Creation began on 09-18-22

Creation ended on 09-18-22

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Different from You: Daddy's Little Girl

It was not what Asuka had expected to find out about, but the mysterious child that appeared in the Entry Plug with Shinji was a little girl. Initially, she had thought the girl was a boy because of the way she looked, but Ritsuko had to explain that was due to either having an androgynous facial structure, being malnourished or a combination of the two. Either way, the kid was a female, but that wasn't the only thing that was known about her.

"Where is Shinji?" Ritsuko asked Misato.

"He stayed to watch after the girl in case she woke up," she explained; she didn't trust Ritsuko around Shinji after that attempt to salvage the Eva from the Angel.

"And he doesn't know anything about her?"

"Idiot could barely walk," said Asuka. "He doesn't know a thing about this kid. What is there to know…besides how someone like her ended up in the plug with him?"

"It's more than likely she's from another universe."

"But how did she end up inside the plug…inside the Eva?" Misato asks.

"We won't know until she wakes up."

-x-

Although he no longer needed the IV line now that he was awake, Shinji needed the pole to support himself until his legs were strong enough to support his full weight again like before. As he sat inside the room the little girl was in, he wondered who this girl was and why she had been found in the plug with him. He noticed that her right hand was slowly inching towards the edge of the bed, as though she was trying to reach out for something. Without any other reason, besides wanting to tuck her arm under the blanket, Shinji reached for her arm picked it up, which then made the tiny limb pull itself away from him…only to grab his wrist as tight as it could.

Flash! Shinji found himself back inside the plug of Unit-01, the LCL murky and cold. In front of him was the girl, holding onto a teddy bear, looking at him. She raised her left arm up, revealing something held in her hand tightly.

"I don't want to be alone again," she uttered.

Flash! He was back inside the room, looking down at the girl, her right arm laying on the bed.

What was that? Shinji thought.

-x-

"…In addition to the teddy bear we found inside the plug, there were no other personal effects we could use to identify the girl," Ritsuko informed Misato and Asuka and Rei, looking down at the teddy bear that had been cleaned of the LCL along with the girl's clothing. "There was something gripped in her left hand, but the doctors couldn't remove it from her."

"What, is it stuck to her?" Asuka asks.

"No, she has a grip on it like a vice; they can't remove it without risking harm to her."

"Any idea of what it is?" Misato questions.

"Something small, round and made of some sort of metal and plastic."

Rei looked at the girl's clothing and pointed to a pair of shorts with a skirt over them.

"What is this?" She asked.

"It's a skirt," Asuka told her. "What else would it be?"

"No, skirts don't include shorts underneath them, and most skirts don't have any leggings."

"Since when are you a clothing expert?"

Misato sighs as she looked at the shirt belonging to the girl, which was yellow and blue with a cat's face on it.

"Hey, wait a minute," she utters as she finds a tag on the back of the shirt. "I thought you said there were no identification marks on her clothes."

"We didn't find anything," Ritsuko told her.

"This tag says otherwise."

"The tag's a brand name."

"There's no clothing brand by this name."

"What?"

"This has to be the girl's given name."

Ritsuko looked at the shirt and read the tag again. It looked like a brand name, but then she realized that it was the thing on the tag. If anything, the shirt was a custom-made one; clothing that was custom-made didn't possess labels or brand names.

"What is the girl's name?" Rei asked.

"According to the name tag, the girl is called Shado," Misato revealed.

-x-

"…How long has he been in there with the girl?" Fuyutsuki asked a nurse, noticing that Shinji was inside the sleeping girl's room.

"Ever since he woke up today," she explained to him. "With the exception of periodic bathroom breaks, he…hasn't really left her side. He seems really attached to her."

"Really?"

"He's almost the only one to visit her with the hope that she'll wake up; everyone else just expects her to wake up so she can be questioned about how and why she was in the plug with him when she wasn't supposed to."

The two walked away from the room and less than thirty seconds past.

"Nurse!" Shinji's voice was heard, and the nurse turned around. "Nurse! She's awake!"

Fuyutsuki decided to go see for himself, and found the girl active now, but she was holding Shinji's right hand again, despite her being in a weakened state. Beside her left leg was a small, rectangular object that was flat; presumably, it was the object that was gripped in her left hand that the medical personnel couldn't remove.

"Daddy," they heard her speak, falling into Shinji's arms. "You found me."

That was a strange thing to hear from a little girl that just woke up. But the question that was running through the three minds in the room with the girl was this: Who was she talking to? There were only two men in the room, but she seemed to respond to Shinji.

"Uh, Ikari," Fuyutsuki spoke, "did she just…call you her father?"

To be continued…

A/N: The scene where Shinji saw the memory of being back inside the Entry Plug felt like an extension of the previous chapter's scene, but the bonus was hearing Shado speak to him, which hints at something else that happened before they were in the plug. I hope this impresses y'all until later. Stay healthy, sane and enjoy life.