Creation began on 11-20-20

Creation ended on 03-23-22

Neon Genesis Evangelion

The Broken and the Unbreakable: Shifting Tactics

A/N: How NERV is going through the changes that have affected their original operation.

The information had been sketchy at first, but NERV now had an understanding of what had occurred in the park where the Third Child, or rather, the former Third Child, had gone to relax away from the Geo-Front. People had reported of a woman with a pair of fiery whips that showed up and singled the boy out, managing to destroy three trees, half a walkway and a fountain in the process. It had only been three days since the first Angel had appeared in human form and the entire strategy to face them had changed into this new game that had been in motion, and all NERV had to defend against the end of the world…was the very same boy that had murdered his father because they couldn't coexist due to different beliefs, backgrounds and matters of conscience.

"She's giving off the same blue pattern as the previous Angel," Maya informed Misato and Ritsuko, as the command center was tapped into the city's surveillance cameras, getting a limited view of the fight between the woman that was an Angel…and the Unbreakable that was Shinji Ikari. "No way."

Shinji, wearing another set of ruined clothing, had jumped out of the way as the whip-wielding woman had flung her right whip's tip against him, missing him, but causing a small explosion on the edge of the artificial lake, demonstrating that her offensive weapon of choice were effective.

And we don't know what else this boy can do, thought Misato and Ritsuko; the original aim of the new operation against the Angels was to understand what it was that Shinji was capable of when put against the threat, as they only knew he couldn't be hurt by most methods that were able to kill a regular person, meaning it was likely that he could perform other feats unknown to people once made aware of them.

-x-

Realization

Invulnerability was one thing they understood about Shinji so far, but it seemed like he demonstrated another aspect of his abilities that was only viewed as a possibility because he hadn't tried anything since the aftermath of the Angel attack from several days ago, when he killed his father. All that was required…was for the boy to show it, which was a challenge right now due to not many people wanting to be near him if he was capable.

"Wear this blindfold," Ritsuko instructed him as he laid under a pair of barbell with weight plates he was going to lift, "after which, you will see if you can lift up the bar once we've set the weights onto it."

Shinji did as instructed and placed his hands on the bar, waiting for the weights to be applied. There were two assistants that applied the weights to either end of the bar and then backed away.

"Begin," Ritsuko told Shinji; they were starting with fifty pounds of weight, since the boy looked skinny and probably couldn't support anything past his own weight.

Shinji slowly moved the bar up, but exhibited some difficulty in holding it. It did seem like fifty pounds was beyond his ability to support. But then, he slowly pushed the bar up and down, once, twice, thrice…until he did it seven times.

"That was fifty pounds, Shinji," Ritsuko told him. "That appears to be your overall limit. We'll try with less weight this time around."

Shinji just lied there until he was told to raise the bar again, hearing only the sound of the wight plates being moved.

"Begin," instructed Ritsuko, and Shinji slowly lifted the bar up.

It felt like nothing had changed to him. He raised the bar up and down seven times, the number he was supposed to do and then put the bar back on the support hooks. It felt like he was still lifting fifty pounds.

"How much weight did you have removed before I lifted?" He asked them, not trying to remove the blindfold.

"We…didn't take off anything," one of the assistants revealed to him, and Shinji removed the blindfold, looking up at the weight plates, seeing that there were more than what he believed to be fifty pounds.

He got up and left the room soon after hearing that.

"How much was that he lifted?" Ritsuko questioned the two assistants.

"Four-hundred-fifty," they answered.

So far, Shinji had shown that he could lift up more than four-hundred pounds of weight…but he lifted the weights up like they were only fifty pounds. And this was only because he was blindfolded at the time. This, along with the fact that he was invulnerable to a heightened degree, had a case of concern for Ritsuko and the rest of the NERV personnel.

"He's a freak," one of the assistants declared.

-x-

"…I am Shamshel, the Angel of the Day," said the human-looking Angel to Shinji as he ducked behind a wall. "You murdered my brother! If you're the only Unbreakable in this whole world, all I need to do is get rid of you! You're just a footnote on the way to the new world order that awaits!"

Shinji was about to go out and attack her, but then he turned to his right behind the wall and saw some people there beside him, keeping their distance.

"Why didn't you run when she showed up?" He asks a man holding a little girl in his arms.

"We go out there and she sees us, she's going to kill us," he answers back. "She's only interested in getting rid of you, but she won't hesitate get rid of us because of you."

"You should've died on that train, not everyone else," a woman tells him. "Why is she even after you? You Ikaris… You're nothing but trouble."

Shinji looks back at Shamshel as she nears closer to where he was hiding, and then looks back to these people hiding in fear of being killed by her whips.

"You think I asked for this?" He questions. "You think I wanted to survive that nightmare of an event, to find out that I was the only survivor of something that makes no sense at all? This is just insane, and all of you are just adding on to my list of problems ever since I had to meet that man that has yet to be buried in the ground because there was no point in even trying to talk to him. You think I attract trouble? Well, maybe I do, but I don't do it on purpose. Well, that's not entirely true. I murdered my father, and nobody that knows seems to let me forget about it, despite that I can't forget about it because I chose to get rid of him. He was more of a monster than what people have labeled me, and yet I get the fourth degree from everyone that either knows my last name or has seen my face. And then we got a woman that uses whips to smash up things on my case, and I still get looked down upon just for surviving a train derailment without a scratch. Hell, I should probably just point out to the woman what could happen if I suggested that she let you all go."

"Actually," they heard Shamshel's voice as she appeared behind Shinji, "I could care less about all of you, and it's not because of this Unbreakable here. This is all merely a game we're playing, and this young man is the only one standing between the end of your world as you understand it…and those like me reaping the spoils. It's nothing really personal, but if you get killed in the process of getting rid of him (she gestures to Shinji in front them), it's of no concern, since you people kill each other every other day. Ha!"

