Creation began on 05-08-10
Creation ended on 06-01-13
Neon Genesis Evangelion
My Special Keeper, Part Twelve-B2
-x-
The time was now four-fifteen…with only a few more hours left till midnight before Rei made her move to end his life. As he reflected back on his life, Kozo really couldn't think of Akira, his childhood savior, actually giving up her daughter and grandson to the keeper of the Fallenbreaker in exchange for his life. He had aged up in the years, becoming a lowly elder with a degree and specialty in metaphysics. There wasn't really anything of particular that was special about him.
Then again, he thought, tied to the chair he was placed on by Rei, she did save my life that night when those rich kids tried to put me down for good.
-x-
Pool of Life, Pool of Punishment, Pool of Change
The twelve-year-old Kozo Fuyutsuki found the loneliness of Akira not being around him to be very dreadful. This was due to finding out that one of her adopted sons from years back when he was a little boy no younger than Kozo himself had finally succumbed to old age, and Akira had to make sure he received a burial when she transported his remains back home; the deceased man had just wanted to revisit his former home that was Kyoto, get back in touch with his original roots…and he was able to before passing away in his sleep, at ease to know that he had lived a good life, hoping the next one would be just as good. Back then, Kozo hated the idea of dying, not just living in fear of it, but the fact that his tormentors made his school life a living Hell with the constant bullying. This made the possibility of dying inch ever closer in his mind because of them.
But they've stopped for now, he thought, trying to enjoy his swimming lessons at the public swimming pool in the late hours of the night. I struck one of them in the head and gave him a concussion.
It was only ten days ago that he had left with his classmates out of Kyoto for the day to go to a frozen lake, and eight days after being encouraged by Akira to stand up to his bullies and defend himself. During the eight days, he participated in a weightlifting program at his school, which also required that the person be taught how to swim if they didn't know how to already, in order to build their upper and lower body strength. While he still seemed somewhat weaker than his tormentors, he had gained some confidence to deal with them that day at the lake.
"I hope you been learning to swim, poor boy," said the leader of his bullies, "because today, you're swimming in the ice water."
As he had minded his own business skating on the edges of the frozen lake, he had found an old pipe piece half-buried in the snow, deciding that he would use it to prove a point to his tormentors that he had become off-limits to their cruelty.
"Ready to go swimming, poor boy?" The lead bully asked him, finding him again in the middle of the frozen lake, accompanied by his friends.
"No," he had told him, bringing up the piece of pipe that he found.
"What on Earth are you going to do with that?" Another of them had asked.
"Hit you…if you try anything," Kozo expressed, taking Akira's advice to heart: Never making the first move until your opponent did.
"Heh! The poor boy is brave, all of the sudden?" The lead bully chuckled, unimpressed by Kozo's threat to hit them with the pipe if they tried anything on him. "Listen up, I'm gonna shove you into the water, and you're not going to do a thing about it."
This only made the rage he had for his bullies build up to the point where he really wanted to hit them with it until they got the message that he was off-limits. And then…the message came hard. The lead bully approached him, and he swung the pipe at his forehead, remembering that Akira told him to hit his tormentors harder than they hit him, with more force than he dared to unleash upon them until they stopped for good. His swing was hard and heavy, making it seem like he had struck a piece of wood with the pipe, and the lead bully backed away, grabbing his head as he fell to his knees.
"He…he really hit him," one of the four, unharmed bullies gasped, just as Kozo brought the pipe back up behind himself, ready for the second round to come while the leader howled in pain at how much his head hurt now.
"Who else wants a piece of me?" He had asked them, feeling justified for what he had just achieved until the teachers responded to the lead bully's cries of agony, not knowing what had happened, but seeing that it was violent.
It was the first time in his life of poverty that Kozo had actually felt a great weight had been lifted off his shoulders when he gave that boy a concussion. They had stayed away from him ever since that day; they didn't even try to jump him whenever he walked past them to and from the school. Even Akira herself was proud of what he did when he informed her.
"…Everyone out of the pool!" He heard a familiar voice, and turned to see it was his tormentors again, accompanied by a much older man that was probably out of his teens. "That's him, right there!"
Uh-oh, he realized his new predicament; this man was probably the elder brother of the boy he gave the concussion…and he wanted to settle the score with violence that was worse than what he had unleashed upon his brother.
The lead bully, still wearing a bandage on his head to show that he'd not recovered from his injury, smiled cruelly at Kozo and crossed his arms in satisfaction as he was now the only one left in the pool and the program's instructor was not present, having left to attend to a minor matter.
This…is bad, thought Kozo, seeing the older boy brandishing a pocketknife in front of them all.
"Get him," the older boy said, and the lead bully's four comrades jumped into the pool after Kozo!
"Ah…aaahh!" He gasped, trying to swim away, but the four grabbed him and dragged him out of the pool in front of the older boy.
"Let's see how long he can hold his breath underwater…upside-down," the lead bully suggested, and his comrades grabbed Kozo by his legs and held him upside-down back in the pool.
Kozo tried with all of his might to hold his breath underwater, but doing so upside-down was hindering his efforts. So this was how he was going to go in life? Not as an old man…but still a young boy?
Akira, he thought, feeling like he was about to burst in the water. You said you'd help me before you left. You told me you would if they continued to persist. You…promised…
His hearing was also dulled due to being in the water, but it sounded like the bullies were laughing at their attempt to murder him. Then, he heard something that sounded like a thud…and then felt his legs get free from their grip. As the back of his head rose to the surface of the water, his ears heard better.
"Witch!" One of the boys screamed.
"Aaahh! She can spit fire from her hands!" Another boy gasped.
"Please, don't hurt me!" A third boy's voice cried. "My parents are wealthy! They'll pay you twenty-thousand to spare me!"
"You think this is about money?" A female voice, calm in sound, but enraged in tone, questioned. "You just tried to murder one of my friends, and you think that bribing me will protect you from my wrath? I don't take bribes, and I don't forgive those that try to kill people I know very easily!"
More screaming was heard, along with splashing thud sounds and shifts in the water around him; he didn't see anything on account of his vision was darkened by his closed eyelids, and his air supply was severely lacking. Moments later, he felt a hand grab him by his right shoulder and pull him up out of the pool, causing the water in his mouth to spill free and allow the air to revitalize his lungs. And as his vision cleared, he was presented with a very rare sight: Akira, holding onto him, while surrounded at the waist down by a small twister of water, conjured from the very pool itself, in front of an cage-like prison made of ice, with all five bullies and the older boy inside it in the center of the pool.
"Akira?" He questioned. "What did you…"
"What I had to in order to get the message heard loud enough," she expressed, setting him on the floor by the edge of the pool now. "And just to make sure the message has sunk in…"
Kozo saw her hands turn into fire! He didn't see her hands catch fire like they were soaked in oil or gasoline, oh, no, no, no. Her hands heated up to the point of spontaneous combustion, literally! Then, her hair strands rose up around her head, like a breeze had swept her hair, except the breeze was coming directly from her. Finally, the temperature within the large room began to drop significantly to the point where Kozo and the bullies could see the mist that was their breaths.
