Creation began on 11-23-16
Creation ended on 01-12-17
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Different from You: Unforgivable
Rumiko had only known fear of this sort thrice in her lifetime. The first was when she discovered her mother's fury at her for being her father's would-be replacement for her after finding out she was pregnant (something she didn't understand at the time because she didn't grasp things like why her father wouldn't touch her mother). The second was how harsh her mother had been to her during her pregnancy and after the birth of her son, causing her to run away from home with Toya in fear of being killed by her sooner or later. And the third was when the city was being evacuated and not everyone was able to get away because of the traffic, and she and her son were under a table in the tea shop just waiting for the end that didn't come because Shinji shaved off a measure of his own life so that everyone else could still live theirs. But now, here she and Shado were, under the threat of death by none other than Shinji's own father, who had them at gunpoint in an elevator that was taking them to the Geo-Front, trying to ignore the gunshot she had gotten in her leg because the man shot at them.
Shado didn't like the man at all for what he did to them…and hoped her father would be by to do something about this misfortune that didn't need to be just because he quit for her sake.
"You pussyfoot just because Shinji doesn't want to continue piloting your wife's abomination?" She heard Rumiko say to Gendo. "He told me everything he found out from the last time he was in that monstrosity, and the both of you, you and your wife, his mother, aren't going to prosper with what you're attempting to do."
"Unless he agrees to continue piloting the Eva, mankind has no future," Gendo responded.
"You mean that only for yourself. Unless he continues, YOU don't have a future. You're no better than a common thief that just got sentenced to the end of their life. You had nothing before you manipulated Shinji into piloting the Eva…and that's all you'll have if anything happens to him or his daughter if anyone tries something irresponsible and unforgivable. You'll have absolutely nothing. You'll be absolutely nothing."
"Shut up."
Shado didn't know what was going on (and she wasn't sure if she even wanted to know what was going on), only that this man, who cared nothing for her father, Ms. Rumiko, Toya or herself was just trying to make her father do something that was hurting him, despite the promise made that he would stop if it got too serious, too strenuous.
"You don't even love your son, so why try to exploit him?" Rumiko questioned, which had Shado's attention. "You ignore him for most of his life, and then you send for him to come here only to fight in a war that makes no sense because you keep the truth hidden away. I mean, why Shinji? Of all the young people born after Second Impact that you could've gone after, you choose the one person that you hate to serve as your lackey. Do you hate him that much that you want to send him to an early grave and separate a young girl from her father?"
"Only an infant needs its parents," Gendo retorted, and then aimed the gun in his hand at Shado.
Shado turned her head away to look out the window at the underground world below them and said, "I will always need my Daddy. He's my best friend and the only family I have that means everything to me. I wouldn't expect you to understand. I just hope that you one day find yourself on your knees, begging Daddy for his forgiveness…only to find that he has none for you. A lady I will never address as my mother hurt him long ago…and you're a man that still wants to hurt him…and you won't say why. I wish I could pity you, mister…but…you really don't deserve any pity. Not like Ms. Rumiko does because you hurt her."
It was the way the little girl looked when she said all of that. She might've looked like a younger Shinji, but she also looked like a younger Yui and Rei to him. So young, so innocent, so devoted. There was no shred of sympathy in her that was directed towards him that she would direct elsewhere to others.
"Thank you, Shado," Rumiko praised her.
-x-
"…So what are you going to do to your father when you meet him?" Tendo asked Shinji as he drove the truck to where Shinji told him they could get into the Geo-Front.
"If I manage to beat him into a pulp, then that's likely to get him to accept that I'm done with him and his wife," Shinji explained his plan. "But if I have to cross the line and put him down like a rabid dog…then may I be forgiven for taking his life because he wouldn't stop."
"But can you really do it? Could you really kill your father?"
Shinji, despite his weariness and need for rest (and possibly medication), sighed that he may not have a choice if his father harmed his daughter and Rumiko.
"Are you certain that the woman you asked to look after Toya at the hospital can be trusted?" He asked Tendo, concerned for Rumiko's son.
"I'm sure, Shinji," he answered. "I was present with Rumiko when she and her son were vaccinated…and she frequents the tea shop. Pastries and chamomile tea."
"I'm sorry. It's hard to put my trust in adults."
