Neon Genesis Evangelion is property of Hideaki Anno, or Khara or whoever the jingle bells owns it. Demon Lord Dante is property of Go Nagai. This is a non-profit fanwork.
English isn't my first language, so feel free to correct me if you see any mistake. I didn't have a beta reader for this one, so there's bound to be some xD
Hope you like it :)
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Caina
His hands stopped typing. They just hovered over the keyboard, hesitant. His throat was growing dry again. He squinted, trying to decipher the text on the screen, which had grown blurry.
Two arms circled his neck, hugging him from behind. He smiled when he felt her warmth on his back.
"Something wrong, Puppy?"
"Nothing, just tired."
"Awww." Mari leaned forward, letting her long hair fall on his shoulders. "You've been working hard these past few days. Why don't you take a rest?"
He rubbed his eyes. She was right, he had indeed been working for… not sure for how long, he realized. Too much, if he couldn't even tell the time.
"Yes, I think a rest would be good." He stood up, his legs trembling. Mari held his arm, becoming his support.
They went to the bed across the room, and she helped him lay on his back.
"Do you want me to tuck you in?" she offered.
"Nah." His breathing was becoming raspier. "I'll just take a little nap."
"Then better to keep the gown on. It's chilly today."
"I wonder if it's snowing…" his eyes went to the dark pink curtains covering the window. Had they been closed the whole day? "Say, why don't we open them? I wanna see if there's snow out there."
"Oh, no no no, Puppy." She wiggled a finger in front of his face, and then booped his nose. "After so much time on the computer, your sight is very sensitive. Natural light could damage those beautiful eyes."
He laughed. "You're still such a tease."
He coughed. It was becoming harder to see. Not that there was much to behold there, in the dim orange candlelight.
Had the curtains been closed yesterday, too?
"I don't know why I'm so tired, Mari," he said. "Maybe… Maybe a vacation is in order?"
"That's a great idea." She sat on the bed, next to him.
"We could go to the beach." He closed his eyes and smiled, imagining the warmth of the sunlight on his skin after… how many days, now? "Or to a hotspring."
"You just want an excuse to see me wear a bikini."
He laughed again. "Hey, can't I enjoy seeing my nice girl with big breasts? But yeah, a vacation… a vacation sounds good. Maybe we should travel around the world. See more of the Neon Genesis. It'd be a shame, to not enjoy our new lives to the fullest, after I went through so much trouble… I just need… to sleep a little."
He tried to move his hand. Mari held it.
"You know… It's only been seven years… but sometimes… it feels like a lifetime ago…"
Those were the last words of Shinji Ikari.
Mari let go of his hand. All her flirty and cheerful demeanor vanished along with Shinji's last breath. She waited for a moment, her eyes locked onto the cooling body.
Then, she leaned forward and sniffed.
"Yep. Dead." She stood up. "Seven years. Never thought he'd last this long." A smirk appeared on her lips. "I guess I should thank you for your help. I'll let you see him one last time."
A second Mari appeared, identical to the first one in clothing, height, body shape, even down to every individual hair and every skin imperfection. However, this new one fell to her knees almost immediately, gasping for air. Her eyes wide and bloodshot, she coughed as the other Mari stretched, only paying the minimum attention to her.
The new one crawled to the bed, and asked one single question in a terrified voice:
"Puppy?"
Still on her knees, her hand reached for his, and jolted back at the feeling of cold skin.
"No… No…" Her eyes filled with tears, unlike her doppelganger's. "No! Puppy, wake up! Open your eyes! Shinji! Shinji!"
But no movement came to the face of the young man, who seemed exhausted and troubled, even in death. And the dark room was shaken by a painful wail, a shriek of pure despair as Mari hugged the lifeless husk, perhaps hoping in vain that her tears would either bring him back, or at least dispel that nightmare.
Alas, that was no world of dreams, no illusion.
"I'm sorry," she cried. "I'm sorry, Shinji… I'm sorry, Yui…"
"Poor, poor puppy," the other Mari said, not an ounce of empathy in her words. "He was too trusting for his own good. He never questioned how was I capable of eating four Adams, or swimming through the waters of instrumentality."
