Creation began on 04-14-10
Creation ended on 03-23-20
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Divine Retribution
A/N: Don't ask why the title is like that, but it sounded appropriate for what this story has inside. Read and review, please.
The year was Twenty-Sixteen. Five months behind bars…and without the possibility of even a parole hearing…and that wasn't even the tip of the iceberg for Gendo Ikari. Oh, no, it wasn't. After he was discovered to have had the goal of causing global genocide with the former secret society known as SEELE to achieve a type of godhood with the sole purpose of being reunited with his wife, the proper authorities, once Ritsuko Akagi and Kozo Fuyutsuki took a swift risk and exposed NERV's darkest secrets to the general public in exchange for clemency, Gendo's grand punishment for what he had done over the years to everyone was to be decided by the United Nation's honorable judges when they received the information of what the two organizations were attempting to do once the so-called threat of the Angels had been eliminated…and was decided that his punishment was the death sentence. He wasn't very happy about that when he was informed by one of the guards keeping him in check (like he's ever happy about anything unless it goes his way?). There were no visitors for him to see…except for Misato Katsuragi, who only came several times to see if he had anything to say to her to relay to Shinji, but he hardly spoke no more than three sentences a day to her.
Now, it was the day of his execution, the last time he'd have to be behind these bars and kept an eye on by these guards that loathed him.
"Gendo," went the familiar voice of Ritsuko to him, "how are you feeling?"
Always facing the brick-covered, reinforced steel wall in front of him with only a small desk bolted to the floor, Gendo turned to face her and responded with, "Ask me in another hour."
"Everything's changing now," she told him. "People are rebuilding their lives, families beginning anew, even Tokyo-2 is expanding due to the new arrivals that have abandoned Tokyo-3. It's a ghost town now, completely desolate. I thought I'd try my luck and see if there was anything you had to say to Shinji. Is there anything you have to say?"
"I have nothing to say to him," he answered her, and then noticed that she had a clipboard with her, sparking some of his long-dead curiosity.
"Oh, this?" She asked him, holding the clipboard up. "I'm starting up a different project that uses some of the Evangelion technology for human medical purposes…and I also wanted to see if you wanted a say in it before they ended your life. By signing this consent form, you'd be donating your remains to a better cause."
"What better cause, cure cancer?" He retorted, never even remotely concerned about the rest of the world. "I'm not the only one with the offer being used on, am I?"
"All the SEELE members are gone and they signed their forms. The project's not about abusing science like before. It's about helping others in a way that's beneficial, the way it should be."
Gendo then recalled that his own wife had said something like that when their son was born: "Science is to be used, not abused, for the good of the people, the way it should be," she had told him, holding the infant in her arms, a picture of pure motherhood.
"I'll sell it to you," he told Ritsuko.
"For what?" She questioned.
"One last kiss," he answered.
Ritsuko really hated this; even when their relationship had ended long before she turned against him with Fuyutsuki, he still had a slight hold over her…but it wasn't strong enough to control her allover again like before…and he still had, if her math was accurate, another fifty-two minutes before his execution was to commence. She gave in and allowed him to kiss her; it wasn't like those romance or horror movie-styled kisses; it was just a short, worthless attempt at trying to find some sort of relief before your life ends sort of kiss.
When it ended, Gendo sighed and uttered, "So, that's what betrayal tastes like."
What an arrogant bastard, Ritsuko thought, offended, and got up to leave his prison cell.
Gendo picked up the clipboard, quickly signed his signature on the consent form and tossed it to the floor near her legs.
Ritsuko picked it up and told him, "You're doing something very noble."
"No, I'm as guilty as they come," he corrected her, "just cut me up until there's no way of putting me back together again."
-x-
Nearly an hour later, Gendo was being strapped down to a cross-shaped table, a white light blinding his eyes that had been stripped of the orange-tinted glasses that he always wore.
"Yea, as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and staff, they comfort me. Amen." A priest had read from his bible as the strapping down had been finished by the guards.
