Creation began on 11-02-21

Creation ended on 11-04-21

Neon Genesis Evangelion

A Warning Threat, Gendo Ikari: One Year Later

A/N: I don't remember writing a chapter to begin with after the previous chapter, so this will be the new chapter. I gotta get to writing startup chapters just after finishing the previous chapter that gets posted. Here we go now.

NERV was in a new bind now. Actually, NERV had been in several binds, all of which occurred shortly after Gendo Rokubungi-Ikari's execution for his role in trying to implement the Dummy System against the last known Angel. The remaining Angels that were stated to come after the one that took possession of Evangelion Unit-03…didn't appear. There had been a moment nearly one indication that one had made its presence known, but that was only two weeks after the execution, and it had only been detected for less than ten seconds before it vanished from the sensors of NERV HQ.

A full year had passed since the defeat of the last Angel, and NERV was losing its credibility as the last best defense of mankind…but not in a bad way. Most people had begun to lost interest in the mere possibility that the remaining Angels would even come, as the previous ones pretty much showed up several weeks or a month or two apart from each other. But to wait an entire year for the next one to appear seemed like a nightmare when it never showed up, resulting in a meeting between an official from the UN and Commander Fuyutsuki over the future of the paramilitary agency. A very short and to-the-point meeting about the future.

"…There's doubt over the next Angel actually showing up, Commander Fuyutsuki," the official explained in the commander's office. "After a year of waiting, the UN is prioritizing the operation against the Angels to be a secondary concern over the primary ones, which include the rebuilding and expansion of the coastal areas affected by Second Impact."

"I can't explain why the remaining Angels have failed to appear, sir," Fuyutsuki expressed. "It took them fifteen years to appear just a year ago, and they were unpredictable each time they did show up."

"Six showed up and tried to get to Tokyo-3. One attacked at sea, miles away from any city. The official explanation for that attack was that the Angel was attracted to the Evangelion being transported, but unofficially, people are starting to talk and believe there was a different reason for that attack. However, if the reason were to be because of the Evangelions, then your agency's sole defense against the Angels is the very same thing that attracts them each time. The UN will continue to fund NERV for the next year, but if the Angels continue to remain absent, NERV will be shutdown."

Fuyutsuki couldn't really argue against that. If the Angels were continuing to refrain from appearing, it made NERV seem unnecessary to continue being of further use. An agency meant specifically for one purpose had no other reason to continue being in service if that purpose was no longer significant. Sure, there could have been excuses to spew to the UN, but unlike Gendo, who would've fought like Hell to keep NERV afloat in case an Angel did show up, Fuyutsuki wouldn't persist in an argument with the UN just to keep NERV active in case the Angels did show up after a long period of patience.

"What are the chances of the next Angel actually appearing?" He asked the official.

"I honestly couldn't say," he responded. "This isn't my area of expertise. This is merely speculation and a courtesy. NERV will be funded for the next year, but if an Angel fails to show up in that time, the agency will be shutdown."

"Understood, sir."

-x-

A year since the execution of his father…and Shinji had seen some better days in the aftermath. The Angels hadn't resumed their attacks after the Unit-03 incident, so pilot training was reduced significantly over the following weeks…then following months. He had more time to spend on his schoolwork and pursue what he wanted to do in the future, much to the chagrin of Asuka, who was bothered by the reduction of time spent at NERV because the Angels didn't appear after the last attack. And then, there was Toji, who had recovered from the incident and whose sister had recovered from her injuries in the following two months after the incident, and both had returned to their lives before the Angels; repairing Unit-03 was deemed a lost cause and what remained of it was destroyed, and there hadn't been any attempts to build any newer Evas after the Unit-04 incidents, with other Evas already being built being scrapped for replacement parts for the three that were still in use.

"Hey, did you hear, Shinji?" Kensuke asked him as he left out the school to head to the library.

"What are you talking about?" He replied.

"NERV may shutdown for good in another year."

"Really?"

"There hasn't been any further attacks by the Angels. The UN doesn't think there will be another one, but they're keeping NERV in place until the next year."

"By which, if there's been no new Angel…"

"NERV gets the boot."

That was a surprise to Shinji. If these attacks had suddenly stopped and NERV was shutdown…then there'd be no further reason for him to pilot the Eva. But only IF the Angels stopped showing up; after the last one, he'd been at ease without any further attacks and the increasing lack of needing to undergo synchronization testing, and he put the death of his father behind him as he had to live with a different designation that came after it. Nobody called him Gendo's estranged son behind his back, instead calling him the last Ikari, which seemed to fit and not in such a negative manner; it just implied that he was the last person in his family that was still alive and hadn't done something so irritable to set people off.

"If no Angel shows up…NERV gets disbanded…and no more need for the Evas," Shinji uttered to himself as he walked away from Kensuke. "No Angels, no NERV, no Evas, no piloting any further. That's a good thing. That's a very good thing."

