Creation began on 07-29-20
Creation ended on 08-09-20
Neon Genesis Evangelion
I Dream of Evangelion: Choice
Tabris opened his eyes and found himself…hanging upside-down…facing the Servant Beast of the Djinn atop one of the skyscrapers in Tokyo-3.
"What… is this?" Tabris questioned; the last thing he remembered was opening the back door of the temple his primary targets lived in…and then nothing.
"You attacked us," he heard the voice of Shinji Ikari, seeing the young man appear from behind the creature, followed by a small dog. "This is us wanting to know who you are and why you tried to harm us. Who are you?"
Tabris was quiet for a while, but Pema, wanting to know who he is and why he attacked them, too, shook him with her tail, heavily extended.
"Answer!" She roared at him.
"My name is Tabris," he answered them, "and my orders are to kill you."
"Whose orders?" Shinji questioned.
"SEELE's."
"Why do they want us dead?" Pema demanded.
"You two, along with the boy's father, are loose ends they can no longer tolerate. They feel as though the world will end because of your involvement in dealing with the Angels and preventing mankind's salvation, and for that, you three must be eliminated."
"We've done nothing wrong to anyone," said Shinji to him. "We're just trying to survive without the threat of being attacked by something we don't fully understand."
"It's nothing personal, just orders, and I must follow them."
"And if I were to suggest that you turn away?" Pema asked him.
"I'm afraid I must decline such a suggestion. My superiors insist that I eliminate you first and then eliminate the boy's father."
Pema frowned at his response. This young man reeked like the other Angels that endangered Shinji alongside his father's unethical acts, but because he was more human than they had been, she was willing to offer him leniency in exchange for him leaving them alone. She didn't want to condemn him to the same fate that the other Angels were dealt unless she absolutely had to in order to protect Shinji. It was conflicting, crossing the lines between humanity and inhumanity, morality and immorality, order and chaos.
"So, asking you to overlook us would be impossible?" Shinji asked him.
"As I said before already, it's not personal. I have orders and I must follow them." Tabris explained to them.
"Grr," growled Otomo to him.
"We don't know you," Shinji told him, "but I don't want for any of us to do something we're going to regret later on. Tabris…or whoever you are, you should really reconsider coming after us. Don't you have anyone waiting for you back home? Friends? Family? Someone that isn't ordering you to come after us?"
Tabris nodded in the negative and expressed, "Unlike you Lilin, I am not bound by any ties to others. I have no one and nothing to hold me back from doing what is my destiny, my very birthright as one of Adam's messengers."
Adam's messengers? She thought. He's an Angel?
Pema pulled him closer to herself with her tail, tightening her grip on his right leg.
"You should really reconsider choosing to look the other way," she told him. "Choose life over death, free will over cold-hearted orders. If you endanger Shinji, I will show you no mercy. Walk away and live. Follow your orders…and you will suffer a fate that is worse than that of death. Those that say they don't fear death have no idea that death is a mercy that opens a door to either light or darkness. Anyone that chooses to cross lines they have no business crossing, they will experience just how many fates that exist and are worse than death. There is being taken away and put in a dark place for eternity, left adrift in the vast ocean, miles away from the tiniest stretch of land, running from a great beast that was trained to hunt you and you alone down to the ends of the Earth, never letting you rest, never letting you catch your breath, or feeling that you're being watched by someone you can never see or hear, but knowing they're always there, depriving you of any privacy, making you fear for your very life. Do you really want to experience such a fate?"
"Since I have free will, I can choose whether or not to obey my superiors," Tabris told her, "but as they hold sway over my fate, I have no choice but to obey. I have no other alternatives."
Pema then grabbed him by his neck and brought him closer to her inhuman face.
"There's always another alternative," she told him. "You can back off, say 'no', disappear, turn against your masters, anything that is not listening to what they tell you."
"You don't know SEELE. When they tell you to jump, there's only one response they expect to hear: How high?"
"Well, we're asking you to disregard us," went Shinji to him. "What is your response going to be after that?"
-x-
"…It's been twelve hours," SEELE 11 told the council. "It shouldn't take this long for Tabris to eliminate three people."
"Tabris won't be eliminating anyone," they heard SEELE 06 reveal to them.
"What do you mean?" SEELE 03 demanded.