Then, Gendo was presented in front of a window showcasing several people that came to see him, particularly those of the United Nations that were thrilled to watch him depart, some of the NERV people, such as Fuyutsuki and Ritsuko, both wanting him gone as much as the UN representatives did, and his own son, Shinji, who was requested to come and see as long as Rei, who had also turned against him, was with him. They all had vacant expressions on their faces.
"Do you have any last words?" A prison warden had asked Gendo, receiving a negative nod as his answer before being lowered back down.
Instead of being electrocuted, which would've been an easy way to inflict harm on him, Gendo's execution was to be carried out by lethal injection of anesthesia.
Shinji watched as the executioner started the machine meant to kill his father, the very man that had caused him much of his current grief ever since he had arrived at Tokyo-3 in response to his letter, and felt no sympathy, whatsoever, for his decided fate. He'd been cut loose by his old man long ago; unloved and unappreciated by him after the supposed death of his mother, and the man hadn't shown a single ounce of interest in his son…except as a pawn in his sick game. It was almost a blessing that the execution was now slowly draining the life away from Gendo, whose eyes were starting to glaze over as the syringes of morphine were injected into his bloodstream, one after another. Because he was an older person that looked as though he never worked out, only ten syringes were necessary, but it looked more like the morphine was just putting him to sleep. The next thing Shinji knew, Gendo's head turned to his right side and he couldn't see his lips or eyelids moving to show signs of breath whilst the syringes kept draining away into his veins and bloodstream.
The executioner then went over to him to check for a pulse, and confirmed that Gendo Ikari, one of the worst examples of people in collective history, was now officially dead.
Rei expressed no emotion for the recently-deceased former commander of NERV, but expressed concern over Shinji's feelings at the very moment. Was he okay? Would he be okay? Would he even talk to her?
"Shinji?" She went, having ceased her calling of 'Ikari-Kun' to him weeks ago before the last Angel had shown up. "Are you alright?"
Sighing, Shinji responded, "I'll be alright. I'll be alright."
-x-
Shinji hated seeing her in this state; the coma being like a curse of sleep that not many people could wake up from. Even the doctors told him that the chances of Asuka ever waking up were very slim. But he couldn't stop seeing her because of such a possibility; he wanted to believe that she would regain consciousness and wake up soon, look him in the face and just say something, anything, to him. He didn't care what she would say to him; he just wanted her to speak to him again like she used to.
"That man is dead now," he told her. "The Angels are gone and the people are rebuilding their lives and so on. The UN is even trying to decide on what to do with the two Evas that are left."
She didn't stir.
"I don't know if Hikari, Kensuke or even Toji will ever come back to Tokyo-3. Please, Asuka, wake up. Say something to me. Call me names or say that I'm worthless, that I'm a coward, something! Just wake up!"
He shook her, but she still didn't respond to him.
"Please, just do something!" He raised his voice toward her. "Wake up!"
Then, unintentionally, he had shaken her with enough force that he knocked her out of the bed, onto the floor, face first.
"Oh," he expressed, worried that he had hurt her, and went to the other side of the bed to pick her up. "I'm sorry, Asuka."
-x-
"…I heard that the bill to make Tokyo-2 the permanent capital of the nation was passed," Hyuga told Misato a few days later.
"Yeah," she responded, trying to get over her interrogation that occurred shortly after the execution of Gendo Ikari had passed. "Who else is being interrogated?"
"Section Two," he answered her. "They're not being very cooperative."
"I didn't expect them to be. They'll probably be out of a job."
"After everything that's happened, it'll probably be a good thing. After various other interrogations, people get the idea to call it quits and leave, no longer wanting anything to do with an agency that they believed was tasked with protecting the people, not committing global genocide. Others get the idea to just leave the city or country, wanting to live wherever the Angels haven't attacked."
"Still, Tokyo-2 is becoming a busy city. I managed to find a new apartment there."
"Yet, you haven't moved in yet?"
"I haven't been able to tell Shinji just yet."
"How is he doing?"
"I don't know yet. I don't believe he's saddened by the death of his father, but he's upset that Asuka may not recover."
Hyuga didn't speak up after hearing this. There was never any way to overlook what the conflicts between the Evas and Angels did to the children. Every time they got hurt, it was a small miracle that they continued to try and live in their day-to-day lives.
