Disclaimer: I do not own Neon Genesis Evangelion or any of the works that are cited in this fanfiction or inspired it;
I am not aware of the artist of the cover image, if anyone knows it, leave his name on the reviews so I can give him proper credits;
Special thanks to Calborghete, Chuckman, Rommel, Charles Bepin and others, they are the reason I am making this and inspired much of this work. Berserk and Shingeki No Kyojin will also be of much inspiration, but by no means this is a crossover fic.
I hope you enjoy this work, please give your thoughts on it. ;)
The Angel Hails - Chapter 1:
A New World...
"There is not much to be got anywhere in the world. It is filled with misery and pain; if a man escapes these, boredeom lies in wait for him at every corner. Nay more; it is evil which generally has the upper hand, and folly that makes the most noise. Fate is cruel and mankind pitiable."
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life
"Wasn't he supposed to arrive earlier?", said the impatient agent while he looked at the boy.
The six-year old Shinji Ikari had stopped crying only because there were no more tears to be shed, now only his whimps were heard on the train station. Not that the agent would judge the kid: His mother died and his father left him for some distant relative.
"Yeah, do you remember how he looks, right?", answered the older agent.
The young men nodded. "A lot like Gendo Ikari, since he is a Rokubungi, but grey-maned and taller."
"Taller?" The old man widened his eyes. "Ikari is already massive and his... what it was... second cousin is even bigger?"
The agent shrugged. "It is in the family, I guess." He looked on Shinji. "Think that the boy will be that big?" It was ironic to imagine this boy, now so weak and battered, being broad-shouldered and standing on his father's 1,92m height.
"May-", the old man's jaw dropped.
A towering unearthly handsome old man at peak physique wearing a battered all-black suit came with a frown. He indeed looked a lot like Gendo, strong complexions and distant behaviour alike. In his waist, there was a fucking sword on a scabbard. "I am Kaworu Rokubungi, the chosen guardian for this child by wish of Yui Ikari." He turned to the boy with a empathetic look.
"You fit in the description, we will wait for the next train, since you're late," The old agent crossed his arms and kept looking at the Rokubungi's hands. They opened and closed quickly."and go together to your house."
"Together?" The old man had a feline grin on his face, he joined his hands on his front, his arms outstretched and the blade swaying on the guard.
The younger agent nodded. "Yes, those are orders fro-" His neck was cutten open, the blade stopping only at the bone. Rokubungi then attacked the older agent, who was unable to take his gun at the time. Shinji was paralyzed, but then was taken in a hug by Kaworu.
"I-I am sorry for making you watch this... And sorry for Yui, but you can never forget her death... nor the death of those two men. This a burden you will carry for life."
"B-but..." it was almost a whisper as the boy slowly accepted the hug. "it hurts so much."
"I know, but is only accepting those pains that one may get stronger." He released the hug and looked at the boy's eyes. "We must go, they're going to be pursuing us." He grabbed Shinji's hand. "We're going to walk, try to go on your feet as much as you can, but when it becomes to much, you tell me and I carry you, okay?"
"O-okay" Rokubungi's mouth twitched in happyness and he squeezed his hand.
The voyage to Uncle Kaworu's home was a hard one. The agents didn't make their travel any easier, the moments where they had to hide in the mud or abandoned houses the worst ones in the period, but at least Shinji had his uncle. Even though he was still mourning for his mother's death, the presence of Rokubungi was a pleasant one, that made the young boy feel safe.
The old man himself was a strange one, he cared a lot for Shinji even if it is their first time together, but didn't care at all to do bad things for other people. Once the boy had questioned.
"Bad? 'The people's good fortune is my misfortune', as one said." Said him with a smirk.
Shinji was puzzled. "Who is the one, Uncle?"
"Max Stirner, I shall teach you about him, other thinkers and all else." said him scratching his unshaven chin.
"You are going to be my teacher?" there was a very small glimpse of hope on Shinji's voice, that someone would stay with him, not like dad did.
"Yes, Shinji-kun."
"Must I call you Kaworu-sensei?"
The old man dismissed with a hand. "Uncle is fine." He then noticed Shinji looking at the sword. "This one" He touched the guard. "you shall learn to use above all else."
"Why, Uncle?"
Rokubungi sighed. "I am not going to live forever, there will be a time when you will be alone, just as I was before you, when that time comes, this sword shall be your only defense... your only purpose."
"But you are being nice to me, I don't want to lose you too!" shouted Shinji.