"Tabris was found dumped in front of Tokyo-3 Memorial Hospital, incapacitated. He's in a comatose state. The medical personnel aren't sure if he'll recover."
"How is that possible?" SEELE 01 questioned. "As the reincarnation of Adam, he was the strongest of the Angels."
"Apparently, the same creature that defeated the other Angels dealt with him, as well. Only, unlike the previous Angels, he wasn't absorbed."
"Now what?" SEELE 05 asked them. "If Tabris was unable to deal with the loose ends, who can we persuade to do away with them?"
-x-
It wasn't a choice either of them expected to make, but Tabris left them with no other choice as they returned to the temple and returned to bed. As he continued to insist that it was either they get dealt with or not, Tabris refused to reconsider, which left Pema, still in her cursed form because of the danger he represented against Shinji, had to render him incapable of harming them or anyone else, for that matter, including Gendo, whom neither cared about. She didn't absorb him like she had the previous Angels, but she did remove something from him. It was like there was this light in his eyes that was suddenly not there after she incapacitated him, like whatever resided within him disappeared from his body…and was absorbed into the collective of Angels that she had defeated earlier on. He was still breathing, had a pulse and everything that allowed for his body to function, but there was nothing inside him, like the lights were on inside a building…but nobody was there to answer.
But Shinji understood that Pema didn't kill him; it was against the limitations of her curse to take anyone's life, just as it was against the limitations of her curse to force people to love or have hope or anything he knew from his understandings of mythology. No matter what either one said or desired, murder wasn't possible, so Tabris was likely subjected to a fate they both suspected as being far worse than mere death. To be unable to move on, accepting death, was like a form of immortality that couldn't be undone. In the end, if it was between Tabris being dealt the cards he had in his hand for his stubborn refusal to leave them alone and Shinji being allowed to continue living alongside Pema and Otomo, then Shinji was going to choose the latter over the former each time.
"What is a worse way to go out?" Pema heard him say to her as they were on their sheets.
"Huh?" She responded.
"There are worse fates than dying," he responded, "but what is the worst fate one can experience? What is it that makes death a better outcome?"
"There is no worst one, Shinji. Any fate worse than death is just awful. What is worse than dying for you?"
"For me? Being without you and Otomo…or anyone that we could view as friends or family. What is a fate worse than death for you?"
"Loneliness, trapped in darkness, cut off from the world and the people that live in it."
Shinji reached over for Pema's right hand with his left hand.
"I love you," he told her.
"I love you, too," she responded.
-x-
Clang-clang! Gendo was awoken by the guard in his holding cell, days later, and he looked over as the door was being opened.
"Hurry up, you're to meet your lawyer," the guard told him.
Gendo got up off the small cot he was laying on and grabbed his jacket. He was finally being released on his own recognizance for his later trial for his actions at the museum. The sooner he returned to NERV, the better, as he needed to find another way to deal with his son and that woman that he lived with.
"…As a precaution, I must advise you to stay away from your son and his lady friend at the derelict temple," his attorney instructed him.
"It is a mistake for him to be with that woman," he tried to suggest.
"Whether it's a mistake or not, it's better for you not to have any contact with either one of them until after your trial. Any attempt to do so will be viewed as an attempt to either intimidate or harass a witness."
Gendo despised how he was being ordered to stay away from his son until his trial.
"What did the police that visited them say to you about them?" He asked his attorney.
"According to them, there wasn't much to say. Whether or not the two seemed involved, it's not their place to pass judgment or harass them. Personally, and only because I had to look at the museum footage of your act, the girl seems to genuinely care about your son. Some would try to call his affection for her grooming behavior, but when I asked if the boy had a record, I found that your son is much a nonentity as the girl; no friends, no contact from other relatives since he came to see you in Tokyo-3, and very little in the way of a social life. Which means I have to ask you this personal question: Is there anyone besides a relative that knows more about your son than you clearly don't?"
All Gendo could really say was that he didn't know anything about his own kid. When it came to his own son, he was in the dark about everything because he chose to disregard him. And then…all because of some girl that was not on any list from any country left on the planet, he was unable to exploit Shinji for his goal…and this same girl had ruined his plans…just to protect the brat from any that would harm him. Oh, how he wished the world knew about this girl and exposed her as a monster and a threat to society; if he couldn't have what he wanted more than anything, then he'd at least make sure that his son couldn't be with her, either.
