Creation began on 12-18-14
Creation ended on 12-29-14
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Different from You: Guardians
The sunlight shone on Shinji's face, waking him from his slumber and to the sight of his daughter, asleep on his lap, holding onto him.
"Aah…" He groaned, feeling stiff in his upper joints as he moved.
Shado, feeling movement beneath her, opened her eyes and looked up at her father.
"Good morning, Daddy," she greeted.
"Good morning, Shado," he replied.
-x-
Deep beneath the oceans of the planet, the damaged cities that were submerged due to the Second Impact were being waded through by something large and ancient. It had been slumbering for many generations…in another time, and now, something awoke it, causing it to travel a great distance towards its unknown destination. Whatever it was, it was…similar to what it used to do for a different purpose altogether.
-x-
"Hello, I'm Kozo Fuyutsuki," the NERV Sub-Commander introduced himself to the gentleman that was Shinji's uncle and Shado's great-uncle.
"How may I help you?" He asked him.
"Does Shinji live here?"
"He used to live here. Isn't he with his father?"
"No, I'm afraid not. We're trying to find him and his daughter, but we have no leads. Has he ever tried to contact you?"
"No, and to be honest, it's better that he didn't. The less we hear of Shinji, the better."
Fuyutsuki was surprised to hear him say that. Normally, most relatives would be concerned about their kids being missing or kidnapped, but this guy seemed unaffected by his nephew or great-niece's absence or disappearance.
Then, he asked if he could look around where Shinji and Shado lived, and he was shown to the back of the house to what looked like a small study that was shaped like a little house.
"We haven't been in there since they left," the uncle expressed. "Only God knows what's in there."
Fuyutsuki turned the doorknob and pulled the door open, taking a look inside. He was quite shocked at what resided in this shack. The sight of two small beds, a stack of books, several drawings adorning the walls and ceiling, and small dishes made the place look like someone's attempt to turn the place into a home instead of a study. And then the sight of a small photograph caught his eye. It was covered in dust, so he wiped it clean to reveal the picture, seeing the two children posed.
Shinji, holding his daughter on the grass in a park, smiling whilst his child smiled and gave the peace symbol with her left hand.
Sighing, Fuyutsuki took the picture out and showed it to the uncle.
"It looks like Shinji and Shado lived here more than they did in the house," he told him.
"That was Shinji's decision after my son hassled his bastard child," the uncle explained. "Ever since the police dumped her here, he went and declared that she was his responsibility after my wife made an attempt to persuade him to give her away."
"You mean an orphanage?"
"Among other things. To this day, I'm still surprised that he managed to father a child with a woman over thirty-five…and that his rapist had his child. My wife believes that the reason behind this was just another get-rich-quick scheme, except that the mother died before she could try to get her hands on anything. Why Shinji even bothered to keep the kid when his own father left him is beyond us. Probably because he doesn't want to be like him."
Fuyutsuki looked back inside the little house and at the books. One of them was titled A Guide to Parenthood and Child Rearing, something Fuyutsuki found appropriate to the way Shinji seemed to demonstrate his concern over his daughter.
"Well, he clearly cherishes her," he told the uncle. "He read one of those parental guide books."
-x-
"Shinji?" The elder lady said to the young father, carrying a few clothes in her hands. "I was up in the attic, and I found some clothes that Shado could wear."
"Thank you," he praised her, accepting the clothes from her, and continued to wait outside the bathroom for Shado to finish washing the dirt off her body.
Inside the bathroom, sitting in the tub, Shado let the water that flowed around as the shower head poured warm water over her. For a short while, she thought she would need her father to help her wash the dirt off her back, but was okay by herself. Another problem was the fear that the bad man (Gendo) would find them while they were hiding here, but Shinji assured her that he would be keeping watch. It had seemed obvious to her father that his father, the bad man, frightened her more than any monsters she could've encountered. Not even the monster they saw last year on this cluster of islands frightened her as much as he did.
-x-
"…They've neither seen nor heard from since the day they left to Tokyo-3," Fuyutsuki told Gendo when he returned to the Geo-Front. "They weren't even the slightest bit worried about them. The little shack that was in their backyard, along with a small room that they say was Shinji's, looked like they might've been where Shinji lived with his daughter as he was raising her. The shack was like a tiny house for the two."