"Call me whatever you will," Akira told the snotty, spoiled, rich boys, now walking on the water of the pool as it turned to ice. "A witch… A monster… A goddess, even… But know this: You've eaten well for a bunch of misbehaving cretins. You've eaten the wealth and spirit of your positive future. And your feast…is at an end. Kozo Fuyutsuki is off-limits to your life of cruelty and stupidity. If you so much as breathe in his direction, not only will I make it so that your hands will never express violence again, but I will unleash an even worse form of punishment upon you. Ever seen what people look like after surviving an unforgiving inferno…with their flesh burnt off to show they were maimed by the flames?"
Kozo couldn't have believed that this woman, this single parent, had in her possession abilities that could've marked her as a virtual goddess incarnate! She manipulated fire, water and wind, and he was certain that she could manipulate the other elements of existence, as well. He could tell that the bullies were wetting their pants already and swore that they wouldn't mess with him no more, which was all that he ever wanted from them.
"Now that we understand each other," she told them as her hands returned to normal, and the ice cage reverted back into water, letting the boys fall into the pool, "we should leave now, Kozo-Kun."
"Yea, ma'am," he agreed, and went to get his clothes.
-x-
Kozo could reflect back on that night and laugh at how stupid and helpless Akira had made his tormentors look. And then parting with one of her relics that was worth a substantial sum to him and his mother to turn their life around and get out of the poverty lane they were in, going from the lower-middle class to the upper-middle class, putting Kozo in the same boat with his tormentors, but, unlike them, Kozo wasn't a jerk.
"…A throwing star made of gold and silver," he sighed, remembering the relic she showed him.
"If you sold it to the right buyer, you could probably buy the nuclear power plant in the Tōkai region for up to five years," she had told him, explaining its value. "I had checked to be sure of its potential, economic value."
"…Yet, you gave it to my family because you felt we were deserving of salvation," he sighed. "Again, why can't a few more people be like you, Akira?"
-x-
Five-eighteen nearing the evening hours of the day, and Rumi was laying atop Shinji's bed with her love interest, trying to forget what they saw and heard of the tape Akira had received this morning.
"Rumi," she heard her nephew say, "have I ever told you about what I had expected when you kissed me that day we was in the elevator?"
"No," she responded. "What did you expect from me when I kissed you?"
"I had expected you would slip your tongue in my mouth."
"I think I heard somewhere that you're not supposed to experience that until after your first date, Shinji. Plus, my tongue doesn't stick out that far." She then stuck out her tongue, showing that it only reached to the underneath of her bottom lip. "See?"
"Eh-heh-heh. Yeah."
"Shinji…are you… You know…ever afraid of…Ayanami?"
Shinji sighed as he turned onto his left side to face his little auntie and responded, "Who's not afraid of Ayanami? When I was kidnapped and brought back to NERV, I was afraid of her trying something on me when I was disabled from being drugged. I get disgusted by the mere idea of her trying to touch me while she's wearing that mockery of the Angelbreaker."
"Ugh," Rumi shuddered; the very fantasy of anybody like Rei Ayanami laying so much as a finger upon her man gave her the creeps. "I'd rather bury her in sand than to let her touch you, Shinji."
"Are you afraid of her, Rumi?" He asked back, wanting her honesty in the question.
The girl looked away from him and at the bedspread, responding with, "Yes, Shinji. I am afraid of her. I'm afraid of what she's capable of doing to the rest of the family if she ever got rid of me. And…I'm afraid of her wanting to kill me…and she doesn't even know me the way all of you do."
"She knows you're protective of me," he countered with that fact. "Maybe that's all she knows."
Wanting to get off the potential death threat that Ayanami gave to her mother of murdering the elder she knew as a little boy, Rumi then decided to ask something that was personal regarding themselves.
"I…" She started, but Shinji spoke up faster than she did.
"I was still in a state of surprise when you kissed me in that elevator that day," he said to her.
"Oh," she responded, sounding disappointed.
"Why do you seem upset about it?" He asked.
"I was wondering…when I kissed you that day, for the first time…if you tried to kiss me back. I might have made the first move when I jumped you, but…I was hoping that it was…not something that just happened between us back then." She explained, having expressed that he would at least feel the same way she did when she kissed him on his lips; sometimes, she could still feel the warmth that was there on her lips.
"I did hold you," he expressed quietly, though if the elevator hadn't opened up during that moment, it would've probably led to…something that was more meaningful between them than a mere smooch that lasted a few seconds. "I…"
"Could I…" She spoke up. "I mean…with your permission…I wish to do it again…if you'll let me."
Shinji leaned his head in toward Rumi's…and kissed her on the lips, surprising her! It surprised her so much that she was glad she didn't have on her half of the Angelbreaker because she felt like she was going to lose her self-control…and kissed back. He felt something pressing against his lips that was small and realized that it was her tongue. Rather than resist her advances, he surrendered to her desire and opened his lips up a bit for her to trespass on his personal space.
Oh, Kami, thought Rumi, shutting her eyes and processing all of what she was doing. What am I doing to him?
She felt like she had lost control and grabbed his head, getting on top of him and savoring every layer of his taste.
This should be wrong, but…I can't view what I feel for Rumi as being bad, Shinji thought, raising his right hand up over Rumi's back…and calmly brought it down on her back as he felt her right hand reaching for his left hand.
A tiny, bead-like object fell onto his left cheek…and then another onto his right cheek, hearing a sound like somebody was moaning like they did in the movies and cartoons. He opened his eyes and saw, to his greatest shock right now, that Rumi was crying.
I'm hurting her, he suspected, wanting this to end before they went too far and she ended up hating him for whatever he might've done to cause her this pain.
But try as he might to raise his left arm up, this little girl had him pinned to the bed…and made him see the error of his suspicion as she pressed her lips even firmer down on his; even her tongue was reaching further inside his mouth, touching his tongue. What he had perceived to be tears of pain were actually tears of longing. She was happy in this second kiss. Her hand tightened its grip on his as her other hand reached toward his neck, feeling the warmth of his pulse that she felt was reserved only for her.
Then, as quickly as it started, Rumi released her hold on him and raised her head up to face him.
"Shinji," she said, almost a whimper, "I love you."
He nodded and responded, "I love you, too, Rumi."
She let him rise up enough to hug him as she regained control of her emotions and restraint. She was happy that he said that; while she had heard him say it before many times, this time, it felt a little different…and more meaningful. And as for Shinji…he meant what he said to her. He really, truly, loved her the way she loved him.
-x-
"…HMM?!" Rei acted up, looking up at the surface of the Geo-Front that she destroyed to allow light to shine through as she was setting Unit-01 down on the ground.
"I love you, Shinji," the little girl's voice was heard in her head.