The old man gave a sad smile. "I am sorry, Shinji-kun, but I am not the one to cure the pain on your heart, nor was your mother. I will, however, try my best to make you able to protect yourself... yourself and the one that will cure." He put his hand on Shinji's shoulder. "Shinji-kun, you are not like me and your father, me and him lost the women we loved forever, but you are yet to know yours."
After a long time escaping the agents and dragging through concrete and mud alike, they finally reached Uncle's house. It was a very simple cabin hidden in the florest with a well, bike, gym and small farm outside. In the inside, there was two beds, two chairs, storage trunks, a gas stove, and lots of books. Of food, there was a big supply of packaged chicken breasts, various meats, cheeses, eggs, vegetables, raw milk and beer.
"You seem interessed in food, good since I will be teaching you.", said Rokubungi as he sat on one of the chairs and brought a pipe, he had his characteristic grin as he smoke.
"How do you get this food, Uncle Kaworu?" - Asked Shinji as he sat on the other chair.
Rokubungi shrugged. "What I can't make, I buy with the money I get from jumping between jobs and..." He frowned.
"Stealing?" Asked Shinji wide-eyed and with a droopy body.
The old man nodded and stood up. "But this is not a talk to now. I have a damn lot to do, Shinji-Kun. What you need to know is that a man does everything he needs to protect his family." He patted Shinji's head.
Shinji leaned forward, never breaking eye-contact. "We are family?"
Rokubungi grinned. "Yes, we are." The boy's face brightened. "There is not much to do here, you should pick a comic to read." He pointed to a pile of books, then he walked to the door. "Till after, Shinji-Kun."
"Bye, Uncle Kaworu." The old man smiled and went outside and Shinji walked to the pile of books. He sighed when he saw that a lot of them were in languages he didn't understand, until he found one in japanese: Berserk.
It was about a warrior called Guts who fought demons called "Apostles", but, to Shinji's surprise, he was a broken man full of rage and sadness, who lost and was betrayed by people he loved, including his own father and best-friend, but he didn't turned to self-loathing, he rather used that to turn himself stronger to survive in such a terrible world. He also did everything Uncle Kaworu told Shinji to do: He never forgot the bad things that happened on his life and used them to become stronger.
As he immersed in this crapsack of a world, Shinji reflected on what happened: Mommy died on that... machine? Beast? Shinji didn't know.
Daddy abandoned him... Why? He didn't love him? He had loved him, but mommy's death made him hate him? Shinji didn't know.
But one day he would know and, until that day came, he would survive.
"Tadaima!"
If Shinji heard it, he made no mention of showing as he was lying on the ground with his eyes locked on the comic book. The old man layed the food he bought and walked to Shinji's side. He was reading Berserk.
Slack-jawed, the boy shouted euphorically. "The man who writed this..."
"... wrote..." Rokubungi corrected.
"... is a genius!" The boy took of his eyes from the comic and looked directly at Kaworu's with eyes too deep for a kid to have. "I want to be" He pointed at Guts. "just like him."
Kaworu raised a eyebrow. "You are aware of the hardwork, right?" Shinji nodded fastly. "You are going to have to train your mind and body everyday with little rest, do you know that?" Shinji nodded, to the old man's surprise, as certain as before. "Hmm."
Shinji pointed at him. "You are going to help me."
Kaworu got himself a feline grin. "Me?"
Shinji gave a thumbs-up. "You are tall and strong like him, can use a sword and maybe as handsome..."
"Maybe?"
"So you are the perfect one to teached me!"
"Just teach." Kaworu corrected before playing his upper lip with his thumb, while looking to the lower right. "Yes... I think I will help you, Shinji-Kun." He glanced at the Shinji. "Know why?" Shinji shaked his head. "Because people are going to want to use you, Shinji-Kun. Even your own father." Shinji shivered. "If you are not strong, they are going to use you as your pawn."
"Pawn? Isn't that checkers?"
"Chess, pawn is the most expendable and usable piece." Shinji stood wide-eyed. "But we're not going to allow that, Shinji-Kun."
"You never stop, don't you?"
If Shinji heard it, he made no mention of showing. He was tired, the sweat running freely from the forehead to the muscles of the chest and arms. The teenager raised the sword, to be more accurate, the ridiculous big piece of iron.
"I" He hit the trunk. "mustn't" He breathed. "run". He raised the sword. "away!" He striked the wood, breaking it in half and then quickly turned to Kaworu. Seeing the sincere grin on the old man's face, his eyes lit up.
"Practice makes perfection, I guess."