"I didn't expect them to keep in touch with the Third Child and the girl," Gendo responded. "If he didn't return to them after he left here, it was a clear sign that he had nothing left to go back to."
"Ikari, your son and granddaughter truly had nothing left to return to, which is probably why they left the country and immigrated to the States. Until we dragged them back against their will, and that resulted in several deaths and injuries."
As the two conversed back and forth, Misato and Ritsuko were engaged in a similar conversation about Shinji and Shado.
"…If they manage to get out of the country and get back to the States, will NERV go after them again?" Misato questioned.
"If Commander Ikari orders so," Ritsuko explained.
"Why does he seem so obsessed with making his son pilot the Eva when he has made it clear, either by his voice or the number of people he's harmed, that he wants nothing to do with NERV, the Angels, or him? And how many people have to get hurt before he gets the message?"
"He's not the understanding type, and he's not known to accept anyone's decision if it conflicts with any of his."
-x-
The Earth seemed so beautiful from a vast distance in the abyss of space. If you're so far from the blue marble that you would assume was the only one in the universe that supported intelligent life, you couldn't see the horrible damage that was done to the planet. Unfortunately, the latest arrival to the planet could see the damage that had been done, and unlike most beliefs, there was no true rebirth in sight. Not with the extensive harm that had been done.
"Aaaaiieeeeee!" It shrieked, soaring closer to its destination, and entered the atmosphere.
-x-
"Hey, something just entered Earth's atmosphere," a man said to his superiors as he looked at his monitor.
"A meteorite?" A woman suggested.
"No, it can't be," he responded.
"Why?"
"It's…slowing down," he revealed.
"What?" She asked.
"It's…slowing down…and now, it's changing its course."
"Any attempt at communication?" Another man questioned.
"No attempt has been made."
And at that moment, a pair of jets were launched into the sky to intercept the foreign object that was confirmed to not be a meteorite.
"…Requesting confirmation that communication has been established," one of the pilots requested.
"No communication has been established," his superior responded.
In the clouds above the jets, whatever they were now catching up to, it was still unseen.
-x-
"…Well, it looks like they fit you just fine," said Shinji to Shado, as she finished putting on the hand-me-down shirt to go with the hand-me-down shorts.
"Do I look okay?" Shado asked, moving her arms to make sure she could move them while wearing it.
"You look good," her father expressed; the clothes she was wearing may have been for boys, but it was known that girls were often seen wearing them.
"Thank you."
"Shinji? Shado?" They both turned to the door of the room and saw the elderly man, looking worried.
"Yes?" They responded to him.
"I just got a call from a friend that recently left Tokyo-3, and she says that she received an unwelcome visit from some men in black suits and gave me a heads-up that they could be coming this way."
Shado then got tense and held onto her father's legs.
"There's an old mountain path nearby, and they may not be able to find you there if they try to look around here."
"Thank you," Shinji told the elder, and quickly grabbed his shoes.
-x-
"…Come again?" The female superior asked the two pilots that were assigned to intercept the unknown target that entered Earth's atmosphere.
"Target looks like…a blue bird on fire," one of the pilots repeated; even he was unsure of what to make of this phenomenon that they saw.
"A blue bird? On fire? Return to base immediately."
-x-
"Shado?" Shinji asked his daughter as they walked up the mountain path the elder had showed them in order to protect them from the men in black.
"Yes, Daddy?" She responded.
"Are you tired? Do you need me to carry you?"
"No thank you. I'm okay."
As they were walking through the trees on the path, a large distance from the base of the mountain path, several men in black had just left the house that they had questioned the owners. Unfortunately, Section 2 was instructed by Commander Ikari to look allover the area that spanned one-hundred miles in all four directions of Tokyo-3. Search the homes, the woods, even the mountains if it was necessary.
-x-
"We got incoming!" Hyuga announced, as the alarms went off, indicating that a new Angel had been detected.
On the screens and holographic displays, the new Angel looked like a gigantic mummy of sorts, wrapped in black and gray bindings with a large, metallic skull. It floated towards the city after passing the hills and tank and missile launcher-occupied domains that were emptying their payloads in desperate attempts to stop it.
"Launch Unit-02," Gendo ordered.