"I love you, too, Rumi," the son of the two people that maimed her years ago had responded after, and it caused Rei to let of of the special cables that were designed to hoist Evangelions from off the ground and into the air, dropping it to the ground.
The armor under her neck slid up to her cheeks and the sides of her eyes, connecting with the armor that resembled fangs or curved blades on them. Recently, and only sometimes, she could hear the little girl she detested every time she was with the boy she had just expressed to caring about, and had returned her affections. Somehow, it sickened her, almost as much as it sickened her to be wearing the facial identity of Gendo's wife.
That little bitch, she thought, hovering back to the ground. Even if it's only a slight degree of comfort in a world on the brink of oblivion, I will deprive her of any happy feelings that she has.
As she abandoned the fallen Unit-01, its resident soul was currently locked within a conversation that it didn't anticipate for years after Second Impact: Yui Ikari was in a conversation with the ghost of Pema Ikari, her dead mother.
"…For you, anyone that would listen to you would do," Pema told her daughter, expressing her anger at what she had done over the years, before and after the end of half the world they once knew. "It didn't matter who it was! You exploited and used us all! You went and alienated Anne-Marie from kids her age because you obsessed over her ability to talk to animals! You forced Masamune to side with the people that wanted to become deities at the end of the world in order to protect her from a life as a laboratory specimen like how you persisted in studying her like she really was one! In a way, forcing him to accept a deal with the Devil! Then, you go and make your own husband, whom you also manipulated to manipulate those around him to help you with your sick goal, disguising it under the pretense of actually giving people a bright future. You, your husband, your mockery of a thing that you view as a deity… If I had known of the darkness that was in your heart, if I had known what you were capable of, what you were intending to do to us, as if it were some sort of a game you were playing… I would've never did what I did with Tai…or I would've took steps to prevent you from becoming a scientist…or just put an end to you before you drew your first breath of life myself, Yui."
Yui looked hurt to hear her mother tell her this, and with their constantly floating and appearing in different places of this white, shadowless, featureless dimension, it only added to her revelations of what she knew as the truth…but had been ignoring them, allowing the truth behind each of her choices to build and build until they became overwhelming.
"You…you don't really mean that," she told Pema.
"Is that what you think…or is that what you want to believe? Seven-hundred people, including myself, were the lucky ones to ascend to Heaven that day, Yui. Everyone else that died, that didn't survive the devastation that people like you deliberately, purposely, unleashed upon the world, weren't as lucky. They didn't descend to the bowels of the inferno underworld that we grew up knowing was Hell after it was, in the darkest sense, unleashed on Earth. They just wound up in the abyss of Limbo, swirling in an unending cyclone of pain and agony that even the kami themselves can't save them from. Heh! Even when I'm up in that beautiful place that exists in the sky, I'm still in pain because I have to watch the people I left behind…the people I still love…get hurt over something that they never wanted to be a part of, Yui. I saw the day your sister expressed her hatred of you for what was truly your fault…and the day she threatened to kill you if she ever got the perfect opportunity to do so, knowing that you would die by her hands in revenge for the future you took from her and flaunted in front of her. I saw the day you forced Masamune to ask you the very question you could never answer him: Were you insane? What pains me the most of everyday I see the hurt that has been inflicted upon the undeserving…is the choice you made of leaving your own child to be the ghost in the machine, just so you could live on as a mockery of eternal proof of people's existence. Is this supposed to be a joke?"
Yui didn't answer her. For years, she had been denying her part in the Second Impact, not wanting to be accused of spilling the blood of over half the world's population of men, women, children, exterminating animals and plants that could never be replaced…and actually wondering if any child born in the aftermath could call the world they had been left with, as if it were a terrible, unwanted heritage, a violent legacy, a place that is like Hell that they had to put up with. She wanted to believe, for everyone's sake, that anyplace could be like Heaven if you had the will to live in it. Unfortunately, there were those that just didn't share her beliefs.
"That little girl adores him, you know," she heard her mother say, sparking her curiosity. "Little Rumi Rokubungi. A little, energetic six-year-old, one of two people, chosen by destiny to give the people of the world back their future…in love for the first time in her life with somebody that really needed to know that someone close to him would give up her life to let him see the day his own can end after he's lived out his own goals that nobody kept him from achieving."
"That's illogical," Yui told her. "A six-year-old being in love with a fourteen-year-old. That's… It's not acceptable in society."
"There's no such thing as logic when it comes to love, Yui. There's no math needed, no statistics required, and no rules as a reference or guide. Love isn't some sort of a biological curse or instantaneous reaction in the brain that one gets. It's a choice, an intense, personal decision that only you, the one that feels it, can make. You choose to be in love, and you choose how to express it, for better or for worse, whether it's accepted by others or not. Anne-Marie, she loved Mori…with great passion. She was even willing to have his baby when she found out she was pregnant. Rumi, she loves Shinji…with just as much passion, if not more, willing to die for him because she feels he's worth whatever happens. But you…you have a long way to go…a really, really long way…before you can ever understand the depths of true love that transcends even the inevitability of death. Can you truly look me in the eye and tell me that everything you have ever done has been out of love? Can you be honest with yourself and say that your so-called bright future for everyone is what you say it is? Can you really hope to avoid your judgment day and atone for the pain you've inflicted upon others by using a project you were directly involved in to erase people from physical existence and smash their souls together in order to create a world where there's no such thing as pain, at the cost of individuality and free will, for everyone?"
Yui looked up at her, seeing that her eyes were the same as they were the day Anne-Marie had told her that she and Gendo had paid a visit to Mori in an attempt to get him to break up with her, further solidifying the hate that the younger sister now possessed for the elder sister: Highly judgmental. She knew that whatever she would try to say would be that of the scientific vocabulary, which didn't fit with her parents' vocabulary of morality, the line between what was right and what was wrong. Still, she had to at least make an attempt to say something without it.
"I… No," she finally expressed. "Nothing I've ever done has been out of love."
"There's an old saying that really is true that would help to teach young people the importance of love: 'It's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all'. When you lose the people that matter to you, you feel the loss that their absence brings you…and you never truly move on with your life, knowing that there were chances never taken, words that were never said, futures that couldn't be made realities that could've been full of smiles because of decisions that were best left unmade."
"But…people's united future, it was written in stone, and the end of days was foretold to happen in more than fifteen years after the Second Impact happened, so what was the point of any person trying to achieve their future if it was going to be short-lived?"
"Ancient inscriptions on slabs of stone don't tell one everything," Pema revealed. "The future isn't always written in stone. Call it whatever you will: Fate, destiny, fortune, or even misfortune. Only the past is written in stone…or in metal…or even in flesh. The present and future…are sought after in the here and now, but not everyone has the right to seek that future out. Maybe the future that they see…isn't the future that is right for people. I've seen Anne-Marie's future in your goal…and it is not one of happiness. I've seen the future of the people that care about Shinji…and even theirs aren't one of happiness in your goal, your husband's goal…or that girl's goal. And I've seen your future if everything happened the way that you wanted…only to see that you're no different from the fools that wanted the end of the world to happen, as you leave behind everything to live forever…and leave nothing but hollow words to the only person that remains alive on a withered and dead Earth to even hear them."
