Creation began on 03-01-20

Creation ended on 03-05-20

Neon Genesis Evangelion

The Beast Waits

With a new breath of air, Shinji Ikari awoke to the unknown day to find that he was in another hospital room, filled with the scent of an incense burning of vanilla and cinnamon. Looking up at the ceiling, he turned to his right, seeing Yuki-Onna, looking down at him, almost human in a way due to her eyes showing her concern.

"You're here," he whispered to her; he wasn't sure how long he was out, but his voice had weakened due to dehydration.

Yuki-Onna nodded and then reached for a cup with a straw in it; a male nurse had told her that Shinji would need to drink water as soon as he woke up. She gave it to him and helped him sip the water into his throat.

"Ah," he sighed, feeling rejuvenated after a cool sip. "Thank you, Yuki-Onna. I needed that."

-x-

"…What were his injuries?" Misato asked the male doctor as they stood outside the room of the boy and the Riptor.

"Some fractured ribs and a punctured left lung," he explained to her. "One the nurses asked the boy what he was hit by before he went under for surgery. Some of us thought the dinosaur hit him, but he claims that they were both hit by some sort of robot using a streetlight."

"A robot did hit them with a streetlight," she revealed, watching as Yuki-Onna carefully helped Shinji out of bed and onto his feet…and then saw the boy hug her. "How serious were his injuries after…she brought him here?"

"He's going to feel like he can barely breathe because of his mending lung and his chest is going to cause him some discomfort due to his fractured ribs healing, but he should recover within a month. Maybe less, so long as he doesn't do anything strenuous."

"Strenuous" was something NERV couldn't afford not to avoid, though. Just sitting in the Entry Plug for a few hours would be a risk for them to make with Shinji on the mend.

"There's something else, too," the doctor told her. "While he was unconscious during surgery, he kept muttering 'Yuki-Onna' before we had to intubate him in order to repair the lung damage. Is that really the dinosaur's name, what he calls it?"

"Her," Misato corrected. "He addresses her as Yuki-Onna."

"Well, she waited around for three hours just to be near him. She damaged a vending machine to get something to eat and people who come here to see their loved ones had to ask a serious question about her: Was she going to eat any of them? A nurse had to say that she ate from the vending machine and was waiting on someone to get out of surgery. Some kids were wondering if she was friendly and were frightened by her because she spoke. She didn't even yell at them or threaten to hurt them. All she said was that she was waiting for her friend to come out of surgery alive."

"She waited for over three hours for him…and she had to put up with everything that regular people get bothered by? It's hard to see her as being half-human when she looks like a monster."

"Well, this monster had to carry him here for medical care and waited for him to come out alive. She could've let him die a slow and agonizing death, but instead she chose to bring him here. The doctors may have been the ones to operate on him, but it might as well have been her that saved him."

-x-

"…This Fulgore robot is a nightmare of the past!" Ritsuko told Gendo as she examined the remains of the destroyed machine. "Most of its mechanisms are rusted and charred. It's a mystery this machine was able to function the way it did after so long."

"Any speculation as to how long it was active?" He asked her, wanting to know how long it was online prior to showing up in Tokyo-3 and who could've programmed it.

"No," she answered him. "All of its internal systems were burnt and any recent programming was erased prior to it self-destructing. Whoever made it go after the Third Child didn't want to be found out."

Looking at the table occupied by the pieces of Fulgore, Gendo was disappointed with not being able to know who sent this antique machine after the boy, but had to suspect that it was an enemy of NERV looking to shut them down.

"Speaking of the Third Child, he was being waited on at the hospital by the Riptor," Ritsuko informed him.

"What are the extent of his injuries?"

"He shouldn't be put into doing anything strenuous for no less than a month due to recovering from a punctured lung and two cracked ribs."

"We don't have the luxury to wait for him to recover."

-x-

"…He still has some of the anesthesia in his system, so he shouldn't walk home," the male nurse informed Misato, who saw Shinji being carried by Yuki-Onna who walked down the street with him on her back. "I'm sorry, but, uh… Do those two, uh…got a thing going on or something here?"

Misato sighed and expressed, "If there is something between those two, I'd doubt here and now that it's anything beyond friendship."

"A boy and his dino-friend? What are the chances?"

The same as the ones regarding the Angels.

"You chose me to pilot the Eva," she recalled Shinji say to her, "not the other way around, and nowhere near because of what that man said."

She would've offered to give the kid a ride back to the Geo-Front, but she suspected that he would prefer the company of Yuki-Onna over other people right now.

"Who is that?" Her attention was cut off due to the nurse pointing across the street towards some girl, wielding a naginata or staff in her hands.