-x-
"…All I can do is trust in her," Pema and Shinji heard a man sing a little as they were dancing in a lucid dream she was having. "Late nights, I can see the love in her… Are you even real? Are you even real? She said, 'Tell me how you feel'."
They were on some street, surrounded by people that lived in Tokyo-3, just watching the pair fall deeper and deeper in love with each other.
"Shinji?" Pema spoke.
"Yes, Pema?" He responded.
"Are you…really happy with me?"
"I am, Pema. Are you happy with me?"
"Eternally, Shinji, I am happiest with you."
"All I can do is trust in her… Late nights, I can see the love in her… Are you even real?"
It's like a dream come true for me, thought Pema as Shinji did something with her call "dipping" in a dance step. I wish to stay with Shinji forever.
-x-
Otomo awoke earlier in the morning before her owners did, seeing the older girl hold onto the younger boy in an embrace in the temple. All she did was turn over onto her back and ignore their closeness. As she was a dog, she had very little understanding of their relationship, only that they cared for each other as much as they cared for her.
-x-
"…Where…am I?" Tabris questioned, finding himself in a dark place, surrounded by a large sphere of orange, floating around other spheres of the same color, containing different, man-sized creatures. "Oh, I see, you're all members of the fallen."
"We've fallen," said a creature that looked like a squid, "but we're not dead. We are all of us part of a creature within a member of the Lilin. Our powers are now its powers, and its powers are hers to use however she has to in order to protect that which matters most to her."
"I remember her. I was ordered to eliminate the two."
"You can't eliminate them," said a humanoid that looked like it was made of marshmallows with a purple mask. "They are untouchable."
"We are all of us defeated," said a being of light shaped like an Evangelion. "Select members of the Lilin sought to remove the whole of the Lilin from existence through the forbidden union between Lilith and myself, but the girl cursed to bear a damned being in her soul forced them to exist within a rut. Lilith and I are here together with the others, but we are all kept from each other, so close…and yet never able to make contact with one another."
"Such is our fate due to the choices made that were against the desires of they that don't desire further ruination."
"We are doomed, no matter what the Lilin do," Tabris insisted. "Mankind is doomed to disappear from existence."
"It used to be doomed," went a shapeless mass in another sphere. "Fate has been altered because a choice was made to prevent the end of everything."
"How is there a choice to prevent the end when it was preordained for the Lilin to be dealt a final blow to their collective whole?"
"She who could not be controlled chose for her master to live in a world where he could be happy. The happiness of the damned one…was desired by the damned one." A large eyeball with large hands stated.
Tabris remembered everything that happened. Somehow, despite this creature not being able to murder him, the Servant Beast of the Djinn had been able to absorb his soul, originally Adam's soul, into her collective of Angels, leaving his body an empty husk, barely a person. This…Pema girl, despite having given him a choice to walk away, had claimed his life without technically crossing the line; she didn't kill his body or soul, but she defeated him, and all to protect this Shinji Ikari she was with. No, she wasn't just protecting him, not with the way her heart ached for his embrace; the girl was now part of his life in a way that was only outdone by a forbidden unity that most would deem a form of living nightmare. They were like one…but not so much.
"Yeah, they are one," Tabris heard the humanoid with bony spurs say. "They're…what's that word the Lilin use? Lovers?"
"Is that what they are? They seem like they can barely stand to be away from each other."
"They chose to make a life together without merging their hearts and souls together into one," he heard the voice of Lilith. "The girl is from another era, quite ancient, and the boy is from the current era, and yet they are able to get along quite well."
"Isn't the girl a slave to the boy?"
"No," went the voice of the strongest Angel. "She is no slave to him. He, despite his uselessness to many other Lilin, needs the girl to survive. And the girl needs him. In many respects, the two have a…symbiosis, if you will. They need each other."
Even so, Tabris had to deal with the inescapable truth he couldn't see a way out of. The choice he had made to go after the two had, in turn, sealed his own fate. The same choice that SEELE had made for him, which left him in this state of existence.
"So, what now?" He asked them.
"Nothing," Lilith answered. "There's nothing we can do. There is no escape from here."
