Creation began on 05-28-16
Creation ended on 07-13-16
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Different from You: Think before Act
It was a nightmare for NERV right now. Bad enough that the Fourth Angel had shown up before they were fully prepared to deal with impending attacks, but now the Fifth Angel had shown up three days after it.
"You're joking, right?" Misato questioned Ritsuko in Central Dogma as they and the rest of the bridge crew saw the Angel approaching the city.
"I wish I was," the faux-blond expressed. "This Angel looks like a giant diamond."
"How are we on Unit-01?"
"The pilot isn't inside the plug yet," Maya revealed to Misato.
"What?! But it's been ten minutes since he was informed that it was approaching! What is taking him so long?!"
-x-
Shado had to admit to her father that she didn't like the outfit that seemed similar to the one they saw the girl with the blue hair in. It looked like a diving suit, but it didn't cover his head, and the blue, black and white portions made him look silly. And then, there were those white things that stuck out on his head.
As they were in the hall, the girl had expressed another concern for her father: While these people put him in a bad situation, the girl told him that they didn't even know what these giant monsters were capable of until after they sent him out to face them. And even if they sent him out to face this new one, they wouldn't know what it was capable of until after it did something, not before.
"They can't do something to find out what it can do instead of making you go out there?" Shinji recalled his daughter asking him as he continued to watch her sit on the bench in front of him in the hall. "They just made you go against the first two without a warning, Daddy. They should know better by now."
"Shinji!" They both heard Misato yell at the teen boy. "What are you doing?! The Angel's getting closer to the city, and you're wasting time out here!"
Shinji looked at her, but then returned his gaze to his daughter.
"I have to consider what my daughter told me just recently today," he told Misato.
"What are you talking about?" She questioned.
"You don't know what these Angels are capable of, so you need to find out before I go out and do something about it."
"Shinji, we don't have time for this."
"You have time to send out a decoy before you think to send me out. You may not know it or care much for it, but I'm not some expendable soldier that jumps for you whenever you call for me. Send out a decoy…or the blue-haired girl, even. Find out what this thing can do before I go out to face it. Know your enemy."
Misato wanted to repeat that they didn't have time for this, but then recalled his actions against the Fourth Angel in the last attack…and really didn't want to see what she had glimpsed before. And she knew this boy was stressed enough as it was already, having to put up with the agency, his estranged father and taking care of his illegitimate little girl.
"Just make sure to be in the Eva when it becomes necessary," she told him, and left them alone.
Shado clapped her hands for her father; he had stood up to someone older than him again.
-x-
"… I don't believe we're doing this," went Ritsuko to Misato, just as the technicians sent up a giant, balloon version of Evangelion Unit-00 holding a rifle. "And the boy actually spoke of this?"
"It was actually his daughter that shared her concerns about her father's safety," Misato responded. "He just backed up and enforced her concerns for her father. And they were both right, we don't know what these Angels can do."
With the Eva balloon fully inflated and being transported out of the base, some of the technicians were starting to spread rumors that this attempt to see what the Angel could do was because of the Third Child's daughter. They found it unusual to be trying something like this because of a little girl's concern for her teen father.
"…Still, relatives of Commander Ikari," a man said to another man as they were moving the balloon up the shaft. "Hard to imagine the guy actually caring about his son and granddaughter."
"…So the girl shows that she loves her father and doesn't want him throwing his life away," a female technician said to a male technician.
"But the Third Child doesn't seem to care much at all about any of us," the guy responded.
"…We're secondary concerns to the boy. He cares more for his daughter than anyone else."
"…A child of rape and a child whose father walked out on him years ago before he was raped. It's a saddening picture."
"I want to pity the boy and his daughter," another woman expressed, "but I can't see past the fact that they're related to Commander Ikari."
-x-
"…He actually suggested this?" Gendo questioned Misato as the Eva dummy floated in the air in front of the Angel.
"It was his daughter, actually," she explained, and then watched on the holographic screens as the balloon, armed with a balloon version of a rifle, was made to look like it was about to assault the Angel…and the Angel unleashed a blast of energy that obliterated the balloon.
"Jeez…" Hyuga sighed in defeat.
"Next," Misato ordered.
From afar on a hillside, a large, tank-like train cart was pulled out of a nearby tunnel and fired a rocket at the Angel. The rocket hit the Angel, but it still stood where it floated. A small flash of light emitted from the Angel…and the machine (along with much of the hillside) was eradicated.
"Maybe it was a good idea to use decoys instead of the Third Child," Shigeru expressed.
"Based on the data collected from both attempts," went Hyuga, "this Angel automatically attacks anything that comes within a certain radius of it, and reacts with hostility the instant it is made aware of the enemy's intentions."
