Prologue: Voyager
Disclaimer: Evangelion is owned by Hideaki Anno and Studio Khara. RWBY is owned by Rooster Teeth. No monetary gain is intended from this work.
Author's Note: This story was inspired by the first chapter of VentXekart's great story titled Shinji Ikari and the Girls of RWBY. Go give that story some love y'all.
One other thing to mention is that as much as I enjoy RWBY, I have to change some things around for anything to make sense. Some changes are minor, some major. Thoughts and critiques are welcome.
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Shinji Ikari was not a person who led an easy life.
Case in point, he currently sat huddled in the fetal position inside a 40-meter biomechanical war machine that had itself been consumed by the "shadow" of a floating zebra-striped sphere monster. If that wasn't bad enough, he was also running dangerously low on oxygen.
Yes, life seemed to have quite the hate boner for young Shinji Ikari.
The Evangelion's life support system had lasted 16 whole hours but now it was starting to fail. The LCL inside Unit 01's entry plug had become barely breathable. The thought of suffocating had earlier terrified poor Shinji, but now there was only numb acceptance. All panicking had done was deplete his supply of breathable LCL quicker and exhausted the lad to the point of slumber.
Once the unfortunate pilot surrendered to the siren's call for sleep, the Angel appeared to him in his dreams, reminding him of his unhappiness. Halfway through its interrogation of the Third Child's psyche, a deep growl sounded out from nowhere and everywhere at once. As soon as the growling stopped, the Angel vanished from Shinji's mind and the young pilot awoke to see that his time in the land of the living was coming to an end very soon.
He glanced at the remaining emergency power.
'Only about 3 minutes of life support left…' He thought groggily.
His earlier introspective journey with the bizarre seraphim made his thoughts begin to wander. What was he doing here? Why him? Where did it all go wrong?
Shinji hated piloting but had stuck around for the fleeting chance that his Father might possibly care about him. He knew this was going to happen eventually though, he just knew it. His luck had finally run out. His pessimistic nature wouldn't let him entertain the idea of any other option that wasn't his eventual death in combat.
And now his nature had proved right, he was going to die alone in an entry plug. Piloting Unit 01 had only brought pain. Not just to him, but to those around him as well.
After all, it wasn't Sachiel that had put Toji's younger sister in the hospital.
And the people he piloted for brought him pain too. It had always been that way for him, ever since his Mother's death and his Father's subsequent abandonment of him. It was ironic that the thing he despised doing the most had brought him the closest to people.
Before his time in the fortress city of Tokyo-3, the only person he could say he found even remotely relatable was his previous guardian. Though it was mostly because his previous guardian had raised him since he was three years old. The relationship between the two was somewhere between totally indifferent and frigidly cold.
He much preferred Misato.
Misato was the closest thing he had to a mother or older sister. She cared about him more than any other person in his life and they'd almost been like, dare he think, a family. Her way of life was somewhat strange to the boy. At work, she was all business but in her off time, she was almost more childlike than Shinji himself. At times it felt like he was the one taking care of her and not the other way around. Not to mention the fact that in Shinji's opinion she drank too much.
He still had lingering doubts about the woman. She was his guardian as well as his superior officer. Caring for him was part of her job, she'd said as much the morning of Shinji's parent-teacher conferences. She'd also told him that she had joined NERV to avenge her father who had died at the hands of the First Angel during Second Impact.
Was that all Shinji was to her? A convenient tool for her revenge? He truly hoped not.
Not that it mattered anyway, he wasn't ever going to get out of this cylindrical coffin NERV called an entry plug.
Toji and Kensuke were the first friends he'd ever had, but they'd only become friends after he'd saved them during the fight with the Fourth Angel. In the beginning, Toji had hated his guts for putting his kid sister in the hospital but had changed his tune once he saw the hellish reality of what Shinji experienced inside his Eva.
For some reason, the incident hadn't deterred Kensuke in the least from wanting to become an Eva pilot, always pestering him about the latest news at NERV. Shinji wondered if Kensuke would still be his friend if he wasn't a pilot. Shinji sadly didn't think so. Shinji wasn't exactly someone who stood out from the crowd.
Besides, everyone else at school lost interest as soon as they realized he wasn't the charming, gallant hero they'd expected. Not that he minded it. Shinji got to fade into the background as he had ever since he began his education.
In a sad way, it was a return to normalcy for the lad.
Although Shinji was good at being quiet and keeping his head down in the classroom, he had nothing on the quiet enigma that was Rei Ayanami. Rei had fought side-by-side with him, but the two couldn't exactly be called friends. Rei's icy personality (or lack thereof) made connecting with her difficult.
