Creation began on 10-27-22

Creation ended on 10-28-22

Neon Genesis Evangelion

My Life, My Escape

Gendo, mainly as a repercussion of his life's choices, had a hard time running, even when he felt like he was running for his life right now. The streets of Tokyo-3 were quiet; partially as a result of the last Angel attack, some people had requested transfers for their families to other parts of Japan where the Angels never appeared, and mainly as a result of the economy being compromised due to the list of employment in the city being mostly NERV-related. As he ran in the dead of night, he kept hearing the scraping of metal against metal, indicating that his pursuer wasn't far behind himself. He didn't even try to turn back to see how close they were.

"You can't escape me, Father," Shinji's voice, laced with resentment and intention, reverberated across the streets as Gendo turned a corner. "Death comes for everyone. Nobody is exempt from the fate that awaits them."

Crash! He fell over a garbage bin and onto the ground.

"Aaugh!" He groaned as he got up.

Scrape! A sparking light came from the strange object he saw his son holding against the side of the building wall as he came from around the corner, dressed in black and his face painted up like a zombie, smiling an unfriendly smile that only reminded the father of how often he would do so when something went his way.

"Ha!" Shinji yelled as he lifted up the object and swung it against a streetlight pole, slicing it with enough force that it fell over onto the street. "I really want to slice your arms and legs off so you can't run from me, Father…and then bury you in the ocean with bricks to anchor you down. Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

Gendo got back up and ran as fast as he could, which wasn't very far.

Shinji smirked; no matter how far his father ran, he would never get far. Not when he could find him easily in this depressing maze of metal and glass.

"Father…you can run forever, but you can never hide," he told him, his voice once more reverberating down the street.

-x-

"Shinji still hasn't returned from seeing his father?" Asuka asked Misato as she sat in the living room watching whatever news was playing.

"Not yet," Misato told the redhead as she adjusted her jacket; she had another nightshift to take part in. "Is there anything of interest on the news tonight?"

"Not really. The American economy has reached a new low, the Russian president has gotten sick, the fishing industry has considered the use of cloning to reinvigorate the world hunger solution, and some people are leaving the city again because it's hinted to no longer be safe and the employment rate is dismal at best; not everyone wants to work at NERV."

"Well, with any luck, after the remaining Angels are gone, NERV will be disbanded."

As Misato left, Asuka had to ponder exactly what would be left to pursue in life when that day came for NERV to be disbanded. She would probably have to find a job elsewhere, but her lack of direction had been stagnant for the last few months. Even as she looked up the list of potential job opportunities, most were overseas and not related to NERV or the UN.

Shinji will probably suggest I take a career in modeling, she thought as she flipped through the channels again.

-x-

Slam! Gendo just narrowly avoided getting impaled by the dark-colored blade as he reached a train stop and discovered the train service had been suspended hours ago.

"Yeah, NERV suspended the service after the last Angel, Father," Shinji told him as he pulled the blade out of the side of the wall. "So, tell me…how much about me do you really know of? How much do you really know about me?"

If Gendo had his gun, he would've shot the boy in the neck and be done with him, but he lost it getting into his car. As Shinji walked towards him, he got back up and looked at him with menacing resentment.

"You were a mistake from the very beginning," he told Shinji as he saw him raise the blade up. "All you had to do was pilot the Eva and face the Angels. And then, you go and get lost in the Twelfth Angel's shadow and cause trouble upon your return."

"Yeah, I've always been a disappointment to you," Shinji responded, watching as he stepped backwards away from him. "Even your minute words of praise have a trace of resentment in them. If you hated me from the very start, you should've just left me alone when you sent me that crappy letter prior to the Third Angel; we were both better off not seeing each other for the rest of our lives if that was what it took to move on from where we currently stand. But now… Now, things are different from how they could've been. I'm better off without the both of you trying to micromanage me."

"What are you talking about?"

"You know exactly what I'm talking about. Who does that to one of their own and not expect for there to be consequences they have to answer for? In a world where the people of the previous generation make choices that result in Hell on Earth, what hope is there for the next generation…if there's any hope for them at all when the previous generation still makes the same series of mistakes, over and over again? When you try to play God in hopes of being one, all you do in reality is get accused of being like the devils that get blamed for every little misdeed you choose to do…and you are the devils that do nothing to incite madness in a world made crazy because of people like you."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, I don't?" Shinji questioned as he raised the blade up and separated it into two. "I don't know about things that the rest of the world doesn't know about? Like how Second Impact was deliberately caused by people that control the world from within the shadows? Like how the reason the Angels kept coming to Tokyo-3 was to reach Lilith, the Seed of Life you had kept in Terminal Dogma, all in an attempt to dispose of the world that is and replace it with a new world? Or how she intentionally sacrificed herself to that abomination, like she was some sort of martyr when all she did was trade family and friends for fake immortality and eternity as a husk nobody's going to give a damn about? I don't know what I'm talking about, Father?"