-x-
"Shinji?" Rei called out to Shinji, seeing him on the patio of Major Katsuragi's apartment. "How are you feeling?"
"Hmm?" Shinji reacted to her question, turning away from the lack of a sight of a city in front of him to face her, who had been invited to stay by Misato. "Oh, I'm, uh… I'm okay."
"After you came back from seeing the Second Child… Miss Soryu," she corrected herself; it was hard to break from the use of military designations and using actual names, "you've been quiet."
Shinji turned away from her gaze…but she kindly turned his head back to face her.
"I accidentally knocked Asuka out of bed," he confessed to her. "I picked her up and put her back into bed, apologized…and left after that."
"But…if it was unintentional, then she is sure to forgive you when she awakens."
"But…what if she doesn't wake up? What if she stays that way?"
Rei could see the weight of concern in Shinji when he expressed his worry over Asuka never waking up from her coma. She might've been aggressive beyond compare, even abusive to the point of intolerable; even more so than most of the Angels had been in a way, but even Rei, with her decidedly-cool emotions, didn't want the girl to suffer.
"You must have faith, Shinji," she told him. "Have faith. Soryu will awaken."
"How can I have faith…when I feel I have nothing left?"
Rei took hold of his hands and expressed, "You still have me, Shinji."
-x-
With the remains of Gendo Ikari being put through a battery of tests, Ritsuko was hoping that one of her projects in the accelerated regeneration of lost or damaged tissues would lead to, with the addition of the technology created from the study of Angel tissues salvaged from most of the Angels defeated by the Evas, the discovery of methods that could be used to aid in the regeneration of lost or damaged limbs or organs in human beings. After the devastation from the Thirteenth Angel incident, along with the crippling of the Fourth Child, there was some research being done into the application of regeneration in human beings. If people could recover their lost limbs, repair ruptured organs; the research could revolutionize modern-day medicine for years, maybe even decades, to come.
"Doctor Akagi," went one of the scientists under her, getting her attention away from the tube that housed Gendo's corpse.
"Yes?" She responded.
"We've made progress on Subject Seven's brain and nervous system," he explained. "Brain activity became normal for eight hours after subject's brain was declared deceased more than two weeks ago."
"The coma victim project?"
"Yes."
"Good work."
It wasn't just the regeneration of missing limbs or organs, but the regeneration of brain functions, spinal injuries, skin repair and even sensory restoration. If the Eva technology could be applied to humans, it would be invaluable to medical facilities everywhere around the world.
-x-
Tokyo-2 Memorial Hospital had been where the crippled Toji Suzuhara had been transferred to after most of Tokyo-3 became a decimated ghost town, but it wasn't what had the young man down. No, it was worse than this. He had been separated from his friends, his sister, everyone. Not even his father or grandfather came to see him.
In the hospital courtyard, he was left in the shade under a nearby tree by a female nurse, apparently forgotten about.
"Excuse me," he heard a man's voice, and turned to his left, seeing a man in a black suit, "but are you Toji Suzuhara?"
"Who wants to know?" He asked back.
-x-
Asuka's brain activity was the same as the last time Ritsuko checked it two days ago; there were nerve signals being fired from the brain, but the signals themselves were so weak that they never reached their destinations in the girl's body. The diminished chance of recovering on her own made the redhead a candidate for Ritsuko's medical project that used the Eva technology to try and help the people that were harmed by the behemoths they used to depend on against the Angels.
How did we let it get this bad? Ritsuko wondered as she looked over the incapacitated girl. How did NERV and the rest of the world permit these dangerous wounds to progress in infection over time? The wounds were inflicted during Second Impact, and got worse as fifteen years went by, letting them become infected because nobody had the nerve to say that what had been transpiring was not enough to help anyone…and what was transpiring was just too much to hurt everyone to the point of self-destruction. In the end, the people tasked with safeguarding the human race…were no better than the monsters that were out to destroy the human race to reclaim a world that had once been theirs.
"Ritsuko Akagi," she remembered Fuyutsuki speaking to her after the Sixteenth Angel was defeated, resulting in the devastation of much of the city, "I need your help."
