Creation began on 05-08-10
Creation ended on 06-01-13
Neon Genesis Evangelion
My Special Keeper, Part Twelve-C3
-x-
"…Hmm?" Anne-Marie opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling of her room.
"Grr?" She heard Jade growl as the tigress raised her head from off the floor. "Grr…"
"Huh?" Anne-Marie looked over at her. "I'm fine, Jade-Chan."
You know, I can read you very well, Anne-Marie, to know that you're lying, Jade had responded to her. What were you thinking about?
Anne-Marie got up into a sitting position and answered, "I thought I had heard my nephew, Shinji, telling the little girl that was devoted to him, Rumi, that…he loved her…the same way she loved him."
Do little girls often fall in love with older boys?
"Yeah, but that's usually due to a childish crush on the general appearance of older boys…or because of how they live in the perception of others…or their personalities, even."
You fell in love with an older boy, right?
"I was fourteen going on fifteen when I experienced true love, Jade-Chan. Rumi's a six-year-old. There's a difference."
"Grr," Jade growled in understanding.
Knock-knock! A knock came to the door.
"Who is it?" Anne-Marie asked.
"Sora," came the response.
"Come in."
The door opened and Sora entered, dressed in jeans and a blue shirt. This, however, sparked the thirty-year-old woman's curiosity, as the young man was normally dressed in his hospital clothing.
"Yes?" She questioned.
"Your father sent me to come get you," he explained. "We're heading to Tokyo-3."
Tokyo-3 meant NERV HQ, and NERV HQ meant Yui, Gendo and Ryoji, and that meant…closure, justice, settling old scores, eliminating sources of personal vendettas…and outright revenge. She, her father and Sora…could satisfy their hunger for justice against their tormentors. She could finally take from Yui what Yui had taken from her: Her life. Revenge could finally be hers after years of nursing the hate she had in her heart as a result of her loss.
"Just let me get my swords," she told Sora.
-x-
"…Hey, Shinji? Shinji!" Shinji heard Kanami calling out to him, and he'd been snapped out of his train of thoughts.
"Huh?" He responded to his aunt. "I'm sorry. What was that?"
"I was just saying that you probably should take a nap," she told him; the drive to Tokyo-3, since the trains were found (earlier by Nemo himself) to be out of the question if the destination was that particular city, their mode of transportation had to be Bumi's jeep.
"Oh. Okay." Shinji complied and tilted his head back; he'd been thinking of how this would be the third time he'd been to the city he had grown to detest.
It seemed that every time the city came to mind, it related to his parents in some way. He just wanted to forget it all, to leave the memories that brought him no comfort…and let go of the idea of a life he could never have with the two people he wouldn't fool himself into believing were simply misguided.
Bump! The jeep had hit a road bump for the fourth time, and Nemo had accidentally bit his tongue for the third time.
"Aurgh!" He groaned, taking out his bottle of water and putting it on his right hand. "I swear to the kami, when I get out of this jeep, I'm slapping somebody in their face."
He used his Hydro Channeling powers to regenerate the minor injury of his tongue and he felt better in less than thirty seconds.
Mayo, reduced to sitting on her mother's lap due to the shortage of space in the jeep, had to question him, "Uncle Nemo, you really gonna slap somebody once you get out of the jeep?"
Shinobu answered for her youngest brother, "I hope it's someone that deserves it."
"It's official," went Miaka up in the front passenger seat, holding Taeko on her lap, "we're all tense."
"I'm not," went Taeko, whose voice contradicted how she felt; the only thing she wished she had done prior to leaving home was telling Bardiel that she probably wouldn't see him for a while.
Rumi, who was sitting on Shinji's lap, had fallen asleep earlier on the way to the city…but had also been questioning herself on how to deal with Ayanami the moment she saw her for the last time. In her subconsciousness, she found herself in the same, misty, forest-like environment again, lit up by the lanterns that hung from the tree branches. Her clear path leading her, this time, toward an open field that was occupied by many people. Some of them were clearly not of Asian origins, as some of them, both the men and the women, possessed lighter or darker skin tones. Rumi had noticed a dark man wearing armor that resembled a lion's physique in some ways, a woman that looked like she was from France because of the armor she was wearing gave Rumi the impression of both the Eiffel Tower and Notre-Dame de Paris, there were even at least twenty men and women whose armored guises that, while very limited and exposing their flesh to the elements, gave them the the impression of animals that walked as people.
They were like statues to her; despite their impressive stances and features, they appeared to be without a life of their own. As Rumi came to stop by a wooden chair near a traditional Japanese food stand, she wondered if these people frozen in time…were all servants of the Angelbreaker gauntlet before her mother and she were chosen to wear it and serve its needs. But, for some unusual reason, they did seem familiar to her…even though she had never met any of them before.
"I came back to this place looking for a solution…and I see people frozen in place," she sighed, unaware that a hand had placed itself on her left arm.
"There are always solutions," a woman had uttered, and Rumi turned around to find a woman that bore a slight resemblance to her mother had shown up behind the food stand. "However, sometimes the solution that presents itself isn't the one you're looking for."
"I'm sorry," Rumi apologized, "but do I know you from somewhere?"
"I'm just one of the previous wielders. Actually, to be more accurate, it's better to identify myself as the last of the previous wielders. The last real one, chosen to wear the Angelbreaker."
Rumi nodded in agreement and then placed her right arm, showing the ancient, sentient gauntlet, on the counter, causing the elder woman to release the girl's left arm.
"I…I just wanted to know, as a person, above being a Unity Channeler and a wielder of the Angelbreaker, how do I deal with Ayanami, who is not who she seems?" Rumi asked her, hoping she could give her the answer she was seeking.
The elder woman sighed and replied, "You're dealing with a spiritually-maimed woman that was given the role to serve as the source of all life on Earth in the beginning-less past, and her responsibility to ensure that her boundaries as the keeper of knowledge was never abused. But her success…and failure as the pinnacle of this world's inhabitants, people, the Lilin…have corrupted her in excess, and now she seeks to restore herself, even if it means removing the people that did her no such wrong. In her eyes, everyone, not just the people responsible for hurting her, is cruel…and the only way to deal with cruel people…is to eradicate them off the face of the Earth. She is angry…and unable to find stability in her existence. So, she punishes everybody with death…along with the accursed promise of a fate that is worse than that: A return to nothingness. She is Lilith, the mother of mankind, incarcerated within a form that is an abomination of what we view as natural life, twisted by the will of the cruel…and cursed with an empty heart, devoid of any of the things we take for granted. Humanize her…and make her let go of the hatred that courses through her."
Rumi nodded that she would do just that.
"But to humanize Lilith will not be an easy task," a new voice uttered to them, and Rumi turned around to see Shiori Reina, the Angelbreaker wielder from over twelve-hundred-forty years ago. "Unlike the children of Adam, who were humanized without fail, without sacrifice, something…may have to be offered in exchange for her conversion."
"What? But…what must I give up?" Rumi asked her.