Even without his glasses, Gendo's face was contorted with rage. Rage over how this boy knew things he wasn't supposed to know. Rage at how he seemed to know more than he had. And bitterness over a new wrinkle in this predicament.

"Damn, Father," Shinji uttered, "are you wettin' your pants?"

Gendo bared his teeth at him. Then, he watched as Shinji backed away from him.

"You don't know anything, Father, and you sure as Hell don't know anyone around you, including me," Shinji told him, putting the two blades back together. "You may think you had all the cards in your deck to your liking, but you were missing a few that other people had…or never had to begin with. Nothing is preordained, nobody exists only for specific purposes, and we'll all be met with our just deserves on our judgment day when the last breath is taken. For now…I recommend putting your affairs in order."

Then, Shinji turned to walk away.

"What the Hell are you doing, boy?" Gendo demanded, confused by his current action.

"Do you really think I would sink to your level and cross the line between being a man…and being a soulless monster that pretends to be a pathetic waste of a man?" Shinji asked him as he turned to face him. "We're as different as water and oil, light and darkness. I'd rather be free from those that try to force me to bend to their will than to have no choice in what I want for myself, Father. If that means casting you two out of my life, then that's a choice I have to be prepared to accept because the three of us… You two are poison to me; not once did there seem to be much of a past and there's no future where we're together. Not when two of the three of us make choices that are beyond unforgivable. But that's okay…because I don't want or need to be around people that don't really want to be around me, which means mostly you two. I had strings…but now I'm free. I don't need parents that suck at being parents…and you clearly don't know what it means to be one yourself. There's no instruction manual, no quick-start booklet or guide, just putting in the effort to learn how to do right by your own kid…and you can't do any of it, even to save yourself. You both messed up, meaning you're both failures…and you don't get to do a do-over if you're just going to repeat your mistakes again and again. So…whatever you gotta do with however much time you have left, I would suggest making a bucket list; all we have is the time that the universe permits. And the sand's running out in the hourglass. Goodnight, Father."

Shinji turned a corner and disappeared from his father's sight.

Gendo ran over to the staircase he saw Shinji go down…and saw nobody around. The boy had simply disappeared, like a ghost.

"Aaaaaurgh! Damn you!" He yelled.

-x-

"…You're late," went Ristuko to Misato as she entered the command center. "How are you late when the traffic up top is nonexistent?"

"There are other factors involved besides traffic conditions," Misato told her as she sat down with a cup of coffee in her hands. "Is there even anything to worry about?"

"Besides the Angels, just making sure the MAGI are protected against hackers and keeping the Evas in top condition," said Maya to her.

"Some of us think that mecha from before will show up and intervene again," added Shigeru.

"That wouldn't be bad; the last Angel was in space where the Evas couldn't get to it, even with their weapons," expressed Hyuga. "Whoever built it had better resources than we did to make the Evas. We didn't even anticipate off-world combat."

"Three-hundred yen says the mecha defeats the next Angel." Shigeru made a bet.

"Five-hundred yen says the next Angel is just as bizarre as the last one," Hyuga staked.

Misato chuckled slightly over their enjoyment towards Shinji's Magisword-created mecha and its abilities…and hoped that the next two Angels that had yet to arrive were dealt with as quickly as possible by Shinji so they could all move on with their lives. The sooner they showed up to be dealt with, the sooner everyone else could move on with other interests in mind.

-x-

Asuka heard a door opening and closing outside her room and a scuffling of shoes on the floor; either Misato forgot something…or Shinji had returned from making an unscheduled visit to his father.

"Is that you, Shinji?" She asked, looking at her door.

"Yes," she received a reply.

"How was your visit?"

"Productive…and dreadful. You wouldn't believe the craziness that man had on him before I left him where I left him."

She got up from her bed and stepped out her room, seeing him go into his room and found him wiping his face clean of some paint.

"What craziness?" She asked him, seeing him dressed in those clothes he found while Lyvsheria with his first Magisword.

Shinji reached into his right pocket and pulled out a small case.

"That bastard is as depraved as he is insane," he told her, handing her the case. "Be careful with it. That's the embryonic remains of the First Angel, Adam, the cause of Second Impact."

Asuka opened the case…and saw what resembled a grotesque tetrapod fetus.

"He had this on him when you saw him?" She questioned.

"Yeah," he responded as he sat on his futon. "I chased him through the city streets and left him alive at a train station, humiliated and with his pants wet from his own piss. I took it from him the instant I slashed his pants with my Kunai Magisword. It feels like every bad apple in the shadows of the world are trying to achieve the unforgivable by implementing something they know they shouldn't…and this is just another example of how far those with unjust intentions are willing to go in order to get what they want."

Asuka closed the case and set it on Shinji's desk. The mere fact that his father had this Angel in his pocket, along with the revelation that the Angels were attacking Tokyo-3 because of Lilith, the Second Angel, Adam's opposite and equal, used as a lure to attract them, made it clear to the girl that this young man's old man was a despicable cretin whose ambitions included genocide and divinity.