Not to mention the time he went to bring her a replacement I.D. card and wound up seeing the girl naked made conversation with the albino more than a little awkward for Shinji. But after she smiled at him after Operation Yashima, Shinji found interacting with the red-eyed girl to be easier. However, they still weren't exactly friends. Rei never hung out with anyone from school and didn't talk much.
He'd never admit to it, but Shinji had acquired a slight crush on the quiet bluenette. He wished he could have seen her smile one last time. He also wanted to know why his Father had chosen her instead of him. He didn't want to let jealousy sour his relationship with the lass but it was hard sometimes.
His thoughts kept drifting through the people he'd met throughout his life and his mind landed on the clinical Chief of Project-E, Doctor Ritsuko Akagi. Dr. Akagi seemed to be mostly indifferent to his existence, or anyone else's for that matter. She was polite enough when they spoke to each other, but it was rare that they talked about anything that wasn't related to Eva.
The only time she showed a spark of life was when she discussed something related to the MAGI. The Third Child did give her the benefit of the doubt since she was Misato's friend. Anyone who was a friend of Misato at least got a few points in Shinji's book.
He let out a mirthless chuckle at Misato's other "friend", Ryoji Kaji. Shinji didn't know what the deal between those was, but what he did know was that Kaji could rile Misato up like no one else. Usually, he was the one getting teased so it was nice to see the tables turn on his purple-haired guardian every once in a while.
In all seriousness, the Third Child didn't quite know what to make of his guardian's old college boyfriend. He seemed nice enough and Asuka liked him. Maybe even a bit too much.
Speaking of Asuka, of all the people Shinji had met in his life, Asuka Langley Sohryu confused him the most.
Haughty and proud was the image she gave off to everyone around her, but at the apartment, Shinji found she could be quite friendly. Well, so long as he didn't accidentally piss her off. The redheaded German's temper was legendary when angered, which unfortunately for Shinji, was far too often. But then again, there were moments when she'd grin and crack jokes at Misato's expense if Misato teased the lad too hard.
Not to mention, they'd fought several battles together and he'd risked his life to save her from the hellfire of Mount Asama. He didn't think the flame-haired foreigner was a bad person, she just confused the shit out of his depressed, teenage mind. And soon after she arrived, Shinji found that he'd developed a crush on Asuka despite her attitude towards him. He paid it even less mind than his crush on Rei. There was no way a girl like her would want a wimp like him, she had made that explicitly clear.
And then she'd gone and goaded him into his first kiss.
He hadn't known what to do so he merely stood there while she pinched his nose and initiated the failed lip lock. After it was over, she ran to the bathroom and loudly rinsed her mouth. Who the heck kissed to kill time anyway? Asuka did, apparently. Did that mean she liked him back? No, that couldn't be, she was head over heels for Kaji. But then, did she really only kiss him to kill time?
He didn't want to think about it anymore. Giving himself hope for a possible future with Asuka in his current state was too painful to bear.
His thoughts drifted onto the man who had raised him for the past ten years, Markus Vincennes.
Markus Vincennes was a practical man who had cared for young Shinji efficiently but not in a way one could consider as loving. The middle-aged American was a former English teacher who had come to live abroad in Japan about a year after Second Impact. He taught the boy everything that a child needed after the young boy had been placed into his care but had done so in a detached manner.
He taught how to cook, clean, and play the cello well enough but held no real affection towards the lad. As long as Shinji got passing grades at school and didn't get into trouble, Markus raised no fuss.
He had known Shinji's parents in some way, though when the boy asked how this came to be he received no answer from the blonde-haired man. Shinji often wondered why the man was tasked with rearing him and had one night caught the man talking to himself in a drunken stupor about how "that bastard Gendo" was the reason he couldn't even see his little girl anymore.
The only time the man ever showed a spark of life was when he was teaching Shinji English. This was the only time that the man expected absolute perfection from his ward. Markus' tutelage of the language had made Shinji quite proficient in what had now unofficially been labeled Post-Impact Japan's second most used language.
If Shinji had his way, he would've simply given it the minimum effort like he did for all other subjects but Markus' insistence that he "speak it as well as Yui did" helped grease the boy's wheels and learn the language properly.
It was surprisingly handy when Shinji arrived in a major metropolitan city like Tokyo-3. There were more foreigners who spoke English living there than he'd expected. Not that any of that practical use of English mattered anyway considering he was less than 2 minutes away from suffocating to death.
Finally, Shinji's thoughts settled on his Mother and Father. He couldn't remember much about his Mother at all. Hell, he couldn't even remember her face. His Father had destroyed her belongings and all pictures of her. By doing so had helped in destroying Shinji's memory of her. He liked to think that she had loved him before she passed away during the lab experiment that people had alluded to being his Father's fault.
And finally, there was his Father.