The one crying gritted her teeth.
"But I'm thankful for that," the other snickered as she walked towards the curtains. "Such naivety served my purpose. I got him to make a new world just for me. One whose energy I could syphon, with no Nerv, Wille, or Evas to stop me."
In a swift motion, she opened them. At the other side of the window, a dead landscape greeted her. Dull light from a brownish sun flooded the room. Ruins of what had once been buildings stretched to the very horizon. Dry, leafless trees decorated the streets, along with rusty cars, worn down by nothing but the passage of time and her hunger.
The Mari at the window smiled, showing sharp teeth. She looked at her own hands. Light pulsated below her skin, reddish and orange.
"The power of an entire timeline," she said, savoring each word. "This must be what being a god feels like. Ah, too bad that I will have to spend most of it to cross dimensions."
"What did you do with the others?"
The words were hissed through tears and clenched teeth. Surprised that her other version would still talk to her, the Mari at the window turned, licked her lips and patted her belly.
"In here. Where else? I sucked their life, as I did with every man, woman, child, animal and plant of this reality. I'm sure the Princess' skeleton is somewhere out there, slowly crumbling to dust."
The crying Mari jumped at her doppelganger like a rabid wolf, spitting curses at the thing carrying her face. She wanted to bite, to claw, to kick, to break bones; but she was effortlessly pushed back onto the floor.
"Don't be pathetic," the other said. "There's nothing you can do to me."
"Monster… You killed him…"
"Of course I did. What, should I have drained everyone but him? No, I needed his life force too, especially because he was the catalyst in the…" she snickered. "Neon Genesis. Oh, how childish. And that's what he was, even at the end. Just a child. So yeah, I had to eat him as well. He just needed to be the last."
The Mari on the floor managed to sit down, but nothing more.
"Now, I know what you are thinking," the other continued. "You're thinking that he was not the last, you are. Ah, but see, you are a special case. I want you to come with me and witness my victory. My revenge. Then, maybe I'll let you join everyone else in my stomach." She leaned forward. "Consider it my thanks for your invaluable help, Miss Iscariote."
The crying Mari closed his hands into fists. She looked up, at the mocking face of her impostor, and threw the deadliest stare she could muster.
"That's not my name, you bitch. I'm Mari Makin–"
She was interrupted by a backhand slap, and she ended on the floor again.
"I know." The other said. "Don't care. Now, come back here. The husk of this timeline won't last for long."
And her shadow elongated, engulfing Mari until she was swallowed by the darkness, back into the essence of the thing speaking with her voice.
The walls of the room began to crack. The candles died. Outside, the ruins crumbled and the brown sun melted in the sky. Black stars twinkled for an instant, and then vanished.
Reality soon gave way to nothing, and the thing with Mari's face clawed at the void, releasing the energy of a whole world. A flash of pale, greenish light came out of her fingers as they tore a hole between dimensions, to somewhere far away, beyond even the Anti-Universe.
She laughed all the way.
"I should add some sauce," Shinji said, after tasting the almost finished breakfast.
He looked around, but found not bottle. It seemed he would need to open a new one. If Misato hadn't swapped stuff around –wouldn't be the first time– they were in the cupboard next to his head. He just needed to reach up and…
An idea bloomed in Shinji's mind. A silly idea, but he couldn't deny that he was curious. He had never been one to propose, much less try new things. Like the cello. He had never stopped playing it because nobody had told him to. And yet, for some reason, that morning he felt like experimenting. His demon blood, perhaps?
After making sure that nobody else was in the kitchen, he put the experiment into motion. Horns grew from his forehead, his hands and feet turned into claws, and crimson lines appeared on his cheeks. He felt fur growing all over his legs. He kept the wings under the skin of his back, however, as he didn't want to destroy yet another shirt.
Then, after a bit of difficulty, his tail emerged from the back of his pants.
