Chapter 2: Umbra

"Whoever finds his life will lose it and whoever loses his life will find it" - Mathew Chapter 10: Verse 39

But then as Shinji with his ruffled brown hair and his mother's magnetic hazel eyes went tumbling down the throat of the savage giant that had bested even him despite him being NERV's best EVA pilot wielding NERV's most potent Evangelion, something very mysterious began to happen that completely blew his mind. Quite literally.

He felt a splitting headache, like a pointed sword being jabbed into his consciousness with great care, for the pain seemed to fade almost as quickly as it came.

Then once again, the same bubbling images that had shown him the final days of his mortal life on this miserable planet that showed him no mercy came back. But this time they were not aspects of himself. Rather as he was sent tumbling into the pool of digestive acids inside the Angel's stomach, he saw his devourer once more in all it's soulrending horror.

It's blue, bulging form. It's razor sharp claws despite its toothless mouth. It's piercing slit-like red eyes that seemed far too small for a hulking giant of it's massive size.

Then he saw clear, colourless water not yet tainted by mankind's carelessness. Lots of it. He heard the flow of a massive torrent of the liquid of life as it seeped towards him, drowning him in his head just as he was submerged in reality by the snot green pool of bubbling digestive acid from head to toe. It dissolved him to mere atoms almost instantly. If he felt pain and suffering, he did not feel it for very long at all and the thoughts that the Angel sent him seemed almost tailor-made to numb out whatever hurt it may have been causing him.

His body was no more. But somehow he still felt. He still thought. The French philosipher Rene Descartes once wisely postulated that "I think therefore I am". Did that mean that somehow...

No. It couldn't be. The cessation of all mental activicty surely meant...

But he could still see these visions. He could still remember everything. His mental activicty hadn't stopped at all despite his body ceasing to be. Rather, his thoughts were on fire and brimming with energy. He had never felt so alive despite being so "dead".

Then a voice. A hauting whisper that sounded eerily familiar. It reminded him of a certain white-haired defector who had given him the time of day when they briefly met despite that poor boy's secret status as the final Angel that would wrap up all of NERV's and SEELE's sinister plans in one fell swoop. Shinji still heard his long lost friend's name as well as his melodious piano playing in his restless dreams. Kaworu Nagisa. He could even see his white face, so friendly and supportive.

"Kaworu!?" Shinji somehow managed to shout out despite having long been melted into nutrients as an Angel's delicious supper. How was this happening?

The voice did not seem to recognize him as an old friend for when it replied, it came in a cold, clipped monotone. Yet something in the way each word seemed so carefully chosen, made Shinji feel warmer than he had ever felt in his entire lifetime, even when he plucked up the courage to give his sweetheart Rei a full blown kiss to her lips when she offered him the lapis lazulli necklace he had worn even unto his last mortal breath.

"Water. The liquid of life. Water. The forsaken gift that humanity took for granted. The building block of civilization."

"Kaworu? It's me. Shinji. Don't you recognize me!?" Shinji angrily barked.

"Shin...Ji." The monotone briefly cracked, bestowing Shinji with indescribable bliss. "It is I. Your sole confidant. I have not much time but know this, my Shinji. Know this. Be shapeless like water and you will truly discover your true power. Pour water into a bowl and it expands to fill a bowl. Pour water into a cup and it expands to fill a cup. Your tears are the key to humanity's salvation Shinji. Fulfil your promise to me that you made when we first met. Let your tears drown the world in their lamentation and grief. Let the world know that even sadness has its place as one of life's most valued treasures. For just as short and long compliment each other, so does gladness and sadness complete each other."

"Kaworu. Don't go" Shinji snapped out of his thoughts for a brief second and looked down to see that while he still looked exactly the same with his plain clothes except much, much paler. He tried to touch his chest with his right arm only to find that it passed right through.

This wasn't true. This couldn't be happening.

This was not Ghostbusters nor Friday the 13th not even Casper the friendly ghost. This was real life so then how come...

"No gain without the pain. No light without the dark. You became the light on the dark side of me and now, go and do as you must my amigo. Take care of Rei and Dr Akagi for me. They need you and you need them. Your reward for protecting them so well is to become their eternal guardian angel. All this time you thought you ran Shinji, you were rushing headlong into your destiny. You are no coward. You are brave. For courage is not the absence of fear but the power to face them head on, difficult as they might be."

