "Please."
-x-
If you've found it, why can't I have it back? Ceres asked Aya, looking at her through the mirror of the women's restroom, engaged in a conversation with her present reincarnation.
We just need to be sure of something, Aya told her. Shinji wants to make sure of something.
But Ceres wasn't convinced.
He wants it for himself, doesn't he? She asked her, which didn't even sound like a question at all. He wants my hagoromo.
Aya had seen this side of Ceres before, but this was new, a rage directed at Shinji, who merely wanted to make sure that Toya wouldn't die if he returned what was Ceres' back to her.
He doesn't want your hagoromo, Ceres, she told her. He wants to make sure nothing bad will happen should you reclaim it.
What could possibly happen that is bad?
Someone dying.
And that should matter to me because why?
Now Aya was offended by her question.
We're waiting until we know for sure, she told her. You'll have to be patient.
But before Ceres could respond that she wouldn't, Aya walked away, leaving the Tennyo in the mirror with an enraged expression.
Outside the bathroom, Aya met with Asuka, who had been informed about what was going on, and who uttered to the older girl, "I take it that she's not happy to be informed that she would have to wait a while longer?"
"I don't believe she even cares what could happen if she does get it back," Aya told her. "I told her that someone could die…and she asked why that should matter to her."
Asuka frowned at this discovery.
"Where does she get off asking such a thing?" She questioned. "I can understand that she's your ancestress and everything, but who does she think she is? Does she think of herself as the very sun itself? That we revolve around her?"
Aya was unable to answer that question, simply because she didn't know how to answer it.
"No," Asuka spoke up, still upset about Ceres' response to this discovery. "No, she must be like the moon to behave this way towards everyone around her."
"Asuka?"
"She must be, right? I mean, she's barely hanging on without her hagoromo and wants it back so much that she's willing to do whatever she feels she has to in order to reclaim what belongs to her, no matter who it hurts."
As much as Aya wanted to say that there was a different reason for Ceres' behavior towards the choice to not let her have back her hagoromo just yet, she couldn't disagree with this young girl's belief that Ceres was someone that was barely hanging on. But so long as she did hold on…and withhold many answers to many questions they needed answers to, Ceres seemed to have a lot of life left in her.
"Then…you agree with Shinji's suggestion on what to do until we know for sure that nothing bad will happen to Toya?" She asked her.
Asuka sighed and answered, "Well, yeah. I mean, don't you?"
"Yes, I do. As odd as it seems, I'm starting to believe in Shinji more than I tried to believe in Ceres. He saw my future the moment I touched him…and he informed me of what he saw. He never withheld anything from me. And then, I saw his past…and felt his pain."
"He's not a fan of pain, whether it's inflicted upon him or not."
They then returned to where Shinji was held, but stopped walking at the sight of what had to be frightening at the moment.
Shinji, without any form of restraints, stepping out of his cell, turning to face them.
"The door was unlocked," he explained, pointing to the cell door. "Are you two alright?"
"We're fine," went Asuka. "What of you?"
"After another conversation with Frenzia, my spirits have been lifted a little. Not a whole lot, but at least enough."
"Was she able to tell you something about saving Toya?" Aya asked him, wanting to be hopeful.
"Yeah. She told me that Tennyo with mana could give a human made by mana the lifespan of a normal human. Except she's never known of anyone human that was made by mana before."
"So…if we convince Ceres to do so, then Toya will live."
"Yeah…if she can be convinced. If she can't, then it'll have to be done by someone else who has access to mana."
Aya sighed at what he meant by that last statement. There was very little chance that Ceres would even consider doing this; all she wanted was her hagoromo so that she could leave this world.
"Could Frenzia do it?" Asuka asked Shinji. "She's a Tennyo, so she has her own hagoromo, right?"
"I asked her, but she said she couldn't because she's not alive, anymore. She also made it so that her mana was accessible to her descendants that managed to inherit it." Shinji explained.
"But…you're from another world, Shinji," Aya stated. "How…"
"The Rage-filled Anchor," he explained. "It transferred to me, which makes me a part of her bloodline, her lineage. But I've yet to inherit her mana. I don't know if I'll ever."
"You could inherit her mana?" Asuka asked him. "That's…a rather scary thought."
-x-
"That's…a rather scary thought." Asuka heard her red-eyed counterpart say to Shinji through the mirror, responding to what Shinji had revealed to her.
"A very scary thought," she uttered to herself.
"Shinji inheriting something from a mysterious woman that happens to be a celestial matriarch for that world's version of the Ikari family?" Misato expressed. "That would be…incredible. He'd be able to do…anything he wanted."
"He'd be like a god," added Rei.
Yes, he would be like a god, thought Fuyutsuki, but for a completely different reason. A god…free from the Eva. Free from anyone's control. Free…from the fate he was originally dealt.
-x-
"…So long as the Progenitor…or Mikagi, as he was once known as, remains unconscious and bound, he's not a threat or hazard, which would make me a threat or hazard," Shinji explained to Aya and Asuka, feeling the warmth of the sunlight on his skin on the roof of the hospital.
Asuka stood two feet from him against the railing, looking out at the ocean water below them.
"So…what happens now?" She asked him.
He looked over at her on his left…and then to Aya on his right.
"I want to deal with Mikage International," he revealed to them, "but before I do that, there's one last thing I want to do that involves our uncooperative Tennyo."
"What do you want with Ceres?" Aya asked him.
"Her mana, her choice. I want to talk to her again, see if I can convince her to let Toya live normally when she gets her mana back."
"She thinks you want it all for yourself."
"She'd be wrong to think that, just as she can be wrong to that everything revolves around her. She can be…so wrong because of her beliefs, her bias, her…"
"Her secrets and unwillingness to admit to her faults?" Aya cut him off.
"Yes. But maybe if I talk to her, try to convince her to let Toya live… Maybe she'll feel something for once that isn't a biological drive or a selfish belief."
"You may have a problem with that idea, Shinji. Ceres is so…uncooperative right now that she won't talk to you, no matter how civil you try to be with her."
Shinji sighed and expressed, "Then I'll have to be anything but civil towards her. She won't talk to me, I'll make her talk to me."
"I hope you know what you're doing. She's not easy to talk to."
"Is anyone ever easy to talk to?"
To be continued…
A/N: Ooh…this is getting intense. Who do you think will prevail in a verbal battle between Shinji and Ceres? Will it be Shinji, a boy trying to find his way in a different place that is unlike the one he knew…or Ceres, the Tennyo that refuses to admit her faults and wants back her hagoromo?