"So, what are you going to do about that?" She asked him as she crossed her arms over her chest.

"Dispose of it," he revealed his intentions. "Dump it someplace far and out of the reach off mankind, ensuring that nobody will ever be tempted to exploit its potential power to destroy for as long as the world continues to spin."

Then, he took out his Legendary Hyperspace Magisword.

"At first, I thought if I didn't have a specific location in mind, Adam would just be cast to the ends of the universe," he told Asuka, "but I made that mistake once with Lilith, and now she's buried in Lyvsheria. This time, I won't make that mistake. This time…I'll send Adam to Pluto; it's too far for anyone to reach, and by the time anyone on Earth does get there, we'll be older and Adam will be unrecoverable."

The Magisword opened a small tear in the fabric of space and Shinji gestured his head towards the case on his desk.

Asuka picked it up and brought it over to the small tear…and dropped in inside. She looked within the tear and saw the dwarf planet where the case was now falling towards.

"Gott im Himmel," she uttered, unable to disbelieve her eyes at the sight of the small planet that was smaller than Earth's moon. "Are you sure nobody here will be able to find and recover the First Angel and bring it back here?"

"Not unless they have access to ships that can travel at the speed of light or sound or have my Magiswords in handy, and I keep these close by. I would say that we're going to be find. Wouldn't you think so?"

"That only leaves the two Angels left to be faced, then, right?"

"Exactly."

"Then…yes, I think we're going to be okay after they get dealt with."

As the tear closed and the sight of Pluto disappeared, Shinji felt elated to have done something more to protect the world from its unnecessary destruction because of human arrogance. While he knew that he couldn't stop the race of human beings from heading towards its inevitable demise, he could at least prevent it from being destroyed while he was alive. He had accepted long ago that it was part of collective nature of the species to seek creative means to condemn themselves to an unavoidable end, he accepted that he and several others, those that chose not to follow that path, didn't have to be a part of that collective. If he sought a peaceful end, he would receive a peaceful end…and he wanted a peaceful end.

"What happens if your father decides to send the police here under the assumption that you're hiding something?" Asuka suggested.

"He can't prove what he doesn't want other people to know about," he responded. "He can't prove I took Adam from him without admitting that he had it to begin with. He can't prove that I paid him a visit without any footage of my whereabouts, a corroborating witness, not even physical evidence of my presence. I made sure to be meticulous of everything I did when I was out there; I cleaned up after myself, even repairing whatever was broken by me, leaving only his messes that he can't explain without making himself seem crazy."

"It seems like you've thought of everything, Shinji."

"Not everything. Just enough to make sure that nothing could be traced back to me, Misato, you or anyone else that doesn't deserve whatever spite my father has for people. I'm no genius, just a guy that wants to leave this madness behind and make my own future free of the disgusting stain that is my parents. You?"

"I don't have much to say about my relatives…but yes, I'd want to do the same thing as you. One thing I don't get, though. Why don't you want people to know that it was you that did these amazing things that ended up helping them?"

"Asuka, the price of fame…isn't worth the cost of happiness. While recognition is something to be earned, if given in excess, it can lead to drawbacks that make one seem distracted by factors outside their perception. I'd rather have recognition for something as trivial as making a decent dish for someone I cook for than to be envied by those that see something I do or have as a sort of power grab. You pilot the Eva to prove to the world that you exist, that you're one of the few that can do so, Ayanami pilots the Eva because she views it as her link to humanity, despite the fact that everyone is linked to everyone else, regardless of that abomination's status, and I used to pilot the Eva because I wanted that man's recognition, for him to just admit that he cared about whatever I did. I used to want his praise as often as I could get from him, but now I know better; I can do much better than receive any recognition from someone like him. I can…see past my past and desire more than what was never afforded to me."

Asuka had to admire Shinji's maturity in the short time he'd been back since his disappearance following the Twelfth Angel. He was more capable, confident in what he could do, and more perceptive of what he knew and didn't know. It was like, for every step he or someone else took, he had to make sure to think three steps ahead.

"You should get some sleep now," she reminded him; it was after midnight by the time he returned from seeing his father.

"Yeah," he agreed with her, taking off his shirt.

She admired his mild physique; not as skinny as he used to be, with a little muscle than the average teen his age. There was a strength to him that couldn't be measured.

-x-

In the coldness of space around the boundaries of Pluto, the case containing Adam crashed into the crevice of its southern hemisphere. It fell into the abyss and disappeared in its untouched darkness. Without light and hope, nobody, human or alien, could never find the ancient being that was once made to destroy the world it once nearly thrived on billions of years ago. Here, it was hoped that nobody from Earth would ever be able to retrieve Adam and pick up where they left off by bringing the human race to its knees…or even elevate it to a higher plane against its volition, to be left alone, forgotten about for as long as possible. Because some things, no matter what they were…were not meant to be sought after.

To be continued…

A/N: What did you think? What do you think will happen now?