Creation began on 03-15-19

Creation ended on 03-17-19

Neon Genesis Evangelion

I Dream of Evangelion: A Maiden's Wrath

Pema opened her eyes as she felt the sense of danger targeting Shinji as he slept beside her on the floor. Something foul was in the air from a distance outside the temple as she got up and walked towards the window by the door.

Who dares to bring trouble to Shinji? She wondered as she looked outside. You have some nerve to show your face around here when you show no interest in Shinji's life or any compassion for the pain he went through when you abandoned him after your wife did first.

She could see Gendo standing a considerable distance by the trees, holding a bottle with a rag lit on fire, the look on his face like that of a stone wall that was exposed to the snow all the time. Then she turned back to look down at Shinji as he continued to sleep…and sighed at what she herself was going to as she went to the door. There was danger, and she needed to deal with it for his sake.

-x-

Before Gendo could throw the lit Molotov at the temple's roof, he saw the front door open up and the older girl, Pema, step out, dressed in a blue nightie with a small, white shawl around her shoulders with her arms crossed. If she was awake, she could either alert Shinji or could indicate that Shinji was awake himself.

"Are you out of your mind right now?" She asked, approaching him. "You must be out of your mind if you feel you have to go this far. What, because he refuses to serve you, you feel that you need to set ablaze where we live just to hurt him?"

"I could just set you ablaze," Gendo told her, actually tempted to do such an act to her.

"You do that…and you will only sign for yourself to experience a pain unlike any you have ever known before," she informed him. "Why do you want to hurt him so much? Why do you both want to hurt him? Are you sadists? Do you believe in Satanism? You want to hurt Shinji to the point of despair and believing that the world is an awful place? All you two have done so far is made him believe that your family is just a plague upon himself, and I don't mean just his aunt and uncle. I mean the two people that gave him life just to torment him: You, his father, the failure that sees him only as a pawn…and your wife, his mother, the heartless witch that abandoned him first."

"You know not what you say," he told her.

"I know exactly what I say. I know that secrets have a cost, that what you want has a price so high, you might as well pay in your own blood just to have a tiny piece of it. And Shinji won't help you pay that price. He won't help either of you…and I won't let you hurt him any further. Don't make me hurt you, because I will hurt you. Why I will hurt you? Because you deserve to be hurt for what you both did to Shinji."

Gendo raised the Molotov up to light the girl up.

"I just wish you were dead right now!" He yelled as he threw it at her.

Grip! The Molotov was caught by the left hand of Pema, who now looked like she had better days because there were thick veins formed across her face and arms.

"I'm sorry," she uttered, her voice sounding thick and inhuman, "your wish not granted."

So long as he had intent to harm Shinji, Gendo was a threat, and Pema needed to resolve him. Changing right in front of him, disregarding her need to hide this from people, her only thought was to protect Shinji from his father, who would stop at nothing to cause Shinji the greatest degree of pain just because he wanted his wife returned to him.

"You think you're the one in agony?" She asked him as she rose over his height, the Molotov bursting into a short work of fire in her left claw. "You're about to know agony in all its forms."

This was something Gendo didn't expect to see or hear. At first, he wanted to believe that his son simply knew where the creature hid when it wasn't wandering around. Now he knew better. Neither his son nor the girl knew where the creature hid… The girl WAS the creature or vice versa…and Shinji was the person she was protecting. Now, his only option was to run while he still had that option.

"Aaaurgh!" He grunted, throwing the other Molotov he had in his hands at her, forgetting that it wasn't lit.

Pema, or rather the Servant Beast, now soaked in an alcoholic solution, growled as she chased after him.

"Run all you want," she uttered. "It will do you no good."

-x-

Shinji awoke to the rising sun…and noticed that Pema wasn't nearby.

"Pema," he called out to her, but got no response. "Pema?"

"Rrr?" Otomo, who was up earlier this morning, whined as she came over to him. "Rrr."

Suddenly, they heard a creak come from outside, and Shinji got up and ran to the door.

Slowly walking up the steps was none other than Pema, who seemed bothered by something as she looked up at Shinji.

"Are you alright?" He asked her.

"No," she answered as she sighed. "I did something stupid…and almost did something wrong to someone that deserved worse than what I chose to do instead."

