Creation began on 03-29-21

Creation ended on 05-16-21

Neon Genesis Evangelion

My Hero, Shinji Ikari: Volunteers

A/N: What do you expect to happen?

It wasn't every day that you find out that someone that bested a reckless and vindictive man that was hurting his child was unable to swim due to never learning. Or that a girl just like him had never swam a day in her life, either.

Momo Yaoyorozu was a godsend for Shinji and Rumiko, being able to use her Quirk to make water wings, though Shinji kept his distance in the pool's shallow end.

"Not a big fan of water, huh?" He was asked by Todoroki.

"No," he answered back.

"But at least you're having some fun, right?"

"It really depends on your interpretation of what 'fun' is for people."

"What is 'fun' to you?"

"I don't really know what it is, anymore. I don't have a… Actually, I don't have much of any recollection of the last time I ever had fun, except for what I perceive to be fun, which is…reading a book or listening to music…or just watching Shado and Toya have fun."

"That…isn't too bad."

"Hey, this water's a bit warmer than I had expected it to be," said Rumiko as she was in the pool beside Shinji, dressed in a blue one-piece.

"There's heaters that keep the water warm," Ida informed her as he swam over with a beach ball floating nearby. "How goes your recovery?"

"Steady as it can go."

"Yeah," Shinji agreed with her, watching as Shado and Toya floated in the pool on tubes. "At least they're enjoying themselves."

Then, he noticed how Shado looked over at them and waved at her father.

Shinji waved back.

"The four of you seem to act more like a family than friends," Shinji and Rumiko heard Bakugo state his opinion as they looked at him with his hands triggering small explosions like firecrackers, and the teen parents gave him a look that was a cross between annoyed and tense. "What? You do!"

Even on the other side of the pool, Shado and Toya felt the need to keep a distance between themselves and this boy that had fire in his hands.

"I don't like him," said Shado to Toya. "He's not…"

"He doesn't sound or look friendly?" Toya asked her, and she nodded. "I feel the same way. He's not very…friendly. And he made our parents upset."

"We don't act like what he said we do…do we?"

"Maybe. Our parents do get along well and have known each other since before we were born."

Flare! Bakugo had made larger explosions, something that Shado saw…and immediately became tense and swam slowly backwards to the edge of the pool.

"Shado?" Toya spoke, but the girl didn't speak. "Shado?"

The girl had a look in her eyes that was a sign that she was terrified of something. Maybe it was the way Bakugo had used his Quirk, or even his attitude. All Toya could see was that the girl was frightened by something.

Shinji saw this from where he sat and turned to look back at Bakugo.

"You need to stop," he told the boy.

"What are you talking about?" He asked him.

"Your Quirk. You need to stop using it. You're scaring Shado."

Bakugo looked over and saw the girl had moved to the very end of the pool and seemed smaller than she appeared.

"How is she scared of my Quirk?" He demanded.

"Have you ever been exposed to violence in your early childhood?" Rumiko asked him. "Have you ever been abused by someone with a Quirk that was used almost exclusively for violence? For all we know, anyone with a Quirk that is being used in any fashion that so much as hints at violence makes Shado terrified, not just the people that have them."

"Heroes are often violent."

"Violence is more a choice than a part of the hero profession," Shinji disagreed with his claim as he got up. "You probably brought up bad memories of my father in her. You didn't mean to, but you stirred a bad period for her. You basically kicked the hornet's nest. It's never a good thing to kick the hornet's nest unless you're looking to mess with the hornets."

Shinji then walked over to the other end of the pool and sat down beside his daughter.

"Are you alright, Shado?" He asked.

"I'm okay, Daddy," she responded to him, sounding like the very opposite of what she said.

"You know you can tell me that you got scared because of Bakugo."

"It…it wasn't really the boy that scared me. It was his Quirk, what he can do with his hands, that upset me. It…it made me think of him."

"Anyone with a Quirk like that has to be mindful of what they can do. But Bakugo… He seems like the type that wants people to know what he can do."