"You were hurt by adults. I don't blame you for being cautious whenever you're around them."
"I chalk up my cautiousness to my paternal instincts. I always need to be on the defensive because I have to look after Shado. Who else is going to if something happens to me?"
"You're just one person, Shinji. You try to do everything at once, you burn yourself out."
"I'm used to burning myself out."
"You and Rumiko. And you both burn…each and everyday for your children. It's only me saying this, but I do hope that you both survive whatever's bound to happen next. Too many good people have suffered enough."
-x-
It was hard to walk with one of her legs housing a bullet hole, but Rumiko didn't have much choice in the matter with Gendo jabbing her in the back with his pistol as he forced them to walk down the hall in the base to the cage that housed Unit-01.
Shado, in her patience of trying to see a way out of this mess that Gendo was making, noticed a bathroom nearby and stopped walking, holding onto Rumiko's uninjured left leg, forcing the teen mother to stop, as well.
"I didn't permit you to stop," Gendo told them.
"What's wrong, Shado?" Rumiko asked the girl kindly.
"I gotta go potty," she explained, pointing to the bathroom.
"You heard the little lady," Rumiko told Gendo. "She has to go."
"We don't have time to waste on a meaningless triviality."
"No!" Shado raised her voice at the man. "You show up at Mr. Tendo's home unannounced and kidnap Ms. Rumiko and I! You left Toya on the floor in pain! You hurt Ms. Rumiko's leg! You have been nothing but cruel to the both of us…and we've done nothing to you to deserve any of your awfulness, and I'm not taking another step further until you let me go potty! And if this is the way it's gotta be, then you're just gonna have to carry me the rest of the way, and I swear to Daddy, if you so much as touch me again, I will go potty on you!"
"Are you threatening me? Are you threatening me with going to the bathroom?" Gendo questioned her.
"Yeah!"
Rumiko looked at the girl and then at Gendo.
"Heh-heh," she chuckled, despite the pain she was in. "She truly is Daddy's little girl. I'd do as she asks, too. I don't want to have to clean up after her if you don't let her go."
Gendo sighed and relented.
"Hurry up," he told the girl, and she walked over to the bathroom.
Rumiko then followed her.
"Don't stop me. I gotta go, too," she told him.
Once they were both in, Rumiko followed Shado to the last stall at the end and leaned against the sinks.
"Did you really have to go?" She asked the girl.
"Yeah," she answered her, "but I also wanted to get away from him. Are you okay?"
"It only hurts when I walk."
"He's gonna hurt us, no matter what we do, isn't he? And he's gonna hurt Daddy, too, isn't he?"
Rumiko didn't want to lie to the little girl, but she had to admit, even if it was to herself, that Tendo's brother was certainly not the understanding or merciful type. Even if Shinji did come to get them or did whatever his father wanted him to do, there was no guarantee that he would let any of them go.
"If it comes to that, we should make sure to get as far from him as we can," she told Shado instead. "If I see an opportunity to do so, I'll get the gun away from him while you run."
"What about you?" Shado asked her, concerned for her leg.
"A fourteen-year-old girl that can barely walk or a little girl that can run? Who do you think they'll try to get first? Me or you?"
Shado then did the only thing she felt she could do: She just hugged Rumiko's legs.
-x-
"…I swear, this place is darker than before," said Tendo to Shinji as they stopped in front of the NERV pyramid.
"There was never any light down here, except for the sunlight that gets down here by some fiber optics system I could care less for," Shinji told him as they walked into the building.
Tendo followed him, but had to stop when he noticed a speck of blood on the floor. He then looked up ahead at Shinji…and saw blood dropping from his right hand.
-x-
Once they stepped out of the bathroom, the girls saw Gendo again, pointing towards the end of the hall with his pistol.
"I swear to St. Jude, you're among the worst parents to have ever breathed the free air," Rumiko told him, needing to point that out because of his behavior.
Gendo recalled Tendo's fascination with non-Asian figures and found it bothersome that a teen mother would pick up on his beliefs.
"Less talking, more walking," he uttered, and they got to stepping.
Further and further down they went…until they reached a door to a large chamber…where Unit-01 resided…and Shado just stopped.
"That's the same monster you had my Daddy use to fight those other monsters," she told Gendo. "Why'd you bring us down here?"