"It may not be you," she responded. "We can't see past a choice that we don't understand when we make the choice. No one's an exception. All we know…is what must be given up."
"Which is?"
"The two greatest feelings that are most cherished at the final outcome," the last of the previous wielders answered. "That is the required toll."
"The two greatest feelings…that are most cherished," repeated Rumi, confused by its meaning. "But…but… Who?"
Then…all the other people, the previous wielders frozen in time, turned to face her and said, in unison, "Lilith will be the one to decide. Those that stand to stop her…and those that stand to achieve their own goals in some similar fashion."
"Trust in the Angelbreaker," the woman told her, then. "Have faith within it, have faith within the people you love…and have faith within yourself."
Then…the mist that always seemed to get in the way of these conversations she found herself in with the previous wielders came and blackened everything and everyone in its blanket. Rumi then found herself back in the waking world, well-rested and raising her head to the sight of the city that had been abandoned several days earlier after Zeruel had devastated some of it in order to cripple NERV HQ. It was daylight, meaning that it was now the Twenty-Ninth of August, the day that Rayden's Comet was scheduled to ignite the skies and grant Pyro Channelers the full extent of their abilities, something she had yet to acquire on her own. She turned to look up at Shinji, who was still asleep, but could fool some people with his dead-like look… She stopped herself from thinking like that and raised up her right hand, caressing his cheek, possessing a solemn expression on her face.
The two greatest feelings that are most cherished, she thought, feeling his skin like it were a burnt leaf now. But…what is this second great feeling that is most cherished? I'm sure I know the first one, but the other is beyond me.
Shinji, feeling something warm against his face, awoke to the sight of Rumi caressing him, her eyes expressing some form of woe. He raised his left arm up and slowly set it upon her hand, a small smile forming on his face.
"Could you two save that for after we're back home, please?" They turned and heard Mayo had spoken, looking a little disgusted.
"We didn't do anything," Shinji told her, but his tone sounded weaker, raspier.
"Drink?" Tsukiko, who was sitting on Shinobu's lap, offered her bottle of water to her nephew.
"Hai," he responded, accepting the bottle. "Arigato."
Suddenly, the jeep stopped…and Bumi hadn't even hit the brakes or taken out the keys.
"What gives, Bumi?" Tsukiko asked him.
"We're outta gas," he told them, but at least they got within walking distance of the city. "We gotta go on foot from here on out."
"Works for me," went Kanami, whose feet hurt from the position she had been in all last night.
They all got out of the jeep and then Nemo ran toward a bush.
"Uh, Nemo?" Miaka asked him. "What are you doing?"
"I was in the jeep all night, sis," he responded. "You try putting up with that far longer than myself when you don't handle personal business between you and a certain necessity back home."
He then ran behind the bush, as they all got the message.
"Who else has got to go?" Taeko asked them, and only Shinji, Rumi, Kanami and Tsukiko were excluded from those that needed to relieve themselves of some internal garbage.
-x-
The sunlight was something that seemed rather pleasant to her right now, even though it was always the moonlight that she seemed to have developed a fancy for. And the damage she had inflicted upon the streets as they fought…it was exhilarating…and quite terrifying when she saw the woman cut off her right arm! Who would've figured that a martial arts master was capable of swinging a sword with such speed and proficiency that they could slice right through dense bone?
Yet, I was unafraid of her, thought Lilith, hiding above the ground on some monorail track system, looking up at the sky, thinking back to her earlier life…before the here and now as her arm regenerated. She hurt me, physically…but she had yet to hurt me the way they hurt me.
Raising her regenerated limb up above her eyes, she slowly rose back up and sprouted her wings to take to the skies again.
In another part of the city, Akira was running down the street, looking for an available source of water to heal her minute lacerations instead of relying on the Angelbreaker to do so. She was hoping that depriving her of at least one of her limbs would slow her down some until she herself had recovered.
I cannot believe this entire city is abandoned to this bullshit, she thought, walking into an abandoned market and finding some bottles of water on the floor; this place was either ransacked or was rattled due to previous conflicts. Oh, yeah.
She picked up one of the bottles and channeled the water onto her exposed lacerations, sealing them up and looking like new, removing them from her forehead, neck and wrists. Next, she removed her shirt and revealed the injury to her abdomen that was left after she'd been stabbed; while whatever potentially-severe abdominal injuries were prevented by the Angelbreaker, the surface-only injuries were still very present and needed to be mended, leaving no scars. Akira had to assume that the Angelbreaker had a slight degree of perfection in its goal of protection for its chosen wielders. In less than five minutes, she had regenerated every cut on her flesh, resting to recoup her muscles. She gave herself a few minutes to catch her breath before she got up and went after the mother of mankind once more, hoping to find a solution to end her without resorting to murder.
"You're so unlike Gendo," Lilith had told her, moments before she has severed her arm off, having been slammed on top of one of the skyscrapers. "He would make sure that whoever wouldn't aid him or his former masters would suffer the consequences of their refusal. The power-hungry, God-loathing fiend would deny any involvement with someone's death or disappearance, stating that people die all the time. But you…you seem to be trying your hardest not to kill me, even though you could. Are you afraid that you may fail?"
"Murder is never the best solution," she had told Lilith, but this was more to herself than for her; the lives of six people, taken by her own hands, was enough weight on her consciousness, so she swore that she wouldn't take another life, no matter what. Roku…six… No seventh death. Seven, considered a powerful number…is both positive and negative. Seven, eight, nine… 'Seven ate nine'… Where are you when you need to pay the price for your misdeeds…Gendo?
-x-
"…I guess we should try the Geo-Front," said Bumi, creating a massive hole in front of them once they came to the city limits. "Everybody ready?"
Shinji looked down the deep hole that reminded him of the one he left out of the last time he was here…and responded, "Yeah, let's do this."
Rumi, Nemo and Miaka could see that Shinji wasn't looking forward to going underground again, not after he'd been brought here against his will the last time.
"Shouldn't we split up to cover more ground?" Nemo suggested, which was possibly his way to convince the family to separate between those that would go under…and those that would want to stay above, as Tokyo-3 was a big place.
Bumi looked at them all and agreed that Nemo's suggestion was better than all of them going under. It was Bumi, Shinobu, Tsukiko, Kanami and Mayo that would go underground, while Miaka, Taeko, Nemo, Shinji and Rumi would stay above to find Akira.
SLAM! Miaka slammed her left foot on the ground and used her channeling to try and find anybody in the city that could've been Akira. Despite her prowess in the art, all she found through the seismic vibrations of the ground were some empty buildings, vehicles and some trees.
"Nothing right now," she informed the others.
"Rumi, you can sprout wings with the Angelbreaker," Taeko suggested. "Go heroine and fly."
Rumi complied and armored up, sprouting wings and soaring up into the air. She gazed out at the buildings far from them and saw one of the skyscrapers looking like it was waving around slowly.
"What do you see up there, sis?" Nemo called out to her.