FLASH! Yui saw a glimpse of this future. She saw Unit-01, her vessel, floating in the abyss of space, looking like a fossil with long, bluish-white hair flowing out the back of its head, motionless as the very planet it drifted away from resembled that of the red planet known as Mars, the new planet Earth of the future. A decayed, hopeless world…with only one person left on it as he laid on the sands of a lifeless beach, his white, soaked hospital clothes blending in with the pure, white sand.
"They're all gone," she heard her son say, as he was the only person left alive in this dead world.
FLASH! She was returned to her all-white dimension within the Eva…and floating upside-down away from her mother.
"It takes the joy out of life now, doesn't it?" Pema asked her, but she didn't answer.
-x-
As Akira stood outside her estate, she wondered if she was making the right choice. To give into Rei Ayanami's demands was a foul decision, but to do the alternative was almost worse than that. But what choice did she really have left? Of course, she knew and accepted the choice she made over two centuries ago…and that was the choice to settle down and accept that her life was never going to be hers ever again, relinquishing her freedom to be a mother, just as her mother had before her. Even now, the mere idea of forfeiting two of her own, even when one of of them wasn't truly hers, was a decision that was best left unmade.
She opened the gate and stepped inside, seeing Taeko sitting on the steps of the front porch.
"Taeko?" She asked, approaching the steps. "What are you doing out here when it's about to be dark out? Did something happen?"
"Are…are you…going to kick Shinji and Rumi out?" She asked Akira, her voice filled with woe.
The super-centenarian nodded in the negative and expressed, "That was never the solution I was coming to. I'm not giving that crazy girl what she wants. Who she wants. If she wants them…she's gotta go through me."
Taeko smiled and hugged her grandmother's legs.
"Those two are really linked," she told Akira, who couldn't deny that truth.
Rumi had told her herself that she was in love with Shinji, and she had allowed her to continue feeling the way she did for him, unwilling to try and stand between them. And, despite being a family, there was no blood relation between the young girl and the boy that was eight years her superior, so you couldn't really say it was incestuous for them to be together if their affections were mutual. The only thing Shinji would be guilty of is robbing the cradle…and Rumi being the child that was being robbed.
"Heh-heh-heh!" She chuckled at the revelation. "Where are those two, anyway?"
"The last time I saw them, they were in Rumi's room," Taeko informed her, and let go of her legs so she could enter the house.
Kanami and Mayo were in the kitchen cooking up dinner when they saw Akira return.
"You're just in time," Mayo had told her. "We're almost done with making dinner here."
"That's good to hear," Akira responded, walking past them and into the hallway, where she spotted Nemo stepping out of his room with a comic book in his hand. "Nemo?"
"Hmm?" The young, thirty-three-year-old man responded, looking up at his adopted mother. "Oh. Hey, Akira. Did you just get back?"
"Yeah."
Then…Nemo had to ask her what he needed to know.
"Just…what have you decided upon, Akira?" He asked her.
"Is not giving in to the mad girl's demands a simple enough answer?" She tried.
Nemo smiled and responded, "Very simple…and direct."
Akira took notice of the comic he was reading and chuckled; it was one of those old comics about the martial arts fighter and alien by the name of Goku and those seven spheres needed to undo terrible catastrophes that couldn't be undone by mere, mortal hands unless they possessed them.
"I think they should've made the third series of that a manga when it came out on video," she told him, referring to the book.
"I look at the stories of it made by the fans on the Internet, and some of it's good to look at, among other stories," he expressed.
The super-centenarian then turned her head to the left to see the two people she needed to let know of her decision of how to handle Lilith's albino human incarnation, seeing the two walking down the hall holding hands. While she was willing to tolerate their relationship, since judging by the color of Shinji's cheeks that their affections were mutual, she really wished that they would slow things down, since the world wasn't going to end. Not while she still had life in her body to say differently.
"I wish you two would slow your roll," she told them.
"I would let go," went Shinji, with a chuckle, "but Rumi has a strong grip."
Rumi feigned innocence and uttered, "All the other ladies can't have him now."
"Ah-ha-ha!" Nemo cracked up; his little sister had laid claim to Shinji's heart…and refused to let him go in fear that another would make a move on him. "All the guys are sure to be jealous of Shinji when you tell that you're already taken."
-x-
Red may have been a color that Rei had associated everything she hated in life, but it was a color she was seeing a lot of for the last half-hour in order to vent out her frustration at the discovery of a little girl she hated enjoying a new sensation that she herself never could experience, in whichever incarnation she existed in. So she took it out on some unimportant NERV employees, killing them and spilling their blood on the walls and on her armor.
Why? She questioned, raising a man that weighed more than she did without the armor off the ground, ignoring his pleas for mercy. Why do I constantly hear that bitch inside my own head?
She shot her right arm through his abdomen and left eight smaller holes of blood in as he fell to the floor, deprived of life.
Naoko heard of their screams and the sounds of splattering…and she paid it no mind; why worry about the inevitable when she had her own problems to contend with? She was more focused on running the MAGI and finally exacting her revenge on Gendo…and then killing her own daughter for good measure after he paid the price for his own misdeeds. The one thing she did wish she had right, though, was a can of air freshener to eliminate the foul odor that the bloodshed would emanate afterwards.
-x-
The night was quiet. Too quiet, and that made Shamshel suspicious right now. She had put Armisael to sleep over an hour ago and proceeded to read her romance novel, but something in the back of mind kept her from enjoying the visualization of what she read.
"Sachiel," she whispered to her brother, "are you awake?"
"Yeah," responded her brother. "What is it?"
"Do you ever wonder how you're gonna spend your last moments at the end of the world?"
"No."
"Not once?"
"No."
In the next cell, Gaghiel, who was laying down, uttered, "Why ask, Shamshel?"
"That girl we saw on TV," she explained. "The one demanding that the Angelbreaker's youngest wielder be surrendered to her along with that boy she protects."
"I thought you said you no longer hated the girl for what she did to us," said Sachiel.
"I meant it. But do you honestly expect the rest of the town to not turn over the little girl that should probably be hailed a hero for protecting them from us, simply because we had a vendetta against her?"
Zeruel, the eldest of the siblings, still awake in his resting position of kneeling down, being chained and covered with numbing agents to inhibit his muscles and keep his inhuman strength down, looked up at the window in front of him and at the night sky.
"I'd rather go out fighting," he then uttered.
"Me, too, Zeruel," added Ramiel.
"Same here," added Arael, who was also still awake.
A shuffling sound of footsteps came from outside the cells…and Shamshel saw their father approaching her cell door with a key.
"What is the meaning of this, Father?" She asked him.
Before he could even answer, her little brother, Bardiel, appeared behind him and said, "It's called helping, Shamshel. Helping the heroes, that is."