Then there was a blinding flash of azure from the lapis necklace which was still solid and which he could still feel. The light was too bright and he could no longer see.

When he next came to, he was back in the ruined city of crumbled buildings and corpse stained roadways. The Angel that had eaten him gave him one last glance of disdain before snorting and turning away, leaving him bewildered beyond comprehension.

It had began to rain very heavily and he could feel the pitter patter of the drops as they soaked him and bounced off his light-blue flawless hands...

Wait. What? No.

There was a puddle up ahead. He just had to run to it.

He screamed when he saw his reflection in the clear splash of water beside a half-eaten corpse of a police constable still wearing it's uniform.

But it was not his squeaky voice of ugliness that he despised with every bit of himself. It was a choir of angels in the high pitch of soprano that he could never hit despite all the singing lessons he found time to give himself.

The face that looked back at him in the water quickly turned from fear into great joy.

Now he knew. Or rather now she knew.

She was not the one trapped in the mirror. He was. Shinji had been trapped in a mirror all his life trying to meet society's expectation of him despite crushing him to the ground.

When he smashed the bathroom mirror that evening in a fit of unbridled madness, he really had accomplished something meaningful even if it cut his knuckles and made him bleed all over the tiled flooring to the point where even the usually aloof Asuka feared for him.

His, or rather her shoulder length blue hair now being beautifully blown around by the wind to perfectly compliment her serene blue eyes told her everything she now needed to know as she gently caressed the back of her neck while turning around slightly, to find that the same shining lapis crystal given to her by Rei had now affixed itself to her flesh. Shinji Ikari was dead. And she was free. Lapis Lazuli had broken free once more from yet another prison made to be unbreakable.

For she knew somehow without knowing why she knew, that it was the first rule of ghosthood that without a momento of great importance to maintain a spiritual link with the living that a soul without a body could not survive.

...

Rei sighed wistfully as a green, dinosaur like Angel came into view and salivated a puddle of green slime onto the pile of rubble beside her. She lifted the peridot ring one more time to gaze upon it with a look of pure peace.

...

Ritsuko said her final prayers as a long, thorny tongue emerged from behind a still standing office building to snake around her body and slowly pull her upwards.

She did not scream, she did not shake. She would finally be taking the next great adventure to a well organized mind.

Her pearl earring had nearly come off, but she attached it once more with her free hands in midair as a gigantic mouth came into view. She could do this because she felt no fear of dying or otherwise.

She wanted to feel as if Yui was with her in her last moments. She wanted to spend her last three seconds with Yui and by extension her daughter Rei. Since Rei was an extension of Yui and she had not properly respected that fact till now.

...

Asuka struggled to no avail as she regained awareness to find herself strapped to a wooden bed by metal clamps as the same masked figures that had taken her capitve earlier continued to hook electrodes into her already unspeakably painful brain that was now begging to be put out of its misery from a huge amount of internal bleeding. She could see despite the blur in her agonizing vision that the electrodes connected her to a huge orange jagged pile of shining jasper crystals the same hue as her carefully styled hair that she spent one hour each morning fixing to pageant perfection.

Then the rat mask figure flipped a switch and all was black, then blood red as she entered a state in which she seemed slowly to lose herself in her entirety. Forgetting first her name, then her life experiences one at a time as her frazzled mind scrambled but ultimately faltered at keeping itself intact.

Asuka had never shown Shinji the Jasper crystal tattoo she had gotten when she was five as a way to really showcase her status as the toughest popular clique leader around her school.

She didn't know if the unknown fate that waited was ironic or not.

Or if she should have been more honest about her true feelings towards Shinji despite her jealousy at his piloting skills that had unintentionally upstaged her and stolen her thunder without him ever really knowing.

All she knew was that this was the moment of Asuka Langely Soryu's true death.

And as her eyes finally closed fully and the brain monitor reading her neural activicty finally reached zero, the Jasper crystal the size of a four seater car glowed vibrantly as a ginormous orange fist covered in red scars smashed a gaping hole through its top.