"It's not for you to know anything," he responded. "Go on."
But Shado nodded her head in the negative.
"Go on," Gendo repeated, lowering the gun at her head.
The little girl, her hands balding into tiny fists as her face contorted into fear-driven rage, continued to nod in the negative.
"I'm not going anywhere near that thing," she told him, and he frowned.
"You're useless," he responded.
Rumiko then grabbed Gendo by his arm and tried to wrestle the gun from him.
"Go!" She yelled at Shado. "Run!"
The girl did as instructed and ran around the two.
"No!" Gendo yelled, trying to get free of the teen. "Damn you!"
He used his other arm and hit Rumiko in her face, but she didn't back down. The girl had to protect her friend's daughter from her grandfather, no matter what the outcome was. As Gendo then kicked her in her abdomen with his left leg, Rumiko coughed, but held onto his gun-toting arm…until she gave in against her more civilized conscience and bit him as hard as she could in his arm.
"Aaaurgh!" Gendo groaned. "You little bitch!"
He kicked her again, harder, but all she did was bite down harder.
"Graaah!" He heard her go, either speaking or groaning in pain from his assault on her.
Bang! His gun went off; he hoped that a bullet being fired would frighten her, but she just held onto his arm, never letting up.
He turned around and saw the little girl had just turned a corner.
"Damn you!" He yelled at Rumiko, and then ran her against the wall on his right, slamming her hard against it.
"Ophf!" She went, feeling like she did when her father had gotten atop her when she was little, but she still wouldn't let go.
Gendo slammed her hard against the wall again, and this time was more effective, causing Rumiko to loosen her grip on his arm. He then grabbed her head and slammed it against the wall, watching her slide to the floor, leaving a bloody smear behind her head.
"Petulant brats," he uttered, and looked at his wrist, seeing that she drew blood.
Rumiko was dazed and reminded of the abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother, before and after she gave birth to her son, and was unable to look up at Gendo as he pressed the gun to her temple.
"I cannot achieve my objective without the boy or his brat," she heard him say to him. "What use are you beyond a lure?"
If Gendo was going to pull the damn trigger, he certainly took his time with her. But Rumiko didn't fear death; every time she thought something terrible was going to happen to either Toya or herself, something just happened to help them see another day. All she had left to fear was the truth behind her son's paternity, which she would've been fine never knowing about.
"You might already be dying, so I'd be wasting a bullet on you," Gendo told her, and she heard footsteps receding away from her.
"Run, Shado," she uttered, falling to the ground. "Run…"
-x-
She ran. She ran as fast as she could down the empty halls, needing to get away from her grandfather before he did something awful to her. Shado never thought she could run as fast as she was right now when Rumiko told her to, but here she was, probably far away from Gendo…but still needing to run and find a place to hide. When she turned a corner, she saw Rei Ayanami, dressed in that ugly diving suit that was similar to the one that her father wore (only his was more conservative, whatever that word meant whenever she heard it, only knowing that when her father said it, it meant it hid everything you weren't supposed to see in public), with that vacant expression she always had.
If I'm by myself and I see this girl or the redhead or anyone else, I run, Shado thought, and ran the other end of the corner that the blue-haired girl was, presumably, going down for some other reason.
-x-
"…Hey, Third," Asuka expressed towards Shinji as she and Kaji saw him and Tendo walking down the hall. "Looks like you couldn't stay away…"
Shinji grabbed her by her coat and, surprisingly, lifted her off her feet and slammed her against the wall on his left.
"I don't have time for your egotistical, self-righteous bullshit!" He told her. "Where's that bastard father of mine?"
"I don't know," Asuka answered him, and he dropped her to her knees.
"Then what good are you?" He expressed, walking down the hall.
Asuka was about to say something to him as she got up, but saw a red stain on her pink coat, right where Shinji grabbed her.
"What the… Did you just bleed on me?" She asked, but Shinji was too far away to hear her.
"Can you tell us where Gendo Ikari is, sir?" Tendo asked Kaji.
"You can try Central Dogma," he suggested to him.
"Thank you."
Tendo followed Shinji into an elevator and informed him of his father likely being in Central Dogma.
"Kami, I am going to break his face," Shinji sighed, keeling over slightly as his breathing became heavy. "Damn injuries."