"Meaning that if we were try to attack this Angel with rockets, bombs or tanks, we'd be the ones sent into the next world instead of the Angel."
"What about its AT-Field?" Misato asked.
"It's still active. It doesn't seem like this Angel's going to drop it anytime soon." Shigeru answered.
"Offensively, defensively, no matter how you put it, this Angel's like a flying fortress."
And it was only because of this discovery brought upon by the thoughtful suggestion of a little girl enforced by the dangerous situation her father was involved in that they knew better now. And it was also because of this new discovery that they couldn't send an Eva out against it without unintentionally having the pilot killed before they even had an open opportunity to attack.
"So how are we supposed to fight an enemy we can't even get near?" Ritsuko asked.
-x-
Shinji went to the Eva cages, but he still didn't get inside Unit-01. He just stood in front of the purple behemoth that he hated as much as he hated his father, waiting for the call to actual action.
"Shinji," he turned to face Misato on his right, giving her a frown. "Thanks to your daughter's concern for your well-being, we have to try a different approach with the Angel."
"Really?" He questioned.
"If I wasn't so angry with the both of you, I'd send you out there right now, regardless of the danger."
"You know, you might be my commanding officer, but if you so much as tried to lay a hand on Shado, you would be just like any other woman I've met. You would be a stranger that I would have to use violence on if she were harmed. So try and send me out there right now, regardless of the danger, and try to explain it to my daughter why there's a chance her father won't be coming home."
It was actually quite a good threat Shinji uttered to her. Misato found herself unable to talk back for his choice of words.
"We'll be using a sniper assault on the Angel," she told him instead.
-x-
A sniper attack was the best chance they had with this Angel, but their prototype of a positron rifle was unfinished, so NERV had to borrow the necessary parts for a functional version that could be setup in the time remaining before the Angel completed its direct invasion into the Geo-Front. Unfortunately, Misato and Ritsuko, who were present when visiting the JSSDF's research and development facility, had to contend with some of the men present there that were displeased with the paramilitary agency due to a rumor they had heard that wasn't so much of a rumor as it was the truth.
"…It's cruel, what you're doing to those two," one of the two men in front of them expressed his opinion. "Bad enough you exploit a former kidnap victim, but one whose priorities should be his kid that nobody else would take of, that's crossing several lines that you can only hope that the gods will have pity upon you."
"Maybe, but we didn't have any choice in the matter," Misato told him, finishing signing the papers that would permit NERV to borrow the necessary parts from their facility.
"How do you people sleep at night?" The other man questioned. "How does that boy and his little girl sleep at night?"
Neither Misato nor Ritsuko answered that question. How could they? Hardly a person in NERV really spoke with Shinji or Shado beyond the relative business they did. Even Misato's conversations with Shinji were pretty one-sided; he didn't really seem interested in talking to her more than what she felt was necessary. For all she knew, the two slept as peacefully as they could.
"Also, based on what you said about this Angel's AT-Field, you'll require a major amount of electrical energy just to pierce through it," the first guy said to them. "Just where do you plan on getting that much electricity?"
"Where do you think? From allover Japan." Misato told them.
-x-
Shado didn't like the odd looks her father got in the cafeteria. The people always seemed to have a problem with him, just because of her presence. It wasn't really the first time she even noticed this, either; this had gone on since before they even arrived to Tokyo-3, back when they lived with her father's aunt and uncle and cousin, people that just seemed to hate them for no other reason than for who her father and his father were. And she still couldn't forget that one time with her father's aunt in the kitchen…or what she had asked her to do that scared her.
Shinji noticed her concern and tried to remedy the scene.
"I think you have something on your nose, Shado," he told her.
Shado wiped her nose clean with her left hand and asked if it was fine now.
"Now, it's on your forehead," he told her, chuckling.
"What?" She responded, and then realized the truth. "Hey! That's not funny."
"I wasn't laughing."
She giggled and instantly forgot about the other people around them.
Some of them, however, saw the girl as a part of NERV that simply didn't belong because she brought an element that didn't go together with what they did here. But the same could've also applied to the Third Child, and it wasn't the fact that he was Commander Ikari's son. It was something else that made it seem like they just didn't belong.
-x-
"…If anything, Ikari," went Fuyutsuki to Gendo in the latter's office, "the girl is smart enough to know when her father is in danger against an enemy we know nothing about and just wants to see him come out of it in one piece."
"Her very presence could interfere with everything," Gendo suspected; he just didn't like the Third Child having any emotional attachments that interfered with his sense of priorities when it came to the paramilitary agency, and this girl was a rogue element that he felt threatened by because the boy demonstrated very little to almost no attachment to Unit-01.
