Creation began on 09-05-16

Creation ended on 12-02-17

Neon Genesis Evangelion

The Beast Cheers for the Boy

A/N: Support comes from unexpected sources.

To Shinji's surprise and disgust, Ritsuko Akagi wasn't someone who could provide any degree of information without having a problem with either who was asking for it or who (and what) it was pertaining to. He thought it would be best if he spoke on Yuki-Onna's behalf about her problem with her memories that she seemed to have that weren't hers, and all Ritsuko suggested to him was that she, as a result of genetic engineering and splicing human and reptilian genes, was likely subjected to inherited memories from the human donors, an unexpected addition to her mental faculties from her human side. Worse was how she asked him about how Yuki-Onna acted as his roommate, since she was living with him.

"That's my business, Dr. Akagi," he told her, unable to mask how he was offended by what he felt was her trying to find a reason to have Yuki-Onna reduced to a laboratory specimen, as he washed his face of the dirt from the day in the bathroom. What was I supposed to say? She sleeps on the floor beside my bed and I give her a pillow and blanket? Truth be told, Yuki's company is…more pleasing than any other person's could probably be. I can't think of anyone else that would actually want to be around me without bringing up the irregularities of my past.

As he decided to call it a day, Yuki-Onna, who sat on the floor in front of the television set, was looking at a music video where women were dancing an unusual dance in the genetic crossbreed's mind. But it was a necessity for her to educate herself whenever she couldn't rely on Shinji or other people to explain things to her.

"Yuki's-Onna?" Shinji spoke to her, and she looked at him.

"Dancing," she told him, and he saw the women shaking and jumping around on the TV.

"Fun," he said back to her. "Dancing is a way of having fun, expressing yourself."

"Friend…dance?"

"Not as much as I wish I could."

"Friend…lonely?"

"Yeah."

Yuki-Onna then got up and stood in front of him.

"Friend…not lonely now?" She asked him, pointing to herself and then at him.

Shinji smiled and responded, "No… I'm not lonely now."

-x-

"…It has memories that aren't its own?" Gendo questioned Ritsuko, who relayed what she suspected about the creature.

"Based on what the Third Child asked about memories, it can be suggested, or even argued, that this creature has inherited memories, passed down at the genetic level from its human donors," she explained.

"But it was believed that memories cannot be passed down generationally," went Fuyutsuki to them; he had read about Ultratech's work on genetics and came to his own conclusion that the people behind it were the pioneers of what may have led to the work on the Evas. "Yet this creature… Yuki-Onna has memories of people she has never met, of things she's probably never done in her own life. She's likely proof that memories actually can be passed down through genetic heredity, even if it's an artificially-enhanced organism."

"Where is the Third Child now?" Gendo asked Ritsuko.

"He returned to his quarters after asking me about his…pet," she answered him.

"We may need to separate them."

"I'm afraid that's going to be a problem," she told them. "It…appears to have some affect on the boy's synchronization ratio. He's always looking at it…and it's always speaking to him, each time more clearly, more coherently…and their meaningless conversations have had a positive effect on his synchronization. It's currently at seventy-three percent."

"What do they talk about?" Fuyutsuki asks; he wanted to know out of curiosity on the creature's behavior and interaction around people.

"A lot of unnecessary things. Music lyrics, the weather, Lake Ashi, sunsets. It always addresses the boy as 'friend', something he definitely takes comfort in."

"So, it seems that Yuki-Onna…has a genuine affection towards the boy."

"Maybe a little too affectionate."

-x-

Yuki-Onna awoke in the dead of night, looking at the door to Shinji's quarters as it slowly slid open, and made a silent growl as she rose up off the floor, shedding her blanket.

A man outside the quarters, under orders from Commander Ikari to remove the beast, along with eight other men, armed with heavy sedative darts, backed away at the sight of a pair of glowing, red eyes.

"We gotta back off," he told the others. "We gotta back off now."

"What about the Third Child?" Another man asked him. "Is he still alive in there?"

As the glowing eyes came closer to the half-open door, the guy saw the boy still asleep, but was starting to stir.

"If this thing hasn't turned him into a snack yet, I doubt it ever will," he uttered as Yuki-Onna's head stuck out the door, looking at them like she was really angry.

She sniffed the air in between them and herself.

"You…are disturbing our beauty sleep," she told them. "Go away…please."

She then pulled back and slid the door closed.

"Screw this," one of them said and walked away; there was no way he was going to risk getting his hide chewed up by a monster that slept by a boy's bed.

-x-

"…So, Shinji, did anything…odd happen last night?" Misato asked Shinji as he sat in the Entry Plug for his next test the next day.