...

"Shinji. Shinji?"

"Huh?"

"Is that you. Is that really you?"

Lapis was roused from her narcissistic stare into the rainy puddle by a sound that seemed to banish all evil with its every syllable.

It filled her with vitality and hope as she cautiously gazed upward to find herself staring into the emerald orbs of a lime green-skinned lass with a lovely dark green dress that fiercely accentuated her regal elegance.

"Er yes. Who are you, please?" Lapis anxiously inquired. She had a good idea of the speaker's identity judging from the faintly glowing peridot crystal conspiciously located on her sweaty forehead above the dapper transparent yellow visor from which she now playfully regarded Lapis.

She could tell from its slight crack and relative dullness compared to her Lapis crystal, that this was only a poor quality Era-2 peridot which Shinji had regretfully been forced to be content with giving her beloved Rei with how stingy his father had grown in these past few weeks even compared to usual. As if saving up for something big and grandiose in secret.

"Please. Take a wild guess, my favorite clod." The Peridot bearer politely fired back, crossing her arms with a light giggle.

Oh this was such a happy day. Never before had Shinji seen Rei this relaxed and fun-loving even on their better days.

"Erm. Rei?" Lapis started only to be gently yet abruptly cut off with a playful wag of the green-skinned beauty's right index finger.

"Please Shinji. Just Peridot from now on. Your Peridot ring gave me life just as my Lapis necklace gave you life too. But we're not Shinji and Rei. Not anymore. We don't have to be bound by society's expectations of us now that it's collapsed and we're different."

Replied "Peridot" soothingly as her newly grown shoulder length bright blonde hair swayed slowly in the wind as she ran her left middle and index finger through a slightly loose lock.

"And I am no longer Dr Akagi. Please. Consider me if you will, the replacement parent for the two of you. I promise I will do my best to care for you both. I vow to guard your lives with my own if necessary." A third loving melody trilled out as from behind a burning car, gracefully stepped a dark tuxedo clad woman taller than both Lapis and Peridot. Her extremely pale pink skin in complete opposition to her suave dark outfit only slightly brightened by a barely exposed and barely visible silk white collar. Her carefully stylized pixie cut hair was strawberry blonde and ended in a sharp point.

Despite the clear amount of work it must have taken, it did not even reach the chin of the tall, dark and handsome fashionable fop who topped her hair with an equally pitch black top hat as if the rest of her outfit wasn't devoid of light enough. A singular pink rose broke the darkness of the tall and thin lady's left chest just an inch from her heart.

A simple silver bangle with a barely visible quartz crystal of the same pink as the rose adorned her left arm where it met her now uncontrollably shaking, sweating hand.

But all these details paled in relevance as Lapis and Peridot turned their attention to the clear and reflective pearl embedded into the stranger's forehead in similar fashion to Peridot's Peridot which showed them their puzzled faces which wavered between admiration and suspicion by the second.

Her every step seemed like a part of some intricate dance that would dazzle even the most demanding crowd. A far better show than you ever would see in the fanciest theatre in town.

So it was all the more surprising to Lapis when Peridot's carefree expression immediately hardened into a paranoid scowl that hurt Lapis's eyes just to look at.
"Why should we trust you? You're the traitorous clod who killed my beloved sisters before they even had a chance to be born to recieve the sacred gift of life. You left Shin...Er Lapis here to die at the hands of monsters you knew first hand to be devoid of any common human decency."

The bowing suit's top hat slipped from her forehead and she slowly craned her head upward to let Lapis and Peridot see that her tears had already waterlogged her collar, ruining it. There was a flood of snot gushing from her nose and her crimson eyes had already begun hurting so badly that she was forced to continiously rub at them with her right hand as her left shakily reached down to the ground to reclaim her top hat.

The ideal model of an Italianischen Mafioso not hesitant in the least to spill innocent blood in the name of war and glory, reinvention, fusion, freedom and her skinflint employer's attention.

The Godfather had nothing on the tearfully mourning grown-up now at the complete emotional mercy of the two much smaller and younger children.

