+++++ Runic Throne. (Sunday + 3,018)

It had been fifty one days since they'd taken up temporary residence in The Wanderer's reality. Over the course of those days, Shinji had met each of his brother's various wives, each of his brother's allies, each of his brother's servants, and he had found none of them anywhere nearly as fun, charming, or engaging as his young niece. Tenshi Ikari, a name that he wanted to slap his brother for allowing to happen, was a nigh-endless fount of energy and curiosity. She had twelve questions ready to go for every answer he provided, thirty destinations in mind for him to take her to for every one they visited, and a love of narrating her own thoughts in such a way that removed any potential mystery regarding her existence. She was, in all aspects, a being of uncomplicated love…if she loved you.

"No." The Little Lady of the Ikari Empire put her foot down firmly, yet again, when Amaterasu asked to accompany her and Shinji on their morning walk around the Palace Grounds. Taking her uncle's hand and turning them away from the kitsune with a huff, she set their pace and marched forth. After leaving everyone else behind, she looked up at him with absolute trust and stated plainly, "She is a liar. Momma Hikari said that I shouldn't spend time around liars, or I'll start lying myself."

Shinji wasn't going to argue the point, nor attempt to describe the nature of a youkai as complicated as Amaterasu to his niece. "I've told you many times, Tenshi-chan, you get to decide who comes with us and who doesn't. I don't make other people's decisions-"

"Yes, yes, it never turns out well," she huffed out in the adorable way a young child does. "Momma Misato says I need to be patient with you, but I really think you just need more hugs."

He chuckled under his breath. Hugs were her preferred method of getting him to stop dwelling on the past, and to stop his 'costume' from slipping. Her first words to him, the day he'd arrived, were 'Wow! Uncle Shinji's made of wiggly stuff!' She saw straight through his disguise, straight to his true nature, and she'd tottered over to give him the biggest hug she could while laughing happily. He'd met everyone else that day with her sitting on his hip as he walked around with her attached to his side. "There is never such a thing as too many hugs."

"You see, this is why I like you so much! You understand me," her declaration made with a grand gesture towards the manor where her family lived, she assumed her 'Imperial Princess' posture. "They're always warning me not to 'crowd you'. 'Don't push him, Tenshi-chan', 'he needs space, Tenshi-chan', 'he can't spend all his time with you, Tenshi-chan'." Dropping her posture and sighing dramatically, she started to swing her arm in a carefree arc. "They don't get us, Uncle."

"I think they understand you better than you think, but I agree that they see things differently than we do."

"Up." Her command was followed without hesitation, her place on his hip well-worn. "I'm supposa keep you out of the house until breakfast."

"Supposed," he corrected without any hint of chastisement. He'd reached an agreement with her regarding the importance of her pronouncing words properly, as the price for her spending so much time with him. "Are the ladies having 'Girl Talk' again?"

"Nope. Don't know why, but Daddy told me that you were not supposed to go back until he sent Momma Arael to find us." She looked at him with honesty, as if he'd ever mistrust her. She didn't know why, and if she did she'd tell him, which was probably why she wasn't told why.

A somewhat familiar individual waved a greeting to the pair from a nearby guardpost. A mid-twenties member of The Wanderer's Imperial Homeguard, the young woman had a professional demeanor of someone three times her age despite an appearance far closer to someone half her age. "Good morning, Your Highness," she greeted Tenshi formally. "Good morning, 'Just Shinji'," her greeting to Shinji was far less formal.

Tenshi enjoyed the way her uncle was teased. "Good morning, Lieutenant. Checking up on your 'kids'?"

"I am, Your Highness. The ladies become restless if I don't give them proper motivation regarding their purpose here." The Lieutenant gestured between Tenshi and Shinji. "Out enjoying the morning?"

"Her Highness is keeping me out from underfoot while my brother does something important, is our current understanding of the situation." Shinji, despite having had to take the time to get used to it, also enjoyed being teased as an equal by someone that understood his difficulties making friends. "My guess would be something involving the Empire's operation. Having two Shinjis on screen, even though I look very little like him, would only serve to confuse whoever was speaking with him."

"You are certainly more likely to be better informed than I am. My concern lies outside the walls of the Manor, not within. I trust Captain Morigawa would let me know if she needed my help with something." The passing of a shadow overhead drew both her and Shinji's eyes, trained military reaction and the grim determination of an uncle protecting his niece evaluating a potential threat. A landing craft from one of the ships in orbit came in on a smooth arc towards the landing pad on the far side of the house from them. "…Nobody told me we were expecting a party from the Fleet today. Please excuse me, Your Highness, Shinji. I need to go ask some questions and potentially…relieve people of their duty."