But to Kensuke, it was a bad thing. It was a bad thing because he still wanted to pilot an Eva, despite knowing that it caused Shinji pain each time he got into the seat of that colossal and suffered at the hands of either the Angels or the people tasked more with making sure the Eva functioned over the overall safety of the pilot. Even if it was only for a day, he still wanted to pilot an Evangelion, under the delusion that it was one of the best things a teenager could experience before having to think about other things, like college and work. It would've been the one good thing to have ever happened to him in his teen years that he had left.

-x-

The only good thing about Terminal Dogma being at the very bottom of the Geo-Front and NERV HQ was that nobody could complain about a foul odor that occurred no more than four months ago. An odor reminiscent of decay. When Fuyutsuki decided to venture down there to investigate the happenings of Lilith, he came to the sight of such horror that he was certain would infuriate Gendo to no end, not only because it would've made his own agenda difficult to fulfill, but because it wasn't supposed to happen at all.

Lilith, the metaphysical and metaphorical mother of all life on the planet, one of the keystones to the Human Instrumentality Project, the goal to evangelize the human race…was in a humiliating state of severe necrosis. She was coming apart from her arms, sliding down the red, metallic cross she was pinned to, the mask on her face bruising her flesh on the sides, and the Spear of Longinus halfway on the ground at the end of the trident end as a result of the necrosis.

How is this possible? Fuyutsuki wondered, covering his nose to keep the stench out for as long as possible until he left the chamber. Lilith has never rotted before. The last time she ever faced anything as severe as this was when Unit-01 was created from her legs and she started to regenerate slowly after that day. But now, she's rotting away.

While he was okay with this happening, it was only a matter of time before SEELE found out and demanded an explanation, and he couldn't just tell them that Lilith was wasting away. They would be unwilling to accept such an explanation at face value…and insist on a thorough explanation and a way to work around the issue.

-x-

"Gott im Himmel, wann wird der nächste Engel erscheinen?" Shinji heard Asuka whine in German as they returned from school to Misato's apartment. "Ich habe es so satt, hier nichts zu tun zu haben!"

Shinji wasn't big on understanding what anything she said meant if he couldn't understand a language he was unfamiliar with hearing, even one as constant as Asuka's German, but every time he did hear her speak in that language, it was, more or less, her way of saying, "How much longer until the next Angel appears?! I am so sick of waiting for them to show up so I can knock them down and prove my superiority!" If there was to be no further Angel attacks, and the one that took over Unit-03 was the last one they would ever face, then Shinji was content with that. No more Angels, no more need for the Evas…unless someone were to up and decide that such a weapon was to be the next step in warfare due to their effectiveness against the Angels, which was something he didn't want to get involved in. If that were to happen, he'd probably be drafted into another war that he wanted no involvement in.

"Hey, idiot, do you know anything about the Angels and why they haven't shown up after so long?!" Asuka asked him.

"No," he answered her. "I'm usually the last person to know anything."

Asuka made it a bad habit to ask Shinji, always expecting him to know something she wanted to know when he rarely ever knew anything of any importance. She didn't know why she always expected him to know something when he was often always out of the loop on NERV-related matters, but if what she heard was true, then in another year, there would be nothing NERV-related to know about because if the Angels didn't show up to pick up where they left off. It was a terrible feeling to have on her conscious, to no longer pilot her Eva against an Angel, and her last sortie was just an insult to her pride. If she could face an Angel and do so on her own, to show that she was superior, that would be gratifying.

"Something better happen, otherwise, I'll be annoyed to no end," she sighs as she goes into her room, leaving Shinji alone.

"I honestly hope nothing happens," he told himself as he went to his room to begin working on his homework.

-x-

It was only one year so far, but it was a boring year because it only reminded her that she was to be in prison for another seven or nine years if she maintained her good behavior for her role in the attempted use of the Dummy System against the possessed Unit-03. Fortunately for Ritsuko, a minimum security prison wasn't entirely awful; she just had to endure the awful food and lack of coffee. And since she had been here for a year, it was also a sign that the human race was still in one piece after the last Angel attack.

There have been no reports on any other attacks, she thought as she was helping the prison guards update their computers with a new filtering algorithm. Not that there would be any published attacks. The less the public knows, the less they can hinder NERV's tactical operations. With Gendo gone, there's very few threats posed by people once the Angels are no longer a threat. But shouldn't Twenty-Fifteen have been the last year we had to live before our destruction? It's Twenty-Sixteen…and we're still alive.

Fates can be averted, she heard a male voice in her mind. Destinies can be changed. What we believe to be the inescapable can become the escapable. What we're often told is inevitable can be undone. You may be a person of logic, but it's not a bad thing to believe in something not ruled by logic.