She floated back down and answered, "One of the buildings from afar looking like it was waving around slowly."
"Waving around slowly?" Shinji questioned, confused. "Like it was about to fall?"
"No…like it wasn't a part of the street it was on where its sibling buildings were."
"Let's go see," Miaka told them, and channeled a piece of the street off the ground and hopped on. "Lead the way, Rumi."
-x-
"…Urgh!" Ryoji Kaji awoke, feeling like he'd been through an intense hangover after his last encounter with Rei Ayanami and her Fallenbreaker.
"How nice of you to join us," she heard a woman's voice, and turned his head to face Naoko Akagi. "Did you sleep well?"
Looking around, he saw that, instead of one of the familiar rooms of NERV HQ, he was inside a large chamber with a giant, marshmallow-like creature crucified on a giant, red cross. There were several other NERV workers, as well, watched over by these dog or wolf-like creatures modeled after Unit-01, either laying around or on all fours with snarling expressions.
"What is this place?" He asked.
"This place…is where it all began," Naoko expressed with dry humor, "and where it'll all end."
Several feet away from where he and the other workers were laying, watched by four of the Unit-01-looking beasts, was Gendo, a mere shadow of a shadow of who he used to be.
"Heh-heh-heh," Naoko chuckled; she wanted to kill him so badly, but until Rei…or Lilith, actually, no longer needed him as a pawn, she would have to wait until she gave her okay to waste him. "People once thought the year Twenty-Twelve, Two-Thousand-Twelve, was going to be the end of the world, only to be led to the truth that it's going to end in this year. The end: A return to nothingness."
"You're wrong," they heard Gendo retort, still sounding capable of intimidating others. "It's not a return to nothingness. It's a return to the very beginning. Back to the mother we all lost."
"But not for you, Gendo," she told him. "Not for you…and not for those that desired the end of the world. For you and them…there is only Hell to look toward. Everyone else, including those who have been dead for many years, will be deprived of everything they are…and live only as smaller portions of a greater existence."
"The same applies to you," Gendo told her.
"Wrong. I won't be joining the rest of mankind in the return to nothingness. At the end, when Lilith is freed, I'll depart to the stars and be like the tenjikurounin, the wandering, lord-less samurai."
"Am I to guess that will be your payment for your services, Dr. Akagi?" Ryoji asked.
"I was imprisoned within Unit-00 for too many years because of this bastard (she pointed toward Gendo). I'm looking forward to exploring the abyss of space with the remainder of my life."
"You sellout," he called her.
"It's called self-preservation mixed with justified vengeance: I do what I have to in order to survive…and whatever I have to in order to settle old scores…surely…as there is somebody that wants to settle an old score with you."
"There's no one that has a score to settle with me," he defended; he knew that there wasn't a soul left that he had any familiar ties with, as Rei Ayanami murdered the last of his relatives…and there was no getting back together with Katsuragi…and just about everyone else he knew has been dead for years.
"If not in life, then in death."
-x-
The sounds of the helicopter propellers had muted out as Anne-Marie thought back to her years after the Second Impact, recalling one of the last conversations she had with Yui before finding out that the elder sister had gotten married. Somehow, even during the most quiet or loudest of periods when traveling around, either with others or by herself, she often always found the time to think back on the root of her hatred, the cause of her losses.
"She's really quiet," said Kyoji to Masamune up front; the Hydro Master had been surprised to know that Masamune, during his success of advancing medical technologies, had acquired a helicopter among other methods of transportation.
"She's always quiet when thinking heavily on many things from the past, Grandfather." He told him.
Kyoji nodded in acceptance and noticed that Anne-Marie also had a dull expression on her face, making her seem emotionless; whatever she was thinking of from the past, it must've been unpleasing for her to dwell on it.
"You two really need to let go of the past," Anne-Marie remembered Yui suggesting to her, and this was earlier on the day she found out about her conversation with Masamune.
Anne-Marie had been minding her own business in her room, and then Yui showed up to strike up a conversation with her.
"What do you want?" She asked with a directed malice.
There wasn't a single sentence of respect between the sisters; Yui spoke of putting behind you painful events and moving forward with your life…while Anne-Marie spoke of her not having lost anything or anyone that mattered to her…and then calling her a monster for her choices made in her childhood.
"I can't even see other people without you having something against them," she told Yui. "If they were people of your preferences, you'd probably allow it. If they were people that wanted to be mechanics, policemen or school teachers, you'd have something to say about that. You don't even like it when people refuse you or speak their mind about you, like you feel threatened by them."
"You know that's not true, Anne-Marie," Yui responded, though it seemed more to the latter part of the last sentence than the first two. "Surely, you'll meet someone new in the future."
"What future? Surely, you know about what happened in the hospital. I can't have children of my own, anymore. And people speak of you behind my back still. Of how I'm likely to turn out like you have. That's not gonna happen to me. I'm not gonna be some stupid biologist."
"What'd you just call me?"
"Well, that's what you are, other than the very monster that parents warn their children of at night."
"Now, you know that's wrong."
"No, Yui. 'Cause I'm being very rational, unlike you. You know, I don't even have to be an insufferable know-it-all to fully understand how it all makes perfect sense to me, right here and now, like it did back in the hospital, to know why you persisted in trying to study my ability ever since I was little when I first discovered it: Because no matter how many times our parents told you to stop, you could never let your damn curiosity of the 'how' and 'why' I could do something most others couldn't go unanswered!"
Yui looked hurt, but Anne-Marie never gave her feelings a second thought after that day, letting her know only that she had better be far away from her before she got the idea to want to kill her herself for all the wrong she did. Whatever affection there was between them, however small, was no longer there.
She never could let her curiosity go unanswered, she thought, looking out the window of the helicopter and down at the wilderness of what was left of the untouched parts of Japan as they neared Tokyo-3. She always had to be in control, deciding everything, even what I was going to do almost every time. Pah, she couldn't even cook without thinking scientifically. Even after the devastation… After the deception, the betrayal and manipulating… It's as though it's all nothing more than variables in some sort of equation for her, like some kind of game. If I do see her again, I'll give her an equation to solve. The last one she'll ever solve: How long will it take for me to put her down like a rabid dog?
Sitting next to her, Sora, almost with a degree of anxiousness, was looking out the other window at the trees that covered the mountainous environment that hadn't been paved over by people to build new additions of civilizations. In a way, the sight reminded him of the line between the natural and the artificial, of how thin the line really was. The mountains, rivers, lakes and forests were all natural…while cities and towns were often artificial. On another level, it also reminded him of how little there was left of himself that was still natural beneath his skin; he still had one organic eye, his digestive system, bone marrow, some muscles and nerves still attached to his brain that led to his natural limbs, but he still had to be over that line between the organic and the technological to a degree that was higher than any other person in Kyoto. He wondered how his brother would react when he found out that his own, little brother was still very much alive…and pissed off.