The next thing she knew, the girl was now standing three feet in front of them, as if teleporting or moving at super speed or something. The sight of the girl made her realize that she had to be dead or something because of her tattered kimono and otherworldly aura (not just her bare feet and sunken eyes.

"The unrest in this city has marked the boy as a threat to a great darkness that pulls in all shadows," the girl told them. "What the Riptor protected him from was only a small taste of what persists in the dark of the world…and it will not stop until his life has been forfeit. You must cease your involvement with this unrest."

Then…she was gone, as though she were never there to begin with.

"Onryō," the nurse gasped as he ran back inside the hospital. "Onryō!"

-x-

"…Hmm?" Shinji mumbled as he was half-asleep on Yuki-Onna's back.

"Friend okay?" She asked him.

"I'll be alright, Yuki-Onna. I'm just tired."

"Friend sleep."

"Thank you."

In the totality of their conversation, the Riptor had walked past over a dozen or so people, mostly women and children that either pointed or spoke about her with Shinji on her back. But she didn't care for their beliefs or opinions about her right now. Her only concern…was just this boy that was recovering from being injured by some old robot.

"Cold," she heard Shinji say, and stopped as she felt a chill in the air, just several feet away from the public entrance to the Geo-Front.

In front of them was a…girl that didn't seem to belong…and she was carrying a pole with a knife attached to it.

"If you threaten to harm my friend, I will hurt you," she threatened the girl, spreading her feet apart and baring her fangs in intimidation and anticipation.

"I'm not here to threaten either of you," the girl said, her voice sounding…unusual and not like the other people Yuki-Onna had ever spoken to. "Initially, I had thought you were one of them, one of the enemy that would endanger the world if left to roam freely and unchecked. But now, I see that I was mistaken, and you have a protective instinct for the boy you couldn't bring yourself to harm, which means there is good in you, something you wouldn't normally see in people unless they wanted something for themselves. Honor has diminished greatly in this world in the following centuries."

"Who are you…and what do you want?"

The girl walked over towards them until she was three feet away…and then bowed her head to Yuki-Onna as a sign of respect.

"My name is Hisako. I was formally known as Chiharu, but I fell at the hands of my killers, losing my life, my future…and perhaps a bit of my humanity. And what I want…is for you to do what you have clearly chosen to do, which is protect your friend from danger. There is a darkness that festers in this godless city…and it calls all shadows to its existence. But you are not one of those shadows. There is no cruelty, no malice, not even a shred of hatred in your heart that is directed towards the end of the world. Your friend sees you as a good person…and chooses to see you as human…and you are human."

Then…Hisako rose up and walked away.

"Yuki-Onna," she heard the Riptor say to her.

"Hmm?" She responded as she turned back to face her.

"My name, the name that Shinji gifted me with…is Yuki-Onna," the Riptor explained.

"Yuki-Onna…the Snow Woman of Japanese mythology. Hisako, the Everlasting Child. Our names hold both power and meaning behind them, within them, whether or not they are symbolic to who we are. It was nice to meet you, Yuki-Onna."

She then disappeared, revealing that she did seem human, but didn't belong to this world, anymore…and explaining the cold presence she gave off; despite the entire time she kept from going off, Yuki-Onna felt a drop in her body's temperature, the same as Shinji when she heard him say that it was cold out. In a way, they were similar in the fact that they were not of this world to varying degrees: Hisako was no longer bound to this world by way of the flesh…and Yuki-Onna could not fit in this world due to not looking like everyone else that did.

Shinji's left hand subtly tightened on her back, reminding herself that she at least fit in his perception of the world, even if others saw her as less than a person and more of a monster.

-x-

"…It brought the Third Child back to his quarters and hasn't been seen outside the base since," Hyuga informed Misato when she returned to the base.

"And how is the Third Child?" She asked him.

"On the mend. Is it really true that she waited on him at the hospital after that robot attacked them…or rather the Third Child, as he was the intended target?"

"Yeah, it's true. I think that if it was another person, she'd care less unless it was someone Shinji cared for. If his father were injured, she wouldn't bat an eyelash if she had an eyelash."

"I don't think Shinji would care if his father were injured, either."

"What is the status of the First Child?"

"She's still in recovery, but most of her internal injuries are mended. She's scheduled for a synchronization test tomorrow afternoon. Wasn't Shinji supposed to start school tomorrow?"

"Yeah, unfortunately, that robot that attacked may have put a pause on that."

-x-

Shinji awoke to what was perhaps the new day, feeling a little better…but seeing dark brown and black scales and a tail in front of his face.

"Yuki-Onna?" He spoke, and the tail moved away from his head and a dinosaurian head rose up to face him.