And there was no lacking of practice. Hours upon hours where spent on studies and phyisical training, every new branch of knowdlege turning itself in a trunk that spawned tens of others. By age fourteen, Shinji far surpassed the average student of his age, quite possibly more than that of the average college student. That only on the mental aspect, on the physical state, the Ikari child had incredibly well-built body and gasped more than one martial art, although swordsmanship was his strongest. That, as said before, if you could consider it a sword. It is sharp and has a grip, so heh? The times the boy actually used a normal-sized sword, he was able to get a draw in a fence with Uncle Kaworu.
Shinji himself sometimes asked himself what gave him the strength to continue with this routine. Well, he knew the answer, for it was the place where man too weak to take the weight of sadness go: Hate. For Shinji, the hate was towards a certain Gendo Ikari, who, after allowing mother to die in that beast, had abandoned his own son.
The hate was present in every action of Shinji, until Uncle Kaworu got sick enough to not be able to leave the bed when the Ikari boy was sixteen. With death knocking at the door, the old man would, from times to times, reveal what he had hidden under the carpet for more than a decade.
"Shinji-kun, we need to talk." Uncle Kaworu's voice had lost its strength, as his body became frail. Shinji's heart twisted in pain just from the memory of the gigantic and confident man who saved him from his father's grasp.
The young man sat at the bed by his uncle's side, the empathetic dark-blue eyes never breaking contact with the old man.
"Now that you are a man, the hate you have for your father will only bring you pain..." Shinji blinked what seemed a thousand times. "...he... he is your mirror and you, Shinji, is his dark reflection. Your father is able to move forward because of love... the love he carries for your mother... where you move because of hate. That hate is illogical."
"He loves her?! B-but..." Shinji felt his eyes watering as the reason for his existence crumbled.
"Yes... he does love her... and will not stop until he will be together with her. Shinji, the reason I allowed your hate was for you to be able to ride it... to use it..."
"Ride what? Use what?" Shinji was closer to the old man, his tears falling on his uncle's chest.
"The beast that killed Yui Ikari... it carries her soul... It will be both the horse and the weapon for yours Parsifal, because you shall outgrown the worn out moralities of man..."
"Why I will do that?"
"... To lose your mankind, to turn yourself as human as you can. Shinji..."
The conversation seemed to take hours. Shinji, rightfully so, was in the bare minimum distraught by what he learned and his place in the world, a lot of the things he feared talking about even on his head. On the good side, it provided him with the purpose he needed after the talk about his father.
Shinji always thought about the day he would stand in front of Gendo and ask why he allowed her to die in the machine, why he had killed her... But now he knew that father held only absolute love for mother and that her death broke him.
Uncle Kaworu didn't say in the specifics why the old fuck couldn't take care of his own son, but, knowing how similar they were, Shinji could only guess that it was because of man's most common feeling: Fear. But from what? That he would still ask.
His new purpose gave little to do on the moment, nothing but exist and survive until the day to act came. The absence of the stronger will he had because of hate had taken its toll and Shinji got several sleepless nights.
To solve that, he got himself a job at a local store. It was a rather strange concept, it was a 24/7 music-store and cafeteria, but it did offer a night-shift job where Shinji could take care of one of the things that he liked the most: Music. Although the bitterness of the last times made the experience less of the appreciation of classical music that Uncle Kaworu had to hours and hours listening to the same post-punk songs, so much that Shinji would recite "Where is my Mind" as a preacher cites a passage of a Holy Book.
One day after one of those shifts, a seventeen, almost eighteen, years old Shinji walked into home to found Uncle Kaworu with no breathing or heartbeats. With watering eyes and barely keeping himself from falling in the ground of the trembling, he cremated the body and cast the ashes upon the sea. He then had to return to his old routine as if nothing happens. No... not nothing, because what does not kill men, makes him stronger.
With the sad irony of life, for his boss life was as good as ever. "Shin-kun, you're a money magnet!", said the old man, who, already quite short even for japanese standarts, looked like a hobbit to the 6'3 muscular young man, "Or should I say... chick magnet? You attract groups of thirsty girls, even some of these fags!" Shinji was fearing that himself was one of these fags for not giving a shit about this or even the girls themselves.
That until the day his boss gave him a package from Tokyo-3 destined to "S. Ikari" with the picture of a certain Misato Katsuragi. The beautiful purple-haired women wearing jeans shorts and a yellow top in a questionable position even put a arrow towards her breasts saying "Pay attention!". Shinji felt heat coming to his cheeks. Well, that is new.
Even worse was the other thing of the package: A note from his father saying "Come".
Fuck.