To be declared legally dead, even after reviving spontaneously some time later, can really make you almost invisible to those around you that don't know the real you, he thought, scratching an itch on his left arm; the synthetic skin was so much like actual skin that it even allowed for minor irritations like itches or rashes. I never saw Mother and Father after that day the soldiers wasted me. I never saw the dominion of the kami…or a blazing inferno… All I ever saw after that day…and just before reviving, several days later…was darkness. It was like someone had turned out all the lights in a room with no windows and left you in there with only the sound of your breathing as the only indication that you were there in the dark.
"What the Hell is that?" They heard Kyoji utter.
"What's what?" Masamune asked him.
"That," the super-centenarian man pointed out the helicopter, toward something below them. "What the Hell is that?"
Sora and Anne-Marie looked out and saw what he was questioning: From up high, the cemetery for all of Japan's deceased population over the last fifteen years had seen nothing to show a sign of positive acceptance from the world. It was though it were the only part of the nation that was truly unfit to support life; there weren't even traces of weeds on the ground.
"That," went Anne-Marie, "is Japan's primary cemetery for those that died during Second Impact or several years after it. It's nothing more than a meaningless attempt to pacify the people that lost somebody back then."
"A cemetery, huh?" Kyoji didn't sound convinced. "It looks more like a…a giant, open wound on the planet itself…and it got infected and nobody took care of it."
Masamune looked down at the cemetery and had to agree with him; it did look a lot like an open wound that got infected…with the infection being its conversion into a forest of tombstones. And only a handful of people were even buried beneath the parched soil that resembled desert sand. He hated the very idea of having his wife buried in a place like that…or the idea of his daughter being buried there if she ever died, which is why he would've had them reduced to ashes as an alternative, unwilling to see their graves in such a lifeless environment; when he had received word of Yui's supposed death, he never attended the would-be funeral, disbelieving that any more bodies would be placed there. And even if he could have done so, he was forbidden to see Shinji, who would've been there as a little boy.
"The planet's really dying because of the arrogance of people that want to be the new gods, isn't it?" Kyoji asked them.
"Yeah," Masamune answered him; he knew personally because he'd been told before, but only because of the former threat that was the Angels would show up in the year Two-Thousand-Fifteen. "Earth is dying…slowly…every single day."
"Heh…demons that masquerade as people in positions of power, use decaying penalties and create indelible agony for the rest of the world. Despite our ability to adapt to most situations…or resolve conflicts… If this is part of what Japan has become in the last fifteen years, then everywhere else must be in conditions a bit worse than this."
Anne-Marie, despite the fact that she had seen places where life endured, where life was unscathed, sighed and said, with a hollow tone, "Remnants of Hell of Earth, trying to take the rest of everything into oblivion. Even places where people reestablished order, death lingered. Guidance was limited to those that needed it…and often never received it."
Sora noticed how she absentmindedly placed one of her hands against her abdomen; despite her losses, there was only one thing about what happened to her that was probably the lesser of the two evils.
Masamune took another glance at the cemetery and could only recall one thought he had when he looked at what was left of Japan that was unscathed…but might as well have been the Garden of Eden…and that was, The world that was left is not a place for people that wanted more for their families that were either taken…or never came to be.
-x-
"…My Kami," went Shinobu, seeing the purple Evangelion that was Unit-01, laying on the ground. "It looks like the Baron of Darkness."
"A long horn and gnashing teeth," added Tsukiko, recalling the known features of the Four Barons of Hell. "And Rumi actually sat in that thing? I'm grateful she didn't die or go crazy."
As they were just outside the pyramidal structure that was NERV HQ, Kanami and Mayo recalled their shared experience within the Eva that was Unit-03, which had been modeled after the fourth known Baron of Hell that, supposedly, was as black as the night and possessed long, unusual arms.
"We should be quick about finding Akira or anyone else in here," said Kanami, just wanting to get away from the Eva as fast as possible.
"Yeah," went Bumi, and they all entered the facility, but he stayed behind for a moment to gaze up at the fallen Eva. "I pity the mothers that were ripped from their children…and forced to become harbingers of their destruction."
He then entered the building, getting away from the presence of the purple, horned, demonic-looking cyborg created by scientists.
"Wow," went Tsukiko, examining the walls and floor. "Looks like a war hit this place."
"And it was the eldest of Adam's children that decimated this place?" Shinobu questioned the impossibility of the Angels' eldest brother, the second oldest life-form before the arrival of the slime that gave rise to the single-celled organisms that spawned the dinosaurs, being able to lay waste to a paramilitary facility supposedly-designed to withstand his siblings. "I would believe it if I had seen it."
The middle-aged elder sister then looked toward her younger sister, Kanami, and asked her if she was doing alright, judging from her constant looking around corners.
"Being here," Kanami expressed, "it just brings back bad memories from my past."
They reached a large space where escalators were functioning and rode one going down.
"What do we do if we find…that jerk down here?" Mayo asked the adults, wondering if Gendo was in this building or not.
"I'm not too concerned about finding him down here," responded Bumi, gripping his staff.
-x-
"…Whoa, boy," went Nemo, tugging at the collar of his shirt as he and the others came closer to the building Rumi had described to them; from a distance, the skyscraper looked as though it was tilting over, left and right, but up close, it turned out that it was really just heated up by a source of energy that was much stronger than its own heating system.
"I know what you mean, Nemo," added Miaka; she and Taeko had removed the top halves of their hanboks, revealing a pair of undershirts that stuck to their skin due to the sweat that was present, but the mother's shirt was long-sleeved, as opposed to the daughter possessing a short-sleeved shirt.
"Miaka, you got to face the music and let go of that self-conscious belief of yours," Nemo told her.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she defended.
"What are you two talking about?" Rumi, who was hovering over their heads, unaffected by the intense heat, probably because of the Angelbreaker protecting her, asked her elder siblings.
"Rumi, does Miaka look skinny as a twig to you?" Nemo asked her, and Miaka grabbed him by his neck, strangling him. "Aaaaurgh! Miaka!"
"I can't believe you asked her that!" She snapped on her little brother-in-law.
"Mother, stop," Taeko demanded her mother to let him go.
Shinji, who had removed his own shirt, exposing his pale, skinny-yet-muscular torso, sighed and expressed discontent over his elder aunt's self-conscious fear. It had been over eight years since her daughter was born that Miaka started wearing hanboks constantly, not as a fashion trend, but to hide as much of herself as possible due to her belief that she had lost much of her weight after Taeko's birth, even going so far as to claim she was skinny. Shinji, of course, didn't need to be a rocket scientist to know that his aunt wasn't skinny; he'd seen her enough times, without her hanboks, that is, to know that she was just as fit as her husband was over fifty years of age.
"Nope," Rumi answered her brother's question, seeing that her eldest sister's upper body proportions were no different from Shinobu's or Kanami's, excluding the fact that the former sister wasn't a mother like the latter sister was, respectively. "Shinji's the only one of us that's skinny…yet we all know the reason for why that is so."