"Good morning, Shinji," she greeted. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I was hit with a streetlight," he joked as he slowly rose up from his bed, careful not to stir up pain in his chest; even if he was informed that he'd recover faster if he didn't do anything that was strenuous, he had his doubt that NERV would permit him to miss a few days, even though he really didn't want to pilot the Eva again at the moment.

"You should continue resting," she told him as he set his feet on the floor.

"If I stay in bed too long, I'd never want to get up."

"You were hurt just yesterday, and unlike me, you don't heal as fast as you're injured."

"Bed rest doesn't necessarily mean that I have to spend all that time laying down, Yuki-Onna. As long as I eat and flex my muscles, I'll still be recovering. People don't heal well if they're fatigued or immobile."

Yuki-Onna nodded in the positive on that truth; as different as they were, they still had requirements that aided in recovery, such as food consumption. Even if humans had developed technologies that enabled them to feed without their mouths or even their digestive system, there were still limits to what they could do to help themselves regenerate…and to stray away from what was nature…didn't do much to enable them to improve.

"What do you want to do first to continue recovering?" She asked him.

-x-

It would've been easy to have the two separated from each other while they were still at the hospital, but then Dr. Akagi had to consider to Gendo the possibility that such a move would compromise the boy's synchronization with Unit-01 (if the Fulgore attacking them hadn't done so, that is). He needed the boy pliable for his plan, but nothing seemed to be going at all according to his scenario…and he blamed that damned hybrid that took a liking to the boy. As he sat in his office, Gendo reviewed the salvaged files on the original Fulgore model made by Ultratech…and there was nothing that indicated that it could be controlled remotely, only that any additional programming in its control matrix would've had to be installed directly from a connection to a main computer somewhere, and each connection required a hardline, since the global technology used back then was still primitive due to being the early years of advancement.

Suddenly, he got a chill down his spine and looked up from the files to what was in front of his desk, seeing someone that wasn't supposed to be there. It was a girl, dressed in a kimono and holding a naginata with a red ribbon tied to it.

"How did you get in here?" He asked her, but she didn't respond. "I said how did you get in here? Who let you in?"

"I let myself in," she then responded, and Gendo felt the chill in his spine get worse after hearing her voice.

"Who are you?" He demanded of her.

"I'm just a transient, here for a brief time, regardless of how long that time will be."

"Your name?"

"It wouldn't matter to you. I just needed to confirm something that I couldn't let go of until I made sure…and now I know."

"Know what?"

"You're just another shadow in the servitude of the darkness that draws all the shadows swollen with evil to its whole. The longer you serve it, the greater it becomes…and the harder it is for you to turn away…until you find that you can't, even when you desire to. Nobody can escape the servitude of what will control them."

"I am nobody's servant, girl. Who are you?"

The girl tilted her head to the right; she was not frightened by this man at all. Rather, she pitied him for his arrogance and heartlessness. Of all the people she had encountered in two realms of existence, this man was by far the most extreme example of a human being that renounced his humanity, something that was supposed to be embraced, not ashamed to be embraced.

"You need to stop trying to hurt him," she spoke, sounding upset, but not at him or for him. "He never did anything to wrong you…and you hurt him. You're still trying to hurt him, and this evil is now after him because the both of you deliberately put him in danger of a relentless force from which he has only the barest of protection against. Secrets have a cost, and the price of yours will be worse than you can possibly imagine. Turn away while you still have the chance to. Spare him the pain of losing what matters to him, even if that means you can't be among those that he could be with. Turn away."

Then she was gone, as though she wasn't even there.

Was she a ghost? Gendo wondered. But that's not possible. Spirits can't exist outside a body.

-x-

Moving through space, moving through barriers of the flesh, Hisako had removed herself from the confines of Gendo Ikari's office…and found herself in a large chamber with a colossal being pinned to a large, red cross, wearing a purple mask with seven eyes.

Gasp! Hisako reacted with fright; something about this immobile being sent a chill down her spine, making her feel as though she was going to die again, despite not being alive.

"The darkness," she utters, holding her naginata defensively in front of herself against the being. "You may not have any desire or consciousness to aid in this evil, but you are but a gateway to releasing it once it has gained enough strength to break loose. This is bad. This is very bad."

She disappeared again, escaping from NERV HQ and the Geo-Front, wanting to get away from the colossal being. She would have to inform the others, warn them of what was here, enabling the evil they would have to face to draw in the darkness of this world to its whole, and if they would require a reason to be fearful of it, she would serve as the proof…for she was frightened by it…and the people using it for their own purposes.

To be continued…

A/N: Misato sees Hisako, Gendo sees Hisako, and Hisako finds Lilith…and is frightened by it due to what it is doing in NERV HQ. What do you think will happen next?