"Huh?" Sachiel gaped, seeing their hunchback brother holding a pair of ropes that he had been told were Shamshel's whips that were confiscated from her prior to being sent here for her rehab.
-x-
The silence of the night wasn't as soothing to Kyoji as it used to be when he was in his prime less than a century ago. Even if he was surrounded by a large source of water to practice his Hydro Channeling in order to get back in touch with elemental blessing. As he raised a few gallons of the water that had destroyed most of his home in the following years, he couldn't help but think that something was wrong elsewhere…or that he felt he was needed, as well.
Watching her great-grandfather from her father's office, Anne-Marie had suggested to her father that they go to Tokyo-3 to settle the score they both knew each other to have with the people still there.
"I favor her choice and course of action, Masamune," went Sora, admiring the Hydro Master's ability to manipulate the water like how he'd seen it being done in the Asian-influenced cartoon that captured the hearts of millions around the world to survive Second Impact when the conflicts ended.
But Masamune wasn't sure that going to Tokyo-3 was a good idea when it had been declared by the military as a no-go zone after the broadcast made by the albino girl that mirrored Yui's appearance. And after Gendo's attempted murder on Anne-Marie, he couldn't risk losing her again. Still, he couldn't deny that he had a dark desire for revenge against Gendo; everybody that probably had a reason to despise the cretin would want to exact some form of vengeance against the jerk. His form of revenge would be just to watch him lose everything he took for granted, but judging from the way he lived his life, what he took for granted…had already been taken from him.
Sora, on the other hand, while not just wanting to get revenge on the guy he knew was still alive, had desired the truth as to why he and the others that turned away from the abusive caretakers had to pay the price for being sold out by one of their own.
Knock-knock-knock! Somebody came knocking at the door, and it was only the skeleton crew that was still around in the building, as everybody had gone home.
"Who is it?" Masamune asked.
"Miss Soryu," the response came, and it reminded him that Asuka Langley Soryu had volunteered to be part of the night shift of computer technicians for the week.
Anne-Marie, as much as she admired the girl's ability to move on with her life and find some semblance of normality in a former planned community that now served as a boomtown of sorts for the physically maimed to get the help they needed to get back on their feet, she had to admit that sometimes she was looking in places she didn't need to look in.
"You may come in," Masamune announced, and Asuka entered the office, noticing the security guard that was her boss' daughter and the mysterious man that was Sora.
"I'm sorry, was I interrupting something?" Asuka asked.
"No," Masamune answered. "How may I help you?"
"I…just needed to confirm something…about him," Asuka expressed, pointing toward Sora, who sat over by one of the windows, trying to keep from looking at the redhead.
"Oh?" Anne-Marie responded, leaning against the sill of the window opposite of the one Sora was near. "Curiosity or some clerical error that was made in the files?"
Asuka sighed and answered, "Curiosity. Wanting to know why his files lack one, recurring detail."
"Which is?" Masamune asked.
"Why his last name isn't included."
Sora frowned, but kept his face hidden from the other.
Masamune and Anne-Marie kept quiet about this, but Asuka just needed to ask him one question that, after thinking about the man's face, she couldn't let go of.
"I…is… Would he, by any chance, be related to a guy named Ryoji Kaji?" She questioned.
CRACK-SMASH! The sound and sight of the window in front of Sora had cracked under the pressure of his right fist slamming into it.
Suddenly, a tapping on the glass came, and Anne-Marie noticed her grandfather, Kyoji, right behind her, supported by a column of water, which surprised Asuka.
"I take it that something happened that made Sora bust a glass with his fist?" Kyoji asked them, just as Sora turned to face them.
"Hey," Anne-Marie told him, "we all got skeletons in our closets that we don't like being reminded of."
"Try to understand, Ms. Soryu," went Masamune. "Sora's past is…very touchy, very sensitive…and not to be heard by those that can't take the truth behind it."
This was all she needed to confirm her suspicions on the man.
"For the new record," went Sora, speaking up, "I was declared legally dead for the better part of fifteen years by relatives that never even saw my… What was left of me that still functioned. How do you explain to people that choose to disbelieve that an eleven-year-old boy survived to be twenty-six when he should've died from being riddled with bullet holes? And how do you live with knowing that the one you looked up to…when he wasn't poking his nose where it didn't belong…betrayed you to the cold hands of the military that decided that a bunch of kids were of no matter to anybody?"
Asuka couldn't answer those questions.
"Ryoji Kaji…was my nīsan before he sold me and a few others out to save himself from being killed by some soldiers that abused their authority in the cruelest of ways." He expressed further, revealing his association to the guy he hated most.
"Nīsan? You mean…Kaji-San is…was your brother?" She gasped, having read the translation required to address one's male sibling that was older than you, but couldn't really see the resemblance between Sora and his brother; Ryoji had a look of off-handed maturity…but Sora still looked like a young boy that had yet to experience a beard or mustache on his face. That's hard to believe a little. But now that I think about it, Kaji-San never once spoke about his family.
"I'm guessing you know Ryoji a little…well, you know him a bit, don't you?" Sora asked her.
"He…he was one of my guardians after my mother passed away," she explained, "but he never did mention having a brother. I once asked him about his family…but he neglected to say anything."
"Always the nosy baka; he'll talk about other things or people…but never of himself. You could probably hang him upside-down…and he still wouldn't say anything about me."
"Congratulations, Ms. Soryu," went Anne-Marie, "he's officially pissed about the one guy he hates to death and would want to end."
"And you get to see how he truly feels when he's fully conscious," added Masamune. "When he's under for surgery, he just…mumbles out how he wants to beat his brother down."
At first, Asuka wanted to defend Kaji-San from his brother, who seemed to possess a grudge that was instigated by him that could only end in blood, but just looking at Sora made her question how he was hurt, then supposedly killed…and still be alive. She had to remind herself that she heard before that he was mended extensively and even had a cloned heart in place of the one he no longer had.
"Um, just how much of his body had to be replaced with cybernetics?" Asuka asked Masamune.
"When you take away the flesh, you would find that there's not much left of him that's still original," he expressed, not wanting to use the science lingo to explain how much of Sora's body had been replaced in the years since he founded the company.
Sora then sighed and got up in front of Asuka.
"Have you ever heard of the theory of spontaneous revival?" He asked her. "I experienced that…several days after being shot to death. What was left of me that could still function brought me back…along with my hatred for my brother."
He then held out his left arm in front of her.
Asuka, unsure of the reason why, gave in and touched his hand, feeling flesh that didn't seem entirely like flesh. The flesh felt like that of a baby's bottom (if she had ever touched a baby's bottom, that is), but as she continued to feel the limb, she felt something in it that didn't seem normal at all. It was…as if this arm were like one belonging to some of the men she worked with…before they were covered in the new skin matrix formula that had been developed.
"Hand," she uttered, going up his wrist, wondering how far his prosthetic limb went. "Humerus…shoulder blade?"
"Entire left arm," he revealed, "right down to the collarbones that also needed to be replaced."
