Creation began on 01-08-21
Creation ended on 01-11-21
Neon Genesis Evangelion
A New Cause: Yui's Nightmare
A/N: I'm still working on the chapter that's supposed to have Shinji/Death and the other horsemen dealing with the minions of Hell, but this is just a small portion of what I decided to have Yui deal with each time she refuses to admit to her faults.
Yui knew she was dreaming again, but she couldn't wake up, and she was surrounded on all sides by a series of conflict between various men and women. High above them were these nine, white harpies that were of abnormal size, flying in a circle, and in the center of their circle was a little girl tied to a cross. She could smell the blood in the air, the smoldering flesh, and saw buildings in the background getting smashed by four Evas, all of which she recognized as Unit-00, Unit-01, Unit-02 and Unit-03. Whatever was happening here was just madness to her.
"You couldn't leave things alone, Yui!" She heard Himeko yell at her, down on the ground with a hole in her head. "Everyone that says 'no' to you either has to hide in the shadows or have their life taken from you! This is all your fault! If anything happens to my family, you will pay the ultimate price!"
"You refused to accept that I was offering a brighter future for all of mankind," Yui told her.
Blast! She saw people to her left blown off their feet and sent into the air.
"All you had to do was join GEHIRN and help further the Evangelion Project," she continued explaining to the dead woman.
"No, you wanted me to sell my soul to a demon you helped to create," Himeko responded as she got up and stood in front of Yui. "You wanted me to leave my daughter alone, just like you chose to leave your surviving son alone when you decided to devote yourself to the Eva."
"I had no choice. SEELE was going to…"
"There's always a choice! You just refused to see another way! You chose to scar Shinji that day! You did! You chose! What right did you have to do what you did to him?! To me?! To my family?! What right did you have?!"
"You should've joined. We could've made a brighter future for everyone."
"I was content with the life I had with my husband and daughter. You crossed the line when you refused to leave me alone."
"You could've done more…but you chose to settle."
"People are free to choose their future however they desire it. What gave you the right to try and take control of mine?"
"I was ensuring a brighter future."
"For who? Was it really for everyone…or was it only for yourself?"
"I…"
"Your decisions had a hand in what befell your son."
NEIGH! The whining of a horse came and Yui turned around, seeing a white unicorn with a rider with a familiar face.
It was her younger son, Shinji, now going by the name Death, the Endgame, his horse galloping towards her. The look of contempt on his face as he came closer evident that he was going to do away with her with his kama. She looked to the ground and found a gun…and picked it up.
Bang! She fired a bullet at him, and knocked him off his horse, onto the ground.
But Death rose back up, tightening his grip on his kama as he approached her.
Yui prepared to fire again, but he swung his kama at pistol and sliced it half!
"Aah!" She gasped.
"Do you believe in karma?" He asked her, and raised his kama again, this time to sever her in half. "I believe in retribution…and you're overdue for it."
Slash! His blade was swung and it tore through her blouse, leaving a deep wound on his waist.
"Aaah!" She gasped again, falling to her knees.
"Your bright future for everyone is one of suffering and loss," he told her. "You can't promise a real future without first hurting the people you claim to want to protect…and who do you have left to protect, huh? You have no one. No husband because he's in Hell where he belongs. No children because they have moved beyond your lack of a maternal reach. No friends because you chose to sacrifice them for your own ambitions. You don't even have a brother because he has rejected you…just like your sister rejected you. What future can you promise?"
Yui then charged towards the horseman and knocked him back, sending his kama flying away from his hand.
"The bright future I still choose to believe in," she told him, "is for everyone's own good."
"That's what you think…and your opinion is nothing more than a falsehood."
"I'll make you believe in it."
"You couldn't make him believe in you, even if you could bring him back to life."
Except Yui didn't believe in Death's claim. She couldn't believe that this…this corrupt version of one of her sons that a woman of means had brought back to this plane of existence had no faith in her ideal future. There was hope for the people, but in order to obtain it, they needed the power of the Evas and the Evas needed the power of the Angels in order to reach that future. Once it was obtained, all of mankind's problems would be solved and the fear of the end of the world would come undone.
"But you can't guarantee that, can you?" Himeko questioned her. "You can't even guarantee that the people of the world you helped to maim will just accept it, can you?"
"I…don't need to," she told her back, and brought her hands down onto Death's neck. "I won't let any of you stop me from doing what I must."
"Look at yourself right now," Death told her. "You can't kill me. I'm already dead…and so are they because of you and your arrogance."