In the end, all it took was an Evangelion being turned into a makeshift bomb with less power than the ones that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki…and the near-death of one of the children piloting it…to drive a severe wedge in the sense of loyalty of two people that served a megalomaniac who didn't even care about the world or its people. In the end, it took a majorly-rude awakening that was the darkest of near-fatal acts any one person could make…to break the silence and speak the truth everyone was left blind and deaf to by those that wanted this calamity to happen since the very beginning.
"What did you two do?" Gendo had demanded of them when word of the truth behind Second Impact and the plan to implement the Human Instrumentality Project were released to the public.
The authorities barged into the Geo-Front and arrested Gendo before Fuyutsuki or Akagi could even tell him of their own volition that they had turned against him.
"Why now?" Ritsuko had asked Fuyutsuki the night they released all the files the MAGI had of everything Gendo wanted kept hidden. "Why after all this time?"
"Because we let a young man get crippled," he chose to explain it like that. "We let another young man suffer the loss of people he was with. A young woman may never recover from a lifetime of conflict…and another young woman almost died in the last attack. We're not saving anyone if disregard these young people. No…we're not saving anyone, no matter what we do. NERV was never in the business of saving anyone, not the way they should be saved. If we can't do right by them, then what is the point in doing any of this?"
Even if she wanted to say that his reasons were illogical, Ritsuko still chose to expose NERV and SEELE to the world with Fuyutsuki. In the end, she had to accept that his way of thinking this was right; even if things had continued to go the way they had been going since the Third Angel attacked, what were they really doing? Even if they did nothing to stop Gendo, how would letting the Human Instrumentality Project happen save the people? Thinking about it now, it seemed no different from what people did in experimentation for decades.
Dissection… Vivisection… Genetic manipulation… None of these, while helpful to people later on, were not exactly at all different from something illegal and could be viewed as some attempt at committing genocide. Not something that would restore NERV's reputation in any degree.
"Even if you destabilize the government and install a new system of order and control, it won't change anything," Gendo had told them during one of their earlier visits to him in his prison cell. "Humanity will still end in the Third Impact."
"Not if the crucial pieces of Third Impact are disposed of, Ikari," Fuyutsuki told him.
And so Adam and Lilith were destroyed; with the loss of Adam, the forbidden union between the two Seeds of Life couldn't be implemented, and with the loss of Lilith, SEELE couldn't implement their own version of Instrumentality. Even Unit-01 had been dismantled to prevent it from being used to commit Instrumentality, resulting in the indefinite standby of the Third Child.
Corrosive acids, a controlled N² detonation, an order for disassembly and the will to make them happen made a huge difference from what was to what is, Ritsuko thought as she continued to monitor Asuka's brain activity.
-x-
The pain was unbearable for the last three minutes! He felt like his nerves were on fire or being electrocuted by someone versed in the art of torture! As he was strapped to the gurney to ensure his own protection, Toji Suzuhara was wracked with agony in the areas of his body where his missing limbs once resided. He was approached by NERV once again, this time to participate in a medical experiment to regenerate his lost appendages, and, like a desperate person, he accepted without hesitation.
The regeneration of his bones was the easiest of the procedure because there were no nerves to transmit or receive sensations yet. But it was the regeneration of the muscles and nerves so far that were excruciating to him. Where there should've been blood on the gurney where the regrown bones were laying, slowly-expanding muscle and nerve tissues that covered and wrapped tightly around the glistening bone of the two limbs. The next thing he knew, by the time five minutes went by, the first sign that this procedure was showing results was in the twitching of his new pinky finger; as there was no skin yet, the sensation of his fingers was really high.
"Aaaah! Aah!" He groaned as he started to feel discomfort in his new leg.
The doctors couldn't administer any painkillers because the injection he'd been administered would've burned through the sedative before it could take affect.
It was eight minutes later that the boy's flesh started to regrow across the two new limbs as blood began to flow through his new veins…and the pain he was in started to lessen in intensity.
"Aah…" Toji groaned again as he stopped struggling against his restraints.