-x-
Hiding under some stairs, Shado prayed the literal shadows under the steps kept her out of sight and away from her grandfather and anyone that listened to him. She crouched on the ground and tried to keep quiet as she heard the sound of someone's footsteps, and shut her eyes in woe.
"…She clearly has no concept of hiding where the cameras can't find you," she heard a man's voice just above her. "We've located the Third Child's daughter. We'll be bringing her to Commander Ikari shortly. Sorry, little girl. It's nothing personal."
Shado cowered at the thought of being handed over to her grandfather.
BASH! She heard something hard and heavy hit something.
"Aaaurgh!" The man's voice she heard went, but she kept her eyes closed.
"Hey, put that pipe down!" Another man's voice shouted, but then another bashing sound came, followed by the guy screaming as he fell to whatever was happening. "Urgh!"
At least three more bashing sounds were heard before the sound of something hitting the floor was heard by Shado.
"It kinda feels personal," she heard Rumiko's voice, hindered by a sense of anger she often heard in her father's voice whenever he was furious with other people. "Shado? Are you okay?"
She opened her eyes and looked out of the darkness toward the teenage girl that was Toya's mother, and saw her partially covered in blood on her head and on her shirt, holding a piece of pipe that was smeared with blood from the two men she used it on.
"Can we go now, please?" She asked her.
"Nothing would be more appreciated by me if we did and found your father," Rumiko told her, slowly lowering to her knees and reaching out for her friend's daughter with her left hand, grimacing from her own injuries.
Shado reached out for her and came out from under the stairs.
"That man hurt you again," she told her, saddened by what her grandfather had done to her beyond shooting her in the leg.
"My pain is nothing…compared to the fear of what's worse to come," Rumiko confessed, and picked her and put her on her back.
-x-
Tendo didn't know if Shinji was either just an angry teen father…or just desperate to save his daughter from his failure of a brother that got on both their nerves. As they vacated the elevator and walked down to Central Dogma, the tea shop owner couldn't help but wonder where his nephew found such strength to carry out his resolve to walk away from Gendo's problems.
"What are you going to do after you get your daughter back?" He felt he had to ask Shinji.
"If it comes to it, leave the city, leave the region…and the nation itself if it means walking away from NERV and the cruelty of the Ikari family with my little girl." Shinji answered him.
"You succeed, could I ask you to do one favor for me?"
"What favor?"
"I don't trust your father as far as I can tolerate his unjust treatment of people. But if we find Rumiko, too… Will you take her and Toya with you and Shado if you do leave?"
Shinji stopped walking and turned to face Tendo.
"If I live to see another day… I'd probably ask her if she and Toya would come with us. But then, I have to wonder what I could do in my future; ever since Shado and I got here, before we met Rumiko and Toya, I found my hands rotating between being those meant to show kindness towards the people I care about…and those that bring pain and misery. I blame my parents and the Ikaris for this rotation between devotion and atrocity. I'd rather be without the hands of a brutal savage and go back to having the hands I hold my daughter with."
"I don't blame you for wanting that."
They entered Central Dogma, but it was empty. Not even Gendo was there.
"The Eva," Shinji sighed at that realization. "If he's not here, he's in the cages where Unit-01 resides."
He even feared the possibility that his father would try and put Shado in the Eva; since his daughter was also born after Second Impact and the woman that had her after raping him was dead, that made her a potential candidate for the Evas. And he needed to keep her safe from that nightmare.
"These Evas… Won't Gendo try to put Rumiko in one of them?" Tendo asked him.
"No, she was born the day before Second Impact. Even if he wanted to, that bastard couldn't use her for any of them."
They walked out of the control center and back into the hallway.
-x-
"…Stop right there," Rumiko heard the blue-haired albino say to her as she and Shado found themselves face-to-face with her.
"Rei Ayanami," Rumiko addressed the girl. "You're the other girl that gives Shinji a hard time."
"I have orders to bring the little girl to Commander Ikari," Rei explained her presence in front of the pair. "Hand her over."
Shado was disgusted with the albino girl's attitude and how she just listens to a bad man like her grandfather without any hesitation.