He didn't like going against what Tenshi preferred, but Shinji himself wasn't going to allow any threats to the most important child in all of Creation. Opening a portal to the room inside the guest house designated for such, he carried his precious cargo through without further discussion. His mood, and the way that it echoed throughout the house, brought Haruka and Michiru down the stairs rapidly to meet him in the entry hallway. "Unannounced landing craft. I thought perhaps we could paint Tenshi-chan's nails while we let the local forces handle whatever it is."

"An excellent suggestion." Michiru swooped in and offered to take Tenshi off of Shinji's hip. "If you would come with me, my little princess, so that we can prepare your nails for fabulousness?"

After giving a hug to her uncle, Tenshi allowed herself to be claimed by a woman she knew her uncle trusted with his entire heart. "Ok Auntie Michiru. Uncle needs to talk to Auntie Haruka, right?"

"That he does." The Sailor for Neptune wouldn't hide the truth from the little one, but she also wouldn't allow her to be exposed to things that she ought not be.

After the hallway was cleared, Haruka frowned towards the door. "One of his craft, right?"

"Yeah." Shinji was grateful that the only entrance into the house was the front door. It meant whatever it was that was out there had to get through him and Haruka to get to Michiru to then get to Tenshi. "He's made it pretty clear to me that there are only three people who can authorize an unannounced craft in his AO, except for an emergency of some sort. I've never heard of a good emergency."

"Well, if our streak ends at fifty one, it's at least fifty one longer than we've had before." Leaning with her shoulder against the wall, she shifted the conversation towards idle chat. "Naru and I had a talk last night. She wants to ask you to help her test her strength, but doesn't want to ask you because it's going to require close physical contact."

"I'll talk to her. She's a good woman for thinking of my problems, but I can't rely on her if she isn't sure of her own strength." He set his back against the wall, resting his head on the same surface and closing his eyes. Calm would serve him better than untethered anger at a potential threat. "There's subtext there I don't see, isn't there?"

"She'd like to flirt with you too, not enough that it's a come-on, but enough that you understand that she's interested."

"…Because Ireul and I have been spending time together?"

"That'd be it, yeah. She's worried you're going to suddenly find love without her having a fair hearing."

He snorted. "I already found love."

"Don't start."

"…Fine."

A polite knock on the door, in the sequence that had been pre-established by those people trusted by The Wanderer to come claim his daughter, announced that someone was requesting entrance. Haruka pressed a button beside her, unlocking the door and cracking it slightly without having to be near the portal to do so. "Come on in, the water's fine."

Arael, one of The Wanderer's antagonists turned wives, entered the guest house in her human guise. Considering Haruka for a second, she then tilted her head towards Shinji. "Your brother has asked that you consult with him on a matter of grave urgency." When Haruka stood from the leaning position she was in, the avian-like woman shook her head. "He made it clear that The Silent One alone was to come. Please continue to occupy Her Highness, and trust that The Wanderer would not seek to harm the man you love."

"It's ok." Shinji squeezed Haruka's upper arm. "If we can't trust the Creator of everything, who can we trust?"

"Ourselves," Haruka responded with a cold glare at Arael.

"I'll be back." He knew that she was angry at something The Wanderer had done. She'd spoken to him more than once that he was hiding something from them, and she didn't like that thought. Recently, she'd attempted to directly confront The Wanderer with her suspicions only to be told that all would be revealed when it was appropriate to do so. As for Shinji, he trusted the nature of the man. Of everything they might share, they did share the quality of being very poor liars to those they cared about. After leaving the house and resecuring the entrance, he set a fast pace towards the Manor. "I assume you don't intend to answer if this is something I should be armed for?"

"I would not presume to direct your decision regarding your defensive standing." She moved easily at his side, unhurried. "You possess variables by nature of your existence that I could not account for, and any advice I would offer is tainted by that fact before it leaves my beak."

"Mouth," he corrected idly, "you're wearing human right now."

"A fair point."

Standing at the entrance to the manor they were approaching was the small blonde pilot The Wanderer allowed to do whatever she wanted to by virtue of him not finding out until it was done. "Oi, Thanatos, need ta bend yer ear fer a sec. You can soar on, Airy, I'll walk him from here."

Shinji noted that Arael left much the same way she tended to arrive at places, quietly and without salutation or valediction. Pausing before the woman he'd had introduced to him as 'Raffle', he attempted to discover the patience needed to interact with her. "Noelle-San."