Splat! Yui looked up and saw the little girl get…sliced and diced, her body parts falling from the sky like water droplets on a rainy day.
"You became a blight on the lives of all that wanted little or nothing to do with you," Death continued, "and the worst thing you have ever done…is persist in this reckless and unforgivable goal you have sacrificed all for. While it is the nature of the All to return to the One, there is a time and place for that to happen, and it is not now."
"You once represented the hopes and dreams of everyone," she grunted, tightening her hold on his neck. "You weren't supposed to go and die. Not yet. Not ever."
"And yet…his death set him free from the likes of you and those like you."
"And you wear his face, speak in his voice, but you don't have his heart!"
"His heart died long before his body did. He dedicated what little time he had left to pursuing his vengeance against the members of the Ikari family that wronged him. The only person he never sought vengeance against, and you know this was due to having met him, was your brother. Even if his soul is damned…and he has to walk the thin line between the land of the living and the realm of the dead, you can never have him or the innocent that he has chosen to protect and avenge against all who are guilty, including yourself."
"Everything happens as it must."
"Yeah…they do."
Then…Yui saw Death's head split open at the jaw, elongating into a large, bony mouth, and it enveloped her head!
Snap! Darkness had surrounded her.
Gasp! She awoke to find herself in her living quarters, panting as she realized she had been dreaming again.
Her hands and face were drenched in sweat and she got up out of her futon.
They will never understand, she thought as she entered her bathroom. The only hope for everyone is this path to the future. But these people that stand in the way. These…damned horsemen… They're in the way. They need to be stopped or at least put in check. Even if they answer to a woman they take orders from, they don't fully understand what is at stake if we don't succeed.
The previous night, Yui had a similar nightmare in which she encountered Rei Ayanami, an albino girl that resembled her to a degree…and her speaking with contempt over how her son had killed her and he didn't even know her.
"He was sent by his father to pilot the Eva," Rei had told her, "and he did absolutely nothing of what he was expected to do when he arrived at NERV HQ. How could he choose not to pilot the Eva…and kill people in Tokyo-3 when he escaped from the Geo-Front and became a threat to the people? How could he disobey his father…and unleash so much death and mayhem upon the people he was expected to defend against the Angels?"
Yui couldn't have answered the girl due to not understanding her own son when she met him for the first time in nearly eleven years. He was a complete stranger in his behavior and his unpredictability as a murderer; she had seen him as a little boy that was so carefree and full of life, not this fourteen-year-old boy that was dead inside and on a quest of vengeance against his father for something committed in the past. And then he stabbed her with a machete and left her for dead to go murder Gendo, making sure that he was beyond any salvation…and killed the girl with him before he himself succumbed to his injuries and died from other factors.
Even as the Horseman of Death, she couldn't connect with her son. He was just…beyond her reach…and he wanted nothing to do with her or anything she was trying to do.
Yui was simply…cut off from her family, either by a grand distance between this world and the next one, by relationships that were strained or nonexistent, or by decisions made long ago or have yet to be made.
"Our family is broken, Yui," Hei-Bai once told her. "We don't have anyone else to spend our lives with…and not many friends or loved ones left to live for. Our father's gone and I'm still waiting for the day his last will will be read. After that… Well, after that, I will move on with my life. You do whatever you want, but I don't intend to be around when that happens. I still have a life in the States. I had a life in Japan…and it doesn't feel like home, anymore."
In a small sense…Yui felt like she had been betrayed and rejected by her own brother…and she was bothered by his unwillingness to look past her previous actions. And if he couldn't look past her decisions that were made to ensure the future of the human race, then he was not worth trying to convince.
"Blood may be thicker than water and everything, but those ties don't really mean anything to people like you," he told her. "So, who are we to each other, Yui? Who are we to each other?"
I'm someone that will show everyone the bright future, she thought as she left out the bathroom. The bright future for everyone will be one that we can all live with…even those that don't believe in it or don't wish to live within it.
In her mind, Yui had to see this goal through to its end. There was no time to be second-guessed or prevented from achieving this by those that had different beliefs. And if she couldn't get Hei-Bai on board with her ideals or agenda, then there were ways to work around their estrangement.
To be continued…
A/N: I'm hoping this chapter gives y'all some more insight into Yui's commitment to her agenda in this story and how her choices have estranged her from virtually everyone around her, including her family. She has become a villain in the sense that she's unwilling to stop, and others see her as either one of the bad guys that will not change and will not know redemption. Even with a nightmare, she isn't deterred; her decisions already made up in her mind, she won't stop until she succeeds.