Drenched in perspiration brought on by the stress of the regeneration process, and with his limbs fully regrown, the boy Toji Suzuhara felt like he had just done a marathon with only a cup of water to keep him hydrated. Raising his restored arm as he raised it over his head, Toji flexed the digits…and smiled at how it felt like his original arm. It was his original arm, right down to the bone. His body remembered what it was like and grew it back accordingly.
-x-
If anyone could actually know what Asuka was thinking about, or even dreaming about inside her coma, they could probably tell you that it was either peaceful or chaotic. But such wasn't the case for the redhead. In her mindset, her subconsciousness, the world was a silent version of the one she had left behind, like a black and white motion picture or the like. There was no sound, but her recollections of people were speaking. There were cars on the streets, but their engines couldn't be heard and their lights weren't on. Even she was present, walking in the street, but she was without a destination.
No matter where I go, there's no place for me anywhere, she thought as the weather was mirroring that of rain. What is the point of me being here if I can't pilot the Eva, anymore?
She passed a man holding a sign that read, "There's more to life than piloting a giant cyborg that's not meant to protect the people!"
Suddenly, she stopped walking and turned back to face the man with the sign, but it was now saying, "You'll find meaning by going back to the waking world!"
The man holding the sign was dark-skinned and dressed like a homeless civilian, dirty clothes and everything.
She got closer to him and then he looked to his left, towards a door in the alleyway. It was closed, but it had light slipping out from its sides.
"Staying here, asleep, isn't helping you to recover from what happened," the sign he was holding now read.
Asuka then grabbed the homeless man by his shoulders and had a look of anger on her face.
He simply pointed to the door and then to her.
Asuka then wondered why he pointed to the door. What, was she supposed to go through the door? Was the door her way out of here? She then looked down at the fallen sign, seeing that the words on it had changed again!
"Wake up and live! Sleep and let the people that know you best suffer!" It now read.
-x-
"…How long has he been waiting for an update on the girl?" Ritsuko asked Maya as she noticed Shinji in the hospital waiting room through a surveillance camera.
"He's been here since this morning," Maya answered her; after Shinji had found out that Ritsuko was trying to use the Eva technology to treat people medically, he came to see if anything had been done to help Asuka wake up from her catatonic state.
"How's progress been made with Suzuhara?" Ritsuko questioned.
"He's currently breaking in his regenerated limbs. He actually can't believe that we're making him write his name a dozen times and kick a ball."
"He's basically gotten into the history books as the first person in the world to regenerate an arm and leg at the same time. We just need to make sure his new limbs function like his previous ones are will last for as long as he lives."
In front of them, in an observation room, the Second Child was laying in a bed with a device strapped to her head that was connected to several wires leading to into a wall and to the console that they were using to try and stir her from her catatonia. This was a variation of the research that was created to try and restore a pilot from high synchronization with an Eva, only with the goal to restore a person's conscious mind and awaken them from unresponsive states. If they could get Asuka to awaken from her catatonia, then it was possible to do this for other people suffering from unresponsive states.
Suddenly, Maya took notice of something in the room: She saw the left hand of Asuka fidget its pinky finger.
"Doctor Akagi, what is Asuka's current brain activity?" She asked Ritsuko, who checked a monitor, receiving quite a surprise.
"They're improving," the faux-blond responded; the new treatment was showing signs of progress. "She might wake up today."
-x-
"…Yo, Shinji!" Toji greeted his friend as he came down the hall from the tests he had been doing with his regenerated limbs.
"Toji?" Shinji responded, surprised to see Toji back at NERV HQ, and was shocked to see him with a new arm and leg. "You're okay?"
"Oh, these (Toji gestured at his new limbs)? I was in an experiment that was meant to regrow arms and legs. Doctor Akagi had contacted me at the hospital I was relocated to and asked me to be the test subject for her project in the regeneration of human limbs. I almost said 'no'."
"What made you decide to accept?"
"My sister wanting for the both of us to get better."
"Oh."
"Hey…uh, is there anything new with Asuka?"
"No, there's nothing yet. I'm still waiting for an update."
"How bad is it? What happened to her, I mean?"
Shinji sighed and explained that nothing went entirely bad at first, but the next few days that came and went, Asuka just…fell apart. The last time he ever saw her was after she had been found after she went missing.