"If you want Shado, try and get her," Rumiko told her, raising the pipe in her hand. "But I warn you, I'm not going to be merciful if you do try. And I have to admit…your diving suit doesn't look good. I can see now why Shinji hates them. They don't hide anything. You look straight-up naked, even when you're not."
Rei merely tilted her head to the right; she had never been spoken to about the plugsuit and its would-be indecency.
Bang! A gunshot was heard…and Rumiko fell to the ground with Shado.
"Aaah!" They both gasped, and Shado looked up and saw Gendo, holding a smoking gun; he had shot at Rumiko again.
Now Rumiko had gunshot wounds in both her legs…and the lack of adrenaline rushing through her veins didn't help to numb her to the pain.
No, she thought, trying to get up. "You spineless bastard."
Gendo walked over and then pointed the gun at her head.
"You try to run, and she dies," he threatened Shado with the teen mother's life.
"You're crazy," she called him.
"And you're nothing more than a means to an end."
"No disrespect to Shado when I say this, but I hope Shinji beats the asshole out of you," Rumiko told them, turning onto her back to look up at the megalomaniac. "You're a monster."
Gendo then aimed his gun at Rumiko's chest.
The two fallen girls then saw a pair of arms appear behind Gendo and grabbed him by his neck and right arm, pulling him backwards.
"Aaurgh!" Gendo gasped, turning around, revealing to the girls and Rei that his attacker was none other than Shinji, who was beyond furious.
Further down the hall was Tendo, walking as fast as he could to help resolve the situation before it got further out of hand.
"You go to my girlfriend's employer's home where she lives with her son without an invite! You kidnap my daughter and girlfriend! You left Toya for dead! You shot Rumiko in her legs!" Shinji shouted the number of horrible things his father did during the time he broke into Tendo's home and kidnapped the girls. "You're history! You're history, old man! History!"
Gendo tried to remove his left arm from his neck, but he couldn't get a grip upon the wrist and he dropped the gun when he felt Shinji's right hand knock it away. He tried to get him by slamming himself against the wall, but Shinji forced his head to the left and felt his teeth sink into his flesh.
"Aaaah!" He yelled.
Rei saw Shinji draw blood from Commander Ikari's neck and made an attempt to move towards them.
"I wouldn't try to get involved, young lady," Tendo warned Rei, watching his brother fall to the floor. "Unless you got a child yourself, back off."
Shinji then raised his father's head…and slammed it hard onto the floor, causing Gendo's legs to spasm before he gave out a yell of pain. When he got up, his jaw was bloody and his chest was bleeding.
Gendo then came to and grabbed Shinji's left leg, raising his bloody face up.
"I should've put your little bitch of a daughter down like the bitch she is!" He raised his voice, reaching for the gun.
Rumiko reached up and held Shado while Tendo used his cane to hit his brother on his right arm so that he couldn't reach the gun.
Shinji picked up the gun and pointed it at his father, whom Tendo then kicked hard in the waist. He decided not to use the gun and just kick his father himself.
"Aaah! Ugh!" Gendo groaned as he struggled to get up.
"Oh, pass out already!" Shinji told him, and kicked him again.
"He's a stubborn-ass goat!" Tendo grunted; Gendo's Chinese Zodiac animal sign was the goat while his brother's sign was the snake. "Ugh!"
Shado looked away as Gendo was getting his comeuppance for his actions against them while Rumiko noticed Rei slowly approaching her boss.
"Don't…even…think about it," she told her, looking at her.
Rei merely stood and watched as Commander Ikari was soon spat on by Shinji before being kicked again in his chest.
"Shinji, that's enough," Tendo told the boy, trying to hold him back now before he crossed the line. "That's enough, Shinji."
Shinji looked at him, then at Gendo, who looked like he just got rolled by a pro that preferred to get rough, barely breathing with blood spilling from the bite on his neck. As he calmed down, he looked down at his hands and the gun that he could've used on his father, but decided not to. He handed the gun to Tendo, who took it from him.
"We gotta check our girls," Tendo told him, and walked over Gendo towards Rumiko and Shado.
Looking down at his hands again and at his father, Shinji wasn't sure if he could even hold his daughter after harming his father.
"Daddy?" Shado's voice reached out to him, and he looked down at her, seeing her looking up at him.
"I…" He spoke up, but couldn't find his words.