The relationship between the male members of the Ikari family was complicated, to say the least. Gendo Ikari had left his son at a train station for Markus to pick up no less than a week after his wife's passing. Shinji saw the man once a year on the anniversary of his Mother's death and never any more than that.
Eventually, Shinji stopped going to visit his Mother's grave at all. It had been three years since father and son had seen each other when they were reunited during that awful day when the Third Angel attacked.
But a happy family reunion was not to be. Gendo had told his son to pilot the Eva or leave. That wasn't what the lad had expected from his Father at all. Why had he been tasked with such a burden? What was worse, if he refused an injured Rei Ayanami would've had to fight in his stead.
Shinji couldn't just stand by and let someone so gravely hurt go into battle knowing that she likely wouldn't survive while he stood a better chance at winning against the Angel. Even if he had no idea what he was doing.
And maybe if he fought, his Father might finally acknowledge him for once. Maybe if he did well enough and lived through the battle they could be a real family again, like they were before his Mother's death.
As time went on, that goal seemed more and more like a pipe dream to poor Shinji.
His Father wanted nothing to do with him. The two barely spoke and were rarely around each other, to begin with. What did Shinji ever do wrong? Why had his Father sent him away? Wasn't he good enough? Why did his Father smile at Rei and not him?
Eventually, Shinji had unconsciously very slowly begun to accept the fact that he and his Father would likely never get along. And then it happened. After Sahaquiel's, defeat his Father had praised him! All the pain and suffering he'd endured piloting Unit-01 had been worth it!
Maybe his Father didn't hate him after all.
In the end, the boy still didn't know what to think of his Father. He'd never get the chance to know whether or not his Father had truly cared about him or not. Time had run out.
'Only about 30 seconds left before the system gives ou-'
BOOM! BANG!
His thoughts were interrupted by the sounds of utterly gigantic explosions coming from seemingly everywhere. The loud booms forced the Third Child to cover his ears as a fearful scream erupted from his lips. The earlier calm he'd felt suddenly went away and sheer terror flooded through his veins. He didn't know what was going on outside the plug. There wasn't enough power left for him to even activate the external cameras.
This is why he grew more alarmed when he heard the monstrous growling coming from the Eva itself followed by the sound of the jaw restraint breaking and a roar echoed from within the cyborg beast's throat.
Shinji was no stranger to Unit-01 moving on its own with no power source. He'd been told it was finicky like that because it was the test-type and not a "true" Evangelion like Unit-02 was. He didn't believe it. He'd seen what lay underneath the purple and green armor of the 40-meter colossus.
It made it easier to sleep at night thinking of the biomechanical titans as mere robots. War machines that obeyed their pilot's mental commands like puppets on strings. But Shinji knew what they actually were.
The Evas were monsters, just like the Angels were. Just because they were under humanity's supposed control didn't change that fact. Robots didn't bleed when they took damage.
His level of fear skyrocketed to levels he didn't know was possible when he barely heard the familiar sound of Unit-01's neck armor unclasping to expose its entry plug underneath the booming explosions outside. Wait a second, was Unit-01 about to eject the entry plug?! He began to hyperventilate, depleting his low oxygen levels even further.
As his mind began racing a million miles a minute the familiar voice spoke once more, but this time he could understand it.
"Shinji...remember this. Anywhere can be heaven so long as you're alive. I love you. Goodbye, my son…"
He was too scared to even attempt a response. Where the hell was that voice even coming from? Suddenly the feeling of being violently ejected from the Eva and the entry plug rattling upon hitting a series of objects outside before impacting hard against something forced Shinji to lurch forward in his seat.
His head struck the plug's center console in front of him and everything went dark.
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ROUGHLY 3 MINUTES AGO
The Third Child didn't know how close to reality his earlier train of thought was.
Evangelions were indeed monsters cloned from Angels, not that Shinji could've known that. Only a select number of people in the world knew of the Evangelions' true origin.
The thing that set Evas apart from all other life on earth was the need for a soul to be artificially inserted into them instead of being born with one like other lifeforms.
Unit-01 was especially different in the fact that, unlike all other Units that had been cloned from Adam, the First Angel, Unit-01 had been cloned from the Second Angel, Lilith. The soul that had been imprisoned inside of its core belonged to one Ikari Yui. Everyone thought the young scientist's disappearance during Unit-01's Contact Experiment had been a tragic accident, but in reality, that couldn't be farther from the truth.
Yui had planned the whole thing.
Being the daughter of a Seele member essentially granted the woman whatever she would have wanted in life so long as she kept her mouth shut about their plans for Human Instrumentality. She never subscribed to the Council's view of humanity's future, and the old geezers had always been suspicious of her. That was why she created a plan for her own version of Instrumentality after her Father died right after Second Impact.