-x-
"Hey, I think I know where this thing is heading," said a woman, trying to monitor the unidentifiable creature that entered Earth's atmosphere.
"Where?" A man questioned her on her left side.
"It looks like…it's heading towards…Japan."
-x-
In the air, still obscured by the clouds, the planet's newest inhabitant flew towards the cluster of islands where it felt it needed to be.
-x-
"…Are you sure?" Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki asked the representative that called NERV to inform them of what was approaching the shores of the archipelago. "Understood."
He hung up the phone and turned to Gendo.
"That was the Japanese Air Self Defense Force," he informed him, "and they say that something is approaching Japan."
"Another Angel?" Gendo asked.
"They don't know."
Ring-ring-ring! The phone rang again, and Fuyutsuki picked up.
"Yes?" He asked, and then became distressed. "Are you sure?"
-x-
Ten minutes ago
A helicopter was doing a routine aerial check over the shorelines overlooking the Japan Trench. Everything being monitored and recorded was being transferred back to base for information updating. Until what caught one of the camera crew's attention made the rest of the helicopter uneasy.
Below at the ocean, something began to rise from the bubbling body.
BOOM! A geyser of water shot from the ocean and dispersed into an artificial rain, as the helicopter crew got an obscured view of what had risen.
"Oh, my God!" One of them gasped.
It was…some sort of mechanical monster, adorned in black, silver, gold and green armor, looking like some sort of dragon from an unknown time period. It glistened like new, and sparked glowing, red eyes as it looked up at the helicopter.
"Rrrrrraaurgh!" It roared and hissed, revealing that the talons of its claws looked like miniature cannons or missile launchers. "Rrrrurgh!"
Then, as if uninterested in the helicopter, it progressed towards the shore, revealing that its tail possessed a large, drill-like end. It was as if something better than the helicopter was waiting for it, or even calling it, to the Land of the Rising Sun that was Japan.
-x-
"…And it's not registering as an Angel?" Misato questioned, getting a look at this mechanical creature that was now walking through the ruins of an old city.
"No blue pattern is coming up from this thing," Maya Ibuki informed her. "It's not an Angel."
"Where's it heading?" Fuyutsuki asked.
"Inward," went Shigeru. "If it keeps its current speed, it should be approaching the outskirts of Tokyo-2 in seventeen hours."
"Well, it seems to be in a hurry to get there," went Kaji.
-x-
Being deployed in Unit-01, Rei was instructed to intercept the mechanical creature while Unit-02 dealt with the Angel.
"That's all the data we have on this thing so far," she heard Major Katsuragi inform her. "If stopping it fails, your orders are to destroy it."
"Understood, Major Katsuragi," she responded.
-x-
"Daddy! Look at the monster!" Shado gasped, pointing towards the Angel.
Shinji saw the Angel and was immediately reminded of the previous year with the monster he had to fight just to get himself and Shado away from danger. He picked his child up and ran up the path to the peak of the mountain.
BANG! He heard a gun go off, and he looked behind them to see a bunch of black-suited men.
"That's as far as you go with your independence, Third Child," the one toting the handgun expressed. "Now, surrender and come with us quietly back to NERV HQ."
Shinji held on tightly to his daughter and questioned, "And if I were to decline?"
Of course, he knew there was nowhere left to run but up. There was another path down the mountain on the other side, but he'd probably be riddled with bullet holes by the time he got to the top. And worse was that he wasn't even recovered from the blood loss or his patch up from having the bullet removed from his shoulder. It was as his daughter said in her prayer/wish last night, that he had his limits because he was only a person that struggled to build a life for the both of them.
"Just give it up, kid," the man told him. "You can't run forever."
Shado stole a peek at the men and quickly turned away, frightened by them as she had been by the last bunch back in the States.
Shinji slowly backed further up the path, still striving to keep them away from the men in black.
"Close your eyes, baby," he told Shado, preparing to run if he had to, even if it meant he was likely to get shot again.
WHOOSH! A strong breeze swept past them…and then another that, literally, blew the men off their feet and off the path, down into the woods.
"Aaaaurgh!" They yelled as they vanished below the trees.
A large shadow loomed over the parent and child, and Shinji turned around to gaze up at what had shown up.