"He hurt Rumiko in both her legs," she told him, and the sound of Rumiko groaning in pain as Tendo helped her up was heard. "He hurt someone that never did anything at him. He got what he deserved."
He wanted to pick her up, but his hands were so bloody.
Shado remedied his problem by just holding him by his legs.
"It's alright now," she told him.
"Aah! Aah! Aw, St. Jude!" Rumiko groaned as Tendo gave her his cane to support her left leg while he helped carry her on her right side. "I can't believe he shot me in both my legs."
"I can't believe he actually shot at you," Tendo responded.
As the four started to walk away, just wanting to leave the Geo-Front, they had to stop because of Ms. Katsuragi, who was in their way of leaving now, accompanied by eight men in suits.
Shinji put his daughter down and sighed.
"Okay," he uttered. "Who's next?"
"Captain Katsuragi," they heard Gendo utter. "Detain these four, immediately."
"The only one getting detained, Commander Ikari," went Misato to them, "is you."
This was a surprise! The suits started walking past the four victims and towards Gendo, placing handcuffs on him.
"What is the meaning of this?!" Gendo demanded.
"I was contacted by Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, and he confided in me that you were crossing the line. It turns out he was right. Trespassing on personal and private property, breaking and entering, kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon, endangering the welfare of minors, even just harassment. The Committee will be informed of these offenses and how far you went to endanger your son and his daughter and friends."
-x-
A solid month went by, and NERV had more than its share of problems during that time that Gendo instigated. With the loss of the Third Child, the paramilitary agency had to deal with any future attacks with the Angels with just two pilots because Unit-01 was declared unsafe due to the injuries it caused the boy due to the high and unstable synchronization. While most found it a simple operation to deal with, the only one complaining that they still needed the Third Child was the very guy that tried to cause his death. Not that anyone else agreed with him, though.
After SEELE was informed of the severity of the situation regarding the Third Child and his unwillingness to continue piloting the Eva, they let Gendo off with a severe warning: If he went after the Third Child again, or anyone associated with him, such as his bastard child or fellow teen parent and her child, he would be serving his felony sentences in prison instead of just having a restraining order against him. It was agreed upon that a dying pilot was of no further use and was better off left alone than sent to an early grave.
"…I haven't heard anything new about the teen parents since the last time they were here," said Ritsuko to Misato as they were monitoring the synchronization test between Asuka and Unit-02. "Have you heard anything?"
"Only that Shinji got a bad bill of health from the doctor the last I heard," Misato explained; she had actually gone to Tendo's tea shop to speak with the elder brother of Gendo and found that Shinji would likely be drinking tea for the rest of his life if he had any hopes of seeing old age. "Beyond that, I don't think he and his daughter are in the city, anymore."
"They were only staying until he got his affairs in order."
-x-
The park by the small lake was dull, but at least had a sense of tranquility that he got in his tea shop. So this was something Tendo was willing to overlook for the time being.
"…I take it you don't enjoy the park much," he heard a man say to him, and looked up from the bench he was sitting on and saw Fuyutsuki standing a few feet away.
"I've always found parks to be somewhat more peaceful when filled with young people with children running about," said Tendo to him. "I heard that Japan's capital is being moved back to what's left of Tokyo-2 because Tokyo-3 was deemed unsafe."
"Yes, that's true…and because the Japanese government prefers to keep people in the loop of decision making. It wasn't an easy choice."
"What is easy these days?"
"You're referring to any recent choices in particular?"
"I had to watch my nephew leave the city so that he and his daughter would be safe from his father. Whatever chance I had to know the two of them personally was wasted because Gendo wasn't punished to the full extent of the law like he was supposed to be. Even I don't know where they went. I just hope that they and Rumiko and Toya are doing fine."
It wasn't like they went into Witness Protection, but Tendo did help the four leave the city for their own protection and ensure that NERV wouldn't have second thoughts about exploiting the young father or his daughter just to defeat inhuman monsters that they knew nothing about. All he could hope for was that he would receive some sort of sign that they were doing alright.
"I am sorry you didn't get to know him," Fuyutsuki sympathized.
To be continued…
A/N: I'm hoping the next chapter will be the last one for this story, but if it gets a sequel, it'll be the first one to do so and not an alternate take on the story.