Creation began on 10-25-14
Creation ended on 10-29-14
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Different from You: One Year Later
A/N: I'm starting to suspect that it's stories based off ideas like this that get more reviews than the ones that are long and in-progress. People that review want more, so I try to give 'em what they want.
It had been almost a year since the Third Angel attacked Tokyo-3, Japan. Almost one whole year since it was defeated and the people were granted a reprieve from the fear of human extinction. But almost one year since the Third Child and his daughter disappeared from Japanese society, leaving no trace with which to track them down.
NERV, provided with more funding after the First Child, Rei Ayanami, recovered from the failed Unit-00 activation test and the arrival of the Second Child, Asuka Langley Soryu, and Unit-02, made several attempts to locate the boy and his child at the demand of Commander Ikari, but to no avail. Even with the aid of NERV facilities around the globe, nobody had seen or heard of anyone going by the name of Shinji Ikari or seen a young teen with a little girl. It was like a story about trying to hide, only the two protagonists hadn't been trying to hide, they only wanted to get away from the people that cared very little about their well-being.
"I'm starting to think we won't find them," went Misato to Ritsuko.
"Until the Marduk Institute locates an adequate candidate for the position of the Fourth Child, NERV has no choice to continue searching for the Third Child," Ritsuko responded, typing away commands for the MAGI.
"Not to be blunt, but you and Commander Ikari did frighten Shado," Misato expressed.
"I thought her name was Fuyona," the faux-blond responded.
"Only because it says so on her birth certificate, but the boy wouldn't call her that. To him, she would always be like his shadow than to be unwanted."
"And the aunt and uncle haven't seen or heard from them since before they showed up here last year. And they have no idea of where they were likely to go."
As they continued to converse, Gendo Ikari, in his office, droning over the lack of progress that had been made in finding his son and bastard granddaughter. It was completely unlikely that people would lose sight of a fourteen-year-old boy and a three-four-year-old girl. Unless, of course, they had managed to be picked up by those that viewed NERV as antagonistic or anti-religious toward the Angels, or they just dropped off the grid, which would make them nearly impossible to find.
Dammit! He thought, picking up a photograph of Shinji from over a year ago before he arrived to Tokyo-3. Where are you?! Where are you?!
-x-
"…I had strings, but now I'm free," a television had broadcast a trailer in front of a small room's sole occupants. "There are no strings on me."
"Daddy?" A little girl with ebony hair that went past her shoulders spoke to a boy that was about fifteen years old. "Could we see that movie one day?"
"Sure," the boy answered her, pouring a small cup full of juice.
Almost a year since they left Japan, but Shinji and Shado had never been happier to be away from the people that either despised them or tried to exploit them. Almost a year since they had fled from Japan and found a new life in the States. It wasn't exactly what Shinji had wanted for his daughter, but he was working on ensuring that Shado would have a brighter future. And he was surprised to find a job that paid quite a considerable sum for people to test new, experimental medicines for hospitals to try on the ill and elderly.
When you had just arrived into a new country and you have no money in your pockets or a green card, not to mention a child to provide for, fear and desperation tend to push you toward the road that allows you to score fast cash at the risk of your health. It seemed simple and sensible enough to him: Show up to the address on the advertisement paper, fill out the form, select the experimental medicines you're willing to test out, and then receive your pay shortly afterwards. It was made easier when he found that through orientations, the majority of the people that had showed up before he had decided to back out after hearing of the potential side-effects of each drug if administered.
"Sir, did you hear everything spoken?" The woman explaining the possible side-effects asked him when she found that he was the only one left in the room the orientation was being held.
"Yes, ma'am," he answered her.
"And you're perfectly willing to participate?"
"This programs pays, and I need the money to better my future."
And it was quite an arrangement he found between himself and the pharmacy that was trying to sell their new concoctions to the hospitals around the States. Every three-four weeks, he would be injected with the experimental drug to see if it affected him in any way, received his pay of between four-five-thousand dollars every three months, and for each medicine that was tested successfully, he received double the amount he was paid to try it out. It was by nothing short of a miracle that he had managed to test out at least ten different medical drugs with little, detrimental effect to his health and make a living to support himself and Shado. While his daughter did worry over him from time to time, he assured her that as long as she was okay, it was a risk he was willing to take.
I hope the next drug I test for them is a new type of painkiller, he thought, looking at his left arm as his hand shook. I still have that lousy phantom pain from that brief stint in the Eva.
When it stopped shaking, he felt relieved, but it would only be a matter of time before the phantom pain returned.
"Daddy?" Shado spoke, noticing his look of relief after his hand stopped shaking. "Hand hurting again? Do you need your pain pills?"
"No, dear," he told her. "I'm fine now."
Shado got up from her side of the small table they used for meals and want over to him, hugging him. She hated seeing him hurt because of that man-made monster and the enemy monster that threatened to destroy all of mankind. It just reminded her of that scary man that was her grandfather when they were being followed by him when they attempted to leave that underground place.
-x-
"…It looks like we might've gotten a hit on the Third Child's whereabouts," went Ryoji Kaji to Misato and Ritsuko, holding a folder full of pictures.
"Oh, really?" Misato questioned him.
"One of my contacts in the States called me and says he saw a boy that looked like the missing Eva pilot, leaving one of those major pharmaceutical companies. Apparently, there's a program of theirs that pays a substantial amount for people to volunteer for testing of new medicines. It looks like young Ikari himself has found quite the job for himself."
"He volunteers for a pharmacy to make ends meat? Kid must be pretty desperate to try and make a living like that."
When Kaji removed a photograph from the folder, he showed the two what he suspected of the boy.
"It looks more like he's trying to take care of this kid he was seen with more than himself," he revealed, showing the boy with a little girl, walking away from a hospital. "But why does he have a little girl with him in the first place?"
Misato and Ritsuko recognized the girl as Shado, but the faux-blond found the child to be a waste of anyone's time.
"Where was this taken?" Misato asked.
"Manhattan," Kaji answered.
"The Third Child's in New York?" Ritsuko questioned.
"The land of the free."
-x-
"Daddy! Daddy!" Shado ran toward her father in the park, crying.
Shinji, who was reading up on how to manage his finances, saw her running to him, and reacted in concern to a bruise on his daughter's head.
"What happened?" He asked her, examining the bruise.
"The man!" She sobbed.
"What man?"
"The bad man! From last year!"
Shinji looked around…and noticed a retreating man in black.
"Come on," he gathered her up in his arms. "We're going home now."
-x-
Only a week after receiving the information that the Third Child was living New York with his daughter, and Gendo was unable to "convince" the little girl to "convince" the boy to return to Japan.
She's a disappointment, too, he thought, looking at his right hand and seeing several strands of hair around the fingers.
-x-
"Your head still hurts, Shado?" Shinji asked her in the silence of the night.
"A little," she answered, her left hand covering the bandage that hid the injury beside her bruise; her father discovered that his father (if it was truly him that attacked her) had pulled several strands of her hair out by their roots, requiring disinfect to sterilize the injury. "I don't understand. What did I do? Why did he try to take me?"
"Whatever his reason, he'd better have moral one."
-x-
"…The DNA results came back positive," Ritsuko told Gendo, using the girl's hair he had provided with his own DNA in a genetics lab just outside of New York. "The girl is the Third Child's daughter. This means that the Third Child is in New York."
"Send out the team," he responded to this revelation.
To be continued…
A/N: Here's the second chapter. What do you think of the differences between Shinji and Gendo now? Patience for the next chapter. Also, praise to Kitedtk for clarifying the difference between male and female DNA. Thank you.