"I'll admit that I don't like her, but even I wouldn't wish that on her," Toji told him.
"Thanks, Toji," Shinji responded.
A door slid open and a wheelchair rolled out, being used by a redhead.
Toji and Shinji turned to look at the redhead…and Shinji gasped.
"Asuka?" He questioned the girl.
"Hey," she greeted them. "I've been bedridden for a while, so I need to use a wheelchair until my legs recover."
"Are you feeling alright?"
"I feel like I've been asleep for a long time, not something I would enjoy unless I was on a vacation someplace."
"Yeah, not entirely cool," Toji agreed with her; the first time he ever agreed with her on something trivial. "What did the doctors say about your waking up?"
"I should be looking forward to a full recovery," she revealed. "What has happened while I was asleep for a long time?"
"A lot has happened after you were in a coma," Shinji explained to her. "The Angels were defeated and NERV has been reduced to being just a research and development group. The Evas have been put in stasis with the technology behind them being used to treat people medically."
"How long has that been going on?"
"Five months, Asuka."
"Five…five months? I was in a coma for five months?"
"That's a long time for things to change."
-x-
Ring-ring-ring! Misato's phone rang and she answered it.
"Katsuragi," she uttered.
"Katsuragi?" A male voice responded, which Misato hadn't heard in months.
"K…k…Kaji?" She questioned.
"Yes, it's me."
"You're alive?"
"It's a long, complicated story."
"Well, where are you? Are you hiding in a hospital someplace close by?"
"I doubt you'd believe me if I told you."
"NERV has been on indefinite standby as a research and development institute ever since Commander Ikari was arrested and executed and the Angels were defeated. At this point in my life, I'm willing to believe that acts of God really do exist."
"Okay, then… I'm at NERV HQ."
"What?!"
"I told you it was a long, complicated story."
-x-
"…So, Misato actually invited her to stay with y'all?" Asuka questioned after Shinji explained to her what happened after helping her switch over to a pair of crutches to get out of the wheelchair.
"Well, after Unit-00 exploded, it took out her building, along with much of the city, so she had nowhere else to stay, except for the base." He explained.
"And…what about your father?"
Shinji sighed and responded, "It's water under the bridge. There was never any hope for either of us having a relationship after he was arrested and sentenced to death. I wouldn't go see him or attend his execution; if there was nothing left to say between us, then there was nothing left to say between us. He never gave me any good advice or words of encouragement. He's just a bad memory that deserves to be forgotten now."
Asuka really wanted to pity Shinji, as he had no parents now. That was the worst feeling one could experience in her mind; to lose just one parent was a string of bad fortune, but to lose both, even years apart, was terrible. But of course, his father wasn't the most positive of fathers, just a man that saw his child as a resource, not as a person.
"So…what now?" She asked instead.
"People move on," he answered her. "There's no further need for the Evas…and we try to enjoy the future we have now."
-x-
Misato rushed down the halls of the infirmary and broke into the room she heard was assigned to her old flame.
"You!" She raised her voice, seeing the man she knew and loved and loathed more than words could describe, laying in a hospital bed. "Of all the… I thought you were dead for months… You pick now to call me… When the madness has ended… You idiot!"
PUNCH! She let him have it on the forehead.
"Aaurgh!" Kaji groaned. "Please, Katsuragi, I'm still on the mend."
"I don't give a damn!" She told him.
It would be a while before she even allowed him to explain how he was still alive. How light in the darkness saved him from the bullet that should've killed him. Normally, a bullet to one's chest or back should've been the sealing of their fate if it hit even one of their major organs, but for Ryoji Kaji, all a bullet did was put him into a state of incapacitation mirroring death due to the blood loss. He managed to survive for almost two days in a comatose state until Ritsuko found him and brought him to the trauma ward and made sure that nobody but her knew he was there, keeping him alive after the failed attempt on his life, stating that "she'll be pissed if you really did die, but she'll be more pissed when she sees you alive".
Kaji should've known that Ritsuko meant Misato would be the one that would be pissed with him, alive or dead. Not that he didn't deserve it, that is.
"What did the doctor say about you?" Misato asked him after she calmed down.