Next, she counted the ribs, having learned from the study of prosthetic replacement that a certain number of them needed to be removed to accommodate the new limb.
"One…two…three…four…five…" She counted, but Sora backed away to refrain from laughing.
"Heh! That…that fifth rib was me. I try not to laugh too hard, as well."
"Even your lungs are artificial?" She gasped.
"Actually, his left lung is artificial, along with his prosthetic bladder," went Anne-Marie. "Entire right leg, much of his spinal column, half his respiratory system. He even needed nanomedicine to help his damaged nervous system and to reconstitute his blood flow for two years after Father found out how severe his injuries that persisted in his recovery."
"And this all explains why you're his special patient," Asuka sighed in revelation. "I never knew that anybody… That any person that survived Second Impact…could ever be so…extensively regenerated."
"Yeah, well, you gotta look at the tagline of Medical Angel: 'It's not just what the doctors have to take away, it's also about what they can give back'." Sora explained, and then pulled the strands of hair away to reveal his hidden eye to her. "I still get the phantom limb pain once in a great while. Reminds me how happy I am to still be able to feel."
Asuka could see that the golden eye wasn't a natural part of him, but, then again, she couldn't say anything about what was left him that was still natural, as the man was like something out of the science fiction comic books. Still, she had to remind herself that, due to reading up on the history of the company's research and advancement, back in the early years, every prosthetic piece afforded to the people in need of them were exoskeletal before the research got better and more articulated in design to being endoskeletal and almost no different from the organic parts they replaced. While the eye made him seem unusual, like he was one of those people with discolored eye cases, she couldn't help but see him as someone that, due to circumstances beyond their control, with a temperamental streak that had been the result of betrayal and a near-death experience that took fifteen years to get over most of…but still left a vendetta that needed to be resolved by the brothers.
Drip. The sound of dripping caught her attention…and she looked down at his right hand, seeing that his knuckles were bleeding.
"Ugh," she shuddered; she had been used to the idea of bloodshed for years when she was a pilot for the Eva, and now she found the sight of blood to be unsettling. "You might want to get that bandaged."
She turned to walk away from the four, having procured the desired information she had sought out, but a hand landed on her right shoulder.
"Can I ask that you not tell anyone about this, Ms. Soryu?" Sora requested of her.
"Yeah. Sure, sure," she answered, and shut the door behind her, allowing her a moment to process everything that she discovered. He's got the most prosthetics out of everyone here…and he had been killed temporarily by soldiers in the aftermath of Second Impact, betrayed by his brother. He must've been nursing a hatred for Kaji-San ever since then, wanting revenge.
"Only people that can't see subtle methods of achieving a victory would resort to outright murder of an opponent," sheremembered Kanami telling her the day she resigned from NERV."The whole world must be insane to believe that killing someone or something makes everything alright."
Somehow, even as she walked away, she started taking the older woman's words seriously about how murder wasn't the solution to any problem one had. As she took the time to fully realize it, she found the idea of killing to be something that she had actually found tolerable as she got older and spent more and more time inside Unit-02. Ever since she could remember, she was attracted to violence in whatever source she could find it in: Action films, horror films, films based off survival-themed video games, even the games themselves. Hitting, kicking, shoving down stairs, pushing in front of moving cars, even unnecessary violence, she found it addictive.
Gott im Himmel, what the Hell was I truly doing back when I was at NERV? She questioned, and then realized that it seemed like her employer and his daughter were also caught up in the web of violence and revenge, not just Sora.
Back inside the office, Kyoji, who had also mastered the skill of healing through water, had mended the small lacerations on Sora's hand.
"I'm surprised you actually cracked the glass," he told the young man. "You didn't even scream."
Sora flexed his knuckles and explained that he'd been through surgery after surgery to get back on his feet, so his tolerance to pain was higher than normal. He then thanked Kyoji.
"Am I the only one in this room that doesn't have a vendetta with somebody that deserves whatever's coming to them?" Kyoji then asked the three, to which none responded, except with their shared silence and vacant expressions. "Damn."
"Water is supposed to be the flowing element," went Masamune, "but how does one wash away a deep-seated pain?"
"Some hurts never truly go away, Grandfather," said Anne-Marie, looking away from him.
He looked at the three and accepted that each had a reason to want revenge against their foes: Sora wanted to avenge his loss of family, friends and most of his body against his brother, Masamune desired justice against Gendo for almost murdering his daughter, and Anne-Marie, who suffered a pain that theirs will never measure up to, wanted revenge against Yui for being deprived of her unborn child and her spouse-to-be, along with her future while the elder sister was allowed to live out hers. He couldn't fully understand the pain they each felt, having been asleep for years, but he understood how it felt to lose someone close to your heart; he was nearing the age of fifty-four when his daughter, Pema's mother, was born after he'd been married to his wife for seven years. There wasn't a day that went by that he questioned his uncertainty of settling down at an age where his wife, who was twenty years younger than he was, would hate him because he would live to be over one-hundred…and there was no guarantee that she would live to see eighty, but their marriage was a strong one…and Pema's mother lived to be forty-two before she passed away due to an accident trying to save her own daughter three years after his wife died from old age. It was true that some pains never truly mend, but he still had people that cared about him, that he still cared about, and that allowed him to move on, to flow like the water he could control.
"You don't wash it away," he responded to Masamune's question, "because pain can't be washed away. It's always there…like ice cubes left in your cup after you're done with a drink…that have yet to melt."
"Does the water ever tell you anything, Grandfather?" Anne-Marie asked him.
"It only tells me the same thing it tells every other person blessed…or cursed with the ability to coerce it," he answered. "That in order to harness its potential, either for benevolence or malevolence, you must let go of your emotions and let them flow wherever they take you. It teaches mostly nothing but acceptance…to let one's emotions flow like the water."
"Where'd you learn that from?" Sora asked him, deeply moved by it.
"A lake back home when I was still young."
-x-
"…It's a strange sort of pity… To be no more. A sad type of cure. For who would let loose…and to lose… Though full of intense pain…this intellectual being that had been sealed away for thousands of generations? Those are the thoughts that will wander through eternity, in the hearts of those that wish… To perish, rather than be…swallowed up and lost forever… In the wide womb of the uncreated night, devoid of their senses and emotions," uttered Rei, floating high above the skyscrapers of what remained of Tokyo-3, holding Kozo Fuyutsuki, by his left leg, in her right hand. "Heh-heh-heh… That little bitch. I hear her in my head sometimes, and find her desires and motivations to be a pain. To save the world of people that are undeserving of the knowledge that was granted to them…and desire the powers of everlasting youth, dominance and freedom…and yet, all she really wants…is what some are denied in their lives: Love. That damned boy's love! Shinji's love! What a laugh!"
"Ah…ah…" Kozo gasped, worried that any moment she was going to let him fall to his death.