"If by 'odd', you mean did any uninvited guests attempt to break into my quarters while Yuki-Onna and I were asleep? Yes, something odd did occur last night." Shinji told her, his face appearing on one of the screens, not really looking at her or Ritsuko, but paying attention to Yuki-Onna, who was standing in the back of the room, watching him.

"Um, you do know they were only there for your protection," she tried to claim.

"No offense, but I doubt that assumption. When does any security detail need to sneak or break into someone's personal space? If you think Yuki-Onna was going to try something on me while I slept, then that's totally ludicrous."

"Is that so?" Ritsuko questioned. "You do understand that, due to her reptilian characteristics, she is a predator, a hunter, a carnivore."

"If she wanted to do to me whatever she decided upon doing, then she would've done so long ago…and I probably wouldn't be here to run my mouth about it."

"Or unless it's just being patient."

"I don't hurt friend," said Yuki-Onna to the women, once more upsetting everyone else present in the room. "I have given up that part of the past."

Everyone turned to look at her like something was revealed.

"Given up?" Maya went. "As in…you've…eaten people before?"

The hybrid turned to face her…and sighed as she nodded in the positive.

"Hey, don't blame her," said Shinji in defense of her past crimes, "blame the people responsible for whatever she was intended to be…or do."

How can he so calm about her past actions? Misato wondered. She's already confessed to eating people before…and he doesn't hold her responsible for being a former man-eater.

"They weren't moving," said Yuki-Onna, "and their hearts weren't beating. Bugs and decay had claimed them before I ever found them."

If this creature was speaking truthfully, then its former human victims had been nothing more than corpses…and it had eaten rotting flesh.

"How long ago was this?" Ritsuko asked. "Months?"

"Too long for any indication of eidetic capacities," answered Shinji, indicating that the hybrid, while human to a degree with the capacity for speech and communication, wasn't intelligent enough to do anything mathematical. "Way before we ever met, too."

This indicated that not only was the creature very old, but hadn't developed mentally enough to understand the concept of years.

Scrape. Yuki-Onna was cutting into the floor beneath her feet, carving several numbers into the metal like it was made of paper.

"She can't tell years, but she has some awareness of days," Shinji explained to them. "She…counts each day that passes, like it's some sort of internal clock. She never loses track. I suspect the counting of numbers represents her time lived."

Misato saw the numeral symbols for nine, two and twenty-three. If these represented how many days Yuki-Onna has lived, then…it meant that she was, in human years…

"You think she's like most of us?" Maya asked Shinji. "Some sort of…adult?"

"Physically, mentally or emotionally?" He countered her question with one of his own.

The alarms suddenly went off, telling all of NERV that a new Angel had arrived.

"I hope…for your sake," Yuki-Onna said to Ritsuko and Misato, "that he does not get ended because of you."

It was the way she said it and the way she looked at them that made a shiver creep up Misato's spine, as if it were meant to be viewed as a threat to the two specifically because they were there.

"I'm sorry, but it that a threat?" Ritsuko asked.

"No," she answered. "Not a bodily threat. A warning. Friend is precious to me. No price tag on value. No thing worth trading over. If friend gets ended…it is on you…and the bad man you smell just like."

It was only when the creature said that did some realization set in for Misato. However she viewed it, however she declared it through her limited speech, Yuki-Onna valued Shinji over all else within NERV. If anything happened to him that resulted in his death, she was going to view it as a murder that they had caused…and hold them directly responsible.

"I'm sorry, but just how is the boy more valuable than the Eva in your eyes?" She asks her.

"Friend… Shinji… Good. You…her…and the bad man she smells like…not as good."

She simply valued his life and his presence around herself. Everything and everyone else around her, including their objective, was a secondary concern.

Then, simply because she didn't understand what she meant by the other thing she told them, Misato questioned, "And what do you mean, Ritsuko smells like a bad man?"

"Not a bad man. The bad man. It's not a decaying stench…but one that lingers."

-x-

The Angel resembled a large, pink, squid-like shovel of sorts, flying into the city. It stopped and stood up in the middle of the city.

Something was approaching its location.

Slam! That something had risen from the ground, looking like a mockery of who it was looking for, but smelling like the one they despised.

It split its limbs apart and unleashed its whips of light.

-x-

Fortress city, my ass! Shinji thought, not wanting to fight the Angel while within the city, and seeing the roads leading in and out of Tokyo-3 behind it.

The Eva, armed with a pallet rifle, cast it aside and charged towards the Angel.