Miaka ceased her strangulation of her brother and released him, sighing at how her little sister could direct such a belief that was hers for over eight years to a young boy that was dying. And part of the reason she had insisted that she was skinny was her belief that much of her lost weight was due to Taeko's head when she was going through the joys and pains of childbirth. She had a hard time believing her head was considered tiny, after what she went through with her on the hospital bed and her legs on the stirrups several hours after she went into labor.
"Aaaahh!" She could still remember her screams in the back of her head, as though it happened only last week.
"Nemo," went Shinji, "lose the shirt."
Nemo took off his shirt and exposed his bare, muscular chest to the ladies' eyes.
"Nemo, who's Nami?" Taeko asked, which sparked Rumi's curiosity.
"Huh?" The Hydro Channeler responded, just as his niece pointed to his right arm, noting the tattooed name on his skin. "My mother before Akira. Nami Souma."
"He actually wanted to get her whole name tattooed there," added Miaka, "but he had to live with the harsh reality of traditional tattooing."
"Which is?" Rumi asked.
"Tattoos hurt," Nemo confessed; after taking the better part of two days to get his mother's first name on his arm, he had to forget about getting his blood family's last name, Souma, because he didn't enjoy the pain. "Always getting needles stuck in you to deposit the ink and paint."
Rumi flew down in front of him and said, "I've been getting stuck with needles at the doctor's since I was two, and you don't hear of me screaming in pain."
"Hey, now, I didn't say I screamed," he defended himself; Rumi never saw him screaming in pain as the tattooing process began. "Anyway, that was years ago, when I was nineteen."
As Shinji approached the hot building, he suggested to his uncle, "I don't know, Nemo, you might want to consider getting that tattoo finished. Submit to the superior-yet-equal authority of the women."
Nemo frowned and responded, "If it weren't for the harsh cruelties of that jerk and this crazy, psychotic Ayanami girl, I'd place you on a frozen lake to teach you how to ice skate."
As they entered the building, they felt like the temperature went up higher. The floor was hot, the air was dry, and the sweat on the girls' backs soaked their shirts.
"I think I just sweated out a whole bottle of orange soda, Mommy," said Taeko, impressed that the building still had power to run the elevators, but disappointed that there was no power for any air conditioning systems to work.
"Must…resist urge…to rip shirt off," Miaka sighed, as the heat was getting to her, and then she untied her ox horns, letting her vibrant hair flow down to the small of her back.
Shinji looked on the floor and saw a piece of paper nearby and picked it up. It was time to put his arts and crafts lessons to practical use. He folded the paper into a fan and waved it in front of his face.
"Ah," he exhaled, feeling a cooling breeze. "We got any more paper to fold?"
Nemo and Miaka looked at him and saw the fan, wanting it.
"Here, Shinji," went Taeko, holding five pieces she picked up off the floor.
Rumi, whom had gone further than they did, still unaffected by the heat, came to an office room…and hesitated to go any further due to the sight in front of her.
"You disgrace an ancient art," she uttered.
-x-
Lilith, sitting cross-legged on the floor, opened her eyes and gazed at the little girl in front of her, glaring at her presence.
"I was expecting somebody a little taller than yourself," she expressed, and the heat energy she generated in the hopes of luring Akira to her ceased as she got up. "But since you're here, I'll be convinced that your… Heh-heh-heh… I can't believe I even want to say it, but it must also mean that your lover is here, as well…isn't he?"
Rumi had never addressed Shinji the way this girl had just now. Sure, she loved Shinji, even willing to admit it in front of his parents, but the mere thought of addressing him as her…lover…was nonexistent in her mind right now.
"My Shinji is off-limits to you," she told her, conjuring a pair of hook swords from her armored hands.
"You don't know the half of it," Lilith responded, and charged at her.
SLAM! She pushed Rumi back against the wall behind her, smashing into another room, right in front of the others.
"Rumi!" Shinji gasped, rushing over to the large hole.
Rumi had endured the assault, but hadn't expected one like that. She looked around the office, but didn't see her.
"Up here, bitch," she heard, and then looked up, seeing Ayanami hanging on the ceiling.
SLAM! Shinji, upon entering the room, saw Ayanami driving his auntie into the floor. He picked up a tiny piece of debris and threw it at her back.
"Off my aunt, lady!" He demanded, which made her realize something: She hadn't planned on any means of acquiring the boy, as she couldn't touch him.
PUNCH! That was all the distraction Rumi needed to use her right fist and send Ayanami flying up a floor or two, allowing her to get up.
Shinji looked at her and she simply told him, "Get outta here, Shinji."
He didn't need to be told twice and left out the room.
"You busted my lip, bitch," Rumi heard Ayanami shout at her.
"Let's take it outside," she responded, and took flight, smashing through the window and feeling the cool breeze of the air.
Lilith followed her and manifested her scythes.
"You will fall before me," she told the girl.
"Not while I still have something to say about it," Rumi countered, and then used her swords to block her assault. "You're twisted, inside and out."
"You think I don't know that?"
"You're going to destroy everything and everyone just to undo the hurt you've been afflicted with."
"Well, greatness calls for sacrifice."
"The people that don't even know you, that have never even met you before… They don't deserve what you're aiming to do to them."
"No one is innocent, Rumi. Everyone's judgment day is now."
"Not while I'm still around," Rumi told her, and then willed a tentacle to form out of the armor on her back, curving around her left side and stabbing the Fallenbreaker's keeper in her waist.
"Urgh!" Lilith grunted, not expecting a sneak attack from a little girl. "Very clever."
BANG! Rumi them used her right arm's sword to bash her on her head, sending her falling to the streets below.
Thud! Lilith impacted onto the roof of a commuter car and took eight seconds to revive.
"I didn't expect my daughter to do that to you, Lilith," she heard the voice of the ageless woman, Akira, whom she found several feet from the car in an alley, glaring at her.
She got off the car wreck and shot a tentacle at her, missing as Akira turned to the side and grabbed the tentacle, pulling her right arm, along with her, toward her.
SMACK! Akira punched her hard in the face and sent her flying backwards into a wall.
As Shinji and the others came out of the building, Nemo noticed that the girl that wasn't a girl, but a thing made in the appearance of his only nephew's mother, had been stuck to the wall.
Whoa, he thought, never expecting that Akira could prove herself to be a heavy hitter.
Rumi hovered over the street and saw her mother stepping out of the alley.
"Do I even wanna know where you've been, Mother?" She asked her.
"Do I even wanna know why I see that some of you aren't at home?" Akira countered.
"Argue later, ladies," went Miaka, pointing over to Ayanami, who was now ripping herself from the wall. "Stop her!"
She was in quite a bind, as she had no means to acquire her target…and she was falling behind schedule by at least two hours.
"Catch me…if you can," she dared them, and took off, running past Nemo and Taeko, down the street.
"Oh, brother," Rumi groaned, reminded of her previous years when she was barely two years old. "She's playing hard to get."
Demented, thought Akira, unstable…and dangerous. Much of which hide her intentions.
Lilith had disappeared within seconds of running away from them, and Akira had only one clue as to where she was going.