"I hate them," he heard her go on. "I hate Gendo for trying to dominate me in the years I was shackled in a weak, sickly form… I hate Yui for maiming my soul…and pulling me from my body when she made Unit-01, thinking she could decide what would happen… I hate the people that locked me away, for so many years, in the darkness… I hate Rumi for what she gained…and I hate Shinji for giving her a reason to see this so-called destiny to its end and save the people! Because of them, I should do to you what I have done to others, Fuyutsuki-San."
He looked at her, seeing her looking down and watching her eyes gaze down at him with bloodlust.
"But I won't let that be up to me just yet," she told him. "You're my beacon. You…and those that remain…to draw the vengeful here."
-x-
The quietness of her room brought no comfort to Rumi tonight. She guessed it was due to the fact that her mother had decided to go up against Ayanami after dinner was over…by herself. And when Bumi asked if she would need assistance, she saw her mother's face looking like a different type of fear, one that was familiar to her, who had experienced it before, had manifested on her expressions…and told that she would be fine by herself. Turning onto her left side, Rumi sighed in revelation; her own mother had lied out of fear of losing them if she brought them along with her.
This isn't right, she instructed herself, looking out her window. It shouldn't be this way.
Fortunately for her, she wasn't the only one thinking in such a way. In the kitchen and living room, Bumi and Shinobu, respectively, whom hadn't retired to their rooms, were in discussion on what to do.
"I should've stopped her from taking off," went Shinobu. "I know what she's capable of, but going up against a girl that isn't a girl…but some…thing with authority higher than hers…that's suicidal."
Seeing inside the refrigerator, the resident family man noticed that there was one can of alcohol left and grabbed it, holding it in front of himself. He'd given it up and wasn't going to get back in the habit. Popping the cap, he emptied it in the sink.
"She's the eldest out of us all," he told his sister. "Often, the eldest family member has to do what the others either shouldn't or couldn't…or just to lead by example."
"I think she's too young to go facing a demon before her time," they heard Kanami, as she showed up in the living room, sitting on the floor beside Shinobu, who sat on one of the sofas.
"Too young, you say?" Shinobu questioned her younger sister.
"Two-hundred-ninety-seven," she explained her reason for thinking that Akira was too young, chronologically, to just go dying in combat with a girl with an attitude against the world. "That's almost no different from when most of us were two, twelve or twenty years old."
As Bumi drained out the beer can completely, he thought back to the first day he met Akira…when his family before hers was still alive. He always thought of her as magical or divine to remain as she was everyday for years. But then his father explained that not everybody enjoyed looking ageless, and Akira was one to miss out on the fact that the people she loved would get older and weaker while she remained in her prime and retained all of her abilities until her chronological age caught up with her. And when he was eight years old…he was the only known survivor of a plane wreck, losing his parents and his older twin brother. He would cry in his sleep for weeks as he recovered from his post-traumatic stress and survivor's guilt…and everyday, he would find Akira there, asleep by his bedside, as if watching over him like a protector.
"Why are you always there, watching me?" He had once asked her, after spending his third month in her home.
"I'm here to listen to you," she had answered him. "Whatever you have troubling you, whatever you want to talk about… I'm here to help you recover."
I almost blamed her for what happened, he beat himself up, but she had no control over their deaths. She may possess power over the four elements, but she was no kami. She never was a kami. She was just a widowed, martial arts master and Unity Master, whose only solace in the world of mortality was to create new relationships with the people she would outlive, eventually. She helped me to endure the pain I felt after they died. Helped me create the comfortable life that I had back then…to the happy life that I have right now.
Moments later, Nemo showed up, sitting at the table with one of his manga books in hand.
"Hey, Bumi," he spoke to his brother, "loan me your car keys."
"What for?" He asked him.
"What do you think?"
"I think you're crazy right now. You don't even know how to drive."
"Then loan me the keys, dearest," he heard Miaka say to him, appearing right beside Nemo.
"Oh, Kami, I'll hot-wire the wheels," Tsukiko, who was carrying a sword on her back, came.
"Un-uh!" Bumi got in front of the door, blocking the path that his wife and younger siblings were gathering near. "Nobody, and I mean nobody, is stepping foot out of this house!"
They each gave him a frustrated look. Then he sighed and uttered, "If we're gonna go…we gotta go together, and that means everyone."
"Me, too?" They heard someone say behind them all, turning to see Shinji, being dragged calmly by none other than Rumi, who had gone into his room and got him up. "I can't fight Rumi. Kanami taught her a valuable lesson in the art of persuasion."
"No use fighting a girl in persuasion," said Rumi. "We often always win."
-x-
Okay, thought Akira, flying her glider toward the abandoned city of Tokyo-3, if I survive this, and get Kozo-San and whoever else is left out of there…then I'll reward myself with getting a new bike to replace the one I recycled back in Nineteen-Eighty-Three…along with getting everyone at home to go another vacation for some relaxation. For, like, five years!
She was glad she had helped herself to three plates of noodles with bacon and pancake bits in them; how Kanami had convinced her to try something that was a mix between breakfast, lunch and dinner was beyond her capacity to recall right now, but the flavor and taste were actually quite enjoyable.
"It was actually Taeko's fault," Kanami had explained the reason for the concoction last year. "She dared me once to cook something that had a theme of breakfast, lunch and dinner in it."
"I don't believe anyone else in the world would've made something that delicious," praised Shinji, just recently this evening.
As the sight of the remaining buildings that made up the abandoned fortress city came into view, Akira channeled the winds to bring her faster to the destination. This time, the city looked less like a ghost town and more like a lonely, desolate graveyard at night, the opposite of a peaceful cemetery during the daylight hours. It almost made the super-centenarian shed a tear…if she truly cared about a fortress city that used to be only a attractant to bring Adam's children to their deaths by using Lilith. She landed on the rooftop of a small building nearby that she deduced was a sort of public school, judging by the running track and outdoor swimming pool.
"My Kami," she expressed, seeing a door on the roof that had been left open.
Splash! She turned to the pool and saw someone climbing out of it. It was a naked girl! One that looked pale in the light of the moon. The girl turned around and revealed herself to be none other than Rei, raising her left arm up and manifesting her armor that substituted clothing.
"I've been expecting you," she told Akira, who heard her perfectly well, even from atop the school building. "Where are the little girl and the boy with a death sentence?"
"Not here for you to kill or manipulate, that's for sure," Akira told her, and then Aero Channeled down to the opposite side of the pool. "I will stop you before you destroy the world, you must know that."
"Me? Destroy the world? Oh, no, I'm not a destroyer of the world. I only want what was kept from me too long ago…and those that die will be my stepping stones. Those that destroy the world…are those that know not their limitations as mere mortals."
Akira found suspicion in the way she spoke…and greater darkness in those red eyes that slowly changed to resemble the greenish ones shared by Anne-Marie and her older sister, Shinji's mother, whom Rei's physical appearance was based off of.