"But Daddy, that's not right. He wants to be heard about, that will make other people think he's either careless or just…bad."

Shinji looked over at Bakugo and sighed at how the explosive boy reminded him of Asuka, minus the Quirk. It wasn't every day that he had to be reminded that he was still a stranger in a strange, new world where society was split between people with powers and people without powers. And not only was he among those with a power that enabled him to stand up for himself and others, but one among people that possessed abilities that were beyond imagination and rationality that were split between morality and immorality. Even children that ended up being born with such abilities and had no understanding of them, which made them either fearful or ostracized from others that feared them.

"If you had to rate our physical and emotional boo-boos on a scale between one and ten," he told Shado, "what would you say we rated at?"

"Separate or all?" She responded.

"Either one is fine."

"You and Rumiko could probably be at five. Toya could be at six. But I…I'd probably be ten…or over ten. I scare easily and people with Quirks that can be used to hurt other people scares me. I get bad feelings that anyone we see is going to hurt us, I feel like I should scream, but I'm reminded of that night you came back and saved me, and…and…"

"You're at least a nine, Shado," he gave her his opinion. "It was worse for you than it was for the rest of us because of my father, what was done to us by him. But we have time to get past it all. We'll get past it. And that man, he's going to spend the rest of his life in prison. And when we get older, we won't have to worry about anyone trying to mess with us like before, because we'll be leagues ahead of where we currently are."

"But…what if I can't control my Quirk, Daddy? What if…the next time someone touches me, I make them disappear?"

Shinji reached down and put his left hand on his daughter's head. To the best of his comprehension and the limited information the doctors and teachers had of Shado's Quirk, people with similar Quirks couldn't harm one another, meaning Shado's Quirk couldn't harm him any more than his own Quirk could harm her, meaning he was safe around her.

"Then I'll do whatever I have to in order to make sure that nobody gets hurt, including you," he uttered. "There's always a way to resolve a problem without making a heavy choice…and never give up on trying to master your Quirk. When you doubt yourself, you let that fear of your Quirk have power over you."

"Daddy…you used big words again."

"I did?"

"You did."

"Sorry. I forget that you're only four."

Shado then said, "It's okay. You and Rumiko have been Toya and my only source of words for as long as I can remember. Every word I know is what you two taught us to speak…and one of the best things we have in common is the same birthday."

Shinji then recalled a memory from his counterpart's past, having been informed that his daughter had been born the same day he had turned ten. It was among the craziest of things that these two people had in common, besides their taste in miso soup mixed with teriyaki and having a low tolerance to alcohol among other things. People could have almost mistaken the two for siblings if they didn't know how closely related they were.

Then, Shado threw a handful of water at her father.

"Hey," he laughed, and splashed her back.

"Eh-heh-heh!" She laughed, feeling a little better.

"It looks like your friend has cheered his daughter up some," said Uraraka to Rumiko.

"Yeah," she agreed with her.

"Is she that terrified of people?" Bakugo asked, as though he had absolutely no sense of the psychological trauma that all four of them had experienced before getting away from Gendo.

"Put yourself in her shoes for a day, and you'd see anyone who isn't someone she knows or trusts as a possible threat, and you'd want very little to do with them out of fear," went Toya to him, defending his friend.

"No offense, Bakugo," said Midoriya to him, "but you were held prisoner by a villain group for less than a week. These four were held prisoner by Ikari's father for more than two years. So, you didn't get as scarred as much as they did. You still behave as though nothing bad happened, but these four… PTSD isn't something people ever truly recover from. Even soldiers from previous wars don't ever recover completely from it."

"He's right," said Rumiko to them, "but I have to correct you on at least one thing wrong you just said, Midoriya. People call it PTSD when it's more PTSI."

"What's the 'I' stand for?" Yaoyorozu asked her.

"Injury."

"Injury?" Bakugo repeated.