"Did anybody we know go underground before I met up with y'all?" She asked Miaka, who hesitated in giving a response. "Why?"
-x-
"…What is this place?" Mayo asked, stepping out onto the bridge of Central Dogma; the last time she was here, she hadn't seen this part of the facility, only a locker room where her clothes and possessions she had with her prior to the Unit-03 incident were being held and Gendo's office.
"Some kind of operation control room or something," said Tsukiko, looking over at the consoles and monitor displays. "Probably where they sent program signals to their armored demons."
Bumi looked up at a part of the large chamber and noticed a desk-like construct that indicated a degree of dominance over everything below it. He jumped up it and found that it was a type of desk where someone sat and directed everyone in an operation of military or paramilitary action…and he loathed to guess who it was that used to sit at the desk.
"You find something, Bumi?" Kanami asked him from below.
"Only delusions of godhood, Kanami," he replied.
"Of nothingness or ruination?" Mayo asked, sounding sarcastic.
"Both," Bumi answered her.
"Let's get outta here now," said Shinobu, and they all left the chamber.
But Kanami stayed behind to examine three constructs that caught her attention: The three aspects of the MAGI's physical and technological presence, the mother, the scientist and the woman.
I wonder who was paid to name these things and places after pieces of religion and thrown around like this? She wondered, and then left to rejoin the others.
-x-
"…Huh?" Shinji went, seeing somebody from afar on the street.
"Shinji?" Rumi asked him, causing him to look at her. "Do you see her?"
"No, I…" He tried to point to what he saw, but it was no longer there. "I…thought I saw somebody down there."
Taeko, hearing in on the conversation, looked over to where her cousin was looking, and saw nobody.
"Maybe it was just the heat playing tricks on you," she then suggested.
"Maybe," he agreed with her, but he was certain he saw an elderly man in white, hospital clothes down the street, staring at him.
Akira, further ahead than the others, opened a door outside a building she learned from Kozo Fuyutsuki was one of the few NERV-owned buildings in the city that acted as emergency entrances and exits, entering a tunnel-like hallway that was shrouded in darkness. She generated a ball of fire from her left hand and illuminated the hall, bringing light to the darkness.
Shinji showed up behind her and Miaka, and the super-centenarian felt his feet shaking.
"Nemo," she uttered to her youngest son.
"Yeah?" He responded.
"Keep your arms soaked."
"Yes, ma'am."
They walked down the tunnel and Rumi kept a vigilant watch over Shinji; she hardly looked anywhere else during the journey in the darkness.
"Say, Akira," went Miaka, "when does that comet arrive?"
"At night, just before midnight," she answered her.
"What does the sky look like when lit up by the comet…from your point of view?"
Akira thought for a moment and answered, "It looks like a mix between beauty and despair: Beauty because of the bright, fiery colors that replace the black and white sea of night…and despair because it seems to evoke sadness at the end of its beauty…because someone could hurt you and not realize it…or you could hurt someone without meaning to."
"That's sad," said Taeko, and they all came to a dead-end. "Grandmother, this is going to slow us down from getting to where we need to go."
"No such thing as being slowed down right now, Taeko," she told her, and thrust her arms out forward at the dead-end, comprised of fallen debris that had cut their way off; as it was mostly concrete, her Geo Channeling pushed the debris forward until it all laid on the ground, revealing the path toward a train system that was present. "Must be one of their express route systems."
Nemo kicked the door opened and checked inside for anybody that might have been there, finding nobody aboard.
"There's no power," he told them, checking the transport system of the train.
"We won't need to worry about power," Rumi expressed, standing in the middle of the train car and pressing her right hand onto the floor.
BURST! A charge of energy from the Angelbreaker turned the lights on and made the express train move downward toward their destination.
"How big is this place you and Rumi went to, Shinji?" Taeko asked her cousin.
Hating to think about the Geo-Front, or any other place that seemed to exhibit a sense of moral decay or foul judgment of decisions, the dying boy, simply because the little girl was curious, responded, "It's probably smaller than home, give or take an extra mile of land. But it would be a great disrespect to try and compare the two places. You'll see when we get there."
FLASH! The train car escaped the dark shaft and the windows were bathed in light, exposing the occupants to the Geo-Front.
"Whoa," went Miaka, holding on to Taeko. "I think we just stepped into the Twilight Zone."
"We didn't step into the Twilight Zone, Miaka," Shinji responded, "we were already in it back two months ago."
His eyes were then directed toward a sight he wished wasn't there at all at the very bottom of the Geo-Front: Unit-01. Memories from his childhood of the last time he saw his mother came back from where he kept them buried, wanting to forget it all, causing him to become tense with a different type of fear.
Akira and Rumi saw this and took notice of Unit-01, but only the super-centenarian knew of who resided within the skyscraper-sized abomination. Rumi was still ignorant of the fact that the mother of her love interest was still around, but that didn't leave her questioning what she might do if she ever did see the woman. Their transport had reached the end of the line and they stepped out onto the floor of the Geo-Front, seeing the purple monstrosity from a short distance and the pyramid-based building that was NERV HQ.
"I'm, uh… I'm just going to close my eyes for a bit," Shinji told them, not wanting to see Unit-01 any longer, and shut his eyes to leave himself in the darkness.
Nemo pitied his nephew and, with Rumi as a guide, directed Shinji toward the base, but he hated the fact that the woman that should've played the role of his nephew's mother was nothing more than a ghost inside a mockery that, while he found some degree of fascination with, he detested for its raison d'être, its reason for being.
And yet, he doesn't know the harsh reality of it all, he thought, taking another look at Unit-01, seeing why it was comparable to the Baron of Darkness, or even why, once he got the story from Shinji and Rumi when they got home after their first time in Tokyo-3, it was also identified as an Oni. I can't even comprehend how he'd react if he ever did know the truth. He'd be crushed, driven to insanity that, even though we only found out recently, we kept this secret from him.
As they entered the base, Taeko looked at Unit-01 again and had the same reaction from it the way she had a reaction to Gendo: She just didn't like it, and it was all twisted up inside.
And Rumi was actually inside that monster? She wondered, thankful that the only repercussion Rumi suffered from was a foul odor that needed to be washed away.
"Taeko!" Her mother called out to her.
"Coming! I'm coming!" She gasped, running to catch up with the others.
"Can I open my eyes now?" Shinji asked them.
"Yeah, Shinji," answered Rumi, and he opened them.
-x-
"…So, that's Tokyo-3, huh?" Kyoji uttered, looking at the sight of the former fortress city designed to repel the former, supposed threat that was the Angels. "Excluding the damages, it's quite a feat of architecture in the years I've been asleep. I hate it!"
"You're not the only one, Grandfather," Masamune added in a mutter, now lowering the helicopter to the ground; he was actually lowering it through the large hole that was once a few city blocks. This was a city never meant for people to live in.
"Your opinion, Sora?" Anne-Marie asked the young man beside her.