Yui knew the Seele Council couldn't be stopped. She was just one woman and they had the world at their fingertips. Her Father had kept their attention at bay whilst he was alive, all the while desperately trying to change her mind about Seele's Scenario.
After her passing barely a year after Second Impact, Seele turned their full attention to her. She knew they had their suspicions about her disagreements with their Scenario and she knew she had to work fast. Yui made herself invaluable to them by spearheading Project-E. Once Unit-00 had been completed and the old men knew how to build and maintain Evas, Yui knew they'd once again consider eliminating her.
After some clever undercover espionage by her old college bestie, Mari, it was revealed her paranoia was not unfounded. They would soon send someone to kill her. Seele took zero chances when it came to their precious Scenario, so Yui decided to become the sacrificial lamb for Unit-01. She'd be out of Seele's spotlight and directly help to win the coming war with the Angels.
Once Yui had become Unit-01's surrogate soul, there wasn't anything anyone could do about it. Humanity NEEDED Unit-01 for the coming fight against the remaining angels so they couldn't just destroy the first viable core for an Eva. Unit-00 may have been completed but it was still lacking a soul to power it.
Being trapped inside Unit-01's core was a strange experience. It was almost like being dead, and yet it wasn't at the same time. She couldn't feel her body and had no way of communicating with people outside the Eva.
Oddly enough, it reminded her of a song her friend Markus had shown her once about a soldier who had similarly lost all sensation and ability to speak.
She could barely perceive things outside of the Eva through its eyes when it had no power. However, when millions of watts of electricity flowed into the mighty cyborg, Yui could see quite clearly and regained her other senses but had no control over them.
That was where Shinji came in. Being the surrogate soul for Unit-01 could only be described as being the middleman between its body and mind. One-third of the three essential things needed for a fully functioning Evangelion. And now that she was bound to the Eva, she would never be free of it.
Her eternal imprisonment was a sacrifice she willingly made.
She believed in her Scenario. And after it was all said and done, she would become a reminder of humanity's accomplishments. She would live on long after the earth, moon, and stars crumbled and turned to dust.
Plus, she had faith in her husband to raise their son right. Yui had never intended for Shinji to become an Eva pilot but Evangelions could only be piloted by those who had a strong link to the soul inside the core.
Yui had no way of knowing but the strong link of a pilot to soul did not just extend to feelings of love and positivity. Hatred also seemed to work just fine in the case of Unit-00.
After her absorption, she waited patiently for Shinji to begin his pilot training. And she waited, and waited,...and waited. Years passed with not even a glimpse of her son. What she did was something out of a nightmare.
Instead of her son walking around the Eva cages, she'd often see a little girl with light blue hair. She didn't pay the girl much mind once she realized the young lass was Unit-00's pilot. But when the girl got close enough to Unit-01 for Yui her blood-red eyes and an exact copy of her face reflected on the young pilot is when the horror set in.
Just who and what was that girl?!
When next Yui saw her little boy, it wasn't the small bundle of energy and happiness she remembered, but instead a depressed teenage boy who desperately craved his Father's love. What had happened to her baby boy?! Yui received the answer when her son entered the entry plug and began synchronizing with Unit-01.
Instead of raising their son as he should've, Gendo cast Shinji off on her old friend Markus. She idly wondered what had happened to the man. The Markus Vincennes in her son's memories looked like a husk of his former self. She saw no memories of his wife, Marguerite, or their baby girl, Maria, anywhere inside her son's mind. And more importantly, why had Professor Fuyutsuki allowed this to transpire?!
Her Sensei was the one person she'd told about her Scenario. She thought she could trust him! He was supposed to make sure things went according to her Scenario!
Her plan to give her son a life that was his to choose freely once the Angels were defeated had been completely derailed. Yui Ikari had severely fucked up. As smart as she was, she never could've predicted her former Sensei's cowardice. Or her husband's fear of getting close to his own son.
And now the one who had paid the price was her baby boy.
Her husband was so lost in his devotion to her and his fear of intimacy that he forgot what was most important. She knew Gendo had problems connecting with people and was afraid when she announced her pregnancy to him. But over time he seemed like he'd gotten better at connecting with people over the course of their relationship. He'd even started playing with little Shinji and smiling more around the house.
Maybe Gendo would've been a good father if she was still around to help guide him but she had no time to reflect on what if's right now. Right now, she had to get Shinji to safety.
But protecting her child was no easy task whilst being stuck inside an Evangelion. For she wasn't alone inside the Eva. Deep within Unit-01 lay a primal force Yui had dubbed "The Beast". The Beast, as Yui had figured out, was a jumbled mess of raw animal instinct that Unit-01 possessed in place of true consciousness. It was the last piece of the puzzle to make Unit-01 activate and move.