When the update was finished, Ritsuko was escorted to the prison library; the lack of access to the Internet was an irritable cramp in her usual routine, but computers were a privilege in prison, not a right. Until the prison personnel were convinced that she wasn't going to do anything to upset the order within the prison, her access to any computer was limited to updating the software issues.

-x-

What was there to do if the Angels didn't come? What purpose was there if piloting the Evangelion was no longer necessary? What use was she to anyone if Commander Ikari was no more? These were the questions that plagued Rei Ayanami for a year with no answers in sight, and they only progressed in the lack of realization that her life was now her own, free of the coercion, the lies, the manipulations.

As she lay in her bed in her apartment, the mysterious albino girl had her head on her pillow, trying to comprehend why the Angels had ceased their attacks on Tokyo-3. She was unaware that, just in the safety of the shadows in her apartment, a stranger watched her with eyes that seemed cold on the outside…but were caring on the inside. This stranger had watched her from a distance ever since the man that manipulated her the most was put to pasture, always waiting for her to do what was her right to do from the very beginning of her existence…which was to make up her own mind on what she was going to do with her life now that she had the freedom to take hold of it and make her own decisions without being led down a dark path. Even a soul as damaged as her own still had a purpose that was to live and be a part of the world, whether it was to become something so trivial as a…basic plumber…or a person as significant as a diplomat.

Maybe all you need to begin moving on towards a future of your own, she heard a voice in her head, is someone you know you can talk to. Someone without an agenda or hidden desire to obtain what will not be theirs. You know who you can talk to. You've always known, deep down inside of you.

Rei looked up at the shadows in front of her, almost thinking she saw someone hiding in them…but decided against that belief; if there had been someone in her apartment, they would've done something of brutal significance to her, like try to steal from her…or kidnap her for some reason that was just as cruel.

Make your own choices, Rei Ayanami, the voice continued to speak in her mind. You are not bound by anyone's will to be limited in your existence. Your life is your own now. It always has been. You…can make your own future without limits. You can even make your own past without limits. They both exist within the eternity that is the here and now.

Then, whatever she thought she had saw in the shadows was no longer there. With the sole exception of herself being present, her apartment was empty.

-x-

"Nothing is transpiring the way they were written in the Dead Sea Scrolls, anymore," went SEELE 10 to the rest of the secret council in their holographic meeting.

"How is this possible?" SEELE 02 questioned. "After the last Angel appeared, the next one was to appear and be dealt with, resulting in grievous tragedy that would bring us closer to our objective. Was there a translation error?"

"No," SEELE 11 responded. "When the Angel was to appear, a being of unspeakable fury would be unleashed and demonstrate a fraction of the power needed to control the future of the human race. But this was set after the Angel stated to be one that hides among the condemned would fall due to misguided blind rage."

"Events that are destined to happen," went SEELE 07, "and events that do not happen…are two very different things. If this was to occur just after the last attack, and it doesn't happen, then what was to be the point of expecting it to happen?"

Nobody spoke up with a response to that question. They were all deep in thought with their own beliefs over why something they expected to happen hadn't come to pass. If it didn't occur, and it was supposed to occur, then they would either be waiting for it longer…or it would never come. It was something to be frowned upon when they wanted results…and were not guaranteed them.

"NERV will only be active until the following year Twenty-Seventeen," SEELE 01 told them, "after which, if no more Angels show, the paramilitary agency will be disbanded."

"What of the Evas?" SEELE 09 asked; during the months after the Unit-03 and Unit-04 incidents, the construction of the Mass Production Evangelions had been done in secret in their facilities across the planet, resulting in all twelve of them being completed two months ago, waiting to be unleashed.

"They're on standby until the Angels are defeated," SEELE 01, "but if the Angels don't pick up where they left off, we can't exploit the Evas to their fullest extent."

The only issue with their goal was that they didn't want to risk jeopardizing it until all their adversaries were dealt with, insuring no other obstacles between them and their desires. But the problem with basing their goals on events that they discovered were to happen at some point in the future…was that nothing was ever truly set in stone. You could carve whatever you wanted to in stone or sand or even metal, but it didn't mean anything if it never came to be, whether a success or failure, because time, like how water washed away what was written in the sand, removed all else over any period of existence, insuring that nothing remained. This left SEELE unable to progress forward, just as Gendo was prevented from progressing forward due to his own arrogance.

All they could was wait until the next Angel appeared. If it ever did. It was the same as with all other periods of time. People forced to wait for something, for someone, either to die, to live, to return, to leave, to lie, to confess, for a truth to a cause, for a lie to cease, for some sort of absolution…that would rarely ever show itself to those that had no other choice if they longed for what they felt they needed.

To be continued…

A/N: What do you think so far? I don't know if the next chapter will be the final one, but this one should be able to keep you wondering what will happen until the future becomes the present. Let enough time come to pass, and things become clear to those that wait for them.