"I doubt feathers there told ye much, if anything. Always one to take things a mite too literal." She gave him a calm smile, one that spoke of dauntless confidence in her course. "You're not walking into a killbox, and nobody is in danger. He wants to give ye a gift, and has kept it all hush-hush from everyone here but me an' two others."

He had never taken her for a liar, and so he allowed himself to relax enough to be what passed for 'calm'. "He couldn't keep anything from you if he wanted to, from what I've seen."

"Nor should he. Can't protect his wing if I'm in the blind." Stepping clear of the door, she gestured into the Manor itself.

Walking much slower through the halls, he exercised his social skills. "He does know that I'm not terribly fond of gifts, right? I thought I'd made that clear."

"This isn't the kind you'd turn down. I think he put a lot of thought into it." She punched him in the arm, a friendly gesture between warriors. "I'm of a mind with you, honestly. Unless it's something truly meaningful, I don't need more crap in my life."

Rounding the corner to the main sitting hall, they came across a group of women that he'd tried to avoid. Despite himself, he winced in pain as he saw Usagi Ikari, Ami Ikari, Minako Ikari, Makoto Ikari, and Rei Ikari sitting in a group whispering furtively to each other. Turning his back to them, he took a seat where he wouldn't have to watch them, and wasn't surprised when Noelle took up a defensive position across from him at the small cluster of chairs to keep people away. "…Thank you."

"Ye've been through 'ell, you 'ave. I'm no of a mind t' let others torment you, intentionally or no." With her mood dropping, her accent became thicker. "I made it clear my position on th' matter, an' was outvoted."

The thumb of his left hand dug deep into the palm of his right. "It's ok. This is their house, Noelle-san, it wouldn't be right of me to demand they not wander around it." His breathing became a conscious act, pushing away the anger and anxiety that being near the reminders of what he'd gone through caused. "Not much to be done about it."

"But when we have the opportunity to do something about it," The Wanderer walked around from behind Shinji, crouching down to be of a height with both him and Noelle, "I'm of the belief that acting is always better than sitting back and dithering." Pressing Shinji back down into his seat, he shook his head. "No, no. You'll want to be seated for this." A slight grin grew on his lips. "Remember the advice I gave you on the moon?"

Shinji blinked, trying to remember the conversation clearly. "Something…about not tens-womph." The breath was knocked out of his lungs as a missile in the shape of a woman smashed into his chest, her arms latching onto his neck and her lips meeting his. Through the shock of the impact, and the confused welter of emotions, he barely made out the features of the woman that was attempting to forcibly implant her tongue inside his throat. …REI?!

Squeezing him close, and breaking off the kiss to smile like a maniac into his eyes, the Rei Hino from the reality he'd been sent to whispered, "Surprise."

What followed was an explanation of the cloning process that had been used once before with great success, returning Noelle to life so that The Wanderer was not without his favorite co-pilot. The science of everything, the philosophy, the morality and ethics, every single word of which was spoken in a matter-of-fact way by The Wanderer's wives, might as well have been the manufacturing specifications for a stand mixer for all he took from it. Standing there, under his arm, was his brother's gift to him for 'services rendered'.

Whatever else might follow from where he was at that moment…he knew for sure and certain that love existed, and it stood about one hundred and sixty centimeters tall.

+++++ Author's Notes, Final.

I dithered back and forth over where I wanted to end this part of this Shinji's story. The original ending, the one from the chapter prior, was put down on paper from the beginning. For most of the writing of this story, I've been dealing with real life matters that have soured me greatly on humanity as a whole, and that ending flowed naturally from the story itself. Not every story has a happy ending, not every story has the protagonist come out clean. A story involving Shinji Ikari becoming the literal embodiment of the old school concept of Chaos and the harbinger of Death might honestly have only darkness available as an ending. When I was doing the final sanity checks on the chapters released recently, however, I remembered a little blonde pilot's story and how The Wanderer found light even in the darkness.

Shinji, from this story, has lost so much. It's been torn from him by forces he can't hope to overcome, left him languishing in ignorance with nobody to teach him how to control who and what he is. He brought a physical darkness into a reality where light itself was intended to reign supreme, and that darkness consumed unceasingly anything that might have given him shelter from the storm of his own creation. Through no fault of his own, Shinji Ikari was the catalyst for the deaths of 99% of life in a universe where he had not yet been born. His adventures, much like The Wanderer's, do not end with this chapter. But this chapter is an end. Hopefully some of you enjoyed the ride, and hopefully you understand that writing a story about chaos theory becoming chaos fact is not exactly an easy process.

As always, be kind to one another. The kindness you have shown me has helped brace me against the unkindness shown to me by others, and I am forever grateful to each of my readers for lending me their time.