"Please forgive me. Rei. I wasn't thinking straight" The pearl foreheaded mobster managed somehow to beg, without sobs and without cries despite the fresh flow of saltwater still leaking from her two badly mutliated sockets which had even began to bleed ever so slightly with how hard she had been forced to claw at them to stop the pain.

"The commander would not allow me to move Shinji away from his abusive apartment into mine. He told me to shut up and know my place as his trophy, or face consequences. My cowardice did me in but no more. My moment of weakness has passed and I now deeply repent the error of my ways. It was neither you nor Shinji's fault that my mother was driven insane by NERV's barbaric experiments that she reluctantly took part in for reasons even I don't fully understand."

She continued, wringing her arms before bending her knee and placing them both high up in the sky, palms held out. The submissive posture of harmlessness in its most pure form.

"Please Re... Er Peridot. Give her another chance. The world is dead. Everyone we knew as far as we know could be gone. She's lost everything and everyone dear to her just like us. She said well-done to me during my missions when Misato did not and she's always stood up for me in the best way she could, trying to get me out of the missions that were too risky with no good outcome."
Lapis begged, clutching her own heart as she felt it ache with a passion as she unflinchingly placed a hand onto Peridot's cold shoulder.

"Why should I?" Peridot vindictively murmured, only to immediately put her hands in sheer regret over her big fat mouth as Lapis stabbed at her psyche with a glare that seared through skin, mind and soul.

"You also kept me prisoner, Peridot. You were also guilty and culpable in forcing me to be someone I was not and to conform to society's expectations, even when they were harmful to both me and those I was sworn by duty to protect. For you now not to give..."

"Pearl. Call me Pearl. Yui always called me that when we were still close and it's how I like to be called." "Pearl" nervously chimed in, hands still in the air despite the tearstains that were raining onto the fine fabric of her suit.

"Pearl" Lapis continued, giving a grateful glance at the former psychopath bankrupt of morals in the name of what she had called the common good of science.

"For you not to give Pearl the forgiveness I know you wish for me to give you is for the pot to call the kettle black. And I can forgive a lot of things. I can forgive a thief who steals my money and puts it into a charity box to be donated to the starving children in Africa. I can forgive a drunk Major who puts both me and every driver on the road in great danger because she's gone insane from the stress of her very important job."

She inhaled sharply.

"But I can never, no matter how I try, forgive the filthy pot that calls the kettle black. The first and all important rule of life if I've learned anything during my years of hell here in NERV, is that you practice what you preach. It's the real reason i cannot get close to my father no matter how I tried to give him the benifit of the doubt and to look past his flaws. Now, forgive Pearl this instant or I'm afraid we'll have to go on without you. And I'd really hate for that to happen. Not when fate has been so merciful as to give the three of us all a second chance that we really don't deserve."

Peridot tensely glanced at Lapis then back at Pearl.

She balled her fist and gave a deep, painful sigh of pure agony and suffering that would move even Satan to tears of guilt and pity.

"Very well Lapis. I forgive Pearl. But I'm the one who calls the shots on this team and makes all the important decisions. And I'll be keeping a very close eye on our new Pearl until I'm really sure she's changed for the better. You down for that, partner?"

"Down to clown and ready to rumble." Lapis confidently slurred out, shaking Peridot and Pearl's hands in turn. "Now. Let's get going. The night's getting cold and I sure don't want to be here when SEELE send forces to check if we're really dead or not. We'll have to make some sort of plan."

And as the three Gemoliches (the Gem equivalent to a Dracolich who was the draconian equivalent to a Lich) walked hand in hand towards the horizon, Lapis smiled her first true smile since being sealed away in Shinji's imagination, dismissed as a mere fantasy and not worthy of his attention through "more important" life matters which in reality didn't matter at all.

Now she knew that when she smashed the bathroom mirror from which she saw herself, she really had broken free. Free from her fake persona made only to pander to the whims of uncaring bullies who had done nothing to earn her love for they had no love of their own to give to her. "Shinji" was the faker and Lapis was the real deal. Now she understood fully what Rei once said when she told him that a dream was where reality ended and reality was where a dream ended. Her journey through both the real and fantasy world had really come full circle. Like life, death and then rebirth.

...

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And by the way: Mortis - Latin for dead.

Umbra - Latin for Ghost.