She flung her left whip at them, but Shinji grabbed it with his right hand, keeping the tip of it from reaching a little boy on the face.

"The one thing I found disgusting about you Unbreakables is that you were Lilith's favorite among her brood…and yet you don't have much of a future beyond this obligation!"

"Says you," Shinji groaned, feeling the burning sensation from the whip in his hand. "Let the people leave. They have nothing to do with this."

"They exist and they're Lilin like yourself. And why should I care if they die in the crossfire? You killed my brother. Everyone's just another casualty in a cruel, cruel world made by the Lilin. Cruelty. It's contagious. And your willingness to try and protect them, despite their conscious dislike of you…is highly ridiculous."

"I don't hate them for hating me; they don't even know the real me. I don't even think I know the real me."

Seeing his hand searing under the heat of the whip, but impressed by his unwillingness to let go of it, Shamshel expressed, "It's gotta be a pain for you not to know who you are. It's like…your soul disappears or something of the sort."

"Yeah. It is like that."

Shamshel then spun around to use her right whip, aiming at the bystanders, but Shinji reached out and grabbed its tip with his other hand, receiving another burn that seared through his flesh.

"Aaurgh," he groaned, feeling the skin on his hand burn away, and he turned to the bystanders. "Run! Get out of here!"

They obeyed and fled the scene.

"Fool!" Shamshel called him, and charged towards him, slamming her head into his nose.

Bash! Shinji, despite holding on to the burning whips, was sent flying backwards, which had the unexpected effect of pulling her with him!

-x-

"…She burned his hands with those whips of hers," Ritsuko told Misato as they were watching Shinji being beaten by the Angel.

"Yeah," she responded, wondering why it was taking Shinji so long to deal with this threat; all he had to do was kill her.

"Oh, you've gotta be kidding me," said one of the female personnel, seeing through a camera that showed some teenager with a camera trying to take video of the fight.

-x-

Although his hands had been burnt by the whips, Shinji refused to let go of them as he got back up onto his feet.

Shamshel pulled the whips back, but Shinji kept them from being flung out , despite the pain doing so caused him. She tried to pull them back again, but got the same result.

"Fine," she expressed, letting them fall from her hands. "I don't need my whips to kill you."

Their fight had left the park and was now on the streets of the city. The scarlet-haired woman walked towards a parked car…and picked it up off the street, surprising anyone that was present to witness.

"Whoa, man!" Shinji noticed a boy his age with a camera; he had been hiding behind the car Shamshel had picked up. "You are one hot mama!"

She looked at him and frowned.

"You're dead," she told him, preparing to slam the car on the boy; she didn't care if he wasn't her actual enemy, as he was just a Lilin that didn't deserve this world that belonged to her and Adam's brood, so one less Lilin was just another step to the end result that was reclaiming this world for themselves. "Any last words?"

Shinji released the whips and ran towards her. Even if the boy was injured by the car, so long as he survived, there was a chance at recovery…so long as he didn't lose an arm or leg. He made contact with her, knocking her to the ground, but the end result left more than a ton of metal, plastic and glass to fall atop them.

Smash!

"I don't see your concern towards these people," she told him. "They either hate you or fear you! Why bother with protecting them?!"

Shinji replied, "It's nothing personal towards them. Everyone that always says that nothing is personal, do they even believe in what they say when they say that? Every time they say something they do isn't personal, that sounds like it's just an excuse to justify their darkest actions and absolve themselves of any wrongdoing."

"We all do…only what we know we have to do," she explained. "Such is the bane that is fate."

"Believe it not, I wanted to believe in fate once. But what is fate. What is it really?"

"You Lilin are truly…a complicated bunch."

"We don't live in an uncomplicated world, anymore. I don't believe we ever did."

"No. You never did…and never will."

Then…all Shinji saw…was fire. If there was such a thing as Hell for him, maybe the agony would be all that he understood in his short life. If there was such a thing as Heaven for him, for trying to do one thing right, maybe he could ask whoever it was that was responsible for putting him on Earth with a wrong crowd…why his life was full of suffering. Why was it that he ended up with a family on the edge of arrogance and contempt, that his mother was dead and his father had been a complete stranger that was never going to accept him as he was, and why when the game was set in the beginning, he ended up as one of the pieces being put into check?

The flames died down…and he was laying on the ground…beside a charred body.

"Great Caesar's ghost," he heard someone yell, and he blinked, confused by what was going on around himself.

Rising to a sitting position, he noticed that his clothes had been charred. He looked around his terrain, seeing buildings and pavement, wondering why it didn't look all that different from where he had been…and then noticed the same boy with the camera nearby, his facial expression one of fearful awe.

"Is this Hell?" He decided to ask him.

"No," he answers, "but you look like you went to Hell and got kicked out when they decided to take her instead."

Shinji looked down at the charred corpse of the Angel and sighs. It would be a while before NERV arrived to collect him, so he would be sitting there until they brought him a new set of clothes to wear. Looking at his hands, he saw that they were heavily scarred by the burns. If it was between these burns and a murder-suicide attempt by the Angel that assumed human form to face him, he would have to live with the lesser of the two fates he had been dealt with.

To be continued…

A/N: It's a challenge, but it's likely that Shinji will have a menagerie of different abilities at his disposal to deal with the Angels in the future as they come to face him. He's already demonstrated his invulnerability and some degree of strength, which he was uncomfortable with discovering because it puts him in a position of concern with other people, but what do you think is next on the list of abilities he has as an Unbreakable? Read and review as you stay safe and sane during these confusing times.