"Still, it's only because of her involvement in his time here that we even have your son here at all," Fuyutsuki reminded him; if anything happened to the girl that excited the Third Child's negativity, not only would they be short a pilot, but he would hold them responsible for whatever led to her harm. "While his sense of priorities may differ from what you had intended, at least he is cooperating to a degree that helps NERV."
On the computer screen on Gendo's desk, the progress the Angel made with a drill it possessed was hindered by the layers of dense armor meant to shield NERV HQ from external attack. It would be less than eight more hours before all twenty-two layers of armor were penetrated.
"Maybe his daughter is a wild card," Fuyutsuki continued, "but should anything happen to her, we can kiss the pilot's feet goodbye."
-x-
Shado tensed up, and Shinji, who was carrying her on his back, felt her tiny hands tighten their weak grip on his shoulders as he walked down the hall to the outside of NERV HQ. Her father turned around, and they saw the blue-haired girl, Rei Ayanami, standing there in the hall in front of them, looking at them with her left eye (as her right eye still had a bandage over it).
Shinji felt his daughter tense up again, and he turned back to walk down the hall.
"Daddy, I didn't like the way she was looking at us," Shado told him.
"Same here, sweetie," he responded, turning a corner, but poked his head back to see if the blue-haired girl was still there…and she was. How many weirdos do they have here?
As they stepped outside into the Geo-Front beyond the base, the First Child silently followed them, causing Shado to be tense all the time for some reason.
That was, at least, until Shinji turned to see the albino a good distance from the two.
"Is she making you feel tense, Shado?" He asked his daughter.
"Yes, Daddy," she answered. "Is she following us?"
"Wait by the trees over there (he pointed her to three trees nearby the large, artificial lake), and I'll go see if she is."
She ran over to the trees while he walked over to the girl.
"I don't know if you were ordered to follow us or if you're just a curious person, and I honestly don't care," he told Rei, "but you're bothering my daughter, and that means you're bothering me, as well. Don't take it too personal, but what the Hell do you want?"
"It should be against NERV rules and regulations to have a little child here," Rei said, as if to irritate him over such minor concerns. "Why is she here with you?"
"I don't see how that is any of your business. Why she's with me is nobody's business but mine."
"Is she really your child?"
"Watch it, lady."
"Will she be with you in the next sortie?"
Shinji's right fist balled up with hostility.
"You wanna get a black eye to go with that bandage?!" He threatened her. "Back the Hell away! You understand that? Back the Hell away."
He turned to leave, but stopped…and turned to face her again.
"I see you anywhere near Shado…and I won't hesitate to make sure you never show your face anywhere without a bruise or scar," he threatened her again, and turned to go to his daughter.
Shado poked her head out from behind the tree nearest to the lake, seeing her father coming over.
"Why was she here?" She asked him.
"Trying to make something out of nothing," he explained, calming down now.
"I don't like her, Daddy."
"Neither do I, Shado."
-x-
"Well… I think it's safe to say that the young parent and child don't like the First Child," went Maya to Ritsuko, watching the scene through the surveillance cameras outside the base.
"And the boy threatened to harm her if she ever got near his daughter," the faux-blond expressed. "We may need to recommend that the girl be removed from his care."
"Do you really want to risk the emotional welfare of the two? The boy's protective of his daughter, and the girl loves her father. Separating them could be a risk it is simply too much for us to take at a time like this."
-x-
Shado hadn't seen a beach with her father, but this large, artificial lake was an adequate substitute for the time being. This allowed them to skip some stones that were there. She wasn't good at it, but that was because she was still little, and her father wasn't good at it, either, due to never being taught by anyone and having watched it being done on television. Still, it allowed her to spend time with her father, to not be ignored or disregarded.
"We're just throwing rocks into the water," she told him.
"Must it really matter, dear?" Shinji asked her, tossing a stone as hard as he could into the water.
"I don't think that was very far."
"I'd like to see you try better."
Shado threw her stone as hard and as fast as possible, but didn't get very far. Actually, she threw the stone in front of their feet, splashing water at them.
"Well," went Shinji, not even the slightest bit disappointed in Shado, "you did try. Good attempt."
"Thank you, Daddy!"
-x-
"…How can he be playing with her at a time like this?" Misato asked Ritsuko, having come to Central Dogma to find the Third Child.
"Blame his sense of priorities," the faux-blond suggested.
-x-
As the night took over the city, Shinji placed his daughter in the locker room and instructed her to wait there for him until he came back for her.