When her son synched with Unit-01, his mind and soul were open to her and the Beast. She was the link between the two. The Beast moved the Eva's body, Shinji commanded it what to do with his mind, and she was the translator that sent those commands to the Beast to carry out.
The Beast seemed to take a liking to Shinji almost instantly once he got into the plug, clocking in at an impressive 41% synch rate for his first sortie. The hardest part had been convincing it to help her save him and the blue-haired girl from falling debris before he first got into the plug.
Getting the Eva to move with no power source was a whole nother level of difficulty.
Without the abundance of voltage flooding into Unit-01 via power cable, the Beast entered a sort of dormant state akin to an animal undergoing hibernation. To get the Eva to move without power was to awaken the Beast from its slumber and give it full control of its body. This process took an incredible amount of energy from both the Beast and herself. They could only hold a berserker state for so long.
Right now though, the Beast was being unusually active. It was trying its damnedest move Unit-01's body but the Angel of Night was draining their energy somehow.
The eldritch monstrosity was currently messing around inside her son's mind. Yui was starting to get angry. What was it trying to do? What was it hoping to accomplish?
For the past 16 hours, the Beast had grown angrier and angrier at being trapped inside an enemy. It had heard enough from this pesky insect that tried to invade its pilot's mind. It liked its pilot.
They had killed many foes together and it would likely never see battle again without him. It decided it would protect the boy when its surrogate soul asked it to, if begrudgingly. It tolerated its surrogate soul but greatly preferred its pilot.
Its surrogate soul didn't have the same amount of negative emotions or capacity for violence that its pilot did...
Yui gathered her will and commanded the primal mind to drag the invading Messenger's consciousness straight to her. If this being was able to communicate with her son, perhaps it could be convinced to let them go. The Beast's mind flowed into her son's brain and snatched the Angel with an animalistic snarl.
When the Angel's mind reached the core Yui found herself inside her body for the first time in a decade. It wasn't her actual body though, it was merely a construct the Twelfth Angel created for her.
She found herself dressed in her favorite old outfit consisting of a purple turtleneck, navy blue skirt, black shoes, and white lab coat. She sat on the same ethereal train car that Leliel had made for her son. Though instead of her darling boy, the form sitting across from her was that of herself as a child. And judging by the expression on its face, it was not happy.
The Beast had also gained a physical form and it sat to her left.
Its overall shape resembled that of a very tall and lanky humanoid. Its skin was pitch black in color and the texture looked smooth to the touch. Patches of white, bonelike armor grew in random spots all over its body. A row of spikes descended down its back from the base of its neck, and its rib cage was exposed. All of its ten digits ended in bonelike claws that extended several inches. The most terrifying part was the Beast's head.
The flesh of its head almost seemed to have been removed to expose the skull underneath. Unlike the other bits of bone, the skull was littered with red markings around its eyes that mirrored the ones on Unit-01's helmet and a large horn extended upwards from its forehead. Its mouth held multiple rows of sharp, jagged teeth.
The Beast's eyes were two round orbs of burning crimson. When it moved its head, small trails of red light followed the eyes.
Around its neck and limbs was a series of short chains that seemed to connect directly to the wall of the train behind it. The monstrous visage might have scared Yui if she hadn't spent the last decade with the creature's mind.
The Angel glared hard after seeing the monstrous form of the Beast.
"Why have you taken me away from that little one?" Leliel asked.
Yui glared right back. The Beast snarled and tried lunging forward towards the Angel. Its restraints held it at bay.
"You WILL NOT hurt my son!" Yui growled.
Another tug on the chains.
"I have done no wrong, I merely wished to understand that Lilum." Leliel answered.
"You were hurting him!" She exclaimed.
The Beast tugged once more, a bit harder this time.
"You hurt him as well. The little Lilum was full of pain and yet you willingly part of that pain inflicted on him. Did you mean to cause him pain?" The Angel replied.
"Of course not! He's my son, I love him!" She raged.
"Then why did you leave him?" The Messenger questioned.
The Beast began snapping its jaws at the offending Angel.
"To protect him!" She yelled.
"And yet you willingly allow him to combat my brothers and sisters when they arrive." Leliel countered.
"Look, I don't have time to argue with you. My son is about to suffocate, just let us go!" Yui bellowed.
The chains holding back the Beast groaned in protest to its struggling. It wouldn't be much longer until it freed itself.
Leliel shook its head. "I cannot let you free."
"Why not?" Yui snarled through grit teeth.
"You would impede my mission to find my Father." The seraphim explained.
Yui had had enough of the Angel's nonsense. She had to save Shinji before it was too late, she was done trying to converse with this creature. Her emerald eyes changed and glowed bright red to mirror the Beast's eyes. The chains holding the nightmarish monster finally snapped and it lunged towards Leliel with an ear-splitting roar.