"Shinji, what are doing?!" He heard Misato's voice through the intercom. "Shoot the Angel!"

"No," he responded. "I'm doing this my way."

Slam! The Eva crashed into the Angel and sent them both flying backwards onto the roads that led into the city limits, missing every building in the process.

The Angel's whips pierced the Eva's waist, but the enemy's weight didn't budge.

"Aaurgh!" Shinji groaned, feeling he had two holes in his waist. "Damn it all!"

He activated the Eva's Prog. Knife and used it to stab the Angel in its exposed core, sending sparks flying all over.

"Friend come back," he heard Yuki-Onna say to him, and he drove the knife in further, causing the core to shatter into several pieces.

"Aaaaahh!" The Angel shrieked, its whips disappearing from sight as it became limp and lifeless.

-x-

The blue pattern had vanished the instant the core was destroyed, meaning the Angel was dead, and the city was still in one piece.

"Shinji, the next time an Angel attacks the city, you are to follow my orders," Misato told him over the intercom.

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Ms. Katsuragi," Shinji responded to her.

"Why is that?"

"Because orders aren't always meant to be obeyed."

The connection was then terminated, and the purple-haired woman felt the need to fume.

"Why, that insolent, little…" She went, but was stopped by Yuki-Onna looking at her. "What?"

"Your breath stinks," she told her.

Misato then breathed into her right hand and smelled her breath, smelling the alcohol she had from earlier.

"Mind your own business," she told the artificial dinosaur.

"Friend is my business," Yuki-Onna responded.

-x-

Shinji wasn't reprimanded by anyone for deviating from the previous order against the Angel, but he was looked at with some degree of increased scorn after returning the Eva to the cages…where Yuki-Onna had waited for him.

"Hey, Yuki-Onna?" He spoke to her as he walked with her back to their private quarters.

"Grr?" She went, looking at him.

"Thanks for cheering me on out there."

"Friend… Shinji… Friend cannot be replaced. Don't want friend replaced. Your presence…your life…is precious to me…more than food and shelter."

Her vocabulary was improving, but her emotions gave her words away. To Shinji, Yuki-Onna had simply stated how irreplaceable he was to her and that he was worth more than money, than jewels, than anything you could put a price tag on.

"You mean a lot to me, too, Yuki-Onna," he told her.

-x-

"…His synchronization increased to seventy-seven percent when the creature told him to come back," Ritsuko informed Gendo and Fuyutsuki in the former's office later that day. "There's something else, too. I think this thing, while still intellectually stunted, isn't as stupid as it seems. It views the boy as invaluable…and the rest of us as secondary concerns."

"Can you elaborate on this?" Fuyutsuki asked her.

"It gave a warning that if the Third Child were ever harmed, it would hold us responsible."

"We'll leave it be," said Gendo to them, "at least for now."

But Ritsuko suspected that he wouldn't allow the creature to be left alone with the boy after what she confided in him about its sense of smell.

-x-

"…Okay, Yuki-Onna," went Shinji to the creature, standing in front of her beside the television, "hands on your hips, then follow the girl's lead."

She had to stand more upright before she could do so, but found it not as discomforting as it should've been.

Boing! The cartoon girl on the TV did as she shifted her body to the left with the blue, koala-like alien that followed suit.

Boing! Yuki-Onna did as portrayed, and got the same result…and looked at Shinji.

"Ooh…" She reacted.

"You're picking up the moves now," he told her, and they imitated the cartoon characters' dance moves further.

-x-

The fact that Tokyo-3 now had a large carcass to dispose of didn't impede the presence of a young woman and older man, both here due to hearing rumors of a dinosaur running around the city with a fourteen-year-old boy.

"What do you think?" The woman asked the man.

"I think it's unusual that even one of Ultratech's abominations survived Second Impact," the man answered back. "But the boy being around it makes me question the very sanity of why anyone, let alone a young child, would risk being around something that is unstable and dangerous."

"Unless, of course, we're thinking this based only upon our own experiences with such a creature. If it is a different one, then we were both right about one thing about Ultratech: They're unpredictable at playing God with the gift of creation."

The woman, dressed in a green leotard with collapsible batons at her hips and a green headband tied around her short, ebony hair felt an area of skin on her right shoulder where three, healed claw marks were, a constant reminder that she didn't escape unscathed from her past with Ultratech and its monsters.

The man, dressed like a blue ninja with a sword and dirty-blond hair reached for his left side where a large, healed bite mark resided, his reminder that the monster was a killing machine.

"The sooner we find this thing, the better," he told her.

To be continued…

A/N: Uh-oh! Who could they be?!