"That I'm lucky to be alive," he answered her. "By all accounts, I should be dead. One bullet missed my heart and left lung by an inch. I still lost some blood, but by then, I was comatose, so all my vitals had slowed to a crawl."
"You jerk…and all for your search for the truth," she called him.
"What truth?"
"Well, NERV no longer exists to fight Angels. The world knows what happened fifteen years ago, and who was responsible. Gendo Ikari has been executed and the Evas either dismantled or put into stasis. The Committee has been shut down, and people are moving on. I guess you finally got your truth in the end."
When she was calmer, she up and said to him, "I'm relieved that you're still alive."
Kaji gave a small smile.
-x-
More time had passed until it was decided that Tokyo-3 was a lost cause to rebuild and the capital was moved back to Tokyo-2, which was expanded upon instead. That worked for several people, since Tokyo-3 was more of a fortress city that no longer had much to protect against and hardly anyone lived there now because of the conflict with the Angels. This left what used to be Tokyo-3 as nothing more than a research and development facility that was NERV, using the technologies behind the Evas to develop new technologies to benefit mankind, with Ritsuko Akagi spearheading the advancement.
Asuka, after making a full recovery from her coma, decided to stay in Japan until she was eighteen, since there wasn't really anything for her to go back to in Germany. This stemmed from there being too many bad memories there, as opposed to the ones in Japan, which weren't as bad because she was around people that she could deal with. Her father and stepmother didn't contest this decision, since there was very little they or anyone else could do to convince the girl to return home.
Rei, with her secret origins kept from the public, was allowed to go on living to pursue her own future instead of existing as a pawn for Gendo's agenda. She hadn't been sure of what she wanted for herself; throughout her entire life, she only knew of the Eva since that was what Gendo had her do, never intending of her to anything else. Fortunately, she now her whole life to figure out what it was that she wanted for herself that was for her to decide.
Misato, after several more days of talking with her old flame, resumed her romance with him, since he no longer needed to work as a spy for any agency (and after she stressed that he needed to find a "real job"). She continued to serve as Shinji and Asuka's guardian, now in additional to serving as Rei's guardian since the girl had no other relatives. Some people suspected that it would be awhile before either adult forced the other to tie their knot.
Toji, with his restored limbs, ended up being able to return to school and resuming his education. His sister made a complete recovery and was able to return home. He was surprised that Hikari was assigned to the same school he was…and worked up the courage to ask her out…and was surprised to hear her say "yes".
Kensuke was glad that his two friends were still around, but there was no wilderness around Tokyo-3, making it near-impossible for him to practice survival tactics like he used to. "What is NERV doing with those Evas now that they're not being used to fight the Angels?" He had asked Shinji once, only to receive a plain response that Shinji didn't know or care so long as he or anyone else never had to pilot one again.
And Shinji…well, he was a free man, from both his father's manipulations…and every other sense of the word. With his father's arrest and execution, there was nobody left in the way of family for Shinji. And Gendo wasn't a man that had ever felt a need to plan ahead (most likely due to how he only planned for the scenario he was prevented from carrying out), as he never wrote a will, but since Shinji was his only son, that was as close to a will as anyone would get when it came to inheriting anything. And…well, now all Shinji had to do with his whole life ahead of him was choose what he wanted to do with it, leaning towards culinary studies since that was his best skill.
-x-
"What is this place?" Gendo demanded, wandering through a wasteland of parched soil and ruined buildings in a night with a crimson wave across the sky.
"What do you think it is?" A male voice sounding like one of the men behind SEELE questioned him. "This is where all who are damned go to spend the rest of eternity. Everyone from the wife-beaters, the serial killers, the kidnappers…to the black-hearted mothers and uncaring fathers. This…is Hell, Gendo. This…is where the eternal damned are forced to dwell, where such desires as relief and peace are nonexistent."
He then stood in front of an ocean of red that mirrored the LCL of Lilith, seeing large crosses that resembled the remains of crucified giants.