"What…what do you mean, Pema? What…what did you do that was stupid and wrong?"

"Last night…your father came by, alerting me to the potential danger you were in. I confronted him, wanting him to leave, but then things got out of hand. He had two bottles with rags in them and one was lit up; I think he was intending to set fire to the temple. I changed in front of him, so he knows that it was me that defeated the Angels using the Evas."

"Did you…kill him?"

"No, Shinji, I didn't…but I came close to doing so. I won't lie to you, but a part of me wanted to, just so that he wouldn't hurt you, anymore…but I couldn't do it without paying a price I don't want to pay. So instead, I just smashed up his car that he had parked by the streets away from the trees while he was inside it and gave him a warning to stay away."

"You and I both know that he's not going to stay away. If anything, he's gonna try and make things difficult for us. But thank you for not killing him, even if he did deserve it."

Pema nodded in the positive, but couldn't look at Shinji right now. She had just confessed to almost murdering his father, almost tarnishing her own soul in the process, and this was grounds for what she had learned recently from Shinji as attempted murder or premeditated murder. If anything, she would expect Shinji to be upset with her.

Shinji, on the other hand, didn't want to think about his father right now. Or his mother, either. All he could focus on right now…was his friend in front of him, not her sense of recklessness that exposed her cursed status to his bastard of a father; so long as his father couldn't be vouched for over the fact that Pema was capable of becoming a creature able to do what NERV couldn't do…and, in a way, more efficiently.

"What are the chances that the rest of NERV will likely know about me?" She asked him.

"Depends on who refuses to stay away from us," he answered her.

-x-

"…Looks like someone sent you a message from somebody else, Gendo Ikari," expressed a male police officer to the unharmed man trapped in his ruined car.

Gendo, despite being in one piece, was surrounded by crushed and crunched, dented and bent, broken and otherwise deformed metal that used to be a black Ford Expedition.

"What the heck did this to you and left you for dead?" Another police officer asked him.

-x-

The Threat of the Maiden

Gendo made it to his car and fumbled with his keys, trying to start the engine.

Thud! He looked up at the front hood and saw the Servant Beast looking at him.

"Aaugh!" He gasped, as she smashed the front window and ripped out the steering wheel.

"Oh, I'd like to break your neck right now," she told him as she ripped the roof off, "to send you right to your maker, because you're nothing more than a mistake made by the gods. You don't deserve to continue breathing, to feel the sun on your skin, to experience the passage of time if all you want is to cause the suffering of others. Can you tell me something positive about your son from your point of view? Can you tell me if he was a happy child? Did he ever cry in his sleep? What was his first word? Can you tell me any of those? If you can, you may just survive this encounter with me. I suggest you start recalling your past with him, because your car is about to become an unimportant piece of scrap metal."

Creak! Gendo could feel the metal of his vehicle beginning to contract and pile into the individual pieces that made it up.

"You can't do this to me!" He yelled at her. "I know what you are now! I'll tell them! I'll make sure the world knows that you're some sort of freak! You'll never be left alone! The Third Child will be taken from you and you'll be locked up in a cage like the animal you are!"

But Pema, despite her fear of being exposed by this man with no soul, didn't give in to his threat to her. She continued to let the car crush into itself with him inside it.

"Go ahead, then," she told him. "You won't die tonight, anyway, no matter how much I'd want to spare Shinji the pain you and his mother inflicted upon his heart and soul. Tell the people what you saw. Tell your superiors, even. Let the children know, too. Tell everyone that you were trapped in your car by a girl damned by the father of a man she didn't want to marry…because she didn't love him…over five-thousand years ago…released from the millennia-long darkness by the very boy you hate to the point of wanting to make him suffer. Would they even believe you without proof, only your word? And your word is… Your word isn't worth much…just like your status as a father isn't worth much, either."

Gendo didn't think this girl was that smart, even if she was who and what she claimed to be. He was the commander of NERV, tasked with carrying out the goal of the Human Instrumentality Project and saving the human race, and she was…just some outsider without so much as an identity or any pocket change to her name. There was no way she was any danger to him or his agenda. And yet…she had disposed of six Angels…and all for a boy that had no worth and chose to live in a decrepit temple that they called their home. How pathetic was she to think that she could possibly be right now?