As soon as its claws made contact with Leliel's body, the Angel's consciousness was violently removed from the Evangelion. The metaphysical train and the duo's bodies crumbled and dissipated.
Now it was time to save her son. With the Angel's mind gone from the Eva, the two felt their power grow.
She tempted the Beast to achieve Berserker with the promise to soon brutalize the pesky intruder. The Eva's giant eyes opened and a quick look around revealed the same white void filled with a mass of buildings, cars, and other various things the Twelfth Angel had consumed. She had seen much the same through her son's eyes when they had been synched hours ago. After a few long seconds of searching, Unit-01 spied its target.
In the distance, a large, red sphere had formed amongst the floating debris. Seems like forcing the creature's mind back into its body had caused its core to finally appear. Unit-01's pupils contracted as the Beast spotted its prey. The jaw restraint groaned slightly in protest as it attempted to open Unit-01's mouth.
Yui denied it access from breaking the restraints, no need to scare her baby any more than he already was. Yui and the Beast warped the AT Field to propel the Eva towards the Angel's core. As they floated towards Leliel's core, Yui and Beast's minds had only one thought. It was time to send the Angel of Night back to God.
Before they could reach the core, their AT Field detected movement coming from above. The Eva craned its massive neck skywards to see a series of dark-colored specs quickly hurtling towards it. As the specs got closer, Unit-01's colossal emerald eyes widened in surprise when Yui realized what was coming towards them.
The dots above them were N2 mines! Just a single N2 mine had all the explosive power of a nuke sans radiation. There must have been hundreds coming towards them at this moment and they were falling very fast! If she didn't do something quick, her son would die here in this endless void.
In a flash, the Beast's bloodlust faded and it entered a state of pure survival instinct, a state Yui echoed. The two forced Unit-01 to retract its AT Field from its usual expanded state and formed it into a bubble around the Eva. The orange sphere flickered brightly with the familiar octagonal pattern as Yui and the Beast willed the AT Field to become stronger. This was the strongest Field they had ever produced and Yui prayed to any God listening that it held out.
She could feel her son's terror when the first of the mines impacted the reinforced AT Field. After almost 20 seconds of a nonstop barrage by the explosives, Yui knew she had to do something. The AT Field was beginning to crack under the sheer destructive power of all remaining 992 N2 mines in existence.
Yui thought about trying to dissolve Shinji's physical form and pull his soul into the core with her. He had a much better chance at survival that way. As long as there was LCL nearby and he had the will to come back, he could return to physical form.
Evangelions could only trap one soul but could bring in others to its core. She had designed them that way.
But sadly it wasn't possible. Shinji's synch rate wasn't nearly high enough to even begin to attempt such a risky maneuver. In his hysterical state, Shinji had unknowingly shut his Mother out of his heart and mind. She was running out of options to save her son!
Yui could only slightly make out the screeching cries of the Twelfth Angel over the boom of explosions all around her. That's when she noticed it. Pockets of color began opening and closing everywhere inside the Angel. If not for the Eva's absurd ability to change its body under extreme stress Yui wouldn't have even been able to see past the overabundance of light flooding into Unit-01's eyes.
If she could, Yui would've gasped when a space several meters wide in front of Unit-01's chest seemed to warp until space tore and displayed an image of a snowy cliffside with moonlight streaming down from behind the tear.
She noticed a small figure cloaked in red on the cliffside but she hadn't the time to even get a clear look at it.
She then understood what was happening.
The Angel was dying, and in its death throes, was quite literally tearing itself apart. Considering its body was a Dirac Sea meant that this creature was ripping apart spacetime. Its physical body did technically count as a different dimension, after all. She'd studied about this type of thing during college but didn't think she'd ever get to see something like this up close.
Yui didn't want to do this but she was out of options. If she wanted to save her son's life, she was going to have to send him through the hole in front of Unit-01. And she needed to do it right now. The size of the rip was already beginning to shrink like the others she'd seen outside of the AT Field
The Beast let out a deep growl in acknowledgment of her decision before finally snapping the jaw restraints and bellowing out a triumphant roar. Its pilot was going to escape from the Angel. It hoped that he survived long enough so they might slay more foes together one day.
When they willed Unit-01's neck armor to reveal the entry plug Yui could feel Shinji's fear greatly intensify. He was starting to hyperventilate so she gathered her strength to bid him farewell, rotated the Eva around so its plug faced the cliffside, and ejected the entry plug through it.
Seconds after the entry plug soared through the hole in space, it closed.
'Good luck, Shinji. Be safe…'
The AT Field cracked further and the stream of N2 mines wasn't slowing down. Another tear in space opened up to the left of the Eva just outside of its protective bubble. It was easily thrice the size of Unit-01. When Yui looked into it, she saw the familiar blackness of space dotted with bright, white stars twinkling in the distance.