"No way," he gasped, and Shado opened her eyes to look.
A large creature that resembled a bird of sorts was hovering above them as it lowered and touched the ground at the base of the mountain. It was mostly blue, with large wings and a reddish-gold crest on its upper torso. What confused Shinji the most about it was that it had arms to go with its wings, like it had come from a world where creatures gifted with flight could adapt to use their arms for other purposes.
It then lowered its left claw down against the mountain path, in front of the two, in a strange gesture that reminded them of when someone wanted something handed to them.
"Aieee," it shrieked softly at them.
"Daddy," went Shado, "I think it wants us to go with it."
"But we don't even know what it wants," he told her, being logical.
"I don't believe it's here to hurt us. It would've done so already."
-x-
"Is that an Angel?" Misato asked Ritsuko.
"It's not registering as one," she answered. "No blue pattern's showing up."
The bird-like creature on the screen that appeared near the mountain then lifted off the ground and took to the air.
Suddenly, the Angel, which was about to face Unit-02, levitated and went after the bird-like creature!
-x-
BLAST, BLAST, BLAST! The Angel fired off several energy beams at the bird-like creature, but missed each time. Whatever this creature was, there was a chance that it was a threat to its agenda.
In the claws of the beast, Shinji and Shado wondered what was going on around them, as they couldn't see what was happening.
"What's going on?" Shado wondered, as the breeze outside the creature's claws snuck through its talons and swept around them.
BLAST! They heard another explosion, and the creature shrieking.
SLAM! Shinji had to assume that, due to the feeling of gravity pushing down on him and his daughter, the creature had to land on the ground. Then, the creature's right claw, which was over their heads, lifted away and revealed several small buildings around them. Beneath them was a surface, a roof, and Shinji grabbed Shado and ran onto it.
The creature took flight and attacked the monster that attacked it.
"Aaaaiieeeeee!" It shrieked, and then fired a bluish-green stream of fire from its beak at the monster.
"Whoa!" Shado gasped, seeing the flames hit the monster and burn it a little.
"Grrrraurgh!" The Angel growled in pain as its body began to slowly heal from this unexpected assault.
Then, it unwrapped itself and revealed that the wrapping were almost like toilet paper in their appearance, and used them to wrap up the creature's wings and arms.
"Aaaiieeeee!" It shrieked, unable to break free.
-x-
"…Orders, Misato?" Asuka asked over the intercom, raising her Pallet Rifle at the levitating Angel that was busy against the creature that had appeared; she was certain that the majority of the NERV personnel was losing their ability to stand the sight of the creature that attacked the Angel struggling to break free of its grip.
"Aaaiieeeee!" The creature continued to struggle, despite it all being hopeless.
"Pilot Soryu, incoming!" She then heard the First Child, and then saw what had to be impossible: Unit-01, in the air, falling towards her!
"Whoa!" She moved Unit-02 out of the way and watched the purple Evangelion crash into the ground.
Then, several small rockets came near her and blasted her Eva onto the ground, as well. The ones that didn't hit her Eva went up towards the Angel's toilet paper-like limbs, blowing them up and releasing the bird-like creature from its grasp.
"Rrraaurgh!" Asuka looked over at a hillside…and saw the mechanical monster that the First Child was supposed to be dealing with, walking around the buildings of Tokyo-2.
"I thought that thing was supposed to be hours away from here!" She gasped.
"It sped up," Misato told her.
-x-
"Incredible," Shinji expressed, seeing the mechanical creature that just showed up and fired rockets from its claws at the Angel.
It reminded him of the old films and the most recent film about that dinosaur-like animal that was the result of atomic testing that periodically attacked Japan, only this one was heavily stacked and looked as though it didn't obey what he learned during his time in the States as the laws of physics, where something heavy couldn't move as fast as something that was not heavy.
The mechanical beast stopped for a moment and turned its head towards the buildings. It looked at a particular building's roof, at two humans atop it, a young man and a little girl. Then, it resumed its trek across the ground towards the bird-creature.
"Daddy," went Shado, "I think it was looking at us."
To be continued…
A/N: Here's the latest chapter of this new story of change. Some people are curious as to what these creatures are, but wait until the next chapter to know the whole sum. As the Angel, it's Zeruel, the mightiest of Adam's children.