"Alright, let's see…"
Careful, he moved his tail closer to the cupboard and tried to grab the handle with it. It wasn't easy, mostly due to the tassel at the tip, not unlike a lion's; but he eventually managed to open it. Then, he sent his tail inside, carefully feeling his way between the products, knocking some of them, until he recognized the shape of the bottle of sauce.
He coiled his tail around it and pulled out, and his face shone with a big smile when he saw that, indeed, he had grabbed the desired item.
"I did it! This tail might end up being useful. I wonder if I can use the horns for someth–"
He saw red out of the corner of his eye, and a chill ran through his whole body.
Asuka stood next to the fridge, with a raised eyebrow and looking quite unamused. Shinji tried to say something, but the words got stuck in his throat and he could only make short, high-pitched noises.
"Don't put sauce on mine." She said.
"Uh? But…" he looked at the breakfast, then at his tail, then at Asuka. "But…"
"Did you wash that thing?"
"N-No? Not really, I mean... I bathe in my human form. But I my tail is retracted most of the time, so I guess it doesn't catch any dirt?"
"Yeah, I don't want any sauce on mine. And start washing your demon parts, too!"
He was about to retort, or try to; when the whole apartment shook, violently and all of the sudden. Asuka held onto the fridge to not lose her balance, while Shinji fell on his ass, and his wings opened in a reflex action of panic.
"No, not another shirt!" His complains were drowned by the sound of the boiling breakfast falling all over him.
When the tremors subsided, Asuka saw Shinji sitting on the floor, an upside-down pan on his head. Everything above his waist was covered by a mixture of hissing oil and ingredients.
"Take that thing off, quickly!" She ran to his aid, forgetting everything else.
"No!" Shinji grabbed her wrists and kept her hands away from him. "Be careful! It doesn't hurt me, but it'll burn you!"
It took him a while to realize what he was doing, and what he was touching. He looked Asuka in the eyes, which were as wide as his. Her cheeks were starting to blush, and his were probably as red as a traffic light. The whole kitchen sunk into a heavy silence, interrupted only by the hissing of the oil and the wails of faraway sirens.
But, sooner than later, the awkwardness was too much, and their brains took control once again. Shinji let go of Asuka, who crawled away, just a bit. They broke eye contact, each trying to hide their dorky fluster from the other.
An alarmed Misato came running into the kitchen. "Kids! Kids, are you alright? Oh, Shinji!"
"I-It's fine," he said, still blushed. "It doesn't hurt. D-Demon flesh and all t-that…"
"Oh. True." Misato slapped her forehead. "It's gonna take a while to get used to that. Still, we should wash that off you."
But the phone rang as soon as she finished that sentence. Shinji stood up on his own, assuring his guardian that he didn't need help. Still, Misato clasped his hands together and offered an apologetic bow before taking the call.
"Yes? Yes, we have… Hey, hold on, you're speaking too fast. … There is a what?"
Misato left the phone hanging, quite literally, and ran towards the veranda. Asuka and Shinji, their blushes receding and the recent event willfully ignored, exchanged confused looks and followed her. He made sure to retract all of his demon parts first, of course.
Once outside, they stood next to their guardian. Mouths agape, they stared at the enormous tree of flesh that had appeared in the middle of Tokyo-3.
The earthquake had interrupted her while she was marking some tests. A little bit of work before going to her actual workplace. Not that she cared about the marks, or the students in general; but she had to do it. It was all part of her disguise.
Now, the tests laid forgotten, some still on her kitchen table, others on the ground along with her morning coffee. Her eyes, wide open, were locked onto the pulsating abomination which now covered most of the view from her window.
Her lip trembling, the demon Medusa, known to her class as Saeko Kodai, gasped in the solitude of her apartment.
"It can't be. She's back."
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So yeah, I've had this idea in my head for two years or so. I think it doesn't make much sense nowadays, when there are theories out there that say that the train station is still the anti-universe, and Mari is taking Shinji back to the village, or whatever. But something happened a couple of weeks ago, and I decided that I didn't want this in my head any longer. I wanted to write it, and so I did. I hope you're liking it thus far.
Special thanks to Silvermoonlight GJ, for giving me the idea of Shinji using his tail for normal everyday tasks.