"Some would call this Hell on Earth," he heard a voice that sounded like Shinji's, and turned to his right, seeing a pale-skinned boy dressed in a dark hakama standing beside him, three feet away from where he stood. "I would just call this place an unending nightmare of a young man that longed for the greatest desire of anyone cursed to live forever…only to be denied, time and again…by the people that disregarded his heart…and stained his soul in blood and hate."
Gendo looked at him and could've sworn he bore a resemblance to Shinji, but lacked something his son had constantly. It was like…like he was devoid of any compassion, for anyone, good or bad, and it showed on his emotionless face.
The boy turned to face him…and Gendo thought he was Shinji, but his hair was disorganized and his face colder than his had ever been towards all.
"Divine Retribution…is the penance of those that have tried to renounce the righteousness of the divinity. Sins here can no longer be atoned for like they could've been on Earth if the sinners, the people that inflicted their spite on others, sought absolution. You had every chance thrown at you to atone…and you threw them all aside to nurture your hatred to the very end of your days. I actually pity you for your decision to remain arrogant and full of malice until your last breath. Even just asking for forgiveness would've absolved your soul by a small amount."
"I don't need forgiveness!" Gendo told him.
"Is that so? A man that abandoned his only son to an unhappy childhood, seeing him only as a pawn for his own benefit, not caring of the personal harm he inflicted, does not need forgiveness? You remind me of someone that tried to bribe me into not exacting my own brand of retribution upon him. He was actually a lot like you…only he had less time to live because someone he hurt wasn't in the forgiving mood…and he didn't have any grudges against any gods. He used to be my father…until I condemned him for his sins…just like how you were condemned for your sins…and never sought the forgiveness of your son."
"Who are you?"
"I'm…just a passerby," the pale boy responded; he decided not to really answer him, as he was just another lost cause. "I used to be a man condemned by his blood bonds that despised him simply because of who he was related to…and now I'm just a lost soul freed from those bonds, seeking absolution in other ways. Forgiveness can still be obtained…even if it's only in small favors. Let all who stand before the divine ones be judged for their crimes, their sins, their actions and inactions against others, family, friends, strangers…and let their fates be dealt fairly in the total sum of their sins."
"God is unfair! How can God be infallible?!"
"Hmph! Why are people forced to suffer? Immortality is a curse that is masked as a blessing upon humans that seek it, not realizing that their days being numbered are a blessing. Any that desire to challenge God, any deity that they believe in, believing that they are cruel and unfair, will be forced to pay a sorrowful tribute for their arrogance. People that lose what they cherish most must learn never to boast their arrogance and accept that they have a limit to how long they can maintain what they cherish, be it their earthly possession…or their personal relationships. You chose to arrogantly boast your relationship with your wife…and you lost her. You chose to disregard your son…and thus you lost any hope of forgiveness from him when your judgement day came and went. But God didn't cast you here for your sins. You did this to yourself. You, Gendo, are your own fault for being here. This is your piece of Hell. And the thing about Hell…is that it's big enough for every damned soul to have their personal place to agonize in the depths of their misery."
That's when Gendo thought of something he hadn't thought of in quite some time, relating to the Bible that he disregarded because of his hatred against God: "I looked and beheld a pale horse. The rider that sat upon it was named Death…and Hell followed behind him." If what he was thinking was accurate, then this young man in the dark hakama was none other than the Pale Rider himself, resembling some version of his son.
"Your name," he spoke, "is Death."
"Like knowing my name makes any difference for you," the pale boy told him. "Death has many forms that he can take on. Death is the opposite of life, sometimes viewed as an enemy of life, but in truth is what balances it out in all existence. Some see it as pointless, but that is the whole point of Death. He grants only one gift, and it is given only when it is one's time to leave the mortal coil. Whether or not those given this gift understand is their own problem. Until next time, Gendo Rokubungi-Ikari."
In a small gathering of wind, the Pale Rider disappeared from sight, presumably to parts unknown to Gendo, leaving the man to wallow in his suffering, all sense of redemption deprived from him.
Fin
A/N: It's only because of my boredom of this wretched pandemic that I found myself able to resume work on this story. For some that want to think of it, yes, this story does have some connection to my other stories that interconnect with one another, but not in the way some would think. Until the next story that comes to mind, this is farewell. Peace.