"Yes. People keep referring to it as a disorder, like it's a sickness that stays with you for an extended period. Except that it's not a disorder. Shinji, Shado, Toya and I aren't sick or crazy. We're just…injured, which is why we're all on recovery."

Not post-traumatic stress disorder? Post-traumatic stress injury? Some of the students heard of other sicknesses and conditions, such as a case of measles, pneumonia, postpartum depression or regular depression, but never hearing about how post-traumatic stress being an injury rather than a disorder. They may have more to learn from these two teen parents as much as they could from their hero teachers.

"I gotta be honest," Uraraka confessed, "you and Ikari are probably going to recover faster than your children will."

"Shinji and I are a little more resilient," Rumiko explained. "We've been hurt before. But Shinji is… Shinji is a lot stronger than even he knows, and not because of his Quirk. He was the anchor that kept the four of us from going crazy…and we were his pillars that kept him from being anything like his father."

"Uh, you and Ikari," said Midoriya, seeming a bit confused by the girl's admiration of her friend, "do you two, like… Maybe there's something else there besides friendship?"

Rumiko looked at him and Uraraka and just responded, "It's complicated. Relationships are tested and measured by factors beyond us all."

Toya then splashed his mother.

"Toya!" She gasped.

"What? You were depressed!" He defended his reason…and then splashed her again.

"Why, you…" She growled and then splashed him back. "You're not the only one that can throw water good, Toya Gaidoku!"

-x-

"…And you understand the reason for why you're being asked to do this?" Midnight asked the male student in front of her.

"Yes, ma'am," he answered her.

It was a risk they were intending to take, but it would help them understand Shado Ikari's Quirk better than what Gendo had tried in the past. Since it seemed that the little girl's Quirk affected people based on their own Quirks, whether they were active or inactive, it was hoped that once the teachers were prepared to do so, they would try to expose the student volunteers to the girl's Quirk and see how they would be affected, based on Quirks that were Mutant, Transformation and Emitter-Types. Once they had collected enough data from the girl, they would be able to address the issues surrounding her abilities.

Aizawa would be around to provide safety if something went wrong and danger was imminent.

"So far, that's eighteen students that have Quirks that are either not so easy to use or can't be turned off," Aizawa stated to Nezu. "Are we really going to risk the students to understand what might've been some sort of fluke?"

"That's why we're not going to do it just yet," the principal told him. "These four only just arrived and need to be able to fit in for the time being. This will be on hold until they have adjusted enough to explain what could be done to aid in learning about their Quirks."

"How long do you intend to put this on hold?"

"For as long as necessary."

"I doubt other people will have your patience, sir."

"Does that include you, Aizawa?"

The teacher and hero didn't answer him, but his silence spoke volumes about the little girl that made an invisible one stand out for the whole school to see. It was mainly due to the fact that he would be having to serve as a potential means to keep the child's Quirk under wraps for as much as possible. There was doubt that his Quirk could even work on the girl's Quirk or even her father's if they were both Mutant-Type Quirks.

-x-

"…Whoa," went Shinji as he and Rumiko looked at the smaller version of the dorm that had been built to accommodate the four of them. "It's…nice."

"Yeah," Rumiko agreed with him.

"I like nice buildings," said Toya as he and Shado walked over to the building they'd be living in. "What do you think, Shado?"

Once they had stepped inside, the little girl sat on one of the two sofas nearby and responded, "We just got in. We've only seen the outside of it."

Meanwhile, outside, the students of Class A-1 stood outside the smaller version of the dorms built for the quartet, wondering how it was in there.

"Probably smaller," said Yaoyorozu. "It's not a mansion or office building."

"Um, maybe looking like a house is better for the four than an office building," suggested Asui. "They need a regular or classical environment rather than a science lab setting."

"Didn't you almost touch Shado, Asui?" Ida asked her; the fact that the little girl had a Quirk they barely understood left some of them unprotected against her.

"All I did was hand her a towel at the pool," she stated. "Hagakure's the only one that touched her, and she's still visible."

Most eyes were on Hagakure, who was still a sight to people due to the fact that her Invisibility Quirk wasn't active at the moment.