"You promise you'll come back?" She asked him, standing behind the row of lockers as he changed back into the plugsuit.
"Not even this large creature will keep me away from the most important person in my life," Shinji told her, sealing his plugsuit.
"You're the greatest, Daddy."
Standing up off the bench, Shinji chuckled a little; his daughter remained the only person that could put a smile on his face.
Once he left the bag of sandwiches and juice boxes with her, Shado was as prepped as possible for the remainder of the situation until her father came back.
-x-
Shinji ignored Rei's presence during the entire briefing by Misato and Ritsuko. They all knew well enough that he didn't like her and didn't try to raise the issue. Since Unit-01 was their only working Evangelion, Shinji had to face the Angel on his own, just like the first two Angels. He tried to comprehend as much of the information he received during the briefing, though only a small measure of the details were understood: Unit-01 was to snipe the Angel from a relative distance with a sniper rifle that fired something called positrons, would be drawing upon the entire nation's electrical power grid to pierce the Angel's AT-Field, and the usual pressure of how all of mankind's future was on his shoulders to deal with the threat.
In all honesty, Shinji didn't concern himself with all of mankind in any situation. How could he? If he had to give mankind a face, to give the people all around the planet (or what remained of a planet that was covered mostly in water and mountainous land after a fifteen-year-old catastrophe), it would have to be the face of Shado, the very person he would put his life on the line for. For her, he would deal with this threat he didn't care for, putting up with these people he didn't trust worth a damn. For her…and nothing and no one else.
"Are you ready?" Misato asked him.
"Let's get this over with," he responded.
-x-
"Based on what we could see from the security cameras," a man in a black suit informed Gendo in his office, showing some pictures on the hallway outside the locker room assigned to the Third Child, "he took his daughter into the room with him…but he was the only one that came out."
"So he just left her in there?" Fuyutsuki asked the man.
"I already have three men down there to see if she's there," he explained.
-x-
At first, Shado thought it was her father that had returned, but when she saw that it was just a man in a suit, she returned her attention to her coloring book on the bench.
"What are you doing here, girl?" The man asked her, but she chose not to answer him. "Excuse me, I'm talking to you. What are you doing here?"
She looked up at him, seeing two more men in suits behind him, and responded, "I'm waiting for my daddy to come back. Now, please, go away."
-x-
"…Now, please, go away." They heard Shado's voice over the radio in Gendo's office.
"What do you see in there?" The man asked over the radio.
"Just a bag of sandwiches and juice boxes that the Third Child must've left," the man on the other end informed them.
"He left her in the one place he would come back for her," Fuyutsuki stated; he could understand how devoted the boy was to his child and made sure she had food until he came back for her. "He was just taking steps to ensure she was kept out of harm's way."
-x-
"…You don't seem to speak much with anyone except your daughter, don't you?" Misato asked Shinji, as he leaned against the security railing beside Unit-01, staring off at the dark city long after its power had been shut off to deal with the Angel, bathed only in the moonlight and stars.
He didn't answer her.
"You know, you can talk about anything to anyone," she suggested.
"I don't know you," he then spoke up. "I don't really want to get to know you. My relationship with my daughter is nobody's business. I trust my daughter. I don't trust any of you."
He didn't see himself as being cold, but just direct in his defense to not want to have any relationships with any of the NERV personnel beyond what he did for them. Ever since he found his daughter had been ignored for an entire day by his aunt when he went to school (or rather, he was forced to go back after insisting that he take care of his daughter), he lost a lot more of his faith in adults (his belief in adults being good people had been shattered since before he was kidnapped and raped). If anyone was going to look after Shado, it had to be himself, and that meant keeping others at a distance; even the touch of another that wasn't his daughter was a hindrance and irritation to him.
Misato decided not to start with him and backed away. The boy was damaged beyond a doubt and wasn't going to trust any of them any time soon.
Something clearly happened to him, and I bet it was more than just being kidnapped and raped, she thought, wondering if she needed to do a thorough background check on the boy that clearly cared more for his kid than anyone else.
-x-
Looking at the Angel through the sniping system, Shinji saw the Angel. But then, without even wanting to, his perception of the Angel shifted into something he didn't want to see. In place of the Angel was his rapist, who was trying to reach out to him with her left hand.
Get a grip, Shinji, he thought, trying to clear his mind of his darkest memories. She's dead. She can't hurt you any more than she had all those years ago.
He tried to put the woman out of his mind, but when he did, her image was replaced with that of his father with a cruel expression. No matter which way he thought, he had two bad thoughts that wouldn't leave his mind. One of a woman that robbed him of his innocence…and the other of a man that never once said a kind word to him, never told him that he mattered to him as a person, as family, or even apologized for abandoning him. They were both just bad people that showed him how cruel and cold the world was to most people.