"I saw one of your ancestors in a vision not too long ago," Rei told her, her left arm manifesting its crescent-shaped scythe. "Memories that weren't realized from generations ago… She resembled you, except she was older and looked a little pudgy for a woman in her forties. I don't remember the entirety of the reason she was there when I was tasting the freedom I had desired back then…but when I try to think it over…I see a little boy…not so different from Ikari's son when he was little, with the exception of sea-green eyes…lying on the ground…with blood spilling onto the soil."
"My great-great-grandfather, Kyokujitsu…and his mother, Fuu." Rei heard Akira say, although it was full of anger and pain; it seemed as though it was a dark hand of fate that seemed to tie them together. "Over one-thousand years ago, you went by a different name…because you were a different incarnation of a greater force. Desumasuku Ayanami-Sakaki, the Maiden of the Death Mask."
That name made Rei widen her eyes in revelation! The last name was familiar to her…but the first name had more meaning…for it reminded her of the mask that was worn by Lilith.
"So, just what should I call you…in terms of formality?" Akira asked her. "You're Rei Ayanami… You're Desumasuku Ayanami-Sakaki… Or…since they're only aliases of who you really are deep down, beneath the flesh…should I address you…as Lilith?"
The keeper of the Fallenbreaker lowered her head and a frown appeared on her face.
"Lilith," she uttered, more to herself than the centenarian across the pool. "I was sealed away by your ancestor…and before her, previous wielders of the Angelbreaker. I will not be sealed away again."
Akira willed the Angelbreaker to cover her body in the armor and resembled a traditional member of the samurai, excluding the headgear that was the same as the first time it covered her in protection, and gripped her staff.
"Seal this," she responded, and sent a stream of air toward the latest incarnation of Lilith, parting the water in the pool and damaging the diving board as it hit and brushed her backwards.
CRASH! She shook the attack off and flew toward her, her scythe at the ready to render her flesh into bloody bits.
Akira blocked with a shield that formed from the armor on her left arm as she leapt up, blocking the top half of her scythe and kicking her head with her right foot, sending her slamming her head first into the wall of the building…and crashing into the room behind the wall.
Lilith knocked the desks away as she got back up and burst through the ceiling and into the air, silhouetted by the light of the moon.
"I don't even know what's worse about you: The fact that you killed in the past…or that you're willing to kill even now to pursue a goal's fruition," Akira told her.
"In the past, I killed without remorse, pity or even fear. In the here and now, even those murdered by me…are no different from when they were alive. But I can't be held responsible for their deaths. Gendo and his wife are at fault."
"So you pin all of your sins on just two people?"
"No… I blame them for what is truly their fault."
CLASH! Lilith's scythe was blocked by a sword that came out of the shield Akira had.
"Is everything their fault?" Akira asked her.
"No," Lilith answered her. "Everyone's responsible for their own decisions…and theirs dealt pain, death…and retribution to many lives that were changed for the worst. What better form of relief for all those miserable souls…than to be cast back into the womb of uncreated night, swallowed up and lost?"
"But who would willingly let loose the dark mother of that womb?"
CLASH! Akira's second sword was blocked by the wings of Lilith's armor. They slowly floated over the streets of the city, away from the school, and then Akira was slammed against the side of a building by the so-called mother of all life on the planet.
"Even as I fight you, I can remember the time when I could see things more clearly," she told Akira, remembering the beginning-less time of her arrival on the planet that had already been selected for her equal in status, Adam. "I remember my fellow people from the lost world I knew as my home before this one. Grrugh! We had found ourselves facing extinction, but persevered to ensure that we would be remembered, one way or another."
Akira then breathed a breath of fire at her face and shoved her away before unleashing two streams of fire from her hands at her, enveloping her in a ball of fire! Unfortunately, flames that were intense enough to melt through solid stone weren't enough for dealing in pain, as armored wings burst from the sphere and dissipated the flames, setting her free…with nothing more than a minor sweat on her forehead to show any change.
"Is this truly the best you can do?" Lilith asked her, the sweat on her head now disappearing. "A little heat? Let me show how it ought to be done!"
Retracting her scythe, she unleashed a blast of energy from her hands and blinded Akira! The building behind the centenarian now sporting a perfect hole as big as the woman that had been blasted right through it!
"Ooh, maybe I overdid it," Lilith suspected.
PUNCH! Something quick had smacked her aside the back of her head, sending her falling to the ground, leaving a crater the size of a bus in the street.
"I know the difference between power and precision, Lilith," went Akira, floating above her, partially singed by the latest assault.
Getting back up, Lilith demanded, "How'd you get away from that?!"
"I move as fast as any other twenty-eight-year-old woman does," she simply explained, landing on the ground, feeling the minute traces of Earth within the concrete, but hating the fact that it reminded her that she still needed to practice manipulating metal constructs not made by the Angelbreaker.
She slammed her left foot on the ground…and the crater, in two seconds, shrunk to nothing, but it trapped Lilith in the street up to her neck and the top portions of her wings.
"Oh, like this is going to stop me!" She taunted Akira, and then shattered the street as she freed herself, sending chunks of concrete flying around, shattering glass windows nearby. "Ha!"
PIERCE! Akira felt a curved blade penetrate the armor protecting her abdomen…and as the dust cleared away, she found that Lilith had gotten in front of her. A scythe from her right arm had stabbed her in the belly and out her back. She felt weak in her knees and fell limp on the blade.
"Aaurgh!" She groaned, being lifted off her feet by the mockery of her grandson's mother.
"It looks like your age has gotten the better of you a little," Lilith told her. "Unlike me, whose body is merely a copy of a woman a year younger than you are, biologically."
Blood poured from her mouth as she looked at Lilith's carbon-copied face, and Akira had to ask a question pertaining to her looks.
"Tell me something," she struggled to speak without much pain, "that bitch, Yui Ikari…is she a fighter? Can she…aaahh…defend herself any better than I can?"
"Please. She might've been an attractive fool when she still possessed a physical body, but her only true power, her only demonstrated ability…was the science she employed. Of course, I can't truly speak for her, since I only know of her from the past experiences of others…but she had never raised her hands in violence."
"That's…aaurgh…a double pity there," Akira groaned.
"Why's that?" Lilith asked.
"What kind of a woman…who has never raised her hand in violence…be called a mother…if she has never brought her child up…and still be called a mother? Hmm?"
"You, who have raised her own hands in violence, call yourself a mother in every sense of the word?"
"I teach life, defense…and the capacity to bury the pain of the past that was inflicted upon others…by others. The one thing I won't teach is evil. Yet, I've seen those that commit evil and call it something good. Something right for others."
"To face evil, one must learn to see evil."
Akira then placed her hands upon the scythe.
"Evil is shapeless," she groaned, slowly pulling herself off the blade, surprising Lilith. "It is intangible. It is a vapor. It is a feeling which, when acted upon by those that express it, can only result in blood, misfortune…and fatal consequences."
Regaining strength in her legs, she stood in front of Lilith as her injury regenerated.
"Then it looks like we have something in common: We both hate Yui Ikari…but for different reasons."
To be continued…