"Hey, I made a conscious decision to touch her on the cheek because I was concerned about her," she defended. "I don't regret my decision."

"Sweet," Mineta expressed, but it had nothing to do her choice that led to her current state of visibility…at least not in the moral way that related to the choice; the boy was ogling her chest.

"Ugh!" Uraraka groaned. "You better pray you don't get on Ikari's bad side."

Suddenly, Mineta looked like the color drained from his face.

"I'll keep as far away from him as possible," he told them. "Last night, I tried to sneak down to the ground floor, and he was glowing like a streetlight. I don't think he sleeps if there's even a hint of someone trying to do something that may upset him."

"I take it you were trying to peep on Ms. Gaidoku," Ida told him. "That's a reckless move on your part."

"What, she's a hottie."

"She's also someone's mother," Midoriya reminded him. "You should waste your time trying to peep at someone more your level."

This was the first time Midoriya had suggested something perverse to Mineta.

"You saying you wouldn't try to cop a look at her?" He asked Midoriya.

"No," he answered. "She seems more she's waiting for Ikari to make a move."

"What makes you so certain of that?"

"If they've known each other for this long, she clearly has feelings for him."

Back inside the little building, Shinji had found his room, right across the hall from Shado's. Though, his room was pretty basic; since none of them had meager possessions, they would have to decorate over time.

"There's a smaller room in the one I have, Daddy," Shado told Shinji as she came in and noticed him looking around his room. "Daddy?"

"Uh, yeah, Shado?" He responded, looking down at her with a smile.

"I said that there's a smaller room in mine."

"A smaller room? Oh, you mean a closet. That's where you store your clothes and other possessions you don't want out in the open."

"Oh. So, this is your room?"

"Yeah."

"It's like mine, too."

"Oh, really?"

"It's…hollow."

"You mean empty."

"Yeah. Empty."

Shinji then sat down on the floor and had Shado sit beside him.

"There's a reason why rooms are empty," he explained to her. "They enable us to decorate them based on our tastes, our…however we like to shape our personal spaces. How would you decorate your room?"

"I…I don't know how I would decorate it, Daddy. Is that bad?"

"No. It's never bad. We're still having to try and rebuild our lives."

"And that's not easy?"

"No…but it's something everyone has to do every now and then."

"Really?"

"Yeah. So, once we're done looking around here, we'll go shopping for things that we need and decorate our rooms however we like."

"Great."

Shinji was once again reminded that Shado, being a tender-age child, had been deprived of a regular life because of his father. This and the mere fact that they had been locked up underground for over two years was enough to throw them off of the path of normality they would've been used to.

"Hey, you two," Rumiko uttered, getting their attention. "Toya and I have checked out our rooms. Are you ready to go out and shop?"

Shado nodded as she got up, and Shinji nodded his head in the positive and smiled.

"We're ready," the little girl expressed.

-x-

Laying on the ground in a vast, empty space, a woman that seemed unaware of anything, having no sense of time, blinked only once. Then twice. Then a third time.

How much longer? She thought, looking towards something.

Whatever she was looking at, it didn't make itself known.

-x-

He was still recovering. Until he could implement his next move, he would need to let his body recover as much as possible. But Gendo, as impatient as he could be half the time, had no choice but to exercise restraint. If he gave himself away to whoever was watching him in his cell, or even listening, his plan to escape would end before it could even begin. So, he would strengthen his limbs by doing two basic exercises: Push-ups and sit-ups, building his remaining arm muscles and recovering leg muscles.

Even if it takes me a month, he thought as he started his sit-ups, I will make you pay dearly for the suffering you put me through.

To be continued…

A/N: I hope y'all enjoy this chapter until the next one. I'm not sure when it will be. For the time being, I'm trying to stay stable. I need to avoid getting jammed and let people that try to depend on me stand on their own feet and take care of their own problems without leeching off me. To all of you, stay safe, stay sane, and above all, stay alive.