"You're the greatest, Daddy!" He heard his daughter's voice cut through the illusion of both adults as an illusion of her dispelled theirs. "You're the greatest!"
There have been many times where I am sure that I am nothing more than a mistake nobody wanted to correct long ago, he thought, but out of all the things I've ever done with my fourteen years of life…my daughter, my Shado…is the one, good thing…that ever gave me a sense of worth, of value, of something or someone to live for that gave me the time of day. I would die for her.
He breathed and blinked, seeing the Angel that put his child in danger of living her final moments out his sight…or being alone for the rest of her life with nobody to care about her. He didn't even hear Misato order him to shoot the Angel; he blocked out the voices and thought only of a memory that smeared the sense of solitude he didn't enjoy.
How many fathers thought about the first word of their kids spoke out?
-x-
She felt a small rattle of the walls and floor, but Shado merely closed her eyes and thought of her father, her family. With him, there was very little fear of the unknown in the world, no reason to believe that people that thought she was better off without him because of something they called his age, or even the shame some say she represented just by existing. She never understood why they were both looked down upon, but Shado understood that her father wasn't liked by others most of the time…and he never did anything wrong to anyone short of threatening to hurt them if they hurt her.
"Oh," the suits that wouldn't leave her alone gasped slightly, grabbing onto the lockers to avoid falling.
-x-
All he saw in the last second was a large, blue diamond with a large hole that gave the impression that it was bleeding. Shinji never felt the blast the Angel unleashed. All he could think about was seeing his daughter when this was over…and now he could.
"…Shinji…" He heard Misato's voice over the intercom.
"Are we through here?" He asked her. "This thing looks dead now."
One shot was all it took, all he needed.
"Yeah, Shinji," she answered him. "You did it."
But the Angel's defeat didn't matter to him. It did matter, but it didn't matter on a personal or emotional level. To him, it was just another matter that needed to be resolved and forgotten about later.
"Shado," he sighed.
-x-
"…There was really nothing," Maya explained to Misato, going over Shinji's synchronization with Unit-01. "His synchronization was elevated, but, emotionally, it was like he wasn't there. There was no feeling of anger, except towards his father and his rapist. No degree of hostility towards the Angel, no desire to commit any level of violence. No emotion, whatsoever."
On a monitor, looking through a security camera that looked down at the hallway outside the men's locker room, Misato, Ritsuko, Maya, Aoba and Makoto saw Shado waiting outside for her father, who soon stepped out and picked her up off the bench.
"I'd call this one damaged kid," Aoba expressed, seeing no comparison between the pressured pilot and the young father walking out with his daughter. "He feels nothing for the Angels, hates his father and his rapist, doesn't get along well with adults, but does everything he does for his little girl."
"Nothing else matters to him beyond the girl," Makoto expressed. "She's his anchor, the only clarity in what little sanity that exists in this world for him."
"He'd do anything for her sake," Maya added in.
-x-
Removing his shirt and discarding it into the hamper, Shinji examined his torso for the umpteenth time. Even after almost five years, the large, star-shaped, bruise-like scar he received from his kidnapping and rape never healed completely; he remembered how the woman and her brother held him down…and the other man took a hot blade and slowly carved into his skin. There were times where he couldn't compare any recent pains from the agony during the time he was kidnapped. And it was all the woman's idea to give him this scar as a reminder of their time together, like it was some sort of twisted date. And this was how people treated each other on real dates, Shinji felt there was no need to date anyone if they just wanted to hurt you like this.
And all the doctors did was just wrap me in bandages, he thought, putting on a new shirt to covered all but the top of the scar that reached the base of his neck.
Knock-knock. He heard a small knock on the bathroom door.
"Daddy? Are you alright in there?"
"I'm fine, sweetheart," he answered her, and slid the door open.
Shado was the only other person in the city that knew of her father's injury from before her time; not only had she seen it a while back, but the aunt and uncle said it was her fault that a woman she never knew caused the injury. But her father declared that she wasn't at fault for something her mother had done to him.
"Were you scared of the monster, Daddy?" She asked him.
"Not as much as I was of leaving you," he answered again.
Much later, in the dark of his room, Shinji, still awake, looked up at his ceiling, wanting to forget about most of what happened earlier in the day. The Angel, the Eva, Rei Ayanami, most of everything.
Sometimes, he thought, just sometimes… I hate not crying about things.
To be continued…
A/N: So how damaged do you think Shinji is to have his daughter be his anchor to tie him to what little sanity he has left in his life?