The Beast and Yui saw their chance to escape and took it.
They quickly dropped the AT Field's spherical shape and used its power to blast the Eva towards the emptiness of space as fast as possible with a swing of its colossal left arm. The N2 mines' concussive force helped propel the giant toward its destination and sent it through the portal. Unit-01, however, did not get to safety unscathed.
Much of its armor had melted and been charred a smoldering black color. Its left arm had been blown completely off at the shoulder due to it being swung. Its legs were also missing several small chunks of flesh.
Yui didn't care though. Her boy was safe, that was all that mattered. She didn't know who the person standing on that cliff was but she hoped they could help her boy find his way back to Major Katsuragi.
She had seen memories of the woman constantly floating her child's head and she knew that he was safe in Misato Katsuragi's hands. She genuinely cared about Shinji and would take care of him, pilot or not.
The Beast agreed and knew not where its wayward pilot had been sent. What it did know was that it was tired now.
With her job done, Yui followed the Beast's lead and the two drifted into a deep slumber, comforted by the idea of seeing Shinji once more and the soft glow of starlight.
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Thus Kindly, I Scatter
These were the words carved into the stone underneath her Mom's name on her gravestone.
Young Ruby Rose had seen these words many times during her visits to the cliffside where her mother's spirit supposedly rested. It was hard to believe it had been almost an entire decade since she had seen her Mom. She missed her.
A gust of icy wind caused the girl to pull up her hood and wrap her bright, red cloak tighter around herself. She kneeled down to brush away some snow that had gathered on the gravestone.
She stood once more and stared down at the grave longingly.
"Hey, Mom. Sorry for not visiting sooner, Dad made me stay home and study crazy hard for the test in his class this week!" Ruby exclaimed.
A couple of seconds of silence passed as the young lass thought of what to say.
"So...I turned 14 last week." She said quietly.
"Yang and Dad went all-out for the party. They decorated the whole house. Yang even stuck a party hat on Zwei! I don't think he liked it very much." Ruby giggled.
"I invited the gang from Signal but they never showed. Said they were busy that day." She smiled sadly.
"I understand though. Everyone's got stuff going on...like they do every year. I just...I just really thought they might finally show up this year." She sighed.
"But Uncle Qrow made it though!" She exclaimed happily.
"I didn't think he'd be finished with his mission in time to make it but he did!"
Ruby beamed with excitement at the memory of her Uncle surprising her with a giant bear hug after he'd snuck up in her.
After her Uncle Qrow was when the fun began. Ruby had quickly dug into the chocolate cake her Dad had baked for her after she'd blown out her candles and made a wish. Her birthday was the only day of the year when Dad (or Yang for that matter) let her have cake for dinner and she wasn't about to let that opportunity go to waste.
After that, it was time to open her presents.
Her Dad had gotten her a nice new pair of red-colored headphones to replace the ones that had recently broken. Her sister had gotten her Ultimate Ninja Showdown 9. Yang then proceeded to thrash her at the game once they played it. And lastly, but certainly not least, Uncle Qrow had gifted her a top-of-the-line cleaning kit for Crescent Rose.
The cheerful smile fell from her face.
She loved all her presents. But when the party was over and she lay awake in bed, there was only one thing she really wanted for her birthday.
"I wish you could've been here…"
"I understand why you had to go. I barely remember your face but I still miss you more and more, every day." The girl continued.
"Everyone else misses you too. It can be rough down here without you sometimes." The reaper remarked.
"I know you can't come back, but maybe you could send an angel!" She joked.
Her grin grew wider at her joke.
"Yeah, the nicest angel you can find. Maybe if we had an angel Zwei might finally get morning walkies on time when it's Yang's turn to walk him." Ruby laughed.
Just then, the young girl felt her scroll buzz and removed it from the front pocket of her jeans. It was a text from her Dad telling her to get her butt back home. Looks like her leisurely stroll up to the cliff was longer than she thought.
'C'mon, Dad, it's only 9:00. It's not like I stay out late like Yang does.' She mentally griped.
She fired back a quick text telling him she was on her way and placed her scroll back in her pocket. Ruby knew arguing with her father was pointless. If she wasn't home soon, he, or worse Yang, would come and drag her back.
"I have to go now, Mom. I'll come back soon, I promise." She stated.
Ruby placed her pointer, index, and middle fingers against her lips and gently kissed the digits. She knelt once more and placed the three fingers upon her mother's gravestone.
"I love you…" Ruby whispered.
She rose to her full height and turned to begin her journey home. She barely made it five paces away from her mother's grave before something suddenly blocked out the moonlight behind her.
She ignored it at first but then she stopped dead in her tracks. There was barely a cloud in the sky tonight! The young lass whirled around to see what had blocked out the light from Remnant's broken moon. Ruby was stunned by what she saw.