"It's not home, it's not paradise, and it's not balanced," he expressed, and then stuck his tongue out in a raspberry fashion of disgust. "Osaka had sights better than this!"
"Oh, my God!" Masamune gasped, and they all saw what made him react with such fright.
Evangelion Unit-01, standing in the edge of the lake beside the pyramid of NERV HQ.
"The Baron of Darkness?" Sora questioned. "The Devil?"
"I assume you're referring to the would-be myth about the Four Barons of Hell, Sora?" Anne-Marie asked him.
"Of all the horrors I've seen so far this year, this one takes the crown," he responded.
"The Four Barons of Hell are nothing more than a myth…with some interesting topics or whatever," went Kyoji, who had looked into this fifty-two years ago. "The Baron of Darkness is synonymous with the Devil…as the Devil is synonymous with Death and as Death is synonymous with the Apocalypse."
"Armageddon… Doomsday… Ragnarok… Judgment Day…" Masamune added in. "If this ends… When this is all over, I pray that these Evas… These barons…are put down for good."
The helicopter landed on the ground and the rotor blades slowed down as the engine died.
As Kyoji made his first step onto the ground, he felt an eerie presence around him, like somebody had stolen all the happiness left within the world and channeled it elsewhere where it couldn't be unleashed.
"There is a great pain here," he expressed, "and it's angry."
Anne-Marie looked up at Unit-01 and felt only disgust that her sister made the monster…and wouldn't be surprised at all if she had, literally, become the very ugliness she represented in her passion for science and discovery.
In the end, she was the monster that parents warn their children about at night, she thought, her left hand twitching with desire to grab the hilts of her swords.
-x-
"…Hey," gasped Bumi, pointing down the hall toward a man that stood outside a closed door. "Maybe he knows where to find Akira."
Kanami looked down the hall, but she didn't see anybody.
"Bumi," she told him, "there's no one down there."
The Geo Master looked again, and could've sworn that he saw a man dressed in white standing in front of a closed door.
"But…I saw somebody down there," he insisted.
Shinobu looked up at the lights and suggested that they might be playing tricks on their big brother's sight, due to their periodic flickering.
They walked toward the end of the hall and at the door, and Kanami and Mayo shuddered at the door.
"You two have been in this room, haven't you?" Tsukiko asked them.
"That's Gendo's office," Kanami explained, not really wanting to go in there.
Bumi and Shinobu, however, due to their curiosity on what the former brother might have kept in his office, wanted to explore its secrets.
"It ain't like something can get any worse than it already is," Shinobu stated, and Bumi channeled the door to open up for them. "What in the… It's awful in here!"
"You're saying that as a person that enjoys architecture or as a person in general, sis?" Kanami asked.
"General! It's poor craftsmanship! Too dark up in here, as well. And… Bumi, is that the guy you saw out in the hall?"
Bumi looked up at the desk that Gendo sat at and saw the man in white, unaffected by the darkness, but his long hair was covering his face.
"That's the guy from out in the hall!" He expressed, and then the other girls came in.
"Huh?" Mayo hesitated, looking at the man in white. "Mama, haven't we seen him somewhere before?"
Kanami looked at him, but then saw him step back from the desk, pressing up against the wall…and then going through the wall, like it wasn't even there.
"He…just went right through the wall," said Shinobu, wanting to question her sanity right about now.
-x-
"…I smell blood in the air," sighed Shinji, as he and the others traveled down an elevator.
"I thought it was only me, Shinji," Taeko expressed.
The elevator stopped and opened up to reveal, true to Shinji's words, blood had been in the air, due to a recently-slain NERV employee.
"Oh!" Miaka gasped, holding onto her daughter.
It was a young woman, maybe in her mid-twenties, with brownish-gray hair and blue eyes, down on the ground with her torso and abdomen riddled with holes and her face sporting a third hole on the forehead, allowing for blood to flow out.
Akira and Rumi turned their heads away and covered their mouths, hoping they wouldn't react to their scene with fits of regurgitation.
"We…we better get moving," Rumi stated, wanting to get away from the sight of the first dead body she'd ever seen in her life outside the movies.
Akira lowered to her knees and closed the dead girl's eyes, suspecting that Lilith probably killed her to vent out her frustration.
"Shinji, did you say something just now?" She heard Rumi ask.
"No, why?" Shinji responded.
"I thought I heard someone speaking."
Akira then pressed her left hand onto the ground and used her Geo Channeling to track any vibrations along the floors…and found at least a few feet belonging to some people several floors below them, with some stairs nearby to lead them.
-x-
"…There's something behind this wall," said Bumi to the girls, and channeled the minute traces of Earth that was still present within the purified material, wishing he had the time to further his skill in the art further, ripping a large hole in the wall to reveal another room. "Whoa! Are y'all seeing this?"
"We're seeing it…but believing it is another story," said Kanami.
Tsukiko turned on a flashlight she had brought with her and illuminated the darkness within the room, revealing a large, tube-like construct in the center of the room, covered in a medical sheet. The sound of water being used was present.
Mayo walked behind the construct and took notice of a small device that reminded her of the monitoring systems she saw at the hospital back home, seeing a colored line that went up every time it showed up on the screen.
"Mommy," she spoke to her mother. "I think there's something alive in this thing."
Kanami went behind the thing and saw the monitoring device attached to it, and then grabbed the sheet to pull it off, revealing what was in it to her brother and sisters.
"Kami and Oni fight for the world," Shinobu gasped.
"Burn me," Tsukiko added.
The blue light from the tube bathed the room in a glow that was no different from an aquarium, but the occupant within it was no member of the list of marine animals that resided within one. Inside the tube was a man, the same man that Bumi had seen, the same one that passed right through the wall. Except this time, he seemed more solid…and in a state of suspended animation or a coma of sorts, provided with oxygen from a respirator machine stuck to the top of the tube. He was dressed in white, medical clothes and his hair had covered his face due to its length.
Shinobu went around the tube and concluded that it was some sort of medically-enhanced sensory deprivation tank, but it didn't make any sense for it to be used on someone that appeared to be in a comatose state; if he was comatose, he was already deprived of his senses.
Clang. Tsukiko had tapped a tag attached to the tank and turned it over to examine it, reading whatever information was present.
"Does that say who this is?" Bumi asked her.
"No. This man's a John Doe, but what bothers me is where he was found; according to this tag, he was discovered in the aftermath of Second Impact where it took place."
"You mean, he was found in the waters of the South Pole? But…he should've been a goner. Nothing can survive in those waters. It's a dead zone."
"The only person that actually survived there for a short while before being rescued was Ms. Katsuragi, right? And she was in a escape capsule. Maybe it was because she was found earlier in the aftermath, but this guy… Even if it was a later time, he should've been a goner." Kanami added in.
"Yeah? Well, tell that to his heart monitor," said Mayo, and then she placed her left hand on the glass of the tank. "But why would they keep him around here? And in secret?"