"I suggest that you hurry up and tell me something you can remember fondly about your son," she told him, reminding him that he was on a time limit before his car was completely crushed around him. "A maiden's patience isn't something you should take advantage of."

"You're wasting your time," Gendo told her. "There's nothing worth talking about that revolves around that boy. I have no memories worth sharing about him. Only an infant needs their parents, and he's not an infant."

Pema's eyes glared at Gendo and she knew everything she needed to know about him…and how any hope there was for him was wasted.

"It's a real pity for you," she expressed, raising her right claw to his head. "I hope for Shinji to one day live without the fact that his disgraceful parents were hurting him for their own, selfish reasons. Here's a parting gift to remember me by and to remind you that I can do worse to you if I could."

While she was prohibited by the limitations of her curse to kill, she could at least mark the guy with a small scar.

"Aaaauurgh!" He yelled as he felt a searing heat emanate from her talons onto his flesh. "Aaaaurgh! Stop!"

But she didn't stop. Not until she was done marking him with the scar she decided on giving him. She didn't stop until a full minute had passed. When she had finished, she removed her claw from his head, branding him with an upside-down Latin cross interlocked with the Egyptian ankh on his left and right cheek; the Latin cross upside-down was meant to symbolize his disgust and disregard towards the gods he chose to abandon, and the ankhs were symbolize how he hungered for more life than he was permitted by the gods to have.

"You think the gods are cruel now," she told him, "well, you're the only one who's cruel here. Your cruelty shows as your ugliness…and now you can't hide how ugly you've become towards whoever sees you. I used to think myself ugly if I ever let Shinji see me in this form. But now…he doesn't fear me when he sees me like this. He just fears what others would do to me if they caught me. I am…eternally glad that he released me from my imprisonment the day I met him…and if it becomes necessary, I will protect him from anyone that dares to cause him pain that is unbearable, including you and his mother who gave up any right to cherish him."

Then, as she turned to leave, Gendo howled at her to come back and release him from the crushed and deformed vehicle.

Like before, Pema simply told him, "Your wish not granted."

-x-

"…Someone certainly humiliated you," one of the paramedics expressed as they examined the burned brandings on Gendo's face. "Did you get a good look at them?"

But Gendo didn't answer; how could explain that he was scarred by a person that had dropped off the grid and didn't exist? Or worse, how could he explain that the girl was older than anyone else on the planet and could turn into something unlike anything else on the planet…and had threatened his life if he tried to hurt his son again?

"Go ahead, then," he remembered her words upon being threatened with exposure by him. "Tell the people what you saw? Would they even believe you without proof, only your word? Your word isn't worth much."

Damn you, girl, he thought as his face was bandaged. I will make you pay for this.

-x-

They stayed in the temple for the rest of the day. Maybe it was their way of shutting out the world right now, but Shinji suggested that for that day, they should at least be permitted to their solitude after what happened the previous day and what his father almost tried to do that night they were asleep.

"You must think I'm awful for scarring your father, Shinji," she told him as she laid beside him on the right on the floor.

"No, Pema," he answered her. "You stopped from him burning the temple last night, and you threatened him to keep away from here. Who's going to believe that he was branded by you, anyway? Even if he had proof, I wouldn't call him a victim. Not when he tried to destroy our home just to hurt us."

"You call…this temple home?"

"Well, we do live here. It's where we come back to, where we eat, sleep, talk and whatever. And…you and Otomo make it feel like that to me. It's the only place that feels worth being in."

"Yeah, Shinji," she agreed with him. "You two make it feel like a home to me, too."

She felt a hand slip under hers a moment later. Turning to face Shinji, Pema saw him looking back at her.

"If I wasn't ancient," she spoke up, "would you still like me?"

"If my parents weren't monsters," he countered, "would you still like me?"

"I think you know the answer to that question."

"Just like how you know the answer to yours."

"Thank you."

To be continued…

A/N: Ooh, Gendo got scarred by Pema! Now he's uglier than before! Next up, signs of the next Angel are upon us and the danger it poses, both to Shinji if set loose and to others, personally and emotionally.