"What the heck…" The girl gaped.
In the sky above the cliff was a massive circle of pure darkness hovering in place. A muted sound like thunder was constantly emanating from it. Ruby had never seen anything like this before. Could it have been some kind of Grimm?!
She took no chances and unfurled Crescent Rose from its magnetic holster on her back and prepared herself for a fight.
As the red reaper took a combat stance she noticed the circle beginning to shrink in size. What in the world was she even looking at? Grimm didn't shrink in size nor did they come in abstract shapes like this. The circle also didn't have any exposed bone that she could see.
She ran out of time to ponder when a large object came sailing out from the circle. As soon as the object had completely left it, the circle shrank rapidly until it disappeared entirely. The loud booming sound disappeared along with it.
But Ruby paid little mind. Her attention was on whatever it was that just came flying outwards over her head. The object soared over the cliff's small clearing and began smashing into the tops of the trees nearby. Four jets of flame erupted from its sides, seemingly trying to slow it down.
Ruby watched it continue on its arc, clipping treetops as it went. It continued falling until it was out of sight. A thunderous crashing sound and a slight tremor of the ground signaled its impact.
Ruby only managed to get a glimpse of whatever it was but it looked like an airship. What should she do? Last she checked airships didn't randomly appear out of weird, black shapes in the sky. Maybe it was a Semblance?
She had overheard Uncle Qrow telling Yang about how her biological mother's Semblance could create portals to those she'd bonded with. Could the circle have a Semblance like that?
'If that's the case someone could be hurt!'
Her eyes widened at the thought and she took off and sprinted into the woods towards the crashed object. If someone really was in trouble she'd be there to help them. It's what Huntresses did, after all.
It's what her Mom would've done.
The trail of destruction leading into the forest made the supposed airship very to track. As she got closer, another gust of freezing made another shiver go down her spine but it also brought with it a bad omen.
The scent of blood was heavy on the wind.
Ruby activated her Semblance and sprinted even faster towards the crash site. When she arrived, the little reaper realized she wasn't looking at an airship at all. The object that had crashed was a large, metal cylinder of some kind.
Steam billowed from it and cascaded up into the sky.
It was white, with a hint of red and gold. The text "EVA-01" was painted on its side. The cylinder appeared to have sustained some damage from fall and subsequent impact into the ground but remained largely intact.
A large rock had pierced the object's rounded bottom and out from the damaged hull leaked an amber-colored liquid. When the liquid touched the snowy ground, its heat began to melt the snow, adding the rising steam.
As Ruby cautiously approached she noted that the liquid pooling on the forest floor smelled exactly like blood. She circled the thing, trying to figure out what exactly she was looking at.
'What is this stuff?' She wondered.
The copious amount of metallic-smelling liquid explained why the smell of blood was so prevalent in the wind. The whole thing reeked of blood.
Within a few seconds, the cylinder cooled and the steam faded enough for Ruby to notice a kind of small hatch on its side. A hatch that was barely hanging on. The girl pulled out her scroll and switched on its flashlight app. She changed Crescent Rose to its rifle mode and slowly crept forward, gripping her weapon tightly in her left hand.
'I knew I should have put a flashlight mod on Crescent Rose!' She mentally yelled.
She reached the side of the thing and shined her scroll's light inside. The only thing at the bottom was the tip of the rock that had pierced the strange, metal tube. She swung her light around towards the top and gasped at what she saw.
Holy crap, there really was someone in trouble!
At the top of the cylinder rested an odd-looking console and a large seat. And sitting in that seat was a person! A boy that looked to be about her age, garbed in a skintight white and blue suit with hints of red and black. His features appeared Mistralian, with a head of dark-colored hair.
He sat with his head slumped over on his right shoulder, a nasty-looking gash on his forehead leaking blood down his face, shoulder, and chest.
Ruby threw all caution to the wind upon seeing the boy and clambered inside the hatch. Her boots hit the bottom of the tube with a splash of orange liquid and she immediately waded up to the boy.
She grew alarmed when she noticed the trickle of blood that flowed from the boy's head down onto his chest. She immediately holstered Crescent Rose, crouched down, and shook the boy's shoulder.
"Hey! Can you hear me?! Are you okay?!" She shrieked.
The boy reacted by violently gagging and expelled more of the weird liquid from his mouth. He coughed loudly for a few seconds. After he finished expelling all the nasty stuff from his body, the boy groggily raised his head and swung his gaze onto Ruby.
It was at that moment that cobalt met silver for the first time.
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And that's it for the prologue! Hope everyone enjoyed this lil diddy. I've got a pretty good idea of where this story is gonna go. Hell, I even based Shinji on a certain fairy tale character for this story.
Until next time, y'all.