"Probably the same reason Nemo gets his information from the movies and comic books of science fiction," expressed Bumi to her question. "The darker flaws exhibited in people that take the path of scientific discovery: Illegal experimentation on human beings against their will."
"You mean…he's their lab rat?" Mayo questioned, disgusted by this discovery.
Tsukiko looked over toward an old gurney nearby and saw an old medical chart atop it. She went over and looked at it; the writing was faded, but the information was still present.
"Oh, my Kami," she shuddered, flipping the pages, one after another, seeing all that was written long ago. "This is awful."
"What does it say, sis?" Kanami asked her.
"This man has been here in scientific captivity since NERV's predecessor organization, GEHIRN, was founded, over ten years ago. They've been studying, experimenting and even dissecting him many times. He's… Now, this is something out of a horror movie right here. He's got some sort of uncharted, regenerative ability they've been trying to replicate." She explained.
"Regenerative ability?" Mayo asked, confused.
"A healing factor, if you will," Tsukiko used the knowledge that was Nemo's field of knowing. "Apparently, it makes him almost immortal in a way. Cut one of his arms off, and he'll just grow another in its place. Remove his eyes, he'll replace them in due time with a new pair that'll pop out his head. According to this chart, they tried everything used to kill an ordinary man: Electrocution, poison gas, firing squad. They even tried decapitating him. Twice! And he still didn't die. They even got the pictures to prove it here."
She showed them the photographs that were there, and each of them shuddered at the sight of the man after he was, supposedly, murdered many times over.
"I've never believed in a man able to evade death like this," sighed Bumi, "even in extreme cases."
"Nobody could survive any of these attempts," added Shinobu.
"But he did," Mayo finished. "Does that chart say if he was part of…that ugly project that made the…monsters wrapped in armor, Tsukiko?"
Tsukiko looked further in the papers…and answered, "No, Mayo. He wasn't part of that project. He's a pet project that was an attempt to make people…as immortal as they believed this man to be. But it didn't pan out for them…or it might've, but his tissues expired when administered to another person, like they can't survive when separated from him."
"So, I guess they decided to bend a rule that they couldn't break," Kanami expressed. "If you can't kill somebody, then you can at least contain them."
"Why didn't I take Nemo's offer to see the movie Jason X?" Bumi questioned himself.
"Bumi," went Shinobu, hushed. "The John Doe… He's looking at us!"
Bumi looked at the man in the tank and stepped back, for he was looking at them…through his uncovered right eye, which was as brown as the Earth back in its early stages of development…but with a touch of something else in its feature.
Thump. The John Doe raised his right arm up and pressed it against the glass; his left arm was holding on to something with a small chain attached to it.
"Whoa," Mayo gasped. "Can you… Can you hear us in there?"
The John Doe gave a slow nod that he could hear them, and then opened up his left arm, revealing an object they had seen many times before: It was a gold, heart-shaped pendant of some sort, suspended from a gold chain. Everyone looked at one another, wondering what was going on.
"We gotta get him out of there," Tsukiko stated.
"Get back," said Bumi, raising his staff up like a bat. "Uh, you might want to get back, as well, sir."
The John Doe moved to the back of the tank, and Bumi slammed his staff against it. The glass, made out of what might've been the strongest materials used in glass manufacturing, was now about to be put to the test against one of Bumi's staff that uses a combination of iron and white oak hard wood. Bumi had never used his primary bo staff to break something like glass that probably couldn't be broken, but he wouldn't deny that, as a child one time, he wanted to do so.
SWAT! His staff hit the glass, but it didn't break under pressure.
"Hold on, Bumi," went Shinobu, who approached the tank and pressed her palms against the glass. "I hope I'm doing this right. Aaaurgh!"
She grunted, concentrating on her hands as they pressed against the glass; she deduced that, while the glass may have been shatter-proof, it wasn't able to cope with being heated past tolerable levels…and she hoped that she wouldn't raise the temperature of the water by accident and boil the man inside.
"Shinobu, you're insane right now," Kanami told her, disbelieving that she could melt the glass. "Stop. You could hurt the man."
But Shinobu didn't stop. She pressed on, just as her palms showed her element of power and passion; the flesh on her hands were now red like fire, smoking from the contact between the glass and them.
"Bumi," she uttered to her brother, "you still got one more swing in you?"
"Bring it on, sis," he responded, raising his staff again.
"On three," she ordered, and, just as the heated glass was about to crack nearest her fingers, she pulled away. "Three!"
"Aaaaurgh!" He grunted, swinging his staff against the glass once more, and it made the tiny cracks of the tank bigger. "Oh, shit."
CRASH! It shattered and spilled water allover the floor and soaked the legs of the ladies (Mayo, however, was soaked on her chest as well as her legs), freeing the man as he fell to the floor.
"Aaah!" Mayo gasped, not believing that her second oldest aunt and eldest uncle could do something reckless. "Shinobu… Bumi… If we live to see the next year, I will push you two into the lake back home for getting me wet like this!"
"Oh, no, Mayo," went Kanami to her daughter. "Not if I get my hands on them first. I'll disable their limbs and then throw them into the lake myself."
Cough! The John Doe, once he had gathered his bearings and removed the breathing apparatus stuck to his face, took a few breaths to revitalize his lungs.
"Tha…thank you, Bumi and Shinobu," he uttered, his voice sounding rusty due to being suppressed underwater. "I never wanna do that again."
As he was getting up, Mayo noticed that his gold heart was a few feet behind her and she picked it up, finding it open and showing something she found truly unbelievable.
"No way," she breathed. "This isn't possible."
Standing weakly on his legs, the man saw Mayo holding his gold heart and remained calm; he'd been imprisoned for who-knows-how-long and wasn't about to let his anger be vented against those that never deserved it, despite his flexing fingers.
Tsukiko looked at the gold heart and saw what made her niece upset: There was a photograph in it that, while looking quite withered, seemed authentic and undeniably truth-revealing, with a little girl holding an older boy in front of her.
"Okay, now, I gotta ask a serious question," she uttered, looking at the mystery man. "Just who the Hell are you and why do you have a locket just like my nephew's, only battered like it had endured years of harsh elements in a harsh environment?"
The man removed the other wet strands of hair from his face to reveal his expression was that of somebody that possessed a great degree of anger, but looked as though other emotions had been there, as well.
"You speak in present tense," he said, as though her words had some other meaning to what she was asking him. "He must still be as he is before the unforgivable."
"What are you talking about?" Kanami asked, looking at the locket and seeing the battered picture of Rumi and Shinji together. "How'd you get a hold of Shinji's locket?"
"You mean, you don't recognize me?" He asked them. "Have I changed that much in the years since your passing?"
"What? Our passing?" Shinobu questioned. "Just who are you?"
"Of course," he realized. "Time is a funny thing. Things change, people change…and yet, they often don't. Look at the boy again."
Bumi looked at the photo and then focused more on his nephew…and realized that some measure of sanity had been taken from the world long ago.
"Girls," he said, "I think this man…is Shinji."
To be continued…