-x-
Rain. There was no other form of weather that matched it in both its strength and ability to reach everywhere it went. Its water could cleanse much of the land stained by some sort of filth, and it often left a lingering stench that smelled of the new day after it ceased. As Tokyo-3 was blanketed by what most could refer to as saddening weather, NERV HQ was met with the return of Gendo Ikari, who had the personnel fall back into their original pattern of pilot training. Any talk about his son and that lady friend of his was shut down by the mere fact that he was under orders from his lawyer not to do anything that would be seen as either intimidation or harassment against the kid.
"So, is he really going to just leave the boy alone?" Ritsuko questioned Fuyutsuki a few days after Gendo returned.
"He has no choice until his trial date," Fuyutsuki answered her. "If he crosses the line, he can forget about his trial. The police will just send him to jail permanently."
"But how do we respond to the illogical fact that his son continues to live in a derelict temple with a young woman old enough to be of influence over him, who has no ties to any societal factions anywhere in the world, not even a birth certificate, and yet they live well enough for those that live off the grid."
"Do you think the girl is some kind of thief?"
"I honestly don't know what this girl is, only that she's very close to the boy, and encourages his disobedience and seems to support him. But how can they live where they live the way they have since they showed up here without any of the means available to people?"
"But do you think she's some kind of thief?" Fuyutsuki asked her again.
Ritsuko sighs and responds, "No. There have been no reports of any burglaries or thefts anywhere near Tokyo-3. There haven't even been any reports of thefts in Tokyo-2. If the girl was a thief, she wouldn't be a very good one. And if Shinji was one, what would be his reason for doing so? He's not trying to get anyone's attention, not even his father's attention. And I've done a background on him, too, and he hasn't been anywhere near an ATM or back. No deposits or withdrawals, no contact with anyone within his limited social range."
"How limited was his social range?"
"Very limited; no friends, barely spoke to his aunt and uncle, even his teachers had nothing to say about him. There was one teacher, however, that had nothing but good things to say about him, but he was a mythology teacher."
"And I'm guessing that after he met Pema, his social range changed slightly. He has her in his life and seems content with that."
"Their relationship just seems illogical."
"But he chooses to be with her. How illogical is his choice?"
Ritsuko wanted to say that it was very illogical due to how NERV needed him to pilot the Eva, but now that NERV was at a standstill, they might've had no need for him, anymore. And if anything else, she wanted to bring into question a possible connection with the creature that showed up and took control of the Evas and defeated the Angels, possibly something the Third Child could explain to them if they questioned him about the two.
"Doctor Akagi," went Fuyutsuki to her, "what are the chances of the next Angel arriving?"
"Very slim," she answered him.
-x-
"You don't like the rain very much, do you, Shinji?" Pema asked him as they sat by the fire within the temple, trying to take their minds off the pouring weather outside.
"No," he answered her. "Once, I was outside in the rain for several hours. My aunt and uncle didn't give me a key to get into the house, so I was unable to get out of the rain. It was depressing and I got sick from the rain."
"That's awful. I'm sorry you had to endure that."
"What was rain like for you back then?"
"Whenever there was a drought, we'd wait for the rain to come and shower our crops and refill the irrigation canals. Sometimes, the rain was the only way to wash the dirt off."
Shinji had to give Pema the benefit of the way she had lived in the past before technology became the norm of this age. And there was a simple time back then, where they had no idea of big the world was, how vast it could be…and how beautiful.
"I never really thought about it until now, Shinji," he heard her say to him, "but when it rains, wherever it rains, it's…it is beautiful to see a placed bathed in rain…even when it isn't."
Shinji got up and looked out one of the windows at the trees, the gray skies, the darkness that filled the woods. It was creepy in a way, but then he had to see the potential beauty of the scenery bathed in the rain.
"It…it really is beautiful," he told her, and she came over to join him in observing the woods.
Otomo came over and tried to hop up onto the windowsill.
Pema saw this and reached down to pick her up.
Shinji saw Pema put her right hand on the windowsill after setting Otomo on it…and placed his left hand over it.
Pema looked at him and smiled.
"You're getting bolder, Shinji," she told him.
"I have you to thank for that, Pema," he responded. "I am forever grateful that I have you and Otomo in my life."
"I, too, am forever grateful to have you two in my life, as well."
They returned their gaze to the rain outside.
To be continued…
A/N: And with Tabris' defeat marks what will be pretty much the end of the Angels. Arael and Armisael won't be seen, but there is still more to come.